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This article about Job's not doing the keynote says the worries this is generating about his health are hurting Apple stock. Is there any other company with it's perception of viability so closely linked to a single living individual? I'm unaware of any right now. It's makes this whole thing pretty interesting. He is a human and can't live forever, regardless of how his health is right now. It seems maybe they have seen that with the earlier rumors about his health and have realized they need to start building a transition while he is still around so the company wont take as big a hit when he is gone.
 
Or maybe it is all much more mundane than that - but I've never seen this type of announcement gain so much press before. It's on every MSM news outlet as well as all the tech sites.

Fine, then here, here, and here.

I never said there was no immunity in IRAQ. I was responding to a comment about immunity from U.S. or Afghan laws, not Iraq laws.

Indeed, your articles back me up, that this was a special situation just for Iraqi law, implying it doesn't cover U.S. or Afghan laws ...

I'd gotten the same impression, but it seems that the term has been in use for a while. Here's one example from 1979

I hardly expect anyone to read that, so I'll summarize. In 1979, according to this article, the Carter administration offered 1.5 billion dollars to Chrysler in what was referred to as a bailout (also called, somewhat quaintly, a "tide-me-over"). Amazingly, the company was proposing a shift to fuel-efficient cars that would get them back to profitability "by 1981". This is all before my time, but I do know that if they ever followed that business model it can't have lasted very long. And so we find them today, stuck in the same ditch they'd driven into back in 1979.
We've all heard that history repeats itself, but this is one of the most startlingly clear examples that I've seen. The difference today, as far as I can tell, is that in 1979 the bailout package called for Chrysler to have a clear plan going forward, and laid out strict conditions (I won't cite them here, but feel free to click on that big ol' link up there). By contrast, I've seen snippets of the recent hearings on a present-day auto-industry bailout. Irrelevant grandstanding about jets aside, these execs manifestly do not have any plan, and have admitted that they really don't know if the bailout will be enough to save the industry.

We should not stand for this. The whole tired show has been seen before. The only difference, again, between the bailouts of today and those of yesteryear is that we no longer ask for any sort of accountability. That, and a couple orders of magnitude.

The mouse was invented in 1964, NOT 1968 http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101041011/nextessay.html

Great minds think alike:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/06/obama%E2%80%99s-wpa/

In the U.S., the private schools (often Catholic schools due to discrimination by the Protestants running the public school system in the 19th and early 20th centuries) have significant performance advantage, in part because most private schools cannot fire incompetent teachers because teachers unions prevent it, which has become a spiraling deterioration situation, at least in many poor schools. Bad teachers, who can't, or more likely won't, find a job else where stick around until retirement, and as their students run amok, other teachers get fed up, and leave, either to stop teaching or go elsewhere. Eventually, these schools are paralyzed with the inability to correct the situation. This is a situation no amount of money can fix, because you can't get rid of the bad teacher even if you have more money to hire a good one. This week's TIME magazine cover article is about this exact problem, and the woman trying to fix the worst schools in the country. Read here.

Private schools also benefit from being more expensive, because the parents who are paying that money make darn sure their kids are doing what they are supposed to. Also, they can kick out disruptive kids, public schools have less leeway in the matter, plus they get money from the government for every student enrolled, so they have a financial incentive to take the student.

Meanwhile, many teachers (my sister is one) choose to work at the private schools despite making less money because of the better environment.

Should taxpayers back car makers first of all?

No.

"Manufacturers generally make 15% to 20% in profit on an SUV, compared with only 3% or less on a car, according to Michael Flynn, director of the University of Michigan Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation." from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004283-6,00.html

SUVs were the rage for over a decade. They were incredibly profitable for the companies. And the profits went where?

I've read other places how the car companies were almost laughing at its customers who were paying so much for these station wagons with extra ground clearance for those rough suburban commutes. They took the joke so far, that GM came out with the Escalade and Ford with the Excursion and Lincoln Navigator. And people bought them!

So, we have companies selling stuff at joke profits for over a decade, and they need what from who?

And all this time they were still making cars, so I don't think they forgot how to do it. I seriously doubt that all their employees got 5x+ increase in wages.

So, why can't these companies go back to making cars? Isn't that what they do for a living?

If any computer, then OLPC is the way to go. To cover one issue mentioned: the keys don't come off.
Also, if your little one doesn't get any real use out of it, at least the recipient of the "give one" half of the deal will be well served.

Although, if Baby Einstein is bad for development at that age, a computer might not be much better. Interaction might make it better than TV, but interaction with an actual person is better.

