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Old 2010-04-02, 10:50   Link #6761
Joojoobees
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Nut jobs on the move again in the US, as governors receive demands to leave office.
While news reports filed by the Associated Press say 30 governors have received threatening letters from the "Guardians of the free Republics",
this account, in a Nevada paper, claims a source within the "guardians" has informed them the letter went to all 50 governors.
Quote:
“It does not represent a ‘threat' from an ‘extremist' (as is commonly associated with ‘terrorist' in the media today) group but instead it is a real, legally binding document which is presented by a Grand Jury of regular people which declares that the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller and treasurer all must have lawful oaths of office in order operate in their respective positions.”

A comment posted on the Appeal's Web site, purportedly from someone with the Guardians organization, accuses the government and media in the U.S. of treason, “Material support of terrorism through US Media for Political or monetary gain,” and violations of the Patriot Act and Rico (anti-organized crime) Act.

It describes their plan as “a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war.”

“De jure” is Latin, in this context, for “lawful.”

The letters sent to the governors are apparently from an organization allied with the “sovereign citizens” movement, which the Anti-Defamation League identifies as a collection of anti-government, anarchist groups whose followers believe every level of government in the country is illegitimate.

One of that ideology's adherents was Terry Nichols, accomplice of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Apparently the letters arrived March 31, and gave the governors 3 days to step down.
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Old 2010-04-02, 11:29   Link #6762
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Originally Posted by Woopzilla View Post
Moscow Metro hit by deadly suicide bombings



Just heard about this... really horrible. Live updates can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8592380.stm
Read on the bbc that one of the women suspected of being one of the bombers was the widow of a militant who got killed by the russian military. Seems like she wanted payback.
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Old 2010-04-02, 15:26   Link #6763
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karthak View Post
Read on the bbc that one of the women suspected of being one of the bombers was the widow of a militant who got killed by the russian military. Seems like she wanted payback.
saw her picture on nytimes, she is cute was the first thing that came to my mind.
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Old 2010-04-02, 18:43   Link #6764
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Quote:
Originally Posted by monir View Post
The article isn't bad actually. It certainly doesn't disguise the fact the views might be one sided, but it still tries to be candid in its expression. Rape Play was just more of an excuse to get into the whole topic of how Japanese culture is viewed from a Westerner's perspective.
One token paragraph. The rest of the article tries to imply Japan's the only country with pornography and/or disgusting fetishes. It also throws in a "think of the children" out of nowhere. All that over pixels.

Frankly, rather than worry about why Japan's got porn, a more pertinent question would be "Why does everyone have porn?". Or, if you insist on focusing on Japan and Rapelay, "Why can they export it to the culturally different US?" or "Why does anyone care?".
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Old 2010-04-02, 21:22   Link #6765
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh View Post
Frankly, rather than worry about why Japan's got porn, a more pertinent question would be "Why does everyone have porn?". Or, if you insist on focusing on Japan and Rapelay, "Why can they export it to the culturally different US?" or "Why does anyone care?".
Thank you. At least someone is bestowed with god's gift of "Common Sense". I cannot see what the fuss is about either. Some form of pornography has existed in Japanese entertainment for a while now (Haruhi Suzumiya, Mikuru Asahina...need I say more?).

I also fail to see how this will spark extra rape and sexual harassment crimes. Lets remember, Japan has one of the highest outputs of pornography in the world, and the lowest rate of sexual assault cases of any other region in the world too. If people want to ban this game, they would've succeeded in banning Grand Theft Auto too. The people who play these games know that it is fantasy, they know it's only a game, and are intelligent enough to be able to differentiate between what is fantasy and what is reality. Those that are not intelligent enough to are the ones that shouldn't be playing these games. Those disturbed by it shouldn't play such games. Frankly, if you stumble across such a game, you were actively looking for it.
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Old 2010-04-03, 14:03   Link #6766
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Contesting jobless claims becomes a BOOM industry

WASHINGTON — With a client list that reads like a roster of Fortune 500 firms, a little-known company with an odd name, the Talx Corporation, has come to dominate a thriving industry: helping employers process — and fight — unemployment claims.

Talx, which emerged from obscurity over the last eight years, says it handles more than 30 percent of the nation’s requests for jobless benefits. Pledging to save employers money in part by contesting claims, Talx helps them decide which applications to resist and how to mount effective appeals...
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Old 2010-04-04, 08:49   Link #6767
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Karzai Slams the West Again

Quote:
KABUL, Afghanistan—President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days on Saturday, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the Taliban if the Parliament didn't back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to two of those who attended the meeting. The people included a close ally of the president.

Mr. Karzai's latest remarks came less than 24 hours after he assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he was committed to working with the U.S. That phone call followed a similar, but less vitriolic, anti-Western diatribe that the Afghan president delivered earlier in the week.

