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If you're going for precision, shouldn't it be

what we're changing is an organism's ability to produce proteins that it previously couldn't.

Depending on the food, those additional proteins could end up in your bloodstream, right? Now is that bad? Maybe, maybe not. Not all industry-funded studies have held up to scrutiny either but you're right insofar as the broad consensus is that GMOs are generally safe. The longer that consensus exists, the more convinced I'll be but until we have a couple generations experience, I guess I'll be the "paranoid" one.

I'm a little surprised you didn't hear about the multimillion dollar campaigns against Prop 37 (CA) and Initiative 522 (WA) last year. The Grocery Manufacturers Association was willing to "spend anything" and it resulted in a new record: the most money ever raised to defeat an initiative in Washington state. After a little scuffle, the top donors were revealed to be Grocery Manufacturers Association, Monsanto Company, DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences LLC, and Bayer CropScience.

Woops, much further up the chain. In limited context:

"Making examples of people just because they have upset a celebrity figure is barbarian and i'm glad i'm not an American if this sort of thing is acceptable there. Where i come from everyone is equal, a crime against a politician holds the same weight as a crime against your average citizen."

Well, I think average citizens are charged with that crime,and some have faced civil actions.

Sorry for the mixup.

" Guessing someones password to yahoo mail, does not seem like a severe crime to me"

Actually that might not be a crime. But actually *using* it is a crime. So confirming that you guessed their password is the first crime.

In the ancient days of amateur radio, it was law that while you could listen to other peoples' transmissions, you could not divulge the contents to others, nor take actions based on such eavesdropping. It's pretty easy to listen in to otehr peoples' conversations, and you might do so to tune your rig, test equipment, verify propogation, so outlawing that was pointless. But it was (and is) properly wrong to take advantage of the contents. This should be obvious. Same thing with guessing passwords and accessing email. Oh, and Mr. Kenell didn't guess the password, he guessed the security questions and changed the password. Overt and intentional.

"if anything Sarah Palin should be schooled on password security and disciplined for sharing sensitive information over yahoo of all things"

Fine. You're assuming, I think, that Yahoo Mail should be considered insecure. I work for a financial institution also, and I don't use external emails for business not because they are insecure, but because my employer wants me to use their system which they have control of and can take responsibility for. that's important - they don't declare other systems insecure, they just recognize they have no control over other systems, and so require empliyees to use systems they DO have control of. You're deciding that the Palins should be using a different system? Care to recommend one?

"Making examples of people just because they have upset a celebrity figure is barbarian and i'm glad i'm not an American if this sort of thing is acceptable there. Where i come from everyone is equal, a crime against a politician holds the same weight as a crime against your average citizen."

Well, I think average citizens are charged with that crime,and some have faced civil actions.

The right to vote and the right to free speech are tightly enmeshed. There's only two things that a person can do which will result in them losing the right to vote, get convicted of a felony or give up ones citizenship.

It was a serious joke to allow corporations and unions to have the same right to speech that individuals have. One of the biggest problems with the political system right now is huge amounts of money funneled in to the races. Allowing groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to slander whomever they like.

Locally the BIAW just got slapped with a half million dollar penalty for violating campaign financing laws. They've been active in trying to get Republicans elected to the state legislature here in WA, and have shown no particular interest in complying with campaign finance law.

``Then Linux came along and somehow "closed source" became a synonym for "proprietary", and "open source" a synonym for "free" (gratis). Microsoft feeds into this by not releasing the source code to Windows. Windows would be an even stronger (proprietary) product, IMO, if the source code were available.''

Actually, Microsoft does make the source code of Windows available. For example, the Chinese government has access to the source code of Windows. Other governments, some businesses, and various individuals (outside Microsoft, too) also have access.

``The Linux community shares some of the blame by touting libre, gratis, and "open source" in the same breath.''

Well, Linux is libre, gratis, and open source. I feel the problem is not so much with the various open source communities. People in these communities often care about their licenses and are aware of the various distinctions. It's people _outside_ the open source communities that seem to assume that "if I can get it for free, I can do whatever I want with it" - which is generally not true, neither of open source nor of closed source software.

The interesting thing is that proprietary software vendors often turn a blind eye to violations of their licensing terms - e.g. redistribution by third parties of software that is gratis but not freely redistributable. I'm sure they are also largely unaware of when this happens, but they also have a good reason for wanting to turn a blind eye: by letting people believe that they have more freedoms than they really have, they aren't driven to software that comes with fewer restrictions.

