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http://john1701a.com/prius/owners/jesse3.htm

This CNW story is such crap and its numbers make no sense. It's old news. I posted my critiques of CNW's old news before at http://www.my350z.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24945 37&highlight=crock#post2494537 and http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=30444&st= 0&p=403215&#entry403215

Did you know that CNW claims that the Prius costs $325K to DISPOSE while they claim it cost $13K to make it? Did you that a VW Phaeton the sold for $64K to ~$100K incurs $2.5 MILLION in disposal costs? This is the type of crap that CNW spews out.

It also makes perfect (!) sense that they claim a Prius only lasts 100K miles when the HV battery is warranted for 10 years/150K miles in CA and a few other states. The Prius also has an excellent reliability record while the Hummer H2 has a terrible one... so therefore, the terrible one should last 300K miles. Right....

See http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-03-01-con sumer-report-list_x.htm for a ranking of reliability by manufacturer. Hummer is almost dead last.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry /2007-03-13-google-poland_N.htm

Why Google put a research lab in Poland

KRAKOW, POLAND -- When Artur Hibner graduates from college this year, he won't have to worry about getting well-paid work in his field right here in Krakow, Poland's thriving former royal seat.

For years, Western technology firms have come to Eastern Europe to lure away talented computer-science graduates like Mr. Hibner, who attends AGH University of Science and Technology. But now, the region's universities are producing so many top programmers that many firms are changing tack - and setting up shop at the source.

IBM, Motorola, and Google have all opened research labs here in Krakow in recent years, while Deutsche Telecom, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and other giants have come to Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, and other cities where universities churn out skilled coders.

"They are looking for all kinds of people, from hardware developers to programmers," says Marek Zaionc, head of the computer-science department at Krakow's Jagiellonian University. "We have a lot of good young people in these fields, and we're still a lot less expensive than other parts of Europe."

Eastern Europeans have dominated international programming competitions in recent years, attracting the attention of tech firms. Last year's TopCoder Collegiate Challenge drew 21,000 registrants from around the world, but half of the 48 finalists were from former Soviet bloc nations, including the winner, Petr Mitrichev of Russia, who also won last year's Global Code Jam, a Google-sponsored competition.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Google | Poland | Slovakia | Eastern Europe | Krakow | Bratislava | Jagiellonian University | Kosice

Tomasz Czajka, a 2004 graduate of Warsaw University, became a national celebrity in Poland after winning three TopCoder competitions in 2004-2005, racking up winnings of more than $100,000.

"When we saw these trends, of people from Eastern Europe winning these contests, we decided to take a closer look," says Kannan Pashupathy, Google's head of international engineering operations. "People have a huge interest in software, and there's a much deeper grounding in mathematics in the curriculum in these countries."

The region's universities have long been strong in hard and technical sciences, especially under Soviet rule, which emphasized industrial and military production. Tech firms began taking notice after 2000, when it became clear that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia would be joining the European Union in 2004.

Cultural, geographic, and economic proximity to Western Europe has given the region an advantage over global competitors like India. Salaries in the region are much higher than in India, but still one-third to half of those in Western Europe. Bratislava, Slovakia's capital, is a few minutes' drive from Austria, while Kosice, Krakow, and other cities are a short flight from London, Paris, or Berlin. EU membership makes investing all that much easier for western firms.

Mr. Czajka's celebrated TopCoder victories have made programming particularly attractive to young Poles. "Everyone knows Tomasz Czajka and everyone wants to be like him," says Hibner, who recently won an international math competition. "Last time I was in Warsaw, there was a huge poster of him in the center of the city."

At AGH, the computer-science department now gets seven to eight applicants per spot. "We could easily take many times more students if we had the professors and facilities to handle them," says department chief Krzysztof Zielinski. "We're happy to provide computer engineers for the companies - it is our job - but we need some help from them. Right now, we are alone."

