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Too bad there's historically no such thing as "Palistinians," and has never been a soveriegn nation called "Palistine."

Too bad that the Six Day War didn't go the way you think it should have. Since when does regions conquered in wartime count as "stolen?" It was won, fair and square.

Too bad nobody realizes that there will never be peace in the Middle East until one side wins. Whom ar you rooting for?

Damn, I knew I should have includeed citations. The first two are from John Adams' letters to Jefferson. As a poster pointed out the first Adams quote is fragmented and misleading. The full quote is supportive, if critical, of religion,

Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it." ! ! ! But in this exclamati[on] I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human Nature; I believe there is no Individual totally depraved. The mos abandoned Scoundrel that ever existed, never Yet Wholly extinguished his Conscience, and while Conscience remains there is some Religion. Popes, Jesuits and Sorbonists and Inquisitors have some Conscience and some Religion. So had Marius and Sylla, Caesar Cataline and Anthony, an Augustus had not much more, let Virgil and Horace say what they will.

You can find both of those in The Adams Jefferson Letters, The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, Edited by Lester J. Cappon, University of North Carolina Press (1959, 1987)

Adams, although not a Christian (in the trinitarian sense of believing Jesus is God) was pretty religious. He vacillated between Deism and Unitarianism. He was adamant about seperation of church and state however, and was angry when the Massachusetts constitutional Convention modified his draft to include Christianity. Seven years later he was vidicated when the citizens of the Commonwealth voted (under referendum) to repeal the Christian clause by a 10-1 margin.

He later wrote, " "As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" (The Great Quotations, ed. by George Seldes, (Citadel Press) quoting letter by J.A. to F.A. Van der Kamp Dec. 27, 1816 )

The Jefferson quote on the Gospel of St. John is from a letter to Alexander Smyth. (Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 quoting letter by T.J. to Alexander Smyth Jan. 17, 1825)

The Jeferson quote on the corruption of Christian doctrine is from the Adams correspondence. (Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., p. 246, quoting letter by T.J. to John Adams July 5, 1814 )

The first Madison quote is from a letter, (The Madisons by Virginia Moore, p. 43 quoting letter by J.M. to William Bradford April 1, 1774) the other two are from his Memorial and Remonstrance of 1785.

You can find the Allen quotes in his treatise Reason, the Only Oracle of Man of 1784

The Franklin line comes from a 1790 letter to Ezra Stiles in which he frankly identifies himself as a Deist.

The Paine Quote is from his The Age of Reason

Priestly's quip on Franklin is on page 60 of his autobiography.

In 1831 prominent Episcopal minister Bird Wilson complained that "The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected not a one had professed a belief in Christianity.... "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." (sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E. Remsberg, "Six Historic Americans," second sentence quoted in Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15)

This is a commonly held misperception on the part of a lot of people who just don't know any better. There's much more evidence against the "Christian nation" lie, however, than there is to support it:

First, consider there is no mention of God in the Constitution of the United States. The only places where religion is mentioned are to prevent it from being used as a criteria for holding government office; and to prevent government establishment of religion.

Second, consider the Treaty of Tripoli and its implications on what the early government of our nation truly thought about the idea of the United States as a "Christian country."

George Washington -- "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God or the Bible."

Nonetheless Washington was best described as a Deist. He rarely attended church and refused communion when he did. He declined ministerial attention on his death bed. After his death there was an active propaganda campaign, spearheaded by Rev. Mason Locke Weems, to portray his as a Christian. Many apocryphal (get it, apocryphal :-) ) story's and quotations resulted, including the ridiculous cherry tree business. Washington's religious tolerance was legendary. He banned anti-Catholic Pope Day celebrations in the Continental Army and appointed the Universalist John Murray Chaplain.

Andrew Jackson -- "That book, sir, is the rock on what our republic rests."

Umhh...not a founding father. But he was genocidal butcher. Chalk one up for the Christians. Not that Madison and Jefferson were much better, being hypocritical slave owners.

"My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength. That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear." -- Andrew Jackson

"This is a CHRISTIAN NATION." US Supreme Court Feb 1892 Church of Holy Trinity vs US .

Wow, that is totally irrelevant.

