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We should start encrypting all our data, no matter how "unsuspicious" or "ordinary" it may be. Everything from conversations between family and friends to financial records (though you should be already encrypting the latter anyway.)

Don't bother. They have access to everything they want via M$ update, and possibly other update as well. It's just too easy. Encryption does nothing when they have the keys to your computer. Find paedo's (won't somebody think of the children!)? No problem. Trawl for those with terrorist plans? No problem. Check the competition on a multi-billion dollar international defence contract? No problem. Just hook a keyword/image checker to the disk indexer that reports back a simple yes/no on the next update. If yes then next update downloads a more comprehensive spy package. Easy.

Think they wouldn't do it? Look at the track record of the major agencies on everything from COINTELPRO to Echelon. Even this. It'd be surprising if they didn't do it.

And if they get caught? Sorry, you must've been infected with a virus, here's an update to "fix" the problem.

This move (warrantless investigation) may simply be to retroactively make broad scale computer tapping "legal". They don't even need to do that for the hundreds of millions of non-US computers - those have no constitutional protections at all.

Particularly if you are a non-US entity competing in any way with US interests you should not trust any network connected computer running any mainstream US software at all.

To repeat: Encryption does not help if they have administrative access to your computer.

---

Keep living the American DRM.

A story in the Washington Post gives a bit more technical detail; it sounds as if this might be a problem not in the voting machine software but in the software in the central computer to which the voting machines upload their vote counts, if the electoral district using the machines chooses to do that (not all do, apparently), and that the problem might be a race condition that shows up if multiple voting machine memory cards are uploaded in parallel.

...There are NO race conditions. There is NO need for parallel execution. ...

I'm not so sure of that. At least according to the Washington Post story on the problem, the problem appears to be with counting votes from the memory cards from multiple machines at a time, and sounds a bit like, err, umm, it might be a race condition:

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

...

The problem is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that upload multiple memory cards during counts, Riggall said. The GEMS system is supposed to save information from one card at a time to be counted in order as the cards are read by a database that Riggall described as the "mother ship." But a logic error in the program can cause incoming votes to essentially shove aside other votes that are waiting in the electronic line before they are counted. The mistake occurs in milliseconds, Premier's customer notice says.

The mistake is not immediately apparent, Riggall said, and would have to be caught when elections officials went to match how many memory cards they fed into a central database against how many show as being read by that database. Each card carries a unique marker.

Perhaps there's no need for parallelism, but, for better or worse, it sounds as if there might be parallelism.

Yeah, that explains why CBS news violated their own policies to cover up a McCain gaffe in an interview with Katie Couric.

But if we were to generate our energy locally, with renewable resources, not only would we leave a nicer place for our kids, grandkids, and their offspring, we'd also improve our national sovereignty. Rather than fund deadly radicals, we'd fund the nice guy down the street. Rather than ship our cash to entities who threaten us at every turn, we'd fund your next-door neighbors. No matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter how wealthy you happen to be, this is a good idea.

Hear, hear. I suggest you forward your post to Senator Edward Kennedy and RFK2 and the Cape Cod liberals who, while saying that we need to embrace alternative energy sources, actively blocked a wind farm project because, partly, the 400 foot turbines placed 6 miles offshore would "steal the stars and nighttime views".

It seems that the high priests of the "green movement," led by such illuminaries as Gore and Kennedy, fully embrace the "do as I say, not as I do" principle of life.

You don't know what you're talking about. Apple doesn't pay for product placement. The "budget" that you "found" doesn't exist: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401670.html

Queue in 10 million "global warming is a scam", "don't look at me, people didna doit" and "Al Gore is a weenie" comments.

But all of these comments on the legitimacy of global warming/cooling/climate change all ignore one very simple, inescapable fact: Most "carbon-neutral" energy forms can be generated locally. Windmills use the wind in your area. Solar panels use the sunlight from your roof. This is also true for geothermal, ocean-wave, and bio-fueled energy. All can be generated locally, with local resources.

Only oil and nuclear have limited supply.

So if, for example, you were a wealthy, North-American country with a severe foreign-debt problem, you might consider the actual costs of oil in lost lives, civil liberties, currency devaluation, and raw wealth shipped oversees to fund a petroleum addiction. This cost is so huge and multi-faceted it baffles the mind. Average people just cannot even begin to understand wealth drain and cost of this magnitude.

