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I dunno about The Onion not being real news. They called this one pretty well:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

"Bush: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over." -- Onion, Jan 17/2001.

And Bill Gates patented 1's and 0's ( http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130 ) And Nebraska votes in developmentally challenged senators ( http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28176 ) Glad to know there's still irony in the world. The biggest irony of all is how we continually fall (at least momentarily) for such satire as truth.

And Bill Gates patented 1's and 0's ( http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130 ) And Nebraska votes in developmentally challenged senators ( http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28176 ) Glad to know there's still irony in the world. The biggest irony of all is how we continually fall (at least momentarily) for such satire as truth.

Darn... I thought that all the books in other languages would have gone through the new Google Purge...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076

This is yet another move by google to it's new product: Google Purge

This sounds like pretty mild news compared to their other announcements http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076.

I wonder if this has anythign to do with Google Purge?

$4B in new stocks... ~$2.5B in print advertising... Yeah, The Onion seems to have it right.

Google plans to purge its cache using its new service Google Purge TM

Which is why I think Google should be the company that leads the way with DRM. Who doesn't trust Google? Plus, I think it would really help with their latest project

You clearly deserve your flamebait mod, you evilutionist! You probably deny the truth of Intelligent Falling as well! After all, gravity is just a theory, and it isn't even consistant with quantum mechanics! Yet another paper in the bad half of that 50%. I could flip a coin and do as well as Newton!

Sounds like you read about Intelligent Falling Theory.

> No, it's clearly intelligent spin.

FYI, Intelligent Spin (notice the capitalization, please!) is just a special case of Intelligent Falling.

Shoulders of giants, kind of thing.

I recall hearing a story that you created DSPAM as a response to the trashy emails that your religious leader was receiving. I also see that your religion plays a large role in your life. I'm curious, how a thinking, logical, Christian such as yourself feels about the "intelligent design" movement?

Is this a misinterpretation of scripture? A reaction filled with fear against science? An attempt to distance ourselves from animals so that the atrocities occuring in modern industrial-meat production can be justified? Or is it a revival of much-needed spiritual values in our country?

In addition, I'm curious what your take is on the Intelligent Falling theory?

The liberal solution likely doesn't involve Intelligent Falling.

Damn near all of the information on the internet is copy/pasted from 2-3 sources. Any search in google will easily prove this.

The library has a very restricted westernized style of handling information, a lot of the best information might not be at that specific library you are at, and I doubt you want to travel from library to library looking for that important book.

You make it seem as if "westernized style of handling information" is a bad thing; however, i can understand why a standarized library organization system can be annoying. Knowing exactly where your book is located in any library can be a pita. BTW, most libraries have a library loan program so you dont have to travel from library to library to get your book. In city loans usually take 1-2 days to fill, and in some districts you can *gasp* reserve the book and have it transfered to the branch you want ONLINE from home!

I don't know about you but all that matters to me is portability and access to information. PDAs are more portable than books, and the internet is a better model of distribution. These are facts and you cannot argue against it.

Glad to know that you dont care about the reliability of your information at all. Glad to see that you will believe any written text placed in front of your computer screen. BTW, if you want a great site for current events, may i suggest http://www.theonion.com/ its easy to access and has PDF'S!!!

The internet as a better mode of distrobution? Electronic distrobution for print media is far inferior to the classic form. New is not always better. Books do not have annoying glare or contrast issues. Books do not get completely destroied in the rain. Books do not have a "limited view time". I can read a book in the bath tub, whereas i wont even think of using an electronic device near water. There is also the major disparity in the number of ebooks compared to regular print media. Lets say that i want to find a book modeling the ancient greek style of education and comparing it to our modern system, or about the cult of isis, or any other non technological work. I wont be able to find one; however i can find hundreds of sources within the 4 libraries in town. Honestly, how can you say that electronic books are more portable than books with a straight face. The only advantage gained from electronic distrobution is the number of books you can carry around at once, and thats nothing to brag to folks. book count != smarts.

I am but your post portrays a tremendous lack of knowledge about what science is.

There is consensus on the theory of evolution. It's the best theory for the data. Yet here we are debating things that the scientific community settled a while ago. And no you don't get consensus from the religious right - that's why they developed ID - creationism in sheep's clothing.

"even if you _hate_ the the ID proponents, and beleive they are flatly wrong and that macroevolution is the endpoint of human understanding of lifes origins, you still need to be able to competantly address their arguments.... steel sharpens steel, if you like."

Competently address their arguments? What are their scientific arguments? What papers have they published explaining this idea and providing support for it? Why they haven't. More like steel cuts mustard. Why aren't they doing research, and finding evidence to support their position? The ID supporters seem to spend a lot of time getting their ideas in the classroom without a single shred of scientific evidence.

