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As the other person mentioned, Castle Rock v. Gonzales is the most recent manefestation of this ruling. An earlier one is South v. Maryland

The Gonzales case is pretty far reaching in that the police don't have to provide protection even if:
A: Specific threats had been uttered, including death
B: A restraining order had been issued*
C: The person making the threat has attacked/fulfilled those threats before
D: The threat was towards children

I suppose it depends on the definition of protection... I mean, the police aren't legally obligated to basically be a bodyguarding service.

I agree, but feel that if they aren't, that we shouldn't prevent people from defending themselves as best as they can. Not everybody can afford to hire a bodyguard. Most can, however, stretch for a cheap shotgun. Hell, if they know the right people they can get a gun & training for a song if there is a real threat against them. Still, most victims have been abused to the point that their fear of their attacker is such that they can't imagine resisting themselves.

Similarly, an attempt at serious harm (even if it fails) is a criminal offense as well. I would think that a police officer standing by while this kind of thing happens would be a dereliction of duty (which I realize is a military term, but there's also civilian dereliction).

It wouldn't be much of a stretch to make the case cover this one as well. Matter of fact, South vs. Maryland is a closer match where a deputy left hostages and the police essentially did nothing for four days.

*Why I've always felt that restraining orders are worth less than the paper they're printed on.

According to this data, those figures put Vista somewhere above Piccolo after merging with Kami, with Red Hat at the level of Super Saiyan Vegeta (after time chamber). In the words of the late great Leonard Nimoy, fascinating.

Also, what bracketing convention does each of those use? Are Red Hat artificially inflating their count with 15,000,000 lines consisting of

{

// loop starts here

__
"First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." --Mohandas K. Gandhi
"SURPRISE!" --Nathuram Godse http://ngodse.tripod.com/

Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.

So tell him he got it wrong - his web page with email address is at:

http://jeffersongraham0.tripod.com/jeffville/index .html

Or if mad Jack is right, no-one would have been shot in the face, by anyone other than a hired assassin. http://www.members.tripod.com/candst/boston3.htm This page taken at random from googling "shot in the face" "nineteenth century" describes how a chap was shot in the face during sectarian rioting in Boston in 1844 - rather hard to argue he was motivated by Grand Theft Auto...

I thought the molasses was heated. I don't see any references to it in the Wikipedia article but I remember references from other sites. Here's an article I found that says some people were cooked by the molasses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur/

Basically, an oil rig, drilling in the middle of the lake, punctured a mineshaft below the lake (mining for salt). The end result was the entire lake draining into the mine below it. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

From: http://members.tripod.com/~earthdude1/texaco/texac o.html/

The water of Lake Peigneur slowly started to turn, eventually forming a giant whirlpool. A large crater developed in the bottom of the lake. It was like someone pulled the stopper out of the bottom of a giant bathtub.

The crater grew larger and larger (it would eventually reach sixty yards in diameter). The water went down the hole faster and faster. The lake had been connected by the Delcambre Canal to the Gulf of Mexico, some twelve miles away. The ever-emptying lake caused the canal to lower by 3.5 feet and to start flowing in reverse. A fifty foot waterfall (the highest ever to exist in the state) formed where the canal water emptied into the crater.

The whirlpool easily sucked up the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, a second drilling rig that was nearby, a tugboat, eleven barges from the canal, a barge loading dock, seventy acres of Jefferson Island and its botanical gardens, parts of greenhouses, a house trailer, trucks, tractors, a parking lot, tons of mud, trees, and who knows what else. A natural gas fire broke out where the Texaco well was being drilled. Let's not forget the estimated 1.5 billion gallons of water that seemed to magically drain down the hole (does the Coriolis effect come into play here?). Of course, there was the great threat of environmental and economical catastrophe.

I saw this on Thursday at fanfiction.net. Here's what it looked like: http://nandhp.tripod.com/googlevideoad.html [JPEG compressed to 8kb]

Nazi German[y], old USSR, and current China had/have numerous programs in place that we are now putting into place.

