What is stopping Microsoft from putting out a version or patch of/to IE that has this feature? I know that the conspirecy theorists could speculate to no end on this one, but is there a simple answer?
Well, I can think of one or two right off the top of my head...
Microsoft Windows Update requires pop-ups to work correctly. Sure, they could put an exception in the code for Microsoft, but then Slashdot would run a feature about it and all us geek types would get pissed off.
Possibly. However, I have to say that in part, I am a Christian not because I was indoctrinated from an early age (I wasn't) but because I am not convinced that a sensible ethical code can be formulated without some kind of teleological (that is, losely speaking, goal-centered) foundation. In order to answer the question of "what is right" or "what should I do", one must first figure out what they are trying to accomplish. Then, having figured out what is right, we must then figure out how to accomplish it. Any ethical system needs to be evaluated according to these three questions: What should I do, Why should I want to, and how will I be able to?
Typical inane, self satisfied, self-righteous Paulian crap (yes, Paulian, not Christian). There are plenty of non-Christian, non-religious philosophers who have devoted their entire life to moral and ethical study, but because it doesn't come from that stuffy old book of yours it couldn't possibly have value, right? Get over yourself. Some people do good merely for the sake of doing good, and don't need the threat of "eternal damnation" or the promise of "eternal life" to motivate them. *I* am of the opinion that anyone who bases their moral decision making on religious grounds can never truly be a "good" person because their basic motivation is selfishness. I try to do good by people even though I don't believe in your god or in your bible. Some of the most well mannered, morally righteous people I know have no religion whatsoever, and some of the "Christians" I know are the rudest, most evil people you'd ever care to meet, all the while thinking that they're "good" because they go to church.
If your moral code is based on dogma rather than on upbringing and simple truths, you won't have the creative energy necessary to deal with morally ambiguous situations. What will you do, carry a bible with you everywhere you go so that you can refer to it if you get in a situation where you're not sure what the "right" thing to do is? Maybe if your moral code was a bit simpler, like "try not to hurt people", you'd be better prepared for life. Read the "ten" commandments sometime. There are a lot more than ten, and some of them are clearly ridiculous. If you see your daughter naked, both you and she get the death penalty, for example. A truly "moral" code based on the bible only works if you ignore a large portion of the bible. Otherwise, your code will be very *immoral*, in my opinion.
MAX TEGMARK wrote a four-dimensional version of the computer game Tetris while in college. In another universe, he went on to become a highly paid software developer. In our universe, however, he wound up as professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.
And in every other universe we know of he is the master sandwich maker.
Who the hell can play 4 dimensional tetris? What the hell IS it?
Another thing I am tired of hearing people complain about is the cost of CD's. Sure, they can be considered expensive. I agree that the cost of replication is way lower than what they sell CD's for. But replication is probably the cheapest step of the CD-making process. Next on the list is the actual studio time spent recording the CD. But the real money-burner is promotion and distribution. Thousands, hundreds of thousands are spent on replication and distribution and marketing just so regular people (including the non net-savvy) can hear about new music. So I think $12.99 is more than fair. Even $14.99.
Whatever dude. The Beatles have made a mint for the record industry, paid for themselves and 5000 other bands already, yet their CDs are the most expensive. Try $17-$20 for a 30-40 year old album. That's just outrageous, and maybe a little out of touch with reality. I'd reluctantly pay half that, but I'd rather listen to my old moldy tapes and LPs than shell out that kind of money. Screw them and the horse they rode in on.
I appreciate your example of entrapment, but when does offering a fellow money equate to coercion? If one held the fellow's child hostage, or threatened his life, that would be coercion. Otherwise, every case where the police arrested a prostitute by pretending to be a client would be coercion. I've watched enough cop shows to know the difference (grins).
Are you a lawyer?
I'm not a lawyer or an abbreviator. You don't have to be to understand entrapment though.
I also know that whether a cop commits entrapment when arresting a prostitute is mostly a function of her lawyer. However, a common example of entrapment would be if a cop offers you $50,000 to carry some drugs on a plane. You wouldn't normally do it, but you might consider it "just that once" for the amount of money involved. Entrapment is when you coerce someone to do something they would not normally do, through bribery, extortion, blackmail, etc. If you can prove that it was normal behaviour, it's not entrapment (probably why they get away with it for most working girls).
Yes, but spamgourmet will not check your existing email address for you, so if you've already got an email address that's getting spam, you're outta luck. If you're setting up a new email address, it's great.
