Slashdot Mirror

The alternative will be Britannica.

I always tell people to check out conservapedia.com. It was started because Wikipedia is edited by YOU and YOU are too biased to provide neutral information.

Here's a section from their page on Barack Hussein Obama
(redirected from Barack Obama)

Doctors from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have stated that Obama uses techniques of mind control in his speeches and campaign symbols. For example, one speech declared, "a light will shine down from somewhere, it will light upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"[26]

Oh my God, this is terrible! Our president is using techniques of mind control on us! What does Wikipedia have on this subject? Not a thing. Because a light shone down on YOU, YOU experienced an epiphany, and YOU said to yourself, 'I have to censor Barack's Wikipedia page.'

Obama may be the first Muslim President
The argument that Obama is a Muslim is largely based on his Islamic background. It also includes:

• Obama's background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.[28] [29]
• (more bullet points)
• Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam.
• Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather than the common American one.
• (still more bullet points)
• Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."[42]
• Obama enjoyed a bigger increase in voter support in 2008 (compared to 2004) by Muslims than by any other voting group, including blacks;[43] "Muslim turnout in the U.S. elections reached 95 percent, the highest Muslim turnout in U.S. history."[44]>
• "President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend [Sunday or Christmas] church services since winning the White House ..., a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors."[45]
• Many atheists claim that Obama is one of them, yet he displays none of the characteristics common to atheism: Obama has not expressed offense at prayer by others, he has not promoted the theory of evolution, and he has never expressed a disdain for religious belief.

Bet you didn't know he was a Muslim. But it isn't all about religion. They also get into flag pins.

Obama wore an American flag lapel pin after 9/11, but later stopped wearing it without adequate explanation.[58] Presumably it would have hurt him with anti-military campaign donors.In 2007, at critical moments in his campaign for the nomination, Obama had difficulties securing the support of anti-war activists.

Don't forget about Tom Daschle, either. He's married to Linda Hall, the mother of all lobbyists.

You mean Africa, with 20% of population infected with AIDS.

Taiwan has 0.1% of population infected.

Untrue, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502517.html False positives play a rather big part in this money-hugging world. Same goes for the AV-world, that recently has been shaken up by the news from Intego that a critical worm has appeared for OS X. They're all in it for the money. The end-user is not important, they are just expected to pay.

"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"

No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.

One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.

They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine ..

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever

Actually, some of the FISA court judges did not agree with using NSA leads in granting warrants. See:

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data

The article shows that law enforcement was using the FISA court to get warrants based on leads from the NSA. This would fall under the retroactive portion of the law.

Second of all, even if the FBI had information about some drug deal, they couldn't use it unless the court agreed that it was a valid use of the foreign intelligence program. Once the warrant is granted, the FBI could build a case against you.

Third, if you call or receive a call from someone that is a target of a wiretap, you certainly can get caught up in the case. Nothing new there. Have you been calling terrorists?

As I said, the only thing less credible than talk radio is the internet. Just because the article says "Obama sides with Bush in Spy Case" doesn't mean it's true.

First of all, the document that the article cites comes from the DoJ, not the White House.

Secondly, the signatories of the document are holdovers from Bush's DoJ. In case you haven't been paying attention, voting on Obama's nominee for Attorney General is being held up in committee by the Republicans. Apparently they are concerned he might actually prosecute crimes.

Thirdly, even if this did come from Obama or an Obama appointee, all the document is calling for is a postponement. That kind of makes sense considering the transition going on at the moment.

Your words would mean a lot more if red states didn't still take more federal aid dollars than they paid out in taxes. They consistently leech money off the blue states.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19566-2005Jan18.html

Yes, you are missing something, but it isn't your fault. The was the wrong article to point to from the Washington Post. The better story was here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html

Their point was that the technology that staffers encountered when they arrived at the White House was really antiquated compared to what they were used to on the campaign trail. No laptops, desktops had software that was several versions behind, limited phone lines and lines that were pointing to the wrong extension, etc.

"If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.

There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost security clearance lists.

By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about President Obama's busy first day on the job, which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the public, and meetings with his economic and national security teams.

Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver. "The President has not yet issued any executive orders," it stated hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $100,000.

The site was updated for the first time last night, when information on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool reports or blog entries.

No one could quite explain the problem -- but they swore it would be fixed.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility -- partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.

"It is what it is," said a White House staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Nobody is being a blockade right now. It's just the system we need to go through."

