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This guy sounded way more interesting, yet how many people heard about it? There are several news articles remaining on the web about him. I once dug far enough to find something about him needing to build something higher up than he was at the time, and more involving aliens and the military.

Google his name and search for yourself. Was it really a mental disorder or something more?

Dead founder of Webroot, Steven Thomas, more interesting
------------------------

Search Continues For Missing Millionaire

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/search-continues-for-missing-millionaire

"The last time I saw him on Thursday, he was having major panic attacks. He was very agitated, aggressive. He was very paranoid. He thinks everyone on the island is out to get him," said his wife, Candis Thomas. "He thinks the military is involved, he thinks that aliens are involved, and he's just been in a real delusion state of being fearful."

"He said he needed to use the bathroom, but never returned. At the time he was wearing a light-green T-shirt, shorts and slippers."

##

Missing Webroot founder found dead
Tragic end in Hawaii

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/14/webroot_founder_dead/

"Police have recovered the body of missing technology entrepreneur Steven Thomas, the founder of anti-spyware firm Webroot Software[1]."

"Thomas was reportedly suffering from paranoid delusions running up to the time of his disappearance."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webroot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Thomas_(entrepreneur)

"he did send a letter to his closest friends that if he turned up missing or dead it was not his fault."

##

http://www.lavasoft.com/mylavasoft/company/blog/in-our-thoughts

##

Millionaireâ(TM)s falling death âis beyond sadâ(TM)

http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/07/15/news/story03.html

"Hikers found the badly decomposed body of the Lanikai resident, who was reported to have a bipolar disorder, at 12:45 p.m. Sunday below the Pali Lookout, nearly two weeks after his disappearance."

"Police have not yet ruled out foul play, Maj. Alan Bluemke said yesterday, although he emphasized no foul play was suspected. The case remains classified as an unattended death, pending the full medical examiner's report.

According to his wife, Thomas began developing problems in April, had been arrested for running naked in his neighborhood and was diagnosed later with bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness, but had refused medication.

Police had described Thomas as emotionally distraught, and his wife had said he had been displaying suicidal behavior.

Thomas had been involved in real estate and stocks after selling Webroot Software, known for its Spy Sweeper software, in 2004 for $108 million."

##

Mysterious events surround death of former FOUNDER of the company WEBROOT â" GOOGLE about the former FOUNDER of the company WEBROOT, Steven Thomas.

Maybe he was onto something? You have to read many articles about him to get a better picture of how odd the events were surrounding his death. Webroot Software founder Steven Thomas was found dead in Hawaii. Save the articles and store them off-line on read only media because the stories will disappear eventually.

Many articles mention he said he was being harassed by ALIENS and THE GOVERNMENT, and others.

Sounds like MKULtra to me.

##

Webroot founder died from fall

Punahou left lasting impression on Obama: Long before he became Barack Obama -- junior senator from Illinois and presidential candidate -- he was just Barry, the good-natured, unassuming kid. He loved basketball. He loved books. He always wore a smile. He got along with everyone. He did not come from privilege, but was able to attend the exclusive Punahou School based on his achievement and with the help of financial aid.

I lived on Tarawa for a couple of years in my childhood. The islands are overpopulated and very fragile. A popular picnic destination when I was there was the island of Bikeman. Here's what is looked like in 1975. The Japanese built a causeway in the 1990s, which altered currents around the atoll. Here's Bikeman now, although that story falsely attributes the loss to rising sea levels. If that had been the case, the entire island chain would have disappeared. Bikeman was just a large sandbank that got washed away.

J Maarten Troost's book The Sex Lives Of Cannibals is a humorous yet insightful story of life on the islands, and is well worth a read.

Hawaii is close...

It's not passed yet (but this is the best time to catch it).

If you're in Hawaii get on the phone lines to your state senator and harass them about this.

http://www.starbulletin.com/business/20090627_Amazon_poised_to_cut_affiliate_program_in_Hawaii.html

It was only this year that international tourists to the US were at the levels seen before 9111, from the AP: "The number of international tourists visiting America should exceed pre-Sept. 11 levels this year for the first time since terrorist attacks crippled the travel industry, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Friday." Notice it says "should" not does or did. Elsewhere: "Tourists skipping US sites", dated 5 July 2008 and "U.S. share of foreign tourists slipping, travel experts say" dated one day later.