The trouble is, with some of these medical issues, that the ethical ways of dealing with the disease are slow, arduous, and sometimes just not effective, which makes the unethical ones a temptation. AIDS is a condition particularly likely to attract extreme schemes, by virtue of being incurable, fatal, and associated(even if often wrongly) by many with various sorts of degeneracy and sin. And this isn't just "oh those crazy primitive indonesians" stuff. Mike Huckabee wanted to quarantine all AIDS patients. Worse, of course, is the fact that it would work, so we have to rely on people's decency to keep them from doing seriously unethical stuff, and who wants to take that risk?

AIDS really isn't unique in this, although it is perhaps the most dramatic case. There are all sorts of diseases that we could attack if we were willing to do some dreadfully unethical things. For the moment, we've mostly resisted the urge; but the danger is always there, just waiting for a bit more stress on the system.

Are you kidding? We berate ALL politicians here - why does Obama get a pass?

Because ____________.

1. he is for Change
2. he is black
3. he is not black enough
4. he is the current American pop-culture flavor of the year
5. he is democratic
6. he is "clean and nice-looking"
7. he hasn't taken office yet and therefor hasn't fucked anything up... yet
8. a lot of people are nothing but team cheerleaders and their team and the players on their team's shit doesn't stink
9. it's the "cool" thing to do
10. all of the above

Also , pure direct democracy , if everyone would really from their own opninion , would slow everything done , because

... which we have already decided is so overwhelmingly a Good Thing that it is the reason we have three separate branches of government, as well as a bipartate legislature. A system of checks and balances is not a flaw, it's a feature, and one that is wise to retain regardless of the details of how the responsibilities of governance are divided up. We want enough time and enough inertia, meaning tendency to resist change, that we can realistically identify the results of the changes we make so as to repeal the stupid changes. The same technologies that allow more direct, more truly democratic participation in government also allow more rapid feedback in the process of distinguishing the desired effects of our changes from undesirable side effects. We'll all keep an eye on it of course, but your basic assumption of inherent inefficiency is disproven.

there is always someone who disagrees with it , resulting in endless discussions and debates , and no real solutions.

That is in fact a greater problem with government by an elected few than a direct democracy, and I can prove it to you right now on one page, using your own example!

You underestimate how easy people can be influenced by the media.

No, azgard is correct, and underestimated nothing. You have underestimated the propensity of people to ignore their job descriptions to collect easy money. It is not true that all politicians are crooks, but it is certainly true that some people are crooked, and likely that some can fool enough of the people enough of the time to be elected. The question, therefore, is whether a republic of elected representatives or a direct democracy is more susceptible to corruption from the interests of the populace. When we represent ourselves, our tendencies to corruption cancel one another out to a degree not possible with a representative few, or class, or elite. It is the republic model itself which is the problem, the very source of institutionalized corruption.

Sure , this isn't completely flawless either , i'm sure , but it may solve some of todays problems ( for instance , by solving the problem of global warming rather than endlessly debating it )

In fact, in a direct democracy, doing "more to address global warming" would pass with a veto-proof majority: 68%. Furthermore, we would do so despite the (false) impression that significant doubt exists among competent, reputable scientists. "Almost seven-in-ten (68%) Americans think the government should do more to address global warming, according to the poll; however, 64% think scientists disagree with one another about global warming." Although study and refinement of the models continue, legitimate debates are on the periphery, not the basics, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar or a moron. It's a fact beyond dispute that carbon dioxide tends to retain heat by not radiating photons in the infrared range. Arrhenius discovered that in the 1800's! Another fact beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased since the beginning of the Industrial, and in proportion to the industrial combustion of hydrocarbons. Thus we know, not guess, that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting increase in thermal energy are the direct result of combustion of petroleum and other hydrocarbons. Ergo, it is a fact, not an hypothesis or theory, that use of gasoline and other hydrocarbons for vehicle fuel and to generate electricity for power grids are causing the measured observables increased mean atmospheric temperature; increased mean ocean temperature; increased severity and frequency of tropical storms; increased polar melting and de

It's a shame more people don't realize how equally-lousy Clinton was. He's responsible for a whole mess of things, like the dot-com crash of 2000, the failure to increase U.S. border security to prevent 9/11, and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that brought-down multiple banks.