But if we were to generate our energy locally, with renewable resources, not only would we leave a nicer place for our kids, grandkids, and their offspring, we'd also improve our national sovereignty. Rather than fund deadly radicals, we'd fund the nice guy down the street. Rather than ship our cash to entities who threaten us at every turn, we'd fund your next-door neighbors. No matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter how wealthy you happen to be, this is a good idea.

Ignore the matter of global warming, because there's a much more immediate reason to "go green". And it has nothing to do with carbon footprint, it has to do with the green bits of paper in your back pocket. It will be expensive in the short term. It will pay and pay and pay for generations thereafter.

Which would you rather be remembered as: the generation that ignored the problem until it was too late, or the generation that set your state/country/civilization on a long-term course of prosperity?

I choose the latter, thank you.

Apple may make an effort to get their products on the screen, but they say they never actually pay for product placement.

First of all rush is a party tool, I dislike party tool (irregardless of the party) Rush and Stephane Miller are in the same bucket (IMHO), I do however rather like the Ed Schultz Show.

Secondly, I told you that I am seeing someone you can stop following me around, its not going to happen (I'm not going to follow you around)

Lastly:

Not only are many bills passed with 2/3rds or more support many bills have sponsors from both parties, I know of this by actually keeping track of issues other than Iraq and Immigration watch C-Span sometime and read beyond the headlines in the papers and youll see that the democrats and republicans agree on about 60-70% of what they work on.

While finding a list of vote by vote for the 110th congress by percent is proving somewhat difficult I did come across this:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/f000439/

More often than not the GOP and the Democrats have the same position on these bills (given how close the numbers are that would mean at least 75% in favor)

Looking at a specific one where there is disagreement you still see a large majority supporting the bill:

Vote description: Feingold Amdt. No. 5183; To require as a precondition to United States-India peaceful atomic energy cooperation determinations by the President that United States nuclear cooperation with India does nothing to assist, encourage, or induce India to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Party Yes No Not Voting
Democratic 25 19 0
Independent 0 0 1
Republican 0 52 3
Total 25 71 4

--

Given you said *there are not any bills* which are agreed to by 70% of the membership and I just provided one I trust you retract the 'liar' statement, hell even the flag burning amendment get up to 66% agreement between the parties..

Usually what you see with a senate vote is a huge majority of one party voting and a measurable minority of the other party voting the same way. Blue state Republicans like Olympia Snowe often vote with democrats and Blue Dog Democrats (like former Senator Zell Miller) voting with Republicans..

Don't forget that Bush himself said he supported the 1994 assault weapons ban and would sign a bill reauthorizing it. Bush doesn't give the first damn about the Second Amendment unless it's politically expedient.

This study really seems to contradict the belief (that has no formal supporting evidence) that polygamy contributes to violence

So studies that merely look at areas with skewed sex ratios aren't enough? Nor the evident fact that young, unmarried men are statistically more likely to commit crime that young, married men?

Also, while I'm willing to believe that polygyny helps the men with many wives to live longer, I wonder if polyamory/swinging would confer the same benefits without the ratio problems of polygyny. (Obviously, polyamory/swinging has problems of its own, but if we're measuring lifespan, things like possibly increased rates of STDs and relationship destruction would be already be factored into the outcome.)

How did China even get the Olympics, it just proves that the ideals of the Olympic games have been trumped by vapid consumerism and it only has teeth when it is deciding where to host a new games.

PDF created in PowerPoint.

Have they learned nothing???

Rich

This is very true, the corporate types call it market saturation.

You only need so many plumbers, electricians, etc etc etc.

At some tipping point it just drives wages down
as the larger supply competes for smaller demand.

Production lines world wide will continue to be made more robotic,
and scaled down on workers, Wal-mart should be renamed China-mart.

The population keeps going up, Less jobs, but more ppl.

Ppl who have a house and kids cannot venture out boldy and
start a company unless they have a product that some other
company will not jump on and leverage them out of business.

Some get bought, but most just get beat into submission
by the big Corporates who don't always play fair.

As bad as things are, they are poised to get a lot worse.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4563171.ece

The war with Iran/Russia is coming, and we race head long like
a bunch of nationalistic monkeys who think its a sport event.

It will not be as cheap as Iraq was at 3+ trillion dollars
on projected cost, sooooo cccchhheeeeaaaappppp.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html

That is some real Mc Lovin right there.

Hold onto your hat Dorothy we are in for a bumpy ride in Oz.

The russians have an opinion on how this is going to go too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Yamantaw

They don't carry bombs on those old bombers:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/kh-101.htm

They carry KH-555's, upgraded stealth cruise missiles with
200 - 500 kilo-ton warheads.

