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In support of parent, all you have to do is look at the graph linked to here. Not only do people with lower incomes fare much better under Democratic presidents, but every income category fare better under Democratic presidents (except possibly the top 1% which are not listed).

Yes, the 4GW number is the nameplate number--the power that would be produced if the wind was blowing all the time. This article at The Energy Blog has more information: Pickens Mesa Power Orders 1,000 MW of Wind Turbines

WTF does everyone in the world and their brother want to install a toolbar in my web browser? If I said yes to all of them, I'd have about 2 pixels of viewpane left to look at.
 
  http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/images/toolbar400gif.gif

Here's another story on the technology. . .

TMS induces an electromagnetic current in the underlying cortical neurons, which may explain its therapeutic effects. Repetitive TMS, using varying frequencies and intensities, can increase or decrease excitability in the cortical area directly targeted by the stimulation. Recent studies combining TMS and neuroimaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging, demonstrate that the effects of TMS are not limited to the cortex but spread to functionally related subcortical structures. This finding provides a basis for using TMS to treat the pathologic neural activity that may underlie neuropsychiatric illness.

But you must come to your own conclusions. Keep in mind, however, that choosing ignorance these days leads to a buzzy kind of bliss.

-FL

From CO2. That's why they're using algae as smokestack scrubbers.

It pulls greenhouse gasses out of the air for photosynthesis, same way larger plants do.

US v. Frazier, an 8th Circuit case, held that this is permissible. I don't think the 8th is alone, but I don't have time to look into it further right now. I do think that this is absolutely the wrong result (essentially, it's a rule that Miranda protects from exercising your rights, rather than from unknowingly waiving them), but constitutionally wrong and jurisprudentially wrong are different issues.

Of course, if the police deliberately delayed giving you your Miranda warnings for the purpose of generating silence from which to infer guilt, that would likely be another matter. This is mostly about when the police don't get around to giving your warnings right away. They can't interrogate you, but they can always remember later that you didn't protest enough to be innocent.

I wonder if Wil Wheaton can still get a hold of the infamous Clown Sweater. If so, be sure to invite him.

I used to read his blog http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/ . I stop reading when the feed to his blog is restricted to be the first few paragraphs only. Even when he now unrestrict it again, I'm still not his regular reader anymore.

Plaintiffs Tishman and Wilkinson filed a lawsuit against defendant Pine, but had difficulty serving Pine with the summons. The plaintiffs tried the conventional methods of service under New York law, such as personal delivery. They even tried the "nailing and mailing" method by affixing a copy of the summons to the door of Pine's residence, then sending a copy in the mail.

Tishman and Wilkinson had information, however, that led them to believe Pine was out of the country. . . They petitioned the court for permission to serve Pine by e-mail, pursuant to N.Y. C.P.L.R. Â308(5), which allows service by such manner as the court directs, when the more conventional methods are "impracticable."

The court allowed service of the summons to an e-mail address Pine had used in a classified ad listing his house for sale. The court held that given the uncertainty about the success of the attempted "nailing and mailing" effort, and the fact that the Pine's attorneys wouldn't give a clear answer as to where Pine was living, alternative service by e-mail was appropriate.

On a related note, amazon adds permanent storage functionality to EC2:

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/04/block-to-the-fu.html

Here's a photo of the winning car (the one on the right, #22), where are these 200 sq ft of solar panels you're talking about? There's also a better angle on the team's homepage here, no solar panels to be seen. Heck, that car doesn't even have 200 sq feet of surface area even if you counted the belly.

Did you know that while solar cars did compete, they were not allowed to win the grand prize?

Yeah, you're full of it. But at least you tricked a mod or two.

If anything, Wikipedia teaches kids not to have blind trust in self-proclaimed experts, both on the Internet and off. The "trusted expert" gimmick has been used to lie in advertising and politics since the beginning of mass media. It's so damn obvious, you have to seriously question the intelligence and/or agenda of anyone parroting the "Wikipedia is full of lies!" meme. (Yes, I'm laughing at you, Andrew Keen.)

My name is not Kathleen, but check out the I am Kathleen campaign that has resulted from all this.

CPU and GPU integration is quite logical progression of technology. There are things the GPU is not optimal and same goes to the CPU. It seems that when combined, they prove successful.

A side note maybe we'll see a Nvidia GPU based Folding@home release some day, but at least ATI latest GPUs have a new client to play with:
http://folding.typepad.com/news/2008/04/gpu2-open-beta.html

incessant posturing, loud voices, and stomping around

And, in Hitler's case, carpet chewing.