The dot-com crash was only Clinton's responsibility in the sense that Clinton didn't fire Greenspan. Greenspan caused the dot-com boom/bust when he cut rates to inflate his way out of the 1980's S&L scandal and the subsequent 1991 recession. Monetarism — the idea that the government should price-fix credit by artificially limiting interest rates — was thoroughly embraced by Republicans, then and now, and Greenspan's adherence to it was the very reason Reagan appointed him. Clinton's work toward balancing the budget and paying down the deficit probably limited the growth rate of the bubble and helped prevent the crash from being a bigger mess than it could've been. (Not that Clinton was consciously embracing Austrian economics or the like. But he had the common sense that it's a bad thing to spend money you don't have, which both the Keynesians and the Monetarists have repeatedly refused to learn. Of course, Republican contrariness helped a lot — I doubt that Clinton would've had that kind of fiscal discipline if both the House and Senate had been Democrat-controlled.)

On border security... the 9/11 hijackers all entered the US under their own names, with genuine Saudi Arabian passports, and had been granted genuine US visas to live here legally. Either they should have been spotted and stopped during the visa approval phase, or the FBI and other agencies should've caught and arrested them after they had incriminated themselves within US borders (as the agencies came painfully close to doing). Customs agents at an airport aren't in a position to single people out and accuse them of having long-term terroristic intentions. Nor are they equipped to deal with the subtle passport fraud employed by the hijackers to hide which countries they'd visited recently. Border guards are even more irrelevant to terrorism — the 9/11 hijackers didn't enter the US through Canada or Mexico, and no amount of added security on the Canadian and Mexican borders would've stopped them since they didn't even pass through those borders.

Regarding the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act... the Act had Republican fingerprints all over it. Gramm, Leach, and Bliley were all Republicans; it was passed along partisan lines (Senate Republicans: 53-0, Senate Democrats: 1-44; House: uncounted voice vote, which the Democrat minority didn't feel a need to contest); and Bill Clinton signed it for... actually, I don't know why Bill Clinton signed it, but the bastard signed the Defense of Marriage Act, too, so it's not like "Bill Clinton signed a piece of legislature" means that the piece of legislature was actually supported by Democrats.

More than all that, Clinton didn't get us into any conflicts until there was an international outcry for intervention, and he generally conducted foreign policy in a way that was, at worst, adequate. He kept an eye on Iraq without engaging in any of GWB's blustery rhetoric and sabre-rattling, much less actually invading it with ground troops, and he put CIA attention on Al-Qaeda and bin Laden even before the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, then stepped up scrutiny afterward.

All in all, I can't understand why Clinton is so reviled by Republicans. The Monica thing was unfortunate, but nothing worse than the (then unknown) adulterous peccadilloes of the very Republican congressmen who were so keen on having Clinton's head. The Republican uproar over Bosnia, and their shouts of "wag the dog", seem quaint

6. The I've passed more environmental legislation than any other president republican of the early '70's.

Yes, I am entirely sure of that. Having already read your biased and factually incorrect link before, it will not convince me otherwise.

*shrug*, I've looked at the body of evidence and I've concluded that she's a nutjob. Asking the town librarian if she could ban books and telling a local resident that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together.

Draw your own conclusions but it's interesting to see at least three different sources for her fundamentalist beliefs.

Keep one window open to fivethirtyeight.com; one window for The Huffington Post, and one for Swampland.
For TV, I'd go with MSNBC (Chuck Todd ftw), CNN and Fox, just to watch and see if their heads asplode :)

Secretary of State blocking voter registration in California.

Making Votes Count in Florida

I find his speech deplorable. Here's some offending quotes.

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

We hadn't even touched the constantly warring factions that Saddam had kept in check. The Battle of Iraq was just beginning, and they knew it.

With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

The innocent deaths in this war far outstrip any legitimate casualties. We bombed their cities with little warning and no regard for innocents.

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense.

How on earth is destroying an entire country in proportion to destroying a few buildings?

Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups, and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction, is a grave danger to the civilized world, and will be confronted.

What the hell is an 'outlaw regieme'? Any soverign country we don't like? America has ties to terrorists and possesses WMDs, should they be next on the list?

Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland - and we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike.

Godwin much with that homeland bullshit? Damn right you took unprecedented measures in declaring war on the planet.

Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight. After service in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of war - after 100,000 miles, on the longest carrier deployment in recent history - you are homeward bound.

Homeward bound, until they were called back. If America doesn't want to stay and occupy a country... then WTF is going on?

Their final act on this earth was to fight a great evil, and bring liberty to others. All of you - all in this generation of our military - have taken up the highest calling of history. You are defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient, and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: "To the captives, 'Come out!' and to those in darkness, 'Be free!'"

