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Hasn't it been shows that the CIA and possibly other DoD depts. have not only tried chemicals, and drugs on volunteers, but, also in public unknown to the public?

You people screech about tasers being over used, but i'm yet to see a single video of a cop using a taser on someone who didn't deserve it.

Perhaps you've ignored the recent news stories about students being tasered for declining to cooperate with misbehaving cops. (The one guy was assaulted by cops for not showing a library employee an ID, the other assaulted for hogging the mic at a Q&A after a Kerry speech.) Or perhaps you're such an fan of authoritarian behavior that you thought those students "deserved" to be tortured.

But it's not the job of a cop to decide that a person "deserves" to be punished by being tortured with potentially fatal electrical shock. In a free society, it's the job of a cop to stop behavior that is a threat to the rights or safety of others, using the minimum force necessary.

There are good cops out there. Most are not outstanding but are competent in ordinary situations. But there are all too many bad ones.

Most are undereducated for better jobs. In 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, recommended "that all police personnel with general enforcement powers have baccalaureate degrees," but very few forces have any requirement beyond a high school diploma. Less than five percent of large police forces require a four year degree.

(Of course, it's probably hard to find people who are educated, and yet will take a job where they are expected to put people in cages for drug possession, prostitution, and the like. Better laws would undoubtedly attract better candidates to enforce them.)

And most police are undertrained for the job they have. In some states only a few hundred hours of training are necessary.

Some are attracted by power rather than service. Many feel that they are entitled to mete out punishment (like the Baltimore cop who proudly told me how he punched a suspect who tried to run - not to subdue him, but "of course I popped him one for trying to get away.")

they aren't rounding up defensless fluffy bunnies you know. cops deal with people who would kill or maime them in the blink of an eye

Sometimes. Much more often they're arresting petty criminals guilty of non-violent drug crimes or minor property crimes. And often they're putting down political protest, whether that be one individual standing up for his rights or a group action.

Actually, music video budgets are shrinking.

I see where you are coming from. However, your analogy is not a fair comparison. You are most certainly not renting the iPhone. It is yours. By the very nature of rental agreement, you do not own anything at all. But by purchasing the iPhone, you have only exchanged money with the vendor in exchange for a piece of hardware. If you want to blend it, unlock it, or even use it with AT&T's rate plan, you can. There is no obligation to do anything with your phone. You could even use it as a paperweight after you've bought it.

But, just to play devil's advocate on your behalf, perhaps the analogy should be with a condo and a house. You do own a condo, but you are bound by certain agreements that limits your freedom. The logic behind these limitations is usually in order to foster a certain type of community for the all condo owners. In fact, Apple's own justification about limiting 3rd party development invokes a desire to avoid "gum[ming] up" the network:

But it's not like the walled garden has gone away. "You don't want your phone to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."

But I believe that's bullshit. Everybody and their brother is allowing development on their phones. Also, in line with this, the U.S. is virtually alone in the world with locked phones. For the beacon of capitalism in the world that the U.S. supposedly represents, we sure don't offer the myriad choices that demand and an free market would dictate must exist. I'm even more impatient with this crap, after living in Asia. I can get cheap, unlocked phones very easily here that will work both in the U.S. and all over the world. And the incentives built-in with providers isn't very convincing except for the most frugal buyer, or perhaps for the the very first-time buyer. Nope, this locking crap (both software and carrier) is for the birds.

So Steve Ballmer has at least two uncles. "But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune" http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ceo-forum-usat_N.htm

Here's a picture of one of the cameras.

Another bit of trivia, apparently some of these cameras cannot see directly below where they've been mounted. As a result, street dealers were simply standing directly underneath them. This may have been fixed in the newer models.

In response to California's threat to shut this project down, I need to comment on my experiences with the so-called "eco" state.

I was doing the Orange County to Encino commute daily for a summer clerkship and wanted a good mileage car. As a farm state kid fascinated with the idea of biodiesel, the car I settled on was the diesel Jetta. However, to my great amazement the diesels couldn't be purchased in California. This in spite of the fact that the diesels get better mileage than hybrids. I had to go to Vegas to buy my Jetta and my first tank was biodiesel. The hybrids were awarded with car pool lane status while my better mileage, (potentially) less polluting diesel was relegated to 2nd class status.

