but here in north central WV (not in the mountains) we also received a little bit of snow in April, and we haven't had that in I don't know how long. In fact, I believe I had less than 3" of snow all winter despite the previous year experiencing about 3 feet so it doesn't mean anything. So yeah March was warmer than usual but April was also colder than usual. It doesn't mean anything. There still were days when the records weren't reached in March here in WV, records that have stood for decades but we came close to them. So if the record highs were set decades ago then what does that tell you about this year? That's right, it is nothing special. Obviously I'm extrapolating local climate to being global climate, but then again, so did this report when it collected stats for a single country rather than the world. Apparently it was just a bit warmer than it was 10 years ago based on averages and I know the report isn't drawing any conclusions readers will, including me. This data isn't anything out of the ordinary and never will be. There is no general trend as can be easily gathered by the data depicted in the top 10 warmest 12 month period in the US chart in the report.

why scientists assume this has to be a mistake rather than by design? Oh that's right. We are all mere beasts who therefore don't have any moral absolutes and who all share the same DNA because we supposedly all came from the same puddle of amino acids that came to life from a lightning strike (or was it a meteorite from outer space infected by the remnants of a supernova?) billions of years ago. Of course, there is no proof of any of that complicated web of ifs, maybes, must haves, probablys, etc. Evolutionists apparently never heard of Occam's Razor. I wonder who has more faith: the scientist who has to convince himself that all those improbabilities and guesses must have happened since he exists to even consider the possibility (despite no evidence actually directly linking any of these findings) or the Creationsist who believes that God designed and created everything and everyone (based on a book written by Man and whose content was handed down by God) and therefore rendered evolution unneeded? Which is the simpler theory? And which is chosen simply to avoid acknowledging a God exists despite being more complicated and unsubstantiated?

Just another example of our rights to search and seizure eroding away.

Based on what? Sentinel is an investigation tool, not a surveillance system. You may not like the name but this will help them prosecute and convict interstate criminals faster and cheaper because they will have electronic tools at their disposal to assist in finding patterns and links when a human can't.

There is no way to prove this theory. They can "think" it all they want but that doesn't make it true. What ever happened to Occam's Razor? The simplest solution is usually the correct one. In the case of human/Earth origin, the simplest answer is God. That eliminates the complex web of lies that constitute evolution and all the "thinks" and "must have been" that scientists have to use when trying to theorize how evolution supposedly made things the way they are. The "must have been" is only used when humans think they know what happened when they weren't around and need something to fit their theory. That's just arrogance. God, however, just created everything from scratch at the same time with no need for the animal kingdom to evolve. Simple. And how do I know this? I have faith...it's also the simplest solution. Can it be proven? I guess that's where faith partially comes into play. Scientists need just as much faith, if not more, in their own theories though. That's why we get the "must have been this way" because otherwise their whole career is demolished and so is their theory. I view everything I can see as proof such as gravity, chemical elements, the effects the laws of physics have on the universe, etc.

It was the "technical skills" that I believe russotto was saying was even more vague than "database skills". "Technical skills" can mean a lot of things. "Database skills" are technical skills so why be redundant and explicitly state "technical skills"? That is what russotto was referring to.

The government is allowed to set any type of requirement constraints they wish in order to ensure that the final solution integrates with an existing system, meets specific security requirements (i.e. FIPS 140-2 encryption as someone already stated), etc. This is only for an RFQ anyway so the final solution is still yet to be determined but as long as a suggested solution satisfies their specific constraints and the other requirements and comes in under budget then any company can qualify. It isn't the government's problem that their constraints may disqualify Google. They probably disqualify a lot of other companies/products too. That's the nature of the beast.

Rated insightful for someone who can't spell dinosaurs? What is slashdot coming to I ask? Assuming evolution is true, what would have been the preempting factor that turned some dinosaurs into creatures with wings? Seems a bit far-fetched to me.

By the way, you didn't actually answer whether the *chicken* egg came before the chicken. Let's assume again evolution is true, you only "proved" that some type of egg came before one instance of a chicken. You didn't prove that an actual chicken egg came first though. What would have happened is that a dinosaur laid an egg that hatched a chicken which then laid an actual chicken egg that hacked another chicken. Of course, with evolution not actually being a good premise to rely on it means that the chicken came first.

By the way, what are noncompos and for argument's sake, what dinosaur turned into a chicken?

Everyone except the poorest people in the U.S. get penalized more than the poorest people by paying more taxes. Obviously the more you earn the more you are taxed and therefore the more you are penalized. So in fact, the poor are the least penalized when it comes to taxes and since taxes are usually a large topic area when discussing aristocracies it seems your statement is simply false.

many countries over there need to bone up on teaching their citizens the sanctity of life.

It seems Slashdot is back into the duping business again. I hadn't noticed any for a while but here we go again.

Abortion = murder, murder = crime, hence abortion = crime. Seems to make sense to me. If we, as a species, protect those outside of the womb we should be giving equal protection to those still inside.

those who are proponents of those theories will stop calling those who disagree with them "idiots", "crazy", "ignorant" and any adjective or noun they feel like using to denigrate those with differing opinions?

The country already is ruled by religious law to some extent: thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. Murder and burglary are against the law. Why aren't you all riled up about that? Constitution doesn't say anything about murder or stealing but yet we have laws for them.

By the way, we know what the Bible says so including in your post "what they think their Bible says" is a transparent attempt at discrediting them. Nice try but it didn't work. Those Republican officials' views are shared by a vast majority of the country's citizens. It just goes to show you that despite what the minority don't believe in, the majority of the population still enjoy and prefer having religion as a large part of their lives. And the side benefit is that those who disagree are welcome to do so as long as the laws of the land are still obeyed by all.

Care to provide said evidence that the Bible is fabricated? By the way, history text books are edited often (at the behest of many people's agendas) to remove events that make certain groups of people look bad to the rest of the world and for many other reasons. Would you doubt everything you learned about history after knowing that Boards of Education decide what to have in the history text books? There are other history books to read as well but, *sarcasm* can you really trust anyone who writes a book *sarcasm* Just come out and say you have a negative bias against religion and we'll move on.

Therefore it must not have happened? Lots of things happened throughout history that were never recorded. But in this case because a particular event happened to be recorded in what is considered a religious document and no where else you have trouble believing it? You have a closed mind.