That shouldn't be a problem. The mirror would have to be virtually flawless. The slightest scratch or bit of dust and the first few pulses burn any reflectivity right off. From the Wikipedia:
"Some believe that mirrors or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily be made less effective by incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface.
"Oh yea, if its in Wikipedia it MUST be true.
Even if it is entirely accurate, the Wikipedia statement only says the defects make the mirror "less effective". So what? That could mean that only 98% of the incident radiation is reflected instead of 100%. You are making a completely illogical inference that a less effective mirror at any level means a destroyed missle. This is not necessarily the case.
This is another example of the government spending hundreds of millions on high-tech, gee whiz systems that only give the appearance of protection, and that can be rendered useless by low-cost adaptation by the attackers. Lasers big enough to insure destruction of an in-flight missle are so powerful they have to be pulse lasers, not continuous lasers. Pulse lasers have to be recharged before the next firing. All attackers have to do is put two, three, or five missles in the air at the same time to make this system embarrassingly useless.
Also, this system protects to 5 kilometers? That's less than 3 miles. That means that attackers can render this multi-million dollar gee whiz Buck Rogers laser shield useless by the no-cost adaptation of simply firing 3 or 4 missles at a plane four miles from the runway (Does anyone really think missle-firing terrorists are going to drive into the airport parking lot to fire a missle anyway?). Sounds like a total waste of money and effort that would better be spent in developing humint in terrorist organizations.
Although I am not absolutely positive, I think it would be illegal in the US for them to do so. Mail-order firearms were outlawed by Congress after it was found that the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used to assasinate John Kennedy was mail-order.
I wish I had mod points! This is the way to break eBay's monopoly on online auctions. Your post highlights a very effective way to challenge eBay. In warfare or business the way to defeat a strong enemy is to focus your strength on his weakness. I can easily think of at least 10 niche markets where eBay's supremacy could be challenged by dedicated sites geared to the needs of niche sellers and buyers. Right now no one except Google even tries to challenge eBay, but if just one challenger takes a niche market from eBay others will see that it can be done.
I think another weak point for eBay is foreign (non-US) markets. There are still opportunities for challengers in those, as yet, undeveloped markets. This opportunity won't last forever as eBay undoubtedly sees this weakness too, and is moving to strenghten its position around the world.
I'm sorry to inform you that you were close... but what he was refering to what was called the "Fairness Doctrine"...BTW before accusing anyone of doing a lousy job, at least get your facts right (Just pokin fun).
Who knows if the original poster was thinking of the Fairness Doctrine or the Equal Time Rule, but that does not mean that my facts were wrong. The Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule were not the same thing. The Fairness Doctrine only required that prepared programming present both sides, not that pure news-reporting present both sides. That is an important distinction. See, that is the problem in relying on Wikipedia - on complex issues it often misleads.
Maybe the original poster was thinking of the Fairness Doctrine (that did not encompass pure news), or maybe he was thinking of the Equal Time Rule (that did include news), or maybe he did not know what he was thinking of; but that does not make my statements about the Equal Time Rule wrong. So it isn't really fair to tell me to "get my facts right".
I believe you're on the wrong side of the pond there partner... I'm gonna bet you mean the BBC or something. Know why I can tell this? Because the sentence you left out of the paragraph you quoted started with "I thought you yanks got rid of all your news shows and replaced them with infotainment years ago.". Canadians do not refer to Americans as yanks -- ever, to the best of my knowledge. Don't drag Canada and the CBC into this, you were addressing either a Brit or an Aussie.
Welllll, according to the original post: Up here in Soviet Canuckistan our state run news on CBC seems allot more balanced then the slhock coming from your Theo-Coporatocracy.
Call me stupid and uninformed, but "up here", "Canuckistan", and (this is a BIG clue) "CBC" in the original post led me to think Canada and CBC. Glad you corrected me - you're really on the ball today.
Wasn't it in the eighties during Reagan's time that a bill was passed that removed the requirment for NEWS programs to offer balanced reports and present opposing views. Once that pesky requirement was out of the way your News shows were alot more entertaining and a whole lot less informative.
The great CBC sure did a lousy job reporting this information to you. It was the "Equal Time Rule" that was rescinded. That Federal law required broadcasters to donate an equal amount of time to any political opposition candidates. If one candidate bought an hour of advertizing the broadcaster had to provide an hour to his opponent. This has clear problems. What if there are three candidates? Ten? How can a broadcaster be forced by the government to give up their airtime free for a particular candidate(s)? There were clear constitutional issues with the law.
