http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...od=djemptech_t

In a program unknown to most computer users, the company has been using its small chain of retail stores and its online computer store to sell customized versions of popular PC models that have been streamlined for a cleaner look and better performance. It calls these machines "Signature" PCs.
...
Microsoft also offers a program that, for $99, will turn users' Windows 7 PCs into Signature versions, if the owner brings the computer into one of its 16 stores
...

This really begs the question ... if this configuration is so awesome, why isn't that the way they are sold by default ?

http://www.philly.com/philly/health/...#ixzz1v3fd1syA



This really makes a lot of sense. I can't fathom how some of these people think. :boggled:

He's supposed to be a Libertarian. This would seem to imply no government interference such issues as reproductive choice and availability of birth control technology. However, according to Wikipedia, he's strongly pro-life. At the same time, he favors stem cell research. So, how does he reconcile these positions? Further, Wikipedia says the following:

Paul has asserted that a right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects the use of contraceptives[169][170] and that the Interstate Commerce Clause protects the sale of contraceptives.[169]
However, legislation which Paul has repeatedly introduced into Congress [see the We The People Act] has been criticized for potentially freeing states to ban the prescription or use of contraception, by stripping the federal courts and the Supreme Court of the authority to rule on the constitutionality of such bans.[171]

So, again, how does he reconcile states having the right to ban birth control with Libertarian ideals of individual freedom?

Consider also Pau's ties to Christian Reconstructionists, also known as Dominionists. According to this site:

Nevertheless, Paul’s support among the country’s most committed theocrats is deep and longstanding, something that’s poorly understood among those who simply see him as a libertarian. That’s why it wasn’t surprising when the Paul campaign touted the endorsement of Phil Kayser, a Nebraska pastor with an Iowa following who calls for the execution of homosexuals. Nor was it shocking to learn that Mike Heath, Paul’s Iowa state director, is a former board chairman of “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. Should Paul win the Iowa caucuses, it will actually be a triumph for a fundamentalist faction that has until now been considered a fringe even on the Christian right.

How does he reconcile Dominionism with Libertarianism?

I downloaded Microsoft's Visual Stuido 11 beta. I noticed that the user interface is this kind of three-toned gray scale. I figured it was just because it was beta and they were going to color in all the icons later.

But I also noticed that google's gmail online has the same sort of look and feel now.

Is there a reason why everything is starting to look like a Kindle?

Imagine three stationary planets as points on a line, Call them A, B and C
A nova explodes that is 100 light years from A, 200 light years from B and 300 light years from C
As the nova explodes, two rocket ships X and Y with mirrors in them are hurtling past Planet B, X towards planet A and Y towards planet C at speed .5c
Since light travels towards an object at c regardless of relative velocity, the light from the nova will reach Planet B AND the two rocket ships X and Y in exactly 200 years regardless of the immense distance that now separates them. The nova's light, of course, reaches planet A in 100 years and planet C in 300 years
As 200 years goes by, spaceship X arrives at Planet A and spaceship Y reaches Planet C
The mirror on spaceship X then flashes the light now arriving from the nova, onto Planet A and they see an event that happened 100 years ago
Conversely, the mirror on spaceship Y flashes the light now arriving from the nova , onto planet C and they see the nova one hundred years before its light arrives
Now replace the spaceships and mirrors with reflective particles zipping along at c and view reflected photons off of them that will not actually arrive--- or already have arrived--- at your locatuion from a specific source for some time to come

So-- while viewing the past may be great for history buffs and great for crime solving, viewing the future allows for deliberate change to create an alternate universe. If I can 'see" that I will die in a car crash in 3 days, I can chose NOT to drive that day. The ORIGINAL universe where I do die must remain intact because it is already someone else's past, but I have CHOSEN to create an alternate universe where I do not die on that day from a car wreck
So I maintain that an alternate universe can only be created via deliberate action to prevent a VIEWED future from occuring. Any action taken not knowing what the exact consequences for the future are, were simply meant to be, and not an agent of change
And if the master civilizations out there-- and they almost certainly exist- have perfected the art of viewing the future, they would then become the masters of their own destinies, shaping the future into the best possible desired outcome. The movie Groundhog Day explains the concept ---if you KNOW what the day will bring and you don't like it, just keep changing it until you get it right. And those master civilizations have almost certainly come up with both creating life and immortality as well. Kind of God- like but that's another subjeect better suited for philosophy

Scott Walker Magically Turns Dismal Wisconsin Job Numbers Into A Pre-Election Miracle

Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 new jobs by giving tax breaks to companies that hire new workers or relocate to Wisconsin (i.e., poaching jobs from other states). Instead Wisconsin was the only state in America that had "statistically significant" job losses according to the report. What does this say about the Republican mantra that the way to create jobs is to cut taxes and lay off public sector workers?

