Slashdot Mirror

In 1947, 70,000 students in Scotland were subjected to an IQ test, and the test scores were recently re-discovered. Studies were then performed on those still alive.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1563915.ece

From TFA: "Between the ages of 11 and 70-plus, the way you live can raise or lower your cognitive skills by around 10%"

Can't find an article to back it up, but on the Discovery Channel, they referenced results from 2007 in which hundreds of the now-70-year-old 'students' gathered to be re-tested, and the majority of them scored the same or better than their 1947 scores.

Lex Worrall, chief executive of Helius Energy, claims Jatropha can produce 2.7 tonnes of oil per hectare. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2155351.ece

For comparison, corn produces about 0.15 tonnes per hectare, hemp about 0.30 tonnes, and canola (rapeseed) only 1.0 tonnes.
So if he's right, it's a very good oil producer, on the order of much harder to grow oil producers like avocado (2.2) or coconut (2.3).

Still 1/5 of algae though.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

It's not too difficult to convert a garden lawn into an allotment or a greenhouse. That's what many people do in the UK. Even if they don't have a garden they can rent an allotment from the city council (much to the dismay of land developers). People were encouraged to do this during World War II. By growing their own vegetables, fuel used to transport produce from the countryside to the cities could go towards the war effort instead. Even after rationing was removed, people still insisted on growing their own food, as it tastes fresher than the produce from the supermarkets.

As an example of a shortage in food supply, you only have to look at the milk shortage the UK faces. The major supermarket chains (Tesco, Sainsbury, ...) all employ "negotiators" to keep the price of commodity items down while keeping the price of other items high. As a consequence, they drove a good many dairy farms into bankruptcy, so they bought milk on the international market instead. Now that China has announced that all children should get at least half a glass of milk a day, the international market cannot satisfy demand.

Source Sunday Times

Link

Reading this and the original article is like day and night.

see the physics GCSE paper here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/exampaper.pdf

Just a few comments.

Q1. Can't be C and can't be D - these aren't stable because they don't orbit the primary. also there is no way to distinguish between C and D if we assume there is a planet at the centre of the circle. Can be A or B. Planets tend to have circular orbits but there's no theoretical reason why they can't have a highly eliptical orbit and moons orbit so close to the primary that the "wobble" wont be visible. (although the graph isn't drawn to scale so they could have drawn a wobble on A)

Q19. Huh? Radio signals are analogue.

Q20. A obviously not true. B&C Hearing deteriorates with age and, barring things like digital hearing aids (if they exist), digital technology has no effect on what you can hear. So I assume they are referring to the loudness war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

And those aren't even the worst!

Q5,6,7 and 8 are all appalling. Q7 is obviously there at the request of the government to soften people up.
Q2. We can take photographs of a moon because it is electromagnetic.
Is this even a sentence? Attempting to make a sentence out of it: We can take photographs of a moon because it affects electromagnetic waves.

Tim.

Saw it, took a few minutes to answer the questions in the paper. It is ridiculous. Also maybe I am wrong, but the following questions seem to be answered incorrectly in the article attached to it (bottom of the page.)

23 is logically D not B
27 is D not C
30 none of the answers make sense.
34 (6370/10) * 2 is not 56000s - but who knows, maybe I am wrong with my understanding of this question.

2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)

Or it could be they're being taught better generally. But actually there's another possibility - the rates are only an average for all GCSEs, and one possibility is that people are switching to easier subjects. So it's not that any given exam is easier, but that some subjects are easier to get an A.

In fact, The proportion of students gaining five good (A*-C) GCSEs including English, maths, science and a language, has fallen from 61 per cent in 1996 to 44 per cent last year.

Obviously it's still bad if some subjects are easier than others, but it's wrong to assume that all subjects are getting easier, and in fact, science seems to be one of the hard subjects. So ironically, making science easier may help to address the problem.

(Though I do love the way that when exam grades in those subjects are falling, people assume it must be due to students getting stupider or teaching standards falling - why aren't all the moaners complaining that English, Maths and Science exams are getting harder?)

