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MS is 33 as a company, Linux kernel is 17. Latest Win XP is barely 6 and Vista is what, just over 2?

Christ, Linux would spend the rest of its life under a bridge if it tried something like that! ;)

(Like: Those D*mn hospital volunteers are keeping the pay down! Or: Those D*mn Habitat for Humanity volunteers, donating their labor, are making it impossible to charge people to build a house.)

Can someone explain?

I've heard that HPV rates are lower in circumcised men.

A bit of Googling... Circumcision lowers risk of cervical cancer:

Women whose sexual partners are circumcised are less likely to develop cervical cancer than the partners of uncircumcised men, concludes a report out today. The difference was statistically significant only in the partners of men considered to be at high risk for infection with human papillomavirus, or HPV, according to the study in The New England Journal of Medicine. HPV causes genital warts in men and women, and certain strains cause virtually all cervical cancers. HPV also has been linked to cancers of the vagina, anus and penis.

"Our study provides compelling evidence that cancers hidden beneath the skin can be detected simply by [dogs] examining the odors of a person's breath," said Michael McCulloch, who led the research.

"Oh, sure, there is no warrantless surveillance...THAT WE KNOW OF."

It's a very convenient excuse to shoot at anyone. But knowing american habits there's always a good reason for a killing spree mainly when it involves civilian targets.

I second c6gunner's comments. :) I apologize for being a bit snarky. And I thank you for not taking me to task for misspelling Exoon. I swear I hit prieview...

Incidentally, this is why I like message boards sometimes. People will post up their sources for you. I now feel compelled to back up that 10%. Keeping 9.41 out of 102.3 billion just doesn't seem wrong to me.

Take a look at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home on the cost of war.
Now, take a look at http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/earnings/2005-10-27-xom_x.htm for Exxon profits.

Then, take a look at http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=56496 which states Iraq is producing 2.4 million barrels a day.
If you are still not satisfied, take a look at Exxon's filing at: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0645391820080206

I understand that as a Bush supporter, you MUST attack the Enemy i.e, whoever talks the truth about Big Oil Profits and taxpayers.

I understand, but i still pity you.

Cyberstalking law opens debate on what's annoying Now how many of you have already forgotten this? The law makes it a crime to anonymously "annoy, abuse, threaten or harass" another person over the Internet. Oh that's right it was two years ago. Perhaps now you should be concerned about Infragard and deadly force. No, 99% of you sit on your ass doing nothing, someone else will fix the government for you. Oh wait, there's that small problem with the FISA law and telcom immunity.

We just have George Bushes. He thinks God wanted him to invade Iraq, so what's the difference?

Some have claimed that at least some robo calls are specifically designed to discourage you from voting, either by annoying you or by giving misleading conversation.

The two year old son of as meth addict mom was tossed off a bridge onto the H-1 highway by their meth addict neighbor.

n theory, the notion of freedom of choice wrt drugs and personal responsibility for any consequences sounds nice. However, in practice, ugly things like this occur to innocent and powerless victims, undermining arguments for legalization.

Another sad story: "Body is last of 4 kids thrown off bridge" no drugs involved. It doesn't take illegal drugs for something bad to happen, bad things happen with and without drugs being involved. You make the bad act illegal not drugs.

But that's not why hemp AKA marjuana was made illegal. Hemp was made illegal because it posed a potential treat to the wealth of wealthy and powerful people. Some of those who pressed to have hemp made illegal included William Randolph Hearst, a powerful newspaper magnate who owned thousands of acres of forest he harvested for the pulp to make paper he sold; Du Pont who was granted a patent on making plastics from petroleum oil, and his financial backer Andrew Mellon of the Mellon bank; and Rockefeller of Standard Oil and Rothschild of Shell. In the 1930s, before hemp was made illegal, MIT did a study on the use of hemp to make paper, they concluded an acre of hemp was able to produce more paper than an acre of forest. Before Du Pont's patent plastic was made from plants of which hemp was a good source, now research is again being done on making Bioplastic. Among other advantages it is renewable and it's biodegradable. Eastman Kodak made plastic for both the cameras and the film from plant cellulose, the original cellophane wrap for food was made from cellulose. In the 1920s and '30s Henry Ford worked on making ethanol from hemp as a fuel for vehicles. He also used hemp to make plastics for them. Rudolph Diesel inventor of the Diesel engine designed it to run on most any vegetable oil including hemp seed oil. In front of congress when Dr. James Woodward, a doctor as well as lawyer, testified for the AMA he said the AMA would have denounced the law making hemp illegal sooner but the AMA had only learned the "Mexican devil weed" to be outlawed was in fact hemp and was used a lot in medicine. He testified it should not be made illegal.

