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That's when you walk into your ISPs office with a hammer. Seriously though, if an ISP thinks they can get away with ruining interactive SSH, necessary VPNs, SSL for secure web transactions, etc., etc., they're not going to have many customers left.

> Is religious intolerance a moral reason?

No. In this context, it's more of a "you can't press your ass together and yet fart" kind of thing. Either you accept a scientific method and LIVE by it, or you don't. There's no point in pretending to be a scientist while actually believing universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster or some similar creature.

As we are speaking of tolerance (or the lack thereof), it's actually the religions of the world which are the incorporated intolerance. You can't cry for religious tolerance if you (respectively the vast majority of people sharing your religious oppinions) don't provide ANY in return. Just as a recent example, you might want to check this pope Benedict's blurb. And no, I don't buy the vicious back-pedalling which started shortly after he gave that speech of his.

> Not a problem if you consider biblical and scientific authority to govern separate non-overlapping domains.

It's not about domains, which are not non-overlapping btw. It's about the stance one takes at life and logic. The viewpoints of religion and science are not compatible. Period.

> The scientific method was designed to work regardless of the individual biases of it's practitioners.

Luckily, yes. However, the scientific method being rather robust changes nothing with regard to the original statement we are discussing here. The ID crowd has managed quite successfully to mud the waters good enough in order to seduce quite a lot "poor souls" by pretending to be science. It's in the responsibility of every true scientist to defend science against such missappropriation - regardless of whether this missappropriation can actually do any *real* harm or not.

It wasn't just that they were speaking Arabic, but also their behavior that made the crew and other passengers nervous.

"The imams were removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix after other travelers were unnerved by their prayers in the terminal, their seating patterns, requests for seat-belt extenders and other things."

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/travel/548167,TRA-News-nation09.article

Thompson To Run For President

(Oh sure, it's Fred Thompson, but it's about as honest as the summary title.)

--
Toro

or perhaps it's like this Michael Vick guy who lets his friend use his Virginia estate and lo and behold gets charged with dog fighting. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/490355,CST-SPT-swir e31.article

I'd suspect more /.ers think Vick is likely responsible for the crime he's charged with than the Sergeant in question in the article. My guess on that would be the nearness of his activities to us geeks or our unwillingness to consider copyright violation a proper crime/civil liability. Or perhaps we just assume that everyone else is a stereotypical non-geek and is incapable of understanding the internet box they bought.

mmm.... double standard mmm... donut.

Clive Barker. vs. Roger Ebert.

Since the best definition of "Art" we have is "the stuff that an Artist makes", I'm rather more inclined to take Barker's word on the matter than the guy who watches movies for a living.

Roger Ebert actually has posted some interesting responses to his statement. Some of which are really interesting. No further comments of his own though. And if you didn't read the original article I recommend reading it too, even if I disagree with Eberts conclusions it has some interesting aspects on what makes art(at least to me who is an art noob).

Roger Ebert actually has posted some interesting responses to his statement. Some of which are really interesting. No further comments of his own though. And if you didn't read the original article I recommend reading it too, even if I disagree with Eberts conclusions it has some interesting aspects on what makes art(at least to me who is an art noob).

I've read through the conversation between QuantumG and Valacosa dating back to this post.

The whaler analogy bad, but this is insightful:

How about:

Stallman: Don't pay your mortgage, don't program closed-source software. It's amoral.
Programmer: But I need a roof over over my head.
Banker: Yeah, we'll foreclose on the programmer's condo if he doesn't pay us.
Stallman: All two million programmers in the country? Good luck with that.

The point is that maybe the status quo is wrong. Think of the benefit to the country/world if two million developer's were freed from the status quo of paying their mortgage. Shit... they let alcoholics live in Seattle for next to nothing, so why can't they give it up for a group who actually does public good?

