Slashdot Mirror

on just how widespread this attack really is. The story IS HERE

Have you ever written military software? I have.

So have I. And while I agree that it's theoretically possible to write bug-free software (for a sufficiently small program), even sky-high military budgets can't afford that level of redundant effort. (By quantum physics, nothing is truely impossible. But some things are hard enough to be practically impossible)

The V-22? Lethal software bugs. The FA-22? Software crash every 2 hours.

Funny how those nukes don't go off by accident isn't it?

Just because you haven't observed any catastrophic bugs is no proof that bugs don't exist.

Serious bugs can be prevented if you just want to make the effort.

If you're now talking about "serious bugs" instead of "bugs" in general, then you've backed away from the stronger assertions made earlier.

But it can be done, and is done all the time in some industries.

Which industries, exactly? Aerospace and military software certainly isn't bug-free! They often try, but even they make publicized mistakes (and the majority of bugs found post-fielding are kept quiet for security).

Your definitions are completely invalid. You call someone an "airplane user" if she has once, ever, gotten anything that was ever on an airplane.

By that reasoning, everybody uses airplanes. But that metric is not only meaningless to determine how important planes are to society, but even more useless to measure how much software development effort goes into each area.

To be at all meaningful, you should only be able to compare people who frequently travel on airplanes with those who frequently use games. Or have used them in the past year, or something.

XBox + PS2 + Gamecube

That's a minority of game systems. Add in cellphone Snake and Windows Freecell, and you can septuple those numbers.

But that whole question is pointless. The number of users of airplanes doesn't matter. You'd have to compare the users of airplane software (basically just pilots) with game players. That's where the overwhelming differential comes from!

PS. As it happens, I'm monitoring software development for a major upcoming airplane project. We're using NVidia 59xx cards, because they're the best. Our programmers despair of achieving graphically quality to rival top of the line videogames. Heck, they probably will hardly even equal the dubious quality of Battlefield 1942.

Maybe you don't understand how bad the SOTA for airplane software is. It's very, very bad.

I really wish the right would cut the crap and just be honest. They want to fuck the economy and then tell the unemployed people, "it's [insert non-white race here] fault. They want to fuck public education to make certain that the people on the bottom aren't smart enough to figure out what they're doing. And then they want to pit them against each other: "Those illegal immigrants/indian insourcers are taking jobs you should be having! Hate them!" They want to get us divided by saying, "Gay marriage is a bad thing. As soon as you allow them to get married... blah blah blah... slippery slope..." Then they want to distract us once one of the following happens in November:

1. Another "terrorist attack" that this administration miraculously "saves" us from
2. Pop! We found Bin Laden!
3. A "terrorist attack" succeeds and we suddenly need to suspsend elections for national security.
4. Bush loses like Gore did, and Kerry wins like Bush did, then the G.O.P. cries out for recounts and howe unfair it all is

Damned lying sins of bitches. And that include you.

Heh heh, surfing the web and basically wasting my life away, I stumbled across the horribly mentally disfigured and monsterous Omarosa. Apparently, she didn't win the Apprentice, but she did win the title of the only Intern Clinton refused to sleep with. "Jesus, you're gross! Get the hell off me!" the President was quoted as saying.

And I would also put money that she's the reason the hapless Democrats crumbled into impotent nothingness after a decade of being on top politically.

Have you stopped to think what will happen to the poor in this country if the white collar wages decrease dramatically?

There are people in the US that don't have air conditioning, can't afford indoor plumbing or electricity. There are alot of people who cannot afford food. Don't even get me started about being able to afford to go the doctor or the dentist. If your wage gets cut by 2/3rds, does it follow that someone eeking out a living on minumum wage will also see a decrease in their wage?

It frustrates me to no end that as Americans we are so quick to feel pity and sorrow for people in some distant land when there is real suffering here in the US.

Many of these call center jobs that have been outsourced were located in the US in low income areas, some of the call centers that have since closed made the decision to open in these low income areas to take advantage of the tax breaks offered by local officials who wanted to provide some sort of economic boost to their cities and towns. When the call centers realized they could get workers overseas for much, much less than minimum wage earner in the US, the call centers closed. What became of these people?

