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For whatever it is worth: Phone Rental Story

Why didn't a comment saying that Comcast, the cable co, is actually paying Tivo to port their front end to their provided set-top box?
Its older news, and they're certainly taking their time rolling it out, but it does rather negate the article's main argument

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-03-14-tivo- usat_x.htm

In which case I believe that you are a little bit paranoid. Do you use a credit card? They can trace your movements based on your expenses. Do you own property or pay taxes? Guess how much information those two facts give to the 'system'. Do you have a passport? Gosh, they could use that to track your movements across national boundaries.

I'm sure the parent understands this who doesn't? Obviously we as citizens reasonably want to limit the government's ability to track us, and no one ought to apologize for that. And obviously we are willing to be trackable where we gain some in return, a creature comfort or government service. It's tug of war game, and every attempt by the government to increase its monitoring ought to be resisted, at least in civil protest if not through litigation. It's not a made-up problem, it's the way we preserve our rights by keeping the line in the sand from being redrawn over and over again until we've lost a right that no real patriot would argue is trivial. However...

This is a minor issue. The potential abuse is really nothing that will harm individual privacy rights anymore than having publically viewable license plates does. The scanner is merely a mechanism that adds automation to a manual process that has long been performed openly by police all across the country. Whenever a cop responds to a matter any matter, the cop will be sure to perform basic checks for such things as warrants or stolen vehicle reports. The ACLU rep thinks the scanning is a civil rights violation? But why? It wasn't a violation when a cop had to identify a plate with his eye and then manually query it. The only thing that has changed is the efficiency of the process and the effective viewing range of the cop's "eye".

I didn't find a specific reference to this issue at the Ohio ACLU page referenced at the bottom of the article, so I am thinking ACLU's response was more of an informal show of concern than a formal protest that would be newsworthy. I did find this 2004 article. It seems related, and it suggests that the ACLU knew about the scanner's use back in 2004, and then only expressed concern over potential abuses. Again, not really a formal protest. Ergo, acknowledge and move on.

Changing the price per credit does not affect the enrollment cap. Major universities in the US already have 3-10 applicants for every available slot.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-11-02- collegerates_x.htm

The IBM worker homepage links to this article. Basically, it's due to the fact that IBM uses tools like Secondlife to conduct business. A lot of us use virtual offices anyway, and the guides for IM, et. Al are out there already: what's the difference really? In the scope of things: if you represent the company, you are (if you value your job) liable to uphold the ethics and code you agreed to. So if you use the same avatar for both work and play, you're just courting trouble.

I'm not trying to convince these Republican diehards. There's not point, but maybe later they'll eventually have enough and have had the facts put before them. I do it because it's fun. And because many others reading can get something out of it. Either the facts or the logic, or just seeing someone stand up to these finks who've bullied around our country for so long.

Now, I don't know which of my stuff you've liked, or disliked, but there's no accounting for taste. Especially when you reveal your taste in debate is soured by facts you can't accept, so you reject them as if I made them up - when I didn't.

My debating methods are far from "amateur". I've made plenty of money, and had plenty of fun getting ahead, debating people into surrender, and convincing the people with the power to reward me, follow me, or just laugh along with me. You might not get it, but I'm from NYC, and showing someone they're wrong is our national pasttime.

Like that clown I just screwed into the ground that you're clearly responding to. They didn't even bother to deny they get their news from Fox. Of course they do. And they tried to deny they're Republican, even in the same post they admitted they were. They didn't bother admitting they never go outside into reality, either. I'm doing them a favor confronting their major malfunctions. Which are written all over their posts: Today's Republicans are such a zombie army that it's usually easy to ID them when they poke their snouts outside their mother's TV room. Not always, because of course people do wrong things like vote Republican for all kinds of personal wrong reasons, but I'm so used to nailing them that I do it without thinking too hard, and am rarely wrong.

Are you really serious about criticizing my telling them to go outside? It's such a silly point to argue, especially when going outside is exactly what these reality deprived, faithy serfs usually need most.

But then there's all you're wrong about: the report about the Qaeda returning to its 2001 strength comes from the official National Intelligence Estimate. The 2000 election's "margin of error" was dwarfed by the thousands of votes stolen in Florida and other states. And I don't have OCD, I just have time and energy to spank fools in public.

