ChasingBlueSky

They banned virtual sales on ebay? A quick search shows people selling WoW accounts/characters on the site still: http://cgi.ebay.com/World-of-Warcraft-Guide-67-Orc-Warrior-WoW_W0QQitemZ250079931841QQihZ015QQcategoryZ4596QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Also, this transfer of virtual goods in a game to cash isn't within the TOS of those games. Most companies, like Blizzard, tend to perma ban the accounts they capture doing this. Trust me, I thought about selling my account at one time :) edit: Just found the story on ebay: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6154372.html _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Because they know they will be tried by a jury of their peers and they will be found.... No... Wait... They should be because the jury is going to be pissed they were late for work and want to get even. Coming from Chicago where the Mayor plows under an airport in a hissy fit because Disney World gets a TFR and we don't.....I tend to believe that this was escalated for a reason, someone has an agenda in Boston. And for tue jury...what't the worst that can happen. It's not like our legal system would find someone guilty for using someone elses computer that had spyware on it and those adds were seen by children...... _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I kept watching the news last night trying to figure out how it was a bomb scare/hoax.....I still can't figure that one out. I just was watching MSNBC on the way in to work and the two guys they arrested were grining as they walked by the camera. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

He isn't the first has-been actor to seek a 2nd life in front of the public....I'd say the blame goes back to 1979 _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16910222/ AP WASHINGTON - Comedian and radio talk show host Al Franken has decided to run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, a senior Democratic official from Minnesota said. The official, who did want to be identified because Franken has not made an announcement, said Wednesday that Franken told her of his decision recently. Earlier this week, Air America Radio, a liberal talk radio network, on which Franken is a longtime personality said it had reached a tentative agreement to be sold to the founder of a New York area real estate company and that Franken would depart next month The network said in a statement that Franken's last day on the air would be Feb. 14. The network didn't specify why Franken was leaving, but Franken told the AP earlier this month that he had contacted Minnesota lawmakers to seek advice about a possible run for the Senate against incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman. Franken, who grew up in the Twin Cities suburb of St. Louis Park and moved back to Minneapolis last year, acknowledged on the air Monday that he's getting close to a decision, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported. "I'm definitely giving it serious consideration, and I plan to make a decision soon and announce that, hopefully not on the same day that Barack Obama makes his decision and announces that," the newspaper quoted Franken as saying. Franken told his audience his last show, on Feb. 14, will be "sort of a valentine" and held out the possibility that if he's made up his mind on running, he might make the announcement on one of his final shows, the newspaper reported. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

In the US that is about 12-13 years old _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