Nice bible quote, was that for those in Abu Gharib? How the hell are we defending from Iraq when they had nothing to do with any attacks on America? How are we protecting the innocent from harm by wholesale bombing of cities?

If Time magazine can criticise it, I don't see why a random slashdotter can't.

Who gives a fuck about Darfur besides a few shallow,bandwagoning, clueless celebrities?!

Everybody has pretty much realized that Africa is a lost cause. The strongest navies in the world can't even keep a few Tanks safe from Somali pirates!

Which was the last US government that didn't illegally export arms?

Hmm, from what I remember of that, the problem wasn't detectable until it was in zero G.

Actually, no, this is not true. The error was in fact detectable on the ground, and in fact was detected on the ground, but the measurement that showed the error was ignored -- the assumption was that the dissenting measurement must surely itself be an error. You can find out more from Wikipedia, or from Time Magazine's article.

Some blame goes to Perkin-Elmer for assuming that the obviously (in hindsight) flawed null corrector was more accurate than the other two null correctors employed, and should be trusted.

Link please. It depends what you consider non-military aid.

you were either in diapers, or you are the trying to revise history...

U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming
The Washington Post
By Victor Cohn; Washington Post Staff Writer
Date: Jul 9, 1971
The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. Dr. S. I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University says that:

-------------

New Ice Age Coming---It's Already Getting Colder
Ocean Floor Sediment Holds Clues to Future New Ice Age on Way---It's Colder Already NEW ICE AGE
Los Angeles Times
By GEORGE GETZE
Date: Oct 24, 1971

Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes.

--------------------

TIME Magazine June, 1974

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

The google is your friend.

Here's one from 1978. It's critical of Carter. It says he want's to do crazy things like shift away from oil to coal and nuclear.

Here's another. He foresaw the problem oil would become. He supported conservation and alternative energy. A frequent criticism of Carter is that he asked Americans to conserve - I'm still not sure I get that. He wanted to develop syngas. If anything he was ahead of his time, when oil prices went down again after the '79 energy crisis Carter's successor figured we wouldn't have to do anything, and that the status quo was just dandy.

Even with the dot-com bust (which incidentally pales in comparison to the housing bust) Clinton grew the economy more than anyone since JFK.

I like how you complain that Bush couldn't push an agenda because the GOP only had control of congress for 2 years (it's 4 and a half - i even gave you dates 1/20/01-6/6/01 and 2003-2007 - and it wasn't around 9/11) you blame Clinton's agenda for Bush's collapse, when the dems only actually controlled congress for two years ('93-'94). Blame Phil Gramm for Enron.

The CRA wasn't the problem. As I said 80% of subprime loans were issued by companies not bound by CRA regulations.

The real cost of the Iraq war is well into the trillions, and I'd rather spend that money on health care than nation building.

I live in Virginia in the Washington D.C. metro area. I've been exposed to avid fans from both sides and have decided I won't be voting for McCain. Why? Read the fifth paragraph down in this article to get an idea of what one sometimes has to deal with. And all I need to do is peruse factcheck.org to see who's lying about what.

Call me stupid & naive for desiring a non-manipulative president but I've been nonplussed with the McCain campaign (and Fox News for that matter). Both candidates twisted each others words but I haven't been exposed to many negative ads against McCain. I wish I didn't have to vote for either of them, we'll still be at war four years from now regardless of who wins--it's probably just a matter of how many countries we'll be at war with.

One car...

The Edsel

not too long ago

dude they stopped counting on April 14, 1994. Did Somebody Say McLiar?.

The account that got hacked was actually her personal Yahoo account, not one of the ones normally used for official business.

Some interesting news on this front: because Palin deleted her Yahoo email accounts, she may be up for destruction of evidence charges. Felony if true, up to four years in prison.

Shortly after the email account hack, Time revealed that the feds already had access to her Yahoo email accounts, as part of a federal investigation into Troopergate.

One shoe left to drop, and it's the big one. Hopefully we'll hear something about it during October, though it's quite plausible that the current DOJ may drag their feet well past election day.

It's true. Hollywood is a huge influence on culture in general and standards of beauty are no exception. Here's a story about cosmetic surgery in Asia, and how it is becoming more popular for people to make themselves look more caucasian, i.e. like western celebrities. It's very sad.

Now people are applying raw numbers to this travesty of beauty standards in an effort to "scientifically prove" that the hollywood ideal is the true one. The interested reader should watch The Trap to show just how damaging adherence to unsupported "objective" numbers can be.