Indeed, computer-science professors from across the region say they fear their departments will be sucked dry by Western firms. The private c

"The problem with climate models is that you only hear about the ones that give extreme results. There is no news value (or grant value for that matter) in reporting models that don't give extreme results."

"Extreme results" is probably an invalidate assumption. Scientists practice a lot of self censorship.
So much so, that the published IPCC reports are widely considered to be under estimates of the true effects.

The GW outcomes you haven't heard about are those which trigger an E.L.E. that mankind is unlikely to survive.
The scientific consensus is to curb CO2 emissions A.S.A.P. in order to reduce the probability of triggering an E.L.E.

Actually, environmental groups are suing wind generator operators.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-win dmills-usat_x.htm

There's a similar story down in Arkansas.

In fact please have a look here for how many European nations are run today.

No, not really, no-one is trying to blow up Sweden, the last terrorist act here (as far as i can recall) was german terrorists taking hostages at the west german embassy in the seventies (the also managed to blow it, and quite a few of themseleves, up).
Personally i believe most (if not all) of the anti-terrorist money could be spent on better things, for example, even if you add all the dead and injured in acts of terrorism against the US, and in US military actions for the last ten years, it's still not even near the 43000 killed and 2,7 million wounded in traffic in the US in 2005 alone.
But it might just be that our governments are so good at finding and taking care of terrorist threats...

El Al, the Israeli airline, uses sturdy bulletproof cockpit doors that the flight crew lock from the inside when the passengers board. The door is not opened for any reason until the last passenger is off the plane at the destination. Even if a terrorist holds the plane hostage, starts killing innocents, and demands entry to the cabin, the flight crew is trained to keep that door closed. Seems simple enough -- it would have prevented the September 11 attacks.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/10/01/ela l-usat.htm

U.S. Soldiers Force Reporters To Delete Photos of Casualties --- Meanwhile the U.S. military is being accused of trying to cover up the civilian deaths. A freelance photographer working for the Associated Press said he took photos of a vehicle where three Afghans had been shot to death inside. An American soldier then took the photographer's camera and deleted the photos. A reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said a US soldier also forced him to delete footage. The soldier reportedly told the journalist "Delete them, or we will delete you."

Hell, CDs are still essentially price fixed, and how long has that been going on?

From the link above:

"Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday."

From another article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/200 6-03-28-new-orleans-wifi_x.htm "BellSouth has opposed proposed legislation that would allow New Orleans to keep its Wi-Fi network running. The carrier, which provides phone service in Louisiana, stands to lose phone and wireless customers if other cities follow New Orleans' lead."

Seems like at least one carrier doesn't like free Wifi.

You're correct. America is essentially a christian fundamentalist country, or well on its way to become one, and that almost strictly has to do with parents spreading their beliefs to their offsprings from the earliest age.

Time to check your facts, bub. According to the American Religious Identification Survey "76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as Christian. This is a major slide from 86.2% in 1990. Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year."

Other research shows that the number of Americans not affiliated with any religion AT ALL has doubled since 1990.

I understand that people want to bash America, Bush, the religious right, etc., but if you're going to do so, at least get your story straight. (And though I shouldn't have to do so, let me just point out that I'm an Atheist Democrat)

Profit. It goes for US$150 per pound.

"Assuming it's an option for you without too many negative consequences."

Not TOO many.

First, calm down. I didn't name any specific environmentalist group, nor did I say all of them.

There's an article in this month's Trains magazine about BNSF's Transcon line which is only one track in a certain section because environmentalists groups always sue to block its expansion to two tracks. The article isn't online, and their site requires registration, which of course you won't do. But it's in the April 2007 Trains magazine, in the article "Birthplace of the Transcon".

There's also the ongoing DM&E controversy over their plan to build a line to the Powder River Basin. The Mayo Clinic and a group calling themselves the "Rochester Coalition" has sued several times to block its construction. There is also at least one NIMBY group suing, as mentioned here.