"Religion {Christianity} is the basis & foundation of Government."James Madison

Madison didn't actually say that.

"Christianity is the companion of Liberty." Alexis de Tocqueville

Hardly a founding father. He wasn't even born until 1805. By the time he arrived in the US in 1831 the movement to Christianize America was in full swing.

John Adams 1813 says: Founding Fathers achieved independence upon the general principles of Christianity.

It is worth reading this in context. Adams was actually talking about the remarkable diversity of the founding fathers. He specifically includes atheists, anabaptists and agnostics. His reference is to the theoretical original principles of Christianity as distinct from church doctrine.

"Who composed that Army of fine young Fellows that was then before my Eyes? There were among them, Roman Catholicks, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anababtists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants and House Protestants, Deists and Atheists; and "Protestans qui ne croyent rien ["Protestants who believe nothing"]." Very few however of several of these Species. Nevertheless all Educated in the general Principles of Christianity: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty. Could my Answer be understood, by any candid Reader or Hearer, to recommend, to all the others, the general Principles, Institutions or Systems of Education of the Roman Catholicks? Or those of the Quakers? Or those of the Presbyterians? Or those of the Menonists? Or those of the Methodists? or those of the Moravians? Or those of the Universalists? or those of the Philosophers? No. The general Principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young G

You should read more works on spirituality written by Hindus then.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" has always impressed me by its very murkiness.

What's so murky about it? "Establishment of religion" has a very specific meaning. There are many posts in this topic that have taken the trouble to explain it. Here's a web page that explains it too. It's anything but murky.

This country was NOT founded by primarily Christian forefathers. They were primarily Deist.

Incorrect, partially. Here's just one reference:

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qtable.h tm

Most of the founders were Christians, and since all of those believed in God, they were all Deists, but the Christians had a particular belief.

Christians have been spreading the lie that the USA was founded in christianity.

Prove it's a lie. I've given one of many references that it is not. I can provide more, but do readers want to go there?

Considering that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams were architects of the constitution, I find it troubling that anyone can believe that the USA was founded in [C]hristianity.

Both Madison and Adams were Christians. In addition, the three above were not the only architects. The Bill of Rights was perfected after many deliberations by all the States at the time. Though maybe specific portions were written by specific people, all portions were adopted by all the State's representatives and all had a say in the wording.

Many people of many religions have done many bad things in the name of their religion. That does not make a religion bad or evil, it only makes those doing the bad/evil acts bad/evil. It's easy to take a single statement out of context to make any point for any side. What was the entire context of the statements these three made? (I'm not asking for my own edification, but for yours.)

PGA

It's "establishment" in no sense of the word. An "established" religion is one like the CoE in England. Here is a brief discussion of the idea of Establishment, with some comments near the beginning on how the American courts have misinterpreted the phrase in recent times. Yes, whatever interpretation the courts impose is the law. That doesn't make it correct, and the Supreme Court has the opportunity to make a correct interpretation here.

Eyal was not a real right-wing group. It was setup by SHABAK provocator Avishai Raviv to discredit Israeli right.

Do you really belive that Yigal Amir killed Rabin? Do you? Probably you also believe that Osvald killed JFK. Read this

You may also read this about Baruch Goldstein

OS X Panther

Malcolm X

Black Panther Party

1. It must work, and continue to work even if you patch the system
2. It has to work with exsisting document/file formats
3. It of course must be secure, cost-effective, etc
4. It must have centralized authentication/authorization
5. It must have an "Enterprise" level of installation. This is a biggy. Some kind of system where an updatable image can be maintained and trivially installed onto a new machine.
6. I'd like to see some kind of centralized preferences/custom settings that can follow you from machine to machine and survive an upgrade, etc.
7. It must be seamlessly upgradable.
8. It must have basic stuff that has been on other OSes like Drag and Drop that makes sense and works. It must have cut-n-paste that works. It must have a centralized and working printing system, etc. (The stuff that the Xerox star had in the late 70s and early 80s.)

Like this view of the world?

See Here and Here

You'll also hear some people claim that the World Wide Web belongs to the Beast, making reference to WWW == VI VI VI == 6 6 6. But actually, the number of the beast is not the vector [6 6 6] but rather the scalar 600+60+6.