Ok, then how about Alaska just keeping the hundreds of billions of Federal tax dollars that are continuously sucked out of it without even close to a reasonable quantity of reinvestment in federal funds? This isn't free money. This is trying to develop the state so it isn't just sucked dry by the lower 48. (There is a reason that there was a push for Alaska to secede from the union in 1972...)

Believe it or not the reason for federal funds is to do large projects that need to be done. Have you ever noticed all of that infrastructure that you rely on everyday? Federal funds at work. So you are using a museum as a comparison? Those sorts of things are kind of important but I fail to see anyone thinking that compares to this type of project. Job training programs? If there is a chance that the people involved will become taxpayers then hell yes, federal funds should be used.

The city in question is packed into the base of a mountain and the ocean. There are no roads that lead there. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane, and if you take a plane you will still have to take a boat to get to town.

I can understand why you would only want the available federal funds spent in your area. Being self centered is a fairly normal idea but that isn't the way it works. Alaska comprises 1/5th of the area of the US! Think about this. If you take the lower 48 and divide it into 4 pieces it would equal the the size of Alaska. And in all of that area there is less then 2,000 miles of road that can be categorized as "Highway". And this state shoulders an exceeding unfair percentage of the federal tax burden.

Federal funds for a bridge in this case is completely in line with the way federal transportation funds are SUPPOSED to be used. Find a different example if you want to showcase wasteful spending.

Please show what voodoo math you have done that shows Alaska pays hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal tax without receiving back similar (or greater funds). I can find absolutely no evidence of this phenomena you describe of Alaska being a tax burdened state. According to this paper Federal Spending Received Per Dollar of Taxes Paid by State, 1981-2004, they have received more than their money back from the Federal government each year since 1985. This ratio has been increasing pretty much steadily each year since then, and in the final year of the paper 2004, they were the 2nd "best" state in this regard, and receive $1.87 for each dollar they spend. Combined with the fact that there is no state income tax, the lowest state & local tax burden of any state in the nation, residents receive around $1000 a year from the oil permanent fund (source), pay the lowest gasoline tax, don't have a general state sales tax, and land has even been given away to outsiders to encourage settlement (source) -- I would say that Alaskan residents are sitting pretty when it comes to taxes either state or federal.

Although if you can post any information that proves otherwise, I am game to see it.

I don't see how anyone can really defend this bridge. The residents don't want it, and even if they did they don't deserve $300 million specifically for it. Like the poster that lives in the city said, they are not even willing to foot 5% of the bill. I am all for Alaska getting its share of federal money, but this was a pork waste project for one of the grandfathers of pork diverting it from a city that needed it (although New Orleans is another city whose residents should rethink their choice of settlement).

If the residents don't like it, we can move each of them that aren't happy with the current land and buy them land elsewhere in Alaska with federal money, and still save a good portion of the $300 million.

I think there were a lot of up and coming Republicans that took the pardoning of Nixon to indicate that what was done was right, that the mistake was getting caught, not committing crimes.

I don't think this is the case at all. For one, the corruption in government historically has been a democrat theme. Not because they are dirtier or anything but because they have had the share of power more often and power corrupts people. I mean some of the biggest political villains in this county, have been democrats, Boss tweed is a known one made famous form the movie "Gangs of New York". Democrats have been behind most all of the racial injustices that are considered the biggest atrocities of the times, Alabama's own bloody Sunday, Orval Faubus and the little rock nine, Ross Barnett and Ole Mis, Bull Connor and project C, the prevailing wage, the lists goes on.

I mention this not because democrats are evil or anything. Times are different now then years ago. It isn't that republicans are trying to get away with it or inherently evil either, it is that they are in power and just getting caught in it. They don't think they can get away with it, they just don't see it as wrong at the time. If they were in power during the things I mentioned earlier, they would probably have been in the middle of it too. So what your noticing isn't that people are doing things wrong, your noticing politics. And more to the point, you are noticing the constant barrage of bashing on everything done by anyone who doesn't agree.