By contrast, even though open source software generally allows much more, the rights holders tend to get very upset when the few restrictions in the license are not respected, especially in the case of modifications not being made available in source code form for GPLed software. There are people who make a living prosecuting such cases. Many of them involve Linux.

So I certainly wouldn't say that the Linux community is muddying the waters here. To me, it seems that they are very clear on what is and what isn't granted as part of the license. Most GPL violations I know of are cases of the violator very obviously not abiding by the terms of the license. Had they read the license, they would have known this. Had they asked the rights holders, they would have known this. But of course, licenses are something you just click through, right? That's the way it works in the proprietary software world, anyway. So, again, it's not the Linux community that is causing the confusion.

I lost all respect for the IOC when they sued a non-profit (and won) to prevent them from using the term "Gay Olympics". Allowing retards to use the word "Olympics", but not queers, seems a bit of a double standard, doesn't it? Never mind the fact that the word is over 2000 years old, and there is very little chance of anybody confusing the "Gay Olympics" with either the Summer Olympics or the Winter Olympics. What next, suing the state of Washington to get them to change the name of their capitol, Olympia? Or just suing the residents for calling themselves "Olympians"? Wait a minute... don't these guys have a trademark on the word "Olympian"?

http://www.theolympian.com/704/story/455367.html

I got in only about 15 days this year, because the passes were closed a few times.

ok....

http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/152368.ht ml

Here is a link to another point of view. It was not a school sponsored event.

This sounds an awful lot like the Bong Hits for Jesus prank, currently headed to the Supreme Court. I expect the principals to loose in both cases for one simple reason: these pranks are occuring beyond the jurisdiction of the school, so long as these pranksters are running things from a non-school PC.

As much as I hate it, this *is* the MySpace generation (born circa '88). In fact, my neighbor's son recently did the same thing, posting info about his principal's criminal record via a fake MySpace account. As you would expect, the principal screamed and threatened, but it was all hot air. At best, he might have tried a defamation civil suit, but being that the criminal record was accurate, he had no way to prove any damages. It was already public info to anyone who knows how to Google.

Psuedo-legality aside, my Psych 101 classes taught me that the best response to a MySpace prank is to ignore it. These kids *want* attention, *want* to stir up trouble. The more "the system" screams and yells, the more excited the pranksters become. And once the legal prescedent is set, that school administrations have no control over what kids do on MySpace, I expect the "fake principal page" will become a staple at high schools nationwide- if it isn't already.

And, to be fair to the schools, this prescedent is in their best interests too. Once it has been established that they can't stop kids from "MySpacing", it also must be accepted that they cannot be held liable either. As a tax payer, I don't want to end up on the recieving end of a multi-million dollar lawsuit against our local high school, especially not because some kid went on MySpace and did something stupid; like met a stranger or shared personal info like an address or phone number.

If you have teens at home, make sure to include the "MySpace talk" along with the "sex talk" and "drugs talk". All bullshit aside, it could save their life.

they also want to raise the legal gambling age from 18 to 21:

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060126/NEWS0402/60126034/1220/NEWS04022101

Unfortunately, the linked article is one of the less informative ones. The Olympian http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20051203/NEWS/51203003 has a lot more, including an estimate from Jirtle that 25% of the Caucasian population has the variant (low IQ) gene. Assuming the sample of 300 was half male and half female, that would mean about 37.5 males with the variant gene and an average IQ of 85, and about 112.5 had an average IQ of 105. That makes the IQ of the group average to 100; the population average now is higher than 100, so that's skewed a bit, but it doesn't really matter if we're talking about significance.

It's been a while since I knew statistics, but I think a Chi square test would be appropriate.

Jirtle says about twenty-five percent of Caucasians have the variant of the gene. The study used 300 children, all Caucasian. So if the study used equal numbers of girls and boys, and if selection for testing was independent of the presence of the variant, then I estimate a sample of

(37.5 +/- 5.3) boys with the variant gene, and
(112.5 +/- 5.3) boys without the variant,

where the errors are statistical and totally anticorrelated.

And same for the girls, of course.

The articles say he presented results at a November conference in Durham, NC. That would seem to match this conference. This abstract refers to the result briefly.

Where I live (Washington State) the teachers use their credit cards at work to look at porn.