Read More...

This one doesn't use Javascript at all. And it's only 4k.
Obfusticated Email Link Creator

It does mixed dec and hex. Creates links like this. But check the underlying code....

It's a Tripod site, so don't /. it.....

"When I listen to the newspaper, I tend to go as high as 650" words per minute, said Gregory Rosmaita, a Web designer based in Jersey City. Because Mr. Rosmaita is blind, his interface with computers is audio-based...

Maybe you've seen his work like here or here

Careful - you almost invoked Goodwin's Law right at the top of the discussion.

A firm called Traf-O-Data is said to have used it in a microcomputer designed to record highway traffic flow.

That was Bill Gate's first company, before MicroSoft. No kidding, and no joke.

Corroborated on Google, or here's a link industry.htm

Mr Amalfi we are ready for takeoff
Spin-Up!
Lets move this city to India, I hear theres pleny of work going there.
Oh I'm getting dizzy
Confused?

The Sumerian myth stuff probably came straight from Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind which was pretty much where he got the Snow Crash's take on NLP. Jaynes' book has a "out there" thesis with rather weak evidence but it was interesting to read oh so long ago. Jaynes is a psychologist, not a historian, archeologist, or other professional who should know more about Sumerian myths.

or better yet, try this. Other Sounds of Homer.

or better yet, try this. Other Sounds of Homer.

That isn't any sort of encrypted text. It is simply a (pathetic) attempt of evading filters...

You insensitive clod!

You've ruined the poor boy's dream!

Just think of the hours of fun he could have had "cracking" the "code".

Just think of the elaborate code -- and equally elaborate conspiracy behind it -- he might have created in a desperate obsession to make his data fit his theory!

It could have been a new formularization to rival the Illuminati, Ancient Astronauts, secret codes in the Bible, or some other tortuous, contrived theory! Why, he might even have constructed the ultimate conspirarcy theory, a religion!

But no! You had to cruelly disillusion him. And rob us of the fruit(iness) of his labors.

For shame!

Here's a WAVE file for it, among many others. Enjoy!
(Hope it works 'cuz my sound card is kaputt.)

Confusingly there is another Telstar records bases in Hoboken in the US.

Here's another. Most of the big record stores only show the tail section - I wonder if it's the CD aspect ratio or post-9/11 political correctness. We didn't have CD's when the Beastie Boys were big. :)

I worked for George Miley (referenced in "The World's Simplest Fusion Reactor: And How to Make It Work") in grad school and have a fair amount of experience working with these things. Of course I haven't touched one in ten years since I bailed out and went into EE, so take all this with a grain of salt. With that disclaimer, a few points.

First, the dangerous output of these things is not neutrons, but x-rays. An ungodly amount of x-rays get pumped out in these things, so if you have a window you ought to shield it (the vacuum vessel did a good job of stopping most of the x-rays, only those headed toward the window needed to be shielded). We used something like a 1/4" of leaded glass.

Second, the fusion that occurs in these devices, at least the ones we built, are beam-target interactions where the target is the background deuterium gas. What one would like to have is beam-beam interactions where the fast deuterons interact with each other rather than the background gas. This would be good for a few reasons, first the resulting fusion output would depend on the square of the input current, not linearly as is it does with beam target. This means that as you increase input power, you would approach and eventually pass break-even (assuming your grids didn't melt or somesuch). Second with beam-beam interactions, you can evacuate the device more thouroughly which helps avoid some types of loss, particularly charge exchange. Third , beam-beam interactions occur at up to four times the energy of beam-beam interactions, which is particuluar attractive for the exotic fuel combinations (D-He3, p-B11, etc). The problem is that it's easy to arrange for a fair amount of background gas to stay in the chamber, but to get high enough denisities for signifigant beam-beam interactions to occur you need some combination of very high input power, very high recirculation rates (see below) and very good focusing at the grid center. To the best of my outdated knowledge, no one has achieved this yet.

