"Hydrogen is not an energy source"? It is an energy source, the same way sunlight and gasoline are. That is to say that you can take it and produce work.
Saying that it's a "transmission medium" is a semantic game. Sunlight requires fusion of hydrogen (and some heavier atoms) to produce heat and light. The light falls on plants, that utilize energetic photons to power proton pumps to fixate inorganic carbon, the products of which are compressed under megatons of pressure, heated, and become oil, which is then pumped out of reservoirs, cracked, refined, and sold as various petrochemical distillates like gasoline.
There are three kinds of energy available to us: fission, exothermic chemistry (Na+H20, etc.), and stored solar energy (such as wind, hydropower, petrochemicals, and biomass). Fission and exothermic chemical sources are basically stored stellar fusion products too.
Otherwise, the point is well-taken. Electricity is, by far, a better medium for power distribution. First, it's potentially easier to distribute (I say potentially, because out current electrical grid would never be able to handle the demand and a superconducting grid is not likely to be feasible based on current limitations of the materials and the availability of the ingredients), other energy forms are easily converted to it, there's lots of technology that can already be adapted to it, and centralized distribution makes upgrading and environmental controls easier to implement.
However, all-electricty has some issues: the infrastructure to support it won't be cheaper to build than competitors like hydrogen, and the energy density of electrical storage is still too low to make things like aircraft possible (you could probably use the electrically powered biomass conversion facilities to produce jet fuel though).
Seriously. The $12.99 you pay for the video download thorough iTunes is a rip-off. The video resolution and quality is inferior, you don't get the extras, you don't even get to burn it to a DVD so the kids in slap it in the DVD player in the car/living room. People are paying a little (20% less) because they are getting MUCH less (1.4G of movie versus 18G of movie -- can't play on standard equipment).
I'm not saying that $15 is a fair price for a DVD either. It costs the manufacturer, last I heard, about $2.50 for the DVD and packaging (including the DVD production costs, discounting the original film production cost which is, on average, fully recouped during its theater run).
Heck, if net-neutrality really disappears, the cost of the iTunes download may skyrocket. I can't blame Target and Walmart for trying though. It's all about putting the squeeze on the vendors.
TLA = Three Letter Acronym
EFLA = Extended Four Letter Acronym
ULFLA = Unnecessarily Long Five Letter Acronym
CYHSLA = Can You Have Six Letter Acronyms?
I was attempting to explain this to someone the other day. You don't need to alter the votes after the fact, though that may be easier. All you need is a good statistical guess (say, a poll by the local newspaper). Given that, you calculate the skew necessary for a candidate to win. Then, you simply tell the machine to randomly record a vote for person X as a vote for person Y every a certain percentage of the time. You only need to do this in specific areas where the races are close, concede a loss in areas where the skew would be too large, and presume victory in areas where the bias is for your candidate.
In the US, you could steal an election with a small software update on a small percentage of the machines. The tallies would all add up and most of the votes counted would reflect the votes cast -- but just enough wouldn't to skew the ultimate result. The only hint you would have something was wrong would be a minor but crucial deviation between exit poll results and the official count.
It makes for a good simulation for students to put together to see just how simple it is to do.
I would agree that Ubuntu is tops for popularity these days, but "winner"? Perhaps you haven't seen Mandrake. Apt and Synaptic are quite nice, but URPMI is no slouch (not to mention, if you prefer Synaptic, it's included in Mandrake too but is based on apt4rpm).
Mandrake has the advantage of third-party commercial support, more so for Novell/SLED. Mandrake also has very good external repositories (such as the Penguin Liberation Front). Mandrake also has an edge over Ubuntu in GUI config management and better KDE support than Kubuntu.
Mandrake deserves some grief for SQA lapses, but seems to be reforming quite well. In my opinion, having dealt with both, Mandrake = SLED > Ubuntu, but they are REALLY close. Close to the point that they are separated by what quirks each has left.
To be fair, the FiOS terms of service not only forbid you from running a web server on your machine (they even block port 80), but and "server-type application" (whether it uses the Internet connection or not). That would include remote desktop, X11, P2P software, game servers (no Unreal Tournament with your friends), SlingBox, et cetera.
Sure, they probably are pretty lax on enforcing it, but the typical use for 3/4 of their customers will include at least one "server" application of some sort in the home, whether the person realizes or not that it can accept an inbound network connection. That just gives them leverage to make you pay extra later or cancel your service without notice.