ID isn't a theory. It cannot be proven false, it cannot be subject to experimentation. That's the method of science. If you are going to teach ID, you should probably teach Intelligent Falling

Another brilliant parody from The Onion - brilliant because it so accurately illustrates the mind set of the religious right.

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133& n=2&ref=myy

I take it, then, that you're not going for Intelligent Falling?

Wow! You can parrot a statistics phrase! If you'd bothered to think, you'd realize that anti-correlation =* not-causation, so the increase in violent videogames is not a cause of youth violence, as the hypothesis "violent videogames cause violent youth", has been shown to be without merit.

*Violent videogames may indeed cause violent youth, and some unknown factor is preventing all these violent youth from causing violence - however, this is about as sensible as believing this

Obvously you have not been reading Your Onion Lately.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

First Post! (At least I can't remember posting before) :)

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133& n=2/

Link is to the Onion and their coverage of "Intelligent Theorys".

I oft see much mention and debate on the "Scientific Method." So many of the discussions fall apart in semantics and basic misunderstandings of the subject material. Perhaps a basic refresher may help?

Please allow me a moment or two to quote from my old friends Crockford and Knight on the The Scientific Method:

"An interest develops in a certain phenomenon. The phenomenon is then subjected to close study and investigation to see whether any orderly set of conclusions can be formed. Usually the first conclusions are only qualitative statements of behaviour. With continued experimentation and refinement of techniques, it often becomes possible to draw quantitative conclusions. When well-defined mathematical relations are discovered, they are are termed laws. A law, then, is a mathematical statement of regularity of behaviour. The ideal gas law, for example, is a a mathematical expression for the quantity-volume-pressure-temperature relations in a gas. A further accumulation of data may show a given law to be only approximate and may lead to a more exact expression than was at first attained.

The next step after the development of a law or a set of laws is to work out a hypothesis, which depicts a mechanism that explains the observed phenomena and the conclusions reached in the laws. If the hypothesis explains a number of laws and if predictions based upon it prove to be correct, it becomes a theory. A theory may be looked upon as a well established hypothesis. The great value of a theory or a hypothesis rests not only on the fact that it explains already established laws but that it enables the investigator to predict other laws and to formulate experiments to test those predicted laws."

I first thought that it was either an Onion or
Borowitz report article.

I think I'll wait for my BWL - Broadband over Water Connection Lines?

Gentlemen, why all the fuss? The Onion provides definitive evidence for alternative theories:

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133& n=2

At some point, when reality sets in

For a timeline on this one, I'll guess about the same week as this problem gets solved...

BOZEMAN, MT--The few people close to Mitch Delomme say that he doesn't realize the implications of his new podcast, an agonizingly personal 40-minute digitally recorded capsule of news, information, and trivia about the chronically lonely pizza-delivery man.

"I wanted to share something about myself," said Delomme, 48, who in the course of his life has been heavily involved in ham and CB radio, personal home-page construction, and participation in late-night community-access cable.

Delomme's podcast is currently available on all major subscription links, where it has attracted no attention.

He is Dave Winer!

George Dubya'a right on it. Here's the news report.

screen actors shoudl stay on the screen. the Voice Actors Guild has been getting shafted by the movie, and gaming industries. in all the big budget animated movies, and video games, theya re getting SAG people to do the jobs that VAG people shoudl be doing. and generally doign a terrible job of it. take the movie Madagascar for example... absolutely terrible voice acting! there are talented voice actors out there that can do a much better job. but these SAG people are getting them jsut for the name recognition, and i think its rediculous. heres an interesting interview with Billy West (voice of Fry on Futurama, and Ren and Stimpy). he talks a bit abotu how screen actors are takign their jobs... http://redesign.theonion.com/avclub/node/240/1/1

You sir should be writing for America's Finest News Source (TM)! = P

See here.

(originally from The Onion, but their archive is no longer freely available)

But Bill Gates gets half.
Just FYI, this was originally published in The Onion, but is no longer available in their archives.

You, sir, seem to be suffering from a serious humor deficiency.

My recommendation: Go read America's finest news source until you begin to laugh again. Then come back here.

I bet you'd all go ga-ga if they got a parrot to realize the concept of complex numbers too! Let me know when a parrot comes up with the concept of sedenions, and then I'll be moderately impressed (-;

PS. Slashdot editors, please use your formidable editing powers (and what a rich history of fine editing you have!) to stop advertising Piquepaille's weblog.

PPS. For your general amusement, here's an amusing article from The Onion.

The boobie-patrol types come from here. As an urban dweller you may not have encountered any in person, but they're out there.