However, I am glad that you are incensed when the Constitution is abused by such laws. Perhaps you should be equally incensed when judges chose to legislate from the bench, which belongs to the legislative branch or to loosely interpret the Constitution to suit their needs.
I'm so tired of hearing this. You're obviously a republican, and you feel that judges are "liberal activists", and that conservative judges "merely interpret the law", right?
A). That's patently false. Do you need a better example than Bush v Gore? If you don't agree that this was conservative "judicial activism" of the worst sort, try actually reading the majority opinion instead of the media crap.
B). Do you really want to live in a country where the legislative branch has final say to implement any kind of crazy law they want to, regardless of the constitution? Maybe you think you do, but you'd change your mind after a while. What's to stop Congress from repealing the Bill of Rights if you have no supreme court?
C). Most judges, especially federal court judges, are conservative. The ones who are called "liberal" are really just not quite ultra right wing (with a few notable exceptions). Souter and Ginsberg are often called liberal. They're anything but.
As an aside, entrapment is NOT when police "fail to follow due process", whatever that means. Entrapment is coercing someone to commit a crime. For example, if a cop offered you ten grand to carry drugs on an airplane, that would be entrapment. Many people (including you) seem to have a lot of trouble understanding the concept.
Obviously the Niven book that would make the best big-budget effects monstrosity of a film would be Ringworld... but cast the wrong person as Louis and you face disaster. Making Speaker-to-Animals and Nessus look plausible would be a heck of a job, too. Compared to that, the CG involved in creating the ring, the flycycles and the flying buildings would be trivial
I always pictured Louis as David Carradine (the guy from "Kung-Fu"). Or maybe the other way around.
I don't see myself buying a PS3, much as I love my PS2, for the simple reason that the hardware has already begun to fail. The DVD ejection tray doesn't work half the time, and the thing often fails to load games. I attribute both of these failures to Sony's inability to make a decent electric motor (or buy a decent one, or whatever). The electronic parts are great, the moving parts suck.
I would think it was just an anomoly, except that I have a couple of friends who have the exact same problems. For $200-$300, we expect the hardware to last more than a year and a half. Unless they change their act, I won't be buying a PS3 no matter when the damn thing comes out. Please don't accuse me of misusing it, I use it correctly. I turn it off when not in use, and I haven't ever had the thing on for more than 5 or 6 hours. It's just some kind of design flaw, and really I think all zillion units should be recalled.
Ummm..... isn't this article a little early?
on
Server In A Fly
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· Score: 1
I mean, c'mon, everybody knows you're supposed to wait til next month to post this kind of crap. What's next?
"Beowulf cluster of perpetual motion machines power successful search for the Loch Ness monster", or "Duke Nukem Forever released"?
But I don't. I count it out such as not to obscure it. Does it guarantee me anything? No. But it helps. Or it did in the one case I had a problem. (Or maybe because it was only short $20 they just said fuck it.)
I consider it more likely that they knew how much money should be in the ATM, and there was extra at the end of the day....
From the article: However, the paper argues that the increase in prosecutable "crimes" could have a chilling effect on security researchers and industry. Security researchers who uncover and disseminate information on vulnerabilities could be charged for their activities. Companies that send unsolicited bulk e-mail could be convicted of unauthorized access. And, makers of faulty software could be liable for the transmission of harmful code.
A chilling effect on companies that send unsolicited bulk e-mail, huh? This has got to be the coolest chilling effect I've ever heard of!
And as far as the last sentence goes, don't we all know that Microsoft has been guilty of terrorism for a long time now?
Maybe Cruise's character wasn't exactly portrayed as a developer (you do learn he created the system from custom parts), but I found the 3d interface he used very intriguing, and possibly quite realistic for the future.
And sneakers wasn't too bad either. Definitely better than most.
There's a big asteroid belt out there with a lot of useful minerals, where we don't have a pesky ecosystem to worry about destroying, we can do all the damn mining we want on any unocupied asteroids we should find out there.
Yes, we wouldn't want to do any mining on the occupied asteroids, would we? And make sure to bring a towel!
Wow! Was that an apology? It takes a really big man to admit he's wrong.
Sorry I forgot to take the time to literally take you by the scruff of your neck and stick your nose in the heaping pile of dancing Israeli stories. God forbid you should actually read any of the links provided, or that you should inconvenience yourself by having to manually enter text into a Google form.
Here is a partial compilation [whatreallyhappened.com] of just some of the many stories written about these Israelis. This is the link contained in this excellent piece by antiwar.com [antiwar.com] on the Israeli-9/11 connection. If you are genuinely interested in learning just how mistaken you were you might consider doing some research on your own.