One should point out that the individual in question was working for the TSA, an agent of the executive ostensibly acting on behalf of and enforcing legislation of the congress. In this case, the first ammendment is clearly applicable -- ask your lawyer.
The 5th Amendment would not generally apply, since it's a copyright infringement claim and thus not a criminal offense. The 5th Amendment pertains to crimes, not torts. Further, the 5th Amendment is understood to refer to the government compelling you to implicate yourself through testimony, not a third party or through evidence.
That said, the as-of-yet-unchallenged Digital Millennium Copyright Act clearly makes "access" to copyrighted works without a license illegal if they are "digital". Under that law, "access" to "digital" copyrighted works is indeed a crime. In that case, if the government got involved in the prosecution the 5th Amendment may very well apply with regard to whatever testimony you give.
The key part of the term "Global Warming" is "Global". That is to say that the average temperature of the entire surface of the Earth is increasing. This is, in fact, objectively observable and undisputed (at least in the literature on the subject). As ocean currents and wind patterns are now changing, some places are warming more rapidly, and others cooling -- as predicted. For example, another degree or two will push the Gulf Stream far enough south that the temperature in Northern Europe would be expected to drop to an average of just under 0C. At the same time, however, the 1 degree change in average global temperature would locally increase temperatures in parts of the mideast another 10C.
A popular tactic used by the paid "Global Warming" denial lobby is to concede that global warming is real, but that one of the following is true: the climate is simply following a regular cycle and there's no need for concern (the amount of CO2 and the speed is unprecedented and the effect appears to actually be mitigated by particulate pollutants and accelerating as the pollutants settle out of the atmosphere), or that the effect is not anthropogenic in nature and thus there's nothing we can do about it (it may be too late, but all evidence in the literature points towards anthropogenic causation).
Climatologists are not referring to places with warming trends and ignoring those with cooling trends. They are looking at the whole enchilada and reporting what they see. Lobbyists and gullible press are the only reason anyone thinks otherwise. The literature is very unanimous and exhaustively complete on the subject. From a political perspective there may be two sides or two schools of thought, but not on the scientific side. That argument was settled long ago.
Compare that to the pharma, biotech, and chemical industries where dependence on Windows is the kiss-of-death. Certain segments of the telecom sector are the same way today. The financial industry is Microsoft's last bastion (and even then, most of the exchanges have moved to Linux or UNIX).
The correct amount of virtual memory is: whatever you need.
Seriously, you ought to have enough RAM that you don't need to swap, saving that, enough to minimize it. So, use more swap that you think you will need at maximum demand. That's it.
Well, there really are "NOW is a great time to buy..." moments. It's not when the vendor's say it, and not necessarily when a reviewer says it either.
It's a great time to buy when: at least one competitor is under scrutiny for investors to show performance (incentive to do anything to boost sales), when product quality and features reach a level of parity (price becomes dominant deciding factor in purchase), when volume sales approach parity (more price pressure plus looking for new market angles), and as a product matures (prices decline with product age).
Now is a good time to buy because you really do get more value (based on what's available) for your money because there's strong economic pressures that favor the purchaser over the vendor. That's not to say that just before the next quarterly report it won't be a better time.
But you are right, the market swings quite a bit. If one player becomes dominant, or if a clearly superior product evolves, or development slows, then price pressures relax and the value you receive diminishes.
What then is the prevailing theory as to the disconnect between the 180 billion light year size and the 15.8 billion year age. If the universe was born out of a massive explosion 15.8 billion years ago, it would have had that long to spread out at the speed of light in every direction. So, then, you'd have a sphere with a radius of 15.8 billion light years that defines the maximum size of the universe.
So, the universe is 148.4 billion light years bigger than it ought to be (if the universe expanded from a singularity at the speed of light). So, do we believe the universe is expanding at much faster than the speed of light? Was space-time warped by the explosion? And if so, how can any guess made on spectral/telemetry data be considered meaningful?
Fewer cables -- particularly power cables and power bricks. Things ought to daisy chain. Also, the computer ought to be able to power off devices when not needed (think external peripherals).
Lower electrical power -- I'd like to be able to reel in consumption, slow down the CPU and power use when not needed. If drives took less power, you could run them off some daisy-chained juicier USB2 or FireWire.