• 6. Anne looks in the mirror at her eye. Which part is used to help identify her?
• 7. People's eyes are used as personal identification: in hospitals, at airports, at school, and/or at home.

see the physics GCSE paper here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/exampaper.pdf

several comments (and food for thought):

1. multiple choice questions are proving popular for one reasons only - they can be marked by computer and are quicker and cheaper to process because of this.

2. unless you think that people are getting a lot more intelligent in a couple of generations then you must assume that either (a) the exams are easier or (b) that students are being thought only how to pass exams (this is the view held by several teacher friends of mine)

3. my first university course (which was a 3 year course in the late 80s) is now a 4 year course - this additional year is used as a remedial course to get students back up to the level they used to be at. universities certainly do not believe that more students are doing much better then they ever have previously.

4. schools are busy reducing the number of students doing maths (and further maths), chemistry and physics as much as possible as in general students get lower grades - in turn this lowers the performance of the school as a whole in the league tables. in other words it is hard to get people to do their jobs properly when their wages rely on them doing it badly.

5. employers have also been lamenting the quality of school leavers in many subjects - maths, spelling, english.

its a pretty dismal state of affairs in the UK, and it seems to be repeating itself in the EU and in the colonies.

i think much of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the government who seem to delight in meddling in the schools at every opportunity. with the international baccalaureates being introduced soon who knows what will happen next?

A 13 year old boy recovered without a transplant with the help of one of these things as well.

The post is great, but please give a source for your figure on the royalty rates for artists.

Unfortunately, a quick search found me this: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/ind ustry_sectors/media/article573960.ece

which says that artists get 4.5p for every 79p track sold on itunes, which is about 6%. Multiply that by twenty and you get 120% which I don't think is too likely.
I also found this site, which details US royalties:

http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/dl_newmedi a.htm

which apart from suffering from some verizon style math problems($0.095cents is how much exactly???), says that artist royalty is 12% (after some deductions)... which would leave the Russian artists with an excellent royalty rate of 240%

It's a shame that your post contains these errors, because it was a very enjoyable read, but the lack of credibility detracts from your points.

They clamp down really extremely on extremists. China's probably not going to have much of an Islamic Jihad issue, at least for the next 20-30 years...

*shrug* Prehaps you can do a bit better then a strawman/ad hominen attack?

How about actually read the current news? Rather then a book written in 1776?

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/art icle600750.ece

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/21/america/wea lth.php

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_an d_features/article2891171.ece

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_38 43.shtml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/08/08/cnchina108.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedb ox

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/08/07/bcnchina107a.xml

Big companies like Lenovo being bought out by China, or more recently the US government blocking China from buying Unocal (US blocking on average 10% of US companies being bought up by China).

Some people argue that singing about weapons, violence and crime promotes it. It might increase the appeal to own a weapon, copying the artist. Much like other people might copy the artist's hairstyle.

Personally, I don't understand the appeal. Having said that, the lyrics to what I'm currently are "can you see the world you help to build / a world of hate and madness / take a look inside, you have no dreams / your empty soul, can find it", and if we're going to start censoring lyrics people might argue that's too depressing, so I'm against any censoring.

I did read (in a paper, so no link) that some rap artists in Britain had agreed to stop promoting (FWOABW) knives, since loads of teenagers have been stabbed in London this year and no one's really sure why link

I just hope we don't embarass ourselves by flushing the global economy down the toilet, just to find ourselves in a warmer climate due to solar effects that we could not stop no matter how hard we tried.

Facts are hard to ignore. Like http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_snow_011206-1.html and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article17 20024.ece. Dust storms caused by winds caused by increased solar heating are the reason on Mars. But Mars is also further away from the sun and gets less solar radiation. If Mars gets enough extra radiation to rise 0.5C, the Earth is getting about 16 times as much. (It is about half the distance from the sun, r-squared rule says four times as much. It is about twice the diameter, again, r-squared says four times as much. four times four, sixteen. About.) Thank goodness for the high heat capacity of water, huh?