So I have no interest in learning about how to debate from you. You're someone who's trying to persuade me of something by calling me names, calling me a liar, and getting everything wrong, including basic facts. In fact, if I'm annoying someone with your low quality of debating skills, I'm probably doing something right.

Run along and play outside, now.

Africa has 200 million cellphone users (about the same as the number of US cell phone users, and 10x the number of fixed phone lines in Africa). To me that seems like the obvious answer for last mile connectivity. Some might hook those phones up to computers with bluetooth, but maybe they should just skip that step and use smartphones without computers. Already Africa is using cellphones to increase productivity, such as cell phone banking.

Nothing gives a person ethics like being well paid for it.

Yes, because that has held to be so true in the arena of smokable drugs.

Google is spending a ton of money working on exactly that.

Yeah - but I was thinking of something beyond keyword or proximity search. Something, er, semantic. But actually semantic, not like the semantic web. Something that could spot correlations across complex documents or organize the information beyond a top 10 list of hits or actually answer questions. While useful, keyword search hardly provides the rich semantic environment needed to organize the world's information.

I'm sure Google is working on this as well as many dozens of other companies (like Endeca). (See http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/cnet/2007-06 -29-endece-google_N.htm/)

Your response is shortsighted, ignorant, and miserly. Private healthcare insurance is too exhorbitant to be compared to trifling luxuries like cable television or private transportation. Yet, that is the only option for Americans.

We have two 7-11s and three Dunkin Donuts in our five square mile Springfield, New Jersey. The only true Springfield if you ask me... http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-conte st.htm

One of my earliest mentors in OSS, Perl hacking, and the guy who tuyrned me onto Slashdot, etc. owns the domain spfld.com. His name is (FOR REAL) Apu and he has (FOR REAL) a brother named Sanjay, he lives in (FOR REAL) Springfield, NJ not far from the (FOR REAL) Kwik-Stop convenience store. Yes, it is in fact destiny!
He's a great human being, volunteering his time as a Rescue Squad Captain, donating his talents to schools and such and was even a volunteer at 9/11 - truly a guy who deserves a helping hand from us! Anyway, there's a contest open to all the Springfields in the US and I'm wondering if fellow dotters could help my buddy out? Here's his email below:
Hi,
You may have heard that the Simpson's Movie is coming out this summer. It will open nationwide on July 27th. But, on July 26th, the movie will premiere in Springfield.
Fox invited 14 of the 71 Springfields from across the U.S. to compete to be the one that hosts the premiere. And, yes, because we are the only true Springfield, we are going to win (with your help). Please vote - early and often - and then get your friends and family and their friends and family to vote too.... Springfield, New Jersey!
The contest site: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-conte st.htm
Media coverage of our entry: http://www.spfld.com/spfld.html#Simpsons
"Thank you. Come again."
-- Apu http://www.spfld.com/
--------------------
Thanks for reading and hope you'll vote for the REAL Apu in the REAL Sprignfield !

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporat enews/2007-06-28-jobs-stephenson-qa_N.htm is another interview with the two of them, which includes this gem:

Randall Stephenson: We use this term a lot at AT&T--we think the iPhone is a "game changer" in our industry. It will change how people think about these handsets.

Um... Randall? If you're using the term 'game changer' a lot, that probably means you don't know what a game-changer is. If they were all over, they would just be the game.

> If I were running an AT&T competitor right now I would be wondering why Jobs didn't approach me with this opportunity and what I could do to earn his approval. I wouldn't want to be left behind

Unless, of course, you're Verizon who had the balls to stand up to Apple. Right decision in the end or not, at least they stood up for their business.

If someone came to you and said:

1) We want you to agree to sell our product, sight unseen.
2) You have to cut all of your partners out of it.
3) We will tell you whether the phone can be replaced if a customer has a problem.
4) We want a percentage of service revenue.

- does that sound like a good business decision to you? You're going to alienate all of your other partners (i.e. Best buy, Walmart, etc..) You're going to alienate your customers (Sorry, we'd love to replace your handset Mr. Big-Important-VIP-Customer, but Apple said no. Can't help you.), and worst of all, you open the door for *EVERYONE* to take a piece of your service revenue - why wouldn't Motorola/LG/Samsung/etc. ask for the same deal? (You did it for Apple - either split revenue with us, or no RAZR2 for you.)