There are millions and millions dead! Oh no, stop living your lives and start panicking!

Thought you might find this funny. From today's issue of The Onion

Dead iPod Remembered As Expensive
VENTURA, CA--A third-generation, 30-GB iPod, serial number AP356372, died early Monday morning at age 2. "I'll never forget all the great music it used to play during my workouts," said the late iPod's owner Sarah Zartman at a brief memorial held over the junk drawer. "It was convenient, portable, and really pricey--almost $500." Zartman said that, had she known the iPod's lithium-ion battery would have such a short lifespan, she might have spent more time listening to it. AP356372 is survived by a BlackBerry.

Odd that this was posted the same week as this op-ed piece

Now, we've got an age of popups, popunders, sliding layers, things that flash in our faces, things that try to install spyware, ads that incessantly try to place cookies on our machines, etc. People are fed up.

So, the next step will be even tougher ad-blocking. Forget simple (and ever-less-effective) popup-blocking, I'm waiting for the version of Firefox, or the plugin, that offers Proxomitron-style dynamic recoding / blocking of selected content, not to mention more privacy-protecting features. Here's a for-instance: on-the-fly recoding of cookies. Doubleclick.net wants to set a cookie? Replace it with a standard "junk" cookies, so that millions of machines suddenly report that they belong to Johndoe@doubleclick.net ... making their tracking data less than useless.

It'll happen. And sure, we'll see some of the big-name providers start to use more intrusive ads and charge for some services. People will adapt. The Onion used to have free content and few ads. Now they have annoying pre-mercials and they charge for archive access. I rarely visit The Onion anymore.

And I'm sure the New York Times and other news providers will likely start charging for premium content; the "free reg required" will give way to something like $12 a year, then $4 or $5 a month, and then it'll grow from there. That's the way of things.

There's a South Park episode where the citizens kill Wal-Mart and shop at the small-town drugstore, which then becomes a supermegastore the same as Wal-Mart and then has to be killed ... and the cycle continues. Thus with the Internet. If the current news sites start charging monthy subscription rates, free ones will appear; if Yahoo and Gmail started charging for their services, more free e-mail would appear.

Doubleclick, just like the RIAA/MPAA and Microsoft and everyone else, is just a cog in the machine. And just like a part in a machine, it seems the whining and grinding often gets louder just before the part wears out for good.

Who else thinks this story should be here

Slashdot readers in particular will probably enjoy the Horoscope. It uses the New Revised Standard Zodiac agreed on at WorldCon 2025.

the best (or IMHO the only remaining good) part of the Onion, is the column by one Lloyd Schumner Sr., Retired Machinist and A.A.P.B.-Certified Astrologer.

Obligatory list of mirrors of my favorite techy Onion article:

http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patent s.htm

http://www.ece.villanova.edu/~thanneru/zeroesAndOn es.html

http://www.gleitsmann.com/Frame3x3long.htm

And here's a link for a shirt:
http://subscribe.theonion.com/product_info.php?cPa th=5_12&products_id=80

You can always hit up the text version.

Home of The Onion too!

Yet another successful prediction by The Onion!

Well, that and only pricks actually take their news from CNN and Foxnews. Hell, I've had a professor say that The Onion is about the best news source in America for finding out what's actually going on.

what am i not getting?

The fact that the Internet is global and many countries don't share the United States' puritanical views on sexuality? The fact that the "more social conservative" people you speak of are in power right now and would *love* an excuse to prevent kids/teens from accessing honest sex education? The fact that the "obscenity rules that apply to broadcasters" you advocate would result in many non-pornographic sites being placed under .XXX (like, perhaps, The Onion)? There are a million reasons why attempting to segregate out porn sites is pre-doomed to failure; this is just a few off the top of my head.

Personally, I am dismayed by this ICANN action; it looks to me like censorship coming in the guise of "protecting the children". Let's all just face it: no filter, domain-name segregation, or other silly external method is going to protect kids as well as the most important one: honest parental discussion and oversight.

http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents .html

Having grown up in "Europe" (Austria and Germany), I am very familiar with the "law". From my experience the "law" governs every part of your life from what you can eat to how long you work and what type of toilet paper you wipe your ass with. America is slightly better in most of these regards.
Look at the double digit unemployment in most of the countries in continental Europe and tell me how much the "law" is helping most of them.
Most of these strikes remind me of an Onion article where the French are striking against low productivity.
A strike might win you short-term concessions, but as most American auto workers are finding out, the union is cutting their throats in the long run with decreased competitive ability.

Well, yes, if whoever writes Jim Anchower over on http://www.theonion.com/ did it.