They have made visits to Cuba to check the Infrastructure,
and have plans for a back up base with Chavez.

http://www.india-defence.com/reports/3929

I was thinking more of articles like this one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24468-2005Feb14.html I read a great article on the subject a few weeks ago, that detailed how much of the several trillion dollars have been sunk into Iraq have been scammed by big military contractors, but alas I can't find it again. If I recall correctly it was estimated at around 20% of those trillions - so billions of dollars. I could easily be wrong though as I don't have the article to hand and one tends to inflate values in memory. Heres another article as well: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050930/news_lz1e30cray.html And another: http://www.propublica.org/scandal/military-contractor-abuse/ Companies like Haliburton and Blackwater (and dozens more) are making money hand over fist, screwing the US public out of those dollars, and they have a strong lobby support and friends in government (who will no doubt retire as members of the BOD for these companies by way of thanks). Its a *huge* scam, and the US public are the victims in this. That's why you are at war in Iraq currently. Its also why i expect that if you pull out of Iraq, you will end up somewhere else, because the money has to keep rolling into the hands of these companies. You may think your Medicare system and other social programs are eating up tons of cash, and undoubtedly they are - but at least they improve the lives of American citizens. Contracts to Haliburton and other similar companies merely line the pockets of their corporate owners. The money currently being doled out in plastic wrapped bundles of $100k each could be spent to decrease the cost of the medical system, create jobs for those who are unemployed, start new companies that produce useful services for US citizens at home etc, rather than being spent on wasteful contract services (like paying a company 15m a month to guard flights for a month where no such flights landed etc).

Waterboarding might not be a walk in the park, but it's been applied to three people who were known to be high-level terrorists.

Now, where's the "-1 Naïve" when you need it.

Hopefully you meant this as some sort of sick joke. If not, you really owe it to yourself to go watch the award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The passages below are taken from an article in The Washington Post.

In 2002, a young Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who'd never spent a night away from his dusty little village, got lost in the fog of war and took a wrong turn into an abyss from which he would never return. It was a detention center at Bagram Air Base, where he was grilled on suspicion of being a Taliban fighter. Military interrogators hung him from a cage in chains, kept him up all night and kicked him senseless, turning his legs into pulp.

He lasted only five days. The Army initially attributed his death to natural causes, even though coroners had ruled it a homicide. Low-level soldiers were punished. It turned out that Dilawar (who, like many Afghans, used only one name) was not an enemy fighter, had no terrorist connections and had committed no crime at all.

Researchers at Human Rights First have categorized more than 70 detainee deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as homicides linked to gross recklessness, abuse or torture.

"...many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was..."

What a boon for Hillary Clinton! When will it be extended to cover YouTube, media archives, and history books?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102989.html

Ok, google helps here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022402094.html

McCain has also switched positions on several issues, but in general, those have been over the course of years, rather than months. Yes, they're both politicians, and their views have changed.

I didn't say they were no better. I said they were worse. The rest of your post is typical right-wing spew that I see so often. Why are Republicans such hateful people?

Regardless, it's been shown that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do. As someone who makes a high income, I'd be better off, in the short term, with McCain, so I'm not arguing for my own personal gain here.

You're a fucking moron. I know you think that you're real smart because you wrote "...think about the square miles needed to permanenty store the nuclear waste" and "Uranium doesn't grow on trees, but you're a fucking moron. Let me explain to you why you're so fucking stupid.

1) "...think about the square miles needed to permanently store the nuclear waste".

Sorry, thank you for playing but the square miles needed to store all of that nuclear waste still pale in comparison to the square miles needed to produce solar photo-voltaic electricity. It doesn't matter how efficient your solar cells are you can only get about 1 kilowatt per square meter of power from the sun. This isn't bad, it's nothing to sneer at, but if you want a lot of power you'd better plan on covering a lot of square meters with solar cells. Now, from that 1kW per square meter take into account the fact that the cells used for these projects are between 10 and 20 percent efficiency, that your power source isn't available for 12 hours a day and that there are these things called clouds that can reduce the power you get from your power source and you see a dramatic increase in the amount of square meters you need to cover with silicon to generate meaningful amounts of power.

Let's consider the plant in question. 12.5 square miles producing 800 megawatts. It sounds like a lot, but in terms of energy density it sucks. 12.5 square miles is 32.4 square kilometers, with an 800 megawatt capacity that works out to about 25 megawatts per square kilometer or about 25 watts per square meter.