I agree - I think it would've kicked butt if VZW had the iPhone. A real 3G network (EV-DO) would complement iPhone wonderfully, as would a real voice network (GSM quality is crap. CDMA not only covers more area per tower, but it has a better vocoder as well.)

But can you blame them for turning it down? I would have, given the way Apple approached them.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-veriz on-iphone_x.htm

"...by the rate their military spending is going it wont be long before they actually out pace us [if not already]..."

That turns out not to be the case. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-11-mili tary-report_n.htm

Note that the USA spent about $529 billion on armaments in 2006, whereas China spent nearly $50 billion - maybe 9 percent as much, 9.5 percent at most. When you bear in mind that China has about four times as many people as the USA, the disparity becomes even more glaring. At least the USA no longer spends more on arms than the rest of the world combined. In 2006 it contributed a mere 46% of the world total.

As one reader of US Today's article ("The Mick") points out: "The United States spends $40 per person on defense for every $1 China does. I don't see why China's spending is such a big deal particularly because it not only has a large land mass to defend, but it borders on near-lawless Afghanistan and a few near-lawless former members of the Soviet Union".

"I think you would be VERY hard pressed to find a parent who wouldn't go for a cure if it were available." I call bullshit. Try http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-07-23-tra nfusion-jw_x.htm . While not a cure, it is a life-saving treatment that was refused by a Jehovah's parent for a 12 year old boy! This happens a bit, which is why custody can be rapidly taken from parents when needed.

David Pogue, New York Times

- "so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese."
- After walking around with the iPhone unprotected for 2 weeks, no marks on it. Glass smudges are easily wiped off.
- 700 megabytes is occupied by the phone's software
- Making calls can be a 6 step process if phone is off.
- Web, Email is superior
- Battery Life Test: 5 hours video, 23 hours audio. Note: did not turn off Wi-Fi and other features as Apple suggests.
- Typing was OK. Difficult at first, but learned to "trust" the keyboard. "The BlackBerry won't be going away anytime soon."
- Cites AT&T network as iPhone's biggest downfall. Cites Consumer Reports survey which ranks AT&T network as last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major US cities.
- AT&T's EDGE cellular network: "excruciatingly slow"
- Slideshow of photos taken with iPhone
- Video Review

Steven Levy, Newsweek

- bottom line is that the iPhone is a significant leap
- The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge.
- e-mail looks more like you're working on a computer than a clunky phone
- YouTube videos work great on Wi-Fi, but can display in a lower quality when you're not at a hotspot and are using AT&T's EDGE network
- unless I did a lot of video watching or Web browsing, [the battery] could generally last the day
- I've been jamming it in my pocket with keyrings, coins and pens, and so far it's nearly as good as new.

Edward Baig, USA Today

- Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype
- The revelation is that it's also comfortable to hold and touch.
- I expected to miss the tactile feel that a physical keyboard provides. I didn't.
- You can hold a conference call with up to five people.
- No voice recognition or voice dialing
- halfway decent internal speakers for listening if you set the thing down
- iPod games are not compatible with iPhone
- our company tech department raised questions about the security settings Apple required with our Microsoft Exchange servers.
- Battery life didn't prove to be a big problem in my unscientific tests

Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal (the submitted article's highlights):

- Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.
- largest, highest resolution screen of any smart phone they've seen, most internal memory
- Impressive battery life and thin
- Feels solid
- Regarding the touch keyboard: "After five days of use, Walt -- who did most of the testing for this review -- was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years."
- Can't use T-Mobile SIM cards
- Wi-Fi capability doesn't fully make up for the lack of a fast cellular data capability
- Multitouch: "effective, practical and fun"
- No way to copy/paste text
- Microsoft's Exchange system support
- Voice call quality was good, but not great
- Can't record video
- No Adobe Flash support
- Songs can't be set as ringtones
- Apple says it plans to add fea

Are you daft? Flash memory is faster than a hard drive. You obviously don't know crap.