Understanding how Apple's FairPlay DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions: why it hasn't been replaced with an open, interoperable DRM that anyone can use, why Apple isn't broadly licensing FairPlay, and why the company hasn't jumped to add DRM-free content from indie artists to iTunes.

Because the DRM locks people into iTunes + ipod, and locks out competition. Why do you think they're keeping it?

"Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people?"

Yes, they, like the M$ and other executives are having self-created difficulties.

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2007/01/3 424-too-young-to-retire-sheryl.html
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/01/too_young_t o_re.html

"I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I have 20 years of experience. I am 50 years old. I am unemployable. I can't even get an interview at companies like Google, Cisco, M$, Dell, HP and Apple, whose Washington lobbyists..."

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=115 318&WT.svl=column2_1

"Google's executive staff has [idiotically] concluded that interviewing takes too long and that by sorting potential employes based on grades -- largely an artificial metric in business -- they are probably missing out on many great employees they might otherwise hire. Unfortunately, Google's 'solution' to this problem is to hire people [who are capable of doing] jobs '3 levels higher' than the jobs they are hired for."

Other self-created difficulties:
* failure to recruit at more than a handful of the thousands of collegs and universities in the USA
* failure to cover interview and relocation costs for impoverished by capable US candidates
* decrease in education and training for new-hires and current employees from what firms were offering in the 1980s
* abuse of resume parsers attached to overly limited data-bases instead of hiring competent humans
* failure to include human contact name, that person's e-mail address and voice telephone number in every help-wanted ad
* failure to advertise jobs in print media across the country
* turning out products of low quality repeatedly, which repels many capable American professionals
* conduct and products that are ethically questionable, which repel many capable American professionals from seeking work at their firms (e.g. that whole "permatemp" scam, RFID, many ERP projects, body shopping)

Libertarian Part is a major party...

No, the Libertarian Party has ballot status...that's about it. According to this piece from USA Today last year, there were about 55 million registered Republicans and about 72 million registered Democrats. Wikipedia tells me there are 200,000 registered Libertarians. Now, they do run more candidates than all other parties combined, but I don't think they even have anyone in any state legislatures right now.

http://www.ballot-access.org/2006/070106.html#11 has some different total registration numbers (that USA Today article was the best I could find on short notice), but it tells the same story. Even the Green and Constitution parties have more registered members. You't think with the way the Republicans have been operating the last 6 years that there's be a bigger swell with the libertarians, but they continue to be only a minor blip with pretty decent internet marketing.

That's the beauty of doing the Moon first. A colony on the Moon is harder than on Mars in most respects. Due to the lack of an atmosphere the sand on the Moon is some of the most abrasive stuff you'll be able to find and the lack of gravity has massive implications for astronaut health and will make many tasks very tedious.

OTOH, *if* something goes really wrong, you won't have to wait for a launch window, you won't give up years and years of work and you won't need a year to get back to Earth.

Someone gets cancer? Back to Earth! No need to wait for spring. Your water supply went the way of the Dodo? Back to Earth! ...

The Moon makes such an excellent training exercise because like in just about any other exercise that's worth its money the problems you face are harder than the real thing while the risks are considerably lower. It also allows us to perfect much of the everyday equipment so it can resist the daily wear and tear and break gracefully while we wait for a better solution to get a spacecraft from here to Mars in a reasonable timeframe.

so... what is causing MARS to warm up?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html

or cliamte change on Jupiter?

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-05 -04-jupiter-jr-spot_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

Right on, Brandyfuck. God saith thou shalt not curse. Except that is not what God said. Of course, evidence and/or proof of God's existence or what She said is harder to come by than manifest proof of P.J.'s existence. How do you know what God said? How do you know what P.J. said? How do you know God exists? How do you know P.J. exists? Do you, perhaps, enforce a double standard in these matters. Or do you use the same standard of proof to assert the existence (or non-existence) of one and the other?

