Slashdot Mirror

There have been reports of U.S. military submitting various terror suspects to "torture" by playing them very loud heavy metal...Other people pay good bucks for that kind of entertainment:D

On a more realistic note, here's a report on the military applications of music in Iraq and elsewhere: http://sptimes.com/2004/11/21/Floridian/Iraq__n__r oll.shtml

Argh- As much as I wish this was true (Aside from the fact that the movie with Val Kilmer where he wears the disguises to get to the free energy source was terrific), I have been ruined by the Segway. I followed the hype for months, and got sucked in to see what the hype was for this invention that would "change the world." And then I saw it was a scooter- and man was I pissed. Oh well. At least I didn't think I had won a Toyota, but actually got a Toy Yoda, like this hooters waitress.... (Scroll down a quarter page for the article...) toy yoda

In case you get a registration page, here are a few more links to the story:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/04/Tampabay/Dolphin _rescued_from_.shtml
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl -817speedodolphin,0,7853284.story
http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/080506/tp2c h6.htm?date=080506&story=tp2ch6.htm
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/1 5297167.htm

I guess the big bad mans are just "misunderstood".

oops, link to SP Times Article

The sptimes.com article is interesting. It points out that as of 2001, the company had delivered nothing but hot air, and had apparently charged the city of Hoboken for US$3 mil in the process. Do you think that the company got another ransom payment for finishing the parking structure after they were (apparently) rehired? I suppose all that money went right to auditing and training classes. It seems to me that Scientology is made of the attributes listed in the article: "part exuberant salesmanship and part hyperbole." These are nicer terms than I would use. I speculate that this software licensing row seems to indicate the Co$ stance on software - it's all in the license. Fight Scientology by supporting FOSS :)

Subject change; This company is based in Clearwater, FL. Anybody else get a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with scientology?

short answer= NO

the company website is a robopark.com - Needless to say, the site is down intermittently since the mention in wired. Research on the site seems to imply that the company has german roots.

side note

Demographics for Clearwater

total population = 108,787

as seen here: About 6,850 Scientology followers have moved to the Clearwater area, joining the church's 1,400 uniformed employees.

See also this report on religios demographics is Pinellas County

Not everyone in Clearwater is a scientologist. Of course you are free to your opinion. But you seem to panic too easily.

Google is your friend.

It's because we allocate the money we spend so poorly and inefficiently. The majority ends up in the pockets of the insurance companies and the drug companies and the hospital companies, especially those who have friends in government to mandate their use. Example I just read about today: after this
Medicare D fiasco http://www.sptimes.com/2005/webspecials05/medicare , the VA software fiasco (with a single software vendor), after so many numerous examples, the government has handed to 3-M on a gold-edged silver platter a NO BID CONTRACT for Medicare Payment Services which will reallocate payments based on new formulas (article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/us/17medicare.ht ml). Do you think somebody has a friend up on high? Just like Halliburton getting no-bid contracts, just like all of the Katrina waste from no-bid contracts, just like Medicare D where the government GAVE UP its right to haggle and negotiate for lower prices from the drug manufacturers.

My god, we asked 3M to evaluate whether the government should use 3M software for medicare billing evaluation? What do they think the answer is going to be? And of course, 3M is out there selling its services to all hospitals saying hey we're know this software in and out, buy our own billing software to deal with medicare.

It hit the whitehouse. The southwest corner but after bouncing from a tree. The thing is, cars loaded with explosives don't do damage on impact like a military ordnance would. Thier most effective means would be to park in the area, then detonate.

Most Skyscrapers and new metal/brink or just skinned building will withstand a hit from a cessna. Usualy they bounce off and hit the ground. The one in that picture didn't but you can see the penetration is minimal. Now the whitehouse has been fortified so it is likley it will be the same(can withstand gunfire and some rockets/missles). But in an airport situation, were this defense bubble would be used, the buildings are already likley to be constructed in a way that small aircraft don't present too much of a problem. It may even be reinforced to withstand small rocket attacks too. It would probably be more effective to land the plane then taxi to directly beside the building and detonate the payload.

The easiest solution would be to outlaw small aircraft from that airport and make one specificly for them a few mile away. Then if a small plane enters the airspace, it is likley to be doing so because of malicious intent and less likley to be an inocent hobbyist not paying attention to the rules.

FOX did not dispute that it tried to force Akre to broadcast a false story, but argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports.

Not quite.

Try this and this for a somewhat better description of what happened.

Millions, can seem to get into the millions. How about some links?

My fault, I should have simply said "over a million."