Falcon

"Early people might have moved south from the Bering Strait by following a chain of small ice-free areas that existed along the outer Pacific coast," Knut Fladmark, a professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, told me by e-mail. "Many of those areas would now be underwater."

In 1997, Daryl Fedje, an archaeologist with the Canadian parks system, found a stone tool at a site now 160 feet under water off the coast of British Columbia. The artifact, 10,200 years old, shows that people once lived on that submerged land, Fedje says.

It will take more such discoveries to advance the theory of Ice Age ocean migration. But with affirmation of the discoveries at Monte Verde, Chile -- no bones, but plenty of artifacts, the old Clovis founding dates have died.

The two year old son of as meth addict mom was tossed off a bridge onto the H-1 highway by their meth addict neighbor. From the Honolulu Star Bulletin: http://starbulletin.com/2008/01/20/news/story02.html

In theory, the notion of freedom of choice wrt drugs and personal responsibility for any consequences sounds nice. However, in practice, ugly things like this occur to innocent and powerless victims, undermining arguments for legalization.

You mean like in these incidents, when someone drove into the Kahului, Maui airport? Fortunately in these incidents, nobody was hurt:

http://starbulletin.com/2005/10/24/news/story01.ht ml
http://starbulletin.com/2004/03/03/news/story8.htm l

You mean like in these incidents, when someone drove into the Kahului, Maui airport? Fortunately in these incidents, nobody was hurt:

http://starbulletin.com/2005/10/24/news/story01.ht ml
http://starbulletin.com/2004/03/03/news/story8.htm l

The mom and stepdad of a 14-year-old boy were, um, not amused to see a 30-year-old guy their son had met on MySpace. At 11:30 PM. In their son's bed. And he'd brought a gay porn DVD and 2 gay porn magazines with him, how thoughtful. Of course, since Hawaii raised its age of consent from 14 to 16 a few years back, said 30-year-old is now in deep shit, and will probably stay so for a "nui loa" time.

Linkage:

Police arrest man found in teen's bed, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Man Accused Of Luring Teen On MySpace.com, KITV-4
Man accused of using internet website to meet teen, KHON-2
Hawaii Too Soft On Online Predators?, KGMB-9
Man, 30, indicted in sex assault on teen, Honolulu Advertiser

The Star-Bulletin strives to make its news report fair and accurate. If you have a question or comment about news coverage, call Editor Frank Bridgewater at 529-4791 or email him at corrections@starbulletin.com.

Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."

From one of the stories linked in TFA (pops):

CORRECTION Saturday, December 24, 2005

A portion of a review of the television show "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source.

Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.

Guess again. The midwest doesn't hold a candle to the Pacific islands in terms of Spam consumption, thanks to WWII. They actually serve Spam and rice for breakfast at McDonalds here.

It's more of a staple food and part of island culture. Hawaii leads the nation in per capita Spam consumption.
We actually make particular can just for Guam, that's called hot and spicy.
All-Spam restaurant is serious business for the Philippines

$1.99 for TV quality, $2.99 for DVD quality, and $3.99 for HD quality, perhaps?

I would pay more for HD, but $2 for TV quality is too high a baseline. I'm thinking $1 for 480p (DVD) and $1.50 for 1080p at the very most. Here's why:

Production costs for Lost are under $3M per episode and it is considered the most expensive show on TV today.
Citation: http://starbulletin.com/2005/01/26/news/story2.htm l

Lost has been averaging over 20M viewers per episode this season
Citation: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051117/n ews_lz1c17nielsen.html>

If we presume that for-pay tv downloading will become the dominate form of distribution, then at $1/episode that would translate into about a 700% return on investment - that kind of ROI is absolutely unheard of for a TV show - I mean it is so ridiculous that the entire management structure at ABC would die overnight from overdosing on the cocaine they bought with their bonuses if that should ever come to pass.

In fact, most shows, probably even including Lost today, lose money during their initial airing and only become profitable during syndication. It is those profitable shows that enable the funding for a lot of riskier and ultimately money-losing shows like Firefly, for example. Ultimately a ROI of 5-10% is probably close to what hollywood averages over all tv shows.

Thus even $1/episode is a heck of a lot for a popular show, although it might be appropriate for a show with a much smaller, niche market.

(and before any points out that I am ignoring infrastructure costs, they are in the noise at this level, particularly if a bandwdith-borrowing mechanism like bittorrent is employed).