Brits have resisted ID cards for over 4 decades.

The American RealID will collapse due to the lack of state support (14 refuse to implement, numerous states refuse to fund, not to mention the inevitable protests).

The Chinese have ID cards, and they also have execution vans roaming the countryside acting as judge, jury and executioner, handing out justice at needlepoint.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-death-van_x.htm

What they don't tell you is china also pulls organs from the bodies.

The Canuk's won't accept an ID card. They have just as many guns and ammo as the US does and they really don't like being screwed with.

Is Mitt Romney a socialist? His similar plan that was actually passed in the state of Massachusetts claims to be bringing down the cost of health care.

It seems that things are rumbling pretty fierce over at Yahoo! now. It definitely seems like they're ready to sell at least parts of their organization off. It was announced that Yahoo! is selling off their Yahoo! Music Unlimited service to Rhapsody: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-02-04-yahoo-music-rhapsody_N.htm/

What this means is really in the eye of the beholder. Could Yahoo! want to ensure that Microsoft doesn't get a firm foot in the downloadable/streaming music business? Do they want to see Rhapsody succeed? Maybe this is just part of the company that MS isn't interested in, so they're trying to sell it off seperately? Or, most likely, they're trying to sell off a sinking ship...which, IMO, is really sad. Sure, the service was limited to Windows and the software sucked horribly, but it was a tremendous product for the price. I listen to it ever day and I'm saddened that I'll have to pay twice as much for Rhapsody now...

Last time I travelled through the US, I had to throw out 50ml of cough syrup.

They didn't force you to drink it?

Beethoven and others were sponsored by rich merchants and nobles. It takes a lot of money to support a person writing music full time.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-03-02-beethoven_x.htm

Beethoven wrote the concerto in 1792 as an exercise under Haydn and revised the second movement the following year. It would be several more years before he published his Opus No. 1, announcing himself as a composer.

The only known copy of the oboe concerto vanished from a Vienna publishing house in the 1840s. Its existence was confirmed in 1935, when researchers found an exchange of letters between Haydn and Beethoven's sponsor, in which the Austrian composer seeks a further stipend for his young German pupil.

---

When we post on slashdot, we are under the social contract of "I want to discuss things on slashdot so I will let anyone read my stuff for free". We may even have a site agreement that the site can use our posts (given the goofy state of copyright). Slashdot is akin to a discussion. However, it is possible that if someone reused a post in its entirety and started making a ton of money, that we could sue them for a share.

---

If society does not reward for music (movies, books, etc.) at all, then some music will be produced (say "X")
If society rewards for music, then more music will be produced.
At the tipping point of compensation, the maximum amount of music will be created.
If society rewards too much for music (etc.), then less music will be produced because the artists get wealthy too soon and lose the motivation to keep creating.

---
If beethoven had never found a sponsor, he would have written at most one or two symphonies. Which one of them are you willing to give up so you can take his work for free?

I meant a port you can use to get power from. I only see powered USB ports on computers. Not cars, nor airplanes, nor clock radios, etc.

Take your pick from Google News 300+ news articles about the marijuana vending machine in the USA:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&ncl=1126931861

When will Slashdot pick up on this news, does one of the editors have to test it themselves?

Smoke em if you got em!

Oh, okay, some urls instead of a simple google news link:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&ncl=1126931861
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/01/hot-button-medi.html?loc=interstitialskip
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_8104481
http://wkrg.com/news/article/marijuana_vending_machines/9588/

I know, this is OFFTOPIC isn't it? It wouldn't be if it was about RIAA, asteroids, robots, Microsoft, or Pirates smoking weed from vending machines. So this post is really this article... ON WEED!