It is very important to think globally, but we honestly need to clean our own house first before we start trying to clean up the neighborhood.

www.displacedtechies.com

The sound you just heard was Larry Flynt dropping a bucket of money in John Kerry's lap... right next to the dancer.

I wonder what kind of dirt Flynt might have on DoJ people. He outed one congressman during the Clinton impeachment. I can only dream that he has something on Ashcroft. But, that might be asking a bit much.

Seems like the real use for such a weapon would not be its actual use, but the threat of actual use. Our nuclear deterrent capability is no longer the Ace of Spades it was fifty years ago; hell, even Brazil may have the bomb now, and at any rate, the club has expanded way beyond five members.

A fully-implemented and -tested space weapons program would place the USofA back into a position of having wartime veto capability.

In addition, this is the only viable deterrent weapon against a non-state actor: Osama, al-Zawahiri, the Zapatistas, the remnants of the Sendero Luminoso, the LTTE, and any other group of terrorists/freedom fighters who run afoul of our sensibilities, all know that the US government is not going to bomb the country in which they may currently reside, no matter what they do to us. Likewise, Robert Mugabe, Yassir Arafat, General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and our ol' buddy Kim know that we're not going to bomb their country, either, as long as they don't openly wage war against us. The humanitarian and political repercussions would be unimaginable, despite the Dear Leader's obsessions.

But if we could knock them out individually, and if they knew it, then we might regain our former position of bargaining strength. My guess is, very few people in the Pentagon would ever actually advocate using such a weapon realistically, and even then, only under the most dire and certain circumstances, and certainly not publicly.

You have about half a clue stick, lets take a look at the other half. Chinese labor is cheap because THE EMPLOYEES ARE SLAVES. Largely they are forced to work by the communist state, yes, China is a communist state, remember?

The basis of a free market economy is that companies are forced to compete on an "equal" playing field. Slave labor>/a> is not an equal playing field.

Kinda like how you can't hijack a plane with a boxknife?

I thought this was debunked by the 9/11 commission several months ago. The boxcutter meme spread like wildfire, and everyone "knew" before the day was out that this was done with boxcutters. But it turns out that only one plane had a boxcutter sighting (relayed via cellphone). They actually used Mace, knives, and bomb threats. I suppose it's possible that "knives" might have been a reference to boxcutters, but we have no further evidence to support it.

By the end of its 2003 fiscal year, Hewlett-Packard Co. had "indefinitely" deferred taxation on $14.4 billion of foreign earnings, according to SEC filings, a move that helped lower its effective tax rate from the statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent to 12 percent. Domestic employment at Intel Corp. slipped by more than 3,300 people last year, but it grew by more than 4,300 abroad. By the end of 2003, the company had $7 billion in cumulative foreign earnings, $700 million more than it had sheltered in 2002, according to SEC filings. The semiconductor powerhouse stated that it "intends to reinvest these earnings indefinitely in operations outside the U.S."

By the end of its 2003 fiscal year, Hewlett-Packard Co. had "indefinitely" deferred taxation on $14.4 billion of foreign earnings, according to SEC filings, a move that helped lower its effective tax rate from the statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent to 12 percent. Domestic employment at Intel Corp. slipped by more than 3,300 people last year, but it grew by more than 4,300 abroad. By the end of 2003, the company had $7 billion in cumulative foreign earnings, $700 million more than it had sheltered in 2002, according to SEC filings. The semiconductor powerhouse stated that it "intends to reinvest these earnings indefinitely in operations outside the U.S."

• Internal Revenue Service statistics cited by a Democratic senator this month show that the vast majority of small businesses do not earn nearly enough money to fall into the highest income tax bracket. According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.
• 
  
  In contrast, 62 percent of business filers reported incomes of less than $50,000, putting them at most in the 15 percent tax bracket, the second lowest. Nearly 88 percent of business filers reported income of less than $100,000, keeping them comfortably below the top two tax brackets of 33 percent and 35 percent,
  

• 
  But under Treasury's definition, both Bush and Vice President Cheney are members of the entrepreneurial class. In his 2002 tax return, the president reported $1,549 from rental real estate, royalties, partnerships, S corporations and trusts, including income from GWB Rangers Corp., a remnant of his days as co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Of the Cheney household's $1.2 million income, $238,682 was from business ventures within the White House's definition of small business.

