Slashdot Mirror

Looks like the first report was way high, and the second way low.

Here's the latest report that I've seen.

You must have only read the original New York Times article stating 170,000 objects were lost. Try reading a more recent article. Only 33 major works are missing!!!

Take your own advice. It's much more than 33

The Washington Post ran a story about this also this afternoon.

"the way the U.S. should have stepped in and prevented the destroying of the international public treasure in the Iraqi museums"

You must have only read the original New York Times article stating 170,000 objects were lost. Try reading a more recent article. Only 33 major works are missing!!!

WaPo
" But the losses turned out to be not nearly as widespread as feared. Reports published around the world that 170,000 items were missing -- the sum of the museum's entire collection -- were vastly inaccurate.

When the inventory was calculated this week, a total of 33 of the museum's 8,000 most precious vases, statues and jewels were actually gone. Two underground vaults beneath the Central Bank of Iraq were discovered to contain many of the collection's priceless pieces, including the treasures of Nimrud, gold and ivory pieces unearthed from four royal tombs in 1989. Other items turned out to have been taken home by museum officials for safekeeping during the U.S. offensive."

Pravda.ru is online... you really should try reading it form time to time. And surely you read the BBC? they have a whole section on the FSU... it's quite fascinating. Pravda and ukrainenews even have english language versions so you don't have to use babelfish. The difference between the US and Russia (and Ukraine, and other FSU states) is that the "government" may have the "enforcement" of organized crime behind it as well. So instead of having to worry about being jailed without representation under terrorism laws, you have to worry, when criticising the government, you may simply turn up bloated and blue on a riverbank come spring. Or perhaps not at all.

And that, of course, is only if you are a man. If you are a woman or young girl (or father of one) you also get to worry about being abducted and sold to a brothel in israel or turkey.

If you think China is so free, I heartily invite you to visit that nation and openly criticise the government. If you don't end up deported or worse, perhaps you'll just be "quarrantined" by the local constabulatory for a week or two under the recently enacted SARS containment laws.

Besides, this is not talking about limitation of freedom.

It is exactly that. How on earth can you attempt the argument it is anything else?

Now, I'm just as guilty as the next guy, but what I download is mostly because it is difficult to get elsewhere. I mean, where they hell am i going to get the latest Claire's Birthday album? (CB is an Estonian band).

More elitist bullshit. It is either ethical or it is not. If you cannot figure out how to get that album without "stealing" it then perhaps it is not your "right" to enjoy it. Or perhaps you could just try applying some logical consistency to your argument and see how none of it really matters.

It is in fact the job of the government to regulate laws which were put into place, including copyright laws.

That's what courts are for. That's why we draw a line between criminal enforcement, where it is the job of the government to defend, against infringment of their civil liberties, those who cannot defend themselves and civil enforcement, where the government is not expected, nor warranted, to police.

And in either case, when the people have decided the law is no longer just (as they essentially have in the case of file sharing) then it is time for we, the people to abridge or abolish those laws as we see fit.

Yes, anyone can afford to copy a page from a book, but it is illegal.

Not in the US. Sorry for you if this is the case in Australia. Wouldn't surprise me one bit, however, given all the other nonsense that government has been trying to lock down the internet.

If you are caught copying a whole book (by your analogy the whole song/movie, rather than just one second) then you are arrested, fined etc.

Again, I'm sorry for you all if that's the way things are where you live. Maybe you really should consider emigrating to Russia or China?

Let's also not forget another big problem with these stores: some of them tend to sell a wide variety of music.

Wide, but very shallow.

My own CD buying has increased (thanks to greater discretionary income than college years), but I almost never step into one of the CD stores. Shopping there is like expecting to buy designer clothing from Kmart - it ain't gonna happen. If it's general pop or orchestral music I'm looking, it's amazon.com's former cdnow that I shop. Usually, though, it's direct from the label - Metropolis Records for instance for 90% of what I listen to.

Funny thing, I've only found maybe one or two Metropolis artists in BestBuy - Apoptygma and Funker Vogt. Lesson of the day? If you won't sell it to me, don't complain that I'm not buying!

