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China has ended fixed currency a long time ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072100351.html

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

NebUad(responsible for gator) are doing the same thing right now in the US:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040304052.html?nav=rss_technology

Was one of their chants during the Brooks Brothers Riot http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31074-2005Jan23.html that halted the Miami vote recount in the 2000 election. Very telling picture at that link.

Whatever happened to the rule of law, Republicans? Did the power distract you from that niggling little issue?

What in the world are they thinking? This seems to be a pretty flagrant abuse of power.

"As it is, the USA has put more money into that city as of late than most of the rest of the world's cities have ever received in the aftermath of a natural disaster" Yeah, it's called gentrification.

If by "gentrification" you mean trying to build million dollar mansions on the lots where all the fifty-thousand dollar homes fell over, then bitching and whining like Trent "Why isn't my home fixed yet?!" Lott about how you can't find carpenters to work for below prevailing wage when they can't afford a place to sleep after a hard day's work, then yeah, exactly.

The following source claims your "Abraham Lincoln" quote is a fake:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/08/AR2007060802470.html

Yes, but you must remember that a Democrat in Texas is called a Republican everywhere else.

Nuclear Parts Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan
 
There, fixed that for you.

A link with some info:
http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/0324008_FBI_Probe_Darfur_Protest_Site_Hack.cfm

Registration required:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032300014.html

Qwest. And shortly afterwards the U.S. government started finding excuses to (a) cancel existing contracts with Qwest, (b) declare them ineligible to for future no-bid contracts, and (c) preventing them from bidding on other contracts. Qwest alleges that hundreds of millions of dollars were routed around them to telcos more willing to play along. Good summary here.

is that the radiation detectors actually work, unlike other projects paid for by this government. Once you have something that actually detects what it's supposed to detect, getting the false positive rate down is just an engineering detail.

Sony for example completely fucked up when it annouced "$50 fee to remove crapware".

Had they annouced that all laptops are now standard to NOT include crapware, and if you chose YES to install their crapware you would be eligible for $50 OFF the price tag, it would have been cheered by the community.

American Evangelicals don't go suicide bombing anyone that disagrees with their point of view.

No, just an abortion clinic or two. They're too cowardly to blow themselves up with it.

They also don't call for the execution of cartoonists that portray Jesus disrespectfully...

No, but they've come pretty close.

There are many policies that facilities will be required to have based on the new HIPAA regulations. Facilities should consider having a policy that specifies how long to retain or keep the medical records. These are known as retention periods. Many states have their own state specific law. Many hospitals and other facilities have one policy that lists all records and documents in their facility and not just medical records. According to the proposed privacy regulation, documents relating to uses and disclosures, authorization forms, business partner contracts, notices of your information practice, responses to a patient who wants to amend or correct their information, the patient's statement of disagreement, and a complaint record must be maintained for 6 years. (See 64 Fed. Reg. 59994). This is the federal statute of limitation for civil penalties. (42 CFR Part 1003). It is the amendment why hospitals and other health care providers maintain medical records as well as billing records on Medicare (Title XVIII), Medicaid (Title XIX), and Maternal and Child Health (Title V) for at least 6 years. Records must also be retained for two years after a patient's death under HIPAA. The Medicare Conditions of Participation, section 42 CFR 482.24 (b), states that all hospitals must retain medical records in their original or legally produced form for a period of 5 years.

Disclaimer: I am a document specialist for a company that itself specialized in business processes for major Part C and Part D health providers. So I know this stuff.

So having you say this is a non-story, based on you citing that records must be adequately destroyed without first stressing that those destroyed records had to be on file, and available at a moment's notice, for YEARS, is disingenuous at best.

It's a story PRECISELY because of th amount of time the records HAD to be retained.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/21/AR2008012102070_pf.html

The administration's e-mail policies have been repeatedly challenged by lawmakers and open-government groups, in congressional hearings and in court. Two groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have accused the White House in lawsuits of violating the Federal Records Act because of what they say is its failure to preserve millions of e-mails, a charge the White House rejects.