Now according to the article, which you probably didn't read, that power production figure is in the middle of a sunny day. Since it's not sunny all day long it kind of sucks when the sun goes down because when it does there goes your electricity.

Now, let's compare this plant to the Palos Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Palos Verde sits on 16 square kilometers of land and generates, on average, 3.2 gigawatts of electricity, four times as much as the plant mentioned in the article, and it generates that electricity day and night. Oh, and the 16 kilometers that Palos Verde site aren't all covered with solar cells, so in terms of not covering up the land with lots of solar cells nuclear wins on power generation and humps solar like the over-rated, underperforming, overhyped by stupid people bitch that it is.

"But the waste" you ignorantly squee. "What about the waste?" What about it? Find an unused chunk of desert, dig a large hole in it, encase the waste in suitable containers and bury it. Even without reprocessing this doesn't require a lot of land. In 2007 the US had about 50,000 tons of spent waste from nuclear reactors (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power). 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is, at an assumed average density of say, 10 tons per cubic meter that works out to 5000 cubic meters. That's not a lot, a cube 18 meters on a side. If we assume that we want to dilute the waste at a ratio of 100:1 that would give us a 500,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste, which is a cube 80 meters on a side.

Reprocessing the waste, either by using standard reprocessing technologies such as PUREX or newer methods such as the DUPIC cycle would reduce this volume even more.

Now, this doesn't include the low level waste from nuclear operations. But while taking that into account we should also take into account the waste from producing solar cells. See, producing solar cells produces a lot of nasty waste as well. It's not radioactive, but it is quite toxic, and that's just the silicon production. Don't believe me? Then read about the Chinese who are finding out what life around a poly-silicon plant is like

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html

What wa

In this Washington Post article

The article on one page: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081203275_pf.html

16 of the last 20 US presidential elections (80%) were won by the taller candidate (sorry, registration required). Treating the system as a two-party system, of course.

Yes, that's a nice, logical, disinterested way to look at it. However it IS pertinent in that someday this is going to happen to us. Someone is going to attack on a large, coordinated scale and we had better be more prepared than what we've seen in the recent past. We do have a larger structure. Unless of course they are taking the electrical grids down (a likely target) which would cut off all mass communication in the area along with taking down our economy.

It should be somewhat alarming to those of us in the US (although, not surprising) that Pootie-Poot is trying to overthrow the leader of a sovereign nation that is pro-Western. We should be concerned that Russians are moving back into their old nation-building ways and back-tracking on freedoms that seemed to be coming to their people. They are not our friends, nor have they been even remotely in several years, if ever. This is one of the countries that was going around the UN embargo of Iraq to supply them with weapons and enriching themselves under the "oil-for-food" debacle.

And after JFK signed the civil rights bills, I felt vindicated. But I was especially proud after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Johnson. Only later did I understand why LBJ said upon signing that he had just surrendered the South to the GOP for a generation, which was optimistic.

In terms of the current rate of acceleration of this trend, according to the Washington Post:

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.

President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions.
...
Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics.

...

Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate . Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ.

...

Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured.

That question doesn't even address the bigger issue, IMO, which is that releasing toxins into the environment leads to birth defects and chronic illnesses -- essentially guaranteeing generations of people who will be permanently disabled as a result of the activity. (Also, their are some tentative links between even mild heavy-metal poisoning during childhood and violent tendencies later in life; not only might you be creating thousands of people with birth defects or mental retardation, but you might be dooming an entire society to increased violence and crime as a result.)

There's a reason why places with functioning governments almost universally don't allow this sort of thing. The social costs are vastly greater than the benefits it brings to the people who actually do it, and many of the people who end up paying the price never asked to be involved at all. They just happen to have the misfortune of living downwind, downstream, on the same coast, or drinking from the same aquifer. That, by itself, makes it a morally bankrupt activity -- nothing justifies poisoning others who never asked to be involved.

Just because someone is starving doesn't give them a blanket license to harm others. It might make their actions understandable and perhaps even morally justifiable on an individual level, but it doesn't mean that it ought to be allowed as a matter of policy. Food shortages are a tractable problem -- the immediate solution, at least, is straightforward. However once an area has been contaminated with toxic waste, and especially once the population has a high level of birth defects secondary to toxic exposure, it can take generations to even realize the scope of the problem.