Use your common sense; 14 hikers tumbling into a volcanic collapse would have made the news everywhere in the US. Yet you will find zero about this on Google, despite this having supposedly happened this year. And you will find plenty of links about the handful of actual deaths.

Choi said 99 percent of the vehicle's system is autonomous, with 1 percent semiautonomous for a communications link for safety. A signal could be sent to the vehicle to stop and return if necessary, he said.

http://starbulletin.com/2005/07/19/news/index11.ht ml

See this article http://starbulletin.com/2005/05/10/news/index4.htm l for Arben's spin on why they gave up on CherryOS and why the source was not released. They people have no shame. Now we can only hope VX30 gets the same scrutiny.

I think Pearl Harbor already has plenty of SPAM. And they like it.

AC:You can't prove an axiom.

Who said that 1+1=2 is an axiom?

"Principia Mathematica is the book Russell wrote with Alfred North Whitehead where they gave a logical foundation of Mathematics by developing the Theory of Types that obviated the Russell's paradox. This assertion may become more convincing after a look at the page 362 of Principia Mathematica where Russell and Whitehead finally proved that 1 + 1 = 2."

Russell's Paradox

"In 1913, Russell and Whitehead published "Principia Mathematica," a three-volume set considered one of the intellectual landmarks of the century that began from first principles and developed the laws of arithmetic (proving on Page 362 of Volume 1 that 1+1=2), but failing in the end to prove the internal consistency of mathematical logic and its ability to determine the truth or falsity of a given statement. The project drove Russell to the outer bounds of sanity."

Honolulu Star-Bulletin: No certainty exists in search for truth

AC: What Russell would have "proved" would look something more like...

Pooua: It would have looked like this!:

before we initiate we will admit 3 primitive concepts (this is you understand it without we need a explanation):
ZERO (denoted by 0);
NATURAL NUMBERS (N);
and IS SUCESSOR OF (this concept indicate a number that is the sucessor of another, and we will denote by "a" is the sucessor of "a");

finaly we define the operation sum by i) a+0 = a (the sum of any number with zero is equals to the number)
ii) a+(b)=(a+b) (the sum of any number with a sucessor of other number is equals to the sucessor of the the sum of the numbers);

by notation you have:
0=1; 1=2; 2=3; etc....

now we can calculate 1+1 that is
1+(0)=> by definition (ii) of sum =>(1+0) =>(1+0) => by definition (i) of sum =>(1) =>(1) => by notation equals to 2.

and by this you can know all others sums. note: you cannt say 0+a=a until you proof this is real. so by now, if you want calculate ], for example, 0+2 you must do:
0+2 => by notation => 0+(1)=> by definition (ii) of sum =>(0+1) => by definition (i) of sum => (1) => by notation equals to 2.

I believe there will always be a place for newspapers. They have a remarkable tendency to stay afloat even in the fiercest competition from more "exciting" and "modern" mediums. Take the saga of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin , which went from an abrupt 45-day notice of closure to its own offices and press.

I won't be counting out the Times until they actually close. Granted, the Star-Bulletin and Times stories are radically different, but I wouldn't be too surprised if something happened at the last minute.

But sometimes people do wake up, as happened when Hawaiians revolted against the abuse directed at Kamehameha Schools by Bishop Estate. One key factor might be concern for one's own welfare vs. concern for others. "As long as it doesn't affect me" could be a sanity check slogan for a lot of people.

Cool idea. One might combine it with Massad Ayoob's technique. "...he always carries a $10 bill wrapped around a matchbook, and tosses that to the mugger first."

...oh, and sorry if the above link offends anyone. It was the only reference to Ayoob and his matchbook that I could find online.

Also, we should mention Prof. Kelly Brownell and the "fat tax". As a very safe driver in a small car, I pay much less insurance than Johnny "Cellphone" Tailgatreax in his Cadillac Escalade. As a safe eater (and exerciser, etc.), I don't carry nearly as much risk as Ronald Pringles McDonald and his unfiltered Camels. Since I'm making better choices, I can fairly ask to pay less. (Ronald and I may carry the same, e.g., prostate cancer risk, or knee injury risk, so we should of course share those costs on that). In order to balance our risks better, Dr Brownell proposes a tax on junk food. The revenue amount to a pay-by-the-gallon health insurance on preventable food-related diseases.