The system has daunted past

Dubya had a no torture policy too. It's just that there was an -- er, interesting -- view of what counted as torture.

As you can read in the Washington post the Obama staff walked into the White House and discovered that the whole place was a mess. From the article I posted here: "The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.". It doesn't go into details but... 6 year old software? And they claim to uphold strict security standards to prevent any cyber crime?

That smells like a huge dose of incompetence to me. And in relation to that I also hope that the new administration will take a very close look at what the Bush administration has added to the e-mail archives. As this site reported some months (?) ago; the Bush admin. archived approx. 26Gb worth of data, the largest amount ever. Makes you wonder... Quality through quantity perhaps?

Sorry, that is not what I am reading. Some are stating, quite plainly, that they do not deserve any protection. Until people are charged, which I have not seen happening, their identities should be obscured as they may be innocent or found innocent.

There are two possibilities:
(1) They are government agents acting lawfully in their official capacity, in which case neither the acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny and accountability (barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done"), or
(2) They are government agents acting unlawfully and contrary to their official responsibilities, in which case neither their acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny (again, barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done").

They are entitled to protection from retaliation in the same way that all citizens are entitled to protection from violent crime, but not in any other way.

[citation needed]
I have seen no investigations as yet, only the threat of same.

Then you haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention, which is hardly anyone's fault but your own. The amount of media attention the various investigations and prosecutions received was immense.

Here's just a few bits:
Military prosecution in Abu Ghraib scandal ends (01/11/2008)
For Abu Ghraib, a limited prosecution (03/29/2006)
The Unlearned Lessons of Abu Ghraib (10/19/2006)
Iraq prison report details lax discipline (5/8/2004)
CIA personnel, civilians cited in abuse (8/20/2004)
Trial Starts in Abu Ghraib Death (5/25/2005)
C.I.A. to Avoid Charges in Most Prisoner Deaths (10/23/2005)

Sorry, that is not what I am reading. Some are stating, quite plainly, that they do not deserve any protection. Until people are charged, which I have not seen happening, their identities should be obscured as they may be innocent or found innocent.

There are two possibilities:
(1) They are government agents acting lawfully in their official capacity, in which case neither the acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny and accountability (barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done"), or
(2) They are government agents acting unlawfully and contrary to their official responsibilities, in which case neither their acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny (again, barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done").

They are entitled to protection from retaliation in the same way that all citizens are entitled to protection from violent crime, but not in any other way.

[citation needed]
I have seen no investigations as yet, only the threat of same.

Then you haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention, which is hardly anyone's fault but your own. The amount of media attention the various investigations and prosecutions received was immense.

Here's just a few bits:
Military prosecution in Abu Ghraib scandal ends (01/11/2008)
For Abu Ghraib, a limited prosecution (03/29/2006)
The Unlearned Lessons of Abu Ghraib (10/19/2006)
Iraq prison report details lax discipline (5/8/2004)
CIA personnel, civilians cited in abuse (8/20/2004)
Trial Starts in Abu Ghraib Death (5/25/2005)
C.I.A. to Avoid Charges in Most Prisoner Deaths (10/23/2005)

Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done... we shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011503149.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Fromthis article comes a cute little tidbit.

""It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs."

Yeah. Not a good sign. If you were given a choice, which would you want your employees to be using, an Atari or an XBox?

Hint - what word processing software would you be running on the XBox?

I was expecting better mataphors from the Obama administration. Stick to the rotary-dial comparisons. They make more sense, even if they are still fairly out of touch with the reality.

Oh, and I want Facebook to be a prime app in the White House? NOT. Keep the network clean, guys. Update your Facebook pages on your iPhones. At least, try not to consort with known virus and malware sites, k?

We're gonna hear more of this, you bet.

The Washington Post had a truly idiotic story today entitled: "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages" that seemed (to me) silly. Among the statements: " The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software." seemed the silliest in that it implies that six-year old software (WinXP?) is "old". The author needs to be told that just because newer is available doesn't mean there is a business sense to use it! From the article: "What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking." The young'uns should learn there are reasons to make those things unavailable. Like, uhhh, security? Think back to when Clinton took office and his minions were saying the same kinds of things about the WH phone system left by Bush 1...that is used "dial phones" (for christ's sake!)...and everything had to go through the WH switchboard. There was a reason for that as the Clintonites found when they "modernized". Suddenly the WH began leaking info like a sieve when the "new technology" was adopted. Watch for the same thing to happen here! For the record: I didn't vote for Obama or McCain but it seems like this article was another kick at GWB.