"There are 150,000 students from China. Some of those are sent here to work their way up into the corporations," Szady said. There are about 300,000 Chinese visitors annually, and 15,000 Chinese delegations touring the United States every year, 3,500 of them in the New York area alone, he said......

He estimated that about 3,000 false-front Chinese companies operate in the United States, and urged private-sector employers to "partner up" with FBI agents to help protect national security.

Aside from the normal round of robot-asteroid-which-corporate-cocksuck-for-president-will-fuck-us-next news, how about something for US, the people of this country:

Marijuana vending machines are a reality in California:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2248565,00.html
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/01/28/vending-machines-in-california-dispense-medical-marijuana.aspx
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/01/hot-button-medi.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7212778.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/28/wvend128.xml
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_8104481
http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/01/29/Cannabis_to_be_dispensed_from_vending_machines
http://www.kwtx.com/medicaldirectory/headlines/14453477.html
http://wkrg.com/news/article/marijuana_vending_machines/9588/

Offtopic, flamebait, troll, pony, whatever, at least this news will appear before the next Slashdot pro-marijuana, pro-nature, pro-peoples-fucking-rights-in-action story hits ten years from now after marijuana is legalized in this still-puritanical, but now we can butt fuck legally, backwards cross-licking country.

hydrogen has a different octane than gasoline (so does ethanol by the way), so both require a modified (more expensive) engine.

As for your next point, both hydrogen and ethanol require new infrastructure if they are to replace oil.

They only reason they haven't taken off is because ignorant Americans (yes, I'm an American too) have a stupid idea that diesel is dirty technology.

In contrast, the United States has long had "dirtier" diesel, although more stringent emission standards have been adopted with the transition to ULSD starting in 2006 and becoming mandatory on June 1, 2010 (see also diesel exhaust). U.S. diesel fuel typically also has a lower cetane number (a measure of ignition quality) than European diesel, resulting in worse cold weather performance and some increase in emissions. This is one reason why U.S. drivers of large trucks idle their rigs all night rather than risking a cold-weather start.

In fact, the only reason why ethanol is taking off is because it's a fairly good additive to gasoline to increase the octane rating

I've looked at some recent studies by the US govt that show a net energy loss.

Studies conducted since the late 1970s have estimated the net energy value (NEV)
of corn ethanol. However, variations in data and assumptions used among the
studies have resulted in a wide range of estimates. This study identifies the factors
causing this wide variation and develops a more consistent estimate. We conclude
that the NEV of corn ethanol has been rising over time due to technological
advances in ethanol conversion and increased efficiency in farm production. We
show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy output:input
ratio of 1.34. --July 2002

"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment," according to the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek.

No, I didn't make it up. It was in the news in 8/06.

Company tests robotic blimp for wireless communications.

Polls say otherwise. A substantial MAJORITY of people in the US are creationists in the sense that they think that evolution is incompatible with the Bible (i.e. the true history)

You know, I thought this too. Along with this story, I can't help but think that these are suspiciously timed with the advertisements I'm hearing/seeing for Cloverfield. I wouldn't put it past movie studios to "plant" stuff like this.

Agreed. I use Time Warner in the NYC area and have never had a problem with bandwidth speeds, and am near positive that I'm in that supposed 5%. But as long as I don't hit speed limits, so to speak, I fail to see their problem.

The crux though, seems to be that broadband providers like Comcast and Time Warner are worried that more and more will move into that higher traffic usage population, and fear their infrastructure won't handle it. But instead of acknowledging the fact that the US, though catching up in broadband penetration (impressive, given our size relative to other industrialized nations), is falling behind in access speed and actual bandwidth, we try to limit its growth, even though demand for bandwidth is only going to go up.

As the nation which, for all intents and purposes, built the original backbone and was the major leader in the internet's formation, design, and construction, this should not be unexpected. We have older lines than many of the nations on that list, and upgrading existing tech can be very costly.