That's 13.6 kilos for those in metric countries.

No, it'd be more like 2.5 kilos - people in metric countries don't gain as much weight as Americans.

"-millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed"
As pointed out elsewhere in these threads, 1% of America's over 113,000,000 households are already in the foreclosure process. Mean household size is about 3 people. This crisis will last many more months, and get worse before it starts getting better. We're already at 3*113M, and those millions will grow.

"-millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes"

I'd say that the millions of Americans spending over half their income on housing would be homeless if they lost over 10% of their incomes.

"-income has shrunk over the past 25 years"

It's surprisingly hard to find year by year stats on "real income". But what I could find in documentation showed that during the 2000s, real income has shrunk. And that includes the incomes of people at the top, which has grown.

"-But that [bs stock price] high was built on a bubble inflated by money lent from the Fed (taxpayers)"

I'm not going to bother working up the stats for that one. The Bear Stearns stock price was based on its expected profits, like any stock. Those profits were derived from the real estate bubble, which was derived from the artifically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, both in the inflation of prices from the increased credit and from the more complex "instruments" (bets on increases) derived from them. That's why Bear Stearns was in danger of collapsing, when the credit dried up. If you need citations to explain that to you, you're not going to understand them.

"-Bear Stearns (and its shareholders, brokers and execs) raked in so many $BILLIONS over the past 10-20 years running the way that eventually ran out, that it was totally worth the price of doing business when its shares collapsed"

Bear Stearns hit the wall with a 61% profit drop at the end of last year, which cost it a few $billion at the end, its first loss in 83 years. Well, in just 2003Q4 the BS profits were over $288M, or over $1.15B in just one annualized year, fairly early in the bubble. As BS started to decline with the bubble that had sustained it, it's profit could still drop to over $361M, even though dropping by a third, still an annualized profit of about $1.5B - while declining. If you look at 7 years where its profits were well over $1.5B average a year, that's over $10B in profits. Even a possible $3B loss is worth it to make over $7B in net profit on it.

"-(much of which ultimately came from the Fed - taxpayers)"

The banks loan money retail that they get wholesale from the Federal Reserve, which is backed by the Federal government. Which is paid by taxpayers. The Federal Reserve loaned JP Morgan extra money to buy out Bear Stearns and prop it up.

"-since your [GP]lies (FYI, he posted 52wk high and low stock price.)"

I don't know what that challenge is supposed to mean. But Before I do any more work to cite the facts I offered, I want to see you accept them. Because I expect you wont. You want to find fault with my "presentation". What's really a problem for you is that you are all too happy to accept the good news about the economy, but the bad news shocks you too much. You want to dislike the messenger, and reject their message. Which makes you a completely typical American.

Which is why we're in such deep trouble.

There's now a follow-up post (http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/04/data-versus-alg.html) addressing some of the comments in this thread.

It also bombarded Cute Overload with links. They now have a permanent boast on how they survived a Slashdotting, and a link to the original story.

This is not a juvenile prank. This isn't anything close to a juvenile prank, the same way swatting isn't. A juvenile prank would have been subliminal flashing penises, not iterative deployment of effects specifically designed to be highly effective against many types of epilepsy. Thousands of people were affected, it was an ongoing attack that received several refinements to make it more effective, so it wasn't spur-of-the-moment either.

Someone not only came up with the idea of forcing people to have epileptic fits, but was evil enough to follow through with it. This is a serious disease, with serious detrimental effects, and it was perpetrated in a way designed to maximize exposure.

The perps need to be found, and need to be prosecuted. Bury them with one seperate count of (at the least) assault for every person who says they suffered epileptic attacks. If law enforcement can't nail these guys, then they may as well throw in the towel, because it means they lost. The bad guys win.

A few months later when I was trying to see if it would be helpful to bot for a Netherdrake, I lost my account in a Blizzard bot sting. WoWGlider was good up until that point. I would have quit WoW earlier without it, so Blizzard got more money from our household (I had two accounts--one for cousins and nieces coming over to play--that account I still have but it is long inactive.) Now I waste that extra time here on /.

*iza

On the contrary, I challenge you to find a "real" economist who does not describe intellectual property as a form of monopoly, and then challenge you to describe how a "free market" can cope with a form of monopoly while still remaining "free".

I'd also like to see your reference on where Adam Smith supports "intellectual property" rights, since I have not seen anything in his actual writing that suggests this. I've seen a lot of bullshit where corporate libertarians mindlessly SAY that Adam Smith supports IP law, but they never actually provide any quotes to support their argument.

