Slashdot Mirror

Question: As of yesterday, what did "Slashdot Cannes stories" and "great modern French victories" have in common?
Answer: They both baffled Google

Question: Does it on some level bother our European readers that they're so feeble they have to rely on an American for their anti-Americanism?

Question: What does it say about the intelligence and judgement of Michael Moore that in 2000 he said there was no difference between Bush and Al Gore, in 2001 asked why anyone would attack New York City since only Gore voters lived there, and in 2004 endorsed a candidate who used his connections with Dick Cheney to land a fat government contract.

The purpose of sex is to procreate

Wrong! For one thing, we'd have to destroy the condom industry... and obey the Catholic Church much more overall...

But seriously, humans are different from other mammals. They reproduce much less frequently, and take a whole lot longer to raise a child. (What other species would allow someone 3 years old to still be 100% dependent?)

Because of the longer maturation period, maintaining an affectionate family unit is important. The mother needs the father to stay with her, to provide for the children. And to promote male fidelity, you need frequent sex. That's why human females are rare amoung mammals in being sexually active even through non-fertile parts of the monthly cycle.

The increased importance of non-procreative sex is not due to any particular culture, but is just part of being human.

PS. Biologists have already gotten two female mice to have a child together. Expect that in 30 years, homosexual humans will have that option too. In that view, this current gay marriage thing is just planning ahead.

Its simple. The guidelines the patent office works with say that they are to assume a patent is valid unless clear evidence to the contrary is presented.

Then again, maybe not. From last Sunday'sWashington Post Style section:

LIFE IS SHORT | Autobiography as Haiku

Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page D01

Like sifting for gold, patent examining can be a scrupulous activity. I mutter my mantra . . . find a way . . . find a way . . . there must be a way. My eyes scan documents and reference books with a determined fluidity. My brain wheels churn in frustration. Pausing for a moment, I gently massage my right wrist with my left thumb. In the background, I can hear the steady beat of my clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Finally, as 12 strikes, I see it. A sly smile grows on my face, and my eyes gleam. Smelling success, I reach for the stamp. REJECTED.

Sindya Narayanaswamy

If you've been following the Riggs Banking scandal lately they appear to be getting a lot of it from the Saudi embassy and royal family.

This article doesn't mention it but millions, if not tens of millions of suspicious transactions through this bank from the Sauid Embassy are though to have gone to funding terrorism.

Its kind of odd the U.S. was so keen to take down Saddam for backing terrorism while the U.S. consistently looks the other way or actively suppresses information about the Saudi's actively supporting it. I guess it helps to be both close friends of the Bush family and have control the worlds largest pool of oil.

You might recall the Bush administration had to black out a huge section of the congressional report on 9/11 which exposed Saudi Arabia's involvement, beyond the fact that it was perpetrated almost entirely by Saudi nationals.

IIRC the saga of Webb Hubbell goes back to 1994 or thereabouts.

(Hey, what good is karma if I can't burn it with wildly offtopic lame jokes?)

How much of the public will be mislead into thinking thats how it really happens?

Maybe that's the purpose of the movie?

The first couple of paragraphs in the following column are political commentary, so feel free to skip them and get straight to the scientific criticism of the movie.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28338-20 04May14?language=printer

Apocalypse Soon?
No, But This Movie (and Democrats) Hope You'll Think So

By Patrick J. Michaels
Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page B01
Washington Post

On March 13, the Guardian newspaper of London, beating the American networks by nearly eight months, called the U.S. presidential election -- for Sen. John F. Kerry. The Democrat would win, the paper declared, not because of his plan for Iraq, or his proposals for the economy, but because of . . . a movie.

Specifically, a movie about global warming. It's called "The Day After Tomorrow." And if it doesn't actually unseat George Bush, it won't be for lack of trying. It opens on May 28, but this movie is already being vocally touted by none other than former vice president Al Gore, on behalf of MoveOn.org, a liberal Internet advocacy group backed in part by billionaire George Soros that appears to be dedicated to defeating Bush.

At least that's the take-home message from the MoveOn Web site, which ominously calls "The Day After Tomorrow" "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see" -- because it will supposedly ignite a backlash against Bush's global warming policies, which favor slow technological evolution over immediate (and expensive) reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. As a climatologist, I'm concerned that this putative backlash could be caused by scientific nonsense.