The White House's record-keeping problems have thrown new attention on a gap in statutory language covering the retention of presidential records.

"If it is a presidential record, then it does need to be retained. It doesn't matter what the format is -- e-mails can be records," said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration. But the agency has no power to intervene if an administration is not preserving presidential records, inadvertently or not, Cooper said.

The law governing nonpresidential federal records is stronger. The National Archives can demand an explanation from any federal agency that it suspects is mishandling records, and it can request a Justice Department probe. Private parties can sue to force compliance with federal records laws, but not the presidential-records statute.

So what happens if a probe is launched? Well, thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley (and the fuck up that was Enron, with BushCo's friend Kenneth Lay), Chapter 73 of USC18 (United States Code 18, Obstruction of Justice) was beefed up. Specifically Section 1505.

1505. Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committee

Why wouldn't these people do their planning outside of the government network, using email with encryption (PGP)? All of them could easily create Yahoo or Google accounts, or they could even create their own little domain name with their own server and run it all with encryption. Then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Despite what the article states about the focus of these fusion centers on anti-terrorism, they do a lot of things which focus on domestic crimes. This can be anything from serial killers, drug trafficking, to serial robberies. This data is being aggregated at the fusion centers and the OneDOJ (among others) program is going to aggregate it again to make better sense of it so that inter-state crimes can be better investigated and solved by sharing the information. These fusion centers receive a lot of flak when viewed strictly from the perspective of anti-terrorism because they are collecting data that isn't necessarily connected to terrorist acts. That data is for other criminal activity. The data is collected based on pre-existing police reports, investigations, etc. so the gov't isn't doing anything extraordinary here besides tearing down walls between federal, state, local, and tribal agencies in order to better solve past crimes and maybe, hopefully, prevent further ones by performing statistical analysis on the criminal data.

For example, by seeing that a new business opening up is located in the same part of a city as a string of new criminal activity the local police department can have more patrols out to make sure the criminals realize they are being watched. Obviously that is at the local level but this type of data mining on *existing data* helps the feds too.

I'm interested in the sociology of Apple. What does it say when a company chooses to be sneaky? To me it says that the top management of the company does not feel confident it can make money using honest methods. Apple's sneakiness says Apple top management is not qualified and should not be employed by Apple.

I'm not the only person disgusted by such behavior. See Apple's Sneakiness Did Not Start Today.

My best understanding is that abusiveness breeds abusiveness.

Computer professionals deal with Microsoft's abusiveness every day. The U.S. government has killed an estimated 1,000,000 Iraqis. The eventual cost of the war is estimated to be $3,000,000,000,000. It has cost more than $1 million to kill each Iraqi. I've never met even one American who hates Iraqis. The money is being spent only to make profits for weapons and oil investors.

One result of all the abusiveness is that some people become accustomed to being abused, and hide the abuse from themselves.

There is only one healthy response: Don't accept abusiveness. Protest abusiveness. Demand that abusive executives be fired, impeached, or imprisoned. If you don't protest the U.S. government's war-making, then you are a murderer, too.

If you know an Apple employee, talk to that person about Apple's abusiveness. Each protest, however small, makes it just a little bit more difficult for abusers to do their mental illness to the rest of us.

Also, this delegate (Leroy Myers) last year introduced a bill that would criminalize the hanging of those fake testicles from the backs of trucks. To put it lightly, this delegate appears to have issues... and should probably stick to fake testicles rather than wireless internet policy.

This is a big problem, and has been going on for years. Read the book, "Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains", or this MSNBC article about the illicit trade of body parts and tissues.

Last year, several funeral homes in New York were charged with allowing these people to come in and harvest bits and pieces from their clients (the dead), sometimes replacing things like femurs with PVC pipe.

TFA refers to cadavers for medical instruction, but regardless, the problems are twofold. One, often there is no consent. Two, there is little concern if the parts contain cancer or communicable diseases, and IIRC, several people have received infected tissue "donations" who later contracted syphillis, hepatitis, and worse.