Bush couldn't do anything right, anyone associated with him is demonized whether they deserve it or not. As a matter of fact, anyone associated with the republicans are too. It is how the country has become divided after going through the Clinton impeachment ordeal. Fact is, while serving as the chief executive officer in the land, lied in sworn testimony while sitting as the defended in a lawsuit, he was impeached over it but successfully convinced a good majority of people it was just a blow job and got out retaining the nickname the Teflon president and the country has been divided ever since. The 2000 election where Bush's own brother was governor in a state that held the balance of the presidency and the way the recount went down made things worse.

But the people surrounding bush is only hogging the limelight. Obama, one of the favorites in the democrat presidential race is tangled up with tony rezko who was just recently busted for attempting to extort 1.5 mil in donation form Hollywood producers for Obama's campain while at the same time they organized a bunch of kickbacks from faulty government contracts and such. Hillary, who is not far from clean in many ways has been involved in land deals too. Whitewater which never resulted in charges against her, landed a lot of her associates in jail including Jim Guy Tucker who succeeded Bill as governor of arkansas. There is more coming on her front but I will wait until it become known, It is probably another vast right wing conspiracy though. How about Jefferson, the distinguished congressman from Louisianan who commandeered three reserve trucks to remove precious object from his mansion that was flooding while keeping the gard troops from rescuing people after Katrina and ended up getting them stuck and causing relief effort to be hampered who also is under investigation (or is it indictment now?) by the FBI who has found marked bribe money in his congressional offices.

Now, I mention this not because I'm singling the democrats out, nor is it because of a tit for tat. It is because if you think it is all republicans, you are only getting half the news. Nothing make the corruption right or justifies it, but the problem isn't limited to one side. It is wide spread and all over the place. I doubt the democrats were taking notes from Nixon getting off easy. We aren't going to get people in the highest offices who are clean, ups

Always illuminating

He's just as corrupt as the rest of 'em, he just puts a better face on it than most these days.

Obama has been a quiet part of the corrupt democrat political machine in Chicago for over a decade. Need convincing? Take a look at his long term relationship with Tony Rezko:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/353829,CST-NWS- rez23.article

When asked about it, I'm sure he'll claim ignorance of the crimes that were going on in his district, being committed by some of his staunchest supporters.

,Allen Lee's essay

April 27, 2007

Editor's note: Contains explicit content, which has been slightly edited for obscene language.

Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab, S...t...a...b..., poke. "So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone..., then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did." Umm, yeah, what to wright about...... I'm leaving to join the Marines and I really don't give a F... about my academics, so why does the only class that's complete Bull Shit, happen to be the only required class...enough said. The model citizen would stay around to vote in new board member to change the 4 years of English policy, but no one really stays around to vote for that kind of local crap, so whoever gets there name on the Ballet with a pretty face gets to do what the F... ever they want with local ordinance. A person is smart, but people are dumb selfish animals. We can't make rules for ourselves so we vote others to do it for us, but we can't even do that right, I meen seriously, Bush for President? And our other option was John Kerry who claimed to parktake in Vietnam Special Forces missions that haven't been declassified.... F...... Bull Shit. So Power Flower Super Mario. Pudge, hook, rot, dismember "Fresh Meat." Mostly new/young teachers are laid back, and cooperative with students as feedback and input into the curriculum and atmosphere. My current English teacher is a control freak intent on setting a gap between herself and her students like a 63 year old white male fortune 500 company CEO, and a illegal immigrant. If CG was a private catholic school, I could understand, but wtf is her problem. And baking brownies and rice crispies does not make up for it, way to try and justify yourself as a good teacher while underhandedly looking for complements on your cooking. No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting.