So, anyways, I looked through the Bible and cannot find the passage that ascribes to God a notion that saying the word FUCK or Fuck or fuck is somehow verboten in God's law (i.e., not allowed by biblical decree). I do know that removing words that generally just impart an expression of strong emotion helps those writing about a subject to have and communicate a more grounded explanation of their arguments and assertions. But then again, I may have learned that in my liberal arts education. I sure did learn to question unbending adherence to a belief system that says that certain old men in my society chosen by divine providence have a monopoly on knowing what is good for me and my family. I tend to try to figure that out for myself (using - shock - science and reason) rather than going to sources like these.

Actually some analysts gave vista not so bright outlook. Microsoft on the other hand had expected to sell 200 million copies of Vista to consumers and businesses worldwide in its first two years. Windows XP, by comparison, sold 120 million copies in its first 24 months.

Not so much spin, as intentional clouding of the issue by MS.

Actually some analysts gave vista not so bright outlook. Microsoft on the other hand had expected to sell 200 million copies of Vista to consumers and businesses worldwide in its first two years. Windows XP, by comparison, sold 120 million copies in its first 24 months.

Not so much spin, as intentional clouding of the issue by MS.

Actually, thanks to the wonders of corrupt capitalism, if you live in a country that's too poor to buy the patented drugs from the company that did the R&D, you probably live somewhere where IP laws aren't particularly well enforced because local companies/people will lobby aggressively against them. As the country gets richer, companies will start to worry about their own IP and lobby to get enforcement tightened.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-30-tha iland_x.htm

Even though the WTO was presumably supposed to stop poor countries doing this, there's still a clause in the rules that allow countries to force compulsory licensing if there's a national emergency, like here in Brazil.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4059147.stm

Even rich places like Taiwan have occasionally done it, based on a potential national emergency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4366514.st m

Of course, most really poor countries tend to be run by a small kleptocratic clique that can be paid off to not allow this sort of thing, even though it's in the national interest, but it's that clique which is the problem, not drug patents per se.

So it seems that the optimal system is democratic enough that the pressure to enforce foreign patents from outside is balanced by domestic pressure to not enforce them, but I think also helps to have domestic drug companies who lack patents of their own.

Because that's what Sony does best, ehh??

But seriously though, I was just going to post an asinine comment about how the Sony Rootkit was outsourced to a 3rd party overseas, and how great their programming turned out to be.

But when googling for some 'sony outsourcing' links, it looks like this isn't news:

The Outsourcing Weblog: Sony Considers Outsourcing PSP Production

The Outsourcing Weblog: New Sony CEO Could Mean More Outsourcing

Sony Ericsson moving part of R&D program to India?

Sony outsources IT development to India

Sony Europe signs up with Indian outsourcer

Sony Will Outsource Some [Battery] Replacements

Sony to outsource notebooks to Taiwan

And that's literly just the first 3 pages.

Fair use & copyright are "unkown" terms in Belgium (and most of the non-anglosaxon world), but we have equal (or more) rights for authors AND users. It's only a difference of naming the whole thing.

Authors, artists & producers.. have a lot of rights in Belgium, but users (listeners, etc..) can freely use excerpts, quotes, etc.. for schools, reports, books, scientific research. We even have the right to copy a cd for personal use..

Other important things about this topic :

• it's only a minority of the Belgian press who went to court
• the others (Flemish part) all have nice deals with Google
• Google has a lot of legal ways to counter this ruling, this is not the end..
• the expert who assisted the judge was a former MICROSOFT employee

And please, stick to the main topic. Belgium is a small, but beautifull country full of the best beer in the world, best chocolate.. and a governement existing of socialists AND right wing liberals.

Sagan mentioned it in "Cosmos", some other scientist came up with it in the 1970s. The environmental data collected on 9/12/01 supports the theory.

We make additive for our jet fuel that makes the contrails more reflective to bounce the sun's rays back into space. It's cheap, easy to do, and people won't even notice. If a couple European governments (I know the U.S. won't do it...) required all aircraft that land in their country to use that kind of fuel, I think it could be implemented very quickly.