1
2>
3>

There are as many as you might want to go Googling for.

Perhaps you're right, but isn't a little presumptuous to say that in response to a story that completely defies our current understanding of the human brain?

Comment: Brain weight is an important index of its pathologic state. Brain weight is correlated with height, weight, age, and sex. The decedant's brain was grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grtams (1.35 lbs.). That weight is less than half the expected tabular weight for a decedant of her adult age of 41 years 3 months and 28 days. By way of comparison, the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan weighed 835 grams at the time of her death, after 10 years in a similar persistant vegitative state.

I am not a physician, but the autopsy report appears to be very conclusive evidence that Ms. Schiavo was never going to regain conciousness in any way, shape or form that could be considered even minimally functioning. Should you wish to read the full autopsy report (39 pages), it is available as a PDF from this location: http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/15/schiavoreport.pd f

A friend's husband sells high-end tires and wheels, just a cottage industry for him. Someone broke into one of his storage lockers and stole some wheels. Fortunately, the thieves were stupid enough to post the merchandise on ebay, complete with photos that included shots of the boxes with the victim's address on them.

But of course nothing beats this story:

The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month.

Care to link your source? Or shall I do it for you? A median income of $80US / mo is a lot less than your stated $250.

In a somewhat related vein, I work with a lot of Indians who have moved to the US within the past 10 years to earn money to either send home now or save to retire back to India later. Many of them have told me that $12-$15K a year is a king's ransom in India, they could retire very easily on little money. When I asked why a business could not open a factory or office there and pay these "low" wages and provide good benefits, the response is always that the local governments and/or businesses would find a way to shut them down to prevent unrest from other workers who would want the same benefits. Every argument I put forward to counter this was shot down, explained with "it's a systemic problem".

While sympathetic to what is going on in China's manufacturing plants now, I know it's not a new or easily solvable problem. I don't see US citizens demanding products made solely in the US under US bylaws and protections, and am further unmoved by peoples' outcry (what was that you said? "Apple sucks"?) when they go half-cocked on a summary of an unread report of US labor law violations in a foreign country.

The fact that Mohammed married a 9-year-old girl (or rather, married a 6-year-old girl and consummated the marriage when she was 9) comes from hadith sahih bukhari 7.62.64. The hadith sahih bukhari are a primary muslim religious text, secondary only to the Qu'ran to most Sunnis, though apparently Shi'a have a more nuanced view of the factuality of the hadith.

In any case, I agree this is a silly reason to attack a religion, since the Hebrew Old Testament has many protagonists and prophets who did things that would be considered immoral or illegal by modern standards. But that doesn't make the underlying comment untrue.

As for the Iran-badges-for-non-Muslims story, I read it originally on Canada.com, where it was posted on the National Post site. They have since removed the story. However, the UPI news wire story on the subject is still up. This story was published in several mainstream outlets. It seems the story was basically untrue at least based on corrections like these, but it wasn't just printed in some fringe outlet by any means.

However, I will grant you that a real news outlet should fact check and withdraw stories that turn out to be false. Many "blogs" and online rant sites don't qualify as news since they don't follow basic rules of journalistic conduct.

Funny that US has bugged a Boeing 767 purchased from the US for use by former President Jiang Zemin.

Didn't hear the Chinese stop buying jumbo jets.

The article also takes a look at how the prevalent attitude is that tapping in to these connections does not equate to stealing and why still other may disagree.

Remember the Slashdot article about the man arrested in St Petersburg, Florida for stealing wireless internet access from another man?

You can get a web enabled washing machine. It automatically downloads clothing care programs. However, the 1st generation machine needs to be connected to a PC in order to download files, but the 2nd generation machine will have a built-in modem.

The machine is the result of a three-year development project that involved 30 engineers and cost roughly $3.5 million, according to the company.

There was also a web-enabled refrigerator that would allow you to download music, E-mail, take photographs and do teleconferencing. Photograph of the machine. Original article

And there's also a microwave with a built in LCD display which doubles as a TV screen and CCTV system so you can see what is cooking inside.

Add a personality chip and a speech synthesizer, and your refrigerator could become your personal dietician. As Dave Lister would say Smeg.

You can get a web enabled washing machine. It automatically downloads clothing care programs. However, the 1st generation machine needs to be connected to a PC in order to download files, but the 2nd generation machine will have a built-in modem.

The machine is the result of a three-year development project that involved 30 engineers and cost roughly $3.5 million, according to the company.

There was also a web-enabled refrigerator that would allow you to download music, E-mail, take photographs and do teleconferencing. Photograph of the machine. Original article

And there's also a microwave with a built in LCD display which doubles as a TV screen and CCTV system so you can see what is cooking inside.