Authors Note: This production of writing is done in the most accurate manner I can depict of the original writing. Grammar and spelling mistakes are included at the best accuracy possible. The first phrase in questions is in fact a Green Day song. The second reference to drugs is in relation to the schools history of drug problems. I am personally clean of all controlled substances. The statement in quotes is done so as a non personal statement as I would have done in reference to a character for a story. The reference to the gun P90 is from a video game, combined with a reference to necrophilia as a comment regarding a seriously messed up situation. A situation such as the rape of villagers during a raid by U.S. troops in Vietnam. I really do not care too much about by continuing academia as in relation to grades. I do however believe on continuing my personal education, and I am actually still working for my classes. My views on the graduation requirements explain themselves. The reference to Mario and Pudge( a DOTA character) are completely random as is this essay. The reference to a person being smart and people being dumb is based on a quote from "Men in Black." I generally do believe the public opinion is best. The rest of the essay is rather self explanatory, the main statement in question I have already released a comment online about. I request that all information I have released is read together, and nothing given separately or as an excerpt as the administration has seen fit to do.

On an additional note, I have completed the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) examinations, and yes a psychiatric evaluation is included in the process. If I'm qualified to defend the country, I believe I'm qualified to attend school.

According to today's Chicago Sun Times article, none of the text was released until today. The entire essay hasn't been released yet. The following article has a few quotes from the essay...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/360827,CST-NWS- essay27.article

So, according the parent, it is perfectly acceptable to put someone in jail on faulty evidence. I like this thinking. We can use all our resources arresting and holding persons with no intent of committing a crime, while allowing alleged terrorist to walk free. After all the most important thing to make people feel like the government is protecting them, not provided verifiable protection.

I agree with you. It's not a matter of keeping score, but there's a reason soldiers the world over are armed with rifles instead of pistols; they're more effective.

This bodycount is unusually high. The Chicago Sun Times is saying the shooter could have been a chinese imigrant on a student visa. Perhaps he had some training... but military training doesn't fit, since infanty and SPECOPS training tends to focus on rifle use, and pistols where used here.

There's still a lot of questions to be answered here.

Mod parent up. Another story from the Chicago Sun-Times .

Mark Steyn: How Gore's Massive Energy Consumption Saves the World

Talk about inconvenient truths...

this summer. Everyone who's been saying, "I just want a phone that's just a phone" might just get their wish.

Also, pretty much summed up in a recent Mark Steyn commentary.

This country is not yet ready for a black prez, particularly the one whose father is from a predominantly Muslim country ... Sadly, in order to win presidency in this country one needs to be a white, Christian-god-fearing male.

Sigh... Mark Twain was right, a lie really does get around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Barack Obama is a Christian. He belongs to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. When asked about his faith, he has said that he has "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ", which, while he doesn't describe himself as born-again or evangelical, is a standard way that evangelical Christians describe their faith. In other words, he is definitely a "Christian god-fearing male".

As to his father being a Muslim. His birth father was an atheist goatherder who left the family when Obama was two years old. His stepfather, who raised him through adulthood, was a non-practicing Muslim, and his father and mother educated him in secular schools, not whacko Muslim Madrassas as some of his political opponents have been claiming.

So let's stop worrying about Obama being some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate, k? Because it's really far from the truth.

You're not an astronaut, are you?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/244870,CST-NWS -astro06.article

Surveillance cameras in Chicago are not only in high-crime areas. They are pretty much all over the downtown areas in low-crime areas, including Streeterville, the River North, all along Michigan Ave and State St. and pretty much everywhere in between every 3-4 blocks (every one or two blocks in some areas such as the Streerterville areas around the Columbus and Grand Ave area.). The ones in high-crime areas are the most obvious since they have flashing blues light on them, but the ones in other areas are just small black ball cameras hanging off the street lights. Some of them even seem to have some sort of wireless transmitter (indicated by the rather large antenna hanging beneath some of them.)

Mayor Daley recently pledged to have surveillance cameras on "virtually every block" in Chicago by 2016 and recently proposed that every business in Chicago requiring every "'licensed business that is open more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period to install and monitor a ''sufficient number of cameras'' to record the comings and goings of its customers." Here is the an article from the Sun Times:

Picture this: Aldermen caught on camera: http://www.suntimes.com/news/anderson/209791,CST-E DT-monroe14.article

Another recent article described the removal of surveillance cameras from Millenium Park, stating that "As suddenly as a pair of security cameras had appeared last month on Jaume Plensa's brightly lit glass-block towers at Millennium Park, they were gone Tuesday. Anxiety over national security saw them installed atop one of Chicago's most visible public art installations. Uneasiness over their aesthetic impact had them removed."

