Does anyone know of any fairly inexpensive way to test for lead in something like apple juice? Something that can be done at home without sending something out to a lab? Just curious. Some posters have stated that a lot of juice sold in the US has apples from China and instead of just fear mongering it would be interesting to test and see if there are actually unsafe levels of heavy metals in the juice. -Greg

Pico and Pine are from some Washington University if I recall correctly. And the Sphinx voice recognition software is from CMU.

"I heard they mail you DVDs if you want."

I seem to recall that the main way to watch DVDs on Linux uses a package that is illegal to distribute in many countries (DeCSS). Sure, it is more readily available than other options but it is still considered illegal.

Cheers,
Greg

Having seen the second video I don't think the officer meant to break the window. It really looked like he was just trying to put the guy up against the wall to handcuff him. It was surprising to see that glass break like that. When you see it at the station in looks much stronger. It also looks like the breaking window cut the officer more badly than it did the suspect.

The other situation though, the one with the man being shot in the back....That officer deserves a nice long stay in jail.

Cheers,
Greg

The system uses GPS systems that use report in their location every minute. Even if they predictions that nextbus publishes aren't open the raw gps feed could be very useful. The nextbus prediction system leaves a lot to be desired; With the raw data I'm sure someone could do significantly better.

Cheers,
Greg

I read that same quote elsewhere and its really surprising to me. As far as I'm aware Muni is super stingy with all of their data. Even their route data isn't freely available for reuse. For instance, I'm trying to put all the Muni lines into openstreetmaps.org but I can't just go on to Muni's website and copy the data from their. If you want to use that data you have to enter into a licensing agreement with Muni where you have to do things like give them quarterly reports on how many users access that data. I've been manually going around and regathering it myself just to avoid having to deal with them.

According to some Google people I spoke with at WhereCamp a bit back even they had to sign that agreement in order to put the Muni info into Google maps. I find it hard to believe that with those kinds of policies in place Muni is going to let people freely view their realtime info, especially if it might make them look bad by showing exactly how often they're late.

However, if I'm wrong and there is someplace where Muni makes this data available I'd love to here it. Otherwise I'm just going to assume the Muni spokesperson is fibbing and hopeing the whole situation blows over quickly.

Cheers,
Greg

I guess it depends on where you live but where I live there are bloggers who cover city council meetings along with all sorts of other small government meetings. They analyze budgets, they make easy to use crime maps out of inaccessible government records, they fight for government accountability.

The sorts of things that perhaps newspapers once did but no longer do because they cut all their reporting staff and now just have a few editors who put a local slant on news from AP and Reuters. because the readership gained by printing that sort of in depth political news doesn't offset the amount of money it costs to print it. When the newspapers do print articles about these sorts of things its only because they found something they could sensationalize.

I suppose I'd agree with you more if I thought newspapers were actually doing in depth reporting but I really don't feel that they are.

Cheers,
Greg

"Funny thing is I have a company car that is only a year old, I doubt the warranty is running out, especially since my company BUILT the car."

You must not work for GM.

Cheers, Greg

"Can you really blame them for not believing that "normal" Britons go around looking at planes on military bases and keeping track of the call letters in their little books? While on vacation to Greece?"

Yes, I can. A little googling will show plenty of evidence to support plane-spotting being a hobby. Also, spies don't usually travel in groups of 12, with their wives, and openly go about collecting data.

I have to admit though, if I'm going to have a criminal record, espionage would be the one to have. Hell, if I had that on my record I might just change my last name to Bond and have fun with it.

Cheers,
Greg

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124181970915002009.html

This article in the Wall Street Journal talks about the long term salary affects of graduating in a recession. If you're sure you can find work in your field then you should be okay. If not you might want to consider getting that degree, at least according to the article.

Cheers,
Greg

Gay marriage
Abortion
Gun control
Tax rates on the wealthy
Amount of regulation for the markets
Torture of key terrorists
Most foreign policy matters
Stem cell research
Universal health care
Immigration reform

"Almost every single one of those issues you pointed out are just election year platform gimmicks."

They're used as election platforms precisely because they matter.

If you're gay, the right to marry matters.

If you or your partner gets pregnant the right to be able to have an abortion matters. Even just knowing that abortions are legal can affect the very personal decisions people make. How could something like this possibly not matter?

If you own guns and don't want them taken away that matters.

Tax rates on the wealthy matter because they effect everyones tax rates.

The amount of regulation of markets matter. For example compare and contrast the current stability of Canadian vs. American banks.

Foreign policy! Its very likely that if we hadn't had Bush as president we wouldn't have gotten into an unneeded war that has already cost us over a trillion dollars. This matters.

Torture. Sure, civil rights. Nothing important there.

Universal health care. Really. Just a gimmick. Weather or not we should have universal health care is just a gimmick. Nothing important there, not at all.

Those issues come up every election because people care about them because they're REALLY IMPORTANT.

The issues and the facts surrounding them might be distorted every elections but the issues themselves are far more than just gimmicks.

Cheers,
Greg

"WTF? You're complaining that they don't have infinite capacity? There's a limit to how many professors and classrooms even a $45K tuition can buy, you know!" Yes....but if you increase the number of $45K tuitions you are receiving you can increase the number of professors and classrooms you can pay for. It probably even scales fairly linearly. I'm sure they do have their reasons for not increasing the number of students they admit but it most likely isn't due to money. Cheers, Greg

And if I were on your jury you'd receive either a Not Guilty or a hung jury. This insanity needs to be stopped.

Cheers,
Greg

I'd be impressed if it could answer "Could you explain your previous answer using a car analogy?"

So you'd be impressed if it just said "No." :)

Cheers,
Greg

I was always under the impression that the 72x CD drives managed the feat not by spinning it faster but by reading multiple tracks concurently. Here is a bit from on review on the drive:

"Enter the technology developed by Zen. Instead of rotating the disc above and beyond the physical limits by some act of magic, they have devised a means to read seven tracks concurrently. Those seven streams of data flow through a specially designed RISC chip and to your computer with no additional CPU-load."

Thats from:http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2/

They didn't use multiple lasers though they used some sort of prism to split one beam I believe. However they did it it wasn't very reliable and the Kenwood 72x drivers were notoriously unreliable as well as incompatible with many types of DRM. I believe Kenwood was the only manufacturer of CD drives of that speed and I believe they patented the technology. I think thats why no one else made drives that fast.

Cheers,
Greg