The desktop is a 3-D environment that requires a lot of resources. :/ They have also tried to make the OS more user friendly. This tends to mean that MS takes away the ability to do certain things to provide a feature for the lowest common user. Outside of DirectX 10 I have no reason to upgrade at all. And since the good DX10 games are still 6-12 months away I am not upgrading any time soon. I don't like the license/tos or the DRM associated with Vista. I also do not like the changes made to installing programs that don't have a MS stamp on them for easy install/use. One other thing is the way they changed access to certain files that allowed 3rd party virus checkers to work - as it stands we will not have heuristic virus protection because of this. WinXP SP2 works great (finally) and I don't see ANYTHING that prompts me to spend the money to upgrade. I don't need the gimick file serach engine since I have my own custom file tree which makes it easy to find anything. edit - this is most likely the last ever MS OS release as the world is changing and a massive OS just isn't needed anymore. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Go back and read alot of the posts supporting GW before the last election. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/substitute_teacher_faces_jail.html?nav=rss_blog Substitute Teacher Faces Jail Time Over Spyware A 40-year-old former substitute teacher from Connecticut is facing prison time following her conviction for endangering students by exposing them to pornographic material displayed on a classroom computer. Local prosecutors charged that the teacher was caught red-handed surfing for porn in the presence of seventh graders. The defense claimed the graphic images were pop-up ads generated by spyware already present on the computer prior to the teacher's arrival. The jury sided with the prosecution and convicted her of four counts of endangering a child, a crime that brings a punishment of up to 10 years per count. She is due to be sentenced on March 2. I had a chance this week to speak with the accused, Windham, Conn., resident Julie Amero. Amero described herself as the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks. On the morning of Oct 19, 2004, Amero said she reported for duty at a seventh grade classroom at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn. After stepping out into the hall for a moment, Amero returned to find two students hovering over the computer at the teacher's desk. As supported by an analysis of her computer during the court proceedings, the site the children were looking at was a seemingly innocuous hairstyling site called "new-hair-styles.com." Amero said that shortly thereafter, she noticed a series of new Web browser windows opening up displaying pornographic images, and that no matter how quickly she closed each one out, another would pop up in its place. "I went back to computer and found a bunch of pop-ups," Amero said. "They wouldn't go away. I mean, some of the sites stayed on there no matter how many times I clicked the red X, and others would just pop back up." Amero said she panicked and ran down the hall to the teacher's lounge to ask for help. "I dared not turn the the computer off. The teacher had asked me not to sign him out" of the computer, she recalled. Amero said none of the teachers in the lounge moved to help her, and that another teacher later told her to ignore the ads, that they were a common annoyance. Later on, prosecutors would ask why she hadn't just thrown a coat or a sweater over monitor. On that day Amero hadn't worn either. Several children told their parents about the incident, who in turn demanded answers from the school's principal. Three days later, school administrators told Amero she was not welcome back. Not long after that, local police arrested her on charges of risking injury to several students. The case came to trial this month, and computer expert W. Herbert Horner testified for the defense that the images were the result of incessant pop-up ads served by spyware on the classroom computer. The prosecution's expert, a local police officer, said time-stamped logs on the machine showing adult-themed images and Web pages accessed by the Web browser at the time she was in the classroom proved that someone had intentionally visited the sites by clicking on a link or typing the address into the browser address bar. An explanation for this is that Web browser logs will keep records of sites accessed whether they were generated by internal pop-up serving software or clicked on by a user. Also, try not to dwell on the fact that the judge in the case barred Horner from presenting technical evidence to back up his claims. Horner on Monday published a summary of the facts he would have presented were he allowed to at trial. I checked out theInternet Archive's view of the site referenced in this case, and it is clear that the page was a gateway site for the type of products typically promoted by spam -- penis enlargement and hair loss drugs. A review of the site's source code shows that it also uses Javascript to launch at least one pop-up ad promoting various online dating and porn sites. When I clicked on one of the sites in that list -- "CoolSexx!" -- my anti-virus program alerted me that it was trying to drop a Trojan horse program on my machine (Trojans are generally used to download malicious software to your PC). The spyware was attempting to load itself onto my computer despite the fact that I was using Internet Explorer 7 and up-to-date anti-virus software. Try also to ignore that the computer in question was a Microsoft Windows 98 machine running an outdated version of Internet Explorer Web browser (IE 5.0), or that the school's license for its firewall program expired prior to the date of the alleged incident. Likewise, the machine's anti-virus software (Cheyenne Software) was expired and it lacked any anti-spyware tools. In short, the Windows 98 computer was completely exposed to the Internet without any kind of protection. Then there is the admission by the prosecution that it had failed to conduct even a rudimentary scan of the computer's hard drive with anti-spyware software. Amero's defense said that had it been allowed to present its full testimony, it would have shown the results of spyware software scans on the PC she used, which found two adware programs and at least one Trojan horse program. The logs showed that all of the unwanted programs had been installed weeks prior to the alleged incident, the defense claims. Spyware and adware has long been the source of objectionable pop-up ads. In February 2006, I wrote about a young man who was earning thousands of dollars each month installing porn pop-up ad serving software on computers whose users had failed to equip the machines with security patches or firewall software. The adware this kid installed was a Web browser add-on that barraged victims with endless pop-ads for adult Web sites and services. I managed to track down several of his victims, including a technologically naive pastor in Memphis. I spoke briefly with Amero's attorney, who said: "I sincerely believe that had we been allowed to present our testimony in full, Julie would not have been convicted. This is a grave miscarriage of justice." With no prior convictions or criminal history, Amero was eligible under state law for "auxiliary rehabilitation," meaning she could have the charges expunged by agreeing to a short probationary period (provided she didn't get arrested again during that period). But, insistent upon her innocence, she chose to fight the charges. A number of blogs have recently spoken up on Amero's behalf. Also, a former Massachusetts school administrator recently called on the state governor to pardon Amero and expunge the conviction. Even the local paper, firmly convinced of Amero's guilt, called for lenience in her sentencing. This may not have been an isolated incident in the Connecticut public school system. According to another former teacher in Amero's school, who spoke this week with Security Fix on condition of anonymity, the kids in the school had few restrictions on what sorts of content they could and did view on school computers. "You could look at any history in any computer and chances are you would see the children had [visited] inappropriate sites," the teacher said. Update, 3:38 p.m. ET: I have corrected two factual errors in the above post, thanks to an eagle-eyed reader from Tennessee who sent me a note. Cheyenne Software was the name of the old anti-virus program (long ago bought up by Symantec), not the firewall software. Also, the weather on the October day of the alleged incident was in the 50s and rainy, so not exactly "balmy." _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