Apology accepted.
Hahahaha! You really are a troll, aren't you? Where's your evidence for the Israeli's "celebrating" the 9/11 massacre?
You really are going to have to stretch to blame this one on Israel. What possible motive could Israel have to orchestrate this, as you seem to be implying? Perhaps they wanted to frame the Palestinians? Perhaps they thought they could rid the world of Barney the purple dinosaur? Yes, that would be adequate motivation for jeapordizing our excellent relationship and all of the financial aid that we give them.
I'm not positive what your motivation is, but I have a feeling you're a regular reader of the Journal for Historical Review. Ring any bells, mister Neo-Nazi?
Unless you can offer a shred of credible evidence that Isarael "celebrated" the 9/11 attacks, this discussion is over. Good day to you.
Taken together, the fact that only one Israeli died in the WTC along with the fact that an Israeli company in the vicinity of the WTC received advance warning of the attack is damning evidence that the Israeli government was at least aware of the attack beforehand.
Not Jews all over the world. Not Jews in Israel. The Israeli Government. There's a big difference. I routinely rant and rave about my government here in America, that doesn't make me anti-American though, quite the contrary.
If there was as much evidence implicating the Taliban as there is the Israelis, I would have supported the carpet-bombing of Afghanistan. It's that damning.
Is the troll going to come back and admit that he was wrong, that he wrongly accused me and others here of being anti-semitic?
It sure is convenient for you that the Post article was taken down, isn't it? One Israeli was killed, huh? How many Zimbabweans were killed? How about Australians? And what has this got to do with anything?
I don't see your link about how the Israelis were celebrating in the streets either. Good luck providing that one.
corebreech was foolish enough to spam us with the following ignorance and superstition:
The story about the Israeli company Odigo receiving an instant message warning of the attack hours in advance comes from The Washington Post.
The story about there being only one Israeli casualty in the WTC comes from The New York Times. And that casualty was a man who was just visiting, i.e., he was supposed to be there.
The story about the Israelis celebrating the fall of the towers was an AP and Reuters story and was reported everywhere.
Funny, Mr trollbritches, how you don't give a single source for any of your outlandish claims, but merely name major publications. I suppose we are supposed to read these publications from cover to cover from 9-11-2001 to the present to find the passages you are referring to?
Uh-huh. How is it that I read volumes on the attacks and never even heard a whisper of the crap you're spewing? Yes, I read the NYT. Could it be because you are making it up?
To bring it almost back on topic, did you also read about an unbreakable code machine from these sources? Perhaps it was powered by a combination of zero-point energy, cold fusion, and a perpetual motion machine.
Me: frantically looks for the "+1, Carmack" moderation option.
Need any more programmers John? I'll work twice as long as anybody you've got for half the pay! I'll teach you how to play Quake 3. I'll even wash your car three times a week and wax it with a chamois. I'll personally distill your peroxide for you at no charge.
I'll be damned if I'm gonna test fly that rocket for you though, I mean, a man's got to draw the line somewhere.
Try reading the book sometime. I, too, like to sin, fantasizing about how great carnal knowledge of Denise Richards' stinky places would be, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I've read the book three times (I know, I'm slacking). Even after your explanation, I find your link to Aliens a bit tenuous. Aliens had none of the political and social elements from ST, it doesn't "feel" like ST, and the similarities you named are superficial. The Aliens aliens were not bugs, we never learned much about the space marines other than the fact they were soldiers.
Their job was not to blow up a city if necessary. The space suits were nothing like the ones in ST, they were pretty much just suits.
If you read the Amazon reviews, they're split with people either loving it or completely hating it. I'd guess the ones who enjoy it are also the ones who find minutes and hours slipping away in AOL chat rooms. It's not necessarily the same people who play Everquest or any other MMORPG.
Another possibility to consider is that they are paid by Maxis, Amazon, etc. The negative reviewers give very good reasons for being negative. The positive ones don't seem to offer any compelling reason to like the game, but more often than not adopt a "wait and see" attitude.
Giving five stars to a game when the best you can say about it is "wait and see" strikes me as a bit dishonest, don't you think? Then maybe some people aren't as stingy with stars as I am. Why shell out monthly money to wait and see?
Amen. Look at the best episodes of the original TV series.
"Amok Time"? Written by Theodore Sturgeon.
"Trouble with Tribbles"? David Gerrold.