I believe you're thinking of RAM memory. Flash memory is slow. But I'm daft... perhaps we should ask USA Today ... they certainly would know far more about the topic than a software programmer. <sarcasm />

Flash does slow down the transfer process a bit compared with hard-drive-based iPods. Apple says you can transfer about one song per second with the Nano, vs. two songs per second with the bigger iPods.

. . . seen a college classroom lately?

Affluence? My students whine about buying the textbook, but they're out in the hall before class playing a PSP. They always ask strange questions "outside the . . . scope" of the lesson. Contact with military officials - do the army recruiters constantly parked outside the main entrance to campus count? As for unexplained absences, well I'm usually suspicious of the one that have extensive explanations for missing labs and exams.

All kidding aside, I'm in that classroom for one thing: to educate my students. If the FBI needs someone to do their job for them, then can call in the Geek Squad http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-09-for t-dix-clerk_N.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2 007-06-20-at&t-iphone-push_N.htm

Also, there's a USA Today article on iPhone today with the first new information from AT&T on the launch (even though it's not much):

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2 007-06-20-at&t-iphone-push_N.htm

AT&T girds for iPhone launch on June 29
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

For consumers eager to get their hands on an Apple iPhone, here's the good news: It will be available in all 1,800 AT&T phone stores at 6 p.m. sharp on June 29.

The bad news? "We fully expect one or more of our stores to run out of stock on the first or second day -- my guess is the first day," says Larry Carter, senior vice president of sales for AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. distributor.

To help accommodate as much foot traffic as possible, AT&T phone stores will stay open an extra hour -- until 10 p.m. -- on the first day.

To get "iReady" for the big day, Carter says AT&T added 2,000 extra sales people to stores. Half will be there just to help handle the expected early crush of buyers. The other half, he says, will stay long-term to help with extra customers the iPhone is expected to draw to AT&T's stores.

Crowd control on launch day is a concern. In some markets -- Carter declined to name them -- AT&T is working with local law enforcement on crowd-control plans. It also has alerted landlords at shopping malls and other phone store locations to make sure nobody is caught off guard.

Not all stores are equal

Carter would not say which stores will have the biggest iPhone stockpiles, but allowed that iPod users are a "natural market" for the smart phone. As such, he says, stores in areas with big numbers of iPod users -- such as New York City, Chicago and much of California -- will be well stocked.

Does that mean that those stores will have more iPhones than stores in, say, Richmond, Va., or Florida? "Yes," he says. "It's just common sense."

If your local store sells out, Carter says sales people will take mail orders, and devices will be shipped in 3 to 5 days, inventory permitting. "Ultimately, we will meet every customer's desire to have one," Carter says.

To discourage sCalpers, AT&T plans to limit how many phones each customer can buy. Carter declined to cite the number, saying only that AT&T would try to prevent "hoarding and reselling."

New service plans for iPhone

There are other surprises in the works for June 29. In addition to launching the iPhone that day, Carter says AT&T also will announce new service plans for it.

He declined to be specific, but says plans will be customized for the iPhone. Translation: The iPhone may offer cool features such as unlimited Web browsing, but you'll have to pay for them.

Carter says the additional fees shouldn't be a surprise. "Regardless of which device you're using today, you pay us a certain amount for (voice) minutes, and you also pay us for data units," he says. "That is also true on the iPhone."

No amount of planning will help, however, if Apple is unable to supply enough phones. "That's what we stay awake at night thinking about," Carter says.

It's also out of AT&T's control. Manufacturing is being overseen by Apple, which also maintains control of design, customer care (for the device, not monthly service), advertising and more.

Apple, famously secretive about its products, has been mum about its Apple Store sales plans. So far, it has not allowed AT&T sales staff access to iPhones so they can get comfortable using them before the big day. "Apple wanted to launch it that way," Carter shrugs.

Only as good as network

One thing AT&T does control, however, is the network on which the iPhone will depend. While network reliability might not have the sex appeal of an iPhone, it could spell the difference between the device becoming a runaway success -- or a flop.

Some guy in I think Toronto doing this...