The article's main hypothesis is that piracy negates the price differential between Linux and Windows.

Specifically, one of the hypothesis towards the end of the article is that Microsoft unofficially acquiesced to piracy and maybe even encouraged it. Well, I thought I would point to Bill Gate's own words in the matter. In an article that I originally read on Cnet magazine, but that has since been commented and reprinted everywhere, he actually stated that piracy helps Microsoft by making the OS pervasive and that they were not worried about the Chinese pirating Windows, because if they are going to pirate "something", Microsoft and him would prefer that it be Windows.

"Then a comment made by Microsoft Founder, Chairman, and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates in 1998 and reprinted widely and often in the official media became a lightning rod for criticism of the software giant. Fortune magazine reported that, in a presentation to business students at an American university, Gates said rampant software piracy might turn out to be a positive thing for Microsoft.

"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/23/ microsoft.china.idg/

And here's a more recent and yet more poignant articles and quotes from Bill Gates as it specifically mentions Linux.

Sources: http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/?q=node/103
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_arc hive/2007/07/23/100134488/index.htm
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/ind ustry_sectors/technology/article2098235.ece
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/07/we-love-microso ft-software-piracy-in.html

I think the article would benefit tremendously from including the information above as it strengthens the author's main thesis a great deal.

from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article22 40427.ece

From The Sunday Times
August 12, 2007
Confessions of a BBC liberal
The BBC has finally come clean about its bias, says a former editor, who wrote Yes, Minister
Antony Jay

In the past four weeks there have been two remarkable changes in the public attitude to the BBC. The first and most newsworthy one was precipitated by the faked trailer of the Queen walking out of a photographic portrait session with Annie Leibovitz.

It was especially damaging because the licence fee is based on a public belief that the BBC offers a degree of integrity and impartiality which its commercial competitors cannot achieve.

But in the longer term I believe that the second change is even more significant. It started with the BBC's own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional "liberal" bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC's allies seem to accept it.

It has been on parade again these past few weeks on the Radio 4 programme The Crime of Our Lives. It included (of course) the ritual demoni-sation of Margaret Thatcher (uninterested in crime . . . surprisingly did not take a closer interest), a swipe at Conservative magistrates and their friends in the golf club and occasional quotes from Douglas Hurd to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the whole tenor of the programme was liberal/ progressive/ reformist.

The series even included a strong suggestion that Thatcher's economic policies were the cause of rising crime. So presumably she shouldn't have done what she did?

There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy.

This programme was quite clearly on the side of the former and the producer/writer was a member of BBC staff. Can you imagine a BBC staff member slanting a programme towards the case for a stricter penal policy?

The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple - much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?

They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word "liberal" would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let's call it "media liberalism".

It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmil-lan's premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.

But we were not just anti-Macmil-lan; we were antiindustry, anti-capital-ism, antiadvertising, antiselling, antiprofit, antipatriotism, antimonarchy, antiempire, antipolice, antiarmed forces, antibomb, antiauthority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place - you name it, we were anti it.

Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain - Britain fr

While that makes it the biggest "newspaper" it still doesn't let it reach the majority of the population. I'd like to see the Sun's sales numbers if it actually reaches the majority of the UK population.

True, the UK population is ~60million people, whilst the daily circulation of The Sun is 3,107,412 (Wikipedia's not a great resource, but will do for these purposes). But the majority of people cannot be arsed to buy a newspaper every day, but what we can do is get a ratio of right-wing bastards Vs. lefty-woofters by comparing the circulation of The Sun with its left-wing counterpart: The Guardian. So, The Sun has a daily circulation of 3,107,412 and The Guardian has 378,228 that's over eight right-wing Sun readers to every left-wing Guardian reader. We're not even taking into account the circulations of other right-wing papers like The Mirror or The Times.

