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Kind of like boston polices rubber bouncy ball camera that self stabalizes.. from 2005..

My google skills show I should get that R&D budget slice.
2005: Boston police, rubber bouncy ball cam self stabalizing
2005: Israeli grenade launcher launched camera munition
2008: UK troops I-Ball

sure, uh huh

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/unamerican-attacks-cant-derail-health-care-debate-.html

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/08/13/reid-protesters-are-evil-mongers/

the fact that you cite the strawman fallacy just proves how ignorant you are. Obama has practically mastered the art of using it at this point.

Bullshit. They had free run of the place before the war and Bush pulled them out to begin bombing.

"Late last night ... I was advised by the U.S. government to pull out our inspectors from Baghdad," ElBaradei told the IAEA's board of governors. He said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council were informed and that the council would take up the issue later Monday.

"I should note that in recent weeks, possibly as a result of increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been more forthcoming in its cooperation with the IAEA," he said, adding that inspectors still have found no evidence that Saddam Hussein has revived his nuclear program.

Youre wrong again.

Read this article. Basically, 911 system wasn't designed for cellular/cell phones.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2009-08-17-cellphones_N.htm?se=yahoorefer

No, but it certainly seems like a lot of the loudest conservatives (note: not all conservatives are Republicans and vice versa, but people rarely make the distinction, same with liberals / Democrats) are always shouting about limited government, free capitalism, let the free market solve all our problems, and so on.

If you tune to some of the loudest leftists (note: not all leftists are Democrats and vice versa) you will hear them shouting things that would have made Karl Marx cringe. The rich only got rich on the back of the poor, Wall Street is responsible for every single thing that goes wrong in this country, "General betray us", etc, etc, etc.

When your exposure to conservative ideals comes from these guys

Do you judge liberalism by the likes of Michael Moore? No? Then why judge conservatism by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh?

It's usually accompanied by lines like "Do you really think the government can do anything right?"

Can it though? In my area we have a mixture of private garbage collection and municipal. Some communities have municipal service and some have private service. Follow the two trucks around for a few minutes one day to see the difference between the private sector and the public sector. The private guys haul ass -- the municipal guys prod along and are lucky to cover half the ground that the private guys do. You know what makes it even more pathetic? The muni guys are paid nearly three times as much.

but the people asking are usually happy to be protected by a government-run police, fire, and military force, drink from the municpial water supply, drive on state-constructed roads, use cellphones and GPS and other things made possible by NASA, eat food and take medicine knowing it's been inspected by the FDA and they don't need to personally inspect the farm / pharmacy, live and work in buildings that won't collapse because they've been built to government-approved codes, and so forth. Seems a strange position to take, if you ask me.

I don't think it's strange at all. Some of what you just listed could be accomplished more efficiently by the private sector (municipal water). NASA didn't set out to deploy GPS -- it set out to keep us competitive with the Russians. It's great that we got some civilian applications out of that investment but don't kid yourself into thinking that's why we spent the money.

As far as the FDA goes, I don't trust them at all and many people would argue that they've done more harm than good. They've turned the process for approving new drugs into a bureaucratic nightmare and have denied dying people the right to take experimental medicines even though they are fully aware of the risks of doing so. Given the events of the last few years I think I'd trust an organization like the Underwriters Laboratories more than Uncle Sam. My UL approved outlet and appliances have yet to burn my house down. My FDA approved peanut butter and drugs on the other hand....

Burn thru all their initial funding with little or nothing to show for it, then roll out something that's big on dreams and weak on funding, and then blame all your problems on your potential customers and not your busines plan.

Yep, sounds like a startup to me. Well, all except for step four, quietly fold up show and go away. That hasn't happened yet.

YET.

Burn thru all their initial funding with little or nothing to show for it, then roll out something that's big on dreams and weak on funding, and then blame all your problems on your potential customers and not your busines plan.

Yep, sounds like a startup to me. Well, all except for step four, quietly fold up show and go away. That hasn't happened yet.

YET.

Cops don't make it into the top ten, they don't even make it into the top 20. You want a dangerous job? Go fish. Literally. Or try logging, or being a cabbie, those are dangerous. Driving around while heavily armed and wearing ballistic vests, with dozens of similarly equipped confreres a radio call away, is hardly "dangerous" -- hundreds of phony, "I love the police, because they keep me safe from legions of zombies", police shows aside. http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/25/dangerous-jobs-fishing-lead-careers-cx_mk_0825danger.html http://money.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P63405.asp http://socyberty.com/work/ten-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/ About 60 police officers are killed every year in America, and the number is dropping. Astoundingly none of those deaths have been attributed to blogs! http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-30-police-killings_x.htm So please stop telling us how fraking dangerous it is to be a cop.