*scoove*
(and don't try to pass that nasty michael jackson my way! even FBI agents now know that only losers listen to that.)

Perhaps we should destroy their computers? Or maybe we should just cane them multiple times until their asses say uncle. Bloody file swappers need to be taught a lesson. And we are the ones that shall teach them. Onward christian.... I mean RIAA soldiers!!!

Sing along like bilbo baggins®:

Together we will overcome the evil-doers
Hiding in their parents basement
We come for you
Come for you

We want our nickles bitch
We want our nickles bitch

Trading our music without our cut
How dare you want to own something
Behold the bringer of light.. Rosenbilderberg
She shall part the red sea of muzak and lead us to freedom... From ourselves.

We want our nickles bitch
We want our nickles bitch


I would not be totally surprised if we opened the door to see Rosenbilderberg sitting on top of a pile of gold counting every single shekel muttering about her precious.

Ok, heres some supporting evidence. You can follow my sources of research.

Source1

source3
source4
source5
source6 Warning Warnings

"Methylphenidate should not be used in children under 6 years of age, since safety and efficacy in this age group have not been established.

Although a causal relationship has not been established, suppression of growth (i.e. weight gain and/or height) has been reported with the long-term use of stimulants in children. Therefore, patients requiring long-term therapy should be carefully monitored. In addition, the use of "Drug Holidays" is recommended, that is, withholding the drug on weekends and during school holidays in as much as the clinical situation permits.

Methylphenidate should not be used for severe depression of either exogenous or endogenous origin. Clinical experience suggests that in psychotic children, administration of methylphenidate may exacerbate symptoms of behavior disturbance and thought disorder.

Methylphenidate should not be used for the prevention or treatment of normal fatigue states.
There is some clinical evidence that methylphenidate may lower the convulsive threshold in patients with prior history of seizures, with prior EEG abnormalities in absence of seizures and, very rarely, in patients with no prior EEG evidence nor history of seizures. Safe concomitant use of anticonvulsants and methylphenidate has not been established. In the presence of seizures, the drug should be discontinued. Use cautiously in patients with hypertension. Blood pressure should be monitored at appropriate intervals in all patients taking methylphenidate, especially those with hypertension."
source7a
source7b
source8

source9 Yet, "since the late 1990s, a spate of scientific research has begun to establish that adults do generate new brain cells in some regions of the brain, well into old age.

And now, for the first time, scientists have seen that new neurons become functional members of the brain, forging new connections and firing "action potentials" like any other neuron.

Although this latest discovery has only been observed in the brains of mice, the analogy to humans suggests that the rules of the card game have indeed changed. It also points toward new directions in potential therapies for neurological disorders or brain injuries."

Source10
"biologists at Princeton University have found that thousands of freshly born neurons arrive each day in the cerebral cortex, the outer rind of the brain where higher intellectual functions and personality are centered."

There has been Research!

The brain adapts to use, research leads us to believe the brain is like any other muscle, use it or lose it.

So the try harder talk actually does make sense. Kinda like what you can tell a fat person. Of course some people want to believe fat people have a disease.

Washington Post Study

This basically proves with science that you can prevent your brain from developing disorders by using it.

Well, except that they haven't been enacted yet, and there's this little thing called Ex Post Facto. Also, the most effective anti-spam bills are unfortunately not the most likely to pass Congress:

• Schumer's bill endorsed by CAUCE
• Schumer seeks international anti-spam treaty

Here's one on "internet news". It was also on Drudge at the time,.

It definitely ran at The Register

Regarding the NSA's distribution of Linux, I refer back to the original post, where I said I give this a low probability of being true. This is why I put all those question marks in the subject line, as well. I am as flummoxed as I can be, trying to figure this lawsuit out, and the general twisting, turning methods of the different players in the tech industry. A lot of times, it makes no sense [back to the statement: I don't have the big picture. Now it occurs to me, maybe there is no big picture.]

That said, I think the NSA has some real concerns to worry about, and they may well be immediate.