"Higher-than-expected tax receipts and the steadily growing economy have combined to produce an improved picture for the federal budget deficit, congressional analysts said yesterday." - Federal budget deficit expected to shrink 7/8/2005

"The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 totals $42.2 billion, down 57.2% from the same period a year ago." - Federal deficit shrinks due to record tax collections
2/12/2007

"The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago." - Federal Deficit Continues To Drop 6/12/2007

Of course the fact that the budget deficit is shrinking as revenues go up doesn't fit very well with people's argument that the tax cuts should be rescinded, so they put their fingers in their ears and keep claiming otherwise...

The economy is booming. The Federal government is making more money than it's ever made before. When you let people keep their money, they use it to make more money. If not for them, then for someone else.

most of the hysteria is based on Gore's little movie, which is based on BAD science that can never pass peer review.

Maybe you missed the story about how all the climate scientists who saw it praised its accuracy.

The German-made computers are highly sensitive to slight fluctuations in the voltage of their power supply, and engineers thought the power from the new solar panels might be delivering "noisy" electricity that would trigger a shutdown. But tests done late Thursday and early Friday showed the power from the solar panels is high-quality, Suffredini said. He said even when the computers were disconnected entirely from the new solar panels, the computers did not come back online.

The computers are dead, not half alive as previously reported.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-06 -15-spacewalk-three_N.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2007-05-21-a t&t-iphone_N.htm read that link

"(Democratic fools in Florida accepted the illegal butterfly ballot proposed by Republicans instead of demanding they obey the law.)"

What about the butterfly ballot was illegal in 2000? It seems that since the local Democrat party controlled the elections board and selected the ballot, whining about it "letting Bush win" after the fact is the height of sour grapes.

If you really want to talk about illegal actions, look at Frank Lautenberg's placement on the New Jersey ballot for Senator in 2002 -- well after the deadline had expired. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/200 2-10-01-lautenberg_x.htm

Get over it.

The outrage over the "illegal" ballot in Florida provided a lot of the momentum for the HAVA legislation, putting us into this mess of electronic machines in the first place.

Fix the electronic machines we've already spent a fortune on. Adding paper trails is the first (and most necesary) step.

The article was not specific enough. There is an AP article that has more details.

The Vista operating system, which became widely available in January, includes a desktop search function that competes with a free program Google introduced in 2004. Several other companies also offer desktop search applications.

Besides bogging down competing programs, Google alleged Microsoft had made it too complicated to turn off the desktop search feature built into Vista.

With its allegations, Google hopes to show that Microsoft isn't complying with a 2002 settlement of an antitrust case that concluded the world's largest software maker had leveraged the Windows operating system to throttle competition.

The consent decree requires Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft to ensure its rivals can build products that run smoothly on Windows -- something that Google says isn't happening.

"The search boxes built throughout Vista are hard-wired to Microsoft's own desktop search product, with no way for users to choose an alternate provider," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said in a statement issued Monday.

In a way, Google's complaint mirrors that of Netscape but instead of browsers, it's search applications.

Well, like I say you can believe what you want to believe. However, what did Americans believe? Well:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm/

[Michael Moore mode]Why did nearly 70% of Americans believe there was a link, with no evidence of one? Could it have to do with nearly every speech for the past two years alternating between Iraq and terrorism? Why did the Whitehouse not attempt to correct people's mistaken beliefs? Could it have to do with what the Whitehouse would have to gain from people believing it?[/Michael Moore mode]

Anyhow, I'm done.

If so many US citizens are aware of this bullshit going on in their country, why is nothing done?

Only 53% of them believe evolution, that's why.

If that poll doesn't send shivers down your spine, I don't know what could. 53% don't care if their president doesn't believe in evolution. 53%. 53% are basically saying: scientific method = garbage. 53%.

66% believe that God created humans in the last 10,000 years. 66%. Unreal.

It's mind boggling.

Well FFXII isnt exclusive to the PS3, nor will GTAIV be (it will come out for the 360). Microsoft doesnt have a chance in hell of buying Square Enix, Japan has strange laws and regulations on foreign companies trying to buy in, and the fact the games companies there are really intertwined and all own shares in each other, its a kinda, if they want to buy one of us out, they will have to buy us all attitude.