Airlines can have a monopoly on a certain route, ie. Hawaiian and Aloha airlines are the only airlines that fly interisland in Hawaii (src). Also, airlines used to be a government granted monopoly (src), but have since been deregulated, to a point.

In the end, if you had $100M dollars and wanted to start an airline that didn't check IDs, could you?

... Headline I've read today.

First was this one on CNN. .. then this one ...

And now another here on slashdot.

Someone would say there must be some sort of psy-ops going on, to soften us up for the headlines ...

Yes.

This makes it sound like all Chinese people are impoverished across the country. China != North Korea. Many people in the coastal region and Beijing live fine and aren't even close to starving to death.

The people in the rural areas, of course, are the ones who are impoverished. But Beijing is giving them the shaft in all ways imaginable anyway. After all, in China, if you're born in a rural area, then in most cases you aren't allowed to move into the city, thus keeping your family poor for generations.

Actually, the most pressing thing pissing me off about the Chinese government now is that they recently closed down the call center where people could make appointments to get visas to come to the US. As a result, people have to line up outside the embassy for hours before it even opens up in the hope that they'll be allowed inside that day. Given that I have a Chinese girlfriend who's going home for the Summer, I'm a bit upset about this situation. For more info...

Science, is that what this is? I thoght it was more along the lines of quackery. And Researchers I didn't see anything about researchers in the cnn post. The article says ...A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up... these are explorers. Explorers may be scientists and/or researchers but they are not necessarily so.

And what about the sponsors "Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock- The Trinity Corporation" Hm... Shamrock, Trinity Corparation. This sounded like a Christian organization to me. So I did some quick checking.

Here is an interesting quote of Mr McGivern "There is value in suffering. We need only look to Christ's death for proof." Read more here

If you are not yet convinced of Mr McGivern's religious leanings check this page where he attacked the movie Dogma because it "openly blasphemes God, defames all organized religion, and particularly mocks Catholic teachings" What's wrong with this guy? Hey it's only a movie right?

Haven't had enough yet; two more links that show Mr McGivern's religious leanings. One at Christian Answers and one at Priests For Life.

I find it very disappionting that a major media outlet like CNN is covering this bullshit. Also, I know it's Tuesday but aren't there better stories to post on ./ :~)

KTUH had some good programming back in the day, but there was also Radio Free Hawaii, where the playlist was determined through ballot voting (ballots were available all over the state).

It's too bad they weren't popular enough to keep sponsorship... the concept was great and the shows were a welcome departure from the top-40 crap on the other stations at the time.

RFH shut down just before the web really got kicking. If they had stuck it out a little longer, I'm sure tons of people would have gotten on board to vote online.

More info about the station and how it works is available in this local news article.

I can only hope somebody else gives this concept another try; the station was a lot of fun to listen to. Also, I miss Sheriff Norm...

And in case you think the list linked above ends in 1978:

April 12, 2000: The USS Olympia, a nuclear-powered submarine docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sprung a leak in the reactor's water exchange system after the maintenance was completed on a faulty valve in the reactor compartment. The valve failed again and some 500 gallons of water was released into the reactor compartment. This water then drained into the reactor bilge. Six sailors were exposed to radioactivity and subsequently decontaminated with soap and water.

Well, actually, there are a lot, though they don't JUST target CEOs, they also target other members of the work force that piss them off. Even though they may not be as effective as mass terrorists like those seen on (and after) the dreaded day two years gone, they too get the job done. Now which type of terrorism do YOU think is more popular?

"How many individuals in the WTC had 'bad behavior'?"

Depends who ya ask, now doesn't it? I know we heroize the poor souls that were needlessly killed on GWB-day, but I think that the terrorists flying the planes thought that there was indeed 'bad behavior' going on in those buildings, mostly in the oppression of a group of people that they believe deserves to be masters of the earth. And if you look at their situations, you see why! Sure, we think it's awful for them to kill a few thousand civilians, and it is, but they see daily US bombings in Iraq (even before our current war started), economic sanctions that kept several Arab states poor enough that starvation was a primary killer of millions of innocents, not to mention the fueling of warfare between Arab nations with weapons contributions, etc. But I rant. Think of it this way -- are the acts of that day more or less justified than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The people who dropped the A-bombs were not considered, terrorists, they were 'heroes,' they 'ended the war.' But they killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. That makes the WTC attacks look like chump change. And yes, they do think they are at War.

Sorry to rant -- comments like this just show a one-sidedness of knowledge that I refuse to ignore.