Oh, another thing. The U.N. has more than a thousand diplomats in the U.S... I suspect there may well be half a million or more. Damn, there were 500+ in Iraq in 2005.

Not an insubstantial bill.

Here it is; not tons of detail because it happened in 2003 and most of its residue has been erased from the memory of the internet:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-04-janitor_x.htm

I read an article about capturing an asteroid into Earth's orbit and using it to slowly adjust the Earth's orbit so that it stays in the habitable zone of the sun.

Because upgrading the upstream pipe from 14.4Kbps to 33.6Kbps would require the Yemenis ISP to take out a small loan at a 'very' high interest rape from the WTO...

But in reality, all ISP's would like to censor traffic as 'Less load + more consumers = Greater Profit'. If ISP's had their way we would all have the old netzero type ad bar on our screens while every mistyped web domain would take you to their sponsors web site all the while making sure you never exceed 1GB a month on your 100Mbit/100Mbit connection.

As far as the 'free market' 'you have a choice' idea goes... We know that just isn't true anymore... Large corporations collude with each other to insure your SOL and they rarely get caught. Even when they do it doesn't drive them out of business.. Flamebait? Damn Dirty Lies? Hey why not check out the quick 30 seconds of research below.

07-14-2009: EU issues charges in global LCD price fixing crackdown
06-16-2009: AT&T and Verizon deny price-fixing accusations
03-10-2009: Hitachi pleads guilty to LCD price fixing
11-12-2008: LG, Sharp, Chunghwa admit to LCD price fixing
03-03-2004: EU probes memory price-fixing charge
09-30-2002: States settle CD price-fixing case

This is why 'fanboys & girls' really need to be 're-educated' and not by their TV's, iPhones or PS3s... ;-|

...because of crap like this.... ...because of their secret rooms.. ...because they spied on Americans' emails... ...because they provided the NSA with a database of American's phone calls... ...because they used their influence to lobby Congress to retroactively get immunity and hide their activities... ...because of their former CEO's stated views on Network Neutrality...

I'm telling everyone I know to switch to T-Mobile. I get great 3G reception, they will actually unlock my phone after a couple months, they have great customer support (in my experience), visual voicemail, and they support Android. $25/a month for unlimited internet...

I have NO affiliation with T-Mobile aside from using them for a couple years, and I would invite criticism of them so people can make an informed decision. I'm just sayin... in MHO an iPhone isn't worth AT&T. For anyone on the fence, Android is actually pretty damn great.

But Saddam Hussein was doing his best to convince the world that he did have WMDs. Unfortunately for him, he succeeded. Before the invasion, no one argued that he didn't have any WMDs...

Sorry, but despite the Neo-Con belief that reality is whatever they say it is, this is total fiction. Colin Powell's PowerPoint show didn't change the fundamental position of the U.N. Security Council or the opinion of many Americans.

From Wikipedia (and yes there are foreign press sites to back this up):
"While Colin Powell's statement to the UN may have been accepted as 'proof' by many in the U.S., this was not the case in Europe, where there was widespread skepticism of any links between Iraq and al-Qaeda."

Powell has since expressed shame over the incident.

...there would HAVE to have been a monkey/human hybrid born at some point

I know there's a GWB joke in there, I just know it... too bad he wasn't the one whose birth certificate is missing, that would be a zinger now!

Whose birth certificate is missing? It isn't Obama's.

Burger Time Deluxe!

(Not to be confused with Burger Time Deluxue, released for the original Game Boy in 1992.)

There were nearly enough ( 19,000 * 250,000 = 4.75 billion, more than half the world's population, but we used them up in Iraq.

North Dakota has about 22 tornadoes a year. Kansas has about 200 a year. Then you have to take into account differences in intensities of those tornadoes, I'd imagine.

We are on the verge of the collapse of civilization, and our only salvation is buying [insert Tamiflu-like product here] from a company that, just so happens, had Rumsfeld in the board (cough Gilead cough)

The House episode was probably based on this kitty:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-07-26-foreboding-feline_N.htm

The Dr. quoted thinks that it may be due to the smell of the person or the behavior of the nurses towards the patients. The ability to smell disease is important when looking for a healthy mate so I lean towards smell.

Seems that significantly fewer people see science as important http://www.livescience.com/technology/etc/090709-scientists-rock-just-not-much-before.html as it used to be.