Firstly, you are being pedantic. Most Americans will admit that they feel safer. I was using the "we" in the sense of the majority. there is no statement of feeling, opinion or perception that one can make about all americans simultaneously. Obviously, not EVERYone feels safer. You can put your attitude away.

The majority of folks I worked with did not feel safer. But then, I'm in a security related industry. So we're likely to be a little out of the mainstream.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of Americans felt safer. But the majority? When people are making jokes about nail clippers, I have to wonder if the mainstream doesn't have some inkling of security theatre - that it doesn't go beyond my immediate circle.

From a Washington Post article dated Thursday, April 1, 2004:

Fewer than half of all Americans think the country is safer now than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, and more than three-quarters expect the United States to be the target of a major terrorist attack at home or abroad in the next few months, according to a new poll.

The survey, released yesterday by the nonpartisan Council for Excellence in Government, found that about half of respondents were concerned that terrorists would strike near their home or work. Seventy-three percent identified themselves as anxious or concerned about terrorism, and 26 percent said they were calm.

And what were they worried about?

The survey of 1,633 adults from Feb. 5 to Feb. 8 also found that although Americans are concerned about terrorism, they rank it behind the economy and health care as the nation's top priorities. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It is your perception that Americans felt safe. But your perception might be as insular as mine, sans attitude.

I feel pretty safe in stating that many people that would help starving children locally probably would not pick up a gun and start shooting at people. Those that are willing to shoot at people, and risk get shot at as well, probably aren't too worried about a little travel.

Hold on now, we're not talking about the morality of shooting people. That's already been decided; it's being done. That's not the point. The point is to what extent will people go to in order to do it?

Attacks on US military targets didn't soak up AQ's resources because they didn't have anyone actively trying to capture or kill them in between their attacks. It's a lot harder to plan and carry out those kinds of actions when the US military is trying to find you and kill you, than when your targets are only acting defensively.

Actually - go read up about the attacks I noted. They WERE being actively hunted between those attacks.

However, I do agree that the scale was different. The invasion of Afghanistan took away a lot of resources from Al-Qaeda. As I noted, I'm fully supportive of that. But that's not the same thing as the war in Iraq.

Your claim is that Iraq takes attention off the US. That it will tie up Al-Qaeda resources. When historically, they were able to both attack US interests in the region as well as the US directly. Iraq has it's purpose but it is not to providing a better target to decreases terrorism in the world.

You may have been aware of what Bush was doing and disapproved, but that places you firmly in the minority. I was aware, and wouldn't have approved at other times, but knew that eventually those powers grabbed by the Bush administration would be revoked.

I need assurances. I need to know there is a check to the power being given. Without that check, it becomes a tool of oppression and evil. History shows it time and time again.

I've seen security folks go of the rail. I know what happens when a sec

Ah but was Johnson's one really 1.2 million? How did they get that figure?

There is a cool satellite image of it all going around, like here, so you imagine someone could eventually come up with a good estimate of yesterdays one.

How do they estimate crowd sizes anyway, fair enough in a stadium (80,000 seats all full = 80,000 people) but for other things it seems to be bordering on random guessing.

You must conveniently forget that he specifically created and tasked an office under his control to produce that bad intelligence at all costs.

Source? The foremost investigative reporter, Bob Woodward, reported in his book Plan of Attack of how Bush challenged CIA Director George Tenet (a holdover Clinton appointee) that he needed to be absolutely sure about WMD before he asks the American people to support an invasion. Tenet said, "It's a slam dunk."

And of course every intelligence agency in the world thought Saddam had WMD. In fact the UN passed a unanimous resolution giving Saddam "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations." Did Bush control all the world's intelligence agencies or the UN Security Council? China and Russia?

You also must conveniently disregard the thousands of african americans who were wrongfully purged from voting registrations in Florida in 2000. As the recount came within under 500 votes difference, the recount was called off by the voting authority in charge (can't remember the c--- name), who also happened to be a major member of the Bush election party.

I conveniently disregarded that bogus claim because it was an unsubstantiated urban legend, the old "blacks were intimidated" myth. Silly claims made by Al Gore's lawyers or partisan Democrats.

Once again, every news organization (did they work on Bush's campaign?) that did a recount afterward found Gore would not have won by any metric, even the cherry-picked Dem-friendly districts Gore wanted. And the media was never able to find a single black vote that was wrongfully discarded, let alone 5,000.

