Senate Passes Children’s Health Plan - New York Times
The Senate gave final approval on Thursday to a health insurance bill for 10 million children, clearing the measure for President Bush, who said he would veto it.
The 67-29 vote followed a series of speeches by Republican senators supporting the bill and urging Mr. Bush to reconsider his veto threat.
The Denver Post - Boulder High students walk out during Pledge, recite own version
About 50 Boulder High School students walked out of class Thursday to protest the daily reading of the Pledge of Allegiance and recited their own version, omitting “one nation, under God.”
The students say the phrase violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
They also say the daily reading of the pledge over the school public address system at the start of the second class takes away from education time and is ignored or mocked by some students.
A state law passed in 2004 requires schools to offer the opportunity to recite the pledge each day but does not require students to participate.
The protesting students, members of the Student Worker Club, want administrators to hold the pledge reading in the auditorium during each of the school’s two lunch periods for any students who want to participate.
Otherwise, they said, they plan to walk out each Thursday when the pledge is read and recite their version, which omits the reference to God and adds allegiance to constitutional rights, diversity and freedom, among other things.
ML (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ML is often referred to as an impure functional language, because it permits side-effects, and therefore imperative programming, unlike purely functional programming languages such as Haskell. Features of ML include a call-by-value evaluation strategy, first class functions, automatic memory management through garbage collection, parametric polymorphism, static typing, type inference, algebraic data types, pattern matching, and exception handling. Unlike Haskell, ML uses eager evaluation, which means that all subexpressions are always evaluated. One result of this is that you cannot use infinite lists per se. However, lazy evaluation and hence infinite lists can be simulated, through use of anonymous functions. Today there are several languages in the ML family; the two major dialects are Standard ML and Caml, but others exist, including F# - an open research project that targets the Microsoft .NET platform. Ideas from ML have influenced numerous other languages, such as Haskell, Cyclone, and Nemerle. ML’s strengths are mostly applied in language design and manipulation (compilers, analyzers, theorem provers), but it is a general-purpose language also used in bioinformatics, financial systems, and applications including a genealogical database, a peer-to-peer client/server program, etc. [edit]
1,000 Attempt Citizen’s Arrest Of Bush
A citizen’s arrest warrant has been issued! Please do your duty and see that it is served!
As George Bush made his appearance and speech today at the United Nations in NYC, 1,000 people issued a citizen’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The day began with twelve separate feeder marches converging from across the city, consisting of perhaps several hundred protesters. The people carried 20 large coffins with them and marched from all five boroughs toward Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza and the UN Building where Bush was speaking. The feeder marches were organized by Arrest Cheney First, the War Resister’s League, Witness Against Torture, Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS-NYC) and others.
I’m In An Open Relationship With The Lord | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
With Jesus as my personal Savior, I felt like I had it all. But then we hit a rough patch, and before long, I was beginning to question both my faith in Him and His commitment to me. At one point, it seemed the relationship was doomed. But I did a lot of soul searching, and together we found a solution that fit both of our needs by adopting an alternative theological lifestyle.
Now that I’m in an open relationship with the Lord, I feel a greater spiritual satisfaction than I’ve ever known.
It all started when I was 16 and first asked Jesus to enter my heart. It was incredible. He filled me up with His love. I’d never been redeemed before, but with Jesus it felt so right, as if the sins of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. For a while there, we were communing via the sacraments several times a week! And every night we spent what seemed like hours in long, mutually satisfying sessions of prayer. I worshipped Him.
Soon the honeymoon period ended, however. Whenever I spoke to Him, He seemed distracted and distant—sometimes I wondered if He was listening at all. Daily devotionals felt like we were just going through the motions of repetitive, meaningless dogma. A few months later, I made a potentially disastrous discovery: I found out I wasn’t the only one He was sanctifying.
One day, I overheard my coworker Sally…
Utah Polygamist Convicted | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter group, was found guilty of being an accomplice to rape for marrying a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man. What do you think?
Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
Top physicists from several major American universities appeared before a Congressional committee Monday to request $50 billion for a science thing that would further U.S. advancement science-wise and broaden human knowing.