Really all the proof one needs is the special relationship between Rupert Murdoch and the British Government, those who get the support of Murdoch have the support of the people (and in case you didn't notice: Murdoch is right-wing). Look at who won on the issue of the Euro, Tony Blair wanted the UK in but Murdoch said no and the whole nation is now brainwashed into hating Europe.

"A bank customer who was angered by the refusal of his branch to refund thousands of pounds of charges responded by sending in the bailiffs.

Customers at the branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in North London were stunned to see debt collectors that were hired by Declan Purcell seize four computers, two fax machines and a till filled with cash."

More:
Times Online: Bailiffs seize bank's cash

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_an d_entertainment/music/article1878724.ece

Not that it directly affects me -- the yahoos currently ruining the studios never had their hands on the stuff I listen to.

MS isn't talking about an EOL date for XP anytime soon, but is planning ahead to a time when supporting XP will no longer be economical. Makes sense to me.

The data protection act - so you can request information on yourself

And the Conservative party are hoping to get this act repealed:

Tories reopen EU divisions with attack on red tape
The report will also propose repeal of data protection laws and many rules affecting the financial services industry, including ending the regulation of mortgage lending. It would be easier for companies to make staff redundant, care home restrictions would be relaxed to create more places, and health and safety regimes reviewed or scrapped, including rules on incineration and protective equipment.

The NIMBYs may be annoying, but the concern regarding nuclear is legitimate, especially given the world's track record. "...radioactive material leaked into the sea and air and dozens of drums containing toxic waste broke apart." Oops!. And they (supposedly) had no idea they were sitting on a fault line.

I'm generally in favor of nuclear, but I'm certainly not convinced of our ability (or perhaps our determination) to competently and safely operate and maintain the plants.

Some engineers said it was old and busted: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and _americas/article2186631.ece

If there is a surplus, taxes get to be cut next year, making the gov. look better. However if a bridge falls down, most people don't actually care, so votes aren't affected.

OK. The formatting is going to suck though...

M.A.D. R.I.P.

(If you haven't already done so, please read the Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke post, you can consider this post to be a continuation and/or expansion of the points made therein.)

M.A.D. of course stands for Mutual Assured Destruction.
It is what passes for sanity these days in international affairs. That
said, it is also enjoying over a half-century of success. M.A.D. is the
policy that justifies the nuclear arsenals being deployed throughout
the world. The Soviet Union had them because the U.S. had them. France
and the U.K. had them because the Soviet Union had them. China had them
because all of the above had them. India had them because of China,
Pakistan because of India. Now we see North Korea has them: they have
them because we have them, we're the adversary sitting on the other
side of the D.M.Z.

Every nation in possession of nuclear weapons
today has them because they're afraid some other nation has them and
they're afraid that if they don't similarly arm themselves, their
nation may only exist in the future as an entry in a history book.

Every
nation but one of course: Israel. Israel has no nuclear-armed
adversaries. To be sure, it has adversaries aplenty, arguably of its
own making, but it has demonstrated repeatedly now that its military --
as provided for by the U.S. taxpayer -- is handily capable of defending
against any manner of aggression these adversaries are capable of
producing.

The other way of saying this is that Israel is the
only nuclear nation in the world today that is not employing M.A.D. as
the rationale for possessing its nuclear arsenal. Israel is doing
something else.

(that's alarming because M.A.D., as policy, works. Israel pursuing some other policy therefore is really terrifying.)

Here is a story by The Sunday Times titled Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran .
So if you're wondering why it is I feel compelled to bring this subject
up again, there you go. Israeli Prime Minister Ohmert recently
acknowledged Israel was in possession of nuclear weapons too, and an
entire post could be dedicated to the incredible hypocrisy seen
expressed by our media in response, but what is likely a sober and
factual report on impending nuclear war takes top billing today.

