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Comment Re:Pollution (Score 0) 303

Minnesota has 13 coal power plants while North Dakota has 6. Those westerlies you speak of must carry Minnesotan pollution off to somewhere else as well. I may not be qualified to give a lecture of the dynamics here...my guess (no offense) is that you are not either. However, considering that Minnesota has abt 9 times the population of North Dakota, I think it is safe to surmise there is not some disparity in the size or output of those plants in minnesota's favor. But surely, to take umbrage, and imply that Minnesotans and others take harm without adding their share of pollution as well is just silly.

Comment SHEESH (Score 0) 199

You know, I came across this video a few days back. It does quite a nice job at giving me the urge to wish we could have nation wide elections on the pay and days worked by our oh so lovely representatives.

They can spend an whole day pontificating/blabbering/eulogizing a fellow member or figure....push for new federal boxing oversight (I am looking at you McCain), and tons of other wastes of time, yet they cannot, as pointed out, even be bothered to read the bills they pass, and worse, dont bother to look at what earmarks might have been stuffed in out of the selfish fear that their own earmarks might get cut if they threw a fuss. Disgusting!

On another note, with regard to the parents sig...I would offer this:
In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit. - Charles Krauthammer
With all due respect to FDR, I think this one is closer to the truth concerning the political clown car that is congress.

PS. Apologies to all the decent representitives, may God help you all.
Image

Dead Goldfish Offered The Vote In Illinois 216

Election officials in northern Chicago want to know why voter registration material was sent to Princess, a dead goldfish. "I am just stunned at the level of people compromising the integrity of the voting process," said Lake County Clerk Willard Helander, a Republican, who said she has spotted problems with nearly 1,000 voter registrations this year. Beth Nudelman, who owned Princess, said the fish may have got on a mailing list because the family once filled in her name when they got a second phone line for a computer. When will we recognize a goldfish's right to vote?

Comment Re:Crows, for one (Score 1, Funny) 591

A friend and I always heard stories of hypnotizing chickens, and once we decided to experiment on his parents rooster. We went the "hold head and draw X's"route. It did indeed hypnotize the rooster, but when it had not snapped out of it 10 minutes later, we were panicking. We were rolling the thing over, throwing it up in the air (we had to catch it, it was lost in La-La-land and did not try and stop its descent), and tossing it back and forth between us. Finally around the 12 minute mark, it woke up and ran off, much to our relief.
Math

Submission + - Surfer Creates Grand Unified Theory (foxnews.com)

surferGuy writes: ""A surfer dude with no fixed address may be this century's Einstein. A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory. That's the "holy grail" of physics that scientists have been searching for ever since Albert Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago. Even more remarkable is that Lisi, who has a Ph.D. but no permanent university affiliation, solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html"
Privacy

Submission + - EU wants air passenger data collected, too

An anonymous reader writes: BBC is telling us that EU commission wants flight passenger data to be preserved in databases for 10 years after the flight. BBC says:"The measures would not apply to flights within the EU." This is part of "anti-terrorism proposals" which also include tighter laws to control hate speech and bomb-making instructions.
Privacy

Submission + - Time to encrypt all P2P traffic? 3

VORNAN-20 writes: Yesterday's item here about Comcast screwing around with P2P traffic brings up an idea. Is it time to change the P2P standard to encrypt all traffic? I think that almost any current PC would have no problem handling the extra load, and really, Comcast or any ISP has no business knowing what you are sending in the first place. I am not a network guy but I think that this is doable. If azureus, ktorrent, etc were all to come out with an "encrypt all packets using " option maybe this could be managed quickly and cleanly. It would be best to move quickly before all of the ISPs catch on to this. Come on developers, liberate us from the network meanies!!
Robotics

Submission + - Operator Turns Off Engine - UAV Crashes in Arizona

Scott Tracy writes: The plane crashed near Nogales, Ariz., because the pilot had turned off the engine and never noticed, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled Tuesday. The board chairman, Mark V. Rosenker, said part of the problem was inadequate supervision and regulation of U.A.V.'s. "We definitely need to change the mind-set from computer game-boy to pilot of an aircraft," he said. If the object was simply to operate a computer console, with no reference to safety on the ground, "you could get an 8- or 10-year-old kid who probably could fly it better than what the pilots are doing."
Biotech

Submission + - DNA Discoverer Claims Africans Are Not Intelligent 1

An anonymous reader writes: Nobel laureate James Watson, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, has made controversial remarks about race and intelligence in an interview with The Sunday Times. Watson is 'inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa' because 'all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really'. He said he hopes that all races are equal, but 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true'. He also writes that 'there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so'. In reply, a British politician has said, 'It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments.' Watson is promoting his memoirs, entitled 'Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science'.
Security

Submission + - Internet Explorer Vulnerability Back From The Dead (raffon.net)

Clown of The Month writes: A vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was discovered almost 3 years ago by cyber_flash, is now demonstrated by security researcher Aviv Raff to automate an exploit of a new vulnerability in Adobe Reader. The old vulnerability allows an attacker to download and open an executable file in an application associated to a different extension. The new vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code from remote when opening a manually downloaded PDF file. Combining both vulnerabilities, it is now possible to execute code from remote by clicking on a link in IE7, as shown in a video created by Raff.
Microsoft

Submission + - Do OpenOffice users save in Microsoft format? (zdnet.co.uk) 8

superglaze writes: "Looking through an article on the Series 60 office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft (eg. .doc) format (hence no plans at Quickoffice to support .odf). I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's the general /.-user's experience of this?"
The Media

Submission + - Hurricane Expert Calls Gore Theory "Ridiculous (smh.com.au) 5

DrWho520 writes: ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

Google

Submission + - Google spikes anti-MoveOn.org ads

stupidpuppy writes: Google has informed an ad firm working for Senator Susan Collins (R) that they will no longer run ads critical of MoveOn.org because they violate Google's "trademark policy". This policy evidently does not apply to corporate trademarks: Google still carries advocacy ads directly critical of Exxon, Wal-Mart and Microsoft, among others. Google is also a major corporate underwriter of MoveOn.
Microsoft

Submission + - Mom blasts Ballmer over kid's crappy Vista OS (computerworld.com) 6

Lucas123 writes: "While on stage at a Gartner's ITxpo conference today, Ballmer got an ear-full from the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer she decided only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult. Ballmer defended Vista saying: "Your daughter saw a lot of value"; to which the mother replied: "She's 13." Ballmer said that Vista is bigger than XP, and "for some people that's an issue, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well." Says the mother: "Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me.""
Republicans

Submission + - Clinton To Boost Nest Eggs (boston.com)

Danny_Boi writes: In her presedential race — Hilary Clinton bids to help out families with their retirement funds — at the expense of inheritence taxing.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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