If the news report is true, I also find it interesting that the name Padilla pops up again. Shoot -- even if the news report is false, and they are manufacturing secondary news items to tarnish the name of Jose Padilla and help get a conviction, I find it interesting.

to damage someone's computer right now. Under the anti-hacking laws, no one has the right to wilfully damage a computer system that does not belong to them. Sen. Hatch talked about changing the laws to make exemptions for copyright holders in this article.

What a bunch of bullshit.

"Washington Post reports that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch from Utah, said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. A notably quote: "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize [the seriousness of their actions]". Hatch has a personal interest, since I'm sure his music is pirated on a regular basis. ;)"

Just thought people might appreciate other links and such...guess I should've submitted it a couple minutes earlier....oh well :)

"Washington Post reports that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch from Utah, said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. A notably quote: "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize [the seriousness of their actions]". Hatch has a personal interest, since I'm sure his music is pirated on a regular basis. ;)"

Just thought people might appreciate other links and such...guess I should've submitted it a couple minutes earlier....oh well :)

Sorry. We don't fly anything French. Let freedom ring!

But, as the Washington Post reports, Rumsfeld claimed that the U.S. knew where the weapons were. Thus it's rather embarassing when they can't find a shred of evidence for them, after occupying the country for this long, even though they supposedly knew where to look. (And don't tell me about the two trucks - they have alternative uses, and the equipment to actually turn their output into weapons has not been found.)

It's difficult to envision any motivation for Saddam to destroy the weapons in secret, and if he did then no war was necessary. If they were moved out of the country, then we've made matters worse, just as Al Gore (and I'm no Gore fan) predicted before the war. The only remaining possibility is that they did not exist in the first place, and that the Bush/Blair administrations were either malicious or stunningly incompetent.

To put it another way: in your corner, we have the speeches of politicians. In the opposing corner, we have a total lack of evidence for weapons based on searches in Iraq, and pre-war evidence that turned out to be forged, single-sourced, or otherwise discounted by our intelligence people.

Now we're left with the aftermath - a huge expense, growing casualties, a waste of political capital on an enemy that didn't really threaten us, and an occupied country that we won't allow to have democratic elections because we've belatedly realized that the majority of their population is vastly more sympathetic to Al Qaida than Saddam Hussein ever was.

I voted for Bush, but there's one word for all this, and it starts with "cluster."

"But even if the economy improves later this year, as economists hope, the jobless rate still is expected to move higher - to as high as 6.5 percent."

"Job growth probably won't be strong enough to accommodate all the additional job seekers who would enter the market, attracted by an improved climate, analysts say. That would contribute to a rise in the unemployment rate, which happened last month."

Here, from the computer consultants Usenet newsgroup is a more realistic definition of "unemployment" that is closer to "underutilization" and historic definitions of "unemployment" that we intuitively think of, and it is _damn_ sobering:

About 20% -- or in other words approaching the same order as the Great Depression of 1930s -- with the caveat that we must remember a lot of people in the 1930s were still close relatives to someone who had a farm -- and that provided a much more benign "safety net" than a potentially hostile government bureaucrat.

Gore never said he "invented" the internet. That was a creation of the republican campaign.

What he said was he "took the initiative in creating the Internet", and this is true, as Vint Cerf and others agree.

Does anyone else think that Myer Berlow looks like the "Coffee Guy" from Mad TV?

How can this be modded off-topic?! It's all about cancer detection, and I was going for funny. If you read the article, the machine is being used to detect breast cancer, not just prostate. And, yes, even guys can get breast cancer

Well, for starters, any of 'em living in California who own a house they bought before the boom :)

> Why the hell do Americans always think that the class they actually belong to is several notches higher than it really is? Maybe 5% of the population save that much. Given that many/most Americans get into heavy debt (mortgages, credit cards, etc), I would say that it is

pretty fucking repugnant that you're asking those of us who do manage our incomes wisely to subsidize the spend-and-consume binging of those who don't.

> Unless you earn a ton of money but live in a shitty house and drive a shitty car and have your kids go to a community college, you simply aren't going to save much money.