Israel
is set to take the world into nuclear war. And why? We are told time
and time again that it is because it can't permit Iran to possess
nuclear weapons. The Sunday Times story even trots out the
"Israel must be wiped off of the map" quote attributed to Iranian
President Ahmadinejad as rationale, even though it's been shown that he
never said any such thing. It is being drilled into our heads that a
nuclear Iran must mean the end of Israel. That M.A.D., a policy that
has kept the world free of nuclear war for over fifty years -- and
despite the bitterest hostilities between opposing nations -- cannot
possibly work between Israel and Iran. And so therefore America must
attack, or at least, look the other way as Israel attacks in its stead.

Of
course, this reasoning is flawed, its conclusion blatantly false. The
established precedent is that M.A.D. works. Not only that, the
precedent is that nations locked in cold war eventually tire of it and
learn to accept the other side. I made this point before: if Iran had
gone nuclear back in 1967, the internationally recognized border
between Israel and Palestine would undoubtedly be the de facto border
today and we'd likely see peace in that part of the world where we now
see nothing but war. It is the huge imbalance of power in the

AbeBooks is an international clearing house for the sale of used and rare books. 100 million books on sale from 13,500 booksellers in 57 countries.

At last count, AbeBooks had sold 55 Harry Potter books priced at $1.000 or more. In August 2005, AbeBooks sold probably the world's most expensive Harry Potter book when a buyer spent $37,000 ($20,000) on an exceptionally rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Most Expensive Harry Potters Ever Sold on AbeBooks

To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more then 300 million copies worldwide in over 200 countries and the books have been translated into more than 60 languages - only the bible can better those statistics.
In France, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first English language book to ever top bestseller list but the series has permeated almost every corner of the atlas.
The books have been translated into most Eastern European (from Albanian to Ukranian), East Asian (Cambodian to Vietnamese), and Scandinavian languages. Some countries even have books in several dialects - for instance, in Spain it is possible to buy the books in Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.
But it's possible to find even more obscure translations such as Faroese (with a mere 60,000 to 80,000 worldwide speakers) and Kalaallisut (the dialect of Greenland spoken by about 54,000). Some of the books have even been translated into the dead languages of Latin (meet Harrius Potter) and Ancient Greek, the latter translation being the longest work in the language since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD. The Wild World of Harry Potter Books, The Harry Potter Series

The literary critic, the academic, doesn't quite know what to make of Harry Potter:

Literary manias expire with horrible suddenness. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the novel in 1852. In America, at the height of its popularity, steam-driven printing presses exploded, trying to keep up with sales demand. But, two years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was dead on the shelves. Last year's book. Harry mania...and there may be more

The only problem with this particular example is that it isn't true. Stowe's novel sold well throughout the nineteenth century. Stage productions and later films embedded Stowe's most memorable images in the in the American consciousness. Simon Legree. Eliza crossing the ice. In the 1930s the WPA's Federal Theater Project produced a stinging, unsentimental adaptation that took the story back to its anti-slavery roots.

Perhaps the key to understanding Rowling's appeal to children, to adolescents, is that she like Twain, like Dickens, like Lemony Snicket, is an uncompromising moralist.

Yes, a very sad loss. I was not sure anyone (surprisingly) on Slashdot picked this up.

I was privileged to attend his final talk the week before, given at Edinburgh. The video is now actually available here (for a while): http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/events/jamboree/2007/

This was absolutely fascinating, and I listened spellbound for an hour and a half. Do not be misled by the title as it covered much of the early development of AI in Britain (not just at Edinburgh). Analogous with the actual topic of this story, it details another, very early "physical computer" MENACE - constructed of matchboxes and beads.

A fuller obituary (that goes way beyond his short involvement with Turing) is here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituarie s/article2061886.ece

Truly a great pioneer and inspiration for us modern researchers in AI.

The author tries to make it seem like preference for blond hair is universal

Not only is this story lame, but it also fails to ask the right questions.

Greasings, motherfscking "citizens" of the United States of (Ignorance And Sufficiency-Induced) Obesia.

So you spent your globally warmed July 4th grilling dead-genetically-ill-creatures and waving those formerly-seens-as-cute China-made plastic flags?

How does it feel to be someone's tool?

Face it: you failed it.

