"Christianity has matured - it's a peaceful religion."
That's shocking that you would say that. George W. Bush is in office solely because of Karl Rove's tricking "Christian" religious extremists into believing that Mr. Bush agrees with them. These people call themselves "Christian", but their anger causes them to support violence.
"And as a Christian, I greatly mourn the continuing loss of innocent Iraqi lives, the total of which is several times greater than the number lost at the World Trade Center."
--
If your gov't chose killing as policy (CIA trained Arabs in 1980), expect
others to choose the same.
As others have mentioned, "Christian" religious extremists have killed many
times more people than "Islamic" religious extremists.
Trying to make one document fit all of life causes enormous emotional
conflict. The extremists react to this conflict by believing that it
comes from outside. Believing this, they attack someone.
If you support dishonesty and violence, you are not truly Christian.
From the Slashdot story: "both stories note that Cisco's latest troubles are likely fallout from their legal battles with researcher Mike Lynn".
I'm amazed at Cisco's lack of social sophistication. From previous dealings with Cisco, I knew they were boorish, but this is much worse than I imagined.
I'm amazed at the sure sense some executives have for creating millions of dollars worth of bad publicity. It's as though they studied how to sink companies, and that is their most professional and creative skill.
What's even more awesome is that Cisco managed to make the FBI look like it is willing to get involved in political attempts to suppress free speech, making it look like thugs, too.
Is there some competition among executives that I didn't hear about? Are they having a contest to see who can do the most damage to their companies? Is Cisco having a competition with Adobe? Is Cisco trying to outdo the Skylarov incident and the Killustrator incident?
I suppose it doesn't matter to top executives. They can just take their million-dollar golden parachutes and go to another company, leaving the wreckage behind.
I agree exactly and entirely with Mr. Schneier's assessment:
"... this has been a public-relations disaster for Cisco. Now it doesn't matter what they say - we won't believe them. We know that the public-relations department handles their security vulnerabilities[my emphasis], and not the engineering department. We know that they think squelching information and muzzling researchers is more important than informing the public. They could have shown that they put their customers first, but instead they demonstrated that short-sighted corporate interests are more important than being a responsible corporate citizen."
If I were on the Board of Directors, I would: 1) Fire the President and Vice-President of Cisco immediately, in a highly public way. 2) Do immediate damage control by exhibiting some sophistication about Cisco's relationships with the outside world. I'm guessing that, sadly, the Board of Directors doesn't have anyone who has the necessary social skills.
The Slashdot story sounds to me like revisionism. There were many cases of incompatibility. Maybe they weren't put there deliberately, but incompatibilities that degraded serious competition seemed to take a long time to fix.
Here's an example from today, in Windows XP SP2: Why is it that, during an install or re-install of Windows XP, Windows can never find the Logitech mouse drivers? Windows finds other mouse drivers. Is it because Logitech makes better pointing devices than Microsoft?
Sounds very possible. A Microsoft technical support representative told me that there are 760 policies in Windows 2000, more in Windows XP. So, I'm not about to look. My guess is that the Windows policies are too crude to be effective in cases where you sometimes want to use the USB port for something authorized.
What's needed is software that limits USB and other connections to those that are allowed. Such software exists, but is expensive. Here is software that is less expensive than packages I've seen, but the web site is so sloppy I lack confidence in it.
"For small projects, Perl's libraries still may tip the balance, but for any kind of large project, the severe deficiencies of the Perl language make it a poor choice."
The developers of Perl wanted to save time in script programming, and that worked when all other tools were worse. But trying to make Perl a full language has exposed design deficiencies that were always there.
You say, "false information like the whisking of the saudi's out of the country which even the left's security darling (can't remember his name and i'm on my phone) said DIDN'T HAPPEN..."
Those Saudis are very, very rich, and have their own Boeing 747s and 727s. They were given special clearance to fly within the U.S. to collect their friends and relatives. Perhaps 72 hours later they were given clearance to fly out of the United States.
From one perspective, this made sense. The government would not want the Saudis to be the target of anti-Muslim violence, especially since one of them, who calls himself "Prince Bandar", is so close to the Bush family that he is known to the family as "Bandar Bush".
The Bush family and the friends and extended family of the Saudis shared some of the same oil investments. George H.W. Bush (Bush senior, George W. Bush's father) attended an investment meeting with some of these Saudis on the day before the 9/11 bombing. One of the Saudis who attended the meeting was one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.