Millennium Park cameras removed after outcry: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom /chi-061219park-cameras,1,4093395.story?coll=chi-n ewsroom-hed

You must be 12 years old. The world is populated by people who cant afford anything. The global distribution of wealth is so unequal, 10 percent of the population (mainly here in the "west") owns 85 percent of the worlds assets. So for pretty much 90 percent of the global population, any kind of advanced treatment is inaccessible. Moreover, even the very rich can be financially devastated through a medical issue in the family. I know a texan family myself - oil money - that were rendered broke due to the son of the family suffering a heart attack. He was brough back from the brink of death, massive braindamage, required an insane amount of money to keep alive, and when the money ran out, he died.

Big Pharma is seriously fucked up - everywhere you look, there is evidence that they are not interested in curing disease, only treating symptoms - you make more money that way. everywhere you look, there is evidence they are not interested in making people better, only in making more money. Cancer, for example, is really not an interesting marketplace for big pharma, because most cancers are rather "personalised" - i.e. successful treatment depends on the genetic makeup of the sick individual, so pharma doesn't really look into that, they prefer blanket chemo because that has a higher return on investment.

you are a dick, and you really have no idea what you are talking about.

Apple has stood firm against this, insisting that low, uniform prices keep sales high and discourage the iTunes Store's users from downloading music illegally.

I'm certain Microsoft will cave on this one. It has already given the music industry the other thing the industry has been demanding from Apple: a kickback on every player sold.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."

I can't really figure out where the new news is in this, seeing as we're already on the "Illinois ain't paying squat" part of this saga.

Blagojevich hasn't paid for video lawsuit as judge ordered (Chicago Tribune, reg. required, subscription-free Sun Times here.)

...[L]awyers from Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. say they haven't received the money or an explanation for the delay, according to court documents. So they went back to the courtroom earlier this month to ask the judge to force the administration to comply.

Chalk up another horrible idea to good ol' Rod, (illegally importing drugs from Canada, buying $2.5 million of non-FDA approved flu shots). But all's well - we voted him in another 4 years too.

Compare that to what you can do with a pen. Forcing precision on the mouse action requires finer movement, greatly increases the likelyhood of unintentionally selecting something, and is generally far more stressful. This is why the users seem to get anxious and want to click. They really want to avoid this horrid new interface that, for some reason, some jackass is trying to force on them.

Funny you should mention a pen. While it uses a pencil, the new Leo Burnett website (they are one of the bigger ad agencies out there) does just this and is extremely difficult to use. What is funny is that they have been praised by many in the industry.

Recently however, Lewis Lazare, the advertising columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, a figure who's opinion is highly respected...BLASTED them out of the water in this scathing piece about their website. Of course, he addresses some other points that I definitely agree on, but the relevance is in his discussion about the interface.

And I'd just like to add....who in the hell gave Leo Burnett the right to resize my browser window? Bastards.

In almost all movies involving the operation of computers, the user operates the machine by incongruent and frenetic banging on the keyboard, ignoring the mouse and system graphic interface elements. This results in instantaneous, nanosecond access and downloading of data. (See "Jurassic Park," "Disclosure.") CARLOS GREENE, Mexico City

From http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic le?AID=/19941211/GLOSSARY/405210364/1023

Im old enough to remember both Siskel and Ebert totally throttling Star Wars,

  Q. I've been a gamer since I was very young, and I haven't been satisfied with most of the movies based on video games, with the exception of the first "Mortal Kombat" and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." These were successful as films because they did not try to be a tribute to the game, but films in their own right.

