I agree, but I deal with rainfall and watershed data. The engineers talk in 20, 50 and 100 year events and these are no where nailed down to any sort of accuracy. even the full 400 year measuring period is looking at is still 8.7e-7% of the lifespan of the sun we have looked at such a small window and drawn an assumption over that window. We are definitely going to be wrong. heck we cant even predict tomorrows weather accurately, let alone something we measuring at a distance, where we are still only theorizing about how it actually works. "slight" variances on a cosmic scale may not be measured in years.

The sun is 4.6 BILLION years old and we are concerned with a couple of years difference in the Solar Cycle? How many of our empirical evidence cycles have we measured in this sort of accuracy? The whole cycle measures within 2.3e-8% of its lifespan and we are surprised that we haven't got the accuracy narrowed down? What other natural phenomenon have we measured to this accuracy cause I would really like to see the ruler that was used...

To protect minors when accused of a crime. Yet the public has NO understanding of a charge and a conviction. This all too easy to accomplish. And what is worse is that it is so easy. At least with drugs, the "planter" still has to purchase and carry them. With the internet "Doing it with Goats" will provide lots of ammo for the would be planter. With the way people guard their passwords the planter doesn't even have to hack in or carry the material at all, nearly 0 risk. With Remote desktops, you don't event need to physically be at the computer.

So now when someone is accused, they are plastered all over the news without being convicted. The public paints them as guilty, and the accused, innocent or not, is ostracized.

It makes me wonder if we should protect the names of accused in cases like this until a conviction. Then again, a lot of the people charge are often in a position where I would really like to limit their access to our youth. A tough call either way.

It would be hard to even go after the guy alerting the police to the charge. It could simply be the IT admin doing a routine audit finding something that was "planted" by the janitor.

I think the only real defense is not to p!ss people off enough to go to these lengths.

They are cheap and generic, called, "IP Camera". Do a search on ebay, there is a guy in Hong Kong selling them I think. They link to each other so they can all be viewed from the same webpage. I wanted something cheap enough that if they got stolen I wouldn't be freaked out. They are easy enough to steal by breaking the mount. I drilled out the screws, but the mount is still breakable. I like the gmailed picture because even if the thieves rip off the computer, I still have photos. Not fool proof by any stretch, but makes my place look less attractive than the other places on the block. The only real protection from a determined thief is insurance with documentation.

When we signed up for $240/yr monitoring, I left specific instructions. "If the alarm goes off, call the police directly, not us or any contact. I will pay any false alarm fine. I live 2 min from the police station, so there is a chance of actually catching someone. Is this OK?" The answer was "You are the customer"

So, we went on holidays, game my mom the code, and a passcode if she tripped the alarm. Warned her that if she did expect the boys in blue. She is 81, was nervous and sure enough she tripped the alarm. So instead of cops, the security company called the house. My mom was flustered, couldnt answer the security question, but the monitoring agency figured she was too old to be a crook and told her how to reset the alarm. They couldn't understand why I was furious and canceled, after all they saved my mom an embarrassment.

so now, I purchased a couple of IP cameras that motion sense and an email to my gmail with a picture. As long as I have my phone, I see who is entering within a few minutes or less (typically 20s). Also makes it very hard for your kids to lie about what time they came home. The 4 cameras cost me $80 each on ebay, and I connected them to my wireless network. I can also at anytime now log into a web page and monitor the surroundings. So even in bed, I grab my iPhone, and have a look outside if I hear a noise.

We also did the 2 big black dogs. They are now part of the family and a great deterrent.

The problem I encountered was that the teachers themselves are often unable to obtain any other job. I have over 12 years of teaching experience. 2 at the local college. The rest as an Independent Consultant to the local colleges.

The problem starts with a salary issue. I could earn the same salary at the local college teaching first year electrical apprentices basic math as an advanced programming course. My salary was based on education * years of experience. The Union (er Teachers Association ensured that). Any decent developer, got a job developing for twice the salary. Those that couldnt get a job applied to the college. Admin complained about the quality of people, were constrained by the Union. I applied because my wife is a school teacher and we thought it would be good for us both to have similar holiday schedules. I lasted exactly 2 years.

I was hired at a time when windows 3.1 was just released and none of the staff new anything about windows programming. I spent my first year developing content. The 2nd year was spent teaching where, and I kid you not, I taught the course in the mornings where 2 of my "students" were teachers who repeat my lesson to different classes in the afternoon. When I got radical and suggested we teach an Assembler course so that the students would actually learn about CPU's, registers, memory, IO etc. I was told by a veteran teacher, "I have been teaching here for the last 17 years and all of our students seem to be doing well, what makes you think you can come in here and suggest curriculum changes?" (my assembler course would have replaced one of the COBOL courses that he taught. I further fell out of sync with the rest of the staff when I proposed a 4 for 5 program where staff was required to work 1 year out of 5 in the industry to gain some relative knowledge of what was really going on out there.

Today, when I look at my nephew wanting to do what uncle does, I looked at the course I used to teach. They still teach flow charting, there is still a COBOL course, a course in project management. A network management course, where the students actually follow the numbers to create AD groups and users with no actual explanation of what a domain is. (one of my staff is taking this course so that he can upgrade his status at work)

Graduates are having a hard time finding work with increased expectations. My own nephew is under the impression that he will earn 50k out of school. However, he is not interested in the local college because of the course content.

To get students interested, we need to entice quality teachers, not the unemployed. There truly are some great teachers/profs, but in my experience they are the exception, teaching as a lifestyle choice instead of a career. In order to do that, salaries need follow industry to some extent. We also need to remove things like teachers associations or at least structure them to create industry comparable practices and policies.

Once an enticing environment is provided, the students will come.

To validate this study...

Which sites did they "study"?