From another perspective, this was government corruption due to conflict of interest. It might have been extremely valuable to talk to the Saudis who were on those planes. However, at that time it was not known that 15 of the 18 terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center were Saudis, that Osama bin Laden planned the destruction, and that some of the Saudis on the plane knew Osama bin Laden.
There is no evidence that any of the Saudis who were allowed to fly out of the country had recent contact with Osama bin Laden. Most of those rich Saudis observe the culture of rich people. They spend a lot of time with other rich people shopping and spending money. They have little interest in politics, except that they expect always to have political control.
Osama bin Laden chose to live in a cave part of the time in a poor country. Osama and the rich Saudis don't travel in the same social circles. Osama bin Laden opposes the control of the rich Saudis, and thinks that the Saudi government needs re-organization. The idea that the Saudi government needs re-organization is a common idea among Saudis, even among rich Saudis, but the rich Saudis don't want to do anything to disturb their privileges, so they block real change.
Many people at several levels of government were involved in arranging the visits of the rich Saudis to the Bush family. They had been arranging those visits for many years, even before George H.W. Bush (Senior) was elected president. It's easy to understand that no one of them wanted to come forward and say, "I arranged the flights for Saudis after 9/11." That person didn't do it alone, and would probably have been fired needlessly for something that was a commonly understood way of operating. The pilots for the rich Saudis always file flight plans that you and I would consider special.
You say, "do I think wahabbism is the root of most muslim extremism? yes."
That statement indicates that you are not well-informed. The problem is not Wahhabism. The extremism is partly a symptom. The U.S. government, not secretly but unknown to most Americans, has been killing Arabs and Muslims and interfering with Muslim governments since before 1980.
For example, the CIA trained Arabs to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1980. Osama bin Laden was there, and participating in the organizing of the fighting, although there is no public record of any CIA agent meeting him. At that time, Osama bin Laden was considered an ally of the U.S. government.
When the Soviets left Afghanistan, the fighting forces trained and supported by the secret agencies of the U.S. government had no comparable way to make a living. Afghanistan is a very poor country. If is not surprising that some of those who were trained in violence turned to other violence.
If your government chooses killing as policy, expect others to choose
My guess is that you probably didn't see Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael Moore is not a skilled filmmaker, but everything in the movie was taken from other sources.
For example, do you doubt that George W. Bush really holds hands with the Saudi leaders to which Osama bin Laden objects? It's in the movie, and was taken from TV network footage.
There is something scary about your dismissal of what I've said. Basically, you say that a little frustration or a little imperfection is enough for you to stop investigating. It's just not that easy. If you want to be informed about the activities of the U.S. government, it is necessary to read many books, and decide for yourself. In a democracy, that's the responsibility of every adult.
Even Saudis who are wealthy agree that the leadership of Saudi Arabia needs change. I'm completely against violence. However, Osama bin Laden's main complaints are justified. The U.S. really does interfere with Saudi politics.
Those who want corruption want stupid patents so they can scare others away from working in their area of technology. They don't care if they sometimes lose a few court cases due to stupidly weak patents. In general, taking something to court is so expensive that the corrupters win just because of the threat.
A major way those who want corruption destroy government effectiveness is by starving the agencies of operating funds. That's what happened to the patent office. The corrupters won't allow hiring of enough people to do the job well.
For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.
They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says
They are corrupting the courts. Those who want corruption spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.
Another major way that corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."
The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.
In general, most Americans don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. Most don't read books. The TV news they watch is heavily influenced by the corrupters. For example, GE, one of the largest sellers of weapons, owns NBC, one of the major ways Americans get their news.
Interesting point. But there would still be the problem of coupling. How could you get energy to one particular molecule, when all of them are vibrating rapidly due to heat?
You said above, "I think the greatest fraud here are your own
statements."
You said this in response to my saying, "All the articles I've seen
are examples of fraud,..."
One of the worst characteristics of Slashdot discussions are people
who make strong, certain-sounding statements pretending to be responses to
something they've seen, when they didn't read what was written carefully. I
haven't read all of the responses to this thread yet, but 3 of them are like
that, at least.