Day One Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearing

So my question is: In this summer of threat, what did you do to protect, let's just say the Pentagon, from attack? Where were our aircraft when a missile is heading toward the Pentagon Surely that is within the Pentagon's responsibility to protect -- force protection, to protect our facilities, to protect something -- our headquarters, the Pentagon. Is there anything that we did at the Pentagon to prevent that harm in the spring and summer of '01?

-- 9/11 Commission Member Jamie S. Gorelick questioning Secretary Rumsfeld

At the risk of starting a firefight, for those who like to believe whatever the US ONDCP tells them, consider also what the US FDA is saying about anitdepressants:

New Warning Urged On Antidepressants

Now imagine what this message would look like if the ONDCP got hold of it: "Antidepressed teenagers are deliberately crashing their cars. Learn about the link between antidepressants and terror."

For the record, I *have* taken an antidepressant on prescription, for about two years (and stopped without any apparent ill effects, so far). I have not taken ecstacy, and probably never will. I drink less than 100 cups of coffee a day. I *have* inhaled, on a number of occasions, and perhaps worst of all, I have consumed alcohol (a prohibited drug for 13 years in the US), and would do it again. :-)

Today it was reported that one of Washington's best-connected Republican lobbyists received $10M in kickbacks extracted from Indian tribes with casinos. He and his boss, former spokesman for the reptilian House (Republican) Majority Leader Tom DeLay (under felony investigation in Texas for campaign finance scams), have been forced out of their catbird seats, and will have to live off the fat of the land until this blows over.

Check out the original link from washingtonpost.com; includes links to archival materials, the study etc.

Longer version of article is online here.

That's 591 dead US soldiers. What about the deaths of civilian contractors that are doing jobs formerly performed by soldiers in past wars? Are there any recently updated casualty statistics on that group of Americans? What about non-us citizens hired by US contractors? Should they be counted in this total?

Except the AWOL aligations were false, and the White House proved otherwise. This was a blatent attempt of the Democrats to portray John Kerry as the "war hero" while Bush as a deserter.

In fact, the White House didn't have a leg to stand on. They talked out their asses for a while until they convinced everyone who doesn't pay attention that they had a case. If you paid attention, like I did, you'd have a different view. To give you some documentation, I googled it. Here's a good article on the subject:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11 -bush-guard-usat_x.htm

It's from USA Today. A relevant excerpt (boldfaces mine):

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Bush said he fulfilled his Guard commitment and offered to make his records public. Host Tim Russert asked, "Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?" Bush replied, "Yes, absolutely."

Since then, White House officials have released only documents concerning whether Bush fulfilled his service obligations. White House statements have not addressed the release of any papers that could show disciplinary actions, medical exams, legal scrapes and the like.

On Tuesday, the White House released pay records from a military archive in Denver that it said showed Bush was paid for at least the minimum training time he was obligated for in 1972 and 1973.

But the records showed only what days he was paid for, not where he was or what duty he performed. Neither did they address outstanding questions about why Bush missed a required physical in 1972, forcing him to stop flying, or what happened during a five-month gap in 1972 when Bush didn't show up for training.


Here's another article for your perusal (boldfacing mine, again):

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the records "show that he was paid for his service, and you get paid for the days on which you serve."

That's the proof the white house had, BTW. Pay records. I've heard members of the national guard at the time say that they had managed to get paid without even showing up for duty. We'll assume for the sake of argument that GWB was 'getting paid for the days on which he served,' though:

The records indicate that between May 1972 and May 1973, Bush served 14 days -- two days in October, four days in November, six days in January and two days in April. The White House offered no indication of why there was a gap in Bush's service from April to October, 1972.

That's a five month gap. Nobody knows where he was during those five months.

AWOL----absent for 30 days or less.
Desertion-----absent for more than 30 days with evidence of no intent to return to duty.
Five months-----150 days

To every argument Khalili made against killing civilians and one's self, Abu Aisheh answered with questions: Aren't we being shot down like dogs? Do you feel like a human being when the Israelis control your every move? Do you believe we have a future? If I'm going to die at their hands anyway, why shouldn't I take some of them with me?