Quieter machines -- one shouldn't have to sacrifice or pay big bucks just to knock 20dB off the sound output of the fans/drives.
Fast bluetooth -- or an equivalent thereof. Maybe something that would make sense with external HDDs, as well as cameras, camcorders, phones, etc. Monitors?
Cheap low-power monitors with decent color for video work would be nice too (the LCDs with the truest color are just too expensive compared to the CRTs).
After that, I'd put aesthetics -- which I don't care too much about since my PC's under the desk.
I had used VMWare way back when and it was pretty simple.
Today, I'm installing a Win2K in a VMWare virtual machine using their free VMWare Server (www.vmware.com), and I must say it's far more slick and the performance is fantastic. If you got as far as installing Ubuntu, you can install VMWare and run Ubuntu in it. It's cake (and tasty cake too, I might add).
Honestly, is a new computer with a legit version of Windows too much to ask? Especially if the alternative is being ratted out as a supplier of bootlegs of Windows and facing stiff fines and serious jail time.
I guess the only drawback would be that your parents have also committed a felony and would be facing the same punishment. Incidentally, you just asked the question non-anonymously. I suppose that's a confession of sorts. Lets hope law enforcement or Microsoft don't read this site...
When I was in graduate school, one of my thesis advisor's friends at Weizmann (not the cited author, but a colleague) was developping HMMs for nucleosome binding prediction. It worked, though not very well at the time. That was about 10 years ago.
This isn't a "new code" of any sort, but rather a pattern of stacking properties in the binding regions. There are other similar physical phenomenon that are well know, but poorly characterized (that is to say, you know it happens and you've a good idea why, but coming up with a model that is strongly predictive is very tricky).
This "discovery" is not that the signature exists, but that we've finally got the statistical sampling good enough to build a computer model of that signature that can be used to predict/identify the sites. Interesting and good work, but a fundamental shift in our understanding of biology it is not.
I'm a Christian, and personally, I don't think Mr. Bush understands the term. I would agree that he desires to push a specific social agenda that's popular among a certain subset of individuals that refer to themselves as "christians", but it's a big stretch to say that Bush is pushing Christianity -- at least as it is understood by the Christian majority in the US.
Case in point: war, secrecy, cut-backs on social programs, increases in military spending, poor financial stewardship, partisanship, etc. I am not impressed that Bush is a meek peacemaker turning the other cheek and loving his neighbor, lifting up the sick, the weak, the hungry, and down-trodden, comforting the mourners, showing mercy, and not killing or bearing false witness. Color me nutty. I'm pretty sure he believes that he's got that thirsting for justice thing down pat, and no doubt he feels persecuted because of it -- but I'm not sure what he's thinking is truly in the spirit of the message, if you know what I mean.
I'm not qualified to call him a bad Christian because, as I understand it, none of us are. However, I do contend that Bush's agenda is a political one without any particular Christian influence. Bush himself even shies away from making that assertion (lest he break the second commandment, one might suppose).
Nice idea, but we Americans can't "vote him out". His office is for 4 years and, presumably, he can't run again after that because it is his second term (and I doubt he could pull off anything that would change that). We have to wait.
We don't get to vote on impeaching a president -- impeachment is a task at the discretion of the Senate, and the majority of them are Bush allies. Even if you could convince you senator to move toward impeachment, if the only evidence to convict him is classified and he prohibits access (and you let him do that), how could the impeachment go forward. Heck, even if you started today, the wrangling would last for months, even years, during which time they'd spend lots of money and do less than they do now (perhaps that would be a good thing). Worse still, it would make Dick Cheney president -- and nobody in their right (or left) mind wants that.
We the people made the bed, now we've got to lie in it.
Um, no. When you buy the game, you are purchasing the media with a copy of a copyrighted work. Namely, you are purchasing the right to receive a copy. You are not entering into a license agreement. It's true that copyright law does grant the recipient the license to do whatever they want with it (short of make another copy except for fair uses), but that's the only "license" involved in the transaction (in the US, of course). Everything else is just a figment of the imagination of the vendor. They might tell you that you bought entered into a license agreement, but in practice, there's really no law backing that up (not that it won't stop them from suing you into oblivion).
The problem with Sony's technology here is that, if implemented, the technology would be tantamount to damaging the media you purchased without any existing legal basis for doing so.