Here are a few links:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0210/p14s02-sten.htm l http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2002/2002-08- 08-contrails.htm http://why.michaelpatrick.org/2004/12/jet-contrail s-artificial-clouds-affect.html

Just like everything else, CDs are subject to supply and demand market forces.

Well, no, they aren't, not entirely.

If one sugar producer decides the "true" price of sugar is $15 a pound, then you can buy sugar from somebody else. But if you want to buy the latest Weird Al or Madonna album, there's only source. It's a monopoly, an in theory limited but in practice eternal one called "copyright". If they double the price of the hot Madonna release, there are a lot of people who won't think that Weird Al is just as good, and vice versa.

It's also important to note that RIAA is a trade association of major music producers, not a single producer. If the major labels (heaven forbid!) were to get together and, say, fix prices then market forces would also not apply. Not that they would do such a thing; RIAA is here to help us. I'm just talking hypotherically, you see.

"On a New York-to-Denver flight, a commercial jet would generate 840 to 1,660 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger. That's about what an SUV generates in a month." -- http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2006-12-18- jet-pollution-usat_x.htm

NYC to Denver: 1629 miles -- http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/cursortrail. html

"4508 09322 GEP DPR RECAP MLS LWT BZN DBS FFU HVE RSK ALS PUB DVV RLG DVV PUB TBE LAA SNY RAP LBF ANY OVR HARPI" -- well I don't know how many miles that is. Cheers,

Has anyone read up on the TDP (Thermal Depolymerization)? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkanto r/2004-01-22-kantor_x.htm I have been reading about it for a few years but very little in the mainstream media other than a casual mention. If the technology works, this would change the world and turn us into Net 0 carbon producers. Is it hype or real???

conservative values call for open and unfettered competition

"Texas probably also means Microsoft's OOXML for Texas documents.

Some years ago Microsoft threated the city of Huston to sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of software it hadn't paid for.

But as it turned out, Huston had more than enough proof of purchase seals. And then they voted to dump Microsoft Office in favor of SimDesk because of Microsoft's gestapo tactics. I don't know if that's still true today and I doubt SimDesk supports OOXML. So not all parts of Texas are friends of Microsoft.

You hit on the one thing I think our doctors are good at: critical care. If you have a broken something or a leaking something they can fix you up amazingly. I know there are good doctors, I just think they are rare and subject to burnout. It's the little things that leave me feeling cheated. I shouldn't have to explain how the common cold works to a doctor.

You're wrong about the error rate. According to the FDA medical errors in hospitals kill 50k-100k Americans per year, and are the 8th largest cause of death. Not all of these errors are caused by doctors, but I think it's fair to mix doctors and the health care system up. This doesn't even begin to cover the millions of less critical errors made on an outpatient, office, or long term care facility. The linked document (from 2000) outlines an ambitious program to reduce medical errors. The results so far are hardly impressive.

I don't think minimizing the error rate and huge financial and human cost are helpful. I have respect for people in the health care field, but we need to be honest about the problems.

you're right - let's slashdot the heck out of it so the military can't get to the website, 'cause as soon as some goofball in the military gets an idea about using "robots" as killing machines- whoa!

  Fortunately, this hasn't occurred to anyone but you.... yet.

Besides helium-3 mining and lunar hotels, do you have any good ideas for a moon base startup?

This is possibly the most small-minded query ever seen on a /. submission summary:

[assume best Jeff Spicoli persona] Like, Mr. Hand, do you have any good ideas for a moon base startup? [giggles nervously]

Opinions on the submission summary aside, the big question for me is: To what extent will Americans (I'm not) expect this venture to be self-funding? A research component (pursuit of pure knowledge stuff) in NASA's budget will, I expect, only get you part-way.