It wasn't the masks so much as the fact that they were black and the t-shirts the athletes were wearing at the time that pissed people off:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/livecoverage/2008/08/china_bloggers_to_us_cyclists_1.html

To understand how Russian "justice" works, read the shocking story published by "The Washington Post" (TWP). Natalia Trufanova was driving a Zhiguli (a lightweight Russian car) with her family in Moscow in September of 2007. She was minding her own business and dutifully obeying the traffic laws. Then, suddenly, a motorcade carrying Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev and coming from the opposite direction entered the wrong lane -- the lane in which Trufanova was driving. A vehicle in the motorcade smashed into the Zhiguli, killing Trufanova and her family. The Russian police wrote a false report, claiming that Trufanov drove into the wrong lane.

TWP notes, "When angry witnesses started posting video on the Web clearly showing that it was the motorcade that was driving in the wrong lane, the lead investigator looking into the accident said that he didn't have access to the Internet."

To understand how Russian "justice" works, read the shocking story published by "The Washington Post" (TWP). Natalia Trufanova was driving a Zhiguli (a lightweight Russian car) with her family in Moscow in September of 2007. She was minding her own business and dutifully obeying the traffic laws. Then, suddenly, a motorcade carrying Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev and coming from the opposite direction entered the wrong lane -- the lane in which Trufanova was driving. A vehicle in the motorcade smashed into the Zhiguli, killing Trufanova and her family. The Russian police wrote a false report, claiming that Trufanov drove into the wrong lane.

TWP notes, "When angry witnesses started posting video on the Web clearly showing that it was the motorcade that was driving in the wrong lane, the lead investigator looking into the accident said that he didn't have access to the Internet."

China is not drilling offshore Cuba. Please stop spreading this myth. Link

Circumcision cuts the chances of contracting aids by 70% during a single sexual encounter. Now this doesn't mean that a man running around practicing unsafe sex is 70% less likely to contract aids, as it would be just a matter of time, but if all the men were circumcised the effect of a single infected woman sleeping around would be a lot less.

it's already funded and being offered as a solution

That's great and changes one exponential curve ... into another exponential curve.

Let's say the uncircumscribed chance of infection of a single encounter is 100% and circumscribed is 30%. Let's also say that people have sex with the same person 10 times and then move on. And let's say people have 5 sexual partners in their lives. The chance of AIDS getting passed with 100% certainty is 100%, the chance with 30% is ... 99.9999940951%. Oh great ... So you can imagine the difference this makes ...

(I'm assuming kids from infected mothers/fathers don't have the disease, but they may obviously get themselves infected the "normal" way)

"Normal":
1 person will infect 5 others in 1 generation (assuming a generation is about 30 years)

It takes : log(5;6000000000) = 13.98 generations = 419 years 8 months 5 days 23 hours and 5 minutes

"Chance of infection 'reduced by 70%' !"
1 person will infect 4.9999704755 others

It takes : log(4.9999704755;6000000000) = 13.98 generations = 419 years 8 months 5 days 23 hours and 5 minutes AND 42 seconds

So you've saved the human race ! For about 42 seconds. Well done ... (the difference is so little, because in order to make a "real" difference you're going to have to make sure that getting to 3 billion infectees is delayed by at least 15 years.

Then marriage :

Let's take muslim marriage principles first, since AIDS is a LOT more prevalent in muslim countries : there are 10% promiscuous women (I'm not saying 10% hookers, just 10% of women who remarry for whatever reason, most men have multiple partners, but, let's be generous, only 3. I mean, women don't have to turn hooker to get into this 10%). This changes the infection rate, of either men or women, to about 3 others, over their entire lifetime.

Well then you get log(3,6000000000) = 20.49405922217591609 generations

or 614 years, 9 months, 26 days, 16 hours, ...

One catch with this last figure, if muslim women have babies earlier than others, which seems to be true, though I don't know how much, this shortens the generation gap, making the number of years go down (and if they have babies on average 7 years earlier, this makes the difference exactly 0)

If everybody followed Christian marriage principles aids would be stopped dead in it's tracks. Now let's not kid ourselves however saying everybody is faithful : let's say (a random) 10% of people become "promiscuous". What happens ?

Since the 2 groups don't fuck with eachother (since anyone who does so obviously is part of that 10%, or becomes part of it by that act), AIDS will i infect the promiscuous group very quickly (in a matter of years) and will die out in the non-promiscuous group equally quickly : it will infect some insignificant number of them every generation, but it won't spread.

Hmmm this turned out to be a very politically incorrect post. Great :-p.

it's already funded and being offered as a solution

Washington Post

Well, at least they have a policy in writing...

link to Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100491.html
I had a friend that worked for AA, she was happy to see them finally absolved. Sadly it was too little too late.