What sony has, is its name (Playstation), I was in a GAME the other week some construction worker was there, said something along the lines of 'I want to get a Playstation because I never really liked the Xbox'. Once the price of the PS3 comes down, the un-vocal fanboys will start buying it up from Fortress U.K and Japan (biggest Sony markets per head of population), U.K is one of the few countries where the PSP outsells the DS.

Blu-ray winning the format war is unlikly me thinks, currently they are outselling HD-DVD (from anothe persons comment) but when the consummers (espically US) realise there is no pornography on Blu-ray http://www.google.com/search?q=sony%20pornography% 20blu-ray, you just can't say no to basically one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world: http://www.blazinggrace.org/pornstatistics.htm (nice stats weird site, soul warping effects of masturbation anyone?) and according to http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-01-0 5-dvd-sales-inside_x.htm the total revunue for home video is 24.5 billion according to the blazinggrace porn video sales and rentals is 3.62 billion thats almost 15% of the market, but it is also more than that. You can watch porn and other films in HD with HD-DVD or just normal films with Blu-ray, which one will the consume choose? (Sounds like betamax to me). The only thing this doesnt take into account is the Internet, but will you be able to resist a 50" closeup of a mans errect penis in High Def?

I know I can, but can you?

Apparently Apple talked to Verizon, and your thought was exactly right - they couldn't agree with Apple's terms.

Verizon didn't go for the deal Apple was looking for.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-veriz on-iphone_x.htm

I don't know if I'd want an iPhone. I went for the LG9800 aka "The V" phone from Verizon as it was supposed to be their high-end gadget. It's a freakin POS. Terrible camera, short battery life, can't use standard headphnes to listen to music, mediocre phone, can't bluetooth pix I've taken to other phones like my roommate's phone can, and it drops calls very frequently at home. Roommates claim their phones work fine at home. I dont' use it for an mp3 player as my iPod Nano is much better for that with much larger capacity, but the 9800 seemed acceptable the couple songs I tried out for kicks. But it leaves me uninterested in expensive combo phones that don't do anything particularly well. I'll wait for some user reviews before I try to care. My next phone will be bought based on signal reception and battery life. But as Verizon reps can't/won't talk to me about what phones have better antennas and signal pickup than other phones, I'm not sure how to make that decision, and I still have this POS that I've hated since I got it. I find the idea of bailing out on cell phones completely quite tempting because I never really use it anyway, and it's an expensive monthly payment for something that works so poorly.

Let's drop the pretense that Russia is in any way a modern democracy please. Elections are a joke, independent journalists are permanently silenced, and if you didn't order it you are certainly didn't doing much to investigate it. You are bullying surrounding nations as soon as they take any steps towards democracy or independence from you or displease you in any way. Fascists and neo-Nazis run rampant in the streets, with the police literarily looking on with arms crossed doing nothing.

And even with all this, Putin has soaring approval ratings, proving once again that nationlist pride is one of the most dangerous memes ever.

Don't know about you, but I don't see either of those sales figures setting the world on fire. Not with 1.2 Billion DVD's being sold in 2004, and Finding Nemo selling 28 million DVDs alone in 2003.

I'm not sure why the Post is just getting around to this when everybody else was discussing it back in March:

USA Today

The BBC

Reuters. This last one has some interesting speculation on why altruism may be related to the similarly-entrenched idea that it's not OK to kiss your sister.

I was going to put something troll-ish in here about the fact that Slashdot seems to be serving up quite a bit of this warmed-over stuff recently--days and days after it's hit the mainstream news outlets. It would probably be a more effective use of time to go and read the article about Google and malware...

I agree with that. It seems to me that kind of thing happens a lot and is a blatant abuse of the old Loss Leader sales strategy. I can't figure out why they don't get nailed for it.

I'm not saying that the IPCC is saying that our cities will be underwater, but I am saying that political push on the IPCC (Nearly all public research funding is political. If someone disagrees, he is either an idiot or not in research.) is clearly towards affirming significant change as a result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The alarmism comes on the heels of that research.

Show of hands.

How many of us have heard from researchers who lost funding because they had dire prediction of runaway warming?

How many of us have heard from researchers who lost funding because they questioned some findings of extreme change?

Heck, I see at least one in this thread.