Yes like a couple of years back when Ford blamed Firestone for explorers that where rolling over when a tire burst. Despite the fact that there were pathfinders and other SUVs with the same tires that didn't roll over even when the tires burst.

God how desperate are you

Not very, since my team isn't the one down 11 points in the polls.

no one gives a fuck about that nothing story outside of people who have a direct, vested interest in smearing the candidate.

I'm not smearing her. Just pointing out the fact that the McCain campaign sent out of town lawyers to interfere with what had previously been an Alaskan affair.

Second, please post the entire quote that proves what you're claiming she thinks is true.

Is this good enough for you?

what the fuck are you mods smoking that open partisan slander rises to the level of insightful to you?

WTF are you smoking that you assume anything that disagrees with your own views is automatically open partisan slander?

And to answer the question, she's smart enough to get elected governor of Alaska, in addition to her previous achievements.

Yeah, and Elliot Spitzer was smart enough to get elected governor of New York. Winning a gubernatorial election doesn't automatically translate into having common sense or wisdom.

But let's pretend like the work she's actually accomplished

Well, since you seem really fond of asking for citations let me ask you for a few: What has she actually accomplished as Governor of Alaska? Was it rejecting all of the earmarks from Washington after lobbying for them while Mayor? It certainly wasn't her energy policy.

I'd just to say a big "grow the fuck up" to those of you who think your sides talking points are useful in discussing the quality of a person's job performance.

Says the person who is defending someone whose entire experience in the national spotlight has consisted of repeating talking points.

time article
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1844160,00.html

wired article
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-09/ff_starcity

...or not much, anyway. I'm sure I read about a home hobbyist conversion back in the sixties, in Mechanix Illustrated or one of those magazines, under the headline "It's a Volts Wagon!"

Of course, when I Googled on that title, what I turned up was http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,924216,00.html>this 1980 Time Magazine story about a bunch of prototype electric cars being developed by big corporations.

They were, as they always are, just around the corner.

"The G & W power system, unveiled with much fanfare, is the latest step toward the return of the volts wagon. With gasoline heading toward $1.50 per gal., with the nation bent on reducing imports of OPEC oil, and with cleaner air high on Washington's list of priorities, the electric vehicle, or EV for short, is the focus of increasing scientific and marketing attention."

"A lot of time and money is being spent on these things. Electrics are no longer dowdy."

"Gulf & Western believes it has solved, or is on the verge of solving, most of the problems of the electric car. The company demonstrated three EVs near its Manhattan headquarters last week: the VW Rabbit and two Japanese-made vans, all powered by zinc-chloride Electric Engines."

Can you give any examples of somewhere someone has used "web 2.0" to mean something other than not refreshing the page to communicate to the server?

In the context of our discussion, this should be significant enough. Yes the wiki mentions AJAX, etc. and the fact that some things that people call "web 2.0" use applications that do not require full page loading, but the criticism section addresses that directly.

here's an example:

Time magazine named "You and Web 2.0" as the "person of the year" and all through the article they talk about things like blogs, wikis, you tube, facebook, and all kinds of other things that span the spectrum of the internet, and most of them do not meet your criteria...

and don't reply back saying "well on paragraph 8 of that article it talks about AJAX" b/c that doesn't prove anything...your contention is that web 2.0 means "pages that don't have to reload to change content" and the Time article, among MANY others uses "web 2.0" as an umbrella term for just about anything on the internet that is new and "cool"

Look, you're using a logical fallacy, trying to force me into some false threshold of proof saying "there are millions of places where they use it the way I use it...not so fast...

In your reply, please specifically address the content of the wikipedia entry (esp. under the "criticism" section) and somehow explain how Time magazine isn't an exemplar about the mainstream usage of a term...then we can talk...

...having sex for thousands of years in the same way as we do now...

The way changed, probably recently: dry sex contributes to AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.

This should provide a good starting point.

Nobody has to "have it in for her" if she is under suspicion of having broken the law. Don't you know? All suspects are entitled to equal treatment under the U.S. Constitution.

According to Time, Palin's Yahoo accounts were already being monitored by Federal investigators, researching the Troopergate case.

Palin's other Yahoo! account (gov.sarah@yahoo.com) had already been hacked, so to speak, by federal authorities who are investigating her role in the firing of Walt Monegan, Alaska's public safety commissioner. Critics charge that Palin fired Monegan for refusing to dismiss her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. (The scandal has already earned a -gate suffix.) After Tuesday's hacks were made public, both private accounts were deleted -- an act that could technically constitute destruction of evidence.