But ain't y'all high-taxin' granola-munchin' sorta folks s'posed to be all fer that "sustainability" and against "consumerism" stuff anyways? :)

OK, that last bit of trollbait was uncalled for. But in all seriousness, what you describe is exactly how Joe Sixpack drags himself out of the gutter and ends up with seven digits in his bank. Most millionaires today are first-generation millionaires. Read the (solidly apolitical, unlike my /. rantings!) book "The Millionaire Next Door" for insights on why. (Or just skim some reviews or the first chapter.)

> unlikely that anyone except very rich people save that much cash. In fact, most of the middle class probably spends all of what it earns.

And if it weren't paying 40% marginal income tax (6.5% SS, 1.65% Medicare, 25% Federal, 9.3% Kalifornia, Single filer, anywhere from $40-80K), maybe they'd be able to afford a home :)

Comes down to equality of opportunity again. Do I have a megabuck? Nope. Will I have a megabuck? At these tax levels, probably not. Do I want to have a megabuck? You betcha. Will I be pissed off if I work my ass off, get that megabuck, only to have half of it taken away from my heirs (be they my spawn or a favored charitable organization) at death? Doubly so.

The $KILOBUCKS (and hopefully $MEGABUCK) in my bank account are mine, I earned them, so I get to say what happens to them. The $GIGABUCKS (and hopefully $KILOBUCKS :) in Bill Gates' bank account are not mine, I didn't earn them, so I don't get to say what happens to them. What part of "private property" is so hard for these people understand?

To verify this, quoted from Europemedia: "From the first of next month, a new EU directive will be enacted, forcing all internet companies to impose VAT (value-added tax) on all digital sales. This amounts to a tariff of between 15 and 25 per cent on items such as software or music downloads, any transactions as part of online auctions and subscriptions to internet service providers, sold over the internet anywhere within the European Union."

In other words, the tax is on services and digital products sold to EU citizens on the Internet. It's still annoying (and hellish for small shareware shops to deal with!) but at least it doesn't affect the cost of physical goods... yet.

And in the case of online auctions, this means that the EU will tax the service eBay provides, not the actual product supplied from seller to buyer.

Jouni

Also, I believe Trillian was the first IM to provide end to end encryption. Its been a long while since my sessions with other trillian users have been plain-text.

Its nice to see a big company embrace encryption like this. Sure, they could just be slightly paranoid about various AIM sniffers out ther, including their own. I guess that idea didn't go too far.

Actually, I'm not too surprised. In an electronic world full of plain-text mail, plain-text passwords, plain-text just about everything short of SSL pages, VPN, PGP mail, and ssh tunnels theres going to be a breaking point. Are users going to force vendors into providing encryption? With the popularity of wireless networks and free "network administration" tools with GUI front-ends no less, then perhaps encryption will be the new industry buzzword in the near future.

TIA has nothing to do with protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism. It is instead part of a hidden political agenda.

Every year, the U.S. government gives between $3.5 billion and $5.5 billion to Jews in Israel. This money is used to kill Arabs. (The Jews call it defense.) The terrorism toward the U.S. was caused by Arabs who feel they have no other way to protest the brutality of moving them from their homeland, and continuing to kill them, to make a new country called Israel. They are sacrificing their lives to try to make a statement. I don't think violence is justified, but the U.S. government thinks violence is justified, the Jews think violence is justified, and it would be illogical to think that violence is okay for politically powerful groups in the U.S., but not for the people they want to kill.

The people who have brought you TIA have also put the U.S. government back into the huge debt it was in during the Reagan-Bush years. The people who want corruption cause the U.S. government to borrow money so that they can spend it (tax cut) to make themselves look good and on high-profit weapons.

Here are a few links that discuss other kinds of corruption:

War Profiteers card deck.

"Speaking to Pentagon reporters in a video teleconference from Iraq, General Conway said, 'What the regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we thought we understood.' He added, 'We were simply wrong.'" [last paragraphs]

Secretary of State General Powell believes he may have been lied to about weapons in Iraq: Powell's doubts over CIA intelligence on Iraq prompted him to set up secret review.

"Could be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time."

More about war profiteers and conflict of interest: Lawmaker Questions Scope Of Iraq-Related Contracts.

Questionable accounting practices -- The U.S. government becomes another Enron scam:

Questionable accounting practices in the U.S. government: "The U.S. government is broke." George Bush gave U.S. citizens a tax cut, but it was fraud. The tax cut will be paid by money the U.S. government will borrow.