An utter crock. Do the math. Assume a mere 150 miles of track and only 10,000 passengers a day. One hundred fifty million to build and 200 thousand to operate daily, but the passenger only pays less than twenty thou total? Give a link or back down

Okay, actually I was being rather conservative... this document says the latest segment will only cost a mere $64 million dollars per mile: "... at $64 million per mile, the North Portland MAX will be very expensive to construct." Thankfully, the cost of operation per rider on that segment will only be $10 each, of which the rider will pay maybe 20-30%.

This article says that the MAX system in Portland costs ten times as much per rider than the bus. That means that on the more flexible bus system a $1 fare pays for the cost of the rider, assuming the $10 figure above is correct.

This article says: "Airport MAX This was a $125 million, 5.5-mile extension developed through an innovative public/private venture involving the Port of Portland, Tri-Met, the City of Portland, Portland Development Commission and Bechtel Enterprises. Bechtel contributed $28.2 million towards the $125 million project. It links Portland International Airport to the existing regional light rail system. The system was completed in late 2001." Note that this says $125 million for 5.5 miles. That would be around $20 million dollars per mile. The article also mentions several other projects with as high or higher cost per mile.

This document has more numbers to crunch. In 2005 it will cost $7.2 million to operate this 5-mile segment each year. They give a ridership forecast for 2020 (which may or may not be bullshit depending on the motives of the person making the forecast), and assuming the fare is $2.00 per boarding, it will bring in from fares $9,412,000. However, inflation and the trend of increasing costs to maintain government programs will have no doubt raised the operating cost of the segment to well beyond that by the time 2020 hits.

(Nobody wants to be the first candidate to say, "Now this isn't what I signed up for.")

Of course, that would probably run afoul of their agreement to moderate the debate: http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040923/tops tories/151247.shtml.

I want to see hard questions asked. Let the candidates ask each other questions. Have fact-checkers on hand.

I want to see Bush and Kerry squirm a little bit. A president's job is to run a country, yet the forum we set up for them to perform is as safe and predictable as possible.

Sigh... Something unpredictable would be nice. I always feel like I know what the next thing out of their mouths is going to be.

No. That's just what Ridge wants you to believe. Real security comes from tinfoil.

(College, incidentally, is the perfect time for this sort of thing.)

Forget Diebold, everyone seems to be forgetting the Letter to the Editor scandal, where the same letter was passed around for troops to sign and then passed off as a letter to the editor in the troops home town. Some of the soldiers whos letters were publish claim they never even signed the things in the first place.

Who's to say that the emails coming from soldiers would even be from the soldiers at all?

C'mon people... standardized paper ballot, a pencil X and a little bit of saliva on the envelope, and a walk to the outgoing mail bag. It shouldn't be that hard!

One aspect of Postal 2 that I haven't seen in other crime-centric games is the ability to forcibly enter a suburban home. That, itself, is a step beyond the acts of personal violation we've seen in other titles. GTA-3 allows you to eject an adult from his car and take it for your own. I feel relatively safe when I'm in my car; and I'd feel relatively well-violated if someone snatched me from it. But I imagine that's nothing compared to being abducted (or otherwise intruded upon) in the sanctity of my own home. (Violation of person would be an even more extreme example.)

Postal 2's creators believe there's an appeal in the act of violating another human being. A Clockwork Orange shows us a group of people who enjoy this; their behavior is perfectly believable. The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment shows us that the capacity for cruelty and abuse of control can exist in all of us. Games like Thief (audio/flash) distance us from this by changing the setting somewhat. In breaking into those medieval homes, there exists the sense of being somewhere I shouldn't, but I never really felt like I was terrifying anyone. Knowing what we do about human nature, would the Thief series sell even better if the victims were people from our own experience?

The consensus here seems to be that Running With Scissors will not gain much by porting the title to Linux. Would an improvement to gameplay make a title centering on home-invasion more interesting?

Aluminum Foiled Apartment

Everything in his apartment is wrapped in alumium foil, except for a copy of Penn and Teller's book "Cruel tricks for Dear Friends".

Well... from the looks of it, this guy will never have to worry about RF interference.

just outlaw tinfoil under the DMCA.. problem solved

But that would make criminals out of people who foil their friend's apartments! ;)

You really are far, far, off base. [snip] Iraq is far better now than it was before the war. Better yet, this time next year they will be far, far better off than they are now. Additionally, they can more than likely expect the same trend to continue for years to come.

OK, where do I begin? First off - I'm amazed and somewhat scared at your current image of what life in Iraq is like. Secondly, I'd like to mention that all linked sites are googled for, none are my favourites or anything like that. I'm personally getting most of my news coverage from the BBC, FYI, but I'm having trouble with their website, so I can't reference anything there. However, I figured you'd want proof, so google was used to get me relevant links. Some of the articles/issues were new to me.