Let's not forget that the planet is warmer than it was when the Little Ice Age ended in the 19th century, and that people have had something (not everything) to do with that. But what Gore and the movie do is to exaggerate this largely benign truth into a fictional apocalypse.

Gore last sounded the alarm on global warming at a rally hosted by MoveOn.org in New York on Jan. 15, which happened to be the coldest day of the past decade in the Northeast. That was fitting, because the thesis of "The Day After Tomorrow" is that global warming causes a new ice age. And not just any old glaciation, either, but one that builds up in only three days.

Here's the plot. In the middle of a Northern Hemisphere summer, the temperature of the high-latitude Atlantic and Pacific suddenly drops 15 degrees. This is caused by the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe from being the icebox it should be at its northerly latitude.

Since the Gulf Stream is no longer transporting warm water to Europe, the tropics get hotter and hotter, and the poles colder and colder. In a series of massive thunderstorms, the atmosphere flips over, and increasingly cold stratospheric air is drawn down to the earth's surface, creating a low-pressure system that produces hundreds of feet of snow. Temperatures in Canada drop 100 degrees in an hour. Just about everyone north of Washington, D.C., dies. The following summer, the ice melts and a continental flood ensues.

Hurricanes hit Belfast. San Francisco Bay freezes. Hailstones the size of canned hams bomb Tokyo. According to the movie's Web page, Madras, India, becomes the "New Venice of the South."

The movie makers maintain that much of this has already started. Disaster is heading our way pronto. The picture's Web site reminds us, for instance, that just last May, we had a record number of tornados for one month, and that more than half of the deaths that occur in hurricanes now are due to

Bah! Stupid me, not checking the results of middle-clicking....

Heh. Was setting up a new Linux recruit with Macromedia Flash and I guess the URL was still hanging around in my cut buffer.

The real link is at the Washington Post. (You may have to log in to see the story, but just use BugMeNot to find a free login.

Shazbot! Preview [should have been] my friend!

One can enumerate the reasons for Iraq's invasion as follows:

• Establishing a precedence for preepmtive war. Now America has bybassed the UN, and global opposition to this unilateral action. If the will to build an empire arises, then it will be done without any regard to what the rest of the world think or say. You can read the following articles too:

  • The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old by James Mann, March 7, 2004

  • PBS had a good program before Iraq was invaded called the War Behind Closed Doors. You can watch the entire program in 30-60 minutes intervals:

  • Specially interesting is this page in the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles where you can see who signed this document. Interesting to note that all of them are either now in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, ...etc.), or are aids to Cheney (Libby, Abrams, ...etc.)

  • An overview of who is who in the neocons circle of power.

• Securing cheap oil. That is obvious. Bush's family history in oil makes that an easy one to figure.

• Complete Dad's job. The personal desire of G.W. Bush to continue where his father has left, to finish the job, and do better.

• The Israel Factor. Read the Israel connection, and how Zionism influences US foreign policy. If you take a look at the players in the PNAC above, and you will find them all staunch Zionists, whether Jews or Christians.

• Construction Contracts. The Infrastructure contracts for US corporations to rebuild Iraq is a lucrative business. Of course the Halliburton link has been reported several times (Cheney used to be its manager or director). The defence spending, plus the contracts should fuel the US economy for a while, or that is what they thought would happen.

The planning to invade Iraq was done before September 11, 2001 attacks, as ex-secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed

As many would notice, Bush is not running the show. Bush is the ideal front for such an operation. He thinks he is doing the right thing, and that God has to do something with it. You can see this PBS program The Jesus Factor.

There are two factions grappling for Bush's attention. The moderate pragmatics (Powell, Armitage), and the extremist ideologue (Cheney, his subordinates, Rumsfeld, his subordinates). Powell's position is almost identical to Shimon Peres when he was the Foreign Minister in the Sharon government, a rational pragmatic dove amid the ideologue extremist hawks.

What is funny and sad at the same time, is that the US Foreign policy is now crafted by the Pentagon and the Vice President in accordance with neocon think tanks like the PNAC. No role whatsover is given to the Department of State (where it should really belong), and Powell is merely a messenger (go tell the UN we are doing so and so, try to sell it diplomatically, ...etc.). No wonder Powell has said that he will not seek a second term even if Bush gets reelected (and repeated it a few weeks ago). Not nice thing being in his shoes I guess.