Decent web page against your interpretation of Adam Smith:

http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/intelpropertycomments/olshovedonpaul.htm

Decent web page against Ayn Rand's interpretation of intellectual property:

http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2005/05/some_thoughts_o.html

And when the 'net gets around to writing and filling a distributed database of reasons to support/not support a firm with your money (and acted on) will the 'net obtain control.

Look at what is going on with Anonymous VS Scientiologts.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/03/journal-anonymo.html

Absolutely! The beauty of biometrics-based security measures is that they eliminate need for paper and electronic ids, ssn, and other things that proved to be inefficient. Swiss banks have been relying on biometric identification for a long time now, and they seem to work. of course, there are some challenges associated with implementing these measures on a larger scale, but overall i believe this is feasible and worth to explore further. Americans seem to be overconcerned about their privacy, and movies like "Minority Report" only exaggerate this problem... I was always wondering why is it that you want everything to be about you, you, and you only, but when it comes to actual attempts to help you to personalize your services, tailor media and content to your personal needs, or simply to ensure your safety, you then cry "privacy invasion!" and run. It is XXI century outside, but you are still stuck in 1776, scared of the dark forest beasts like "privacy invasion", "gun control", etc. ("Village", anyone?). It is time to wake up and embrace the new world! Biometric measures will allow you to pay your bills by touch of a fingertip or blink of the eye; psychographically-and behaviorally-tuned media will deliver content that you want and advertising that you really need. Already now you read news and blogs selectively, preferring those that better fit your needs or political ideological views. You tune your RSS feeds, bookmark your favorite sites, and take advantage of personalized sales offers mailed to you by stores. Why not to go further and make things even easier?!!! Is not that nice when vending machine greets you by your name and dispenses drink based on your mood or blood pressure? Is not that nice when to board the plane or open the bank account all you need is just to press your palm to the screenm, and you get your seat on the plane based on your socio-psychological preferences? Your selfish and egomaniac tendencies lead you to believe that everyone will be snooping on you and invading your life. People, wake up! You will be no more than a record in the database, lost among the millions and millions of other records. welcome to the real world: Modern Metrix Blog at http://www.mmx.typepad.com/

Remember that, the next time they make you take off your shoes at the airport. Its nothing cabin door locks and a few air marshalls couldnt fix.

The "fix" here is not safety. The fix here is actually to make the public feel like Daddy is protecting all his little children.

People want an authority figure to do all the hard thinking for them and to tell them that they're safe now. Their simple minds see the long lines, the green-vinyl gloved hands gently (yet firmly) caressing their persons, the cool touch of the xray disrobing them, and the delays as simply more evidence that they're being taken care of, much as one would take care of a pet rabbit.

You are just misinformed. USA foreign aid as a percentage of the GDI is the lowest of just about any developed country:

http://markc1.typepad.com/relentlesslyoptimistic/images/foreign_aid_chart1.GIF

Most of that aid goes to (semi)developed countries like Colombia, Israel and Egypt for political reasons, or to Iraq and Afganistan (which we fucked up in the first place), instead of to the poorest countries in the world:

http://static.flickr.com/51/189662626_257b15004f_o.jpg

Okay, I'll bite. You've provided one example. Let's say the story is entirely as you tell it. Can you now refer me to the video of Israelis dancing in the streets, handing out sweets? Or perhaps the Israeli streets named after the shooter?

No, I didn't think so.

If Palestinian children are being hit by gunfire, perhaps Palestinian gunmen shouldn't be firing from near children.

It happens all the time in Israel and abroad. Islamists know dead children and crying mothers are good shields when alive and good propaganda when dead.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/22/lebanon-battles-070522.html
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/06/index.html
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2007/03/iraqi_jihadists.php

Here is a mirror from his blog. I think:

http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/10/takin-vegas.html

look at the filing at http://secondlife.typepad.com/ related to the Schwarziniger filing in California; the CHP determined that leaving the url open to the public is not actionable....

Rule #7: A thing with a smaller version of itself is cute.

...when a Second Life user bought land before it went to auction using a non-linked but publicly accessible URL and he was banned and his assets seized.

http://secondlife.typepad.com/

Some interesting background reading. They settled, but the "hack" question was never answered by the court .

A few days ago, Scott Addams was exporing this same idea in a post on the Dilbert Blog. I suppose he must have been reading TFA.