I have not seen "Doom," but don't plan to, nor do I think that it's fair to say that it pleases all gamers. Some of us appreciate film, too. That said, I was surprised at your denial of video games as a worthwhile use of your time. Are you implying that books and film are better mediums, or just better uses of your time?

Films and books have their scabs, as do games, but there are beautiful examples of video games out there -- see "Shadow of the Colossus," "Rez" or the forthcoming "PeaceMaker."

Josh Fishburn, Denver

A. [Ebert:] I believe books and films are better mediums, and better uses of my time. But how can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a convincing argument in their defense.

The "Chicago Sun Times" offers a better version of the story.

In just the last few months, I've been dazzled by cool stuff by Michael Haneke (*the* coolest end-of-the-world movie ever made, "Hour of the Wolf," the creepy "Hidden," and the revoltingly subversive "Funny Games") and Takashi Miike (the icy "Black Society" trilogy), the awesome 1976 black comedy "Network," and a pair of superb recent documentaries, "New York Doll" (70s glam rock) and "Why We Fight" (Eisenhower's warning against the military industrial complex). I can't also forget "The Servant," a sinister 60s-era British flick (made by Joseph Losey, the immensely talented film industry outcast from Wisconsin) about a manservant slowly taking over his master's life which has the additional gift of having been adapted by our recent Nobel Laureate in literature, Harold Pinter. Oh, yeah, and two really different, fantastic dramas about the boxing life: "Fat City" (1972) and "The Set-Up" (1949). Hell, I'd watch more, but the week's only so long and I have to make room for possibly the best serial drama ever made, Deadwood--a masterpiece in our time!

See, it's too late in the day to complain about Hollywood. Disappointment and boredom will await you if you depend on the idiot factory. Happily, the rest of the planet hasn't lost its touch. The library of international film is so full of good and even astonishing work that you need a lifetime to watch it all.

Like any subject, you won't get very far without some guidance. The little paragraph in the On Demand section? That isn't going to cut it. Get hold of a good film companion like Halliwell's, and read some of the great movie critics like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael. Or if you want to start this instant, then peruse the reliable Roger Ebert's short odes to great films. Start at random, you can hardly go wrong with anything here:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/secti on?category=REVIEWS08

The violent actions of Christians/Catholics have ALWAYS been denounced and condemned by Christianity as a whole.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-abort0 6.html/

Priest who axed abortion clinic gets Elgin post

July 6, 2006

BY TOM POLANSEK Courier News

A priest who used an ax to hack up a Rockford medical clinic where abortions are performed has been assigned to a top position at an Elgin church.

The Rev. John P. Earl began serving July 1 as parochial administrator at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 272 Division St.

In an interview Wednesday, Earl declined to discuss his arrest and subsequent guilty plea for the attack on the Northern Illinois Women's Clinic.

Instead, he urged a reporter to begin an investigation into whether DNA from the "blood and guts'' found at abortion clinics matches the DNA of people who enter and leave the clinic. Until he sees such a report, Earl said he had "no interest in talking to . . . any newspaper.''

Scared off by owner's shotgun

Earl's entanglement with the law began Sept. 30, 2000, when he was arrested after he admitted to crashing his car into a garage at the clinic and using an ax to break doors, windows and surveillance cameras on the building, according to police reports. He was charged with two counts of criminal damage to property.

Earl never actually made it inside the medical office, which performs abortions. He stopped his attack after the building's owner fired two warning shots from a shotgun, the reports stated.

The clinic was closed at the time of the incident, and no one was injured.

Earl pleaded guilty to the charges Feb. 14, 2001, and was sentenced to 30 months of probation and ordered to pay restitution and fines.

one parachute failure when USSR leaders scheduled a flight for a national holiday, for political reasons, instead of launching when ready

Thank God that's totally different than the present situation.

Star Jones is leaving the view and all you guys can talk about are games?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertainment/cst-f tr-star28.html

What happens when they decide block the sun and the earth cools too fast, or photosynthesis doesn't occur like it's supposed to?