Mosquitos do not have venom. When a mosquito bites, you are exposed to proteins in the saliva of the insect -- some of which have a mild anti-coagulant effect. The itching and raising of a small bump is the result of an immune response to the foreign protein. As such, you'd expect that on the first exposure (your very first bite), there'd be minimal response, then subsequent bites would produce the itchy bumps most people associate with a bite. As with allergy shots, frequent exposure to the same proteins will lessen or eliminate the effect over time -- though how long the state persists will vary from person to person.
People that are immuno-suppressed whether by drug or disease would also be expected to have reduced response to mosquito bites.
Further, if your body has acclimated to the proteins in the mosquito's bite, it is quite possible that you'll find that when you travel you might respond to the bites of other species of mosquito that might have different/variant compositions to their saliva.
New Hampshire makes it illegal to record video and audio of someone "without their consent" and "where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy". One may argue that on a porch in public view, with a camera clearly evident and pointing at you, adjacent to a sign that says "videotaping in progress" is not a place where a stranger has a reasonable expectation of privacy. I'm not even sure that that consent is necessary if the system was set up as a security measure any more than it would be in a convenience store. Sure, it was a police officer that came to the house, but it was also a person with a loaded gun. Whether or not they were an officer would require authenticating their identity first.
Most scientific/engineering programmers (myself included, though technically I'm a computational scientist) do NOT work on a Windows platform. Windows APIs could not be more foreign. Most users of HPC computing are purely UNIX (and more recently Linux) developers. Windows has never been the platform of choice for high-performance technical computing, and frankly, it never will be -- it's not designed for it (even Windows HPC isn't, marketing notwithstanding), applications are not developed for it, and MS doesn't even pretend to market to segments that make the most use out of it (never appeared at BIO, PSC, ISMB, etc.).
There are a number of companies that, for a small fee, will work with the provider and give you a by-the-second trace of the phone's physical location as triangulated by the cellular network. You can pinpoint the location of the phone within a dozen meters or so.
Heck, T-Mobile might do it for you (or the police) for free if you asked nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hydrogen is not an energy source"? It is an energy source, the same way sunlight and gasoline are. That is to say that you can take it and produce work.
Saying that it's a "transmission medium" is a semantic game. Sunlight requires fusion of hydrogen (and some heavier atoms) to produce heat and light. The light falls on plants, that utilize energetic photons to power proton pumps to fixate inorganic carbon, the products of which are compressed under megatons of pressure, heated, and become oil, which is then pumped out of reservoirs, cracked, refined, and sold as various petrochemical distillates like gasoline.
There are three kinds of energy available to us: fission, exothermic chemistry (Na+H20, etc.), and stored solar energy (such as wind, hydropower, petrochemicals, and biomass). Fission and exothermic chemical sources are basically stored stellar fusion products too.
Otherwise, the point is well-taken. Electricity is, by far, a better medium for power distribution. First, it's potentially easier to distribute (I say potentially, because out current electrical grid would never be able to handle the demand and a superconducting grid is not likely to be feasible based on current limitations of the materials and the availability of the ingredients), other energy forms are easily converted to it, there's lots of technology that can already be adapted to it, and centralized distribution makes upgrading and environmental controls easier to implement.
However, all-electricty has some issues: the infrastructure to support it won't be cheaper to build than competitors like hydrogen, and the energy density of electrical storage is still too low to make things like aircraft possible (you could probably use the electrically powered biomass conversion facilities to produce jet fuel though).
2 DVD9s (what you get in the package from Target, 2x9G=18G) do play on standard equipment. The iTunes download, however, will not.
Seriously. The $12.99 you pay for the video download thorough iTunes is a rip-off. The video resolution and quality is inferior, you don't get the extras, you don't even get to burn it to a DVD so the kids in slap it in the DVD player in the car/living room. People are paying a little (20% less) because they are getting MUCH less (1.4G of movie versus 18G of movie -- can't play on standard equipment).
I'm not saying that $15 is a fair price for a DVD either. It costs the manufacturer, last I heard, about $2.50 for the DVD and packaging (including the DVD production costs, discounting the original film production cost which is, on average, fully recouped during its theater run).
Heck, if net-neutrality really disappears, the cost of the iTunes download may skyrocket. I can't blame Target and Walmart for trying though. It's all about putting the squeeze on the vendors.