Although many people see conflict between science and religion, it appears that science conflicts with itself more http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/07/68494044/1

As fun as it might be to disparage the USA (and it's perfectly alright when it leads to improvements). I find it hardly believable to equate China's government to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption

We can argue about their research methods all day, but at least it's up for discussion. Unless you're looking over your shoulder and checking the window for the Chinese Death Van.
For added fun, I'll include this link because it's from across the pond, and Godwins the thread in one fell stroke.

As the summary claimed:

Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota

I would like to introduce to you the Ford Fusion Hybrid, which has been rated above the Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima hybrids in numerous reviews.

And while Nissan did license Toyota's hybrid technology, Ford did not. The Ford Fusion Hybrid is the first automotive hybrid drive train to be developed in the US, by a US auto company, and built in North America for an American car. So if Toyota is trying to preemptively squash competition with their patents, they are too late.

You should point out that "built in North America" with regards to the Ford Fusion means "Mexico." (Specifically Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico). They're not being built "in America" nor "by Americans."

Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota

I would like to introduce to you the Ford Fusion Hybrid, which has been rated above the Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima hybrids in numerous reviews.

And while Nissan did license Toyota's hybrid technology, Ford did not. The Ford Fusion Hybrid is the first automotive hybrid drive train to be developed in the US, by a US auto company, and built in North America for an American car. So if Toyota is trying to preemptively squash competition with their patents, they are too late.

"Toyota has already reached the break-even point on sales of its hybrids; by contrast, its foreign competitors, like GM, still have years of bleeding red ink ahead of them. Toyota says the parts in its next line of hybrids, due for release next year, will cost about half the current bunch, allowing it to drop prices and raise profits. While the company is estimated to have lost about $10,000 on each car produced when the line was launched back in 1997, "the new Prius is going to be hugely profitable," says Nikko's Matsushima, bringing in thousands of dollars per car.

Meanwhile, as of just six weeks ago, you have GM clinging to the old line: "as long as gas is cheap, Americans will want big, powerful vehicles. He compared [Obama's] policy to trying to fight obesity by having the government require that clothing only be made in small sizes." This after GM already went broke pursuing that strategy, while Toyota is poised to make a killing on their small fuel-efficient cars!

A quick Internet search revealed that up to one-third of electricity use in the U.S. is for lighting. The current administration is also ordering the DoE to require many household appliances to be more energy efficient. The fine-tuning is happening. It will just take a while to get over the foot-dragging that characterized the Bush administration.

Street Fighter. Astronaut. Rocket Scientist. Rapper.

Actually, they're testing this in Iowa, and part of the 'need' for the GPS is so they can charge you more PER STREET you drive on. Say it costs 20 cents/mile on the interstate, but only 5 cents on the slow back roads. They claim this will help to decrease wear on the thoroughfares.

So basically they're giving a very strong hint on where you should or shouldn't be driving. Neat huh?

Makes me sick. And the best part, in the Iowa test you pay when you go to the pump, so you can keep track better.

I almost signed up for the test until I read how intrusive it was.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-20-roads_N.htm

http://venturebeat.com/2007/01/15/ethanol-use-causing-corn-shortages-spiking-price-price-of-tortillas/

Well, I haven't done the direct research myself, I just know what I've read.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-10-ethanol-study_x.htm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119258870811261613.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/05ethanol.html
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20947/Biotech_to_Ease_EthanolRelated_Corn_Shortage.html

And to further your argument (again, I'm more interested in the truth than being right)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/10/ethanol-as-cause-of-food-crisis-flat-out-wrong/
http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f81/definitive-proof-ethanol-not-creating-food-corn-shortage-61448/

From the USA Today article: "Lenovo is on a more conservative course. In designing the new ThinkPad, it installed keystroke-tracking software on about 30 employees' computers (They volunteered)." http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2009-06-26-delete-key_N.htm

Let's not kid ourselves ...

Sure, other governments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we, in the US. I couldn't think of a better place to put fiber splicers than the "AT&T office in San Francisco." Facebook, and of course other social networking and technology companies, must be a gold mine for them. All they need to do is connect the social networking dots, as they currently do with American's phone calls -- there's no concern for domestic wiretapping laws involved -- it's simply call delivery data for them, and a bit of connecting the social network dots. Hence the reason Verizon Wireless sent out a snail-mail privacy notice to their customers regarding their use of call delivery records in light of the possible broad-surveillance lawsuits, a few years ago. One doesn't need the full conversation if it's possible to ascertain and forward onto other agencies the usual suspects. Separately, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, once said that he doesn't "tell people the NSA uses Perl. [He merely tells] people the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all."

Those are smart scientists and engineers over there, to be sure. I'd love to work for them, too. :-)

For all the grief we give about Bill Gates, at least he is doing something for humanity that is good other than spend money on luxuries.