You're wrong about having to say *why* it is stupid to take jelly beans for cancer. If you want me to take jelly beans for cancer, you have to have the data to back it up (though I'd probably take the jelly beans, anyway, as long as it's orally).

Now, it's worth noting that the depth of the IPCC reports is generally comprehensive and explanatory. The largest problem is that the policy-makers don't read past the IPCC summaries. The time spent on IPCC summaries reflects this, and the end result for people not willing to read is this garbage.

CO2 almost certainly has a significant impact on global climate, but our research shouldn't need to lead to dramatic changes regarding only CO2. We're trying to turn only the knobs that we feel comfortable twiddling (CO2 emissions). We do this while largely ignoring the knobs that we find it difficult to twiddle (water consumption, regional urbanization, and agricultural development). Where's the funding for research showing that these are not significant causes of climate change? This is what Lindzen was talking about.

Being a doubter gets me lumped in with deniers, which is why I want the debate to be rooted in science. I think that our focus on CO2 will ultimately overlook other important causes of climate change, and I expect to be doing this again in 30 years. If we are open to answering real questions instead of quick to remove their funding, we're doing real science. Show me that care has been taken to carefully confirm and explore and I'll go along. At this point, I'm not comfortable that this is the case.

"They're gonna (complain) about everything, you know what I'm saying? Then you'll see them accept it," Bay says. "The things that really matter are there." Internet chat that Volkswagen didn't want the Beetle involved in an action movie are false, Bay says: "I just liked the other car better. I didn't want anything to do with the Bug because it reminded me of Herbie the Love Bug

>it's simply evidence that disputes your 'they'll get along' theory
If you are interested in a serious discussion, cut out the sarcasm and just say what you mean. Nowhere did I state that there are no death squads or other atrocities committed by nearly every faction in Iraq, except maybe the Kurds. In the real world, death squads may or may not be indicators of later genocide, c.f. Central America in the 1970-80s and Columbia today. As any 2nd-Amendment proponent will tell you, when both sides of a dispute are heavily armed, they both have a motivation to work things out. The fact that there's a lot of people with guns in Iraq doesn't mean that they armed factions won't eventually come to a resolution other than genocide.

>Contrary to your belief, Iraqi Sunnis are and have been getting out of Iraq because they are afraid.
Again, your sarcasm makes it difficult to have a reasoned discussion. Of course anyone with the money to do so flees the combat zone, but it's not just the Sunnis. The NYTimes article to which you cite : "...despite the ethnic and religious motives of most of the Iraqi factions, the Iraqi civil war resembles internal conflicts in revolutionary China or Cambodia: there is a cleansing of the intelligentsia and of anyone else who stands out from the mass...".

>...show us your evidence that Saudi Arabia is involved finacially or militarily to protect the Sunnis in Iraq
Widely reported even in Mainstream Media: "...Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash."

>...your 'get along' theory...
What "get along theory"? Since you refuse to read anything but blogs from interested parties, don't expect to learn anything except the viewpoints of interested parties. The Rey Stewart book is not, as you suggest, by a Washington Post reporter, but by someone who actually ran a couple of Iraqi provinces for the CPA.

Beware: if you search for ice regelation on google, some web sites propagate the error that the mechanism of ice skaing is regelation. As you can calculate in the question sheet, regelation does not give sufficient depression of the melting point over long enough for it to be important for ice skating.

It seems clear from the literature (but disappointing) that regelation is not the cause of the ice being slippery when you ice skate. A paper published in Physics Today in December 2005 and listed in the references for this demonstration, discusses the concept, initially proposed by Faraday, that a microscopic layer of water, found on ice even at very low temperatures, is responsible for ice being slippery. On the other hand, regelation apparently is a primary contributing cause for the motion of glaciers, as discussed in one of the references.

There is a lot of discussion about whether this really demonstrates regelation, but rather simply conduction of heat by the wire to the ice cube so that it will melt, followed by freezing over of the cut due to conduction of heat away from the cut to the surrounding ice.

A phone is really a general purpose device. You want to make telephone calls, you want to get and receive messages, text, e-mail, whatever your preference is. The phone really is kind of a general purpose device that we need to have clean and easy to use.