You cited an article about Henry Lai's research. In my opinion, Henry Lai
is an embarassment to the University of Washington. I have no connection to
anyone or any company in the cell phone industry. Here is my Slashdot comment
about him:
I'll add to my parent comment. I was hoping someone else would help, but
instead there are three comments seeming to disagree, but not really
disagreeing.
Everyone agrees that heating alone is not enough to cause problems;
cell phones just don't emit enough energy. As I said above, walking into the
sunlight is likely to heat you much more than cell phone radiation.
Atoms do interact with microwaves of cell phone frequencies. However, no one has ever shown any
chemical or biological effect of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). No one has
ever shown any chemical or biological effect of Electron Spin Resonance (ESR).
Those are qualities of the nucleus and of electrons, but apparently have no
effect on the interaction of electrons in chemical bonding. The bonding is
what makes the nature of chemistry, and therefore biology.
As I mentioned above, anyone discovering a new kind of interaction
between electromagnetic waves and chemical bonds would immediately be very
famous. It's not as though it hasn't occurred to anyone to do research.
People say that there may be some subtle effect that we have not yet
discovered. And there may be. However, those comments often give the
impression that they think that the discovery of a new subtle interaction
would have a subtle effect on our understanding of the world. That isn't true.
In fact, the discovery of a new interaction would create a revolution in
Physics, in areas we think we know well. That makes it seem less likely. Our
understanding of the Physics has been stable for many years. For example,
Planck's constant is known with an uncertainty of only 89 parts per billion.
Einstein's discovery of relativity revolutionized our understanding of
physics at extremely high relative speeds. Relativity has no detectable effect at low speeds.
Discovery of a new interaction between electromagnetic energy and chemical bonds would revolutionize our
understanding of normal life.
The sun emits energy in the same wavelengths as cell phones. The only
difference between the sun's energy and cell phone emissions is that the cell
phone energy is at one specific frequency, and the sun emits energy at all
frequencies. But no one has shown any frequency-specific interaction, and the
physics is quite clear that there cannot be any. High energy electromagnetic
waves definitely can have a strong effect on chemical bonds, but not low
energy waves. The energy emitted by cell phones is perhaps 1/10,000 or 1/100,000 of the
energy needed.
For there to be interaction, there would have to be both coupling and
resonance. The comparatively long wavelengths of cell phone emissions
couple very weakly to the tiny electrons that affect chemistry.
A stronger response to some frequencies would indicate resonance of
some kind, a frequency-dependent absorption. Because there is broad absorption
at cell phone frequencies, there appears to be no chance for resonance. The
problem with theorizing resonance is that the mild absorption of each molecule
at those frequencies blocks the propagation of energy, and tends to spread the single frequencies by absorbing at one
wavelenth and emitting at another, in a well-known random way.
You are speculating, and speculating intelligently, but there is no need
for speculation. It is possible to calculate the expected effect of microwave
radiation on surrounding material.
Suppose you wanted to fry something on purpose. How much microwave
energy would you need? The amount of energy in each photon is related to
Planck's constant, which is a very small number: 6.62606891 x 10**-34
joule-seconds, with an uncertainty of 89 parts per billion.
The energy of each photon is equal to Planck's constant times the
frequency of the radiation. The frequency of cell phone communications is
centered around 850, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz, or millions of cycles per second,
in the case of GSM phones, which are the most common. 1,000 MegaHertz is 10**9
cycles per second, or Hertz.
The frequency of red laser light, or red LED lights, is about 4 x
10**14 Hertz. So, each unit of electromagnetic cellular phone radio energy is
somewhere near 1/400,000th of the energy of one photon of red laser light.
Heat is electromagnetic energy, too. The numbers are such that the
energy of cell phone radiation after it spreads as it travels toward your head is
small compared to the energy of the heat in the room and your body.
The result is that there is no manner presently known to physics in
which the energy of the phone radiation could interact sufficiently to make a
difference in the chemistry of your body. Cell phone radiation cannot affect the
chemistry of your body by heating the tissue, for example.
Microwave ovens achieve heating using at least 600 watts focused in one
direction.
There are many, many very well-educated people in the world who would
love to discover a new way that electromagnetic energy interacts with matter.
Such a discovery would make any physicist or chemist instantly famous, and
almost certainly earn him or her a Nobel Prize. The motivation to make such a
discovery is enormous for people working in those fields. The fact that no such discovery
of a new kind of interaction has been made is indicative that at least it is not easy.