Score: -1, factually incorrect. From USA Today's coverage:

Jackson had a huge soft spot for charitable causes. He gave millions of his own money and helped raise millions more to support advocacy groups ranging from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to the American Cancer Society. His efforts prompted a listing in the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records for most charities supported by a pop star. [emphasis mine]

He donated $1.5 million to a burn center, the proceeds from a settlement he received from PepsiCo after sustaining second-degree burns to his scalp while filming a 1984 TV commercial for the soft-drink giant. Later that year, he donated an additional $5 million to charity from his share of the Jackson 5's Victory Tour. Also that year, he was honored by President Reagan for his contributions to combat drug and alcohol abuse.

Jackson also co-wrote with Lionel Richie We Are the World, the star-laden 1985 single that sold 20 million copies, raising millions for famine relief.

RBHS is also the school of the math teacher with ads: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-12-01-test-ads_N.htm Strange, isn't it? The people I've met there are reasonable.

Even the oil exploration community was convinced of global warming in the 1990s before it became a Republican vs Democrat issue. It's unfortunately become another thing for sects of lay preachers to yell about as another example of the evils of education.

Easily located citation provided for the doubtful: Even USA Today can figure it out.

Why yes, yes I do, much more than you do it would seem.

$14 trillion is your DEBT you illiterate. Debt is money owed which is a fraction of your total obligations.

The government does more than just borrow money it creates programs to spend that money on and each American (currently) also has half a million dollars worth of *obligations* to pay for. The government can't put 100% of the money it receives into paying back debt without taking money away from it's programs and services. Which is why I clearly stated that it would take over a century to pay that 14 trillion down even with 100% of Americans wages going in as the government also has to pay for it's obligations (Social Security, Medicare, Military, Beauracracy) which are increasing rapidly over time, even if they didn't allow new spending starting now.

Your current tax level isn't even coming *close* to paying for the governments obligations *let alone* making repayments on the debt and interest owed on bonds. Which is why your government has borrowed nearly 10 trillion dollars from the citizens of China, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia and others in the last decade to keep the good times going.

So you're either going to raise taxes to an astronomical level, slash and burn your government services and keep taxes at the same level or do the tried and true practice of bankrupt governments and devalue your currency or worse simply default.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-05-28-debt_N.htm

Comprehension is good.

Yeah, but look at the data.

This means that if my employer pays me in nickels then I also must pay more in income tax to the feds as a nickel is worth more then five cents in pure metal value these days.

No, you can go to the bank and get nickles for 5 cents each. You can not go to the bank and get $20 gold pieces for $20 each.

If you were melting down the nickels and selling the bulk metal you would be in violation of more than tax laws.

Ding! Someone with a clue. That was my entire point!

Except that you fell victim to the same groupthink when you made an issue of keeping the details of your special revelation a secret.

Because those cockpit doors can't be opened without the key, combination, whatever, right?

They can't even be opened with "the key" as there is no cabin accessible keyhole. They use dead-bolts and cross bars that are only accessible from within the cockpit.
There is a picture of the one in Delta jets in this article - normally it doesn't even have contact with the door, much less a cabin-accessible unlocking mechanism.

The coupons were payed for by the sale of freed-up pieces of the spectrum, and actually the coupon money was only a fraction of the sale price (1.34 billion out of 20 billion). The real thing you should be objecting to here is that they sold a natural resource that should be owned by the people, then paid us back in the form of $40 coupons that basically raised the price of the converters by $40 apiece. In any case, the coupons were not paid for by taxes.

There's a difference between what they're "allowed to access" and what's admissible in court once they've seen it. The techs aren't the government--things they've seen don't automatically get excluded because they shouldn't have seen them.

Guess what? No more Fourth Amendment. No, really.

If a private citizen breaks into my house and sees something illegal, they can usually alert the cops and have knowledge of that thing be admitted in court, even though they themselves can still be prosecuted for trespassing and breaking and entering.

If a private citizen breaks into my house and sees something illegal, they can place you under citizen's arrest which for you is legally equivalent to being arrested by a police officer, even though they themselves can still be prosecuted for trespassing and breaking and entering. There, fixed that for you.

The difference in an arrest between a cop and an citizen is that a) the citizen is usually assumed to be a jackass in court, because the system hates competition and b) a cop can arrest you on the suspicion of a misdemeanor whereas a citizen has to see you commit it but may still arrest you on the suspicion of a felony. (This is how it works in California; I would guess that it would be similar most places, but I certainly wouldn't take it as legal advice in any state. I learned when I was becoming a security guard, something I'm glad I don't do any more. And the most dangerous things I ever had to patrol were the Santa Cruz bus station, and mental health offices.)