The same kind of things that happen every other time they muck around with the environment and screw stuff up. Things like the cormorants in Michigan, the bears being re-introduced into the Alps and the Sea Lions on the west coast.

Why is it the same people who love evolution are the same people who want to keep everything the same?

I have no idea, but it is very true.

"If you're being mugged, you probably cant use a cell phone. But with this when a sudden elevated heart rate is detected, you may auto activate GPS and mics/video. Maybe even alert nearby people or police. Good for protecting kids etc."

You've enlightened me to make some predictions:

In 50 years, NYC junior high gym classes will be cancelled when parents complain that kids would have to remove "smart-shirts" during gym class.

Decision will be reversed three years later when Hanes smart-jockeys finally get smart enough to distinguish between the "Help, I'm getting mugged in gym class!" heart rate and the "Look, Stacy finally hit puberty!" heart rate.

Mark my words.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privac y05.html

That article points out a much bigger threat to the public's privacy than what the NSA is doing. Yet there's no outcry about it.

The NSA, OTOH, is mining data and looking for patterns with the ultiumate goal of using that information to prevent violence. It's only a matter of time before someone or some terrorist org gets a hold of a suitcase nuke, if they don't already have it.

I think what the NSA is doing is a positive step. If they ever used the data in the wrong way it would cause huge problems, and I'm confident it would be addressed.

When 9/11 occured, everyone wanted to know how the government could possibly miss the obvious and not prevent it. Now they are trying to tune in for the sake of safety. I think it's a positive step. I'm sure they know everyone is watching closely and the first mis-step in using that data will cause huge problems.

Retired US Generals call for Rumsfeld to resign Maybe the military will be a wildcard and not side with the gov't... Gangs claim turf in Iraq... might not side with the people, either.

Maybe old John Titor wasn't a hoax...

And there is Rumsfeld and Cheney trying to reheat the Cold War.

The future so bright I gotta wear shades?

Either way, with no consequences to their actions...

Except for the 'possible' Bush impeachment hearings that a few states and quite a few cities and counties are trying to bring about. (This isn't to say that I don't completely agree with everything that you said, just wanted to point out that the EFF is no longer the 'only' one doing anything about the current administration)

Actually, Ebert himself has said he dislikes his own stars system. When reviewing Basic Instinct 2, he gave it only one and a half stars, but said he still enjoyed the movie.

The real problem with Ebert reviews of videogame movies ... is that he always assumes that movies based on games are actually based on the games they are based on.

Here's one where he doesn't make that assumption. Sometimes a movie is so badly done that it can seem like they copied the video game because you can't imagine a screenwriter coming up with so bad a plot. Many times the plots of Video Games are horrendously bad, but are intended to facilitate gameplay. These can be hard to distinguish from horrible movie plots which have no such justification. Only someone who has played the game would be able to distinguish between the two. But when a movie takes the basic premise of the game and expands it to become a movie in its own right (see Tomb Raider in the link above), there's no confusion. You really can't blame Ebert for speaking ill of the video game inspirations for these horrendous movies. You can, however, blame the people who take your fond memories of playing the game and destroy them by making such horrible films, simply because they know you'll fork over $10 to see it.

Probably, this has a lot to do with his low opinion of games in general. Since most movies based on games are in no way based on the games they are based on. Someone just buys a game's name, makes a movie and sticks the name on it. I wonder what he thought of the movie version of Super Mario Brothers for example.

I'd like to get him and explain this to him. "You know how American International Pictures would name movies after Edgar Allen Poe stories or poems and then use an H. P. Lovecraft story (see Haunted Palace for example) or some historical horror story from England (see Conqueror Worm for example, well actually in that case they just imported the movie and slapped on the name with some edits) for the actual plot? Well that's what video game movies are like."

"The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change," Hansen wrote in 1998. He later admitted devising "extreme scenarios" about global warming to get the attention of "decision-makers."