Over the years I've read several articles by people who claim to have
discovered biological damage by cellular phone radiation. For example, there
was a previous Slashdot story in which such damage was claimed. All the
articles I've seen are examples of fraud, not physics or chemistry. Generally
what the "researchers" are doing is applying enough concentrated energy that
they get local heating.
Generally the fraud in these reports is not in the reports themselves,
which just detail the laboratory measurements. The fraud is in knowing that
people will generalize information in the report to cell phone use, and not
warning them of the incorrectness of such an conclusion. It's fraud, done for
the temporary fame.
There are many people who know more about this than I. Someone else
may want give a more complete or better explanation. For example, someone may want
to show how to calculate the amount of local heating caused by cell phone
radiation. I did that once with a physicist friend, and the amount of heating
was insignificant. Walking from the shade into the sun will heat your body much more.
Standing in the sun absorbing the high-energy ultraviolet radiation is truly damaging;
severe exposure can cause sores and even eventually skin cancer. The photons of ultraviolet
light are more than a million times more energetic than cell phone radiation, and the sun emits far, far more energy than a cell phone.
See the sig above: $16, $0 Domain, 7.6GB Disk, 192GB pipe, MySQL, RoR,
IMAP, [alderflats.com] ("alderflats.com" links to Dreamhost.com.)
(I know this is off-topic, but it is on-topic in that sigs are
allowed, and sometimes we need to comment on sigs.)
Now I understand the Dreamhost ads we see in people's sigs, including that in the parent
comment:
"Earn $97 CASH for each account you refer! Introducing DreamHost
Rewards - the most flexible affiliate program of the web hosting world! You
can choose to receive substantial one-time credits for each of your referrals,
or recurring credits for every payment that your referrals EVER make to
DreamHost! Credits can be paid out via PayPal or check, or applied to a
hosting bill with DreamHost.com. You don't even need to host with us yourself!
"
We've had problems with Dreamhost in the past. That was 3 years ago.
Maybe they've changed. Anyone have any experience with the present Dreamhost?
How does Dreamhost compare with Powweb,
for example? They both seem to have abusive marketing ideas; that raises a
red flag for me; if someone abuses other people, they will certainly abuse me,
I think.
All those advertisements of huge bandwidth allotments are just sneaky
marketing, for Powweb, anyway. Powweb limits the number of hits customers can
get each day, so that no customer could possibly use all the bandwidth.
Sigs that are ads create conflict of interest. The commentor may make
a useless comment just so the ad will be seen. That decreases the utility of
discussions for everyone.
I wish Slashdot editors would not post stories that are really advertisements. Is there corruption among Slashdot editors? Are some of them accepting money secretly?
Any solution that is extremely expensive is not really a solution. Antec, in my opinion, is a mediocre manufacturer that exploits the weaknesses of those whose self-esteem is attached to having computer hardware.
One tip about AutoIt: Install the latest version of AutoIt. Then install the version of SciTE that includes AutoIt. We have found that just installing SciTE with AutoIt gives error messages.
The web site is a little bit confusing, but the AutoIt help messages are quite clear.
As someone else said, use AutoIt.
AutoIt is
by far the best open source software for automating Windows installs and other
tasks in which the program pretends to be a user. There's an IDE with an
Intellisense-like interface and a compiler. Be sure you get AutoIt with the SciTE IDE, the site is a little confusing.
AutoHotkey came from the same source as AutoIt, is also open source, and is also impressive.
--
If your gov't chose killing as policy (CIA trained Arabs in 1980), expect others to choose the same.
My vote for the buggiest software besides Microsoft Internet Explorer is Windows Update.
Why does Microsoft want security risks? Maybe this is the answer: When people have problems with their computer, they often buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of Windows, which, of course, still has huge security risks.
--
If your gov't chose killing as policy, expect others to choose the same.
Slashdot Mirror
"Christianity has matured - it's a peaceful religion."
That's shocking that you would say that. George W. Bush is in office solely because of Karl Rove's tricking "Christian" religious extremists into believing that Mr. Bush agrees with them. These people call themselves "Christian", but their anger causes them to support violence.
I'll let a Doonesbury cartoon say it:
"And as a Christian, I greatly mourn the continuing loss of innocent Iraqi lives, the total of which is several times greater than the number lost at the World Trade Center."