The Alaska governor could also face charges for conducting official state business using her personal, unarchived e-mail account (a crime); some critics accuse her of skirting freedom-of-information laws in doing so. An Alaska Republican activist is trying to force Palin to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public-records request, the Washington Post reported last week.

Given that she apparently conducted official business through the accounts, and that she subsequently deleted the accounts, it appears that she may well be in violation of multiple laws, in multiple jurisdictions. Destruction of evidence will be a particularly sticky charge for her attorneys to deal with. And of course, that particular crime is a felony, so the penalty could land her a prison term longer than her potential four-year term as VP.

Sounds like there is enough evidence made public already (and who knows what the Feds drummed up while watching her), that she can be investigated for multiple violations of the law. If found to have broken the law, she should be indicted and prosecuted, and pay the price for having broken the law.

Nobody is above the law, least of all a member of the "party of the rule of law."

And given that she is running for a top federal office, you'd want her to step forward and clear her name, wouldn't you? Make plain that she's a law-abiding citizen, worthy of your vote, certified free of legal problems, so she can hold office? Or at least continue to hold the one she's got now?

In some certain ways, she's the perfect successor to Cheney. The secrecy thing, pursuing political vendettas, disregard for the law, that type of stuff.

Several years ago I worked in a very large and respectable company that shall remain unnamed (but whose name rhymes with, say, "Nokia"...) and we just shipped our turnkey system with our software AND with the source code. And the company wasn't (and still isn't, AFAIK, but don't work for them since a long time) an open-source company :o) It was a screwup by the consultant guys in India.

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, knowing the level of QC that happens in India and China.

oh, right, I forgot that it does indeed happen. Even nowadays (de javu).

'He just showed them why it is not such a good idea to put a religious person at the head of a science organisation.'

What, you mean like Francis Collins?:

http://www.genome.gov/10001018

Dawkins isn't a big fan of his views either:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1555132,00.html

but apparently that whole 'human genome project' thing turned out to be quite successful...

Also have you noticed that the anti abortion crowds are making much more progress lately now that their tactics are less confrontational? If your trying to change thought patterns it's better to take a high minded approach rather than a terror approach. I personally believe abortion is deplorable after a fetus has nerves that can transmit pain to its brain as I can't imagine causing pain to a baby, and I don't think abortion is the best answer ever, but I respect both sides of the argument for valid points outside of that, and I think in general that's a trend America is following. Women now that have children and give them up for adoption to parents who desperately want a child to love are seen by popular media now as heroic, and even christian groups have started to see that condemning women for being pregnant out of wedlock is a strong factor in increasing abortions, and really is against the "throw the first stone" tenant anyways.

I'll try and buy another copy and get back to you.

Here's another review which mentions the "window of contact".

Sorry to disappoint:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Source http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html

So, in light of this ... what role does the Sun play in climate change? ... OBVIOUSLY it plays a role. Without the sun, we would cease to exist.

Just a few articles about the recent LACK of sunspots:

• Sun : One Month Without Sunspot
• First month without sunspots in a century
• What's Wrong with the Sun?
• Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century

If you read these articles, you'll realize that the sun plays a larger part in our climate than we do. In addition, check out the "mini-ice ages" after each of the periods ... from the NASA article ... The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years. Sunspots were rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken down completely. The period of quiet coincided with the Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in Earth's northern hemisphere. ...

It may appear that the whole "global warming" hysteria is about to come to an end ... and just like the 70's, the next big scare will be "global cooling" ... check out:

• Time Mag Flashback: 1974 Issue Warns of Man-Made 'Global Cooling'
• Another Ice Age?

I'm NOT saying that man doesn't play a trival part, but realistically, we don't matter that much on a global scale.

Just listen to George Carlin ... he DOES make some sense.

They are a third world nation with first world aspirations, but they can't seem to get it right. How long before we get back to the old USSR? I'd guess sooner rather than later. Problem this time is, the US and Europe aren't going to let Russia roll their tanks into every Eastern European nation bulldozing their people into submission. Fool us once...