But can you really justify their actions?
but can you justify the following:

Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

Border Police Officer Forces Palestinian Resident of 'Attil to Commit Sexual Act with Donkey, in Zeita,Tulkarm District, The West Bank, June 2003

IDF Officer Etches Star of David on the Arm of Qassem 'Awisat, with Glass Shards, at Seida Checkpoint, Tulkarm district, The West Bank, 30 April, 2003

For one, try reading the news item again, as the submitter clearly quotes the article with mention of it. The article really does have it in there too.

I mean, geez, not reading the article is typical of a slashbot but not even reading the submitted blurb and then commenting on the story?

Also, try these on for size:

The Register pointing out that Steve Jobs said so himself during an Apple financial analyst conference.

A Reuters article states rather matter-of-factly that Apple's store doesn't make money.

Apple's Senior Vice President said the store does not make a profit in this news.com.com.com.com article.

This Washington Post article spells it out pretty clearly.

Do I need to go on, or can you prove that the store does make money for Apple?

I've provided a laundry list of things which FM can't do w/ TeX does quite handily.

No, you haven't. The only thing you've mentioned in this whole thread was some bullshit about pulling 2,200 pages of information out of a database, which is a job that TeX cannot do by itself. Comparing TeX and a shitload of custom programming to Frame is not a valid comparison.

its UI only appeals to people who like Quark or Illustrator (I mislike both)

Oh, cry me a fucking river. You claim to dislike InDesign's interface, but your preferred alternative is a program with NO USER INTERFACE AT ALL? Whatever, dude.

Why don't you provide a link to a .pdf which you've created w/ can't be done in TeX?

Here. TeX cannot be used to produce this document. Why? Let's name a couple reasons.

1. TeX can't use the fonts we depend on, because it can only handle antiquated font formats.

2. TeX can't do automatic edge detection for text wrap.

3. TeX can't do color separation.

4. TeX has NO copyfitting features whatsoever. None. Zero. Zilch. If you want your copy to fit, you're going to have to run out a proof, mark it up, and edit it manually. Good fucking luck.

And so forth, and so on.

There are lot of people who can argue having a legitimate fear that we'll go down that same road the Germans did and very well end up killing millions in the process. I wouldn't be so quick to regard them or their comments as stupid. Sure there are some real twits among the lot, and some of these twits really stick out as being card-carrying twits. There are, however, some incredibly well-read intellectuals out there too.

For the most part, the comparisons that people draw between Bush's America and Hitler's Germany do not, and are not meant to, imply that genocide will result. Notice though that the people who bring up the genocide connection are the ones that most desperately want to kill the message entirely.

The more accurate statement is that we live in a fascist police state like that of Nazi Germany prior to the War wherein the civil liberties of citizens who are not part of a special class are trampled upon in the name patriotism and nationalism; and wherein the government makes extensive use of symbols and rhetoric to create a national sense of unity and mythological greatness amid an environment of fear and perpetual danger caused by outsiders who work from within and without to destroy our nation; and wherein the government uses censorship to control what information the public (and other government agencies) has access to.

Of course, if someone said all this, someone else would rant about how we're not like Nazi Germany because millions of [insert group of undesirables] haven't been murdered.

The proper checks and balances are in place via a search warant.

To think that criminal communication wouldn't be encrypted, is niave. Given that, why extend law enforcement's powers, other than to allow then to snoop where they clearly don't belong.

If they have a judge's blessing, its simple enough to place a keylogger So if its reasonable to expect that communication to be encryped, and if there are already tools, to perform surveillance on unenrypted communications.

If you look at this and this perhaps you'll consider changing your viewpoint?

Canadians would appreciate it, as we'll undoubtedly be pressured into the same costly (both in dollars and in freedom) legislation up here.

...it's actually trying to detect explosives... Chocolate isn't the only problem - peanut butter and cheese can also set those machines off.

Miami Herald story
The Boston Globe article
Washington Post article

I just use a dummy password for all those newspapers anyway. I let the browser remember it.

Oh, and I'm not a 65-year old CEO living in Ethiopia, but don't tell that to the Washington Post.