That was a separate story.

I could thing of a few other reasons to boycott.
Corruption has other ways of expressing itself...

water...
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2005-07-04-pollution-china-cover_x.htm
land....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6582571.stm
air...
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70107

effect of being there ... Oh hey they noticed... And you thought global warming a disaster... they could at least cut back on the cancer causing shit.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-04/16/content_434747.htm

So only Republicans attempt to deny people their vote? How about the sons of a Democrat Congresswoman and a Democrat Mayor slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans for their get out the vote effort? Oh... and triangulation? That was Dick Morris' technique for Bill Clinton, not a Republican idea. I'm also intrigued about this notion where Republicans suddenly control the police where large numbers of blacks live... those areas (known as cities) are almost always controlled by Democrats, on both the legislative and executive sides.

Maybe you need to check out some sites other than DailyKos and get out of Mom's basement to visit reality every now and then.

"America has never said it wants to attack, change the government and own another nation; we don't want more territory- we just want wars there to stop. It's maddening when we take part in a distant war (think Bosnia) where we bombed the Christians and worked for the Muslims, and then come home. But we're not about expansion-for-expansion's sake, many/most of the UN members cannot make such a claim."

You must have just woken up from your nap that started around 1965 when the US got heavily involved in Vietnam after faking the Gulf of Tonkin incident (and after all was told the whole fucking mess lead to some 2 million dead civillians and 50'000 dead Americans) right through 2003, when a certain country's politicians lied to everybody about another, smaller country having big bombs, germs and shit, and invaded that smaller country, which has, up until now, and it hasn't stopped yet, resulted in about 70'000 dead civillians and 3500 dead Americans.

Wake up. It's no longer 1945, and the English have finished paying off their war debts to you. (which went up until right until 2006). Perhaps today is a good day to realise that the world has changed, and that your image of the world is seriously out of wack.

Well the main reason is the consumer's willingness to pay.

True.

But record labels also need to recoup their investments and one "successful" artist has to pay for many "unsucceful" artists.

False. Lets not describe their wholesale corruption with anything so nice as "recouping their investments". These people are thieves; with everything from illegal payola and artists contracts to massive overcharging for technical services and "lost" royalties. They lie about royalties, they lie about production costs, they lie about how much they assist the artist and they lie about how heavily the "successful" artists subsidize the unsuccessful artists.

Just like hollywood accountants they claim to be losing money on most artists but basically, just like spammers, they never stop lying. Any claims like you've just made about unsuccessful artists being subsidized should be ignored unless there's exceptionally strong evidence proving the claims.

---

It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?

Errmm... Good points right up to the last sentence. The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons sent to Iraq.

IMO, Americans could do with far more such selflessness these days.

Actually 70% of American households give at least $1800 per year, that is more than most countries.
http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/May/10-36789.html

According to this USA Today article Americans give more than twice of the next most charitable country.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-25-charitable_N.htm

Maybe EVERYONE could do with far more selflessness...

No one would ever deploy an off-grid (i.e. battery backed) system and expect it to make financial or other sense. The only reason to deploy such a system is if you have no way to connect your site to the grid.

You're partially but not compleatly right. It can cost a builder tens of thousands of dollars to have the power company a couple of thousand feet:

"In nearby Marlboro, Sunny and Nat Tappan live in an older-style off-grid home, about 2 1/2 miles up a hill off a dirt road on an isolated 90-acre tract. The rustic, timber-frame house, which sits next to a pasture with sheep and chickens, has a composting toilet and no running water (they have a well). Sunny and her former husband bought the property 18 years ago and spent a few thousand dollars on a solar power system. Connecting to the power grid would have cost $80,000, but Sunny, 53, had no interest anyway."

You're the second person to talk about Deep Cycle batteries but seemingly only read the name. If you follow even the wikipedia link you will find it saying they can be discharged up to 80% for several cycles, but the reality is you don't want to routinely discharge them that deep. They will deliver far more watt hours discharged to only 50% or less.

"Deep cycle batteries are designed to be discharged down as much as 80% time after time, and have much thicker plates."