Ahem. You may as well go ahead and attribute "The trouble with Tribbles" to the Dean (Robert Heinlein, for you non sf geeks). David Gerrold wrote him a letter of apology for stealing the idea, after all .
I am very tired of hearing about how this "couldn't possibly be terrorism". Especially when the thrust of the argument is that a missle couldn't have hit it.
Of course a missle couldn't have hit it. Or, if one could have, it would have to be a very special missle with the funding of a government.
However, it wouldn't take much for a saboteur to loosen a ceramic tile. This scenario is unlikely, but definitely possible. It was completely irresponsible of the Bush administration to issue a statement that this "couldn't possibly be terrorism", before an investigation has even been performed. Suppose it WAS terrorism, and later evidence supports sabotage. This puts the investigation at risk because the facts would be at odds with the president's off the cuff remark.
I am not saying that I believe it was sabotage, but the coincidences here are very striking. 9/11 was a date picked very carefully by the terrorists responsible.
The first Israeli ever to fly on the shuttle flew on this mission. This mission was within three days of the anniversary of the challenger explosion. It is very possible, indeed likely that these two facts are mere coincidences, but it is irresponsible to rule out the possiblity of sabotage altogether before all the facts are in.
That having been said, the president has much more information than me about the security procedures taken by NASA. I sincerely hope that these procedures are 100% reliable, and the possiblity of sabotage has occured to NASA. I do consider it possible, however, that internal sabotage was not high on their list of potential safety issues.
I know a lot of scientists, and most of them are very trusting by nature. The sort of security needed to compeletely protect against internal saboteurs would have to be forced down their throats, because it would go against their nature to distrust one of their own colleagues. Even if this was an honest accident, the possibilty needs to be considered and guarded against in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I can think of one or two right off the top of my head...
Microsoft Windows Update requires pop-ups to work correctly. Sure, they could put an exception in the code for Microsoft, but then Slashdot would run a feature about it and all us geek types would get pissed off.
MSNBC uses pop-ups.
Is that enough or do you need more?
Friday was a great book, wasn't it?
Hey, what if we sent a starship to this star and there was a big ring around it with a buncha humanoid creatures? Wouldn't that be cool?
Typical inane, self satisfied, self-righteous Paulian crap (yes, Paulian, not Christian). There are plenty of non-Christian, non-religious philosophers who have devoted their entire life to moral and ethical study, but because it doesn't come from that stuffy old book of yours it couldn't possibly have value, right? Get over yourself. Some people do good merely for the sake of doing good, and don't need the threat of "eternal damnation" or the promise of "eternal life" to motivate them. *I* am of the opinion that anyone who bases their moral decision making on religious grounds can never truly be a "good" person because their basic motivation is selfishness. I try to do good by people even though I don't believe in your god or in your bible. Some of the most well mannered, morally righteous people I know have no religion whatsoever, and some of the "Christians" I know are the rudest, most evil people you'd ever care to meet, all the while thinking that they're "good" because they go to church.
If your moral code is based on dogma rather than on upbringing and simple truths, you won't have the creative energy necessary to deal with morally ambiguous situations. What will you do, carry a bible with you everywhere you go so that you can refer to it if you get in a situation where you're not sure what the "right" thing to do is? Maybe if your moral code was a bit simpler, like "try not to hurt people", you'd be better prepared for life. Read the "ten" commandments sometime. There are a lot more than ten, and some of them are clearly ridiculous. If you see your daughter naked, both you and she get the death penalty, for example. A truly "moral" code based on the bible only works if you ignore a large portion of the bible. Otherwise, your code will be very *immoral*, in my opinion.
MAX TEGMARK wrote a four-dimensional version of the computer game Tetris while in college. In another universe, he went on to become a highly paid software developer. In our universe, however, he wound up as professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.
And in every other universe we know of he is the master sandwich maker.
Who the hell can play 4 dimensional tetris? What the hell IS it?
Whatever dude. The Beatles have made a mint for the record industry, paid for themselves and 5000 other bands already, yet their CDs are the most expensive. Try $17-$20 for a 30-40 year old album. That's just outrageous, and maybe a little out of touch with reality. I'd reluctantly pay half that, but I'd rather listen to my old moldy tapes and LPs than shell out that kind of money. Screw them and the horse they rode in on.
I'm not a lawyer or an abbreviator. You don't have to be to understand entrapment though.