I would not go as far as to say that they intentionally planned and executed the September 11 thing. But the neocons sure did exp

One can enumerate the reasons for Iraq's invasion as follows:

• Establishing a precedence for preepmtive war. Now America has bybassed the UN, and global opposition to this unilateral action. If the will to build an empire arises, then it will be done without any regard to what the rest of the world think or say. You can read the following articles too:

  • The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old by James Mann, March 7, 2004

  • PBS had a good program before Iraq was invaded called the War Behind Closed Doors. You can watch the entire program in 30-60 minutes intervals:

  • Specially interesting is this page in the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles where you can see who signed this document. Interesting to note that all of them are either now in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, ...etc.), or are aids to Cheney (Libby, Abrams, ...etc.)

  • An overview of who is who in the neocons circle of power.

• Securing cheap oil. That is obvious. Bush's family history in oil makes that an easy one to figure.

• Complete Dad's job. The personal desire of G.W. Bush to continue where his father has left, to finish the job, and do better.

• The Israel Factor. Read the Israel connection, and how Zionism influences US foreign policy. If you take a look at the players in the PNAC above, and you will find them all staunch Zionists, whether Jews or Christians.

• Construction Contracts. The Infrastructure contracts for US corporations to rebuild Iraq is a lucrative business. Of course the Halliburton link has been reported several times (Cheney used to be its manager or director). The defence spending, plus the contracts should fuel the US economy for a while, or that is what they thought would happen.

The planning to invade Iraq was done before September 11, 2001 attacks, as ex-secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed

As many would notice, Bush is not running the show. Bush is the ideal front for such an operation. He thinks he is doing the right thing, and that God has to do something with it. You can see this PBS program The Jesus Factor.

There are two factions grappling for Bush's attention. The moderate pragmatics (Powell, Armitage), and the extremist ideologue (Cheney, his subordinates, Rumsfeld, his subordinates). Powell's position is almost identical to Shimon Peres when he was the Foreign Minister in the Sharon government, a rational pragmatic dove amid the ideologue extremist hawks.

What is funny and sad at the same time, is that the US Foreign policy is now crafted by the Pentagon and the Vice President in accordance with neocon think tanks like the PNAC. No role whatsover is given to the Department of State (where it should really belong), and Powell is merely a messenger (go tell the UN we are doing so and so, try to sell it diplomatically, ...etc.). No wonder Powell has said that he will not seek a second term even if Bush gets reelected (and repeated it a few weeks ago). Not nice thing being in his shoes I guess.

I would not go as far as to say that they intentionally planned and executed the September 11 thing. But the neocons sure did exp

though with a slightly different frequency range... the troops found the terrorists were using the circuit boards out of remote control toy cars to detonate bombs. The countermeasure was easy, and obvious...

Story here.

EU Agrees to Give U.S. Airline Passenger Data

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 2004; Page A02

European airlines will soon share information about their passengers with
U.S. officials so they can be screened for security reasons, under an
agreement approved yesterday by the European Commission.

The agreement also would allow U.S. carriers to share information about
their passengers with European Union countries. The data swapping would
likely begin in the next several weeks, officials familiar with the talks
said yesterday...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A281 49-2004May14.html

Pixar was never "in" the Disney empire. They merely worked with each other. Basically, their agreement to work with each other is terminated in the sense that they aren't going to make any more movies jointly. As for why, Pixar wanted more money and Disney didn't want to lose profits.

Washington Post story covering this

I agree that it's really annoying working with people who don't speak the same language you do. This is especially frustrating in service industries where you can't even talk to someone who is trying to take your order. But, on the other hand, it's a very small step from "damnit, people need to learn English" to "Goddamn niggers are taking over, send em back where they came from". The politically INCORRECT crowd likes to jump on these sort of statements too and it breeds alot of hate and lends a sort of legitimacy to the real foul racism that, sadly, is all too common. here is a link to a story about a politician who makes some pretty straightforward, reasonable remarks about multiculturalism. Can't argue much with what he's saying. But the kind of "support" he's getting from people about it makes my skin crawl.

Actually, while we may have an overwhelming firepower advantage in Iraq, we hardly have overwhelming numbers.

A general rule-of-thumb for occupations is 1 soldier per 40 inhabitants. Having less means you don't have enough troops to adequately control activities on the ground.

We have something like 1 soldier for every 160 Iraqis there today.

A Proven Formula for How Many Troops We Need

So it should be obvious why we're having these problems today.