--
If your gov't chose killing as policy (CIA trained Arabs in 1980), expect others to choose the same.
As others have mentioned, "Christian" religious extremists have killed many times more people than "Islamic" religious extremists.
Trying to make one document fit all of life causes enormous emotional conflict. The extremists react to this conflict by believing that it comes from outside. Believing this, they attack someone.
If you support dishonesty and violence, you are not truly Christian.
From the Slashdot story: "both stories note that Cisco's latest troubles are likely fallout from their legal battles with researcher Mike Lynn".
I'm amazed at Cisco's lack of social sophistication. From previous dealings with Cisco, I knew they were boorish, but this is much worse than I imagined.
I'm amazed at the sure sense some executives have for creating millions of dollars worth of bad publicity. It's as though they studied how to sink companies, and that is their most professional and creative skill.
It's awesome. In only one afternoon of work, Cisco corporate officers arranged to have Bruce Schneier call them "thugs": "I can't imagine the discussions inside Cisco that led them to act like thugs."
What's even more awesome is that Cisco managed to make the FBI look like it is willing to get involved in political attempts to suppress free speech, making it look like thugs, too.
Is there some competition among executives that I didn't hear about? Are they having a contest to see who can do the most damage to their companies? Is Cisco having a competition with Adobe? Is Cisco trying to outdo the Skylarov incident and the Killustrator incident?
I suppose it doesn't matter to top executives. They can just take their million-dollar golden parachutes and go to another company, leaving the wreckage behind.
I agree exactly and entirely with Mr. Schneier's assessment:
"... this has been a public-relations disaster for Cisco. Now it doesn't matter what they say - we won't believe them. We know that the public-relations department handles their security vulnerabilities [my emphasis], and not the engineering department. We know that they think squelching information and muzzling researchers is more important than informing the public. They could have shown that they put their customers first, but instead they demonstrated that short-sighted corporate interests are more important than being a responsible corporate citizen."
If I were on the Board of Directors, I would: 1) Fire the President and Vice-President of Cisco immediately, in a highly public way. 2) Do immediate damage control by exhibiting some sophistication about Cisco's relationships with the outside world. I'm guessing that, sadly, the Board of Directors doesn't have anyone who has the necessary social skills.
I was talking about new mice, with new computers being prepared for customers.
Have you ever tried it yourself?
I didn't say Logitech mice don't work. I meant Windows has to be shown Logitech drivers manually, unlike the products of most companies.
The Slashdot story sounds to me like revisionism. There were many cases of incompatibility. Maybe they weren't put there deliberately, but incompatibilities that degraded serious competition seemed to take a long time to fix.
Here's an example from today, in Windows XP SP2: Why is it that, during an install or re-install of Windows XP, Windows can never find the Logitech mouse drivers? Windows finds other mouse drivers. Is it because Logitech makes better pointing devices than Microsoft?
Sounds very possible. A Microsoft technical support representative told me that there are 760 policies in Windows 2000, more in Windows XP. So, I'm not about to look. My guess is that the Windows policies are too crude to be effective in cases where you sometimes want to use the USB port for something authorized.
What's needed is software that limits USB and other connections to those that are allowed. Such software exists, but is expensive. Here is software that is less expensive than packages I've seen, but the web site is so sloppy I lack confidence in it.
"... he and his colleagues are releasing into the wild."
Software developers need marketing skills. It's not a good idea to call your prospective users "the wild".
MOD PARENT UP TO +5!!!
"For small projects, Perl's libraries still may tip the balance, but for any kind of large project, the severe deficiencies of the Perl language make it a poor choice."
The developers of Perl wanted to save time in script programming, and that worked when all other tools were worse. But trying to make Perl a full language has exposed design deficiencies that were always there.
You say, "false information like the whisking of the saudi's out of the country which even the left's security darling (can't remember his name and i'm on my phone) said DIDN'T HAPPEN..."
Those Saudis are very, very rich, and have their own Boeing 747s and 727s. They were given special clearance to fly within the U.S. to collect their friends and relatives. Perhaps 72 hours later they were given clearance to fly out of the United States.
From one perspective, this made sense. The government would not want the Saudis to be the target of anti-Muslim violence, especially since one of them, who calls himself "Prince Bandar", is so close to the Bush family that he is known to the family as "Bandar Bush".