Here's a short list: For lying and stealing DOS For stealing code from Stac Electronics For stealing the NT kernel destroying Netscape via monopoly tactics even if AOL caved in. For pulling the same crap with Real Networks For ripping off customers and makeing "90%+ margins" on what is Insecure by Design. Seriously. I know we live in an Enron world and any given company is about as honest as the politicians they buy off, but just look at the track record. These guys are serious slimeballs. Period. And the list above doesn't even cover how they screwed over Apple, used university resources in the early days to pursue a commercial venture.

It's mere hours since HALF THE POPULATION OF FINLAND WAS KILLED BY TERRORISTS and you people are talking about a crappy book?? MY GOD PEOPLE, GET SOME PRIORITIES!!!

A large part of the world is anti-U.S. government, not anti-American. Most Americans don't know this, but the U.S. government supports the killing of Arabs by supporting a scheme of embezzlement: U.S. weapons makers and other largely secret influences have arranged that Israel be given about $5 billion each year as "foreign aid". (The figure varies somewhat each year, and may not be accurate for this year.) But the money can be used only to buy U.S.-made weapons, like the "AH-64 Apache helicopters" mentioned in today's story: Hamas Leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin Killed in Gaza.

This arrangement allows U.S. weapons makers to "sell" more weapons than they would otherwise, and at pre-arranged prices. The Israelis are not careful about the price they pay, because the money is free, and because not discussing the price is part of the arrangement. Of course, everyone tries to keep all of this secret, and there is considerable pretense.

In recent interviews on U.S. TV, the King of Jordan and the foreign minister of Iran both say that the biggest factor encouraging al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. is the U.S. government's long-standing support for killing Arabs in Palestine. A Jewish leader said that U.S. government money for weapons was like gasoline on the fire of Israeli-Arab conflicts.

There are only 14 million Jews in the entire world, and less than 5 million Jews in Israel. The $5 billion donation from the U.S. government is about $1,000 for every Jewish Israeli man, woman, and child.

I believe that no violence is justified. So, I am not justifying violence when I mention this: It is interesting to note that, throughout recorded history, beginning 3,200 years ago with an Egyptian pharoah, the decendants of Abraham (who became those we call the Jews) have had periodic conflicts with the people around them. The Jews move into an area and, within perhaps 200 years everyone else wants them killed. No other culture that I've been able to find provokes such hostile reactions. Mostly Jews blame everyone else. The only time I have ever known a Jewish person to take responsibility is a quote from former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "Any group that has been persecuted for 2,000 years must be doing something wrong." (But it is 3,200 years.)

If you would like more facts about the purposes of al-Qaeda, you can download and read the al-Qaeda Training Manual from the U.S. government's Department of Justice web site: al-Qaeda Training Manual. Note that some of it is missing, presumably because the U.S. government does not want us to read it. Note that the conflict with Israel is mentioned. It has been plausibly suggested that much of the inspiration for the manual came from training given by the U.S. CIA to Arabs fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

Osama bin Laden predicted that the U.S. would invade and occupy an oil-rich Arab state. The U.S. government under the present president Bush planned an attack on Iraq well before 9/11/2001. (If you watched yesterday's 60 Minutes TV news show on CBS, you saw this discussed intensely.) Those plans apparently encouraged al-Quaeda volunteers. The actual occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military encourages more to volunteer.

So, Americans live in fear and have their treasury drained by war so that weapons makers can make a higher profit.

There are other factors, of course, in this story of stupidity and illegality and ignorance. There is craziness. This is difficult to believe, but true, and has been widely reported: Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., who almost all support George Bush, have a plan to arrange the conversion or death of all the Jews, which they believe is predicted in their bible. There are numerous rationalizations and quotes from the Bible, but act

Well, it's not NASA or space science in general - accidents screwups, I can understand.
What's pissing me off is the foolish attitude of the Bush Administration as regards science in general - and O'Keefe is right in with them. Safety concerns, my butt. Going to ISS is more dangerous, but ISS is the Admin's boondo^H^H^H^H^H^H baby. He's not even listening to the atronauts' opinions, which is bad enough (and foolish); hearing him tell the NAS that he'll "consider" their decision but that it won't change his mind is infuriating. Meanwhile the public disagrees with him and Bush - and it's taxpayer money they are spending here....