I don't see why people are complaining...the ads aren't going on Google's page, they are small, and they will be relevant to the page content. I don't see what the problem is with Google doing it, if they make a *really* bad move then people will simply stop using it & they'll go under.

Mod parent up funny. That is some funny shit.

If 8 years of Clinton is to blame for our current mess, who do we blame for the lousy economy under the first Bush? Clinton wasn't President yet.

Unemployment and tax policy [registration, sorry]

Mod me down, offtopic, I guess.

I have a hard time believing our government invaded a country to get rid of weapons that never existed..stranger things have happened.

Never existed? Tell that to the 750,000 Iranians who died because of those weapons that *never existed*. Tell that to the U.S. companies like Dow that were granted liscenses (over 170 of them) to sell Salmonella, botulism, and antrax to Iraq. Or the thousands of Kurds who were gassed before the first gulf war.

Maybe you need to read up a littleon what was going on in the 80's, since you obviously weren't around.

Dumbasses like you need to stay on IRC.

their first line at hitting the iPod

According to the Washington Post, Sony's "first line" better be cleaning up the mess of software they call Sony Connect.

According to these documents [gpo.gov], again from the OMB, the Federal budget for FY2005 will be $2.4 trillion.

I suggest you look at how much money we're ACTUALLY spending. The budget for 2005 could be $20, but that wouldn't reflect or ACTUAL CURRENT SPENDING. The current administration doesn't seem to be very good at sticking to any sort of budget.

Suffice to say, none of this supports the idea that the government drives the economy in any major way.

Well that's another argument, but one I'm pretty confident you would loose. Even if the gov't didn't make laws which governed the economy or print money, throwing around a "mere" 23% of our nations GDP has a bit of an effect on our economy, much bigger than say, Walmart.

Pffl. Do you honestly think the percentage of GDP that is government spending has changed significantly in three years?

Yes. Do they not have newspapers where you live or something? One would hope you at least heard about Sept. 11th?

link
link
link
link
link
link

I don't know about your friend but there ARE some firms partaking in torture and various abuses. If you read some of the stories, you would realize that there were a few more "civilians" that were part of it (these guys haven't been charged). Search Google News or your favourite news source for CACI International and various other firms. Here is a story on what I'm talking about.

What you are saying is true for hte most part: most of the private companies are simply transporting goods or providing security. However, some firms are doing more than that, including torture, killings, etc.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

You need to be careful in your use of the word "citizens". The Americans who were tortured and killed were civilian contractors

Likewise, you need to be careful in your use of the word "civilian". According to this Washington Post article, the four "civilian contractors" killed in Fallujah were "among the most elite commandos working in Iraq to guard employees of U.S. corporations". The article goes on to say that the security firm that hired these men "puts them through rigorous training requiring the same skill levels as those possessed by U.S. Special Operations troops", and that the "vast majority of [the firm's employees] are former military personnel". Note also that these men were armed.

While what happened to them was most certainly disgusting, innocent civilian bystanders they were not.

you shouldn't frame things as if the Americans are torturing the general Iraqi civilian population the same way that the Islamic Militants have tortured and killed the American civilians

My above point notwithstanding, just because atrocities have been committed on Americans does not justify returning the favor. Have you ever heard of taking the moral high road?

I hope you are right about the Iraqi mind-set. I just don't see much evidence for it. The Iraqi blogs that I can read are in English and the authors fairly westernized. Of course the handful blogs are not representative but it is reasonable to assume that they are more US friendly then your average Iraqi. That is why it doesn't bode well that you've lost them. . Riverbend ] for instance wrote in the past of her fear of a civil war. That was one of her rationales for keeping US troops in her country. The photos changed all this. In her last entry she wrote:

I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We'll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.

I also hope that you are right that only some few bad apples conducted torture. But that does not seem to be what Iraqis believe. Unfortunately the USA didn't have much credibility in Arab eyes to begin with - now they are of course inclined to believe the worst. It doesn't help that there are some really worrisome reports that these kind of maltreatments might be indeed much more systemic. From Seymor Hersh's article who originaly broke this news:

In his report, Taguba strongly suggested that there was a link between the interrogation process in Afghanistan and the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Given the devastating public relation record (remember 57% of all Iraqis already wanted the US to leave immediately before the Fallujah battles and the torture scandal) the Washington Post reports that senior officer of the US military seem to share my opinion that there is nothing left to gain for your country in this war.