After Friday's call, U.S. and Afghan officials said they were putting the incident behind them and moving on.

Mr. Karzai's fresh round of accusations against the U.S. and its allies laid bare his deep distrust of the West and was likely to further damage an already bruised relationship. The U.S. Embassy here declined to comment on Saturday's speech.

Five of the lawmakers who attended the two-and-a-half-hour meeting said it largely consisted of the president lambasting them for rejecting a few days earlier his attempt to take control of the country's Electoral Complaints Commission. They quoted Mr. Karzai as saying that the lawmakers were being used by Western officials who want to install a "puppet government" in Afghanistan.

Waheed Omar, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, denied that the president said he would join the Taliban or accused the West of trying to control Afghanistan. "He talked about the new electoral law and asked the members of Parliament to reconsider their decision," Mr. Omar said.

The lower house of Afghanistan's Parliament rejected almost unanimously a decree issued in February by Mr. Karzai that gave him the power to appoint all five members of the electoral commission. The upper house has yet to vote on the decree.

The commission previously had been made up of three foreign, U.N.-appointed members, one Afghan named by the Supreme Court and another appointed by the Afghan human-rights commission.

The electoral commission threw out as fraudulent nearly a million votes cast for Mr. Karzai during last year's presidential election, ordering a runoff vote. The runoff didn't take place because the runner-up candidate withdrew from the race.

Fresh Parliamentary elections are slated for September, and Mr. Karzai's control over the commission could benefit candidates allied with him, potentially producing a more pliant legislature.

Despite securing re-election, associates of Mr. Karzai say the events around the vote left the president feeling betrayed by the West. Those feelings were clear in a speech Mr. Karzai gave Thursday, accusing "foreign embassies," the U.N. and the European Union of being behind the electoral fraud and of trying to force him into a coalition government with his opponents.

While Mr. Karzai didn't dwell on those accusations Saturday, he did return to the broader theme of foreign interference, saying that it was the main cause of the insurgency, according to five lawmakers who attended the meeting.

"He said that the only reason that the Taliban and other insurgent groups are fighting the Afghan government is that they see foreigners having the final say in everything," said one of the lawmakers.

All five lawmakers said Mr. Karzai told those who gathered at the palace that the Taliban's "revolt will change to resistance" if the U.S. and its allies kept dictating how his government should run. The word "resistance" is a term often used to convey the idea of a legitimate struggle against unjust rulers, such as the mujahedeen's fight against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

President Karzai's remarks were the latest sign of the growing rift between the Afghan leader and the U.S, which is pouring troops into the country in a bid to reverse the Taliban's momentum and win the support of ordinary Afghans.

Key to the surge strategy is restoring the battered domestic reputation of Mr. Karzai's administration. During a brief visit to Kabul on Monday, President Barack Obama pressed Mr. Karzai to clean up the pervasive corruption in his government.

If anything, President Obama's visit appears to have backfired. A businessman with close ties to President Karzai said the Afghan leader was insulted by Mr. Obama's comments and was left with even greater doubts about the American commitment to Afghanistan.

At the time of the visit, U.S. officials said they intended it to signal their determination to stabilize Afghanistan.
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Old 2010-04-04, 09:07   Link #6768
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SaintessHeart View Post
Did Karzai suffer a blow to the head leaving him brain damaged recently? Western troops are the only thing keeping the Taliban from retaking control of the country. If he had said this in a public speech, I'd write it off as trying to appeal to the masses, but in a meeting with Afghan lawmakers? Accusing the people keeping you in power of "interfering" isn't the smart thing to do.
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Old 2010-04-04, 18:12   Link #6769
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SaintessHeart View Post
Beside shooting himself in the foot, Karzai , by his attitude and acts, give munitions to the westerner than want the withdrawal of the foreing troop as their presence is wasted .
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Old 2010-04-04, 18:58   Link #6770
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iPad is launched
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8601679.stm
All i could do when watching this video was cry and shudder in fear that this was not an Onion remake but infact reality.
Then I heard the comments and wondered which would be more sastifying,
A sniper rifle or a shotgun...

Will iPad be a magic bullet for the publishing industry?
To continue the debate on iPad's future with the e-book industry....
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Old 2010-04-04, 19:16   Link #6771
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iPad is launched
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8601679.stm
All i could do when watching this video was cry and shudder in fear that this was not an Onion remake but infact reality.
Then I heard the comments and wondered which would be more sastifying,
A sniper rifle or a shotgun...