I been born in Moscow and leaved half of my live in USSR (not Russia, - the USSR), the other half of my life I leaved in New York USA and in my opinion those 2 the USA and the USSR were were so close to each other in the cense of "what they did and why did they do that"... I mean I almost see them as an identical countries. Of course USSR was monarchy ruled by the communist party, while USA was showing off as a "true democracy capitalism". but those are about ALL the differences there were in those 2 countries. USSR was very furious about controlling their people, as a tool to accomplish control they used fear along with killing or sending away those who protested, while they did it ONLY to their own people (the ones under Molotov Pact). During the 70+ years of USSR the only major war is Afghanistan. US has found a different way to control their people, since US is "democratic" they could not use force as a first strike instrument against people, instead US has achieved the same (or even better) results with a united media used as a direct propaganda tool. - US has started a major war/incident with almost every precedent US had (some of the precedents have even achieved to start more than 1 major war during his precrdancy) dislocating and killing as many people as USSR. The only BIG difference was the Stalin who managed to kill more Soviet People than Hitler during his whole WWII !! (And that is according to soviet sources! so the actual numbers can be much higher!) - Most aggressive Stalin repressions were reported during 1937 - 1939 - US seem to LOVE stalin at that time (Time Magazine made him man of the year in 1940! http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19400101,00.html ) - Does that look ironic to you? or do you want to say that US and europe did not know that Stalin killed millions of people in 1939 alone?? At that time the West did not think that it was any bad to kill those people, and silenced about the whole thing!!! This is just one of the examples where after 50 or so years we can clearly see that there was no difference between the US and USSR intentions toward "peace and democracy". - The end result is the same, call it democracy or what ever else the intention is to conquer and rule one way or another. Perhaps Baltic states think they will be better off with US... Perhaps they dont see that US is building a "human shield" employing those Baltic states against a "Possible attack from Russia" Perhaps Baltic states dont see that US and Russia are simply competing against each other because they both want essentially the same thing? Perhaps Baltic states dont realize that IF SUTCH AN ATTACK will ever happen they will be among the first ones to suffer with most casualties anyway since they are on the "border of conflicting parties". Perhaps they think that it is better to inflame the aggression between Russia and US - will that make them any safer? Perhaps those states should learn a thing or two from Finland who managed to stay in the balance between the 2 opposing powers! Just my opinion of course...

The editors note that is now attached to the Register article that you link to really does not help to support your position. Incidentally I remember having read earlier that year that the warming trend will be put on hold this year because of a severe La Nina effect - apparently the National Geographic guys didn't get the memo.

The Register article DID help my position, however not as dramatically as I would have hoped :)

The Ice extent graph showed 10% more ice than last year, whereas the map showed 30% more pixels than last year. The two sets of data appeared to be contradictory, but they were not. Still, the 10% increase of ice from last year instead of their being almost no ice is a big difference.

Especially since it wasn't just national geographic reporting this, it was almost everyone!

Exclusive: Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole ...
North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say - CNN.com
North Pole could be ice free in 2008 - climate-change - 25 April ...
ABC News: North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008
FOXNews.com - Report: North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Summer ...
North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer | LiveScience
Summer may see first ice-free North Pole - Climate Change- msnbc.com
North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Year - AOL News
No North Pole ice for 1st time in human history?_English_Xinhua
An Ice-Free North Pole? - TIME

Just a simple google search for "north pole ice free" will give you 1000's of articles. Notice how every one of these articles has very little variation. Not even fox news challenged the claim.

So much for a free and independent press.

"I see you can't tell the difference between was and is. Ossetia (indeed all of Georgia) *was* a part of the USSR, just like India *was* a part of the British Empire. That doesn't give Britain the right to interfere in modern day India. Russia has no right to interfere in modern day Georgia or Ossetia"

The point is, Ossetia, arguably, never was really a part of Georgia. It was _given_ to Georgia by Stalin (a native Georgian, BTW).

Read about the beginning of the conflict, for example here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972214,00.html

I can't find English-speaking sources about Georgia refusing to give foreign passports to Abkhazians and Ossetians. That was back in 1991...

But I'm not a Russian propagandist, though I think _some_ Russian actions are good. Some Putin's actions are bad. For example, current situation in Ingushetia is Putin's failure - he supported Zyazikov's thugs. Also, election in Ingushetia was a complete falsification which has been _proven_ (http://eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/engnews/id/1208608.html) but Putin somehow has silenced critics.

Russian troops will surely leave Georgia. Want to bet?

And yes, US giving Georgia military hardware is BAD. Though I wholeheartedly agree that NATO/UN/OSCE peacekeepers are good. Though UN peacekeeping forces have their share of shameful failures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre)

"Trying to convince the religious that their religion is a sham is next to impossible.
Trying to convince the poor that they can become rich overnight is easy."