Third there are two issues of loss in this type of device. First let's talk about break even. In order to break even, you need to be able to extract as much power out of the device as you put in. Assuming that you can convert about 50% of the energy coming out of the device into power (this may well be optimistic), your output power needs to be twice your input power, since half your power is lost as heat. In other words, you need to produce as much additional power from fusion as you put in as electricity. When we were working on this we were produncing something like .00000000000001 times as much power[1] from fusion as we put in as electricity. Far from break even. Going to D-T instead of D-D would probably up this by a factor of 10 or so, but still far from break even.

The second loss factor involves losses of the recirculating D+ ions. One is grid losses, the star mode referenced in the above article helps a fair amount here. In our experiements, the grid was about 95% transparent, but because the discharge avoids the grid, we ended up with an effective transparancy of 99.5% or so. The background gas presents another big source of loss. A real killer is charge exchange: you invest 30 keV in some ion and then it grabs an electron from a D2 molecule in the background gas. Now your fast particle is not constrained, being neutral, and it goes crashing into the vacuum chamber wall and is lost.

Even if you won't be able tomake one of these into a powerplant in the near future, there are some applications for a relatively simple neutron generator. One that I believe has been commercialized already is neutron activation analysis. In other words bombard some object with neutrons to make it radioactive (activate it), and analyze the type of radiation that comes out to see what the object is made of. Sounds scary, but your only making the object a tiny bit radioactive. Really.

There's some slides from a relatively recent IEC confe

That was Bussard's big breakthrough - he developed a way to use magnetic fields to protect the inner electrode from electron impacts, and thus increase the efficiency. Unfortunately, as far as I know, he never got the money to take it much beyond the concept demonstration stage (not as far as break-even). See "The World's Simplest Fusion Reactor: And How to Make It Work" for more details.

Unfortunately, Wallace's IEC, like every other IEC ever built, doesn't get even close to break-even. Their primary utility is, as the article mentions, as a neutron source (and in fact that's what they're usually used for). There are some folks that are hopeful they can find a way to improve the efficiency of IEC fusion and exceed break-even (Robert Bussard, of Bussard ram-jet fame, for example), but no one's managed to actually demonstrate a working, energy-generating IEC yet.

Been done - remember that PC game from the late 80's, Life and Death?

Betty Bowers reflects Christianity like Osama bin Laden reflects Islam. Get a life. Read what God really said.

Now for the topic, this should never have happened... I heard rumors about Win2K systems controlling the failsafes, that got MSBLASTER, anyone can confirm or deny? ;) If so, hey, I'd like to pummel someone in the dust for this...and it hit a little close to home, remember, Niagara Falls is home to the hydroelectric plant run by the New York Power Authority that supplies a lot of juice to NYC. Not surprising that NYC was affected. Thankfully I was only affected for half an hour! Ghad.

-uso.

The one you are thinking of is )*(

For the balance:
Azz-cons !

_1_ - .31Cd for the newer, more aerodynamic 240sx...

_2_ - .34 or .35 Cd for the 1997 model.

_3_ - .30 Cd for the 1991 240SX SE

_4_ - .29 Cd for 2003 350Z Track Model!

So now, you still claim your old 240sx has .26 Cd?

I think there's some emotional attachment here...

and so would my mate in Japan. He's finally got hold of a cache of the stuff and is a very happy man!

Read his web diary for the story:
http://gaijinlife.tripod.com/

---

However, this lawsuit [against McDonald's, over a hot coffee spill] was, IMHO, stupid, because of the sum that was paid out (can't remember the exact figure, but it was huge).

All folks ever remember is the initial judgement ($2.7M here), and they almost never hear the facts of the case. (McDonald's knew for a long time their coffee was incredibly dangerously hot and refused to do anything about it. They also refused to compensate Plaintiff for her medical costs, which is why she chose to sue.) Lectlaw describes the facts of the McDonald's coffee case.

Note that the judgement was reduced by 5x on appeal: this is the norm. But especially note that to avoid another round of appeals and pay her medical bills (reference here), the plaintiff accepted a sealed out-of-court settlement. We will never know the amount, but I would guess offhand that it mostly covered her substantial medical and legal costs.

The American justice system does occasionally run amok. But if the story is that some ordinary individual or small business has beaten up a multinational corporation in court, you can usually bet that justice was seriously on the side of the little guy.

No, that's not why the NIV sucks, it sucks because they don't follow the translator's principles, and inject their own meaning into the text.