Apparently some singularity believers have had nightmares about being punished by a future singularity (or something) for not donating enough to the Singularity Institute or related groups. Two quotes below, there is more in this link:

Apart from the sheer LOL factor (how many other people past kindergarten age have nightmares about robots?), this looks like typical cultish behavior. Paying money to a dubious organization so as to far well in the next life... except that it will supposedly be a powerful machine in this life instead.

I used to think the singularitarians were not so much cultish as simply silly. Now I don't know anymore. They really do believe this stuff (at least the peons at the bottom of the hierarchy) and it influence their very selves. It wouldn't surprise me at all if someone of them attacked the research facilities of Google or Intel, like a geek version of the Unabomber.

A few days ago I was walking barefoot when I thought I had stepped on a piece of tape or something sticky that was stuck to my foot. Sitting down to remove this sticky thing I saw nothing was there. No sticky something at all.

What I was feeling was my own skin. The surface of the skin was completely numb and the skin below processed the feeling as something sticky.

Years ago in this same area I had either arthritis or gout and when the pain subsided numbness set in.

Anyone know anything about this?

While watching programs like Ghost Hunters you often hear them say batteries go dead because ghosts like the type of energy that they store. I often thought that if they liked this type of energy why not just plug in an electric train transformer and then the spookies would have all the energy they could handle.

Well on one ghost show they did something very similar to my suggestion. They plugged in a machine and voila there was the ghost.

What I saw was this. The electricity magnetized some dust which caused it to swirl around. Could it be that when theres lightening or whatever people see this and think they're seeing spook?

I think ghosts are either hallucinations or misunderstood phenomena.

Go HERE (BBC)

I'm sorry but a little bell rang for me when I watched the embedded video of this press conference on this page today.

One question. Does anyone else, like me, think that the emotions shown in the video are not genuine?


Compus

My friend and I are making a media project for uni of short selection of 8-10 min clips of cases where the sensationalist media, or general lack of scientific understanding in the general population, or people fixated on misusing science for their religious doomsday prophecies, have lead many people to fear/worry science and create a lot of the anti-science mentality we see today. The first half of each clips are the sensationalist argument, the second the way science could save us; not hinder us.

The first clip he has made was about mass coronal ejections and the resulting chaos they could cause to all electronic based systems and satellites. Which was countered by two new novel theories that could overcome such an event (completed)

The second hes started is about the anti-vax movement and UK vaccines cause MRSA fiasco, countered with a brilliant clip from Charlie brookers newswatch that explains the science perfectly (completed)

We need a few more examples of media sensationalism of major dangers we should fear where they over hyped the concern and ignored the science; and also the science theories that could easily solve them (or have). Mainly as his project, but also to help educate science naive people that sometimes worry themselves sick over things they don’t need to. Just suggestions are welcome, but if you can link to a documentary that you know has a sensationalist scare tactic type segment we could use, or the real science to counter it, that would save us a lot of time! The more widely known ones the better.

Other ideas:

* Catastrophic meteor impacts and potential science based theories to avoid the situation.
* Homoeopathy claims, and what the science says. (funnier the better)
* Global warming sensationism examples, and what novel scientific methods are being developed to combat it.
* Pollution in general and landfill sites, what theories have been suggested to overcome polluting of the seas, safely get rid of excess methane in landfills, disposing of un-recyclable rubbish.
* Anti medicine sentiment examples, and how studies show them wrong.
* The popular "Rising sea levels will flood most of the earth in a few hundred years unless we all stop driving". Countered by arguments of the complexity of the climate system and other factors for sea level rise.

Any extra ideas appreciated, especially direct video clips/documentaries. Basically any sort of science based project thats inherently altruistic in its scope.

Also he's planning on making a second series after this of how when science mixes too closely with business and profit what disasterous effects it can have. But thats a way off yet.

Many thanks.

Hi.

I saw this:

http://joco913.com/news/blue-valley-...p-for-science/

What do you think? Obviously, I'm pretty sure it's not going to work. They don't seem to get that quantum mechanics obeys the laws of Conservation of Energy.

Turkey suspects bird of being Israeli spy

:dl:

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook

To those who expect any of the videos of the 9/11 aircraft to be more clear, consider that all of them just accidently caught the images they did. The clearest are the Fairbanks and Hezarkhani videos, because the camera was focused right where the plane was headed.

The parking lot cameras at the Pentagon were focused on a much closer point. The net work news cameras were focused on the towers, so the aircraft only came into focus just as it hit.

Here is what a good camera focused a couple hundred feet out, with no fish-eye distortion shows when an aircraft passes by a little beyond the point of focus. How clearly do you see the aircraft against the background between 0:03 and 0:07?

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