And let's not forget the shameless attempt by Bill Beckel to disqualify 1000's of overseas military ballots because they were delivered too slowly. Beckel went on TV and defended that one, so it's not like it was even disputed.

statistically the average age that people lose their virginity is 14

[citation needed]

According to this, 17 is the average.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500826.html

I showed you mine, now you show me yours.

"You do know that has nothing to do with the server itself right?"

Do you have any citations for that?

'A piece of malicious software planted on the company's payment processing network that recorded payment card data as it was being sent for processing to Heartland by thousands of the company's retail clients'

I'll take Federal Election Commission data over liberal bullshit drivel from the politico any day, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html.

That is an overwhelming victory?

No, it's not. The 58.8% to 40.6% victory of Reagan over Mondale in 1984 was an overwhelming victory, with Reagan winning 49 of the 50 states (525 to 13 electoral votes). Perhaps if the liberal media blowhards didn't favor Obama 3 to 1, the margin would have been significantly less than 7%.

Most posts here seem to be generalizations based on little to no facts, and I can't see how that's helping the discussion.

Can't speak for the Cisco lady, but Kundra has been kicking serious butt in DC. He's run tech start-ups and runs his agency the same way: aggressive, frugal, and with little tolerance for those that don't performance. Here's a Washington Post article on him from a few weeks ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html

He created hundreds of data feeds in his first few months in office to make DC one of the most open governments around. Then a few months ago, he hosted an open competition with $20k of prizes for anyone to create innovative applications using these data feeds.

Armed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

Smart move, the peanut butter will make a biological weapon out of your waste data.

The biggest failure of Windows 7...

The product has to be released before it can fail. Remember that you're bashing a beta.

And yeah, if it has even one port open to the Internet in its default configuration on ship day, it's hosed. The targeted exploits will begin on day zero, and by six months they'll be commonly known. And then a patch will be issued that won't be applied by everyone because automatic updates break too much stuff. And so we'll have another worm like Conficker. Again. Because why would we learn from history?

But if it otherwise works OK noone will care. [sigh]

The Washington Post had an recent article about this technology being applied in the Washington, DC, area. Slashdot has also featured articles on similar technologies that use deep water from large lakes or the oceans themselves.

Just make sure you get an old lady to drive the bulldozer. That way, you can get away with it, too.

Tell that to Jerry Brown, California's attorney general: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011402930.html

If it was a server glitch, HD crash, incompetent admins, normal IT problem then sure I could easily understand. Giving 88 white house people separate email accounts, non .gov domain names, and going through the RNC computers instead of the normal white house computers is just too fishy. Read the summary of findings found by oversight committees and you won't help but see it wasn't an IT fault it was a deliberate skirting of the laws. This is as bad as Cheney making the claim that the office of the VP isn't part of the executive branch so he doesn't need to give records to the national archives.

Actually, no. Iraq has ties to terrorism, Saddam was paying the families of Hammas and Hezbollah suicide bombers something like 75k after the death of the bombers. That has never been disputed. What has was the ties to Al Qaeda in which turned out to be less then they expected.

The rest of what your claiming is a bunch of hogwash. The WMD's that Saddam had wasn't provided by the US. He engineered them in house with aid from the soviets. The Yellow Cake ordeal was am international ordeal that other countries weren't sure of, it turns out to have been orchestrated by some retired CIA officers who had a chubby for Bush but France and Italy and Russia thought it was real. It wasn't until later (after Bush's speech) that they themselves discounted the information entirely. At the time, the US was at a point where they weren't sure if it was real or not, despite the Plame ordeal.

And yes, your right, Saddam did pretend that he had them. And if you looked at the UN quarterly inspection reports for the time Bush was in office, you would see that until after the Invasion in 2003, the UN inspection teams thought they had them too. But to think that Bush was lieing, you would have to forget the previous 10 years before he took office. And don't give me grief about the site being right wing, the quotes are accurately attributed and you can find them if you think they are made up.

Here is something that might put it in a little more perspective. The Bush Lied is little more then politicians playing politics in order to get elected. You have fallen for it hook line and sinker and are now a soldier operating under false pretenses thinking you are in the right. In short, you are what you think Bush is.

Seldom are truer words spoken here. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, if the president has the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear strike and wipe out the human race, he has the power to have water poured in someone's face.