The reason remakes are successful is that we are old geeks that revel in the glow of "classics". My 17 and 19 year old children have never heard of many of my old "classics" and refuse to watch the old "black and white" versions I have. They cant understand why I think the the original The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of Worlds, are not even the same story as the remakes. They did however shell out their twelve bucks for a tried and true forumla. Although the fact that I like the movie title should have chased them away screaming. Hollywood or movie making is about making $. I will invest in a remake that has made money far sooner than I will in a "new" idea. it is simple econonics. Logans Run will make money. Period. Maybe not record amounts, but it will keep everyone involved employeed until the next "great" idea comes along. The purpose is and always has been to make money. So with actors and crew available, but no "great" ideas brimming, Lets do a remake so we all get to eat supper.

If RIAA and MPAA or whoever can charge me for every blank DVD and CD I purchase without proof that I have downloaded anything illegally why are we so upset with the mobsters. My musician friend says he has never seen a cent of what I have paid for my blank media.

Its funny, but I am being forced to look in the direction of some of these sites. I have been downloading movies and tv shows from iTunes because it was too easy. Now my wife would like to watch some of these on our TV, but guess what? I cant! Not without spending another $260 for apple TV. Not because my DVD player wont handle digital media... Our home movies play just fine from a thumb drive. But the stuff I have paid for wont! So my solution, download it from somewhere else.

Sorry I have no sympathy for the MPAA and its DRM. Create a business model that is affordable and competitive with the crimials, and the criminals will go somewhere else and I will continue to buy legit.

We live in a big brother society. Everywhere you go, you are on camera. My city just installed cameras at every intersection, stating it was to help traffic flow analysis, and oh yeah it will also issue speeding an red light photo tickets. Now we are a small city so this was easy to do, but so far, traffic patterns seem the same, but there are a lot more flashes at the intersections now. But more importantly, did you consent to being filmed? I can even pull up the AMA website and watch and capture video from some of these video feeds. I dont remember allowing myself to be filmed.

Walk into a store, look up, again you are being captured on video. Did you consent to that?

Now try this, take your video camera, put it on your shoulder and walk into the local police station... Or even stand outside and take a picture. Google was able to do this all over north america, but I will bet if you stand out there filming for 10 min, you will be asked to leave.

At some point we have given up our right, if we ever really had one, to not be filmed without our consent. At one point, it might have been because we were still reasonably anonymous. Now with a few searches through facebook, I can get an awful lot of pictures to cross reference with my video.

And now the police are saying they should be exempt from all of this video. Fact is we live in a video captured society, and it is getting worse. I remember reading in a novel about a society that had every moment of their lives recored. This was held in a secure private data facility, and only accessed if a crime was committed. I see us heading in that direction.

Lastly, the police have a hard enough time keeping up with catching the criminals. I am on the side of if you are doing nothing wrong, what does it matter. That is why I dont worry about the store video camera, im not stealing. Yes partial editing or videos can be used, but then they are also taken in context.

I am sure...
Police arrest suspect.
Suspect strikes officer.
bystander starts filming.
police strike back, wrestle suspect to ground and handcuff.
Suspect gets video and charges police.

Would a judger really not take into account that the video started 1/2 way through an incident? And if the media started to sensationalize then its time to charge the media!

In fact in this situation, the police could turn around and use the video to support thier argument that they used "reasonable force". UNLESS they decided on a little payback for the the first hit. But then the police themselfs have sunk to the level of a street gang.

We live in a recorded society. Learn to make home movies or really good disguises.

Once again science has put some poor animal out of a job. The snailski's were great spokes family for high speed internet. Now what?...

Strong Beer, mayan calander, 6 pack...

So who wants to bet they stopped writing the calendar around their 6th beer...

I believe they had a limited story in season 1 and it was different enough that people said "Hey, way cool!"

Season 1: Hey lets make this island no one understands with WAY bizzare STUFF and see what the audience thinks. And oh yeah, we should do things like throw in a polar bear, some "other" people (well come up with a name later), and make the whole jungle shake to get people really scared and give them a purpose to stay together.

Season 2: Hey it WORKED, were still employed... Now what, lets do it again. Add some more weird stuff, the audience imagination is going wild. We might even be able to skype an idea or two.

Season 3: We should really start to try and tie some of this together. Lets do the easy ones.

Season 4: Im starting to get dry, anybody got an idea where this going yet? Ive got so many loose threads my mind is like an angora sweater. Lets hit the web for some weird ideas.

Season 5: Hmmm... looks like its going end next season. Lets just blow the whole thing up and then we can do what we want next season.

Season 6: Anyone know how to tie this ball of yarn together? Hmmm... me neither. Lets do some weird dream/purgatory/lifeanddeath stuff and the audience will make some stuff up and tie it together for us. Just remember we need to sing kumbayaa at the end OK?

And for me that about sums up the what the writers were thinking about as they drank beer in group think sessions.

A theme I read in many of the replys were centered around "I should be able to make my own choices". Yes to a certain extent. But how many of these people will run back to the gov't when they develop bone cancer? How does the average person who has trouble with their VCR make an informed decsion on a new experimental medical procedure. Medicine will turn into (if not already there) a salemanship game. "Cures baldness, impotence and raises IQ's, come one come all, only 10 cents". The FDA ensures a standard of research and documentation required to provide some common level of proof. Its not perfect, but I dont trust the masses to make informed decisions. There were a whole bunch of women who thought Thalydimide was a wonder drug, until their babies were born. But for every bad story there is also a good one. If the treatment has the success purported, why not get some investors, and get the approval required and own the procedure, instead of the cowboy approach. This is only going to lead to a legal battle, someone else will find the investors, but the treatment itself could end up in court for years as well as the FDA process.

is a RTF I am going to read!