The Bush family and the friends and extended family of the Saudis shared some of the same oil investments. George H.W. Bush (Bush senior, George W. Bush's father) attended an investment meeting with some of these Saudis on the day before the 9/11 bombing. One of the Saudis who attended the meeting was one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.
From another perspective, this was government corruption due to conflict of interest. It might have been extremely valuable to talk to the Saudis who were on those planes. However, at that time it was not known that 15 of the 18 terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center were Saudis, that Osama bin Laden planned the destruction, and that some of the Saudis on the plane knew Osama bin Laden.
There is no evidence that any of the Saudis who were allowed to fly out of the country had recent contact with Osama bin Laden. Most of those rich Saudis observe the culture of rich people. They spend a lot of time with other rich people shopping and spending money. They have little interest in politics, except that they expect always to have political control.
Osama bin Laden chose to live in a cave part of the time in a poor country. Osama and the rich Saudis don't travel in the same social circles. Osama bin Laden opposes the control of the rich Saudis, and thinks that the Saudi government needs re-organization. The idea that the Saudi government needs re-organization is a common idea among Saudis, even among rich Saudis, but the rich Saudis don't want to do anything to disturb their privileges, so they block real change.
Many people at several levels of government were involved in arranging the visits of the rich Saudis to the Bush family. They had been arranging those visits for many years, even before George H.W. Bush (Senior) was elected president. It's easy to understand that no one of them wanted to come forward and say, "I arranged the flights for Saudis after 9/11." That person didn't do it alone, and would probably have been fired needlessly for something that was a commonly understood way of operating. The pilots for the rich Saudis always file flight plans that you and I would consider special.
You say, "do I think wahabbism is the root of most muslim extremism? yes."
That statement indicates that you are not well-informed. The problem is not Wahhabism. The extremism is partly a symptom. The U.S. government, not secretly but unknown to most Americans, has been killing Arabs and Muslims and interfering with Muslim governments since before 1980.
For example, the CIA trained Arabs to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1980. Osama bin Laden was there, and participating in the organizing of the fighting, although there is no public record of any CIA agent meeting him. At that time, Osama bin Laden was considered an ally of the U.S. government.
When the Soviets left Afghanistan, the fighting forces trained and supported by the secret agencies of the U.S. government had no comparable way to make a living. Afghanistan is a very poor country. If is not surprising that some of those who were trained in violence turned to other violence.
If your government chooses killing as policy, expect others to choose
In my opinion, Microsoft has never had the management quality necessary to do what the Slashdot story proposes.
My guess is that you probably didn't see Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael Moore is not a skilled filmmaker, but everything in the movie was taken from other sources.
For example, do you doubt that George W. Bush really holds hands with the Saudi leaders to which Osama bin Laden objects? It's in the movie, and was taken from TV network footage.
There is something scary about your dismissal of what I've said. Basically, you say that a little frustration or a little imperfection is enough for you to stop investigating. It's just not that easy. If you want to be informed about the activities of the U.S. government, it is necessary to read many books, and decide for yourself. In a democracy, that's the responsibility of every adult.
Even Saudis who are wealthy agree that the leadership of Saudi Arabia needs change. I'm completely against violence. However, Osama bin Laden's main complaints are justified. The U.S. really does interfere with Saudi politics.
Those who want corruption want stupid patents so they can scare others away from working in their area of technology. They don't care if they sometimes lose a few court cases due to stupidly weak patents. In general, taking something to court is so expensive that the corrupters win just because of the threat.
A major way those who want corruption destroy government effectiveness is by starving the agencies of operating funds. That's what happened to the patent office. The corrupters won't allow hiring of enough people to do the job well.
For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.
They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says
They are corrupting the courts. Those who want corruption spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.
Another major way that corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."
The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.
The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent. Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, by Dilip Hiro is an excellent book about the corruption that led to the most recent U.S.-Iraq war.
The corruption is extremely widespread. The books mentioned above and the 3 movies and 34 books reviewed in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
In general, most Americans don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. Most don't read books. The TV news they watch is heavily influenced by the corrupters. For example, GE, one of the largest sellers of weapons, owns NBC, one of the major ways Americans get their news.
Interesting point. But there would still be the problem of coupling. How could you get energy to one particular molecule, when all of them are vibrating rapidly due to heat?
You said above, "I think the greatest fraud here are your own statements."