At this point I think fairness demands that Bush is reelected. No other president deserves to have to cope with such an ugly legacy that won't bring any good.

The suspect had been identified by acquaintances seeking a $250,000 reward.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A111 60-2004May8.html

Remember, kids, no more bragging about those worms to real-life acquaintances!

The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were among the most elite commandos working in Iraq...Blackwater has about 400 employees in Iraq, said one government official briefed by the company. Its armed commandos earn an average of about $1,000 a day..
They were MERCENARIES.
Say it with me now...MERCENARIES.
I wish to freaking god the spin would stop.
It's ridiculous.

Harman's mother, Robin Harman, said her daughter would never hurt anyone.

"She has this . . . attitude that she is going to save the world," said Robin Harman, who lives in Northern Virginia. "She got over there and got an eye-opener. You don't put unqualified kids in that situation."

Yesterday, as Robin Harman watched Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testify, she called her daughter a "scapegoat." "They're passing the buck, putting it all on the little kids," she said. "That's what makes me so mad."

Harman took many photographs while in Iraq, her family said.

Among hundreds of digital pictures passed around her MP unit -- and obtained by The Post -- is one taken before the soldiers got to Abu Ghraib in October. In it, [Sabrina D.] Harman is smiling, crouching slightly, a thumb up, and leaning toward a blackened, decaying corpse with long fingers and a gaping mouth.

Yeah Mrs. Harmon, it's all Rumsfeld's fault that your innocent little daughter is cheerfully mocking corpses on camera...

Was 10, is now 7.

"most universities make it a requirement to use powerpoint"

Don't know about most, but I bet these ones do.

Microsoft's Big Role on Campus

Gates to fund Cambridge scholarships

Gates Foundation Gives Record $70 Million for Genomics Research

Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act

Oh, man, that Onion. Their stories are always such a hoot. I've got to go check out the original, see if they've got a picture to go with it.

Oh, crap.

I'm outta here.

No contradiction. The guys (I'll go out on a limb and predict they're male) who stole these network cards are probably not millionaires, therefore they don't merit any special treatment.

It's not just SciAm that has observed this creeping Lysenkoism either -- see also the International Herald Tribune, and that bastion of left-leaning reporting, the Washington Post (with the sub-head, "Changes Renew Criticism That the President Puts Politics Ahead of Science").

And by the way, do you consider any and all criticism of the President in an election year invalid by virtue of perceived politicking? Sometimes things are just wrong at any time.

For those who haven't bought into the "outsourcing is great for America" BS, check out this discussion about IEEE-USA's stance against outsourcing. The IEEE has also released a position paper on the topic.

Looking at the economic side of the argument, there is also a short article about a finance professor arguing against placing blind faith in outsourcing and the "externality" that companies are exploiting given the current labor and tax laws.

Want to do something about it? Try using your vote. Bush and Kerry have established their position on outsourcing (Bush is for, Kerry is against). Being unemployed does not mean you lose your right to vote, so make it count.

article from Forbes

You also might find this article from the Washington Post educational.

I guess in retrospect it should have been set at its closest during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Vasily Arkhipov, quite probably the greatest hero who ever lived, singlehandedly saved the world from nuclear destruction. (It's a long article, do a search for his name if you just want this part of the story.)

But the chance of exchanging hundreds of H-Bombs thus causing on a nuclear winter etc. are now very small.

Really? Do you know about the incident in 1995 where Russia almost launched their nukes at the US because they forgot norway was going to launch a missile and thought the US was doing a pre-emptive strike (that's how you do nuclear war, you launch your missiles and hope they strike before the other guy launches his)?

See this link for details.

Specifically, from the article:

The rocket was spotted by Russian early-warning radars. The radar operators sent an alert to Moscow. Within minutes, President Boris Yeltsin was brought his black nuclear-command suitcase. For several tense minutes, while Yeltsin spoke with his defense minister by telephone, confusion reigned.

Little is known about what Yeltsin said, but these may have been some of the most dangerous moments of the nuclear age. They offer a glimpse of how the high-alert nuclear-launch mechanism of the Cold War remains in place, and how it could go disastrously wrong, even though the great superpower rivalry has ended.

Russia and the United States still rely on a doctrine that calls for making rapid-fire decisions about a possible nuclear attack. If a Russian president wants to retaliate before enemy missiles reach his soil, he has about eight minutes to decide what to do.