TLA = Three Letter Acronym EFLA = Extended Four Letter Acronym ULFLA = Unnecessarily Long Five Letter Acronym CYHSLA = Can You Have Six Letter Acronyms?
I was attempting to explain this to someone the other day. You don't need to alter the votes after the fact, though that may be easier. All you need is a good statistical guess (say, a poll by the local newspaper). Given that, you calculate the skew necessary for a candidate to win. Then, you simply tell the machine to randomly record a vote for person X as a vote for person Y every a certain percentage of the time. You only need to do this in specific areas where the races are close, concede a loss in areas where the skew would be too large, and presume victory in areas where the bias is for your candidate.
In the US, you could steal an election with a small software update on a small percentage of the machines. The tallies would all add up and most of the votes counted would reflect the votes cast -- but just enough wouldn't to skew the ultimate result. The only hint you would have something was wrong would be a minor but crucial deviation between exit poll results and the official count.
It makes for a good simulation for students to put together to see just how simple it is to do.
I would agree that Ubuntu is tops for popularity these days, but "winner"? Perhaps you haven't seen Mandrake. Apt and Synaptic are quite nice, but URPMI is no slouch (not to mention, if you prefer Synaptic, it's included in Mandrake too but is based on apt4rpm).
Mandrake has the advantage of third-party commercial support, more so for Novell/SLED. Mandrake also has very good external repositories (such as the Penguin Liberation Front). Mandrake also has an edge over Ubuntu in GUI config management and better KDE support than Kubuntu.
Mandrake deserves some grief for SQA lapses, but seems to be reforming quite well. In my opinion, having dealt with both, Mandrake = SLED > Ubuntu, but they are REALLY close. Close to the point that they are separated by what quirks each has left.
To be fair, the FiOS terms of service not only forbid you from running a web server on your machine (they even block port 80), but and "server-type application" (whether it uses the Internet connection or not). That would include remote desktop, X11, P2P software, game servers (no Unreal Tournament with your friends), SlingBox, et cetera.
Sure, they probably are pretty lax on enforcing it, but the typical use for 3/4 of their customers will include at least one "server" application of some sort in the home, whether the person realizes or not that it can accept an inbound network connection. That just gives them leverage to make you pay extra later or cancel your service without notice.
One should point out that the individual in question was working for the TSA, an agent of the executive ostensibly acting on behalf of and enforcing legislation of the congress. In this case, the first ammendment is clearly applicable -- ask your lawyer.
The 5th Amendment would not generally apply, since it's a copyright infringement claim and thus not a criminal offense. The 5th Amendment pertains to crimes, not torts. Further, the 5th Amendment is understood to refer to the government compelling you to implicate yourself through testimony, not a third party or through evidence.
That said, the as-of-yet-unchallenged Digital Millennium Copyright Act clearly makes "access" to copyrighted works without a license illegal if they are "digital". Under that law, "access" to "digital" copyrighted works is indeed a crime. In that case, if the government got involved in the prosecution the 5th Amendment may very well apply with regard to whatever testimony you give.
The key part of the term "Global Warming" is "Global". That is to say that the average temperature of the entire surface of the Earth is increasing. This is, in fact, objectively observable and undisputed (at least in the literature on the subject). As ocean currents and wind patterns are now changing, some places are warming more rapidly, and others cooling -- as predicted. For example, another degree or two will push the Gulf Stream far enough south that the temperature in Northern Europe would be expected to drop to an average of just under 0C. At the same time, however, the 1 degree change in average global temperature would locally increase temperatures in parts of the mideast another 10C.
A popular tactic used by the paid "Global Warming" denial lobby is to concede that global warming is real, but that one of the following is true: the climate is simply following a regular cycle and there's no need for concern (the amount of CO2 and the speed is unprecedented and the effect appears to actually be mitigated by particulate pollutants and accelerating as the pollutants settle out of the atmosphere), or that the effect is not anthropogenic in nature and thus there's nothing we can do about it (it may be too late, but all evidence in the literature points towards anthropogenic causation).
Climatologists are not referring to places with warming trends and ignoring those with cooling trends. They are looking at the whole enchilada and reporting what they see. Lobbyists and gullible press are the only reason anyone thinks otherwise. The literature is very unanimous and exhaustively complete on the subject. From a political perspective there may be two sides or two schools of thought, but not on the scientific side. That argument was settled long ago.