I don't suppose you have specific examples you'd care to name beyond just yelling: "Bush is a totalitarian" and running away?

The first similarity between the contemporary US and Nazi Germany that comes to mind is the ban on public smoking and restriction on tobacco advertising. Of course, those were enacted mostly by state and local governments, starting more than a decade ago.

The second similarity is that Hitler succesfully turned around an economic recession, although Bush certainly isn't the only US president to have done that (recently, both Reagan and Clinton come to mind).

The third is probably the Interstate Highway System, which Eisenhower freely admitted was inspired by the Autobahn, another of Hitler's programs.

The only "bad" similarity that comes to mind is Japanese internment camps, which were a loooong way from being similar to anything of Hitler's, and supported by all three branches of government.

Unless, of course, you're referring to that time when Bush though his Jewish doctors were trying to kill him, had his political opponents executed, or caused widespread famine by rounding up the peasants and having them shot. If you'll excuse me now, it's time to go check on my backyard steel furnace.

Besides, isn't it a bit presumptuous for a politician elected to four-year terms to start issuing Five Year Plans?

Where are these guys when you need them?

I presume lenses have gotten slightly better over time too? For instance, Metropolis from 1927 seems somewhat blurry (or maybe it has some purple fringing or something?), and probably wouldn't have much extra useful resolution if scanned in to HD.

I hereby call Goodwin's law:
http://members.tripod.com/~goodwin_2/law.html

Seriously. It's Noo-Noo without the casing.

Scientists, eh? They'll be getting ideas from Postman Pat.

http://www.prometheus6.org/images/pwinfield.jpg
http://cage.p.tripod.com/images/t_dathon.jpg

Personally, I'd rather have one of these.

Aha! sorry to disapoint you bosnians,
but greeks has done it before.

My greek fat answear to your 3-Hill-Pyramids
is the huge Mounten-Pyramid hoax.

Enjoy:
http://www.mani.org.gr/taigetos/pir/taig15.JPG
http://www.mani.org.gr/taigetos/odoip_photo1/t11_p ir.jpg
http://www.ancientgr.com/Unknown_Hellenic_History/ Eng/Taygetou.html
http://kefhelm.tripod.com/online/news/news-aliensv isitGreece.htm

What part of your brain do you leave on? Nothing much makes sense on that show. Politics (every presidential subplot)... geography (try working out how fast they'd have to travel in the stated times)... physics (bombs) ... biology (instantaneous healing of wounds; viruses with magical properties)... statistics (innumnerable unlikely coincidences). Not to forget mountain lions But it's got pace. And torture. Actually I enjoyed Nikita from the same producers more, though it strained credulity at every point. Section One did however have the coolest computer interfaces I've ever seen. (If you were a Nikita fan you'll notice the set of CTU, as well as not a few actors, seeming very familiar.)

Apple will recycle ANY computer you decide to unload on them when you purchase a new computer. Even your old 486 Win 3.1 box. That way, switchers get in on the recycling action too.

Here's a snippet from the Shareholder meeting stating so.

You might look into Cygwin and rxvt.

...this:

      GoDaddy Swipes A Domain Name
      http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/monkeybites/index.blo g?entry_id=1460947

Though I'd be loathe to grant enough power to any regulatory body to fix the bigger issue -- parking is, sadly, lucrative -- domain registrars are intrinsically centralized. Some US states have laws that an establishment may be licensed for nude entertainment, or they may be licensed to sell liquor for on-premises consumption, but not both. Some sort of community-induced eradication of domain squatters would be sweet, but until that happens, I'll settle for the Powers-That-Be making a mutually exclusive thing out of registrars & parking-for-revenue providers.

http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/cultofmac/index.blog? entry_id=1457845

Apple has cool products, but I don't know why anyone would trust them any more than other corporate giants, with their teams of aggressive lawyers frothing at the mouth for any chance to litigate.