There has never been any law requiring news media to present balanced reports. Newspapers in the US have a long history of presenting the news as they see it, independent of government rules.
I do have a problem with a biased news organization constantly claiming they are "fair and balanced" when they are anything but balanced. Seems like false advertizing.
I work for Dell, my job is to decide whether to recall. Everywhere I go I apply the formula. It's simple arithmetic. If a new laptop built by Dell is sitting on someone's lap, and it bursts into flames, sterilising and disfiguring the user, does Dell initiate a recall? You take the population of laptops in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
Assuming you really do work for Dell, now that the official policy to allow a certain number customer disfigurations for monetary gain is out, C (cost of lawsuit) is now 10C or 100C if a good plaintiff's lawyer sees this. Maybe the charges are now even criminal and some Dell executives that apply the formula (you?) might face criminal charges for depraved indifference.
There's no way that you'd even require a doctor's care unless we're talking about continuously pouring the coffee on the same location.
Sorry but you are wrong about that. Until a few years ago I would have said the same thing, but then I splashed a small amount of hot coffee on my bare foot. It was just a small amount, a blob about the size of a quarter, but when it hit my foot it caused an immediate deep burn. I had to see a doctor, there was major blistering and I will always have a scar from that almost instantaneous contact. I know it seems contrary to most people's experience, but an instantaneous contact with a hot liquid like coffee can cause a very serious burn.
I am constantly astounded at just how well built and designed the rover must have been. AFAIR, it was only intended to run for a couple of months, yet it has now clocked up a couple of years,
Gimme a break, please. As impressive as it is to get remote vehicles to operate on another planet (and I do not minimize that accomplishment), their life expectancy was clearly set artifcially low in case they failed soon after arrival. Setting ridiculously meager performance goals is a classic way to game the system, declare success early on so you never have to explain why you spent hundreds of millions on a system that did not meet more realistic performance goals. The engineering on these rovers may indeed have been great, but the fact that they lasted longer than an absurdly short 90-day lifespan is more an indicator of the successful engineering of public and Congressional expectations by NASA than good mechanical engineering.
What are you talking about? I'm responding to your earlier, completely factually incorrect assertion that Pelosi wasn't on the select committee during the very first, and the ongoing briefings by the NSA and the routine business of funding their operations.
I never said that. I said she wasn't briefed on the NSA spying operations and warrantless wiretaps and you stated (don't deny it - you said she was briefed on these "exact programs"). Since she wasn't even on the Intelligence Committee when these programs were developed it is pretty clear that she would not have been.
In February of 2002, the senate announced their joint inquiry into the intel shortcomings prior to 9/11. The inquiry was announced by the members of the select committe, including the ranking democrat on that committee, Nancy Pelosi, who was still a member at that time, just as she was during the NSA briefings earlier in the fall. Wishing that a senior democrat wasn't tuned into this doesn't make it so. She was right in the thick of it
First, announcement of a Congressional inquiry does not a Conressiopnal briefing make. Second, for you to expect anyone to believe that immediately after 9/11 that the Bush administration briefed Congress on their plans to conduct warrantless wiretaps and to collect every single phone record of every single American (and God knows what else) is absurd. You seem to think that because Pelosi was on the Intelligence Committee on 9/11 that she was magically briefed about future secret programs that did not even exist until years later.
Just give it up. NO ONE will ever believe that this administration has ever made any substantive attempt to keep anyone in the loop on its secret programs.
They're not, that's the whole point. Some of them are squeezing this for momentary political advantage. Period.
Your "period" notwithstanding, that is not the whole story. They ARE upset, and rightly so. The Bush administration has politcized the government to a degree that would have been unimaginable six years ago. From the politicization of leaks to discredit those who disagree with its policies, to the appointment of a horse show organizer to head FEMA, to the appointment of General Richard Myers' 20-someting year-old niece to head a major government agency, this administration has consistently put its own benefit ahead of the nation's benefit. To blame its opponents as merely being "political" is the height of hypocracy.
Detention, you mean? As in, taking a combatant out of the area in which he's been blowing people up, shooting at cargo trucks, funneling cash to people that chop the heads off of journalists, that sort of thing?