I also know that whether a cop commits entrapment when arresting a prostitute is mostly a function of her lawyer. However, a common example of entrapment would be if a cop offers you $50,000 to carry some drugs on a plane. You wouldn't normally do it, but you might consider it "just that once" for the amount of money involved. Entrapment is when you coerce someone to do something they would not normally do, through bribery, extortion, blackmail, etc. If you can prove that it was normal behaviour, it's not entrapment (probably why they get away with it for most working girls).
Yes, but spamgourmet will not check your existing email address for you, so if you've already got an email address that's getting spam, you're outta luck. If you're setting up a new email address, it's great.
I'm so tired of hearing this. You're obviously a republican, and you feel that judges are "liberal activists", and that conservative judges "merely interpret the law", right?
A). That's patently false. Do you need a better example than Bush v Gore? If you don't agree that this was conservative "judicial activism" of the worst sort, try actually reading the majority opinion instead of the media crap.
B). Do you really want to live in a country where the legislative branch has final say to implement any kind of crazy law they want to, regardless of the constitution? Maybe you think you do, but you'd change your mind after a while. What's to stop Congress from repealing the Bill of Rights if you have no supreme court?
C). Most judges, especially federal court judges, are conservative. The ones who are called "liberal" are really just not quite ultra right wing (with a few notable exceptions). Souter and Ginsberg are often called liberal. They're anything but.
As an aside, entrapment is NOT when police "fail to follow due process", whatever that means. Entrapment is coercing someone to commit a crime. For example, if a cop offered you ten grand to carry drugs on an airplane, that would be entrapment. Many people (including you) seem to have a lot of trouble understanding the concept.
I always pictured Louis as David Carradine (the guy from "Kung-Fu"). Or maybe the other way around.
'Cause I have something all of you dont: a 30 second skip button. My commercial breaks sound like this:
"Half Pr.."
"Great Pruh.."
"Mutual of..."
"Sex..."
(7 second instant replay back)
"The earl of sussex wuh....."
"Can you he..."
"And, we're back! Tell me Ann, " (etc).
I would think it was just an anomoly, except that I have a couple of friends who have the exact same problems. For $200-$300, we expect the hardware to last more than a year and a half. Unless they change their act, I won't be buying a PS3 no matter when the damn thing comes out. Please don't accuse me of misusing it, I use it correctly. I turn it off when not in use, and I haven't ever had the thing on for more than 5 or 6 hours. It's just some kind of design flaw, and really I think all zillion units should be recalled.
"Beowulf cluster of perpetual motion machines power successful search for the Loch Ness monster", or "Duke Nukem Forever released"?
I consider it more likely that they knew how much money should be in the ATM, and there was extra at the end of the day....
A chilling effect on companies that send unsolicited bulk e-mail, huh? This has got to be the coolest chilling effect I've ever heard of!
And as far as the last sentence goes, don't we all know that Microsoft has been guilty of terrorism for a long time now?
And sneakers wasn't too bad either. Definitely better than most.
Yes, we wouldn't want to do any mining on the occupied asteroids, would we? And make sure to bring a towel!
Sorry I forgot to take the time to literally take you by the scruff of your neck and stick your nose in the heaping pile of dancing Israeli stories. God forbid you should actually read any of the links provided, or that you should inconvenience yourself by having to manually enter text into a Google form.
Here is a partial compilation [whatreallyhappened.com] of just some of the many stories written about these Israelis. This is the link contained in this excellent piece by antiwar.com [antiwar.com] on the Israeli-9/11 connection. If you are genuinely interested in learning just how mistaken you were you might consider doing some research on your own.
Apology accepted.
Hahahaha! You really are a troll, aren't you? Where's your evidence for the Israeli's "celebrating" the 9/11 massacre?
You really are going to have to stretch to blame this one on Israel. What possible motive could Israel have to orchestrate this, as you seem to be implying? Perhaps they wanted to frame the Palestinians? Perhaps they thought they could rid the world of Barney the purple dinosaur? Yes, that would be adequate motivation for jeapordizing our excellent relationship and all of the financial aid that we give them.
I'm not positive what your motivation is, but I have a feeling you're a regular reader of the Journal for Historical Review. Ring any bells, mister Neo-Nazi?
Unless you can offer a shred of credible evidence that Isarael "celebrated" the 9/11 attacks, this discussion is over. Good day to you.
Not Jews all over the world. Not Jews in Israel. The Israeli Government. There's a big difference. I routinely rant and rave about my government here in America, that doesn't make me anti-American though, quite the contrary.
If there was as much evidence implicating the Taliban as there is the Israelis, I would have supported the carpet-bombing of Afghanistan. It's that damning.