I would like to improve the automation of my home. I have some vague images of the "Home of the Future" from early cartoons and discussions with friends. Some people worry about gender role changes and social impacts: http://askpang.typepad.com/relevant_history/2003/0 7/home_of_the_fut.html http://samvak.tripod.com/home.html Others just want better technology. For me it is really about common communication standards, even [gasp] network aware appliances. Leaning on communication over the power lines to achieve low-quality control with limited feedback is not good enough for me to adopt. My brother-in-law loves X10 though and suggests that wider usage will result in improvements that will bridge the gap. I am not convinced however. Ultimately for me its about what I can control and see from my office, but I am just a hopeless geek...

Certainly Hubble's butt doesn't look nearly as exciting as Xena's.

This random review agrees

We have a gawdawful NPR affiliate here: WABE. They play ATC, Morning Edition, Marketplace, Fresh Air, This American Life, Car Talk, Wait, Wait... and a little tiny bit of other public affairs content - a fair amount of which is crap.

But when Morning Edition goes off at 9AM, you have a "Workday Full of" mainstream top-40 classical music. Not anything adventurous, just the same old crap.

The worst part is that the license fee WABE pays to NPR entitles us listeners to almost all of the content that NPR offers. WABE is STANDING IN THE WAY of listeners that want NPR content.

So what's wrong with listening to WAMU and KCRW on the web? What's wrong with getting podcasts of stuff that WABE blocks?

Oh yeah, and the other dirty-little-secret: in cities where public radio and public television are run by the same organization, the money from both Radio and TV fund drives can land in the same pot. In Atlanta, the NPR fund drive props up WPBA, channel 30.

So they're getting MORE funding than they need to deliver a full day of NPR content, but siphoning it off to run the TV station. Gotta love it. Where's my iPod?

Atlantans should check out the Atlanta Public Radio Initiative

I used to be an MD fan. I still have my MZR-50 - a truly classic MD recorder.

However, they have some failings. They didn't improve; SONY locked them down, and they were expensive. I can now buy an MP3 player for twenty quid. That's incredible. Why would I want to buy an MD player which is over 5 times the price?

These days I actually use my Nokia for music on the move- but I relish going home and listening to CDs on a serious hi-fi.

No, 911 was not one-off'd. The technique used and the large number of lives lost, are the only things one-off'd about 911. There is a long history of Islamic aggression, imperialism and terrorism. Here's a dose from just the 20th century.

1. Muslim Turkey has expelled approximately 1,500,000 Greeks from its empire in the east and replaced them with Turks. They have massacred approximately 2 million Armenians and replaced them with Turks in the west.

2. Muslim Turkey has invaded and occupied northern Cyprus, displacing the Greeks living there.

3. Muslim northern Sudan has conquered much of southern Sudan, literally enslaving its Christian and pagan population.

4. Indonesian imperialism has occupied all of non-Islamic western New Guinea and incorporated into Indonesia.

5. Muslim Indonesia has invaded and conquered Christian East Timor with horrible loss of life.

6. This very day, Muslim Indonesia is attempting to destroy Christianity in what used to be called the Celebes.

7. A half-dozen Arab countries have fought two to four wars (depending how you count) in an attempt to destroy Israel and occupy its territory, and is currently continuing the attempt this very day with the publicly voted consent of 55 of the world's 57 Islamic nations.

8. For no good reason, Muslim Libya has blown up western aircraft, killing many civilians.

9. Muslim Iraq, in an imperialist war of aggression, invaded and occupied Muslim Kuwait.

10. Muslim Iraq, in an imperialist act of aggression, invaded Muslim Iran with a resulting (some estimates say) death of 2 million people.