I'm sure everyone being held in cells by the US government will be very happy to learn that they are not inmprisoned, but detained. Just like they were happy to learn that being chained in a crouching position for days at a time or being attacked by dogs or having their heads held underwater was not torture because they did not fear death or organ failure when it happened. Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the poor innocent taxi driver who was imprisoned in iraq and died from beatings, and of the German citizen who was kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned for six months and then dumped on a back road in Albania because the Americans got his name wrong.
Wake up. In October, 2001, Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committe. She even wrote to the NSA director [washingtonpost.com] following a briefing on these exact programs at that time.
Excuse me but your sense of time and my sense of time appear to be different. These domestic warrantless spying programs were instituted by the Bush administration AFTER 9/11 and AFTER Pelosi left the Select Committee. Pelosi was on the committe during the Clinton Presidency and for a short time into the Bush Presidency. I don't get how you think she could have been briefed on these EXACT PROGRAMS (your term) after she left the committee.
Why is is that even current members of the Intelligence Committee are complaining that they kenw nothing about the extent of these programs if the administration was so concientious about briefing Congress? If you think the Bush administration briefs anyone candidly about the full extent of their activities you are living in a dream world.
...that didn't stop Congress from, in the wake of thousands of citizens being killed by an identifiable, repeat-offender group, extending to the executive branch exactly the military/intel options needed (and now being used). If you're going to thump the table while citing history, at least cite all of it.
If Congressw did that then why are they now upset at the excesses? It seems obvious that they do not believe they authorized everything the administration has done. Anyway, I don't see how monitoring every single phone record of every single American is what is needed in the fight against terrorists. Somehow this administration has transformed Americans from terrorist victims into terrorist suspects.
Also we are not just talking about intelligence gathering here. Secret prisons, imprisonment without trial, torture, etc. are all clearly illegal (and NOT authorized by the USA Patriot Act)yet this President, in the quise of being a "Wartime President", has turned legality on its ear and decreed through secret Presidential directives (as would a dictator) that the law is not applicable to his administration.
One can see the obvious stepping off point to "the real traitors are the ones who *reveal* our secret, extra-constitutional prison system."
When the Nazis came to power and instituted torture, secret prisons, imprisonment without trial, and concentration camps they did not say "This is evil, heh, heh, and we'll do it anyway", they said "This is Patriotic and we do it for the good of the country and the people."
Now that the US has secret prisons, torture, imprisonment without trial, and concentration camps and I hear the same "This is Patriotic and we do it for the good of the country and the people" I get very, very worried.
If you're paying any attention to this story beyond simple partisan axe grinding, you'll find that people like Bush's arch-nemises in the house and senate (like Nancy Pelosi) have been briefed on these exact NSA programs since 2001, just weeks after 9/11
Pelosi is never briefed on secret programs since she is not a member of the Intelligence Committees. Even Republican members of the secrt intelligence committees complained that they were never told about the domestic spying progrmas revealed in December, and certainly not about te pen-register information being collected by the NSA without warrants. My understanding is that only certain "tame" members of the committees were briefed, and the Administration now calls this "briefing Congress".
Even if these programs were briefed to the committees, I question what sort of oversight this really could be since the members are prevented by law from disclosing any information about the briefs, even to other members of Congress! What kind of oversight is that?
And now about the so-called "War on Terror". What a load of horsesh*t. Only Congress has the power to declare war, and Congress has not done so. This country is NOT at war. Bush just uses that PR label to give himself unlimited "war powers" and call himself a "wartime President" so he can do whatever he wants. Bush taking exceptional powers because of the War on Terror is as absurd as it would have been for Johnson to have called himself a wartime President because of the War on Poverty, or Bush Senior for the War on Drugs. The War on Terror is an administration program that is very warlike (in its usual incompetent way) and has the look and feel of war, but we are NOT at war. This is an important point because the Constitution is very clear that no President is to be able to give himself special powers by declaring a war on his own. Our troops in Aghanistan have an honorable mission, but let's not call it a war just so politicians can increase their powerbase.
Forbes has an article [forbes.com] on how the EFF has won the first round by getting the judge to agree that the documents should be released. Of course, AT&T will get a chance to scrub them clean of "trade secrets", a loophole they will no doubt abuse. However, at least the judge is showing a willingness to get down into the nitty-gritty.
Well this is not quite accurate. The judge ordered that AT&T and the EFF work TOGETHER to redact AT&T trade secrets from the documents. There is no reason to start shouting about a conspiracy to delete incriminating information when the judge was smart enough to include both sides in the redaction process.