8 minutes is all that separates us from annihilating half the planet. You can toy with fate for only so long. We've already norrawly dodged nuclear war twice, once with the cuban missile crisis, and once with the underreported norway incident. How many times do we have to come close to midnight on the doomsday clock before we wise up?

Even more worrying, russia can't afford the cost of running their military. They have thousands of nukes, and can't secure them all. The only thing that'll work is a concerted effort to dismantle them, but the US currently is actually building more nukes instead of going for a shared dismantling program.

Washington Post article on the value of the NASDAQ in 2003 compared to 2000. Yahoo finance graph of the NASDAQ over the last 5 years. Yes, Sun is way lower now compared to where it was than the index as a whole so they haven't recovered but tech as a whole is still down from the heyday of the dot.com bubble.

Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands,
So now a brothel here cannot receive its own spam because the whores might complain about its sleazy content.

Aargh!

Democrats made a number of mistakes in 2000; the first was running Al Gore as their candidate, but the second was in how they pursued the Florida issue. They should have demanded a recount of the entire state; it would have reeked less of Gerrymandering, and it would have resulted in a win. The NYT was right in saying that the mistakes were more wide-spread than just the counties that the Democrats picked out.

However, if you poke around even a little bit, you find numerous articles talking about this issue. Sure, it is always "BUSH WOULD HAVE WON IF GORE'S RECOUNT HAD BET ALLOWED!!!! (but he might have lost if they'd have recounted the entire state)", but the studies are still there saying that he probably (which is the same as "maybe" if you don't like the results) would have lost.

I have a little more faith that people will read the content, not just the headlines.

By the way, you didn't "dig" at all, much less "any further". Four links down from the headline you chose to focus on was a link to the consortium study that showed that Gore won. Just so you don't miss it again here are some more links to various sources. Much of that is raw data of the research, but some of the links I originally provided reported the results of the research. At least one of the links provide a number of different interpretations of the data, all of which show that Al Gore would have won.

Aw, what the heck... since some people are incapable of following links more than one deep:

• Slate
• Washington Post
• Common Dreams

Democrats made a number of mistakes in 2000; the first was running Al Gore as their candidate, but the second was in how they pursued the Florida issue. They should have demanded a recount of the entire state; it would have reeked less of Gerrymandering, and it would have resulted in a win. The NYT was right in saying that the mistakes were more wide-spread than just the counties that the Democrats picked out.

However, if you poke around even a little bit, you find numerous articles talking about this issue. Sure, it is always "BUSH WOULD HAVE WON IF GORE'S RECOUNT HAD BET ALLOWED!!!! (but he might have lost if they'd have recounted the entire state)", but the studies are still there saying that he probably (which is the same as "maybe" if you don't like the results) would have lost.

I have a little more faith that people will read the content, not just the headlines.

By the way, you didn't "dig" at all, much less "any further". Four links down from the headline you chose to focus on was a link to the consortium study that showed that Gore won. Just so you don't miss it again here are some more links to various sources. Much of that is raw data of the research, but some of the links I originally provided reported the results of the research. At least one of the links provide a number of different interpretations of the data, all of which show that Al Gore would have won.

Aw, what the heck... since some people are incapable of following links more than one deep:

• Slate
• Washington Post
• Common Dreams

This is exactly the tactic used in Florida, where Republican-rich areas were tallied accurately (with hanging and dimpled chads being counted), while in poorer, minority-rich areas hanging and dimpled chad ballots were discarded.

One of the reasons we don't hear about Monsanto and Lockheed Martin is that they don't want us to hear about them.

Monsanto is the antithesis of the family farm. They genetically engineer seeds and plants. They sell chemicals that pollute the land. They browbeat farmers into using buying their products or paying in court.

Lockheed? They recieve oodles of taxpayer dollars to build bigger bombs. Approximately half the country thinks this is a bad idea, and furthermore, raising the public's awareness of Lockheed products can only lead to more investigations by journalists and more oversight by Congress. That's just not good for business.

These companies do spend tons of money on research, much of it directly taken from tax coffers. They don't want attention for the same reasons that anybody who is up to no good doesn't want attention.

Article Here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3 4424-2004Apr22.html

Pretty much, California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel decided by a UNANIMOUS vote of 8 - 0 to block counties from using Diebold machines for the November elections.

I'm normally very cynical when it comes to politics, but it's nice to see my state get (somewhat) of a clue.

Oh, yes, he was elected. As spelled in the Constitution, by representatives sent to Electorate College by all of the States of the Union.