The scientists spoke for approximately three hours about the complicated science machine, which is expensive, and large, telling members of the House Committee on Science and Technology that the tubular, gamma-ray-using mechanism is vital in some big way. Yet the high price tag of the thing, which would be built on a 40-square-mile plot of land where the science would ultimately occur, remained a pressing question.
Programming languages - Every serious student of computing should be familiar with a range of different languages (for example, I used a mixture of C, C , Delphi, JavaScript, Perl and Tcl/Tk to create this CD). This collection includes compilers and other resources for a wide variety of programming languages, including conventional procedural languages, object-oriented languages, functional languages, logic programming languages, scripting languages, and some just plain weird languages. You can choose which are which! For a light-hearted comparison of a range of languages, I’ve also included a widely-circulated collection of “shooting yourself in the foot” jokes about different languages…
Installed smlnj (ML of New Jersery). For linux/unix systems, installation tgz file can be found here http://smlnj.cs.uchicago.edu/dist/working/110.65/index.html I should get started on the project soon since it is due for me by Oct 23…
In a large field, in the middle of nowhere, a group of guys begin to
gather around…
Man with giant finger steps forward
“Are you ready to get fingered??”
Man with giant toe steps forward
“I toed you I ain’t messin round any more!”
Man with giant leg steps forward
“I said leg-o my eggo!”
Man with giant eye steps forward
“I love eye-scream!”
Man with giant nose steps forward
“Do you smell what the rock is cookin?”
Man with giant ear steps forward
“I never heard such commotion before!”
Man with giant adam’s apple steps forward
“What the fuck?”
The End
Part of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com
Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”
Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield sought the ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI to the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.
Starbucks Music Giveaway | The Onion - Americas Finest News Source
Starbucks announced that they would be giving away 1.5 million songs a day for one month to promote their music arm and iTunes deal. What do you think?
25 cent wings at buffalo wild wings tonight. mmm, that was some goodness!
Ananova - Biker’s penis hit by lightning
A Croatian motorbiker’s penis was zapped by lightning as he stopped beside the road to take a leak.
Ante Djindjic, 29, from Zagreb, said: “I don’t remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.
“Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis.”
Djindjic, who suffered light burns to his chest and arms, added: “Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually.”
The Pirate Bay - The worlds largest BitTorrent tracker
Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.
While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.
The companies that are being reported are the following:
* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB
Slashdot | Google Planning New Undersea Cable Across Pacific?
“Google is planning a multi-terabit undersea communications cable across the Pacific Ocean for launch in 2009, Communications Day reports: ‘Google would not strictly confirm or deny the existence of the Unity plan today, with spokesman Barry Schnitt telling our North American correspondent Patrick Neighly that “Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable. We’re not commenting on any of these plans.” However, Communications Day understands that Unity would see Google join with other carriers to build a new multi-terabit cable. Google would get access to a fibre pair at build cost handing it a tremendous cost advantage over rivals such as MSN and Yahoo, and also potentially enabling it to peer with Asia ISPs behind their international gateways — considerably improving the affordability of Internet services across Asia Pacific.’”
CMU professor gives his last lesson on life
Randy Pausch set the tone early on yesterday at his farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University.
“If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you,” said Dr. Pausch, a 46-year-old computer science professor who has incurable pancreatic cancer.
It’s not that he’s in denial about the fact that he only has months to live, he told the 400 listeners packed into McConomy Auditorium on the campus, and the hundreds more listening to a live Web cast.
It’s more that “I am in phenomenally good health right now; it’s the greatest cognitive dissonance you will ever see — the fact is, I’m in better shape than most of you,” he said.
And then, to the appreciative laughs and applause of his audience, Dr. Pausch dropped to the stage floor and did a set of pushups.
“So anyone who wants to cry or pity me can come down here and do a few of those, and then you may pity me,” he said.
“What we’re not going to talk about today,” he continued, “is cancer, because I’ve spent a lot of time talking about that … and we’re not going to talk about things that are even more important, like my wife and [three preschool] kids, because I’m good, but I’m not good enough to talk about that without tearing up.”
Habeas Corpus: Bring it to a vote
Senate Democrats on Wednesday lost the fight to restore habeas corpus rights to imprisoned “illegal enemy combatants” when the procedural motion fell four votes shy of the 60 needed to cut off debate.
