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You forgot the children...

Google Plans Free VoIP in the UK

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1454225, 00.html

just in case you got a 404 error.

Someone left a bracket on there, so...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1454225, 00.html

Good link to Article

An alternate link

Yes.

The land back then was also one supercontinent, as the Bible implies.

From here

The Great Dying occurred on the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods when all land was concentrated in one supercontinent, known as Pangaea.

"The marine extinction and the land extinction appear to be simultaneous, based on the geochemical evidence we found," said Peter Ward, the palaeontologist who led the research.

"Animals and plants both on land and in the sea were dying at the same time and apparently from the same causes - too much heat and too little oxygen."

This site has a good explain of how this happened: Hydroplate theory

Darn, somebody beat me to the submission. Anyways, here's my version, which has some more information:

Robotics physicist Mark Tilden has unveiled his follow-ups to the Robosapien, which was mentioned on slashdot last year and sold rather well during the holidays. The foremost is the $200 Robosapien V2, which will be able to lie down, stand up, speak, use its built-in camera to recognize objects and people, and follow a laser-traced path. The $70 Robopet will be able to perform simple tricks and learn through positive and negative reinforcement. The $100 Roboraptor is covered with sensors and will have three different moods: hunter, cautious, and playful. The Robopet is scheduled to launch in July, with the Robosapien V2 and Roboraptor scheduled for September. I can't wait to see what hacks people come up with for this.

From that moment on, no matter how tempted he felt to use his secret gases, Hitler had always to balance in his mind the conviction of his scientists that the Allies had them too.
Had he known how flimsy the evidence was which supported these convictions he might have thought again. Nazi scientists, for example, read great significance into the fact that references to compounds related to nerve gases suddenly ceased to be mentioned in American scientific journals at the beginning of the war. They correctly deduced this was a result of censorship by the US authorities. What they did not know was that this was to protect the secrecy of the insecticide DDT then under development, not the secrecy of any new war gas. In other words, the Führer had been misled. Neither the Americans nor the British possessed a chemical weapon remotely capable of matching nerve gas.

There is the problem of determining the proper "balance".

For instance, I'm sure that if one solicited calls for 'balance' on Adolf Hitler, one could get LOTS of claims from his proponents suggesting all sorts of positives about him, blaming everybody but the Germans for the Second World War due to the Versaille Treaty, denying the Final Solution, attributing the Nazi defeat to Jewish Bolshevik traitors, or whatever. Personally, I'm inclined to think that any properly balanced view of him in terms of history should be profoundly negative... and fanatics will be inclined to frequently and loudly tilt the balance the other way.

In addition, the selection of facts -- even when true -- can be quite biased. A previous poster noted that an article on rape linked to the Abu Ghraib scandal. One might wonder if the same person who added that link would consent to linking an article about rampant sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Congo, including the running of prostitution rings and the creation of child pornography involving rape, or perhaps listing articles on the French use of torture and extrajudicial execution during the war in Algiers in an article on torture or state terrorism. Somebody who has a bias specifically against the United States or its government, for instance, might constantly point to Abu Ghraib while ignoring far larger scandals.

Here
Well, I can't find the complete list but it exists and was leaked. Actually, I think there are a lot of hereditary peers and baronets who don't use their titles day-to-day. There's not much point in giving them up unless you want to enter the commons.

LOL! British Imperialism has bit them in the ass!

Meanwhile, Bush is planning to spend $30-$40 million in lavish inaguration festivities.

Ya know, I read a bunch of articles, but that had the cleanest text. I could have quoted Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132832,00.html , but I figured people would accuse me of conservative bias.

Then, I thought about quoting the Sunday Times from the UK:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-12 91280,00.html but who knows who might own that.

I also thought about quoting a French source. http://www.investigateur.info/news/articles/articl e_2003_05_5_auchi.html, but I think I have made my feelings clear about the French.

Finally, I considered a source from Pittsburgh, http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/middlee astreports/s_273762.html, but was afriad I would be branded a Steelers fan.

It seems that Amazon did great business this holiday season, but they also seem to have miseed some delivery dates.

So, business is good, but some didn't get their gifts in time for the holidays. This kind of begs the question as to what the percentage of on-time deliveries were. Was this a worldwide issue or was it mainly in the UK only?

1. men who get excited by/about women
2. men who get excited by/about men
3. women who get excited by/about men
4. women who get excited by/about women

Read the 'If Kazaa can block traders of child porn, it can block copyright infringers too article on The Register.

I also found the article at The Times to be more informative than the one linked one on /.

How many terrorist incidents have there been in the US since 9/11? The Macy's Parade looked pretty calm to me.

eh? Acts of terrorism are stable if not on the rise. So, we haven't been bombed on American soil in 4 years? That's not something to brag about.

Story 1 -- global terrorism rose in 2002
Story 2 -- global terrorism sucks. US may be as safe as we were since 9/11 but reelection may prompt new acts
Story 3 -- Rise in terrorism in 2003 over 2002. (Note in the first article 2002's numbers were understated though.
Story 4 -- Lebanese, people who actually know something about terrorim, see 100% rise due to foreign policy.
...