I personally think Bush is an idiot (and I'm a Texan who was born in the town next to where he grew up). Nevertheless, the chief executive is given broad powers and much of Bush's so-called "illegal" or "unconstitutional" actions fall within the use, however ill-considered, of those powers. The way to have dealt with it would have been to have decisively voted him out in 2004. No one who voted for him then can honestly say they thought he was a better man than he turned out to be. Now is the time to move forward, because we as a nation are facing much bigger challenges than worrying about dealing justice to this sorry lot.

The infrastructure developed from the New Deal provided a tangible product which could be openly used by other segments of the economy and benefited far more. Roads affected the Automotive Industry and eventually the suburban sprawl and housing.

It should be noted that the Interstate Highway System was not started until 1956.

The CCC improved roads in public parks. The WPA did pave or repair 300,000 miles of road, but keep in mind the US currently has 3.9 million miles of highway.

New Deal spending is actually a lot less than people generally think. Federal spending peaked at 8% of GDP during 1933-1941, whereas today it is over double that number (20%) while both state and local spending are both themselves are today over 8% of GDP.

The New Deal was more about dollar devaluation and regulation rather than spending.

Weren't there concerns that Bush staffers where using non-secure equipment for communications because they could be "cleaned" and wouldn't keep records, as required by law? Didn't the White House "lose" emails, including many from Karl Rove related to firings?

Who's to say Bush didn't do the same? I mean, who KNOWS what they covered up by not following procedure? Not that there is a large belief that Obama is a bad guy, but every President (and administration) must be held to higher standards and accountability from here forward. We see what being too trusting has brought us.

This wasn't news when Bush was in office and he used a cell phone and a PDA too.

Actually, it was an issue for Bush, though it had nothing to do with phone calls or PDA functionality.

Obama is a notorious IM addict. He pretty much ran his campaign through his Blackberry. Now of course, you can use a Blackberry to make phone calls and track your appointments, but that's not why he's under pressure to give it up. The security wonks don't like the potential for text messages getting intercepted, and the lawyers don't like the legal exposure he'd get if the messages were subpoenaed or FOIAed.

I'm not sure if Bush ever had a Blackberry or a PDA, but he used to be a heavy email user. He went cold turkey when he assumed office. According to his "last email" that went out to all his correspondents, it was mainly about the legal exposure.

An NSA-approved smart phone is probably the solution to the security issue. (See one of the submissions in my sig.) I suspect Obama will just blow off the legal issue. He's supposed to be Mr. Open Government, after all.

Now I wait for my -1, didn't fangirl score.

And you'd deserve it! People who don't like fangirl stories (what happened to fanboys?) have no place on Slashdot!

But this is not a fanchild issue. Obama keeps talking about the dangers of living in the "Presidential Bubble". One way he wants to avoid this is to have a lot of contacts that aren't mediated by his underlings. A Blackberry or other pocket IM device is an obvious tool for this purpose.

I suspect he's being a little naive. He's going to be in charge of the biggest bureaucracy on the planet — does he really think that he can be on a first-person basis with the whole kaboodle? But hey, he's surprised us before!

"Discrimination" as you call it is legal, unless is it due to race, national origin, religion, gender, disability, etc, i.e., a "suspect class." I love this silly idea that any type of different treatment is "discrimination."

Not being hired because you tested as a difficult, no social skill borderline Asperger's personality isn't discrimination under any law I have heard of, any more than if you came off that way in an interview. Life is full of hard knocks, and you simply can't sue your way out of every one of them.

What next, a girl doesn't date you because you aren't handsome or rich enough and you sue her? Under what cause of action? The Lakers won't sign be because I am short and can't jump and I am in my 40's? Discrimination. NASA won't make me an astronaut because I don't have an advanced science degree or any pilot experience? Discrimination!

George Will makes this point in his recent column, although as a lawyer I think he blames the wrong culprits (lawyers).

Here's hoping it goes better than the FBI's "virtual case file" upgrade.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701485.html

You DO realize that you just gave the "If you have nothing to hide" speech, don't you? Which is of course exactly what has become wrong with the USA and most of the west. There is a good reason why we must reject that argument and fight those that would implement it in government. Simply: power corrupts. There is a good reason why that phrase is so old and is yet used so frequently. Because it is a universal truth. Water is wet, the sky is blue, and power corrupts.