The rights, which were eliminated by the implementation of the Military Commissions Act last year, allowed detainees to challenge the evidence against them — and therefore the legality of their detention — before a federal judge.
Most of the detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay — more than 95 haven’t been charged with anything and those who have are entitled only to a closed military hearing.
The logic of those who vote against the restoration of habeas rights, such as closeted Republican Sen. Joe Lieberman (the only non-Republican to vote against the motion, while six actual Republicans sided with the Dems on the issue), is that the prisoners are dangerous foreign criminals who don’t deserve access to the U.S. courts.
The U.S. arrests and detains those men on foreign soil. Shouldn’t they have the right to fight the evidence held against them? According to the 43 senators who voted against the motion, no.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in June to hear the appeals of two sets of Guantanamo detainees, but a legislative fix is needed, now. Sen. Arlen Specter said he’s looking for another way to put the habeas provision to a vote, and we hope he succeeds.
Every time this effort is defeated, our president’s claims of bringing democracy and freedom to the rest of the world seem all the more obscene.
SCI FI Tech | SCIFI.COM
Right when you think you’ve got a cable standard down that works with most of your devices, some committee or commission of some sort goes and releases a new, better standard to upgrade to. It’s pretty annoying, but it’s one of the things you’ve got to deal with in technology. It moves pretty fast, after all. So first there was USB, then there was USB 2.0, and now, wouldn’t you know it, we’re about to get USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 improves upon its successors by adding fiber-optic cable alongside the copper wiring, greatly increasing the speeds. The upgrade should allow for high-def devices, such as HD DVD or Blu-ray players, to use the standard to send data. As of now, today’s USB cables aren’t fast enough for such heavy transfers, sending data at 480 megabits per second. USB 3.0, on the other hand, will increase that tenfold to a whopping 4.8 gigabits per second. The fancy new cables should start hitting shelves and being used in devices around 2009 or 2010.
Sunny Outlook: Can Sunshine Provide All U.S. Electricity?: Scientific American
In the often cloudless American Southwest, the sun pours more than eight kilowatt-hours per square meter of its energy onto the landscape. Vast parabolic mirrors in the heart of Californias Mojave Desert concentrate this solar energy to heat special oil to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit 400 degrees Celsius. This hot oil transfers its heat to water, vaporizing it, and then that steam turns a turbine to produce electricity. All told, nine such mirror fields, known as concentrating solar power plants, supply 350 megawatts of electricity yearly.
In the face of mounting concern about climate change, alternatives to coal and natural gas combustion such as these never seemed more attractive. And with the bounty of the sun waiting to be captured near fast-growing major centers of electricity consumption—Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix, among others—interest in such solar thermal technology is on the rise. The first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to the neon lights of Vegas this summer.
But physicist David Mills, chief scientific officer and founder of Palo Alto, Calif.–based solar-thermal company Ausra, has bigger ideas: concentrating the suns power to provide all of the electricity needs of the U.S., including a switch to electric cars feeding off the grid. “Within 18 months, with storage, we will not only reduce [the] cost of [solar-thermal] electricity but also satisfy the requirements for a modern society,” Mills claims. “Supplying [electricity] 24 hours a day and effectively replacing the function of coal or gas.”
Leaked Media Defender e-mails reveal secret government project
Peer-to-peer (P2P) poisoning company MediaDefender suffered an embarrassing leak this weekend, when almost 700MB of internal company e-mail was distributed on the Internet via BitTorrent. The e-mails reveal many aspects of MediaDefender’s elaborate P2P disruption strategies, illuminate previously undisclosed details about the MiiVi scandal, and bring to light details regarding MediaDefender’s collaboration with the New York Attorney General’s office on a secret law enforcement project. We have been reviewing the data for days and will have multiple reports on the topic.
MediaDefender specializes in file-sharing mitigation—practices that disrupt and deter infringing uses of P2P file-sharing networks. Music labels and movie studios pay the company millions of dollars to temporarily impede the propagation of new releases in order to compel consumers to pursue legitimate commercial distribution channels. MediaDefender accomplishes this task by using its array of 2,000 servers and a 9GBps dedicated connection to propagate fake files and launch denial of service attacks against distributors.
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