It's all google-able. And if we count those 'insurgents' as terrorist, which we're fond of doing when it serves our purposes, terrorism is astronomical.

It's a joke, even though it's not funny. Americans are masters of torture innovation, but we "render" our prisoners to other countries to be tortured, to avoid that "quaint" old Geneva Convention. Of course Turkey does too, as it's now officially "civilized", part of the EU. Political torture is a global outsourcing bonanza. And even the Turks are accusing us of genocide in Iraq. Who's lauging?

Can be found on the Times Newspaper website, includes the number itself, and the corresponding solution.

Yeah, its not like berkeley is the #2 research university in the world or anything reputable like that.

Oh, wait. They are.

I'd be inclined to say you are both right and wrong. Here is a pretty good write up on the Afghanistan war. Its is obvious that the war on the ground was waged by special forces working with local militias. Its nearly impossible to sort who among them were CIA and who were Army. It is a certainty the CIA had a major contingent there and that its a normal career path to go from military special forces to the CIA field operations so they are nearly synonymous.

I recall a documentary on the prison uprising where CIA agent Michael Spann was killed showing Americans in civilian dress coordinating the battle, and threatening the news crew for filming them. I'd make a guess they were CIA and not Army.

Here is an article on a couple more CIA agents killed in Afghanistan, they were former special forces soldiers.

Obviously the air war was coordinated from CENTCOM but I imagine there was a mix of CIA and special forces telling them where to bomb.

On the other hand, I don't think I'd say that the plan for the Afghanistan war was really any better than the one in Iraq. They mostly just scattered the Taliban and Al Qaida and didn't really kill them, kind of like Fallujah. Its not like the countryside in Afghanistan is any more under control than the Sunni triangle. Its just a smaller country, a smaller war, and there is a much smaller U.S. contingent that tends to huddle in a few well secured areas so it doesn't make the news as much as Iraq.

Doctors Without Borders has pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because they are both considered dangerous and that is a group that rode out the duration of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Speaking of which that was a war in Afghanistan that was run entirely by the CIA which is another indicator they were probably major players in this war. They used indigenous forces in that war to, and interestingly enough, after they were armed, funded and trained by the U.S. they turned in to the nucleus of Al Qaida.

..can it shoot down a suitcase? Because that's where the bombs are gonna be..

A suitcase dirty bomb isn't a huge threat.

A suitcase nuke is a significant threat. On the otherhand, they seem to require some fairly sophisticated nuclear engineering and experience. Only a few countries have made them. If one of those countries is handing them out to terrorists and one goes off in the US, it probably won't be the last nuke to pop.

If anyone cares, Osama Bin Laden has sought and received religous approval to use nuclear weapons against the United States.

The PATRIOT Act is likely to be far more useful in stopping a suitecase nuke than most technological widgets. But, if an Al Qaeda terrorist was stopped while carrying a suitecase nuke because of a PATRIOT Act wire tap, I suspect many Slashdotters would be conflicted.

a Star Trek-style thruster

Had the ion drive fallen just 5 per cent short of maximum thrust, Smart-1 could have collided with the Moon.

They work by using electricity from solar panels to charge atoms of the noble gas xenon, which are then fired into space at 1,000mph to power the probe.

This stream of ions accelerates Smart-1 at just 0.2millimetres per second.

In space, this builds up over time to generate speeds of up to 10miles per second, or 36,000mph.

Why newspapers publish drivel like this, I'll never know. If it was hard to get right you wouldn't have amateurs fisking this stuff on Slashdot!

My guess is their intention is not to have 4 units so each can regain profitability (which would be nice) but to maybe funnel some of the expenses towards one or two units.*

What expenses? I don't know, the half a billion dollar legal defense fund they've set up. Which as an aside, is kind of a fucking stupid idea. It's like walking into a Mercedes dealer with a check for $150,000 and saying "What can I get?" ("Why, sir, this luxury edition E-class has so much more eagle. It saddens me to think of you missing out."). I predict the lawyer's fees will be around $500m. Bravo, smartasses.

Another part of me** thinks that all they're doing is separating these units so they can be separated into companies to not only avoid any anti-trust legislation but also to sell said company after, oh, inflating profits and reaping a tidy sum for AOLTW share-holders. Basically, let someone else worry about it. I will leave the charting of "???" and "Profit!" to somebody else.

* IANSGAAP.****
** The part filled with the creamy nougat filling of reckless greed.
*** See above Times Online link.
**** I Am Not Sure of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Like most people on this earth, we don't like being told how to vote, "you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies". ;)

James Lovelock, a leading British environmentalist, recently wrote a scientific paper extoling the virtues of nuclear power as one of the only curbs to rampant fossil fuel usage.

This was further backed up by Hugh Montefiore quitting (or rather pushed from!) the board of FoE after coming out in favour of nuclear power.