The bigger issue now though, is that because of our hand in the net's formation, we have a lot of sway in its politics. Moves like these set a dangerous precedent for other nations to do the same, much in the way that China's censorship helped pave the way for other nations to undertake such draconian measures. We should be a leader and grow in the right directions instead of trying to find an easy way to fix our problem and ignore it until it blows up in our faces.

Random Sources:

Breoadband penetration-

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0704/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access#Broadband_worldwide

Broadband Speeds - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm

You destroy what you cannot build.

The two colossi must once have been a truly awesome sight, visible for miles, with copper masks for faces and copper-covered hands. Vairocana's robes were painted red and Sakyamuni's blue. These towering, transcendental images were key symbols in the rise of Mahayana Buddhist teachings, which emphasized the ability of everyone, not just monks, to achieve enlightenment.
The Buddhas were cut at immeasurable cost probably in the third and fifth centuries A.D. Why the Taliban are destroying Buddhas

The Buddhas marked an oasis on the Silk Road.

They were products of a society that was prosperous in trade, confident in its mastery of the arts and engineering, and whose core beliefs were strong and generous and subtle.

But if you're not a part of the press -- and you can't just declare yourself a reporter -- then you can't simply publish a photograph of anyone you see on the street.


Rubbish. Someone on the street is in public and therefore can have no expectation of privacy. I most certainly can take their photo, and given that I own the copyright on any picture I take, I can certainly publish it (in 99% of cases anyway). What's more, press photographers aren't generally protected in any particularly special way - anyone can use the reason of "news worthiness" or public interest to protect their publication of an otherwise problematic image.

More info in the PDF found here and in this USA Today article.

Well, it looks like the year of many things:

2008: The year of the big airline merger
2008: The year of RSS
2008: The year of OpenID
2008: The year of layout engine - CSS3
2008: The year of principles
2008: The year of Palestine

And all along I thought it was the year of the rat...

In the past decade there has been a change of power in Serbia, (the former Soviet Republic) Georgia, and the Ukraine because the exit polls disagreed with the official results. Mismatching exit polls are assumed to be prima facie evidence of election fraud.

(a) Bigger differences - the difference between the exit poll and election results was 12% in the Ukraine.
(b) Supporting evidence - the Ukraine results included a highly suspicious 96% voter turnout rate in the pro-goverment east, vs. an apparent overall turnout of 79%. Plus, you know, the opposition candidate getting poisoned.

It's not like exit polls aren't wrong in other countries, too. In the 2004 French election, exit polls put the vote split at 40/34/17, whereas the final results were 50/37/13, which is quite a substantial difference.

"The trouble is, whenever you have a surprise result in an election, and it runs counter to the polls, the media always say the problem is the polling, not the counting." But he adds, "The thing is, these things always work in one direction-in favor of the more conservative candidate, and that defies the law of quantum mechanics."

That's an absurd analogy.

If there are problems with polls, they're likely to be systematic problems, such as "conservatives are more likely to ignore pollsters because of antagonism towards perceived liberal bias in the news" or "angry rednecks vote Republican and don't talk to pollsters", rather than the truly random problems he's assuming.

Is the question of tampering worth looking into? Of course, and I'm glad Kucinich is getting a recount going, and anything that gets more paper trails into voting is good, but the eagerness with which people are leaping on the notion of voting fraud - despite very, very thin evidence - is disturbing.

I suppose it might be left over from the losses in 2000 and 2004; however, obsessing over the past isn't going to win the future. Now that there's going to be a hand recount, I'm not at all sure it's in the best interests of Democratic supporters (or democratic supporters, for all that) to engage in a nasty internal spat over accusations of fraud. Don't think this won't be saved as possible ammunition later this year in the actual election.

The PEOPLE DON'T WANT Real ID.

The only bright side to this whole thing is that 6 years is plenty long enough for this to get repealed. We're due for a new president here fairly soon and with any luck it will be somebody who won't go along with this crap.

How about child porn rings? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002/03/18/net-porn.htm

You may not like anti-drug laws, and neither do I, but to assume that's all the FBI does is just plain wrong.