What seems more likely.... that the NSA tried to strong arm Qwest and when that failed decided not to try and get information from the other telecoms or the other telecoms are lying about not handing over our information? Qwest has no reason to lie while the other companies have 200 billion reasons to do so. You are not playing the PR game! AT&T put out a press release that only IMPLIED that they did not cooperate with the NSA. They said that AT&T did not give the NSA any company records. They said nothing about allowing the NSA access to trunks lines or areas inside their facilities that would allow the NSA to collect the data themselves. The press release also said that AT&T did not provide NSA with any data about calls from 2001 to December 2006, but it is beleived that one of the SUBSIDIARIES did.
Is this lying? Technically no, but it sure is deceitful, misleading and slimey! Power to the Public Relations Departments of the world. Join us and you too can have a career by learning how to lie by telling the truth.
...it's not like the commercial goes unnoticed. It's just like "Ford, Citibank, Local political ad, back to the show". So we know what ads are on even if they flip by in seconds. And if we happen to see one that catches our eye or we actually want to watch, we'll watch it.
This is exactly right. I was one of the first Tivo buyers too, and quickly found out that it is not like the ads go away, you just get extremely short synopses of them. What is more, while I'm sitting watching the FF images flash by I'm paying attention to them! Why? Because I have my finger on the stop button so I won't FF too far into the show and have to back up. I will often see an interesting image during the FF and stop to see what the commercial is all about. I think advertisers are missing the boat when they don't edit their commercials to attract viewer interest during DVR FF.
Yes, you are being ridiculous. Nobody would consider such rice to be "human". I feel sorry for you because you are either stupid enough to actually think we might think a few human genes makes something human or you are just a sadly misinformed person with regards to how religious people think.
I'm thankful that the unified opinion of the entire fundamentalist Christian population has been delivered to us ridiculous, stupid slashdotters by someone calling himself "Zontar Thing From Venus".
Slashdot Mirror
If you are filling up the bagging area then.... YOU ARE TRYING TO BUY TOO MUCH STUFF USING SELF CHECKOUT!
'SCUSE ME DUDE! See, I can shout, too. But we're talking Home Depot here where you buy BIG STUFF. Its very easy to fill up the bagging area.
Am I a conspiracy nutbag or has the US been in possession of high aerospace technology (such as antigrav) for more than 40 years? You be the judge.
You are a conspiracy nutbag.
Geek walks into a bar and sits next to a pretty girl. Tries to pick her up by exclaming "Hey, my washing machine just emailed me!" Pathetic.
That shouldn't be a problem. The mirror would have to be virtually flawless. The slightest scratch or bit of dust and the first few pulses burn any reflectivity right off. From the Wikipedia:
"Some believe that mirrors or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily be made less effective by incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface.
"Oh yea, if its in Wikipedia it MUST be true.
Even if it is entirely accurate, the Wikipedia statement only says the defects make the mirror "less effective". So what? That could mean that only 98% of the incident radiation is reflected instead of 100%. You are making a completely illogical inference that a less effective mirror at any level means a destroyed missle. This is not necessarily the case.
This is another example of the government spending hundreds of millions on high-tech, gee whiz systems that only give the appearance of protection, and that can be rendered useless by low-cost adaptation by the attackers. Lasers big enough to insure destruction of an in-flight missle are so powerful they have to be pulse lasers, not continuous lasers. Pulse lasers have to be recharged before the next firing. All attackers have to do is put two, three, or five missles in the air at the same time to make this system embarrassingly useless.
Also, this system protects to 5 kilometers? That's less than 3 miles. That means that attackers can render this multi-million dollar gee whiz Buck Rogers laser shield useless by the no-cost adaptation of simply firing 3 or 4 missles at a plane four miles from the runway (Does anyone really think missle-firing terrorists are going to drive into the airport parking lot to fire a missle anyway?). Sounds like a total waste of money and effort that would better be spent in developing humint in terrorist organizations.
Ebay refuses to list firearms.
Although I am not absolutely positive, I think it would be illegal in the US for them to do so. Mail-order firearms were outlawed by Congress after it was found that the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used to assasinate John Kennedy was mail-order.
I wish I had mod points! This is the way to break eBay's monopoly on online auctions. Your post highlights a very effective way to challenge eBay. In warfare or business the way to defeat a strong enemy is to focus your strength on his weakness. I can easily think of at least 10 niche markets where eBay's supremacy could be challenged by dedicated sites geared to the needs of niche sellers and buyers. Right now no one except Google even tries to challenge eBay, but if just one challenger takes a niche market from eBay others will see that it can be done.