There's the option to leave the contract every three years. That's part of the deal. From Wednesday's London Times (horrid signup for non-UK residents): "The NHS has the right to terminate the deal every three years."

Can't help it. Read this article yesterday and found it hilarious. Had to share :-)

Before posting the inevitable abuse, please bear in mind that the author is American.

TimesOnline Article

/joelethan
-- When I heard I was fired on the car phone, I CAREERED off the road!

However America can do something about it right now if they want to while China probably cannot. Indeed, if the USA do not act now they probably will not be able to in ten years because by then the Chinese renminbi will be the foreign reserve currency of choice & the USA economy will most likely be running on fumes. China's growth was 9% last year & they now have the second largest GDP (by purchasing power parity) on the planet. Exports to the USA are rising at 20% pa. This is probably the Americans last chance.

The other recent news would seem to indicate that.

He added that he was disappointed by Señor Zapatero's threat to withdraw Spain's contingent in Iraq, saying: "We cannot alter our mission to stabilise Iraq to one to destabilise the country.

"Passiveness will lead us nowhere."

Mr Kwasniewski also insisted that Poland was staying the course in Iraq and would not bow to terror. "We are facing the same threat as Spain," he said, but he stressed that "terrorism must be combated, also with force".

This is how the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski (who happens to be an ex-communist) reacted to Kerry's remarks during the presidential debate (link in Polish, my translation):

"It's sad that a Senator with twenty years of experience does not appreciate Polish sacrifice... I don't think it's a question of ignorance. One thing has to be said very clearly: this Coalition is not just the United States, Great Britain and Australia, but there's also contribution of Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Spanish soldiers who died in Iraq. It's immoral to not see this involvement we undertook because we believe that we have to fight terrorism together, that we need to show international solidarity, that Saddam Hussein is a danger to the world.

"From such a perspective, you can say we are disappointed that our stance and the sacrifice of our soldiers is so marginalised. I blame it on electioneering - and a message, indirectly expressed by Senator Kerry - that he thinks more of a coalition that would put the United States together with France and Germany, that is those who in the matter of Iraq said 'no'.

"President Bush is behaving like a true Texan gentleman - he's fighting for the recognition of other countries' contribution in the Coalition."

Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka also took Kerry to task for forgetting about the other 30 or so countries involved in the Coalition. He was, however, philosophical about Kerry's rhetoric: "During election campaigns things are said that one shouldn't necessarily take at face value."

What do you say to Poland? Poland! Why does everybody forget that we were supported by Poland!


The real question is what does Poland say to us. Here's what the President of Poland says about the Bush administration's justification to going into Iraq:

"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."

-President Aleksander Kwasniewski
(March 18, 2004)

Great way to build a coalition.

Full Story

Speaking of being a "better global citizen"..

Jesus Christ... According to the Times of London, now he's The King Of Blogs

Have a look, for instance, at ChildLocate.co.uk

Some more links:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-8593 96,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,690 3,1101683,00.html
http://www.followus.co.uk/

According to a times article, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209- 1224582_2,00.html (stats in the newspaper edition) Yahoo has over 256m email users, google under 1m. It doesn't mention MSN, but the search engine figures speak for themselves: 43% Google, 31% Yahoo, so I imagine the rest is msn, altavista...

I wonder how many users Hotmail has - 100m atleast. Multiply that by 2gb, and that's a huge upgrade.

Nelson Mandela
Mahatma Gandhi
35 of the US Founding Fathers
Cherie Booth QC (who still takes human rights cases against her husband's government, and wins, and incidentally earns 4x more than the PM)
Some of the above, and some more obscure ones, are listed here

However there's still a long way to go when google asks, in response to the search for "great lawyers",
"Did you mean: great leaders?"!

The Sunday Times

July 25, 2004

All children to go on big brother computer
Robert Winnett and David Leppard

A NATIONAL database containing confidential details about every child in
Britain is to be set up by the government. An identifying number will be
assigned to each child so that the authorities can access their records.
Details of the proposals affecting all 13.5m children in Britain under the
age of 18 are contained in cabinet papers leaked to The Sunday Times.

All parents will receive letters from the government informing them of the
plan, which will be added to the Childrens Bill in the autumn.

The central electronic register will hold information on a childs school
achievements, GP and hospital visits, police and social services records
and home address. It will also include information on their families,
such as whether parents are divorced or separated...

The Times

IMHO, The Times still is ;-)

wrong - if you bother to look up the facts you will find that MSFT scores 13th on the total list, and second in IT/Tech companies.

My apologies. The closest I've got to experiencing a MOPP/TAP suit is seeing Lloyd Scott in person walking a marathon in a 120lb diving suit.

Fuller story here

Chemical weapons found.

Who's dense?

This month came news that the car had been delayed again, despite assurances that deliveries would start in April this year. Bugatti now says none will be delivered until late 2005.

FYI. The original email-intercept story was reported in the Sunday Times.

Five different British news papers with reporters all over the world all starying the story with "Dough!".

Other news sources are quite adament it is not an April fool joke

Times

There is a similar piece over at The Times