Add a personality chip and a speech synthesizer, and your refrigerator could become your personal dietician. As Dave Lister would say Smeg.

No reason to stop inhaling those anthrax spores! Enjoy! Ha ha!

So very funny. Or maybe not.

Bad example. The notion of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center was indeed foreseen. In fact, surviving a hit (from a '70s era jetliner, unfortunately, not today's wide-bodies) was a design criterion for the towers.

Quackwatch
Professor Protests
Warning Signs of Chiropractic foolery
Wikipedia Article

Chiropractic is pseudoscientific horseshit. While it's true that some chiropractors are merely back massagers, the majority believe in the strange teachings of their school. Some excerpts:

"Chiropractic was founded in 1895 by Daniel David Palmer, a grocer and "magnetic healer" who believed that all diseases are the result of misplaced spinal bones. According to his theory, "subluxations" (misalignment) of spinal vertebrae cause disease by interfering with the flow of "nerve energy" from the brain to the body's tissue cells. Spinal "adjustments," by restoring vertebrae to their "proper places," allow brain energy to heal the diseased condition."

"Nerve conduction studies of human spinal nerves identified as being subluxed by chiropractors were shown to be normal by conventional scientific measures. Studies involving X-ray and CT scanning of the human spine before and after chiropractic manipulation show no changes in joint position as identified by radiologists."

"Aside from placebo effect chiropractic therapy has never been shown to treat any condition other than musculoskeletal problems."

Chiropractic has never been shown to have ANY verifiable effect on ANY condition. Not only is it useless, it can often be dangerous. In fact, if you can find a chiropractor who can provide actual evidence of the practice's efficacy, or even of a simple "subluxation," you'll be eligible for the JREF's One Million Dollar award.

Penn and Teller did a succinct expose on the dangers of chiropractic on their show "Bullshit."

Already happened. This summer in New Orleans?

The only thing I can think of to differentiate yourself from the majors right now is to stock imports and the means to play them. In this way you will have things that the big chains mostly don't have. When I was contracting in Virginia I loved to drive out to this one non-chain store that carried imports. Ideas can be had from NCS and Lik Sang. Get a few Messiah NEX systems, and some old NES games for them to appeal to the nostalgic market.

There was one rap group that used a Beats of Rage mod to advertise themselves, though I have no idea how that worked out for them.

The biggest problem though is getting people actually to the store. If you could get people to come once a week, for some kind of competitive game night, they might buy or at least come back.

I thought this article about Animenation was interesting:

Right hobby, right time

Of course, they built their online business first and the retail store came later.

You would be surprised what you can get for $8 and a candy bar.

That said, the OP may find that if he gave us the log analysis tools and algorithms he wants to apply to the log files, a bunch of us would run the analysis on our own logs and send him the results. That way he would get the benefit of a slew of different data sets, instead of just one or two.

Companies are not too keen on sending out their internal datasets (Sarbanes / Oxley might have something to do with that, or the thought of being caught in some sort of phishing scam) but may be a bit more comfortable in simply sending him the analysis results on their data.

Jihad at San Francisco State

CU prof's essay sparks dispute - Prof Ward Churchill says 9/11 victims were not innocent people

USF Professor Sami Al-Arian calls for "Death of Israel" and "Damn America"

University of New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold addressed the terrorist attacks in his morning class on Western Civilization, remarking, "Anyone who can bomb the Pentagon has my vote

US Universities have been especially anti-American since the '60s.
Of course, they don't mind that the government helps to pay their salaries.

a story ... about laser-scribed chicken eggs that will "fight terrorism"

I thought that you had to be joking until I googled it. Link for the lazy.

Women's names used to be used for hurricanes that had their origin in a particular location. The first place I ever read this I think said that it applied to north of the equator. The article I found recently on the subject says it was for hurricanes that were plotted on the pacific ocean.

Whatever the case, everyone agrees that in the late seventies the naming scheme was changed to include male names due to charges of sexism.

1. A very targetted voting anomaly, sufficient to swing the election.
2. A broad voting-pattern discrepancy between counties that used Diebold machines, and counties that used paper ballots.

1. It would require the participation, flawless execution, and total silence of thousands of people, - officials in every county in which voter fraud was attempted. And not just the ones who pulled off this nationwide fraud, but also those who were "approached" to do so, and refused. Not one of them could make a mistake, get caught, or speak out. Not one.
2. It would require the non-involved local officials be completely unaware of fraud going on under their nose.
3. By the end of the day, the exit polls ended up being very close to the actual election outcome. In addition, most polls prior to the election showed Bush winning by between 1-5 points. A vast voter fraud effort would require we believe the pre-election polls, exit polls and election outcome were all wrong...despite being almost exactly the same.

