In Rowanda the slaughter was committed using nothing more than machetes. However the people where whipped into a fervor by people on the radio inciting to violence. Marconi should have seen it coming. He had a responsibility.

More seriously, to paraphrase stephenson and others. human beings are at the top of the food chain because we are the most effective and fearsome killing machines currently known. We will find new ways to kill things, and each other regardless of the intended purpose of a tool, and how many safe guards are built into it. It is what we do and why we are where we are.

I guess I won't be able to listen to "The Wall" again.

How long before the whole album gets censored because of the lyrics of In The Flesh...

Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me,
Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Jewish!
And that one's a coon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint,
And another with spots!
If I had my way,
I'd have all of you shot!

But hey, I guess if they can ban huckfin for the use of the N word... this one is a no-brainer

If you live or work in SF you don't ever, ever, ever question bicyclist or bicycling. Those people will fuck you up. (People at work speak in hushed tones when complaining about bikes for fear of reprisals)

Of course they won't stop at red light, or stop signs, or cross walks; make up traffic law as they go along, and think that self righteousness will save them when they interface with a ton of moving steel (or with a person [1]). And that is when they're not riding on the sidewalks (even when a dedicated, fenced off, bike lane is _right_ there!).

Bicyclists: you move to fast and too unpredictably for me as a driver or pedestrian to keep us both safe. This only gets worse because every bicyclist seems to decide on the fly if in a given context they want to behave as a vehicle, or pedestrian.

If you are one of those few bicyclists who actually stop at a stop sign (say at 5th and brannan) then thank you... please remind your brothers and sisters that traffic laws help the rest of us keep them safe.

--locust

[1] Hi Chris Bucchere

I seem to recall that movie rental records (belonging to the rental company) were made private (by law) after they were disclosed and used against a congressman.

As an atheist, you embarrass me.

Inherently, science and religion are human endeavors, and tied into the evolution of human societies, the pursuit of power and so on. Given that, for a long time Men of God were the only ones with education, and with free time, it stands to reason that they would contribute to science. Remember, that they had power based on knowing things that were hidden from the rest of the populace. To deny, that for a long time, the clergy _were_ the scientists is risible, as is the discounting of their contributions.

Dr. Bakker's essay is a direct response to people like you... it is practically showing the contributions of people of faith to science. But you are too blinded by your hatred to see it.

Talk about the banality of evil.

Your censor, the police officer beating the crap out of you, the intelligence officer who orders your arrest, they're just doing their jobs. They're not evil. They're just doing a job. They're nice people really. If you're nice to them, maybe you'll change them.

Lets not even start talking about the blatant racism behind: 'Chinese up and English down'.

We in the 'west' have a lot of recent experience with this sort of thing, and experience has shown the consequences of that behavior. I promise you every argument trotted out by the communist party in china was trotted out by some tinpot soviet puppet, if not the soviets themselves. (or south american, or african, or wherever dictator). In the same way, you can replace White/Aryan with Chinese and get all the crap about up with China down with everyone else. We've seen it all, heard all the arguments, seen the results and come to the conclusion that the behavior is unacceptable.

We don't always live up to our ideals,real politic gets in the way, and we screwup - a lot. But those are the facts, and that what we try to stand for. China is not special, just another country where all the old tropes are trotted out to try to maintain power.

I would gladly pay the BBC so that I could watch (online, without cuts, delays, etc):

Topgear
BBC soccer coverage (especially the world cup).
Have I got news for you.
The BBC's 24 hour news channel
Etc.

The BBC is _exactly_ why I pay for XM. (That, and I just could not handle the drivel that passes for 'Fresh Air' on the drive home).

In Canada you file to become a 'deemed non-resident' at which point, if the country in which you are living has a tax treaty with Canada they claim to work it out behind the scenes. It used to be that you had to file every year, but they got rid of that a long time ago, as it was just paper work. Once you became a 'deemed non-resident' they kept that status.

In order to become a 'deemed non-resident' you have to show that you severed major financial ties with Canada. For example, you can't own and rent out a home. If you do your world income becomes eligible for taxation.

(I could go on, but its been a while since I looked at this, and I'd hate to sound to informative).

It looks nicer and surely out performs the Civic on the 1/4 mile.

For the same money you could actually go out and buy a lotus elise, not just a car that looks like one.

If you live in the good old USofA, where (ostensibly) its a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, aren't you basically saying "Fuck You" to yourself?

Given that the id is the only token used to get data, what in the drop box system, prevents me from iterating across the id space, until I find some really juicy data?

So here's what clarkson had to say at the time. From the times online:

Phone calls were made. Editorial policy wallahs were consulted. Experts were called in. No “i” was left undotted. No “t” was left uncrossed. No stone remained unturned in our quest for truth and decency.

Tesla could not complain about what was shown because it was there. And here’s the strange thing. It didn’t. But someone did. Loudly and to every newspaper in the world.
..

This was weird. Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn’t question at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles.

You would figure that if these claims were so outrageous, tesla would have contradicted them at the time.

If a portion of your user population has enough trouble with your UI that they are 'fat fingering' their way into trouble, then at some point it is _your_ issue.

But that having been said, a quick glance through the support thread shows things like this: "http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=345259e6d424bad3&fid=345259e6d424bad300048dfbff785d0c&hltp=2"

The code reverses the numbers before doing its (loose) compare... so uses the 7 last digits.

Bob - 408-555-1234
Fred - 510-555-1234

become

4321-555-804
4321-555-015

And it only uses the first 7 digits, which for both numbers, is "4321555"...
So if you send a message to Fred, and it looks in the cache for the contact, there's a chance it will go to Bob.

Yeah, but the doctor calling you when you are 5 minutes late for an appointment, to make sure that you are actually going to make it, because so many people haven't recently because they lost their jobs is evidence.