Mostly I'm pretty cool about things, but this kind of political election year pandering - and Bush's "M-M" initiative is no more than him trying to look like Kennedy - really infuriates me. Safety...CAIB or not, does O'Keefe seriously believe that working on ISS and putting together the infrastructure for a Moon/Mars program will be safer? He's a fool. IMO NASA should stick to doing what it does best - science, research, and science maintenance - and the gov should relax regs and encourage private co's to do space stations and manned exploration. Goldin seemed to understand what NASA's mission is - O'Keefe understands how to count beans and put them in their little numbered holes.

Grrr... :)

Anyway, yeah, Star Dragon is on my "must-read" list, it looks good. Real Soon Now. Life is full ... I'm also helping edit another couple books by a couple friends, and writing (slowly and painfully) one of my own, sort of a time travel mystery (Painful, aye :) entitled The Mobius Rip.

Also hoping to make the Nebraska Star Party this year - missed it last year, this year=? - work is eating me alive... and enjoying my new home out here in the Black Hills - love it here, can't wait to get over to WY and do some field geology - I'm very much an amateur but love it anyway.

Anyway, cheers, gotta head off for work soon. I'll try to remember to shoot off an email later...

Cheers!
SB

But Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said AOL's intentions are good, but blocking Web sites is "paternalistic." She said she worries that system could be abused by someone seeking to block a rival's Web site by spamming AOL members with that link.

The more interesting story about AOL today is this one:

AOL_Crooks

I think going after the sites that spam loads it's images from is a great way to go after spammers. Most of them use the img src tag with a uniqe ID (usually the email address of the person) to retrieve the images so they know when a person received it. No hit, might have hit a blackhole and they have no way of knowing.

This doesn't appear to be what they are doing though. They appear to be going after the link the person clicks on to buy. Still waste the spammers time, but I can see this getting abused if the system is automated -- or even if it isn't.

Not true:

Ominously, the poll showed some increased support in Muslim countries for suicide bombings and other forms of violence; 82 percent of Jordanians, 40 percent of Moroccans, 41 percent of Pakistanis and 15 percent of Turks said such violence could be justified. Majorities in Pakistan and Jordan had favorable views of Osama bin Laden, while majorities in Jordan and Morocco said attacks against Americans and Westerners in Iraq are justified.

The problem with Islam is that it is not just a religion, it is a supremacism and an imperialism. Muslims always seek to dominate and impose their will on others, and most of the world's conflicts (in the Philiphines, Nigeria, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Israel) are the result of this.

Along those lines, check out this Dr. Gridlock column from the Washington Post.

In short, someone is annoyed at a vanity license plate that says "CAVSUCK", referring the the University of Virginia Cavaliers, presumably. (Of course, the owner of the plate could be referring to a specific automobile made by Chevy or just generally doesn't like people having a "cavalier" attitude...)

I commented that I'm offended by a lot of vanity plates with Christian messages, but we'll never see those removed. As you said, everything is offensive to someone.

I suggested that the Virginia DMV let the plate on the car, because that plate says a lot more about the owner than anything else, and it serves as an excellent indicator of someone I should avoid at all costs.

--RJ

That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.

To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.

But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.

And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.

Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.

Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.

from The Washington Post

Contempt for Congress

Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A30

TENSION BETWEEN THE executive and legislative branches is inevitable, but the Bush administration has tended to treat Congress with an arrogance bordering on contempt. The latest illustration involves the report that the Medicare chief actuary was threatened with firing if he gave lawmakers his analysis of the likely costs of the new prescription drug legislation. The actuary, Richard S. Foster, estimated that the new entitlement would cost far more than predicted by the Congressional Budget Office: $534 billion over the next decade rather than the CBO's $395 billion.

Whose analysis (if either) is right is not the point. Rather than straightforwardly acknowledging the difference and having an honest discussion about which analysis was more accurate, the administration preferred to stifle dissent and muscle the measure through Congress. Indeed, had the administration been more forthcoming, the bill probably would have failed: The House managed to pass it only after leaders delayed gaveling the vote to a close in order to engage in last-minute arm-twisting.