• Diebold's election-systems division is "run by a registered Democrat"
• Mark Radke--Director of Marketing for Diebold Election Systems--has an exclusively Democratic donation history, having donated close to $10,000 to Democrats since 1995--when he was with Fulbright and Jaworski--including the legal limit of $2000 to John Kerry in the recent campaign. [2000-2004: $4,250] -- [1995-1999: $5,600]

The article referenced in this Slashdot story is a complete lie, in my opinion. It is certainly possible to do what the article says. However, the cost in energy is greater than the amount of the energy returned.

The situation was the same 50 years ago. There is a huge amount of oil in the shale, but no way has been found to extract the huge amounts of oil efficiently.

The article refers to the "Synfuels debacle". Here's an article about Synfuels called The Great Energy Scam that discusses how scammers take advantage of the lack of technical knowledge of the public. Here's another article: Harsh glare on synfuels hitting home.

In my opinion, this is just another attempt to start a new scam. I think the word farce is too weak. Here's a little about how it works: THE 2005 ENERGY BILL, Helping Corporations, Hurting Western Colorado.

--
Bush lied, many died.

I love conspiracy knotheads.

I love Buzz Aldrin's response to conspiracy knotheads.

"Imagine law enforcement officers roaming the streets and ripping counterfeited t-shirts off materialistic girls."

Imagine no more...
"Consumers who obtain counterfeit products face hefty fines." -- http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/21/Travel/Let_the_b uyer_beware.shtml

After you donate to any charity you choose why not make your next vacation to a spot hit hard by the storm?

Take your business meeting there, family trip or day trip to a place who has had to rebuild and spend a few dollars there. The people need outside economic stimulation - for years. If you can't make up your mind on where to visit next summer, pick a town who is just starting to rebuild and show your support.

and spare us the comments on the obvious reasons why a few obvious places aren't going to be a choice

to showcase monopolies, you pick out: microsoft, mpaa, riaa, phone companies, clear channel.

all good choices, and none of them depend on an exhaustable resource in the ground. so the fact that monopolies exist in places where things like raw materials aren't much of a problem means that there are most likely more in industries where raw materials play a key role.
this is becuase the barrier to entry into a raw material base industry is much higher, this gives less competition, more consolidation, bigger companies, more monopolies.

"That's why the current price spike worries the heck out of them. While it's great for them in the short term, its consequences are disturbing to them in the long term. If energy prices stay high, it leads to worldwide recession which dramatically cuts into their profit margin..."

you might think so, but i doubt it. as you said,
"Stock price is everything to a major company."

the fact that stock price dominates companies decision making is big part of the problem. the people in the "finance" industry seem to live and die on quarter to quarter profits , and this puts pressure on the companies to perform now. you might have noticed this pressure in the form of enron, worldcom, healthsouth, adelphia, and some that have not been discovered yet. so when a stockholder looks up an oil stock and sees that they've been having record profits, the stockholder will buy. this tells the company that they are doing something right. so the company is forced to think in the short term if it wants to continue to "grow" by getting more investment from outside.

"Both of these things are highly illegal, and mergers between large oil companies are subject to antitrust approval in most of the nations (including ours) that they operate in."

yeah, but if they buy the congressmen (you can tell me they don't, but i am certain that they do), then the laws don't mean squat.
and, as for companies doing something illegal, it should be noted that this is simply a financial decision, not a "moral" one. if the benefits, in terms of profits, of doing something illegal outweigh the potential consequences, like a fine, then the company will do it. there is no doubt in my mind about that.

just look at what bechtel did...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html

or maybe monsanto...
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/24/Worldandnation/T he_reporter_Detroit_.shtml

or how about what walmart and many other compaies are doing by paying chinese workers like 10 cents an hour.

"But you try to hide a conspiracy in an industry that consumes a major portion of the entire world's economy and employs hundreds of millions of people worldwide."

just because there are many people involved doesn't mean that there isn't a conspiracy. just look at the auto industry... over 100 years and we still have an engine that works on the same design. does that mean that, out of all of the smart engineers, no one has come up with a better idea? or that the internal combustion engine is the be all end all of inventions? no. it means that because people are still making money off of the engine, they see no reason to change. so, as people are still making money in the oil industry, there is nothing to drive them to change or to question why things are the way they are.

and just because there are many people involved doesn't mean anything. world war II showed us that. people say "how could the germans be so blind as to not see the execution of MILLIONS of people?" i mean, millions of people simply gone, how did someeone not notice, how did WE not notice?