You said this in response to my saying, "All the articles I've seen are examples of fraud,
One of the worst characteristics of Slashdot discussions are people who make strong, certain-sounding statements pretending to be responses to something they've seen, when they didn't read what was written carefully. I haven't read all of the responses to this thread yet, but 3 of them are like that, at least.
You cited an article about Henry Lai's research. In my opinion, Henry Lai is an embarassment to the University of Washington. I have no connection to anyone or any company in the cell phone industry. Here is my Slashdot comment about him:
Distinguish between real science and junk science.
My guess is that you didn't read my comment carefully, and have no idea whatsoever about the science I explained.
I'll add to my parent comment. I was hoping someone else would help, but instead there are three comments seeming to disagree, but not really disagreeing.
Everyone agrees that heating alone is not enough to cause problems; cell phones just don't emit enough energy. As I said above, walking into the sunlight is likely to heat you much more than cell phone radiation.
Atoms do interact with microwaves of cell phone frequencies. However, no one has ever shown any chemical or biological effect of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). No one has ever shown any chemical or biological effect of Electron Spin Resonance (ESR). Those are qualities of the nucleus and of electrons, but apparently have no effect on the interaction of electrons in chemical bonding. The bonding is what makes the nature of chemistry, and therefore biology.
As I mentioned above, anyone discovering a new kind of interaction between electromagnetic waves and chemical bonds would immediately be very famous. It's not as though it hasn't occurred to anyone to do research.
People say that there may be some subtle effect that we have not yet discovered. And there may be. However, those comments often give the impression that they think that the discovery of a new subtle interaction would have a subtle effect on our understanding of the world. That isn't true. In fact, the discovery of a new interaction would create a revolution in Physics, in areas we think we know well. That makes it seem less likely. Our understanding of the Physics has been stable for many years. For example, Planck's constant is known with an uncertainty of only 89 parts per billion.
Einstein's discovery of relativity revolutionized our understanding of physics at extremely high relative speeds. Relativity has no detectable effect at low speeds. Discovery of a new interaction between electromagnetic energy and chemical bonds would revolutionize our understanding of normal life.
The sun emits energy in the same wavelengths as cell phones. The only difference between the sun's energy and cell phone emissions is that the cell phone energy is at one specific frequency, and the sun emits energy at all frequencies. But no one has shown any frequency-specific interaction, and the physics is quite clear that there cannot be any. High energy electromagnetic waves definitely can have a strong effect on chemical bonds, but not low energy waves. The energy emitted by cell phones is perhaps 1/10,000 or 1/100,000 of the energy needed.
For there to be interaction, there would have to be both coupling and resonance. The comparatively long wavelengths of cell phone emissions couple very weakly to the tiny electrons that affect chemistry.
A stronger response to some frequencies would indicate resonance of some kind, a frequency-dependent absorption. Because there is broad absorption at cell phone frequencies, there appears to be no chance for resonance. The problem with theorizing resonance is that the mild absorption of each molecule at those frequencies blocks the propagation of energy, and tends to spread the single frequencies by absorbing at one wavelenth and emitting at another, in a well-known random way.
You are speculating, and speculating intelligently, but there is no need for speculation. It is possible to calculate the expected effect of microwave radiation on surrounding material.
Suppose you wanted to fry something on purpose. How much microwave energy would you need? The amount of energy in each photon is related to Planck's constant, which is a very small number: 6.62606891 x 10**-34 joule-seconds, with an uncertainty of 89 parts per billion.
The energy of each photon is equal to Planck's constant times the frequency of the radiation. The frequency of cell phone communications is centered around 850, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz, or millions of cycles per second, in the case of GSM phones, which are the most common. 1,000 MegaHertz is 10**9 cycles per second, or Hertz.
The frequency of red laser light, or red LED lights, is about 4 x 10**14 Hertz. So, each unit of electromagnetic cellular phone radio energy is somewhere near 1/400,000th of the energy of one photon of red laser light.
Heat is electromagnetic energy, too. The numbers are such that the energy of cell phone radiation after it spreads as it travels toward your head is small compared to the energy of the heat in the room and your body.
The result is that there is no manner presently known to physics in which the energy of the phone radiation could interact sufficiently to make a difference in the chemistry of your body. Cell phone radiation cannot affect the chemistry of your body by heating the tissue, for example. Microwave ovens achieve heating using at least 600 watts focused in one direction.