Is the troll going to come back and admit that he was wrong, that he wrongly accused me and others here of being anti-semitic?
It sure is convenient for you that the Post article was taken down, isn't it? One Israeli was killed, huh? How many Zimbabweans were killed? How about Australians? And what has this got to do with anything?
I don't see your link about how the Israelis were celebrating in the streets either. Good luck providing that one.
The story about the Israeli company Odigo receiving an instant message warning of the attack hours in advance comes from The Washington Post.
The story about there being only one Israeli casualty in the WTC comes from The New York Times. And that casualty was a man who was just visiting, i.e., he was supposed to be there.
The story about the Israelis celebrating the fall of the towers was an AP and Reuters story and was reported everywhere.
Funny, Mr trollbritches, how you don't give a single source for any of your outlandish claims, but merely name major publications. I suppose we are supposed to read these publications from cover to cover from 9-11-2001 to the present to find the passages you are referring to?
Uh-huh. How is it that I read volumes on the attacks and never even heard a whisper of the crap you're spewing? Yes, I read the NYT. Could it be because you are making it up?
To bring it almost back on topic, did you also read about an unbreakable code machine from these sources? Perhaps it was powered by a combination of zero-point energy, cold fusion, and a perpetual motion machine.
Need any more programmers John? I'll work twice as long as anybody you've got for half the pay! I'll teach you how to play Quake 3. I'll even wash your car three times a week and wax it with a chamois. I'll personally distill your peroxide for you at no charge.
I'll be damned if I'm gonna test fly that rocket for you though, I mean, a man's got to draw the line somewhere.
I've read the book three times (I know, I'm slacking). Even after your explanation, I find your link to Aliens a bit tenuous. Aliens had none of the political and social elements from ST, it doesn't "feel" like ST, and the similarities you named are superficial. The Aliens aliens were not bugs, we never learned much about the space marines other than the fact they were soldiers.
Their job was not to blow up a city if necessary. The space suits were nothing like the ones in ST, they were pretty much just suits.
I think I'd buy "The Puppet Masters" before ST.
Another possibility to consider is that they are paid by Maxis, Amazon, etc. The negative reviewers give very good reasons for being negative. The positive ones don't seem to offer any compelling reason to like the game, but more often than not adopt a "wait and see" attitude.
Giving five stars to a game when the best you can say about it is "wait and see" strikes me as a bit dishonest, don't you think? Then maybe some people aren't as stingy with stars as I am. Why shell out monthly money to wait and see?
It's been quite a while since I saw Aliens, but I don't remember any sort of similarity with Starship Troopers whatsoever. Care to explain?
"Amok Time"? Written by Theodore Sturgeon.
"Trouble with Tribbles"? David Gerrold.
Ahem. You may as well go ahead and attribute "The trouble with Tribbles" to the Dean (Robert Heinlein, for you non sf geeks). David Gerrold wrote him a letter of apology for stealing the idea, after all .
I am very tired of hearing about how this "couldn't possibly be terrorism". Especially when the thrust of the argument is that a missle couldn't have hit it.
Of course a missle couldn't have hit it. Or, if one could have, it would have to be a very special missle with the funding of a government.
However, it wouldn't take much for a saboteur to loosen a ceramic tile. This scenario is unlikely, but definitely possible. It was completely irresponsible of the Bush administration to issue a statement that this "couldn't possibly be terrorism", before an investigation has even been performed. Suppose it WAS terrorism, and later evidence supports sabotage. This puts the investigation at risk because the facts would be at odds with the president's off the cuff remark.
I am not saying that I believe it was sabotage, but the coincidences here are very striking. 9/11 was a date picked very carefully by the terrorists responsible.
The first Israeli ever to fly on the shuttle flew on this mission. This mission was within three days of the anniversary of the challenger explosion. It is very possible, indeed likely that these two facts are mere coincidences, but it is irresponsible to rule out the possiblity of sabotage altogether before all the facts are in.
That having been said, the president has much more information than me about the security procedures taken by NASA. I sincerely hope that these procedures are 100% reliable, and the possiblity of sabotage has occured to NASA. I do consider it possible, however, that internal sabotage was not high on their list of potential safety issues.
I know a lot of scientists, and most of them are very trusting by nature. The sort of security needed to compeletely protect against internal saboteurs would have to be forced down their throats, because it would go against their nature to distrust one of their own colleagues. Even if this was an honest accident, the possibilty needs to be considered and guarded against in the future.