The Times Online is reporting that O2 have already won the contract ("O2 has beaten its rivals to win the exclusive UK rights to offer Apple's iPhone"), BBC News is saying that it is "reported to have won the sought-after deal". So the BBC is speculating whereas The Times is claiming it to be fact. I don't know who to believe.

If you believe all the articles you read then apparently O2 have denying winning the contract, being quoted as saying "they're just stories without any truth to them". That sounds like a pretty negative statement for a company who is apprently just being hush-hush about being in such a privileged position.

O2 do not have very good 3G coverage in the UK, it seems almost a no-brainer that Vodafone would've won the contract since their infrastructure is superior. There's no EDGE in the UK, so the UK iPhone either has to be 3G, or work over GPRS... the latter doesn't bear thinking about (think Youtube vids downloaded at 3-4KBps).

The smart money is still on Vodafone to win the contract in my opinion, despite these reports, and the UK (maybe Euro) iPhone having 3G support.

Britain/Europe is working on making publishing information on how to make bombs illegal. Burn the books, Burn the books!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/art icle2023030.ece

the United Kingdom spends eighty billion pounds a year on healthcare

Hm, nominal spending is more than that. Now I don't know much about the NHS (other than that it doesn't work) but I do know a bit about government contracts in the UK, and I would be very surprised indeed if more than about 50-60% of that went on anything of even peripheral value to healthcare.

Here, the Times (rapidly becoming a tabloid but never mind) has something on it:

Annoyingly chatty but probably basically correct article.

To put it another way, the UK NHS is like the US DoD; they're both ways to funnel money from the taxpayer to those who position themselves to recieve it. The NHS, however, which is regarded almost with veneration by most British people and which doesn't have to fight actual wars, is far more corrupt; buildings built, bought, sold and knocked down within the space of a few years, and so on. But the NHS long ago passed the point where it's powerful enough to keep going forever -- it's quite a political power broker in fact, which is why you *do* get reasonable free healthcare from it in much of Wales and Scotland.

Meanwhile, in England, health care does cost money -- you pay over the counter for even a basic dental checkup. You don't want to? Then take out some private health insurance. It's a fast growing sector in the UK. Good!

I imagine that there are people who find it hard to afford, though, what with all the taxes they're paying. And that's bad. But what can you do?

That (along with Russia's desire to become a member of the WTO) is probably why allofmp3.com is now mp3Sparks.com, including the same logins/passwords and the same typos in the track names and album titles, and of course owned by the same people. more info here

That's it!!
They have to wait in the latest never ending line for the latest eyeGizmo and so, won't be able to attend. "Queues of more than 100 people have already formed outside the company's flagship store in Manhattan, with one gentleman -- the first to form the line -- now in the 4th day of his vigil on 5th Avenue." (emphasis mine)
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_ and_web/article2005122.ece

That article's headline is "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions." Bush's actions were limited by that qualifier. Hussein was complying and had given up the WMD as required by the UN resolutions (primarily resolution 687 see:http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news /iraq/un/index.html). So far 500 munitions of degraded sarin has been found (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Natio n/archive/200606/NAT20060621e.html)(Personal, this doesn't seem like a stock pile). So technically, the war is illegal as it fails the qualifier that congress stipulated.

Most people feel that Congress wouldn't even have passed that resolution had Bush et al not been fabricating the intelegence (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3 87374.ece)

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned"

Which is more important for law enforcement to deal with -- copyright infringement or ACTUAL piracy on the high seas? The latter does exist, and was an increasing problem of late, but has subsided somewhat as governments have given it more attention. Should resources be redirected from the Coast Guards and navies of the world to combat copyright infringement instead? How can anybody advocate the claim that copyright infringment is more important for law enforcement to deal with than violent crimes?

Besides the fact the quoted numbers are bogus, this lawyer is an idiot for thinking the relative importance of everything can and should be measured in terms of dollars, and even if it were done, if you did a realistic cost analysis of violent crime, inclusive of its effect on victims and insurance, I'm sure that copyright infringement costs wouldn't look all that impressive anymore.