I think another weak point for eBay is foreign (non-US) markets. There are still opportunities for challengers in those, as yet, undeveloped markets. This opportunity won't last forever as eBay undoubtedly sees this weakness too, and is moving to strenghten its position around the world.
I'm sorry to inform you that you were close... but what he was refering to what was called the "Fairness Doctrine"...BTW before accusing anyone of doing a lousy job, at least get your facts right (Just pokin fun).
Who knows if the original poster was thinking of the Fairness Doctrine or the Equal Time Rule, but that does not mean that my facts were wrong. The Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule were not the same thing. The Fairness Doctrine only required that prepared programming present both sides, not that pure news-reporting present both sides. That is an important distinction. See, that is the problem in relying on Wikipedia - on complex issues it often misleads.
Maybe the original poster was thinking of the Fairness Doctrine (that did not encompass pure news), or maybe he was thinking of the Equal Time Rule (that did include news), or maybe he did not know what he was thinking of; but that does not make my statements about the Equal Time Rule wrong. So it isn't really fair to tell me to "get my facts right".
No problem. Sorry I got a bit snippity. Enjoy your holiday.
I believe you're on the wrong side of the pond there partner ... I'm gonna bet you mean the BBC or something. Know why I can tell this? Because the sentence you left out of the paragraph you quoted started with "I thought you yanks got rid of all your news shows and replaced them with infotainment years ago.". Canadians do not refer to Americans as yanks -- ever, to the best of my knowledge. Don't drag Canada and the CBC into this, you were addressing either a Brit or an Aussie.
Welllll, according to the original post:
Up here in Soviet Canuckistan our state run news on CBC seems allot more balanced then the slhock coming from your Theo-Coporatocracy.
Call me stupid and uninformed, but "up here", "Canuckistan", and (this is a BIG clue) "CBC" in the original post led me to think Canada and CBC. Glad you corrected me - you're really on the ball today.
Wasn't it in the eighties during Reagan's time that a bill was passed that removed the requirment for NEWS programs to offer balanced reports and present opposing views. Once that pesky requirement was out of the way your News shows were alot more entertaining and a whole lot less informative.
The great CBC sure did a lousy job reporting this information to you. It was the "Equal Time Rule" that was rescinded. That Federal law required broadcasters to donate an equal amount of time to any political opposition candidates. If one candidate bought an hour of advertizing the broadcaster had to provide an hour to his opponent. This has clear problems. What if there are three candidates? Ten? How can a broadcaster be forced by the government to give up their airtime free for a particular candidate(s)? There were clear constitutional issues with the law.
There has never been any law requiring news media to present balanced reports. Newspapers in the US have a long history of presenting the news as they see it, independent of government rules.
I do have a problem with a biased news organization constantly claiming they are "fair and balanced" when they are anything but balanced. Seems like false advertizing.
I work for Dell, my job is to decide whether to recall. Everywhere I go I apply the formula. It's simple arithmetic. If a new laptop built by Dell is sitting on someone's lap, and it bursts into flames, sterilising and disfiguring the user, does Dell initiate a recall? You take the population of laptops in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
Assuming you really do work for Dell, now that the official policy to allow a certain number customer disfigurations for monetary gain is out, C (cost of lawsuit) is now 10C or 100C if a good plaintiff's lawyer sees this. Maybe the charges are now even criminal and some Dell executives that apply the formula (you?) might face criminal charges for depraved indifference.
Ummmm, 'scuse me. These people are famous because they made accidental discoveries, they did not make accidental discoveries because they were famous.
There's no way that you'd even require a doctor's care unless we're talking about continuously pouring the coffee on the same location.
Sorry but you are wrong about that. Until a few years ago I would have said the same thing, but then I splashed a small amount of hot coffee on my bare foot. It was just a small amount, a blob about the size of a quarter, but when it hit my foot it caused an immediate deep burn. I had to see a doctor, there was major blistering and I will always have a scar from that almost instantaneous contact. I know it seems contrary to most people's experience, but an instantaneous contact with a hot liquid like coffee can cause a very serious burn.