Time spent in the mail room can be instructive:

Prized for portability -- possessed illegally

BTW, your view of Lincoln and the civil war is just whitewashed BS.

You should get it into your head that noone is "supporting" Saddam. People are supporting the rule of international law and sovereignty of nations. People are opposing "unilateral", "pre-emptive", "might is right" and "who's gonna stop us!" crap which reaks of 1930s Germany. People are opposing hubris motivated stupididty like "exporting democracy" at a point of a gun to the Middle East while ignoring every last bit of cultural and historical data about the region. That is what is going on. Saddam and his impotent antics are secondary.

about spyware? Let's face it, Sunbelt Software has a long history of spamming...

Not to mention the entire Clearwater/$cientology thing...

Then again, who better to look into the entire spam/spyware connection. They're simply vetting out the competition, right? What a world.

"Are they plannign to detonate a bomb in the cargo hold via Wifi? Why couldn't they just use a timer or Altemiter to detonate?"

First, as has been mentioned, you'd have to use a radar altimeter which could probably be detected. And Timers mean you have to make a few rash assumptions, such as the time the airplane is going to leave.

"What else, coordinate with other terrorists? Why can't they use radio and code words worked out beforehand. Or simply fly the plane low over a city and use random passanger's cell phones. (Yes they work)"

Needless to say, the answer to almost all your questions is range and traceability.

Suppose I'm planning on having people hijack two airliners and fly one into the Capitol building and one into the White House. Suppose one of the hijackings fails--for whatever reason. It might be worthwhile to be able to communicate with the people on board the aircraft to have them change their target.

And, of course, while I'm doing this, I'd rather not be in the Washington DC area which is where they'll be looking for me. I'd rather be leaching my WiFi signal anonymously from some guy in Florida. :^) Or, more seriously, in the Maldives or some other place with no extradition treaty.

The cell-phone problem comes up in that I would probably like the information to be encrypted. Most commercially available cell-phones don't have encryption. Also, the government has gotten pretty good at tracing cell-phone users. The Internet offers much cheaper anonymity. If you've got access to a bot-network, you could probably keep the feds running around forever with no idea where you are.

...it links the same bloody article!

...it links the same bloody article!

...it links the same bloody article!

...it links the same bloody article!

...it links the same bloody article!

Don't let elitist idiots confuse you... If it is a) a cartoon, b) made by a Japanese studio for c) a Japanese audience (that's a requirement because otherwise Batman: The Animated Series would be anime), then it is anime.

Here's the funny thing about people complaining about fansubs, anime viewership has just grown and grown, and there were fansubs from the very beginning of U. S. anime viewership.

I mean I can't complain about the amount of commercially available anime in the US, because when I started my interest there was almost nothing. Now, it is a huge business and people who were much smarter than me have made huge fortunes off of it. (Now pardon me as I sob quietly.)

Will George Lucas "go Hollywood" now that he's joined filmdom's elite? Not likely, the San Francisco-area resident indicates in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine. When asked about the folks who run the film industry, Lucas replied, "They're rather sleazy, unscrupulous people. L.A. is where they make deals, do business in the classic corporate American Way, which is screw everybody and do whatever you can to make the biggest profit."

I laughed until I cried.

Source: Saint Petersburg Times (pops)

Killing people for real is much harder than it is on TV!

Well, some crimes aren't.

... and it will be cheap! http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/04/Tampabay/Dunedin _explores_worl.shtml

The NAACP suit was not about restoring voting rights to those human defendants, it was attempt to mudsling at Harris and DBT/Choicepoint.

Not to defame hero Katherine Harris or the freedom lovers at ChoicePoint, but that comment on the NAACP suit is certainly groundless and defensive. Besides, these people sling mud on themselves.

Harris and the accountable administrators at ChoicePoint could elevate their status considerably in the conservative movement by serving the prison time they've earned. Too bad there are Republican majorities in every level of government above them, so they'll never be prosecuted.

Leave the morality lessons to the parents and the priests. They are quite good at their jobs.

well, some of them are. some of them are not.

censorship imposed by the law is wrong. but that does not mean self-censorship imposed by moral concerns is wrong. some children have proper guidance, others do not. the question is, which is more important: catering to/reveling in the lowest common denominator, or not contributing to the negative inputs morally disadvantaged children receive. a pointless question in this society, where money is the deciding factor in all things, but.