We have already had 8 years of abuse of power here in the USA, and closer to 30 years of corrupt laws that were obviously written by "he who wrote the biggest check". So if you don't mind all my data will be kept where I can encrypt it however I want. And considering the wholesale wiretapping and the risk of state sponsored industrial espionage IMHO you'd have to be really crazy or really naive to just leave your data where anyone outside your company can get at it.

And what about liability? Do they have a monetary guarantee to cover your losses if THEY get hacked and all your data gets handed to your competitor, thereby giving them your plans for the next 5 years? If YOU are in control of the data you can set security policy, limit who has access to which data, etc. But by passing it to "the cloud" you frankly have NO clue who has access to your data or if they are disgruntled and looking to make some cash on the way out. No thanks, doesn't sound too appealing to me. It just isn't worth the risks to me for a free doc editor and online collaboration.

Yeah, turning hazardous junk into artificial reefs can't possibly fail.

Oh wait...

If this can save so much money why isn't the health care industry already doing it? Are they really that stupid or are all the promises of big savings not likely to pan out?

Two reasons. First, it's a collective action problem: if all companies but one were digitizing records in a common format, then the last company would indeed jump on board without government prodding. But it might be inefficient to be the first-mover.

Second, in this economy, businesses are unwilling to post short-term losses for long-term gains because their margins are so thin right now. And even if they wanted to make that trade-off, banks are hoarding their money and might not make the loan.

A friend of mine explained the situation to me. This is third-hand information; look it up for confirmation before you fully trust it.

Originally, Boeing got the contract for the tankers, back in 2001 or so. But in 2005, the contract was taken away from Boeing and put up for bid again, because Congress investigated and found some illegal influencing done by some lobbyists. At least two people went to prison over this.

So now, the Air Force still needed tankers, but they needed to put the contract up for bid. But according to my friend, only Boeing was really ready to bid on the contract. So, because the USAF didn't want to make it look at all like Boeing was getting it without any competition, they bent over backwards to help Airbus participate in the process. They bent over way too much, and helped Airbus way too much; my friend really feels that the result was unfair and the Boeing tanker deserved to win.

So Airbus won the contract, and Boeing protested strenuously. (I live in Washington state, and a lot of Washington state voters, as well as Representatives and Senators, also lobbied furiously for this decision to be reconsidered.) So now the tanker is being put up for bid AGAIN.

My friend feels that with a fair competition, Boeing will win the contract easily. I kind of hope so, since Boeing is the "home team" for my state.

Meanwhile, the aging old tanker airplanes the USAF has now continue to fly, and continue to cost more to operate than new airplanes would.

Here's a Boeing press release. It's obviously partisan in favor of Boeing but it lines up with what my friend told me.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q1/080311b_nr.html

Here's a Washington Post story about this. It agrees factually with the above, but does not go into the history of why the Air Force handled the contract the way it did.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/19/ST2008061900091.html

The Marine One replacement, the VH-71, saw its budget more than double and face enormous delays.

One can only image what will happen to the Air Force One budget.

This is the post I missed. My bad. I was like "I could have been sure I called someone out for not reading the article, after I assumed it was the *same* article I read, but turns out it wasn't! I owe them an apology!" I tried to run back in and apologize, but I forgot which post I said that in.

In any event, the story, as I read it on digg, is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010601195.html

That's what I was going off on. There's no reason you should have known that unless you read it as well, and that's an unreasonable assumption for anyone to make.

So I apologize for making that assumption. With that said, reading *that* story, the kid isn't trying to shift any blame. He was desperately trying to get food and go to Gym class, where he could (ostensibly) play. That doesn't seem to me to be a "bad kid" in play, here. Just one who has been neglected and ill-taught.

According to the washington post it would take only 15,000 square miles to replace all the oil used in the United States which includes the oil costs to move oil around.
Which sound huge right? Luckly this country is pretty damn big, with lots of pretty useless areas....
The Mojave Desert for instance is over 22,000 square miles.
While you obvious can't covert the whole thing and dump it all in one place you can probably still find lots of place to stick huge tanks of this stuff, and the tech is only going to get better.
But you are correct in that this wont solve the problem it's still very promising.

Would you care to explain the mechanism that these rights are granted, and what "Creator" is being referred to? Hint: Jefferson wasn't a particularly religious man. Perhaps you should take that phrase a little less literally and a little more figuratively.