Will iPad be a magic bullet for the publishing industry?
To continue the debate on iPad's future with the e-book industry....
I think what we're looking at is Apple's first modern failure. I cannot see this being a hit success like the iPhone or iPod.
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Old 2010-04-04, 19:25   Link #6772
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Originally Posted by Harufox View Post
I think what we're looking at is Apple's first modern failure. I cannot see this being a hit success like the iPhone or iPod.
I think it will succeed, at least at first. Though I can see apple eventually loosing ground like it did back the late 80's for the same reasons: it's competitors will put up something similar that is far more open to third-party development than the iPad is. (Seriously, something can be said about the paranoia of Steve Jobs when he won't even let third party app developers USE an iPad to test their programs before the iPad's release.)
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:13   Link #6773
Joojoobees
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Originally Posted by Harufox View Post
I think what we're looking at is Apple's first modern failure. I cannot see this being a hit success like the iPhone or iPod.
I really doubt it. It looks like Apple has an absolute winner with the iPad. People were already releasing software that was an illogical fit for the iPhone (such as medical software). The iPad will see a boom in such niche applications. Salespeople, for example, will be using it on the road instead of laptops that were thicker clients than was ever needed for that purpose.

The market for eReaders was just taking off, and now you can get an iPad to do that, AND surf the web, AND email, AND play games, AND ...

There is clearly a market for this device.
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:19   Link #6774
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They just sold 600,000+ of them on the first day... I wouldn't say it's a failure just yet... just give it some time...

I'm planning to get one on the future to try and bypass those expensive college textbooks (and iPad has access to iBooks, Kindle and B&N ebooks store, which the current ereaders lack at the moment as they are locked to one store and a color display)... and other stuff.
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:27   Link #6775
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Originally Posted by Harufox View Post
I think what we're looking at is Apple's first modern failure.

i think most tech savvy schools would force students to buy iPAD to replace textbooks.
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:36   Link #6776
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Okay then, Apple must have a black magic department, because all their products seem to be very popular, even for their price. Although I have seen the prices on the iPad and they look rather appealing for what they are.

I'm just thinking Apple may have been tempting with luck here, it does seem a bit over the top. I'd prefer a netbook over one of these, but as an eReader, the iPad will appeal to the open minded.

I just wish it wasn't so minimalist in the design the department, the tiny home button and the proprietory Dock port looks really out of place on a device that size.
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:45   Link #6777
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Netbooks aren't great in my opinion because of the cramped keyboards, slow processors and small screens. If they had a bit more power, a better, touch oriented OS (perhaps Linux) and a touch screen with no keyboard and mouse, then it would be better. All they are is just Ultraportables with less power and smaller... not really something evolutionary or groundbreaking.

I'm sure after the iPad is out, there will be more open solutions that use Android and Linux to spur competition (and no, Windows 7, even though it has multitouch, isn't optimized for the touchscreen without putting more applications on top of it...) and soon, probably it will be jailbroken.
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Old 2010-04-04, 20:57   Link #6778
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...and soon, probably it will be jailbroken.
I beg to differ. Ever since the 3rd Gen iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS, jailbreaking either of them has become a bit incomplete. If either one is turned off, it has to be jailbroken again. A jailbreak was simply an exploit, and it won't take long for Apple to make their products bullet-proof (software-wise, that is).
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Old 2010-04-04, 21:04   Link #6779
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I beg to differ. Ever since the 3rd Gen iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS, jailbreaking either of them has become a bit incomplete. If either one is turned off, it has to be jailbroken again. A jailbreak was simply an exploit, and it won't take long for Apple to make their products bullet-proof (software-wise, that is).
Only true with the later iPhone 3GS models. I have a iPhone 3GS that is currently jailbroken because it was not one of those models that have the new bootrom. However, If Android becomes popular and overtakes iPhone, Apple may have to rethink its closed garden and change it in order to compete with Android (and yes, Android is also growing a pretty reasonable rate.)

and yes, the iPad got jailbroken... but yeah... it's pretty much a cat and mouse game like Wii, PSP homebrew.
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Old 2010-04-04, 21:11   Link #6780
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chikorita157 View Post
...However, If Android becomes popular and overtakes iPhone, Apple may have to rethink its closed garden and change it in order to compete with Android (and yes, Android is also growing a pretty reasonable rate.)

and yes, the iPad got jailbroken... but yeah... it's pretty much a cat and mouse game like Wii, PSP homebrew.
I think that's another issue I have with the iPod touch/iPhone/iPad, is that "closed-garden" approach. I think if you pay through the nose for one of these, then you are entitled to do whatever you want with it, it doesn't make sense to me why Apple would continue putting a chokehold on what goes onto products they have already sold. Similar systems have existed in other devices (Symbian S60 3rd edition's mandatory code signing is one of them), but I cannot understand why? When it comes to operator control, a SIM lock is pretty much the only thing I can think of that would make sense (as you obtain the phone on a contract for $0 upfront, or you pay a fraction of the retail price for a pre-paid one).
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