With all of *our* tax money that the telcos have sucked up over the years and their long history of unethical business practices, from monopoly to the impossible-to-read bill you receive every month, they can all suck it.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/09/toy-yoda.htm

be careful when shopping for a Toyota, this girl thought she was getting a Toyota too...

it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially remove defunct anti-miscegenation laws from their law books. In the respective referendums, 62% of voters in South Carolina and 59% of voters in Alabama voted to remove these laws.

In many rural, mostly white counties, the amendment either passed narrowly or was defeated.

I'm not sure you actually care to hear about this, but many state departments of roads or transportation ARE spending money to save lives in car accidents. Crossover cable barriers on highways have saved many lives. I personally know two people who were probably saved by this on I-70 through Missouri. Crossover fatalaties brought down from 24 in 2002 to 6 in 2005 for a tune of $20.5 million installed and relatively little maintaining once they have to replace a section damaged by crash. How much is a person's life worth?

TFA: "If I can sell 1.5 million computers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, I will feel a lot better than other sales we might make."

It seems that there is no need to characterize the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ethiopia might not be so much in focus, thus it might be interesting to give a quote: "The United States has quietly poured weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia, whose recent invasion of Somalia opened a new front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
A Christian-led nation in sub-Saharan Africa, surrounded almost entirely by Muslim states, Ethiopia has received nearly $20 million in U.S. military aid since late 2002. That's more than any country in the region except Djibouti.
Last month, thousands of Ethiopian troops invaded neighboring Somalia and helped overturn a fundamentalist Islamic government that the Bush administration said was supported by al-Qaeda.
The U.S. and Ethiopian militaries have "a close working relationship," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said. The ties include intelligence sharing, arms aid and training that gives the Ethiopians "the capacity to defend their borders and intercept terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," he said." (emphasis mine)

Am I the only one who feels that there is something strange about exactly this selection of countries as an intial target market?

CC.

Madonna recently left Warner for Live Nation apparently for the cash. Interestingly, Live Nation does not appear in the members list of the RIAA. Coincidence?

The problem with most Americans posting to slashdot is they don't realise that what is legal in their country may not be in another. Please if you are going to discuss this don't link to USA today. This is about Australia we are a different country, I know that is a hard concept to grasp but please try.

You don't even need internet to get fired for what you do off job.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-02-16-pregnancy-bias-usat_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-22-pregnant-teacher_x.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4636907.stm

http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/http://www.digg.com/health/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.workerscompinsider.com/archives/000587.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/30/off_the_job_smoker_sues_over_firing/
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-28029.html
google for more

You don't even need internet to get fired for what you do off job.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-02-16-pregnancy-bias-usat_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-22-pregnant-teacher_x.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4636907.stm

http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/http://www.digg.com/health/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.workerscompinsider.com/archives/000587.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/30/off_the_job_smoker_sues_over_firing/
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-28029.html
google for more

Everyone has heard a similar story, or has a friend of a friend that this happened "personally" to. Problem is, it's all complete bullshit. Show me one credible source that documents someone being labelled as a sex offender for having consentual sex with a younger girlfriend (and before someone bothers quoting statute, yes I am aware that there are laws against such things in most states; I'm asking for a instance where someone has been prosecuted and than placed on a sex offender registry solely for that crime).

I'll do you one better.

Prosecuted for posting nude pictures of her 15-year-old self. Charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography. I think the court's rationale was that they were prosecuting her on behalf of her older self, whose life she potentially ruined.

On his 62nd birthday December 20, 2007, Tancredo formally ended his candidacy for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, and endorsed Mitt Romney.

This isn't exactly correct, and I thought it might be helpful to clarify it.

With regard to the law, the version sent to the President for signature can be found here.

In fact, the law does not actually prohibit the sale of indcandescent bulbs by 2012. Rather, beginning in Section 312, the law sets efficiency standards, phasing in over time, that current incandescent bulbs cannot meet, but doesn't specify the type of bulb that should be used. Interestingly, it also includes the following provision in Section 321(h)(1) (found on page 95 of the document I linked to):

"REPORT ON MERCURY USE AND RELEASE.--Not later than
1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary,
in cooperation with the Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, shall submit to Congress a report describing
recommendations relating to the means by which the Federal
Government may reduce or prevent the release of mercury
during the manufacture, transportation, storage, or disposal
of light bulbs."