If helium-3 is present to the extent indicated by the lunar soil samples brought back by Apollo 11 and subsequent missions, then the economics of a lunar mining operations might even work - if we can find something to do with a big swack of helium-3, other than filling kid's birthday balloons. Maybe there's someone out there who is an authority on this: to what extent does using helium-3 as fuel for fusion reduce the by-product/radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactors? Is helium-3 at reasonable cost a Big Win for the nuclear industry?

The time is certainly ripe for getting serious about getting out of the fossil-fuel business (not from an economic perspective, where Exxon's $40 Billion USD profit last year looks Pretty Good, but from a How Long Can This Go On? perspective).

I'm reading this the day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their report, which says things don't look good, to say the least:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2007-02-02 -climatechange_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

So the economic appeal may be there.

Six month rotations are mentioned. I'm not an out-doors guy, but I'll tell you that the prospect of spending 175+ straight days in-doors isn't too appealing to me. Maybe this is why Huxley envisaged Happy Drugs; this would be the ultimate test of our ability to medicate ourselves to contentment in the face of adversity in our environment. I'm wondering what the rotation cycles are for remote assignments on Earth, e.g. Antarctic and Arctic exploration stations? While functionally the Antarctic Winter and the Lunar environment have the same effect - no going outside except in serious gear, or you die - I think that there is a psychological oppression that goes along with being on the moon. Comments?

I think that six month rotations would take quite a while to build up to.

They should make an "I'm Linux" commercial.

They should cast John Roberts, the guy in the enzyte commercials, for windows, and Ellen Feiss for mac.

As for who would play linux? I'm thinking a /. poll for that...

New Poll: Who plays "Linux" in the commercial?

- The Geico Lizard
- Scarlett Johansson
- Jonny Lee Miller aka Zero Cool
- Carrie-Anne Moss
- CowboyNeal

Wrong. The Sierra Club had a total budget of nearly 100 million dollars to work with. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-03-07-sie rra-club_x.htm

"The papers allege that the companies, "ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy" by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay."

The labels were actually found guilty of this once before:

States settle CD price-fixing case
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY

NEW YORK -- The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s...

  Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

In settling the lawsuit, Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice.

"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30 -cd-settlement_x.htm

Maybe some of those jobs being lost should never have been there to start with

Talking With The NFL's Greatest Poet
Dhani Jones?
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/zillgitt/ 2005-02-01-zillgitt_x.htm

That is already in place on the most part. The Mall of America has had a curfew for the past ten years. I remember kids getting into fights on a Friday evening. Since the curfew, I have not seen a single fight.

Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.

It's harder to do with cable than broadcast, because cable channels get per-viewer subscriber fees for their revenues in addition to advertising. The subscriber fee is for the whole channel, so they can decide how the apportion it to a particular show.

For broadcast, it's basically around 60 to 80 cents that advertisers pay per viewer for a popular show. For broadcast, a solid popular show gets around 10 million viewers. Cable ratings are much lower. Battlestar Galactica specifically gets around 2 million viewers on a good night. But since it's on cable, they can still afford it since they have those subscriber fees.

Subscriber fees for the Sci-Fi channel are 16 cents per month per subscriber, and they have 79.88 million total subscribers, so $12.8 million a month. How much of that to apportion to Battlestar Galactica? That's what makes this hard. Flat per hour division gives you roughly $18,000 per hour. Cable ad rates are like $6500 per 30-second spot (who knows if the Sci-Fi channel can command a higher rate?), and assuming about 20 paid 30 second spots per hour (don't include promos, PSAs and the like), you get $148,000 revenue for an episode of BSG.

So: ~$150,000 revenue per show / ~2 million viewers = $0.075. Seven and a half cents per viewer is what they are happy to take in to show you BSG (they haven't canceled it, so they must think it's worth it). So it seems closer to your guessed at 12 cents than the $1.99. Don't worry for the media companies, they're swimming in profits.

Higher taxes means you can have a better educational system, a better medical system

Please cite some proof for this claim. Some of the best funded school systems in the nation on the per child basis are also the worst performance wise. So tell me again why I want higher taxes to give more money to people who don't know how to spend it?