There was an interesting article about the bonds soldiers have with their robots: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050501009_pf.html

"may" do so? Did the New York Times misspell "must"? Or is it that there is a lack of clarity in the FCC's administrative law as to how long it can go before it makes public the detailed results of the auction?

When the D Block gets resolved, the FCC will be allowed to reveal who won the other blocks.

What good came out of the current US administration?

• Africa Aid Program
• Formally withdrew US support for the International Criminal Court. I know some people think this is just go-it-alone cowboy Bush, but surprisingly its just a continuation of Clinton policy. The trouble with the ICC is that it purports to have jurisdiction to retry US (or other) citizens (double-jeopardy) if the 4th, 5th, 6th amendments get in the way. The ICC treaty does not limit itself to "war crimes" and can subject people to lengthy detention without charge, no right to cross-examination, no juries, no warrant requirements, no right against self-incrimination, etc, etc. See for instance Toward an International Criminal Procedure: Due Process Aspirations and Limitations
• Medicare prescription drug benefit--which has been working out surprisingly well contrary to all of the scare rhetoric from the AARP.
• No Child Left Behind while flawed was certainly a step-forward--especially for minority students

A much more complete obituary of ACC is now posted on the Washington Post, here.

AP/Washington Post

BBC

LA Times

Bloomberg

National Post

if we get some chinese comments, perhaps people here can translate them

Someone already did:

For those living in the West who didn't realize that there's little sympathy for Tibet independence among ethnic Chinese in the PRC, this blog post on Global Voices will be a shocker. John Kennedy has translated chatter from Chinese blogs and chatrooms that generally runs along the lines of: those ungrateful minorities, we give them modern conveniences and look how they thank us... where have we heard this before? Reuters has a roundup on the Washington Post that begins: "a look at Chinese blogs reveals a vitriolic outpouring of anger and nationalism directed against Tibetans and the West." (...)

"Davesgonechina" at the Tenement Palm blog has been translating the chatter coming from Chinese netizens on Fanfou and Jiwai - Chinese versions of Twitter. Click here, here, and here, specifically. Dave has done more than translate: he points out that this Tibet situation is a real challenge to all people who believe that the Internet can help foster free speech and bring about better global understanding. Here is his challenge to all of us...

The above info, plus a great deal of other material well worth spending the time to read, was aggregated by boingboing's Xeni Jardin, who since this situation has erupted in Tibet has kept a close eye on the whole thing and provided some very good info like the above mentioned post.

Of course, now that we know they were wrong, they should given the resources to do a better job next time, preferably a better budget more power to operate without the ACLU breathing down their necks

You're trying to blame the ACLU for the WMD fiasco? Seriously? That makes about as much sense as blaming lesbians for 9/11.

The Japanese were using this techniques on US captives in WWII and were convicted for this by the US. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

Boy are they ever

Would you rather they come up with a free-speech-restricting law that's more enforceable?

Why not? Anonymous political donations, for example, are quite impossible already — and sites like this even make the donors easily searchable. (One can even incorporate such searches into their Human Resources practices — legally.)

And if donations aren't anonymous, and limited (as per McCain-Feingold and other unconstitutional legislation) — to your liking, then it is rather inconsistent on your part to complain about bans on anonymous speech...

No, from my memory the person was crossing the border with their laptop in standby, and the encrypted volume containing the child porn was already unlocked.
The Border security officer examined the laptop, saw the porn and confiscated it. Somehow the laptop turned off (maybe the officer turned it off when confiscating it, or it ran out of battery) and the decryption key was cleared from memory, locking the child porn drive again.
Ah, found the article

Seriously, we can't even interface antiquated technology with our legal system and retain our civil rights over corporate rights.

That was a bi-partisan bill which Republicans happily supported because it hurt the Democrats most (now that they are in charge). I'm not going to give them a marksmanship trophy for shooting themselves in the foot.

Were you by any chance a staffer for Congressman Jefferson?

Ethics should be a non-partisan issue that all Americans support. If you disagree, I honestly think you could deserve the label "UnAmerican".

this November, he's going to be looking for a new job

He is not. The job of a senior statesman is waiting for him — and it is a very well paid one:

On one particularly good day in Canada, Clinton made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.