Imagine a place where basic social order has broken down. This is Iraq. No government to pay wages, no workers to do essential tasks in a human society. Complete turmoil. There are still problems with drinking water in many places; due to equiptment that has been poorly maintained, as you yourself point point out. The war and lack of engineers working (who'll pay them and give them replacement parts?) has pushed the system to breaking point, a system we weakened ourselves (I'm a bit skeptical on this one, i.e. delibarate targeting).

Coming out the other end, sewage is also a massive problem. Not only do the above issues affect drinking water, they also have a big problem with rivers of raw sewage around in cramped living conditions. Disease is the last thing you want when you have a completely destroyed health system. Having no refuse facitlities also causes many problems, not least of all disease carrying vermin.

The lack of maintence is not Saddams fault, it never was, it is due to the international sanctions, which has been commonly acknowledged for a long time. They could not import the parts to fix the systems. They couldn't manufacture them, as the equiptment to make piping etc is the same stuff you use to make weaponry, and the sanctions have denied them that as well. It's now down to charities to help rebuild this system, as well as collaliton forces. Sure, you can pat yourself on the back that water and sewage will soon be superiour to pre-war levels, but remember why the system was poor in the first place. I'm sure all the dead children and vurnerable people who have died as a result of your glory will be lining up to thank you if there was an afterlife.

Police are scare and crime is at extraodinary levels. Car jacking, kidnapping, rapes, murders and theft plauge every city. Citizens are scared to roam the streets, travel at night is a dangerous proposal. Cars are only used in emergency, unless you want armed gangs taking them from you.

Most peoples savings have been rendered useless. The most popular large denomination note, the 10,000 dinar, is not accepted anywhere, due to mass forgery on stolen printing machines. Coinage is the only acceptible payment for anything. However, this is fortunatly changing, as a new currency has been introduced a week or so ago. This will take a while (til January they reckon) to become universal, but it leaves serious issues with folk who have literally become pennyless. People have to eat, feed children, pay bills and live. With so many workers not getting paid

This is the same David Brame who also is accused of raping a woman in 1988. Of course nothing happened to David Brame. And the Pierce County sheriff's department did nothing about Crystal Brame's complaints because her husband was the chief of police.

Perhaps we can make the object of the game to shoot Tacoma cops, who are corrupt and Pierce County Sheriff's deputies, who are stupid and corrupt. Oh, and you could add Pat Frantz to the list. He's the head of the police union in Tacoma who has been threatening journalists and blaming the media for David Brame's actions.

Yeah, I think that having a game where you waste these useless and corrupt cocksuckers would be a good thing, I think that having kids play this game would be even better.

But-- if you didn't have running water or electricity or food at the moment, these would be more important (See Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs) than being able to create albums of the songs in different albums you bought. More than likely, you would not realize what was happening until it was too late.

My own theory on Iraq is that we had to find someone after the USSR fell (and find them fast) in order to justify continued military spending and undercut the peace dividend so Bush Sr. conspired with the Kuwaiti gov't to lure Saddam into invading Kuwait ("The Fire This Time" by former Atty. General Ramsey Clark gives a good account of this) and then mobilizing world opinion while politically preventing an Iraqi withdrawal. Remember the words of April Glaspie of the US State Department when asked by Saddam about the US position regarding Iraq's claim to Kuwait's territory-- "The US takes no position on Arab-Arab matters."

Until the first Gulf War, Saddam was our ally (even after the USS Stark incident and gassing the Iranian soldiers and Kurds). Personally I think that Reagan and Bush Sr. should be tried along side Saddam at the International War Crimes Tribunal. Wait-- Bush was! Maybe that is why the US is pulling out of its involvement with the war crimes tribunal!

As an interesting musing, the US opposition to the ICC may have very little real practical value. If US allies are tried at the Hague for war crimes in operations where they were fighting along side us Americans, it seems that would have a chilling effect in terms for support for US foreign policy. Just another way that the illusion of power is an intoxicating influence...

Rather, Microsoft sees a future for MSN that will someday justify the billions of dollars in development and marketing spent on the service over the years.

"We believe that this is going to be a very very big business, a business the size of Windows or the size of Office in the future," he added, referring to Microsoft's two largest revenue-earning products, the Windows operating system and Office suite of business software. "It's something that consumers will come to rely on in their everyday lifestyle."
</snip>

From: http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20021013/busi ness/19285.shtml