• Ugly but Informative
• Great Description page
• a Vendor who sells OTEC and other enegry harvesting alternatives. Has some nice diagrams.
• Pedestrian newspaper article.

Wouldn't this mean that nothing illegal happened to Kevin?

Just to add to a good point...

Thin air is good for getting higher true airspeeds out of a given amount of thrust. The reason we're not all flying around at 60'000 feet is that our fire breathing engines run out of poop as the air gets thinner (and mach effects, but that's beyond the scope of /.).

If you give up the fire breathing part for power (like Helios), you can see some pretty impressive altitudes.

Which is a long way of saying, "It doesn't take more power to fly higher, it just takes more than you have."

Interestingly, although the album was hugely influential (and remains so) ... it wasn't a huge success in the U.S. at the time

Nothing's changed... the US really seems to miss out on interesting music and picks up the trends years after they've become normal in the rest of the world. Electronic music is the current example. And it was even invented in the USA!

Most people in those very cities don't even know it. (Except for the savvy slashdotter, I'm sure :)

So perhaps this anniversary should be used to mourn how some things haven't improved (yet)?

Hawaii, the Aloha state, the state with some of the most friendly and courteous drivers, initiated a pilot red-light and automatic speed detection program in 2000.

According to this article, public outcry about parts of the program led to the law being repealed. We should probably keep an eye on how this turns out because it will probably set a precedent for the rest of the country.

After months of screaming from the people, the Legislature backed off and the governor repealed the "VanScam" or "Talivan" program in Hawaii. The "van" reference was to the white Nissan vans that the van cam company parked on the freeways at blind spots to trap motorists. Judges were throwing the tickets out of court because there was the "guilty until proven innocent" angle, plus the fact that the private contractor running the program was getting $27 per ticket, regardless of whether it stuck in court or not. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a couple of stories about the demise of the hated program: http://starbulletin.com/2002/04/10/news/index1.htm l and http://starbulletin.com/2002/04/11/news/index1.htm l Contest every ticket on every conceivable angle! Aloha!

After months of screaming from the people, the Legislature backed off and the governor repealed the "VanScam" or "Talivan" program in Hawaii. The "van" reference was to the white Nissan vans that the van cam company parked on the freeways at blind spots to trap motorists. Judges were throwing the tickets out of court because there was the "guilty until proven innocent" angle, plus the fact that the private contractor running the program was getting $27 per ticket, regardless of whether it stuck in court or not. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a couple of stories about the demise of the hated program: http://starbulletin.com/2002/04/10/news/index1.htm l and http://starbulletin.com/2002/04/11/news/index1.htm l Contest every ticket on every conceivable angle! Aloha!

Next thing you know they'll be selling clean, purified ,all-natural "Spring-Air" to people living in LA, Houston and other heavily polluted cities.

It's not about racial groups, it's about animal abuse...human cruelty.

A number of years ago, Toronto really became a laughingstock when baseball player Dave Winfield, after accidentally killing a (which, by the way, is vermin - it's basically a rat with wings), was instantly arrested by the police and busted for cruelty to animals.

Excerpt from this website http://www.stanford.edu/~greggjp/EEEEEE/Notes00/Ma y00Notes1.html

If I remember right, Winfield was actually arrested, though the charges were dropped. Something about Billy Martin refuting the very idea that Winfield could've hit the bird on purpose, given that he hadn't hit a cutoff man all year. (In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Winfield was booed for years in Toronto after killing a seagull -- the national bird of Canada -- with a thrown baseball.)

Those people really have their priorities totally screwed-up as a society.

--

The military has already tried to collect the DNA of its employees into a database, ostensibly for the purpose of identifying casualties of war. Two marines, however, refused to provide samples and were courtmartialed for disobeying direct orders. They're still in the midst of a lawsuit.

For further reading, here are some links I've found relating to the case:

• Marines refuse to give DNA
• Marines' DNA defense: The order was illegal
• Marine court-martial called landmark case

The military has already tried to collect the DNA of its employees into a database, ostensibly for the purpose of identifying casualties of war. Two marines, however, refused to provide samples and were courtmartialed for disobeying direct orders. They're still in the midst of a lawsuit.

For further reading, here are some links I've found relating to the case:

• Marines refuse to give DNA
• Marines' DNA defense: The order was illegal
• Marine court-martial called landmark case