-- In about 2003, Gonzalez and others found an unencrypted wireless access point at a BJ's Wholesale Club store. BJ's reported a breach of its computer networks in early 2004.

-- In 2004, other members of the ID theft ring compromised an OfficeMax wireless access point in Miami, and they were able to steal credit card data. After law enforcement officials in 2006 identified OfficeMax as the victim of a data breach, the company said it hired an outside auditor to conduct an investigation and found no evidence of a security breach. An OfficeMax spokesman didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.

So either the Secret Service was letting this go on just so they could make one bust, or they had no idea that their own informant was committing major breaches while under their supervision. Also, how stupid is this guy that he didn't even stop breaking the law after getting busted and becoming an informant? Some people are just begging to be sent to prison, and it looks like the prosecuters are going to grant his wish. For the rest of his life if they have their way.

P.S.: The Threat Level post with the info about him being an informant also contains a link to another case about another informant who was stealing social security numbers while working on a computer inside the Secret Service offices.

The usdoj.gov website seems to be down for me at the moment but should come back up eventually.

"...nobody starves in the West today." Hogwash! Food pantries across the US are experiencing higher demand than ever. Many people are forced to choose between paying for food, drugs or fuel--because the cost of all of these are skyrocketing. The US government's own statistics show an increase in hunger among US households. The wealthiest nation on Earth can prosecute two wars halfway around the world but it can't feed or provide health care for its own people. Globally six million children die of hunger and treatable disease EVERY YEAR. That is capitalism's fault. Capitalism has been responsible for more war and death than Stalin ever was.

Looks to me like this is an excellent time to read up on alternative treatment methods, as the barabaric, for-profit US "healthcare system" appears hell-bent on becoming less and less available to those of us with imperfect health and fewer than several gazillions of dollars.

Here you can RTFA all on one page.

And to date, I'm not aware of anytime where the NSA letters or anything concerning a library has bee abused.

FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters

I didn't mean the israeli arabs were excluded because of general discrimination, I meant they were excluded from the army - in ways that are typically difficult to pin down - and later not serving in the army was used against them to discriminate.
I found this link meanwhile Is excluded the right word?.

I agree that concerning homosexuals Israel is a step ahead of the US. That is why the argument is misleading. It suggests extrapolation. Concerning the treatment of Israeli Arabs Israel is way way behind. And they're much better off than those who live in the westbank, who are again much better off than people in Gaza.

I think I know what I'm saying when I emphasize the Israeli need to keep up appearances and to cover up every discrimination. The first person that needs to be fooled there is the Israeli Jew. After all, they want to be nice. Well, they are. But that is a very weak safeguard. It also makes it very difficult to tell them their country is doing things that are very wrong.

Maybe you should read that book of Susan Nathan's.

So, to you, stacking the Supreme Court with anti-abortion zealots

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111400720.html

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2008/05/sekulow_recalls.html

and going after porn with a vengeance by increasing Justice Department prosecutions and devoting FBI resources to porn DURING A TIME OF TERRORISM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bushs-war-on-porn-perve_b_7704.html

and viciously pushing to remove porn's sources of funding

http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/01/cz_sl_0501porn.html

and levying huge fines on outspoken media opponents for talking about innocuous things

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0408043fcc1.html

or for showing a tit

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/01/entertainment/main626925.shtml

or using swear words

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article390108.ece

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080616/epps

isn't doing much to push the religious agenda?

How much more does it take to convince you that Bush, especially during the time he had no Congressional opposition, was actively doing things to help the religious zealots? Are you sure that YOU haven't been living on Mars the last seven years?

"I urge the colleges to satisfy the requirement of "offering alternatives" by partnering exclusively with indie, creative-commons, and public domain distributors."
Which would not stop students from downloading works that the MPAA governs at the same time.

"BTW - why in the world do colleges need to be involved in "offering alternatives" when there are dozens of well known websites already offering alternatives. iTunes anyone? Rhapsody? eMusic?"
Because, according to the EFF themselves:
"The recording industry is already willing to offer unlimited downloads with subscription plans for $10 to $15 per month through services such as Napster and Rhapsody. But these services have been a failure on campuses, for a number of reasons, including these: They don't work with the iPod, they cause downloaded music to "expire" after students leave the school, and they don't include all the music students want." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

"If people aren't using these already what makes anyone thing that a college offering the same will suddenly be more successful?"
Because if they had a local library then students could access the library off of their campus, instead of having to download over the internet. They wouldn't have to worry about trojans, or whether the music file would even play on their player, etc. The aforementioned may make it seem like I think students are stupid - perhaps, because the Washington Post thinks university system administrators are stupid; some gems:
"Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic -- and a great many universities do not"
"The toolkit allows an administrator to require a username and password for access to the Web server. The problem is that the person responsible for running the toolkit is never prompted to create a username and password."