There are some other sites which have had support for a while now, such as omploader [omploader.org]. It would be nice if some big sites like youtube get rid of flash too, but I'm not holding my breath.

Right, offering ogg video at least as an alternative on youtube would be a real blow against evil, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, the don't be evil part of google left with this guy while Eric, Larry and Sergie never really found it expedient to buy into that concept.

See here:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2006-07-26-disney-mobile_x.htm

Location via GPS is assisted by cell towers. Line of site is not always needed with AGPS chipsets. Its all automated.

There is no reason this phone could not be zipped into a backpack and the child told never to take it out unless it rings. Thieves can be tracked as well.

This is a commercial service. There is no reason to cobble together something complex.

One of every four homeless people in the USA is a veteran. However, given what the world knows about what the US military does in places like Abu Ghraib, I'd salute anyone who didn't go back.

Leap in U.S. debt hits taxpayers with 12% more red ink
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
2009-05-28
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-05-28-debt_N.htm

...The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That's quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined...

Bottom line: The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion...

By the time the Kenyan Prince and Telly Axelrod and Bolshoi Emanuel and Blofeld Soros and the rest of the tribe are finished, there won't be any USA left [much less any USAF to hire you].

If you want to do this kind of work in the future, then you'll need to emigrate to China.

The agnostic phone: you're never sure whether it is currently vibrating in your pocket.

Not as far fetched as some might think... http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-06-12-cellphones_N.htm

Black market meth is generally synthesised from pseudoephedrine which is in turn refined from cough medicines like Tylenol (as you'd probably know if you've watched Terminator 3 :) Inconveniently if you happen to want to make a batch of meth, the police are well aware of this fact and require apothecaries to report any large sales of pseudoephedrine-containing medicines.

Given that the cheapest price I can find online is US $7 for 8 fl. oz. and you need quite a lot* to manufacture a small amount of the drug, I'm pretty sure it's going to cost a lot more to do it yourself than just buy it. Sort of like the way very few people run illegal moonshine stills - the easy, legal availability of the product, coupled with the illegality and pain-in-the-ass factor of doing it yourself, means using the legal product is a much more attractive option. And it's a lot, LOT more effort to make meth than it is to make moonshine.

* (I'm not sure how much, because I've never made meth and don't really want to research it here at work for obvious reasons, but I'd guess at least ten bottles' worth, given that the amount per dose is single-digit milligrams.)

The nation's 15-year-olds make a poor showing on a newly released international test of practical math applications, ranking 24th out of 29 industrialized nations, behind South Korea, Japan and most of Europe. U.S. students' scores were comparable to those in Poland, Hungary and Spain.

http://www.usatoday.com/educate/mathscience/article-math2.htm If you can NOT use the math what worth is it. Tim S

My credibility, that derives from knowing how to read, and having read the SIGMA website and several of the blogs of its members?

And yet, you are completely incapable of providing a single link to back up your claims. Funny that.

As to your assertion, that a bureaucrat can anticipate threats better than science fiction authors

Not at all what I wrote. What I wrote was that focusing on the billions of one-off threats is a total waste of time and money because we can't afford to protect against every single threat someone can dream up.

But thanks for providing a perfect example of what I was talking about. So far we've had one semi-movie plot threat come true - just one. And look at the billions of dollars we've wasted on preventing it from happening again. Pick 10 more threats just like that and the war in Iraq starts to look cheap.

But lets take a step further and look at the kind of utterly ridiculous and pointless ideas these sci-fi writers have proposed:

Grind up and aerosolize pigs, spray it over an unruly population. Let the population know what just happened and remind them they won't go to Heaven with pork in their systems so it's not a good time to die.

an antibiotic that cures martyrdom;

At the Washington conference, Bear offered to put biometrics researchers in touch with movie special-effects experts. The experts might be able to help the government determine how to match the face of someone walking through an airport to a grainy photo of a known terrorist. -- Because we all know that movie special effects let you zoom in on any picture until it is clear, but only hollywood scientists know how to do that.

Bear says the writers offer powerful imaginations that can conjure up not only possible methods of attack, but also ideas about how governments and individuals will respond and what kinds of high-tech tools could prevent attacks.

Gee, he even comes right out and admits they aren't about broad-based planning, they are about conjuring up the improbable stuff.

And finally, the group includes fucking Jerry Pournelle. Anyone who has ever read his columns in Byte knows the guy is a bumbling narcissist who has a completely mis
guided view about his own technical competence.

So yeah, I DO know WTF I'm talking about and you've proven quite well that YOU don't know jack shit.