When the administration finally was forced to acknowledge its far-higher estimate in January, officials acted surprised at the new price tag. "This is really the first time that we've come up with a full and precise cost estimate because we were going through our budget processes," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Hogwash. Yes, the measure was still evolving. But Mr. Foster's analyses showed as early as last spring that the cost of the benefit was likely to be between $500 billion and $600 billion -- and the White House now admits that officials were well aware of the higher estimates.

Now administration officials would like to pin all the blame on Thomas A. Scully, who then headed the agency that oversees Medicare and who says he was only joking when he threatened to fire Mr. Foster. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, in announcing Tuesday that the department's inspector general would investigate the matter, portrayed Mr. Scully as a rogue agent. "I called Tom . . . to remind him those threats were not appropriate," said HHS Chief of Staff Scott Whitaker. Yet Mr. Foster believed Mr. Scully was not the only one who wanted the information kept from lawmakers. "More than once, Tom said he was just following orders," he told The Post's Amy Goldstein. What orders there may have been, and from whom, will be for the inspector general to determine. How much to trust the administration in future legislative battles will be up to lawmakers.

Just once, just once, I'd like to see the stupid Slashdot posters like you actually use your brain BEFORE you post. Check the link, dummy. It's to a Post story on Yahoo. If you had bothered to stir the few brain cells you haven't already burned by watching Internet porn, you could have checked the Post Web site yourself and seen that, quite clearly, they posted a sidebar about how to tell if your PC is infected and what to do if it is.

Slashdotters, you're all a bunch of idiots. How many times have I seen you post "I saw this CNN report..." or whatever, when what you're really linking to is a Reuters or AP or some other news organization's report. Get the facts straight. You bitch when the media gets it wrong, but you don't hold yourselves to the same standard. MalacypseTheYounger, kiss my butt.

The Hague Invasion Act being one of the examples. Maybe, after the election, the law is broadened even more to include economic charges against an American based company as a valid reason to act against European countries.
It may have been a joke, but this could leave a sour taste.

The sidebar included in the story on the Washingtonpost.com site DOES in fact tell you the symptoms of infection and what to do about it.

Too bad the person who posted this story didn't link to the sidebar that ran in the washingtonpost.com story, which tells you exactly how to find out if you have phatbot and how to get it off your system.

had the good people who posted this story actually linked to the story at wp.com - instead of the same copy of the story at yahoo - everyone reading the story would have seen that sidebar.

Yeah, the joke just reached out and slapped me. But I figured some would see it as preaching rather than a gag that cuts both ways. Religion brings out zealots and as Washington Post humor writer Gene Weingarten notes, "Humor is largely cynicism and zealots are too earnest to be cynical."

Yeah, the joke just reached out and slapped me. But I figured some would see it as preaching rather than a gag that cuts both ways. Religion brings out zealots and as Washington Post humor writer Gene Weingarten notes, "Humor is largely cynicism and zealots are too earnest to be cynical."

... to worry about security.

[Jessica] Simpson, whose verbal gaffes are also legendary, pulled another one Sunday visiting the White House, our sources say. The singer was introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton and gushed: "You've done a nice job decorating the White House.

(source, near the bottom, after W. refers to the Ford Theatre as the Lincoln Theatre.)

Source: washingtonpost.com

Spot is dead you insensitive clod!

How about James Yee's transcript?

The Washington Post has the best illustration of Bush's approval ratings.

What's interesting is that, short of declaring war, Bush is utterly incapable of improving his image on his own. Left to his own devices, his numbers do nothing but go down.

The Approve/Disapprove numbers are dangerously close to crossing on WaPo's graph. With the recent MediCare cost coverup, controversy over politcal ads, and the Administration's complete tone-deafness on outsourcing, I see no reason for the numbers to go up.

The Washington Post has the best illustration of Bush's approval ratings.

What's interesting is that, short of declaring war, Bush is utterly incapable of improving his image on his own. Left to his own devices, his numbers do nothing but go down.

The Approve/Disapprove numbers are dangerously close to crossing on WaPo's graph. With the recent MediCare cost coverup, controversy over politcal ads, and the Administration's complete tone-deafness on outsourcing, I see no reason for the numbers to go up.