This is a commonly believed lie.

He was not elected. The election results in Florida were miscounted, as has been reported by a number of independant (as well as biased but detailed and cross-referenced) sources.

This isn't about theGore winning the popular vote by over a half million votes. It isn't even about the 11,000 individual complaints to the Justice Department about voting rights violations in Florida.

This is about the fact that Al Gore legally won Florida, and therefore the 2000 presidential election.

.. and trust me on the sunscreen

I'm your regular run-of-the-mill pretentious journalist. I read the Washington Post every day. I read Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The National Review, Harpers and others. I find Time and Newsweek basically worthless. And I can't stand most television news.

I love Wonkette.

Wonkette is not journalism.

Her goal is not to inform, her goal is to entertain. Most importantly, she is upfront about this. She makes no proclamation that she will tell the whole truth. Her level of credibility is just a hair above The Onion and that's fine because she's entertaining and doesn't claim to be anything else.

Guess what: The people who read Wonkette know not to go to her for the news. Wonkette is just Entertainment Tonight for people who care about the stars of politics instead of the stars of hollywood etc. I couldn't care less if David Beckham had an affair, but I got a kick out of knowing that Mathew Yglesias was in Best Buy.

But, to get to why this is on Slashdot. Yes, the Internet is different. Previously, the news mediums available to us before were push only. They lectured to us. So, it was natural that articles looked like lectures.

The Internet instead is a conversational medium. As a result, much of it will inevitably look much more like what people are talking about, than a newspaper or even television.

For those of you that have no idea wtf Isikoff's story was:

Conservative (and unreadably lame) Drudge's original story
Liberal Salon's slant
Liberal (for the US) BBC's slant
Washington Post's slant

I'd call the Washington Post conservative & pro-big gov't at the same time, but I'm a Liberal (big L). My pinko parents used to think the Washington Post is the bee's knees. Now we're pro-secession San Franciscans. I'm convinced that when the big one hits, it'll be the rest of North America that falls into the ocean.

This is an election year in Australia. A coalition of the willing could probably kick up enough fuss on the web to push over the stupider provisions of this TA. (note the lack of the F.) This is not a free trade agreement. It's very protectionist and caters to U.S. sugar farmers in the key battleground state of Florida.

'nuff said.

Jack Valenti and George Tenet are old friends!

That's not always a contraindication. Remember Frank Polifka's chicken pulverizing tornado machine? He only had a high school diploma and a certificate from diesel engine school.

A Washington Post story has more but questionable details. They rely on one or two anonymous sources and some big dogs at BIG buzzword projects. The picture, however, does point to a ssloppy and pointless attack on 20 or so high profile buzzword projects. This is either a routine script kiddie attack, or one planned by M$.

University buzzword projects have weak security. Most of the PhDs I know are too busy to keep up with computer nonsense and STILL use winblows, telnet and other junk that is the source of these problems. The bigger the dog, the bigger the head and the less time they have had to learn or update.

All the signs are there for Microsoft involvement. The Wintel press has been primed with bullshit about poor security of poorly managed Unix. The hack work was high profile, sloppy and looks like more of a "look at me" stunt than an attempt to gain resources. The wintel word will be dancing in the streets at the news and trying to take yet more ill deserved power.

IS at universities have already been bad. Their response to Winblows problems has already made life difficult for the responsible Unix user. Their ever escalating big dumb vendor solution has made their networks blocked, proprietary, buggy, painful and expensive. Administrators have turned their eyes and minds from publishing potential of networks to stupid copyright and Winblows nonsense. This is going to give those weenies a place to point and say, "See! I told you it was all the user's fault. Give me more control to fix your incompetence."

The optimist in me would like to think that good things can come out of this. Free software users can point to the fact that this was not a robot attack, that it is extremely rare and that the damage will be fixed in two shakes of a GNU tail. I'd even like to think that this will make job opportunities at Universities for competent Linux administrators to help secure systems. Professors need competent help and they are not getting enough of it now. If they were, they would not still be on Winblows, they would not be using Telnet and this attack would never have happened. The pessimist in me thinks that dumb asses are going to things even more difficult.

It's up to competent people to win the day here. It would be absurd for software that's routinly rooted by robots to win out here. You have the experience, you know the answers, get out there and kick some ass!

Washington Post has more coverage in this article, Hackers Strike Advanced Computing Networks.