No, we need lower taxes and smaller federal gov.

Higher taxes means broader shoulders carry more weight

It also means less money for those broader shoulders to use to invest and create more jobs with much more efficiency than the gov. can.

> And you somehow believe that the western world is immune to this indoctrination ?
> But somehow, when it's China involved, manipulation of information is the worst thing in the world. Take a look closer to home.

On the contrary, I agree with you. Look at Iraq.

We have a huge problem with a corporate media telling us what to think (Hi, Rupert), but we do have basic protections like free speech which the government hasn't taken away from us... yet. The Internet makes it wonderfully hard for them to even try it. Sure, right-to-a-speedy-trial and confessions-under-duress are taking a battering now, but thanks to free speech, we've at least got a chance. Your average Chinese doesn't, and I bet they've never heard of these:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-1901 558,00.html
http://www.faluninfo.net/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-deat h-van_x.htm

I am sure there were people who thought the "skeptics" of the world is flat theory were crazy too. There are doubts being raise on global warming (here, here, here). Further, we don't completely understand the science of the climate. Predicting the future climate has uncertainties. Just look at local weather prediction. They don't say the percentages any more, but they use a computer model that gives the percentages like 80% chance of rain, but these predictions are not certain. Some scientists have concerns that global warming has been blown way out of proportion (here).

      I am not saying we shouldn't take some actions, but I am saying that you are ignorant to just rule out everything the skeptics say. Any American plan for energy independence and global warming has to be two fold. Short term plans as a consumer buy more energy effecient appliances and cars; as a company (and government) do that and developer more local resources (like drill for more oil in Alaska, California, the mid-western U.S., and in the Gulf) and update the methods to produce fuels like gas. Refineries are decades old using older technology.

      Now the second part is long term. Start to research feasible, cost efficient, and easy to use alternate energy means for heating, transportation, production, etc. If the technology is not feasible, efficient and easy to use people will not use it. It's that simple. You can should all you want, but people want things that are cheap (& cost effective) and easy to use. The more you need to spend or do to accomplish the task, the less people will use it.

      To dismiss all the doubts of people as the whining and/or ignorant rants of lunatics is not very scientific. All options should be considered. Scientist have had a closed and narrow mind for a long time now. They need to leave the labs a little more and come back to reality. Scientists and people like you are the people who are really arrogant.

As far as the camera network goes, Chicago already has many of these cameras in place, but right now they are only in place in high-crime areas. Here is an image of what they look like, and they also have microphones on them and can record gunshot sounds. These cameras are very well liked from what I have read and there are plans to install more of them across the city, not just in high-crime areas.

That might not be a good idea.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-14-eco li_x.htm

The question is who did the people of Florida actually intend to be president. I don't care if it "would take a long time", the point is to accurately reflect the will of the people. We need to trust that the system is working correctly. The hasty intervention of the Supreme Court needlessly opened a deep wound in this country. Many felt that it was justice denied not "sparing" us anything.

Now as to who the people of Florida actually intended to elect it is pretty clear that it was Gore. Check out this summary from USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10 -recountmain.htm.

It is interesting to note that there we a lot structural issues that were working against Gore.

So why are we even talking about this? Because until we have a voting system that everyone can trust we are not really living in a democracy.

> There's no such thing as "minor" options backdating, it's illegal.

Sorry, you're wrong. Backdating is not illegal. The problem Apple is having is over which quarter's earnings were affected. This misconception is akin to the myth that it's illegal to have a monopoly ala Microsoft (it's illegal to abuse a monopoly position in certain ways; not to have a monopoly).

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technolog y/2007-01-09-apple-jobs-usat_x.htm

The backdating of options grants isn't illegal if companies and recipients make the proper SEC disclosures and follow accounting and tax rules. In Apple's case, the improper accounting forced the company to make a financial restatement of $84 million to correct misdated grants from 1997 to 2006.

Come on, I read this months ago http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/200 6-09-30-single-pixel_x.htm