Compare that to the pharma, biotech, and chemical industries where dependence on Windows is the kiss-of-death. Certain segments of the telecom sector are the same way today. The financial industry is Microsoft's last bastion (and even then, most of the exchanges have moved to Linux or UNIX).
The correct amount of virtual memory is: whatever you need.
Seriously, you ought to have enough RAM that you don't need to swap, saving that, enough to minimize it. So, use more swap that you think you will need at maximum demand. That's it.
Well, there really are "NOW is a great time to buy..." moments. It's not when the vendor's say it, and not necessarily when a reviewer says it either.
It's a great time to buy when: at least one competitor is under scrutiny for investors to show performance (incentive to do anything to boost sales), when product quality and features reach a level of parity (price becomes dominant deciding factor in purchase), when volume sales approach parity (more price pressure plus looking for new market angles), and as a product matures (prices decline with product age).
Now is a good time to buy because you really do get more value (based on what's available) for your money because there's strong economic pressures that favor the purchaser over the vendor. That's not to say that just before the next quarterly report it won't be a better time.
But you are right, the market swings quite a bit. If one player becomes dominant, or if a clearly superior product evolves, or development slows, then price pressures relax and the value you receive diminishes.
What then is the prevailing theory as to the disconnect between the 180 billion light year size and the 15.8 billion year age. If the universe was born out of a massive explosion 15.8 billion years ago, it would have had that long to spread out at the speed of light in every direction. So, then, you'd have a sphere with a radius of 15.8 billion light years that defines the maximum size of the universe.
So, the universe is 148.4 billion light years bigger than it ought to be (if the universe expanded from a singularity at the speed of light). So, do we believe the universe is expanding at much faster than the speed of light? Was space-time warped by the explosion? And if so, how can any guess made on spectral/telemetry data be considered meaningful?
Fewer cables -- particularly power cables and power bricks. Things ought to daisy chain. Also, the computer ought to be able to power off devices when not needed (think external peripherals).
Lower electrical power -- I'd like to be able to reel in consumption, slow down the CPU and power use when not needed. If drives took less power, you could run them off some daisy-chained juicier USB2 or FireWire.
Quieter machines -- one shouldn't have to sacrifice or pay big bucks just to knock 20dB off the sound output of the fans/drives.
Fast bluetooth -- or an equivalent thereof. Maybe something that would make sense with external HDDs, as well as cameras, camcorders, phones, etc. Monitors?
Cheap low-power monitors with decent color for video work would be nice too (the LCDs with the truest color are just too expensive compared to the CRTs).
After that, I'd put aesthetics -- which I don't care too much about since my PC's under the desk.
I had used VMWare way back when and it was pretty simple.
Today, I'm installing a Win2K in a VMWare virtual machine using their free VMWare Server (www.vmware.com), and I must say it's far more slick and the performance is fantastic. If you got as far as installing Ubuntu, you can install VMWare and run Ubuntu in it. It's cake (and tasty cake too, I might add).
Honestly, is a new computer with a legit version of Windows too much to ask? Especially if the alternative is being ratted out as a supplier of bootlegs of Windows and facing stiff fines and serious jail time.
I guess the only drawback would be that your parents have also committed a felony and would be facing the same punishment. Incidentally, you just asked the question non-anonymously. I suppose that's a confession of sorts. Lets hope law enforcement or Microsoft don't read this site...
When I was in graduate school, one of my thesis advisor's friends at Weizmann (not the cited author, but a colleague) was developping HMMs for nucleosome binding prediction. It worked, though not very well at the time. That was about 10 years ago.
This isn't a "new code" of any sort, but rather a pattern of stacking properties in the binding regions. There are other similar physical phenomenon that are well know, but poorly characterized (that is to say, you know it happens and you've a good idea why, but coming up with a model that is strongly predictive is very tricky).
This "discovery" is not that the signature exists, but that we've finally got the statistical sampling good enough to build a computer model of that signature that can be used to predict/identify the sites. Interesting and good work, but a fundamental shift in our understanding of biology it is not.
I'm a Christian, and personally, I don't think Mr. Bush understands the term. I would agree that he desires to push a specific social agenda that's popular among a certain subset of individuals that refer to themselves as "christians", but it's a big stretch to say that Bush is pushing Christianity -- at least as it is understood by the Christian majority in the US.