I am constantly astounded at just how well built and designed the rover must have been. AFAIR, it was only intended to run for a couple of months, yet it has now clocked up a couple of years,
Gimme a break, please. As impressive as it is to get remote vehicles to operate on another planet (and I do not minimize that accomplishment), their life expectancy was clearly set artifcially low in case they failed soon after arrival. Setting ridiculously meager performance goals is a classic way to game the system, declare success early on so you never have to explain why you spent hundreds of millions on a system that did not meet more realistic performance goals. The engineering on these rovers may indeed have been great, but the fact that they lasted longer than an absurdly short 90-day lifespan is more an indicator of the successful engineering of public and Congressional expectations by NASA than good mechanical engineering.
What are you talking about? I'm responding to your earlier, completely factually incorrect assertion that Pelosi wasn't on the select committee during the very first, and the ongoing briefings by the NSA and the routine business of funding their operations.
I never said that. I said she wasn't briefed on the NSA spying operations and warrantless wiretaps and you stated (don't deny it - you said she was briefed on these "exact programs"). Since she wasn't even on the Intelligence Committee when these programs were developed it is pretty clear that she would not have been.
In February of 2002, the senate announced their joint inquiry into the intel shortcomings prior to 9/11. The inquiry was announced by the members of the select committe, including the ranking democrat on that committee, Nancy Pelosi, who was still a member at that time, just as she was during the NSA briefings earlier in the fall. Wishing that a senior democrat wasn't tuned into this doesn't make it so. She was right in the thick of it
First, announcement of a Congressional inquiry does not a Conressiopnal briefing make. Second, for you to expect anyone to believe that immediately after 9/11 that the Bush administration briefed Congress on their plans to conduct warrantless wiretaps and to collect every single phone record of every single American (and God knows what else) is absurd. You seem to think that because Pelosi was on the Intelligence Committee on 9/11 that she was magically briefed about future secret programs that did not even exist until years later.
Just give it up. NO ONE will ever believe that this administration has ever made any substantive attempt to keep anyone in the loop on its secret programs.
They're not, that's the whole point. Some of them are squeezing this for momentary political advantage. Period.
Your "period" notwithstanding, that is not the whole story. They ARE upset, and rightly so. The Bush administration has politcized the government to a degree that would have been unimaginable six years ago. From the politicization of leaks to discredit those who disagree with its policies, to the appointment of a horse show organizer to head FEMA, to the appointment of General Richard Myers' 20-someting year-old niece to head a major government agency, this administration has consistently put its own benefit ahead of the nation's benefit. To blame its opponents as merely being "political" is the height of hypocracy.
Detention, you mean? As in, taking a combatant out of the area in which he's been blowing people up, shooting at cargo trucks, funneling cash to people that chop the heads off of journalists, that sort of thing?
I'm sure everyone being held in cells by the US government will be very happy to learn that they are not inmprisoned, but detained. Just like they were happy to learn that being chained in a crouching position for days at a time or being attacked by dogs or having their heads held underwater was not torture because they did not fear death or organ failure when it happened. Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the poor innocent taxi driver who was imprisoned in iraq and died from beatings, and of the German citizen who was kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned for six months and then dumped on a back road in Albania because the Americans got his name wrong.
Wake up. In October, 2001, Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committe. She even wrote to the NSA director [washingtonpost.com] following a briefing on these exact programs at that time.
Excuse me but your sense of time and my sense of time appear to be different. These domestic warrantless spying programs were instituted by the Bush administration AFTER 9/11 and AFTER Pelosi left the Select Committee. Pelosi was on the committe during the Clinton Presidency and for a short time into the Bush Presidency. I don't get how you think she could have been briefed on these EXACT PROGRAMS (your term) after she left the committee.
Why is is that even current members of the Intelligence Committee are complaining that they kenw nothing about the extent of these programs if the administration was so concientious about briefing Congress? If you think the Bush administration briefs anyone candidly about the full extent of their activities you are living in a dream world.
If Congressw did that then why are they now upset at the excesses? It seems obvious that they do not believe they authorized everything the administration has done. Anyway, I don't see how monitoring every single phone record of every single American is what is needed in the fight against terrorists. Somehow this administration has transformed Americans from terrorist victims into terrorist suspects.
Also we are not just talking about intelligence gathering here. Secret prisons, imprisonment without trial, torture, etc. are all clearly illegal (and NOT authorized by the USA Patriot Act)yet this President, in the quise of being a "Wartime President", has turned legality on its ear and decreed through secret Presidential directives (as would a dictator) that the law is not applicable to his administration.