The sad fact is that since 1988, the contrarian position on global warming has been nothing more than a snow job by Republican politicians and Republican interests, especially right-wing "think tanks" paid to churn out talking points that benefit industry and politicians.

The depth of right-wing hackery is demonstrated not just by George W. Bush, but by George Will, who to this day denies that anthropogenic global warming is real. His denials read like creationists flailing their tiny fists against 150 years of consensus on evolution. "One degree might be the margin of error" -- that is quite simply false.

To see George Will, the face of modern conservatism, in full petulant splendor, you have to watch the video. All he brings to the table -- all any global-warming denier can bring to the table -- is a snow job of out-of-context quotes from the 1970s about how some scientists thought the globe was cooling, not warming. Pretty sad. But that's one of the many differences between scientists and pundits. When new facts come to light, scientists change their minds.

But there has been a Republican pattern, from 1988, when James Hansen went before the U.S. Senate to explain that he was "99 percent" certain that global warming was real and that it was to some extent caused by humans, to earlier this year when the Bush administration's appointee tried to muzzle the very same James Hansen on the very same issue. Over and over we see partisan politics as the opposition to actual science. By arguing that any action on global warming would destroy our economy (not true -- carbon emission per GDP dollar has gone down dramatically since 1970 while productivity has boomed), Republicans play the issue as a political weapon, forcing Democrats to adopt moderate positions. Remember Bush's campaign ad making fun of Kerry for even considering a gasoline tax?

And who suffers? We are already in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, and though the first effects of global warming are just beginning to be felt, it's about to slam the ecosystem like a freight train. The only hope we have is that technology will take a quantum leap soon enough to allow us to effectively change planetary climate, on a scale we can't today engineer. But that's a crap shoot, a total unknown (much like global dimming, by the way, which we also know next to nothing about, and which if part of a natural cycle may mean global warming is going to get much, much worse over the next century). We need to do something besides hope.

It seems that it's too late to halt global warming's effects, thanks largely to fifteen years of Republican dissembling, but maybe if we start now we can mitigate to some extent the horrific human death, disease and displacement that will be everyday news on our grandchildren's planet. All we can do is start now. Maybe if these poll numbers are accurate, finally, finally we may be able to help.

There's a fundamental difference between Shakespear and GTA: one was on paper, one is digital.

I [do] indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I don't agree with Ebert. I believe that by giving a player choices you can make a point even more strongly than you can in a passive or narrative medium. This seems obvious to me: choices mean a player can explore consequences of different actions in a way that is much more natural than attempting to do so in a narrative. But then I play games and I suspect Ebert doesn't. So why do we care about his opinion?

Q. If this was such a great year for movies, why are box-office receipts so far down from last year, even though admission prices are at an all-time high? Do you feel that there is such a growing disconnect between Hollywood and America that Hollywood had better wake up or face serious consequences?

Cal Ford, Corsicana, Texas

A: No, I don't, because the "box-office slump" is an urban myth that has been tiresomely created by news media recycling one another. By mid-December, according to the Hollywood Reporter, receipts were down between 4 percent and 5 percent from 2004, a record year when the totals were boosted by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which grossed $370 million. Many of those tickets were sold to people who rarely go to the movies. 2005 will eventually be the second or third best year in box-office history. Industry analyst David Poland at moviecitynews.com has been consistently right about this non-story.

Q. If this was such a great year for movies, why are box-office receipts so far down from last year, even though admission prices are at an all-time high? Do you feel that there is such a growing disconnect between Hollywood and America that Hollywood had better wake up or face serious consequences?

Cal Ford, Corsicana, Texas

A: No, I don't, because the "box-office slump" is an urban myth that has been tiresomely created by news media recycling one another. By mid-December, according to the Hollywood Reporter, receipts were down between 4 percent and 5 percent from 2004, a record year when the totals were boosted by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which grossed $370 million. Many of those tickets were sold to people who rarely go to the movies. 2005 will eventually be the second or third best year in box-office history. Industry analyst David Poland at moviecitynews.com has been consistently right about this non-story.