That said, I prefer the Tomson version, which does indeed have "thees and thous".

-uso.

Software tends to get developed for new models as they are released. See Linux-based software for the 9000 series here. Most of the stuff is for Windows (see here, for example) and written in Europe. Also here. "MMedit" is a good word to Google on.

Is he writing things like Romanes Eunt Domus?

Zoroaster and Zarathustra are alternative spellings of the name of the same person -- a Persian philosopher who founded the religion known as Zoroastrianism. Quote from that link:

"The Persian religion was founded by a legendary sage named Zarathustra, who had taught that there was a supreme god, the wise lord Ahuramazda, who was opposed by the forces of evil, which were under command of Angra Mainyu. (Since only Ahuramazda was to be venerated, the exiled Jews in Babylonia considered Cyrus a monotheist like themselves.) All other gods were regarded as mere good spirits or demons. The most remarkable aspects of this religion were the radical dualism and the presence of an ethical message: no other pagan religion had postulated a dichotomy between good and evil, light and dark, truth and lies."

If I'm not mistaken car maker Mazda is named after that religions's god.

More at http://members.tripod.com/historel/orient/08perse. htm.

• Greg Egan
• Iain (M.) Banks
• Alistair Reynolds
• Ken MacLeod
• Richard Morgan
• Peter F. Hamilton
• Plus one of the old masters back at work: M. John Harrison

For an interesting look at Jack Thompson, check out conwebwatch.

I love this quote (from a linked article):

Back in 1988 Thompson was the GOP challenger to Reno for the district attorney's job in Dade County. Thompson's unique campaign message was that Reno was unfit for the job because, as a closeted lesbian with a drinking problem, she was great candidate for blackmail by the criminal element. Jack never explained why this remained a threat even after he exposed her "secret." Reno cruised at the polls.

For an interesting look at Jack Thompson, check out conwebwatch.

I love this quote (from a linked article):

Back in 1988 Thompson was the GOP challenger to Reno for the district attorney's job in Dade County. Thompson's unique campaign message was that Reno was unfit for the job because, as a closeted lesbian with a drinking problem, she was great candidate for blackmail by the criminal element. Jack never explained why this remained a threat even after he exposed her "secret." Reno cruised at the polls.

1. " Perceptrons: An Associative Learning Network".
2. "Single and Multi-Layer Perceptrons"
3. Perceptron.

To briefly summarize the tale of woe, Frank Rosenblatt invented the perceptron in 1957. It had one layer of artificial neurons and sparked an entire field of research in artificial learning. In 1969, Marvin Minsky at MIT wrote a book called "Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry"; in it, he mathematically proved that the perceptron could not solve certain classes of problems. This book essentially decimated funding for neural-network research for about 15 years.

In 1982, John Hopfield at Caltech revived the field with the invention of the Hopfield Networks. Further, several researchers invented backpropagation as a way to train neural networks with 2 or more layers or artificial neurons and overcame the limitations that Minsky indicated. Now, the field of neural networks has plenty of money to do research.

So, there is a possibility that research into cold fusion will grow hot again.

... from the desk of the reporter

what is it that you define as a modern society, and why is it that you think india doesnt have one?

Well, one large clue is the caste system.

Sure. Here.

• The National Pot Party
  
• Pan-sexual Peace Party
  
• The Internet Party
  
• The Expansionist Party (feeling that Geo. W. Bush is a pansy and not being agressive enough in the expansion of the USA throughout the world)
  

this, but that does also fit the bill.

Google for "spam economics". Here are some of the links you'll find.

Even if I'm out by a factor of 40, my figures were based on a tiny 60,000 mails, and the only reason for this was the assumption that the ISP would be proactively monitoring traffic through its MTA or network in order to prevent policy violations, and would pick up attempts to send a number of messages unreasonably large for an opt-in list.

According to this site it's from News Radio.

Yeah, I found it by using Google.

The GUI itself could have been patented if software patents had been around at that time. In 1981, just one of the innovative ideas coming out of the PARC project, the Xerox Star 8010 was unveiled at a Chicago trade show as the first computer with a GUI. The Apple Lisa came soon after, having much better commercial success. If these guys can't patent such things, why should anyone else be allowed to?