Joel Osteen might agree with you:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1533448,00.html

Katrina's emergency response from the feds was very similar to previous storms. What changed was the magnitude of the disaster AND the gross ineptitude of local authorities and _citizens_.

Ably assisted by Dubbyah making FEMA a sub-agency of DHS, which appears to be the most incompetent agency in existence - a title that takes some doing, I know.
As soon as you make emergency managers part of a body that's all about finding "t3h terrists", you change its focus and direction. Whether or not FEMA was a charlie foxtrot before 11/9 is a point for argument, I'm sure, but since being subsumed into DHS it's been an unstoppable toboggan ride into the abyss of bureaucratic hell.

If you want to see how emergency management should be run, look to the Coasties. They saved 33.5k people after Katrina, and they have fewer than 40k staff! They don't insist on kicking decisions about the colour of Post-It notes up to national command level, which means they're agile and can respond quickly. Local commanders have authority to make decisions, and that's that. The closure of NY Harbour after the planes crashed was ordered by the port captain, without having to check with his boss, or his boss' boss. Same with Baltimore/Washington. That is how an emergency organisation needs to think and function. Instead, DHS and all its subsidiary parts (with the exception of USCG, it seems) are all about buck-passing and central control.

It was telling that, in the wake of Katrina, one Louisiana sheriff said "I'd blow up FEMA and ask the Coastguard what it needs."

Yeah, because American intelligence agencies have morals!

No, but they are under some sort of civillian political control. In Russia and China intelligence agencies control YOU (If YOU=the civillian politicians). US intelligence agencies are actually controlled by the law whereas in Russia or China they operate completely outside it.

But I'm sure loads of Americans will now tell me that the US is as bad or worse than countries that do this

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1834474,00.html

70 something Beijing residents get their house taken away by politically well connected developers. They apply for a permit to protest and are punished by being sent to a reeducation through labour camp without any trial.

I'm sorry, but your whole post seems pretty ridiculous to me

They usually do to people wearing blinders.

First, I don't know where you heard that Palin has difficulties with mainstream conservatives because the opposite is true. Without a doubt she will serve to coax the conservative base of the Republican party who would otherwise stay home or vote independent or Obama.

But she also destroys McCain's biggest attack on Obama: that he has no experience. She's unknown in Washington circles, making it hard for other Republicans to back her up, as opposed to if McCain picked Kaily Hutchinson. And she has her own corruption problems to worry about, as she tried to have her trooper ex-brother in law fired during a child custody battle.

Second, I take exception to your claim (which you state as fact) that McCain has almost no chance of winning this election.

He doesn't.

Or haven't you heard that McCain has been rising in the polls for several months?

No, he hasn't. He's been floating in the same place and hasn't broken 45.

He surpassed Obama in several polls right before the Democratic National Convention.

In crappy polls like Zoogby. In other polls like SUSA with a history of accuracy, McCain is and always has trailed Obama.

McCain has no chance because:

• He is the biggest flip flopper on the planet.
• It's not just Dem rhetoric: McCain really has tied himself to Bush's policies.
• Obama has far more fundraising capacity, and can force McCain to play defense in states like...Alaska.
• He has no inspiring message or policy. Not a one. All he can do is try to tear down his opponent
• The Dems have FINALLY learned their lesson from the Dukakis/Gore/Kerry debacles and have stopped playing prevent defense.

And finally, McCain has no chance because he's doing his best to alienate his most loyal base: the press. Just look at his cranky answers to softball questions from Time:

There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I've read your books.
No, I'm not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of ...
I think we're running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don't know what you're talking about.

Really? Come on, Senator.
I'll provide as much access as possible ...

In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it's over?
[Does not answer.]

Do I know you? [Says with a laugh.]
[Long pause.] I'm very happy with the way our campaign has been conducted, and I am very pleased and humbled to have the nomination of the Republican Party.

A lot of people know about your service from your books, but most people don't know that you have two sons currently in the military. Can you describe what it means to have Jack and Jimmy in uniform?
We don't discuss our sons.

So you are a McCain fan. I'm leaning towards Obama, but I get the sense that I may be generally more moderate than you are.

Anyway, McCain's manufactured vitality is going to be a huge factor. Stuff like this:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1836909,00.html

where he gets a little crotchety is not going to help him with undecideds. If they missed anything in vetting Palin, he will get nothing out of picking her.

I don't think things are anywhere near settled, too many people are just starting to pay attention (last nights Democratic convention coverage drew huge numbers of viewers...).