As for the payback period (not sure why a link to wikipedia here)

The link to the wiki article wasn't about the payback period. If you had read it you would have seen it was about ROI, Return on Invest, which is what the text for the link was. Not everyone knows what ROI is and for those who don't I included a link to a wiki article explaining what it is.

even grid-tie solar panel systems never pay for themselves

I said nothing about grid tied systems in the post you replied to, but I did specifically mention about "off the grid" systems. Most of those who do build off the grid install a solar, wind, or hybrid system specifically because it does cost less. To have the power company install cabling just a few thousand feet can cost more than $10,000. You either pay that plus a months power bill or you use the money to buy and build a solar system then you're free of having to pay until it or parts of it are replaced. All it requires is a little maintenance.

"Since the house is about 1,200 ft from the Arizona Public Service grid, it qualified for utility service, although connection would have cost about $5,700."

"Sunny and her former husband bought the property 18 years ago and spent a few thousand dollars on a solar power system. Connecting to the power grid would have cost $80,000, but Sunny, 53, had no interest anyway."

Apple wants GSM because it's an international standard and they don't want multiple versions of the iPhone for different countries.

The student was allowed to say what he wanted to say, he was not blocked from speaking up at all. In fact he was allowed to keep saying what he wanted to say long after he had broken the rules of the debate (and a Florida law, but that's less important).

In a true police state he would never have been allowed to speak at all. America is not a police state.

In a true police state, he would have been turned away before he had entered if his true intentions were known, or carried away at the doors if he didn't comply with the "go away" request. Oh, wait - this has already been going on around here. Isolated examples - the President has already declared that he doesn't want to see or hear dissent.

The difference between "free country" and "police state" is a continuum, not a line, and such a state can be enforced by simple threat, if not overt action.

Funny how most of the people who say that the US is a police state are Americans who've never actually been to or met anyone who has lived in a real police states.

You're totally right. Those other repressive regimes operate secret prisons where people are whisked away without being formally charged and then they're tortured for supposed information. Nobody even knows how many of those prisons exist or how many prisoners are in them. And then their own government completely monitors all their 'private' communications without warrants or any reasonable cause to suspect them of wrong-doing.

Fortunately, we've got a constitution that protects Americans from living under such a 'police state.'

Seth

From the sidebar of the very article you link:

AT&T will unlock phones for customers once they have fulfilled their contracts, which typically run one to two years. One big exception: Apple's iPhone, distributed exclusively in the USA by AT&T. "That's different," says AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.

For how the iPhone is "different", see here.

• Once a contract has been fulfilled, Cicconi says AT&T will "gladly unlock" a customer's phone, if requested

USA infant mortality rate is the worst in the western world because you do not have socialized medicine. This means many poor people have very poor pre and post natal care, do not get good information on how to care for themselves while pregnant, and can only afford the bare minimum care. For more info USA Today article on USA Infant Mortality rates and obesity.

You're not going to get a better buy than the Falcons, so better hope that they work and SpaceX doesn't go belly-up ;)

Although it's possible SpaceX will go belly up, I seriously doubt it will, the only way I can this happening is if they can't deliver. If it were then Richard Branson wouldn't be investing or putting in orders for any SpaceShipOnes so he could offer flights to space tourists. His Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to its first 150 passengers for $200,000 each. They have collected more than $15 million in deposits.

Counter intuitive as it may be, DVR viewers actually push ad ratings up. At least according to Nielsens data.

See http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/01/162624 5
and the article it references: http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2007-06-01-nie lsens-usat_N.htm

AMMO!

For those unfamiliar with Air Force traditions, IYAAYAS stands for If You Ain't Ammo, You Ain't Shit

Members of Air Force munitions squadrons, responsible for the storage, handling, and loading of weapons on USAF aircraft, are a notoriously independent bunch. Except when transporting and loading weapons on aircraft, they live in their own tightly guarded compounds (REALLY tight if storing nukes). Some say this is to limit access to the weapons, but many in the Air Force believe it's to limit exposure to the "special" breed of troop that spends his days counting BBs. This seclusion has given them their own separate identity, which they proudly proclaim with the above acronym as well as shouting AMMO! in unison whenever their squadron is mentioned.

Something tells we won't be hearing AMMO! yelled around Minot AFB for a while. . .