Questionable accounting practices at Halliburton, Vice President of the U.S. Dick Cheney's company.

Should U.S. President George W. Bush be impeached?

In a CNN article, John Dean asks, "Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?"

An Associated Press article reports that a retired Department of State analyst says the Bush administration was "not entirely honest".

International reaction is extremely negative. The Hindustan Times mentions that "a former CIA analyst with 25 years' experience" ... "accused the Bush administration of lying to Congress".

The kind of person that wants to believe that his/her AIM conversations are now secure, from say...his/her employer.

But, I think AOL just wants less competition in the field of software sold to employers.

How long until someone says AOL is enabling terrorists? Maybe a long time...maybe the encryption used is pretty weak.

Or, I wonder if AOL has a new office in Anguilla.

No they do pay the costs. The whole point of local number portability is more competition which in turn means lower prices for consumers.

The cost of the necessary SS7 datadase dips is a cent or two per call. The cell companies are already billing you for it, even though they have done nothing to implement it and are probably going to outsource the business anyway. The additional competition between carriers is likely to reduce cellular rates by $10 a month or so.

Verizon know this will cost them. That is why they are going to go and buy the best politicians money can buy, starting with Billy Tauzin, Tom Delay and the others who were so helpful to Westar

It is because the government is corrupt. To take a look at how legislation is made read this story in the Washington Post.

Bascially DeLay and three cronies charged a company $56,000 to Republican campaign funds in return for exceptions from regulations. The company saw the payments as bribes - "we have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table". And so does every other company being shaken down buy GOP thugs.

Bush did not raise all that money in the last Presidential election from benificent philanthropists. He collected it form companies like Enron who wanted specific favors like being allowed to rig the California energy market.

To see if Verizon is going to get another delay (or maybe a De Lay) just take a look at how much money they give to Billy Tauzin, Tom Delay and co. The going tarif for that sort of favor would be about $500,000 or so.

The reason they do not want local number portability has nothing to do with capital cost. The systems are run by outsourcing companies and are simply a mondification of the existing SS7 system configuration. The reason they don't want to allow portability is that their customers are more likely to switch companies if there is a free market.

...and in other news, Unemployment hits 9 year high

The videos are here (where the panel visibly ripples after the impact) and here.

The accompanying slide presentation has the details: the 1.7 pound foam block was fired at 531 mph and, where it struck a T-seal between two panels, displaced them and caused a 4/10 inch gap. This fake wing was made of fiberglass, but given the results, a test with actual shuttle wing material from the Space Shuttle Discovery is planned for today.

Here are some of the headlines from news.google.com:
Shuttle Wing Under Gun
Investigator Amazed by Shuttle Foam Force
Foam theory faces pivotal test
Tests Show Foam Causing Wing of Shuttle to Deform
Foam chunk was shuttle's undoing, tests indicate

IBM said after the close of trading Monday that it had received a notice of a formal SEC investigation primarily concerning "certain types of customer transactions." Spokesmen for IBM declined to elaborate.

Though the US rejects it here.

I am more concerned the the attitude of the justice department regarding these detainees. Your quote "The Justice Department says its actions were fully within the law, adding that it makes no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from terrorist attacks" mirrors this quote from the WashingtonPost about the Moussaoui trial: "The government's appeal resulted in Tuesday's hearing. Prosecutors argued in written pleadings that national security should trump a defendant's rights in terrorism cases." Though these people are not US citizens, they are still people and hold a right to a fair trial. I applaud the judges decision, but it looks like the outcome of this is that the Moussaoui trial will be moved to a Military Tribunal, where more secrecy is allowed.

Jayson Blair so you don't have to ask

behind-the-scenes footage [...] no audio [...] "Star Wars" buffs won't be treated to actual scenes being shot, but they probably will watch Darth Vader eating in the cafeteria, space-station sets getting hammered into place and makeup artists touching up the face of Obi-Wan Kenobi. [...] There are a lot of things we can do with that webcam and not spoil the excitement of the film for fans

Lower income people DO pay taxes. Lower income people pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes than rich, just ask warren buffet.