You're right Jefferson wasn't religious. He even said religion was a private affair and that's where religion should stay, private. Because of that, and because he was a Deist, when he ran for president some clergy and other religious people tried to demonize him, Alexander Hamilton compared him to an atheist. TJ went so far as to take the Bible, strip all the passages about miracles and such and released the Jefferson Bible. As for how I take his statement I don't take it as been religious at all. For all I care the creator could be evolution. The point though is that rights are innate not granted.

"Nature" does not write laws. We believe that there are certain rights inherent in being human, but that is a concept we created for ourselves, along with all of our other laws.

Some of the USA's Founding Fathers, like Alexander Hamilton did not want rights to be enumerated in the Constitution. If rights were enumerated then some rights may be overlooked. Hamilton even wrote "I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous." So as a compromise the Constitution was written without them then the Bill of Rights amended the Constitution.

Falcon

Full of shit, perhaps.

Gasoline taxes pay for road maintenance genius.

That type of tax is known as an Excise Tax also known as luxury tax. You don't have to pay that tax if you don't buy gasoline.

I will be driving anywhere I want on any chunk of road I choose, because I pay for gas and as a result I pay the excise tax used for roads. Thank you very much for illustrating your lack of knowledge of this subject.

These projects will be paid for with money collected from Direct Tax

Now, lets tackle your statement regarding why I should pay taxes.

Of course, I should pay taxes to pay for two wars that I'm opposed to. I should also pay taxes to fund bail-outs and bonuses for bankers and auto-makers. You would argue that I should pay taxes that are sent to foreign countries.

Do you realize that we (The USA) fought against British taxation and won independence as a result? Perhaps you should move to the jungle where you can build the socialist utopia of your dreams. I'll stay in the USA, the last known address of freedom.

If nothing else, it suggests a benign, free, easily found device that can be used to distract oneself after digging up those memories. May not be particularly profound, but it was worth writing up - Not everything is particle physics. Science that is easily understood by the public at large carries an inherent value well worth pursuing.

  You just shouldn't take it to extremes. Sure knows how to pick 'em, eh?

I never thought I would have anything positive to say about John Ashcroft, but this story changed my view: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html

You wouldn't know if a US citizen was sent to gitmo.

First - the military controls what names appear on their lists. Who is to say they couldn't send a US citizen to gitmo and list them under the name of a wanted Moroccan?

Second - the Bush(jr) administration is an easy target for conjecture since they have a history of erosion of civil liberties and are one of the most secretive administrations about national security matters.

Third - perhaps you haven't heard of extraordinary rendition. There is nothing to say the federal government couldn't 'disappear' someone if they wanted to. If you need any evidence, look at the Maher Arar case where a Canadian was intercepted at JFK international, rendered to Syria by the CIA and tortured in Syria. If the US had sufficient cause, they could do this to an American. If its done in secret and can't even be challenged in a court of law, how do you know the "sufficient cause" bar hasn't been lowered?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101900835_pf.html

The law must be reviewed, executed and challenged under the light of day or it will slowly erode our liberty.

Small plants are more expensive to build, more expensive to maintain, and intrinsically less efficient.

False. This obvious "invention" was available in the public domain through all the debates about wind power, in which monopolists claimed that only one wind speed could generate power for any given turbine. Not to take away from the team that has finally brought it to market, but neither an electronic switch nor variable resistance are novel concepts. The only reasonable explanation for this taking so long is industrial conspiracy, illegal collusion. The Third World can do it. Expense is not the reason that we have not.

Coercive monopolies for utilities guarantee that we use over-priced and obsolete technologies, nullifying the presumed benefits of "economies of scale". Only residential, user-owned solar and wind power will solve the United States' energy problems, which stem from the petroleum oligopoly and local utility monopolies. Nuclear power is for suckers, and our country's corporatist GOP "leadership" diminishes our credibility and negotiating power on nuclear energy with un-chummy countries like Iran and Pakistan, in addition to the pollution and fraudulent deception of US "customers" who are deprived of options by government collusion with petroleum corporations and Bechtel, the largest recipient of US nuclear tribute.

In contrast, Palestinians are not responsible for the acts of Palestinian terrorists, since they have no control over them.

That was true until Hamas was put into power by the 2006 election. Naturally, I have no reason to assume that Hamas would have ceased if it had received no seats, but it had the support of nearly 2/3 of the population at the time of that election.

- T

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010201695.html

The airline already apologized, refunded the money, and paid for the other flight the family took that trip. Just get over it. Plus really it was passengers on the flight who started the whole thing. Like that old lady on the plane in that movie about Harold and Kumar.