11. Muslim Albania, this very minute, is attempting to enlarge its borders at Christian Macedonia's expense.

12. Muslim Northern Nigeria has been (and is currently) an aggressor against the Christian south.

13. Muslims expelled approximately 800,000 Jews from their homelands between 1947 and 1955.

14. During Jordan's occupation of the West Bank, the kingdom undertook an unsuccessful attempt to make Jerusalem a Muslim city by forcing out approximately 10,000 Christian inhabitants.

Yes, I know that the reverse has been true. For example, Christian Serbia entered and massacred Bosnian Muslims. The western response was instructive. The west sent troops to protect the Muslims. Serbia gave up its leader to be tried for the crime by an international panel. Will Indonesia do the same with respect to Timor? Or Sudan with respect to southern Sudan?

Question: What is the title of the shortest book in the world? Answer: "The list of Muslim nations who have risked the lives of their soldiers to protect (as with the U.S. protection of Muslims in Kuwait) Christian or Jewish citizens from Muslim imperialism."

If we just stopped consuming more than our fair share of oil and stopped catering to Israel's every whim, poof, no more pissed off Muslims problem solved

So what about all the other countries, besides the US, that have been targeted and attacked? Is Spain also consuming too much and catering to Israel? What flawed and erroneous thinking! Must be nice living in a fairy tale where everyone knows the monster (USA/Israel) is attacking the village (everyone else) and speading evil (consumerism).

I'd guess that scripting your team is a lot more strategic than simply responding to stimulous during a battle, and probably a lot more interesting. Sure it may break down to a question of who casts cure on the guy who is at 30% health, but that kind of planning is the strategic element of RPGs. Now it has been distilled in a unique package.

I'm utterly excited about this. I haven't bought the last 4 Final Fantasies, but I'll buy this one. I can only hope it lives up to the promise of being the Final Fantasy for mind rover players. Even if it is as simple as Y's walk-through-em-to-instantly-fight model, at least that cuts out the weakest part of an RPG.

BTW, if you want more action oriented FF, try Secret of Mana for the SNES. This was a sequal to a Game Boy zelda clone, which happens to be the only 3 player action RPG out there (you get the second and third characters several hours into the game). Likewise, Crystalis was one of the last SNK titles for the NES, and it too is absolutely amazing.

I'd guess that scripting your team is a lot more strategic than simply responding to stimulous during a battle, and probably a lot more interesting. Sure it may break down to a question of who casts cure on the guy who is at 30% health, but that kind of planning is the strategic element of RPGs. Now it has been distilled in a unique package.

I'm utterly excited about this. I haven't bought the last 4 Final Fantasies, but I'll buy this one. I can only hope it lives up to the promise of being the Final Fantasy for mind rover players. Even if it is as simple as Y's walk-through-em-to-instantly-fight model, at least that cuts out the weakest part of an RPG.

BTW, if you want more action oriented FF, try Secret of Mana for the SNES. This was a sequal to a Game Boy zelda clone, which happens to be the only 3 player action RPG out there (you get the second and third characters several hours into the game). Likewise, Crystalis was one of the last SNK titles for the NES, and it too is absolutely amazing.

Plenty of folks have an extra leg.

In any event, for every human with more than two legs, there's probably a thousand or so (of course, I could easily be off by an order of magnitude or two here) humans with one or zero legs, so it doesn't affect the ultimate conclusion, that `Most people have more than the average number of legs.'

... who were two individuals above the sixth rib but who shared a single body below.

Folks like this are still born today. They just don't get to become rich.

Ok, looks like at least Bettie Lou Williams made some good money. Though I have to wonder how much of the money she made Best kept ...

How about lowering the price on the frickin' PSP?

They annonced a price cut, a couple days ago.

The Breakdown In Communications quest in EQ Gates Of Discord was and remains the best quest ever.

It is certainly the most convoluted, complicated, frustrating and nearly impossible quest ever to be introduced within a game. It consists of 14 subquests in all of the zones of an EQ expansion with complicated and difficult requirements just to even enter each zone - some zones can be entered with group work, some require extreme raiding (54 person raids). Once you get into each of these zones, you generally need to obtain multiple items and flags through excessive grouping and raiding efforts (raids needing anywhere from 18 to 54 people).