Warren Says Bush Tax Cut is Stupid

Even the rich are against this tax cut, they dont WANT the money and they flat out tell people they wont spend it.

Personally, I think we should do away with income tax completely. Instead, tax the goods that people consume.

I completely agree with that. But if we taxed the goods, people would consume less and the economy would slow down. It depends on the percentage of tax on each good, but currently states do tax goods.

"Those that buy the goods pay the taxes on them. More expensive items, same tax rate, but more is paid."

Thats already done, so I guess we need to raise taxes in this area, fine, but I think the income tax should still exist.

Anyway the tax cut is bad, the worlds richest people know more about the economy than you, if warren buffet says hes not going to spend the money and to give it to the poor, why the hell dont you listen to him? Hes going to get most of the tax cut anyway.

Subject: FW: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

URGENT ASSISTANCE - FROM USA

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH
202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111
FAX: 202.456.2461

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am GEORGE WALKER BUSH, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence.

I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the republic of iraq. My partners and I solicit your assistance in completing a transaction begun by my father, who has long been actively engaged in the extraction of petroleum in the United States of America, and bravely served his country as director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, my father, then vice-president of the United States of America, sought to work with the good offices of the President of the Republic of Iraq to regain lost oil revenue sources in the neighboring islamic republic of Iran. This unsuccessful venture was soon followed by a falling-out with his Iraqi partner, who sought to acquire additional oil revenue sources in the neighboring emirate of Kuwait, a wholly-owned U.S.-British subsidiary.

My father re-secured the petroleum assets of Kuwait in 1991 at a cost of sixty-one billion U.S. dollars ($61,000,000,000). Out of that cost, thirty-six billion dollars ($36,000,000,000) were supplied by his partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other persian gulf monarchies, and sixteen billion dollars ($16,000,000,000) by German and Jap

I'm not necessarily talking about the FCC chairman. The vote today was along party lines. It is controlled by the republicans, 3-2.

I don't care who brought the chairman on board. It was still the republicans who voted for this.

Globe199

Republican Michael Powell, the chairman of the five-member FCC board, said the new rules are more likely to withstand legal challenges than the old rules, which had been rejected by U.S. courts.

Michael Powell is the son of Colin Powell in case you didnt know.

This means that in the future, the government will now only have to write one letter or make one telephone call to one board of directors of a single company to control the flow of propaH^H^H^H^H news throughout the entire usa.

They are already controling what you see on the news; read about it here.

And I quote:

(March 22):....it is not conducive to maintaining an overall neutrality in the Palestine uprisings to show any pictures of the American peacenik that was run over by the Israeli army bulldozer. This is only to be mentioned as a "tragic accident" for which the IDF "is truly saddened."

(Feb 10)....It is not permitted at this point to use or refer to any film clips, stills or articles emanating from any French source whatsoever.

The consolidation of these powers in the hands of a single person, say the person who inherits Murdoch's empire is truely firghtening, not only for the citezenry of the USA, but for the whole world, because now any flagrantly law violating military action can and will be sold to the american poplulation, and subsequently exported anywhere in the world, justified with bald faced lies transmitted through this consolidated and all powerful deception machine, which the Neocons are building.

Even Ted Turner is against this. It is a huge tragedy for the USA and the world, no doubt about it.

The dam will ultimately be able to crank out 18,200 megawatts of energy a year, the equivalent of 26 nuclear power plants or 10 big coal-fired power stations burning 50 million tons of coal.

or about 36 watts per person! China better invest in transmeta or low power dragon cpus if they ever want to make computers ubiquitous. However because of falling energy prices in china, its unlikely the overrun cost of this damn will be recouped quickly, making future investments in energy production in doubt.

With as much water as Lake Superior, the reservoir will stretch 385 miles east to west and more than one mile north to south and 600 feet deep. unlike lake superior all of this water is held back from a lower flood plain by a single entity--the dam. THis could be a spectacular flood if it breeched.

but there's reason to worry. small cracks are appearing in the damn and construction officials arrested for corruption. 60 percent of the waste entering the reservoir comes from sources that can't be treated, such as fields laden with fertilizer and insecticide. Of the 90 tributaries entering the reservoir, 60 are now considered heavily polluted. It may well become a cesspool the size of lake superior.