Except that he he has. At first, many African Americans were reluctant to vote for him because they were afraid he wouldn't be viable. But ever since he proved that he could win even in white-majority states, the African Americans have been overwhelmingly supporting him.

Yes, it's quite obvious we're the only ones doing what's right. That evidence is echoed worldwide, why look what good we're doing in the Middle East. American Foreign Policy has not been a pretty thing for at least the past 8yrs and really, much longer than that. Off topic maybe, on point definitely. If we had free trade with Cuba, they most likely would be the 51st State by now and a fine vacation spot. Embargos typically make the poorest and weakest of the nation being embargoed suffer. Those in power, find a way to remain in power. Now free trade and capitalism, and the free flow of ideas, now those things can be infective and spark great things, (see Fall of the USSR). I think it would be difficult at best to cite US foreign policy success where Cuba is concerned. Anyway, nice story from Washington Post 2/19/08 is here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021901649.html

I know you said "most" but Kansas isn't considered "The South" and they're a key part of the gang of forward thinkers that preach "Intelligent Design" in public schools. Seriously though, they need to save the religious brainwashings for Sunday school. Religious education has it's place, but public school is not it. If people want their kids taught false science, send them to a private evangelical Christian school. Otherwise, why not also teach native Indian ideas of creationism in public school, such as how the spider Sussistinnako created the earth. Can't prove it, can't disprove it, so it's "scientifically" just as valid as "Intelligent Design".

Wrong again. The fertility rate is falling but is not yet so low as to be below replacement levels.

You are wrong again. It is rising, not falling. It used to be below replacement levels, and I hadn't been paying attention enough to notice it increased. Here is my citation and quote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002725.html

McCain's chief political advisor, Charlie Black, is currently a lobbyist for United Tech, that's why this would benefit Republicans.
The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists

Its clear you didn't read .... "While we should mourn the loss of each innocent, and make efforts to keep it from happening" included in my post. I don't know about you, but we can't prevent 100% of bad shit from happening. Shit happens and we should minimize it as best we can, but it will always still happen. Just because I'm not a freaking bleeding heart doesn't mean I don't have one.

Its also amazing to me is that bleeding hearts like yourself get fixated on numbers, and loose sight of real people behind the numbers. Real compassion is not having one's blood boil because of a number, its having the compassion for those that actually lost family and friends.

I lost three of my good friends in a crime that was twisted and evil, and the guy who killed them was never brought to justice and has remained free and at large for 30 years now, if he's still alive. I still miss my friends, Brad, Brent and Geoffrey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030102328.html

http://www.mcsheriff.com/wanted/bishop.asp

My point, it is better to remember the people behind the stories than get fixated on the numbers. I'll never forget.

Or the consequences of these wonders, which all home chemists need to consider before trying to make them or anything else.

Have you ever actually read the constitution? It borders on paranoid as to the extent to which it goes to ensure that the government doesn't become too powerful. America's worst infractions have been a result of directly and blatantly violating the constitution.

I think, the GP's point was, Americans today don't care as much — we don't share the Founders' paranoia. Probably, because we have not seen the problem firsthand in too many generations — thanks, no doubt, to the Constitution.

The First Amendment itself is getting chipped away — you can't fake e-mail headers (there goes the anonymous speech, deemed precious on this very forum every time some asshole tries to get away breaking copyrights), and you can't be helping a political candidate too much.

But Americans welcome these laws, because they seem to address an acute problem (spam, lobbyists with too much freedom of speech, etc.). We clearly lost most of that paranoia of 200 years ago... Don't even get me started on the Second Amendment...

Making a legal distinction between spamming and protected speech is the task as painfully difficult as describing a difference between appearances of a cat and a dog or, to get back to legislation, between (erotic) art and pornography. "I know it when I see it" is the only reliable standard...

I'd be the first to sign up a "kill the spammers" petition, if it weren't for my respect for the 1st Amendment. I'm not alone at this — all anti-spamming bills target not the "bulk e-mailing" itself, but the headers-forging and other related activities.