Here ya go: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97063,00.html

Perhaps everyone you've ever met doesn't fall into this 70% of all Americans: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm

It is not illegal. This is a better article http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-09-16-cle ancar_x.htm/

There's only one Shaolin temple, even though the Songshan region is home to numerous martial arts training schools which use the name of "Shaolin." The Shaolin temple has recently taken legal action against such schools in order to preserve the integrity of its name and heritage. See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/2002-09-25-kung-fu-t rademark_x.htm

That doesn't cover shuttle costs either, which are a lot higher, at around $20,000 per pound. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-02-04-shu ttle-critics_x.htm

Doesn't look to good in comparison to the expendables.

The outlook for solar, though, is getting much brighter. A few dozen companies say advances in technology will let them halve the price of solar-panel installations in as little as three years. By 2014, solar-system prices will be competitive with conventional electricity when energy savings are figured in, Deutsche Bank (DB) says. And that's without government incentives.

Hardly, given the crop of craptacular Republican candidates.

Craptacular Rebs., Craptacular Dems. It's a fairly even race given that (once again) we have a 'lesser of two evils' election coming. The only real point is that politics are far outside the mainstream desire. There's very little politicians that represent what the majority of American's want, which is why we'll probably be arguing who really won the next presidential election.

What scares me? The group of people that feel government should have more power and tax us all to hell because "the government knows how to spend our money better than we do". The whole "tax and spend" crowd is just ridiculous. Sadly, Republicans are spending like Democrats and Democrats are spending more than Republicans.

What else scares me? Those that feel they need to force their beliefs on others, be it religious or otherwise. The government should not be poking their nose in personal affairs such as trying to ban gay marriage. Let gay people live their lives. It's none of your business. Likewise, don't give me this bullshit fois gras ban or trans fats. There might be some backwards merit in it, but tell me what I can or cannot eat. As far as I'm concerned, they're all the same. It's far better to educate people to trans-fats, heck, require it to be more obvious what is/is not good for you. Educate the people, don't force it down their throats.

American's don't need national health care, like Billory thinks. We need to CHEAPER health care. The Gov. needs to regulate the oligopoly of health care and their costs. A good way to start is to increase competition. These 'convenient care' health centers that are popping up in Wal-Greens and Wal-Marts are a step in the right direction. Cheap, fast, and professional health care centers. Sure, you're not going to get surgery there, but for the common cold, check-ups, rashes, etc. (you know the majority of health care needs), it's a great thing. How much will insurance cost/cover if your doctor visit only costs $30 instead of $300 for 10mins of care?

You might be following me now. It's all party lines, it's all politics. There needs to be a lighting bolt 3rd party candidate that can play to both sides and show what Americans are really feeling. Not just the extreme right and left isles.

Most of their shareholders support GWB

I remember ads for plans for that in the back of Popular Science back in the day, next to all the plans for home built helicopters and hovercraft and so forth. Back then it seemed so cool... although now, I don't see how a 5hp lawnmower motor could power a car at highway speed. A normal car needs around 15kW to cruise at highway speeds. An efficient alternator will run at 75% efficiency or so, good engine controls are, say, 85% efficient, and a DC motor is again around 80%. All up, you would need around 40 BHP to cruise at highway speed in a series hybrid powered solely by the fuel engine.

Of course, series hybrids excel at stop-go traffic, and the 5hp generator is probably perfect for rush hour driving. But still, it wouldn't do much at all to extend the battery range when cruising. In terms of efficiency, you're much better having the engine directly connected to the wheels, for example see the Insight (an efficient ICE with electric boost). The Prius's swanky Synergy drive system allows direct drive by the ICE via a CVT, too. You can even do away with the hybrid aspect altogether and just use a small, efficient ICE, as the Lupo, which uses around 3 liters per 100km. Obviously, though, it's unsuitable for US consumption because it's not big, loud, or fast enough.

you can't just make it *look* like you've changed your spots. You actually have to change your behavior, and regaining credibility takes a lot longer than destroying it does.

Only to people who pay attention.

You noticed this because it's tech. You don't notice most of the thousands of times it happens elsewhere.