One might also worry how this will shift the eco system and farmland down stream. THe river has traditionally created havoc with its floods but presumably also renewed farmlands and sustained eco systems down stream.

I am a major shareholder in the largest of those five corporations, yet -- speaking only for myself, and not for AOL Time Warner -- I oppose these rules. They will stifle debate, inhibit new ideas and shut out smaller businesses trying to compete. If these rules had been in place in 1970, it would have been virtually impossible for me to start Turner Broadcasting or, 10 years later, to launch CNN.

I fail to see any rocket scientists holding the Presidency in the USA in its entire history. Or any scientists, after B.F., for that matter.

Even assuming that "political science" doesn't count for some reason, you don't have to look too far to find one.

The most recent scientist U.S. president would probably be Jimmy Carter, who "was educated in the Plains public schools, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. He later did graduate work in nuclear physics at Union College."

The president of the United states being a former nuclear engineer was considered a major asset in resolving the Three Mile Island crisis safely.

P.S. If you're so fscking smart, how come you're not running for - and winning - the Oval Office?

P.S. BTW, ability to speak fluently is in no way related to intelligence.

Clearly being smart and an ability to speak fluently is not a prerequisite to running for- and winning- the Oval Office.

W

PS: Assuming B.F. stands for Ben Franklin, well, he was never president.

A game server got hacked.

Back in real-life:
FCC Decision on Media Ownership Nears - rejected

1. Downplay your capabilities.
2. Carry out a sophistacated op, like bombing yourself.
3. Blame somebody else.
4. Proclaim, "Oops, we goofed. Give us more money to fix the problem."
5. Get more money for computers, etc.

Example: Michael Hayden a year or two before 9/11/2001.

True? Who knows, but the moral of the story is don't believe everything you hear. It stands to reason that anything the CIA wants the public to know is made available for a reason. And likewise everything it doeosn't want people to know is not made available.

Are you guys familiar with In-Q-Tel? (It's mentioned in the article)

Here's an article.
and another...
and another...
and another...

Sorry, it appears I was mistaken.

The doubleclick guy was supposed to be the Homeland Security Privacy Czar.

In a related matter, it appears that I'm not so lazy after all.

• All commercial email must have an "unsubscribe" option (that actually works).
• If you opt out and are spammed by the same company again within 3 years, your ISP (but not you) can sue for $10/email, up to $500,000. Triple damages if it's "willful".
• It would be illegal to send commercial email to addresses scanned from web sites. (But how would they know where a spammer got the address?)
• Forged headers would be punishable by a fine up to $3,000,000. (It doesn't say if this applies to commercial email only, or all email.)
• It would be illegal to send commercial email with sexual content unless you follow FTC guidelines. (This one is bit scary.)
• There would be no requirement for ADV: in the subject line, unlike some competing bills.

Furthermore, they can't show any examples of living things falling from that altitude and surviving Er, remember the worms surviving the shuttle crash? This stuff happens all the time, especially when the live organism is distanced from the outer layers of whatever it came down to Earth in. However, this is not to say that I believe their theory contains much clout. To say that virii external to Earth mutated and evolved as such that they can infect us without having had any previous contact with us is a bit loony, to say the least. I'm sure the chances of that are roughly the same chance of humans with roughly the same genetic sequences having evolved in a different area of space at the same time as us.

The Washington Post gives more details on two plans. The first would involve a launch of Atlantis with a four man skeleton crew to an orbit within 20-30 meters of Columbia and a transfer of the stranded astronauts using spare spacesuits. The second would have two astronauts "don the two space suits aboard their craft and attempt to patch a hole in the left wing using odds and ends, including stainless steel parts, insulation, soft tiles ripped from the side of the shuttle, an ice pack and heat resistant tape."

The Justice Department has used many of the anti-terrorism powers granted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pursue defendants for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including drug violations, credit card fraud and bank theft, according to a government accounting released yesterday.

And then, of course, there's this guy, the modern scion :&}