One can see the obvious stepping off point to "the real traitors are the ones who *reveal* our secret, extra-constitutional prison system."
When the Nazis came to power and instituted torture, secret prisons, imprisonment without trial, and concentration camps they did not say "This is evil, heh, heh, and we'll do it anyway", they said "This is Patriotic and we do it for the good of the country and the people."
Now that the US has secret prisons, torture, imprisonment without trial, and concentration camps and I hear the same "This is Patriotic and we do it for the good of the country and the people" I get very, very worried.
If you're paying any attention to this story beyond simple partisan axe grinding, you'll find that people like Bush's arch-nemises in the house and senate (like Nancy Pelosi) have been briefed on these exact NSA programs since 2001, just weeks after 9/11
Pelosi is never briefed on secret programs since she is not a member of the Intelligence Committees. Even Republican members of the secrt intelligence committees complained that they were never told about the domestic spying progrmas revealed in December, and certainly not about te pen-register information being collected by the NSA without warrants. My understanding is that only certain "tame" members of the committees were briefed, and the Administration now calls this "briefing Congress".
Even if these programs were briefed to the committees, I question what sort of oversight this really could be since the members are prevented by law from disclosing any information about the briefs, even to other members of Congress! What kind of oversight is that?
And now about the so-called "War on Terror". What a load of horsesh*t. Only Congress has the power to declare war, and Congress has not done so. This country is NOT at war. Bush just uses that PR label to give himself unlimited "war powers" and call himself a "wartime President" so he can do whatever he wants. Bush taking exceptional powers because of the War on Terror is as absurd as it would have been for Johnson to have called himself a wartime President because of the War on Poverty, or Bush Senior for the War on Drugs. The War on Terror is an administration program that is very warlike (in its usual incompetent way) and has the look and feel of war, but we are NOT at war. This is an important point because the Constitution is very clear that no President is to be able to give himself special powers by declaring a war on his own. Our troops in Aghanistan have an honorable mission, but let's not call it a war just so politicians can increase their powerbase.
Forbes has an article [forbes.com] on how the EFF has won the first round by getting the judge to agree that the documents should be released. Of course, AT&T will get a chance to scrub them clean of "trade secrets", a loophole they will no doubt abuse. However, at least the judge is showing a willingness to get down into the nitty-gritty.
Well this is not quite accurate. The judge ordered that AT&T and the EFF work TOGETHER to redact AT&T trade secrets from the documents. There is no reason to start shouting about a conspiracy to delete incriminating information when the judge was smart enough to include both sides in the redaction process.
What seems more likely.... that the NSA tried to strong arm Qwest and when that failed decided not to try and get information from the other telecoms or the other telecoms are lying about not handing over our information? Qwest has no reason to lie while the other companies have 200 billion reasons to do so.
You are not playing the PR game! AT&T put out a press release that only IMPLIED that they did not cooperate with the NSA. They said that AT&T did not give the NSA any company records. They said nothing about allowing the NSA access to trunks lines or areas inside their facilities that would allow the NSA to collect the data themselves. The press release also said that AT&T did not provide NSA with any data about calls from 2001 to December 2006, but it is beleived that one of the SUBSIDIARIES did.
Is this lying? Technically no, but it sure is deceitful, misleading and slimey! Power to the Public Relations Departments of the world. Join us and you too can have a career by learning how to lie by telling the truth.
...it's not like the commercial goes unnoticed. It's just like "Ford, Citibank, Local political ad, back to the show". So we know what ads are on even if they flip by in seconds. And if we happen to see one that catches our eye or we actually want to watch, we'll watch it.
This is exactly right. I was one of the first Tivo buyers too, and quickly found out that it is not like the ads go away, you just get extremely short synopses of them. What is more, while I'm sitting watching the FF images flash by I'm paying attention to them! Why? Because I have my finger on the stop button so I won't FF too far into the show and have to back up. I will often see an interesting image during the FF and stop to see what the commercial is all about. I think advertisers are missing the boat when they don't edit their commercials to attract viewer interest during DVR FF.
Yes, you are being ridiculous. Nobody would consider such rice to be "human". I feel sorry for you because you are either stupid enough to actually think we might think a few human genes makes something human or you are just a sadly misinformed person with regards to how religious people think.
I'm thankful that the unified opinion of the entire fundamentalist Christian population has been delivered to us ridiculous, stupid slashdotters by someone calling himself "Zontar Thing From Venus".