If you haven't read this then you haven't seen the real creative talent of these people: I personally can recommend the bottle of Uncertainty. It comes in real handy from time to time... http://putative.typepad.com/putative/2007/01/fedex_refuses_s.html

This simply cannot be allowed!

Perhaps what's called for is a book vault, in the spirit of the recently built Norwegian seed vault.

I'm reminded of something from Max Headroom (a truly brilliant show for anyone who is not familiar with it, on par with greats like Blade Runner and Demolition Man for its crisp and witty vision of a possible future dominated by television). In the series, nearly everyone has given up all their privacy information to the computers, of course, except for a small few who refused, a long time ago, and have no records. They're called Blanks because society can't easily track or understand them. One of them, who is called just Blank Reg in order to have a name at all, gives someone a book at one point and says, "It's a book. It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should 'ave one." The insight of the throwaway remark has the deep understanding and precision targeting of many of the throwaway lines in The Simpsons or South Park.

The issue is not so simple as the loss of a thing we're all fond of. It creates the risk of a catastrophic loss of all of humanity's information, since books are more than just outmoded relics. What is not outmoded about them is their accessibility and their duration, which even given the lifetime of paper still well exceeds the lifetime of a typical CD or a storage format. The area of survivability seems like it comes quickly into play as a serious matter.

This is not to say that it's bad that Google and others have been scanning things, since that adds redundancy of survivability to the system. But it's to say that there's a risk in the other direction of the loss of technology that would allow Google to operate, and in that case, books are a very reasonable backup.

If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend John Robb's Global Guerrillas blog. He's got a good book out too, but the blog is more up-to-the-minute analysis. It won't come as a surprise to folks on slashdot that the insurgency is heavily reliant on an open-source model (and more specifically, exploiting our inability to change tactics on-the-fly). Good reading.

This also makes him available for appointment to some post in the White House. Imagine the work he could do in Commerce, overseeing the Internet, at the FCC overseeing information flow, or at Justice, overseeing IP-related enforcement.

+2 Informative. Wow, this is very awesome. More states should be this progressive.

I had an awful experience in my tax law classes; basically the only thing I learned was that whatever firm hired me upon graduation would most likely force me to play by their rules and require me to sign a non-compete contract. BTW H&R Block is infamous for noncompetes and doing really insane things with tax preparation fees. Anyway. Kinda doomed me into thinking I might be potentially stuck doing a job I hated, was inefficient and illogical for an unknown amount of time. (Keep in mind this tax law class took place in Utah.) That was also when I decided to avoid the CPA route like the plague. Contracts spell doom. Microsoft + Contracts spell MegaDoom.

It doesn't surprise me that the ruling cited in the blog link is Arthur Andersen, LLP. Any accounting or business undergrads please take note. Something about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act might ring a bell.

Because in California, Non-Competes have no legal value.

That said, I agree 100% with the notion that this is MS' Waterloo. They have effectively stated that they can not, even with owning the OS and web browser, use people's web habits and make money from that.

Perhaps a bunch of Silicon Valley types should buy some MS shares and start a proxy war over where MS is headed (demand that MS pay out their war chest for example)?

Just a RND thought.

I'm with Scott Adams: Holes.

To summarize, what we need is a better way to dig cheap holes.

Think of it: with a cheap way to drill a hole we can drill down close to the mantle of the earth for cheap geothermal. With a cheap way to dig a tunnel we can expand our freeway infrastructure by placing new roads below ground. Infrastructure can be run underground more cheaply--if we have a cheap hole to run them through.

Holes are the future.

You never see it in web programming.

Steve Gibson does it:

http://kleinmatic.typepad.com/kirkunit/2007/03/steve_gibsons_a.html

Andrew Keen, is that you?

I think some kids are on your lawn, you'd better go scare them off.

If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.

And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas.

I'm wondering: did any of the legislators consult a single tech guy?

You mean precisely like people do?

I've heard rumors that similar things are done for movies, books, games, tv shows, and even food.

I believe the idea is to work out how closely you agree with the reviewer in question in order to determine if what they say is useful (and of course when you completely disagree they can be useful - if they love it you'll hate it sort of thing)...

But, yes, if the point was meant to be that there is no one comparison function and hence each persons ordering will may be different, then that's clear enough. Doesn't stop people reporting that X's is better than Y's.

The note was posted at 10:14 p.m., probably Central Time. It starts with an old-fashioned freedom-loving salutation ("Whoa!") and ends with an angry attack on the very hippies ("socialists") who elevated him from another nobody right-winger congressman running a quixotic presidential campaign to a hilarious national Internet fad.