Well apparantly quite high. The fact there was less time between the guy playing GT and driving than most of these instances has probably not helped our cause.

The judge should be able to apply some relative thinking to see that boy racers will be drawn towards racing games and not that the game will make boy racers out of good drivers. I would have thought if ever a game was to advocate taking your car to an actual racetrack instead of the streets, it'd be GT. Though the case could have been far more worrying in a possible games censorship sense if the guy had been playing say.... Need For Speed Underground.

I know I'm going to get modded offtopic at best here

You think so ? Not very likely, Slashdot is decidedly anti 'Iraq' war.

However what I'm about to post will certainly get modded down.

wasn't the point of the invasion to stop Iraq from deploying its extensive stockpiles of WMDs?

No. That's what the rhetoric of the anti-war campaigners would have you believe but it's just not true.
"regime change is in the interest of the world." was the stated reason of both Bush and Blair.

penalized for the actions of the stupid

It is personal opinion in which way anyone views this issue; and attitudes vary over time and subject matter.

The scale varies from the cold-hearted Matlusian & Randian view ; to the overpowering cotton wool Nanny State.

On this particular issue, it is my personal opinion, that our internet rights are not being curtailed by these Internet Danger Signs.

Do danger signs, required by government, stop people using:

* electricity plugs
* medicines
* rat-poisons
* or other stuff?

No. But they probably saved a few toddlers from electrocuting or poisoning themselves.

---

In Australia there is a big problem with some Indigenous Australians sniffing petrol.
So the government places restrictions on how petrol can be obtained in those parts.
Surely that is penalising car owners who do not sniff petrol?? Where do you stand on that issue?

Let's drop the pretense that Russia is in any way a modern democracy please. Elections are a joke, independent journalists are permanently silenced, and if you didn't order it you are certainly didn't doing much to investigate it. You are bullying surrounding nations as soon as they take any steps towards democracy or independence from you or displease you in any way. Fascists and neo-Nazis run rampant in the streets, with the police literarily looking on with arms crossed doing nothing.

And even with all this, Putin has soaring approval ratings, proving once again that nationlist pride is one of the most dangerous memes ever.

Do the friggin study :

1)Get a few dozen lab rats (baby rats if you RTFA and are still worried),

2)Put them near a wi-fi base station for a few months

3)Dissect and observe if tumors have formed

4)Repeat as necessary, with other organisms if you wish (perhaps the uninformed media wh**es?)

Now tell me: where in that list is there ANY room for a bunch of moronic talking heads on an alarmist docudrama to offer their OPINION? Farking incompetent buncha loonies! Bah ...

Rants aside, people really need to grow up and get over this knee-jerk reaction they have with "radiation". In case it hasn't been said already, EVERYTHING emits radiation. Fancy names like gamma rays, xrays, alpha, beta, etc etc (ad nauseum) are just names that were given to things BEFORE we figured out the physical principles that governed them. Someone needs to construct an equivalent of the dihydrogen-monoxide parody for radiation methinks :P.

Anyway, I found a very nice website for laypeople that explains the behavior of water exposed to different parts of the EM spectrum (water is a good prototypical substance as it is so ubiquitous in our body): http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html.

A special focus on the microwave region (1mm to 30cm wavelengths) can also be linked from that page. A few seconds of Googling found the following articles:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061212/080748.s html - A year ow wi-fi is equivalent to 20 minutes on a cell phone :P.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/he alth/features/article665419.ece - The original article. Notable quote:

"When we have conducted measurements in schools, typical exposures from wi-fi are around 20 millionths of the international guideline levels of exposure to radiation. As a comparison, a child on a mobile phone receives up to 50 per cent of guideline levels. So a year sitting in a classroom near a wireless network is roughly equivalent to 20 minutes on a mobile. If wi-fi should be taken out of schools, then the mobile phone network should be shut down, too -- and FM radio and TV, as the strength of their signals is similar to that from wi-fi in classrooms."