But even that should raise outcry... Where are the solemn-speaking defenders of the right to anonymity, for example? Should not even the headers-forging be protected by their vision of the 1st Amendment — spammers really do do it to remain anonymous...

At least, political speech is still protected... Oh, wait, it is not — not since that infamous bit of "bi-partisan" legislation named "McCain/Feingold" was passed. Seems like even simply standing on a street talking up a candidate may be a violation, if you do that for too long — everyone's political contribution is limited by this Constitution-busting law, so once you've talked for enough hours to reach the limit at some reasonable rate, your time is up...

Did the Founding Fathers err with the limitless Freedom of Speech, or are we interpreting it too widely and are forced to reinterpret chunks of it away, when dealing with abusers?

The military is the largest part of the budget.

False. The military is only part of the "national defense" budget, which is only 21% of the federal budget. This includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS, Coast Guard, FEMA, foreign aid, and lots of other non-military spending. "Entitlements", such as social security, medicare, etc. make up 61% of the budget. 22% goes to pay for healthcate (Medicare + other healthcare combined).Source.

Of course there are lies, damn lies, and then statistics. Feel free to go through the federal budget line item by line item and categorize things yourself. It can be spun by anybody's agenda. For instance, the Washington post splits up "health" and "medicare" into separate buckets, clearly a spin move to make "defense" tie for the largest category.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/2036215
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/07/AR2007100701199_pf.html

Two quick URLs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig
http://lessig.org/blog/

In short, he's a very smart (arguably brilliant) legal mind who thinks that the current copyright system is the result of corrupt practices by media corporations and the complicit congress. He has unsuccessfully tried the legal route (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/technology/articles/eldredprimer_100902.htm) and is now working on the corruption aspect of the issue.

I'll get modded down for this one, as it is Slashdot, but here goes:

Many of America's client states are rebelling against the economic burdens placed upon them. A clear example of this is seen in South America, where several countries (Venezuela included) are acting in contravention to America's economic wishes.

Which explains why the U.S. and Peru just struck a free trade agreement and why the U.S. already has a free trade agreement with, pound for pound, what is arguably the most powerful and stable economy in South America - Chile.

Oh, but Chavez. He makes a lot of angry speeches against the U.S.! He MUST hate us! He must just be screwing us and cutting us out!

Try again. Venezuela's main export partner - still by massive, massive margins (46% in 2006, according to the CIA world factbook) is the U.S. He still sends vast majorities of his oil to the U.S. Economically speaking, he's lining up just fine. Security wise, he's causing a few issues with neighboring countries that we would like him to stop, but as far as his massive oil industry - which is the only real engine his economy has - massive amounts of it are coming here, and there's little reason for him to change that.

Also of note, according to CIA World Factbook figures from 2006: Brazil imports almost twice as much from the U.S. as it does Argentina and exports twice as much to the U.S. as well.

Furthermore, the American economy is in deep trouble, largely because it has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to build expensive weapon systems (and also to build too many unproductive but expensive toys such as big screen TV's).

Oh please. The American economy has stalled a bit, but we're not even at the point of a classic recession (failure to increase GDP).

The economic system you are discussing is referred to generally as "neo-Marxism", with its focus on large states ruining the outlying countries for their wealth in an evil capitalistic world. What neo-Marxists never came to realize is that the world is not a zero sum game - and that rhetoric rarely translates into cold hard cash.

Now, what the U.S. likely is experiencing is more akin to hegemonic diffusion. The U.S. is, pretty much, an undisputed world Hegemon at this time. However, to maintain this hegemony, it must maintain trade (using its own resources) and trade a great deal with other countries, slowly diffusing its wealth to others. The great examples of this at the moment would be China and perhaps India. China is building a massive military based on income largely from U.S. trade, for example. China improves quickly, and the U.S. finds it increasingly difficult to maintain its relative position. The big question is whether this will switch to a bi-polar world (U.S./China), remain a uni-polar world (U.S., possibly China) or become multi-polar in the end.