And at least Dave Taylor at the U of P agrees: "even with a firewall keeping non-university students from accessing the toolkit's Web server, any student on the network armed with the Internet address of the Web server could view all of the traffic on his or her segment of the network, said Penn's Dave Taylor."
- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_opens_1.html

"It is no business of a college, which people pay to attend, to be factoring into their cost model marketing and/or service costs of music/movie distribution."
Apparently it is. Quoth that EFF dude again:
"Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, and they also pay for cable TV subscriptions and site licenses for software."

Moreover, the EFF dude thinks that's an excellent thing to apply to music downloads as well:
"By the same token, they could collect a reasonable amount from their students for "all you can eat" downloading." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

"I urge the colleges to satisfy the requirement of "offering alternatives" by partnering exclusively with indie, creative-commons, and public domain distributors."
Which would not stop students from downloading works that the MPAA governs at the same time.

"BTW - why in the world do colleges need to be involved in "offering alternatives" when there are dozens of well known websites already offering alternatives. iTunes anyone? Rhapsody? eMusic?"
Because, according to the EFF themselves:
"The recording industry is already willing to offer unlimited downloads with subscription plans for $10 to $15 per month through services such as Napster and Rhapsody. But these services have been a failure on campuses, for a number of reasons, including these: They don't work with the iPod, they cause downloaded music to "expire" after students leave the school, and they don't include all the music students want." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

"If people aren't using these already what makes anyone thing that a college offering the same will suddenly be more successful?"
Because if they had a local library then students could access the library off of their campus, instead of having to download over the internet. They wouldn't have to worry about trojans, or whether the music file would even play on their player, etc. The aforementioned may make it seem like I think students are stupid - perhaps, because the Washington Post thinks university system administrators are stupid; some gems:
"Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic -- and a great many universities do not"
"The toolkit allows an administrator to require a username and password for access to the Web server. The problem is that the person responsible for running the toolkit is never prompted to create a username and password."

And at least Dave Taylor at the U of P agrees: "even with a firewall keeping non-university students from accessing the toolkit's Web server, any student on the network armed with the Internet address of the Web server could view all of the traffic on his or her segment of the network, said Penn's Dave Taylor."
- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_opens_1.html

"It is no business of a college, which people pay to attend, to be factoring into their cost model marketing and/or service costs of music/movie distribution."
Apparently it is. Quoth that EFF dude again:
"Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, and they also pay for cable TV subscriptions and site licenses for software."

Moreover, the EFF dude thinks that's an excellent thing to apply to music downloads as well:
"By the same token, they could collect a reasonable amount from their students for "all you can eat" downloading." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

"I urge the colleges to satisfy the requirement of "offering alternatives" by partnering exclusively with indie, creative-commons, and public domain distributors."
Which would not stop students from downloading works that the MPAA governs at the same time.

"BTW - why in the world do colleges need to be involved in "offering alternatives" when there are dozens of well known websites already offering alternatives. iTunes anyone? Rhapsody? eMusic?"
Because, according to the EFF themselves:
"The recording industry is already willing to offer unlimited downloads with subscription plans for $10 to $15 per month through services such as Napster and Rhapsody. But these services have been a failure on campuses, for a number of reasons, including these: They don't work with the iPod, they cause downloaded music to "expire" after students leave the school, and they don't include all the music students want." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

"If people aren't using these already what makes anyone thing that a college offering the same will suddenly be more successful?"
Because if they had a local library then students could access the library off of their campus, instead of having to download over the internet. They wouldn't have to worry about trojans, or whether the music file would even play on their player, etc. The aforementioned may make it seem like I think students are stupid - perhaps, because the Washington Post thinks university system administrators are stupid; some gems:
"Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic -- and a great many universities do not"
"The toolkit allows an administrator to require a username and password for access to the Web server. The problem is that the person responsible for running the toolkit is never prompted to create a username and password."

And at least Dave Taylor at the U of P agrees: "even with a firewall keeping non-university students from accessing the toolkit's Web server, any student on the network armed with the Internet address of the Web server could view all of the traffic on his or her segment of the network, said Penn's Dave Taylor."
- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_opens_1.html

"It is no business of a college, which people pay to attend, to be factoring into their cost model marketing and/or service costs of music/movie distribution."
Apparently it is. Quoth that EFF dude again:
"Universities already pay blanket fees so that student a cappella groups can perform on campus, and they also pay for cable TV subscriptions and site licenses for software."