USA Today's story does a good job of summarizing this issue. {ProfJonathan}

Digital expenses represent an average of 11% of yearly revenue for the mostly big-market stations that have already made the transition. By contrast, the costs for stations in the 100 smallest markets, when they do go digital, will be about 242% of annual revenue.

Luckily for Montana's stations, the 2001 Legislature kicked in $1.9 million for the digital build-out, and both stations plan to meet the deadline with less-than-full-power transmissions.

Careful who you give
that saliva to...

The opposite, I guess. Treat the as act as what it is rather than what it might be or what it might lead to or what the person was thinking of when he did it. With the possible exception being that if there is an indication of a clear intent to be harmful, then the crime is more egregious. But there has to be a very high burden of proof of such a clear intent. The arguments of the type "what else could he be thinking" and "it is usually the case that people do it because..." do not establish such an intent. Even eyewitness testimony is not enough. Only a clear authenticated recorded communication would be. This goes both for murder and for sex.

Of course, child molestation is a crime regardless of circumstances. But if it's done by 2 12-year-olds, they should both go to some sort of juvenile jail (or possibly mental institution?). My evidence is anecdotal, but someone on slashdot mentioned that Germany has age of consent of 14 (yeah, I know... lousy source). I don't think Germans are quite a society that every one argues we would be if the age of consent was 14. So our arguments are probably bogus. And yes, it does mean that 2 13-year-old should at least receive therapy (well, a judge should have the power to compel them to do so) if the are found having sex. By 14 such an overwhelming population of people has had sex that to make it illegal seems arbitrary. By 15 HALF of the teenagers have had sex. Can you imagine that what half of people did by the time they were 15 would be illegal when they are 14? That's not a law -- that's a way to make the entire population into criminals at police's discretion. Oh, and I do have sources for this "half" statistic: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/child/2002-04-23-teen-sex.htm and http://www.childbirthsolutions.com/articles/pregnancy/teensex/index.php

Basically, there is no such thing as thought crime. This won't always be easier on perpetrators, btw. It will remove qualification "crime of passion" from murders of cheating lovers. Rather than examining whether people acted rationally when dealing with other people, the law can put the burden of demanding of everyone to act rationally. And not acting rationally would not be a crime in itself. If it lead to criminal behavior, then those crimes themselves would be treated without regard for the people's state of mind. Ie, "who gives a hoot about the motif?"

As for horny teenagers, it's just another drug war/prohibition/war on poverty... war on not thinking as "you should". Let it go. You can't save people from themselves. And when you try, too many innocent people get caught in the middle.

Ok, I guess now that I spent all this time laying it out, it's clear (to me at least) where this whole Meagan Law was shortsighted. If there are people who are sick enough that they can never be let out without some sort of supervision, they really must not be let out... I guess ever. I mean, the alternative is the current law which allows the police (if they so choose) to brand half of the population criminal enough that they must register where they live for the rest of their lives and expect to have their rights arbitrarily diminished at police's discretion. It's not so much a conspiracy theory (for one, I don't think the police has such resources) as a statement that in a society we purport to be such a scenario should not be even theoretically possible.

that this car maker takes serious actions on Monday/Friday car workers and the car will be a vintage collectible much sooner than any other makes on the market?

Ron Paul has about 104,000 donors. His donor-feed is at:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/webservices/REST/fundraiser?name=liberty

It's not clear to me [and I've searched a bit] if that number is total number of unique donors or total number of donations. Other articles touching on the subject are
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/us/politics/06paul.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/10/12/politics/horserace/entry3362383.shtml?CMP=OTC-RSSFeed&source=RSS&attr=Horserace_3362383

Now... has Ron Paul found the most donors? I don't think so. Barack Obama had 92,000 new contributors in the 3rd Quarter, and has had 350,000+ thus far
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-10-01-fundraising_N.htm

So in short, cut the crap. Regardless if you appreciate Ron Paul's unique perspectives or think he's a crazy foolish man, don't make things up. Use facts. The truth is out there ;), and in this case it makes it pretty clear that Ron Paul has not had more individual donors than any other candidate in the race.