IMO, the most comprehensive study was done recently by a Danish team: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061205/170444.s html and this is what came out of it:

A new Danish study tracked 420,095 people who've been using mobile phones for up to two decades or more, and found absolutely no evidence of a substantial cancer risk. The study is the largest yet disproving any cancer link, but the debate over the topic is like a b-horror film villain, who just keeps popping up after you're sure the last blow killed him. Science means little to the significant number of people who have made cancer via wireless their personal techno-bogeyman, so no study in the world is likely to change their minds and put this debate in the morgue.

Especially note the lines I have highlighted in bold.

Here's the original story for the Danish study in the Guardian: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/20 06/12/07/mobile_phones_dont_trigger_cancer_says_st udy.html

And just to assure the tinfoil pholks :P,

if you were looking for evidence of increased solar radiation, what do you think you would find on Mars? Some evidence of increased heat similar to Earth? Well guess what... a couple of weeks ago there was this article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article17 20024.ece Basically, Mars has warmed over the same period by about the same amount, as the Earth.

I always thought it was funny that people would sooner believe that cow farts warmed the planet more then the massive fusion engine in the sky. I guess it's best not to offer up rational thought in the face of rabid hysteria.

Thanks for posting this... I've been waiting for your post for a couple months... If you take a poll in the US,... I'd bet a majority of the people would agree with you and say that Iraq is indeed currently in a state of civil war. Oh wait... I don't have to guess... we have this Harris poll from November showing 68% of Americans think Iraq is in a civil war and this CNN poll from this March showing 65% think Iraq is in a civil war. In the former (more recent) poll, only 14% of Americans disagreed. So I think it is pretty fair to say that yes, Americans do believe that Iraq is in a civil war.

Now... lets compare this with the opinions of Iraqis living in Iraq. This poll from less than 2 months ago has only 27% of Iraqis thinking they are in a civil war. How can only 27% of Iraqis think they are in a civil war at the exact time that 65% of Americans think they are in a civil war? Simple - you say it over and over enough and people will believe it. I am by no means saying everything is cheery over there - I am sure it is hell... but it apparently isn't a civil war. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the media mentions the words "civil war" in every single broadcast about Iraq? Or that the current congressional leadership reiterates this exact point every time they speak on the issue? Think about this over the next week or so... make a concious note every time a reporter or leader of congress says the words "civil war".

wtf. that has to be the most naive comment i have ever read!

This is what has just been announced in the uk and Tony Blair resigned to try to blanket out the media revolt!

The leaked Iraq war documents: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article53 5913.ece

I guess you missed the article about NASA putting living bacteria in one of the Mars Rovers. We've already polluted one of our neighboring planets, why are we concerned about rocket stages drifting in space?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/articl e544976.ece

I notice that there's a man going by "Captain Gatso" who's still active in certain protest activities in the UK. Looks like there's now suspicion on him as a letter-bomb terrorist, which he's denied outright and which doesn't make sense. The UK's universal surveillance plan for the nation's roadways (eg. here) was once marketed as something to fight crime, but is now all about "road pricing." Considering the amazing claim that the average Briton is now spotted on camera 300 times a day, that the cameras bark orders at you, and that the software will actively scan for signs of trouble, I'd like to avoid England until things change. No offense to you, much to the politicians and other officials building this network. Unfortunately we in the US are following along, with both parties involved.

Producing alcohol produces *VAST* amounts of CO2.

The whole CO2 thing is just total FUD. Mars is warming just as fast as we are. In the historical record, CO2 lags warming, it doesn't lead it, and no surprise, with the water vapor cycle running at many times the speed of the CO2 cycle and directly tied to temperature, which our current CO2 generation is not. Global warming is real, all right, but it sure as heck isn't CO2 that is causing it. Look up. See that yellow thing? That's a free-running fusion reaction, and it makes a lot of heat at rates that are known to vary, and that is by far the most likely candidate for what is causing the warming we (and mars) are experiencing.