Moreover, the EFF dude thinks that's an excellent thing to apply to music downloads as well:
"By the same token, they could collect a reasonable amount from their students for "all you can eat" downloading." - Fred von Lohmann, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501761.html

...are we not a Capitalist country any more?

No, we're not.

On the topic of oil shale:
Oil shale requires a lot energy and water to convert into oil. It costs more to extract. It has net emissions over 40% higher than oil. And it produces toxic byproducts that have to be isolated to avoid contamination of water supplies. Source (first one I came across, feel free to look for others): http://www.mcclatchydc.com/256/story/45748.html

I'd rather pay a bit more for oil that isn't quite as bad for my air and my water. If there is ever an actual crisis (and no, $4/gallon is not a crisis, call me when it hits $10), it'll be there for us, but why the all-fired hurry?

The point is that more drilling isn't a fix.

But that point is invalid. ANWR alone could have oil flowing in around eighteen months, and that certainly would affect prices near term. Offshore drilling is a longer process but that keeps us healthy as an economy until alternative energy comes online in quantity to meet our needs.

It is a fix, if you don't ignore long-term consequences of your actions! And, it's WAY better for the environment.

You know what ANWR is about?

Drilling in an area one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves undisturbed a refuge one-third the size of Britain.

For my children, I'd like to pass on a society that peacefully transitioned to alternative energy sources rather than one that wet through a decade or two of the hellish aftereffects of an economy strangled by energy costs. Because along with that you get well-preserved resources too, as the article notes.

This had already been through a grand jury and his lawyers had been informed that he was about to be charged. So it's not like some scientist committed suicide for another reason and the justice department is conveniently appointing him as the patsy.

And this is hardly a victory for the justice department or the FBI which will look like a bunch of keystone cops. It would have been better for them if this case had quietly gone away. Because this guy had been under investigation since 2002, but the dept. was so set upon Hatfield that they not only dismissed concerns about Ivins, but he was put in charge (if guilty) of analyzing the evidence in his own crime. Then they had to pay Hatfield off after ruining his life by making him a public suspect. He was exonerated this June. (An earlier version of the story in USA Today had mentioned an management change in the FBI that finally started the reinvestigate leads and not just hone in on Hatfield.)

Some wonder if Ivins was trying to use the scare to test or forward his vaccine. Says the WP: "Nearly two years after anthrax mailings killed five people and sickened 17 others, Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins accepted the Defense Department's highest honor for civilian performance for helping to resurrect a controversial vaccine that could protect against the deadly bacteria."

At a 2003 award ceremony he said, "Awards are nice. But the real satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on-line." Back on-line? Was the research being defunded and he saw creating a scare as a way to get the funding back to his research? This is also apparently the vaccine that has caused a concern over safety and some soldiers refused to take the shot.

You hit the nail on the head - but they have proven many times that they really don't care about what is really important. They are too worried that someone might be using steroids to hit one more home run.

I am not really sure how things like this cell phone ban, steroid use or a hundred other things I could talk about that they focus on become agenda - it appears to me that the gov't is trying to accomplish two things:

1. Power. The power that congress has has been a little unchecked and is abused for both professional and personal gain tons of time. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

2. Justification. They need to justify why they are there. It is kind of like when the Hollywood types talk about things they have little or no knowledge of. They are trying to justify their position or title.

I don't know what the fix is for the government thing. Unfortunately it is few and far in between folks that actually care. Look at the voting rates. I truly think that we could eliminate a good portion of our deficit spending just by not wasting tax dollars on things like this Cell phone ban.

Just my two cents. Thanks for letting me use my soapbox. :)

There is a correlation between crime rate and lead exposure, a known neurological poison. I'd say a better inflammatory question to have asked, is "Did IT staff give themselves lead poisoning from handling IC boards made with lead solder all these years?" This might explain the BOFH reputation, the guy had lead poisoning. It would also explain why there are so many strange people in the IT industry, e.g. all the paranoid, conspiracy theorists and here on slashdot.

The thread included messages such as, "I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly" and a reply claiming "she has herpes."

That would only be libel if it names them specifically. The article never states the plaintiffs were specifically named.

TFA is poorly written, I prefer this one or the wikipedia article. What appears to have happened is some guys voted on the hottest women at prestigious laws schools. The plaintiffs were on the list and the anonymous comments were made about them.