Case in point: war, secrecy, cut-backs on social programs, increases in military spending, poor financial stewardship, partisanship, etc. I am not impressed that Bush is a meek peacemaker turning the other cheek and loving his neighbor, lifting up the sick, the weak, the hungry, and down-trodden, comforting the mourners, showing mercy, and not killing or bearing false witness. Color me nutty. I'm pretty sure he believes that he's got that thirsting for justice thing down pat, and no doubt he feels persecuted because of it -- but I'm not sure what he's thinking is truly in the spirit of the message, if you know what I mean.
I'm not qualified to call him a bad Christian because, as I understand it, none of us are. However, I do contend that Bush's agenda is a political one without any particular Christian influence. Bush himself even shies away from making that assertion (lest he break the second commandment, one might suppose).
Nice idea, but we Americans can't "vote him out". His office is for 4 years and, presumably, he can't run again after that because it is his second term (and I doubt he could pull off anything that would change that). We have to wait.
We don't get to vote on impeaching a president -- impeachment is a task at the discretion of the Senate, and the majority of them are Bush allies. Even if you could convince you senator to move toward impeachment, if the only evidence to convict him is classified and he prohibits access (and you let him do that), how could the impeachment go forward. Heck, even if you started today, the wrangling would last for months, even years, during which time they'd spend lots of money and do less than they do now (perhaps that would be a good thing). Worse still, it would make Dick Cheney president -- and nobody in their right (or left) mind wants that.
We the people made the bed, now we've got to lie in it.
Um, no. When you buy the game, you are purchasing the media with a copy of a copyrighted work. Namely, you are purchasing the right to receive a copy. You are not entering into a license agreement. It's true that copyright law does grant the recipient the license to do whatever they want with it (short of make another copy except for fair uses), but that's the only "license" involved in the transaction (in the US, of course). Everything else is just a figment of the imagination of the vendor. They might tell you that you bought entered into a license agreement, but in practice, there's really no law backing that up (not that it won't stop them from suing you into oblivion).
The problem with Sony's technology here is that, if implemented, the technology would be tantamount to damaging the media you purchased without any existing legal basis for doing so.
Mosquitos do not have venom. When a mosquito bites, you are exposed to proteins in the saliva of the insect -- some of which have a mild anti-coagulant effect. The itching and raising of a small bump is the result of an immune response to the foreign protein. As such, you'd expect that on the first exposure (your very first bite), there'd be minimal response, then subsequent bites would produce the itchy bumps most people associate with a bite. As with allergy shots, frequent exposure to the same proteins will lessen or eliminate the effect over time -- though how long the state persists will vary from person to person.
People that are immuno-suppressed whether by drug or disease would also be expected to have reduced response to mosquito bites.
Further, if your body has acclimated to the proteins in the mosquito's bite, it is quite possible that you'll find that when you travel you might respond to the bites of other species of mosquito that might have different/variant compositions to their saliva.
New Hampshire makes it illegal to record video and audio of someone "without their consent" and "where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy". One may argue that on a porch in public view, with a camera clearly evident and pointing at you, adjacent to a sign that says "videotaping in progress" is not a place where a stranger has a reasonable expectation of privacy. I'm not even sure that that consent is necessary if the system was set up as a security measure any more than it would be in a convenience store. Sure, it was a police officer that came to the house, but it was also a person with a loaded gun. Whether or not they were an officer would require authenticating their identity first.
Most scientific/engineering programmers (myself included, though technically I'm a computational scientist) do NOT work on a Windows platform. Windows APIs could not be more foreign. Most users of HPC computing are purely UNIX (and more recently Linux) developers. Windows has never been the platform of choice for high-performance technical computing, and frankly, it never will be -- it's not designed for it (even Windows HPC isn't, marketing notwithstanding), applications are not developed for it, and MS doesn't even pretend to market to segments that make the most use out of it (never appeared at BIO, PSC, ISMB, etc.).
There are a number of companies that, for a small fee, will work with the provider and give you a by-the-second trace of the phone's physical location as triangulated by the cellular network. You can pinpoint the location of the phone within a dozen meters or so.
Heck, T-Mobile might do it for you (or the police) for free if you asked nicely.