How thorough do these surveys have to be to finally declare a species extinct? I mean, there's a lot of water, isn't there? I mean, I know this isn't the middle of the ocean, but I'm sure there's a lot of space to cover. Logically speaking, to confidently say something is extinct, wouldn't that require a proof of exhaustion. Literally just checking every possible place and not finding any evidence of the animal. I mean, if they haven't checked everywhere, I don't think they should be saying 'extinct' just yet. If this guy is saying there's hope based on the amount of area they haven't checked, I'm guessing that means its a large area. I think its a bit premature. It's not like there haven't been premature announcements of extinction on species before: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/28/woodpec ker/index.html and http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2 006-03-09-rat-squirrel-survivor_x.htm

The height of the dust bowl. Drought. Pestilence. Ecological disaster. Glad everything is back to normal now.

Nobody designs species, nobody ever has.

If we are not 100% there, we are coming very close

"If their lives depended on it (I take it you're assuming that the failure to form the U.S. as we know it would have threatened their lives; I'm not quite sure how"

-and you are correct, a bit blurry when I posted that. The Declaration of Independance was basically the death warrant, not the CC. However, everyone's personal wealth and future prospects for power were in play. Granted, not even close to being the same.

While I reject your polling numbers as applicable to this debate (apples/oranges), if you simply compared population centers (specifically # of registered voters) my point becomes clearer. Here's the county-by-county results for 2000 and 2004 in simple blue-red maps: http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm & http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/countymap.htm.

48 of 50 states (if I remember correctly) have a winner-take-all allocation of EC votes - i.e. you win the majority in a state you get all the EC votes for that state. However, if all states allocated it's EC votes proportionally to the number of votes won you'd have essentially the same thing as a national popular vote. Looking at those two maps relative to county population it's pretty clear Gore or Kerry could have concentrated their resources and tailored their promises to a small portion of the country and won handily under a popular vote system.

"If their lives depended on it (I take it you're assuming that the failure to form the U.S. as we know it would have threatened their lives; I'm not quite sure how"

-and you are correct, a bit blurry when I posted that. The Declaration of Independance was basically the death warrant, not the CC. However, everyone's personal wealth and future prospects for power were in play. Granted, not even close to being the same.

While I reject your polling numbers as applicable to this debate (apples/oranges), if you simply compared population centers (specifically # of registered voters) my point becomes clearer. Here's the county-by-county results for 2000 and 2004 in simple blue-red maps: http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm & http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/countymap.htm.

48 of 50 states (if I remember correctly) have a winner-take-all allocation of EC votes - i.e. you win the majority in a state you get all the EC votes for that state. However, if all states allocated it's EC votes proportionally to the number of votes won you'd have essentially the same thing as a national popular vote. Looking at those two maps relative to county population it's pretty clear Gore or Kerry could have concentrated their resources and tailored their promises to a small portion of the country and won handily under a popular vote system.

- At the moment, the US spends $50 per person per year on education.
- Besides, it's pretty well established that people will do more productive work on a 35-hour week than a 40+-hour one.

I don't suppose you'd care to cite any sources to back up those claims, especially regarding education. 5 minutes on Google brought me to a very different (though slightly dated) per-student spending figure.

Direct democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner. I imagine the civil rights movement would have ended very differently if the issue had been settled by referendum.

$740 million? That's like 4.2 days of the Iraq war!
($177M/day for Iraq http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nat ion/president/2004-08-26-iraq-war-clock_x.htm

That sounds like a big number, and is for most of us, but not for the Federal government. About 29 cents more in taxes off each paycheck (assuming 100 M taxpayers, and paychecks every 2 weeks).

There are much bigger fish to fry.

Also, there is only so much one can cut the energy use, and thus that cost down, and still get the business of the government done. And the improvements in efficiency will require hardware, software, and personnel which have their own costs. Eventually you will hit a point where there is no longer a return on investment to make it worthwhile.

They also tried to bring Muslims into a NASCAR race with cameras to get a reaction once. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006- 04-06-dateline_x.htm http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/headlines/cup/04/0 6/nbc.dateline/index.html

That depends on whether they're in the USA or not. If you're in the USA, enjoy your stay at the Gitmo Hilton. If you're not, well, you might not be bothered at all, but don't fly to the USA.