There are many, many very well-educated people in the world who would love to discover a new way that electromagnetic energy interacts with matter. Such a discovery would make any physicist or chemist instantly famous, and almost certainly earn him or her a Nobel Prize. The motivation to make such a discovery is enormous for people working in those fields. The fact that no such discovery of a new kind of interaction has been made is indicative that at least it is not easy.
Over the years I've read several articles by people who claim to have discovered biological damage by cellular phone radiation. For example, there was a previous Slashdot story in which such damage was claimed. All the articles I've seen are examples of fraud, not physics or chemistry. Generally what the "researchers" are doing is applying enough concentrated energy that they get local heating.
Generally the fraud in these reports is not in the reports themselves, which just detail the laboratory measurements. The fraud is in knowing that people will generalize information in the report to cell phone use, and not warning them of the incorrectness of such an conclusion. It's fraud, done for the temporary fame.
There are many people who know more about this than I. Someone else may want give a more complete or better explanation. For example, someone may want to show how to calculate the amount of local heating caused by cell phone radiation. I did that once with a physicist friend, and the amount of heating was insignificant. Walking from the shade into the sun will heat your body much more. Standing in the sun absorbing the high-energy ultraviolet radiation is truly damaging; severe exposure can cause sores and even eventually skin cancer. The photons of ultraviolet light are more than a million times more energetic than cell phone radiation, and the sun emits far, far more energy than a cell phone.
See the sig above: $16, $0 Domain, 7.6GB Disk, 192GB pipe, MySQL, RoR, IMAP, [alderflats.com] ("alderflats.com" links to Dreamhost.com.)
(I know this is off-topic, but it is on-topic in that sigs are allowed, and sometimes we need to comment on sigs.)
Now I understand the Dreamhost ads we see in people's sigs, including that in the parent comment:
"Earn $97 CASH for each account you refer! Introducing DreamHost Rewards - the most flexible affiliate program of the web hosting world! You can choose to receive substantial one-time credits for each of your referrals, or recurring credits for every payment that your referrals EVER make to DreamHost! Credits can be paid out via PayPal or check, or applied to a hosting bill with DreamHost.com. You don't even need to host with us yourself! "
We've had problems with Dreamhost in the past. That was 3 years ago. Maybe they've changed. Anyone have any experience with the present Dreamhost?
How does Dreamhost compare with Powweb, for example? They both seem to have abusive marketing ideas; that raises a red flag for me; if someone abuses other people, they will certainly abuse me, I think.
All those advertisements of huge bandwidth allotments are just sneaky marketing, for Powweb, anyway. Powweb limits the number of hits customers can get each day, so that no customer could possibly use all the bandwidth.
Sigs that are ads create conflict of interest. The commentor may make a useless comment just so the ad will be seen. That decreases the utility of discussions for everyone.
I wish Slashdot editors would not post stories that are really advertisements. Is there corruption among Slashdot editors? Are some of them accepting money secretly?
Any solution that is extremely expensive is not really a solution. Antec, in my opinion, is a mediocre manufacturer that exploits the weaknesses of those whose self-esteem is attached to having computer hardware.
One tip about AutoIt: Install the latest version of AutoIt. Then install the version of SciTE that includes AutoIt. We have found that just installing SciTE with AutoIt gives error messages.
The web site is a little bit confusing, but the AutoIt help messages are quite clear.
As someone else said, use AutoIt. AutoIt is by far the best open source software for automating Windows installs and other tasks in which the program pretends to be a user. There's an IDE with an Intellisense-like interface and a compiler. Be sure you get AutoIt with the SciTE IDE, the site is a little confusing.
AutoHotkey came from the same source as AutoIt, is also open source, and is also impressive.
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If your gov't chose killing as policy (CIA trained Arabs in 1980), expect others to choose the same.
My vote for the buggiest software besides Microsoft Internet Explorer is Windows Update.
Why does Microsoft want security risks? Maybe this is the answer: When people have problems with their computer, they often buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of Windows, which, of course, still has huge security risks.
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If your gov't chose killing as policy, expect others to choose the same.
It seems to me that a large part of the money Microsoft gets comes from exploiting the ignorance of computer users.
Why does the richest man in the world, who has never been good at his core business, feel as though he needs to dominate another business?