This quest is so complicated it's difficult to pin an actual amount of time required to complete it, but I would say it would require a typical (if you can call those who complete it typical) player a year or two of *daily* grouping and raiding to complete.

If you want to read up on it, read about it here:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?ques t=2781

For an alternative writeup see:
http://robbiem01.tripod.com/everquest/Breakdown.ht ml

Like Morrowind before it, the Oblivion previews are uniformly gushing. (Though one previewer was silly enough to stick his head up over the edge of the trench, only to get it blown off.) Like Morrowind before it, Oblivion is going to be a poorly realized, buggy, performance-hoging, bore of a game.

If Square is Ben & Jerry's, and if Black Isle is Häagen-Dazs, then Bethesda is whoever produces those gallon tubs of shit ice cream for fat people who don't care what they're shoving in their face so long as there's lots of it.

I used to work for the (now defunct, obviously) Phase 3 Studios. We needed
a name change, and yes, it was in homage to the above joke...

http://sstwordsmith2.tripod.com/Phase3/

Not EPROM, DRAM. You're thinking of the September and October 1983 issues of Byte. Steve Ciarcia wrote about using a DRAM as cheap CCD substitute. I had a subscription at the time and I remember the article talking about popping the lid off of a DRAM. But a Google search (see below) says he was talking about a special DRAM from Micron with a clear window. I dunno, maybe popping the lid off the DRAM was from a different article. That was long ago. I couldn't find the actual article but the following gives a lot of the details:

http://members.tripod.com/RoBoJRR/techcorner.htm

Just because the Segway wasn't commercially successful, that doesn't mean it wasn't a good invention. Dean's problem was trying to replace cars with Segways. The Segway is designed to replace walking, though, not driving, according to its speed and the fact that it offers no protection from harsh weather or poor road conditions. The idea of marketing the Segway to the Postal Service was a good one, though it had that one design flaw (the Segway toppling over when the battery runs out) which could be fixed pretty easily, if Dean wants to re-release the product. Anyway, the Segway appears to be successful in Japan, where they replaced everything above the platform and it's remote controlled: http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/gadgets/index.blog?en try_id=1298966

you need to worry about salt mines though... http://members.tripod.com/~earthdude1/texaco/texac o.html

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/IBDGunConFailur e.html

Pretty much tells us that, yes, gun control can increase OVERALL crime statistics. If you focus on gun-crime alone you are only seeing a partial picture.

John Lott's work (More Guns, Less Crime; The Bias Against Guns) is certainly controversial. He is however a serious academic researcher and should not be dismissed outright.

AC

There's a basic explanation of the known forces (Strong, Electronmagnetic, Weak and Gravity

There are quite a few ideas kicking about:

scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG)

Modified Newtonian Dynamics
General Relativity,
Quantum Gravity,
The http://www.halexandria.org/dward155.htm">Zero-poin t Field,
Superstring Theory,
M-theory,
Inflation/Cosmology,
Yilmaz gravitation, and
Membrane Gravity

Law of Universal Gravitation,

And there's also Intelligent Gravity

Unfortunately, there is no one simple experiment to prove any of these either true or false.

I think you need to reevaluate that.

For a traveller on the ship it would only seem like months. For the people left behind it would be years.

Look here. http://members.tripod.com/wmhxbigguy/Theory/time.h tml

See here to get the joke.

Emo's a brand?

I'm not certain why you segued into a rant on the separation of church and state, but I will let website advance several well-written arguments in favor. You should also look up the phrase "tyranny of the majority", and James Madison's and Thomas Jefferson's views on the constitution - I daresay that they knew rather more about the constitution that they helped frame than you or I. Here's a rather profound quote:

Directly, The (unamended) Constitution, Article VI, Section III

" but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its own stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility."

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Vol III, (1833) p 705.

The phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather derives from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, Jefferson referred to a "wall of separation between church and state." James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote in the early 1800s, "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate."

I was always partial to the old Mad TV sketch, Sex Toy Story with Buzz Lighttouch (a vibrator) and Woody (a BDSM doll). Unfortunately, the only image I could find has neither of the aforementioned characters. But there is an inflatable woman in the picture.

Who could ask for more out of Disney?

Google is directly helping to advance the Chinese propaganda.
Google clearly has no reason to present one side of an issue. Will they censor pro-US stuff and present only the Chinese side? Maybe they don't need nationalistic loyalty, but they can only remain neutral by blocking both viewpoints, rather than advancing the chinese agenda.

This is a repost for those who may have missed it.

Example: A search for falun gong on google brings up pro-government propaganda. Dissenting views are blocked.

Google should at least block all sites for a given keyword, not present propaganda only. Have some ethics, tell them "give us a list of keywords to block" .. not "give us a list of sites you want censored". Users who serach for a keyword should get no results and a notice saying "sorry your govt. blocked it etc."

source:

http://googlecensorship.tripod.com/google_censors_ falun_gong_in_china/index.album?i=0&s=1

In the interests of not making a book-length post:

http://www.bushlies.net/pages/10/
Top ten lies.

http://bushwatch.org/bushlies.htm
With more lies from administration officials as well as Bush

http://www.bushlies.net/pages/1/
War on terror lies.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lie s.html
Iraq lies.

http://pearly-abraham.tripod.com/htmls/bushlies1.h tml
More lies.

Google " "bush lies" OR "Bush administration lies" " for another million or so pages.

Example: A search for falun gong on google brings up pro-government propaganda. Dissenting views are blocked.

Google should at least block all sites for a given keyword, not present propaganda only. Have some ethics, tell them "give us a list of keywords to block" .. not "give us a list of sites you want censored". Users who serach for a keyword should get no results and a notice saying "sorry your govt. blocked it etc."

source:
http://googlecensorship.tripod.com/google_censors_ falun_gong_in_china/index.album?i=0&s=1

Ok, but http://runningonalcohol.tripod.com/id26.html say that "it will actually get better mileage and/or more power" than gas (which can't be bad). And you can convert a gas powered car to ethanol, not to biodiesel. So, maybe ethanol has more chance than that.

It's hard to see from the CNN photo, but you can see the major design fault regarding the placement of the gas bottle here. It makes me cross my legs just thinking about the things that could go wrong!

Anyway, there's nothing to see here, they were racing rocket bikes in the 1920's! Move along, move along...

Haydn.

Yeah, I notice that you're quick to correct my admittedly limited knowledge of the Ukrainian language, while leaving unanswered all the questions I asked, simultaneously drawing further conclusions that I'm a "Russian-sympathizer" and support "Stalinist de-Ukrainianization", bases on what - on a *possible* spelling error. Huh?

It's worth mentioning that Wikipedia uses the spelling "Golodomor" here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

A Ukrainian dictionary also returns "golod" as a translation for the
English "hunger": http://www.ukrainiandictionary.com/listing.asp

Another Ukrainian dictionary also gives the pronunciation "golod" for
"hunger": http://lingresua.tripod.com/cgi-bin/onlinedic.pl

So, to summarize:
1. You did't answer any question I posted.
2. You spread misinformation about the spelling and pronunciation of the
      word "golod".
3. You drew conclusions about my symphaties and political stance from my
      spelling/pronunciation. Several times.
4. You failed to note that I didn't claim that "Holodomor:" was not a
      genocide, but merely pointed out the fact that there's a great
      controversy and a general lack of evidence.

All this means that you're fucking little twit, blinded for some reason by
irrational hatred agains Russians (despite that neither Stalin nor Kaganovich
were Russians), to the extent that you perceive as "enemy" anyone not
convinced in the one true anti-Russian dogma and all in all not worth another
second of my time.