A decent article, seems to slant more towards supporting the Dems but does make sure to cover both sides of the issue. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/washington/30cnd-congress.html?hp&ex=1170219600&en=001783a7bfe4f5c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage Senators Assert Right to Block Bush’s Iraq Plan By JOHN O’NEIL Published: January 30, 2007 The Senate Judiciary Committee began laying the constitutional groundwork today for an effort to block President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, or to put new limits on the conduct of the war there. Democrats on the committee were joined by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who led the panel for the last two years, in asserting that Mr. Bush cannot simply ignore Congressional opposition to his plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. “I would respectfully suggest to the President that he is not the sole decider,” Mr. Specter said. “The decider is a joint and shared responsibility.” Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, acted as chairman for the hearing, and said he would soon introduce a resolution to block the funds needed for the troop increase. “Since the President is adamant about pursuing his failed policy in Iraq, Congress has a duty to stand up and prevent him,” Mr. Feingold said. Mr. Feingold’s bill would go beyond a nonbinding resolution passed by the Foreign Relations Committee last week, which expressed opposition to the troop increase. Many Democrats have shied away from a direct attempt to thwart the president’s strategy, and some Republicans, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have all but dared the war’s opponents to try cutting off financing, a move they believe would be seen as undermining the nation’s troops. Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican of Utah, said that Congress must “consider not only our policy objectives, but what message we send by our actions.” Mr. Hatch was repeatedly interrupted by a woman in the audience, who said that her son was a marine due to return soon to Iraq for his third tour of duty there. Mr. Bush’s plan calls for 4,000 additional marines to be deployed to Anbar province. “He can’t go back,” she said. Mr. Hatch expressed sympathy, but went on to say that “some who say they support our troops turn around and talk about defunding them. “The message to our troops is that we no longer support them,” he said. Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, countered by citing news articles that said some of the new troops being sent to Iraq are going without adequate training or equipment. “Now who is standing behind the troops?” he asked. Mr. Durbin suggested that Congress revisit the resolution it passed in 2002 authorizing the use of force in Iraq, since the prime reasons cited in it — the threats posed by Saddam Hussein and by weapons of mass destruction that Iraq was thought to possess — were no longer factors. “By what authority do we continue this war?” he said. Mr. Specter read the results of a survey of service members conducted by The Military Times, which found that only 35 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush’s handling of the war. The senator suggested that in that light, the military might be “appreciative of questions being raised by Congress.” Mr. Feingold insisted that his resolution would “not hurt our troops in any way,” since it did not affect financing for troops already deployed. The panel heard from legal experts, who cited constitutional debates over conflicts ranging from the “quasi-war” with Napoleon in 1798 to peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Somalia in recent years. No war seemed to hang more heavily over the hearing than Vietnam, where Congress brought American involvement to a close by cutting off financing. Prof. Robert Turner of the University of Virginia suggested that Congress had made itself responsible for the deaths of the 1.7 million Cambodians estimated to have been slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, by denying funds for President Nixon to wage war inside Cambodia. Similarly, he said Congress bore responsibility for the deaths of 241 marines killed by a suicide bomber in Lebanon in 1983 because it raised the question of forcing a withdrawal there. Other experts testifying at the hearing said that Congress had the power not only to declare war, but to make major strategic and policy decisions about its conduct. Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law for the Library of Congress, said, “I don’t know of any ground for a belief that the president has any more special expertise in whether to continue a war than do the members of Congress.” He said that the title of “commander in chief” was meant by the framers to emphasize unity of command and civilian control over the military. “The same duty commanders have to the president, the president has to the elected representatives.” Walter Dellinger, once a top Justice Department official under President Clinton and now a professor of law at Duke University, said that “Congress does not have an all or nothing choice,” and can “validly limit the presidential use of force.” An example of unconstitutional Congressional interference, he said, would be an effort to force the president to choose certain generals. But a resolution of the sort described by Senator Feingold would be “fully within Congress’s powers,” he said, since it would provide “not one penny less” for troops now in engaged combat, but would set limits on where other troops could be deployed. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

ADHD??? I had the hiccups for nearly a day and was quite miserable. Some friends came over before a night out at the bar. My friends wife turns to me without warning and asked me the above question. My response was one of "um....huh?" and for a moment I actually thought about it. I was cured, no more hiccups. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

When is the last time you saw a pink squirell? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

seems to confirm that the main cause of religious phanatsy is the fear of death - which tends to become greater the more imminent the event is. Cheers, T It's more 'fear of the unknown' than just the fear of death that prompts humans to create images/stories/beliefs around an entity that exists beyond our understanding. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Outside of maybe McCain, I haven't seen any politicians come up with something solid. I'm a big fan of Obama but what has he offered other than "we must get troops out and I will not support Bush's new (first?) plan to end the conflict. I have heard former DoD folk offer stuff to the media, but I have yet to see anyone inside DC offer a fully documented plan. Then again, I don't know if the Bush plan isn't anything more than his "21,500" troops speech. IN fact: Soooo, all this plan talk is a bunch of bullshit hot-air from both sides.... I need to try that on my next RFP and see how well it works. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

First off, most of the people that go to the Super Bowl aren't the hard core fans. Much like the World Series, the NFL owns about 90% of the tickets, the last 10% are handed out among season ticket holders and the two teams that play. The other 90% are handed out by the NFL as they see fit: promotions, business partners, trusted/valued friends, etc. This means that the people you see for 18 weeks on TV braving the cold are left at home, or they journey to sit outside the game for the entire thing and tailgate. For most fans, the traditional season happenings end with the last home game. I can see part of this as a security issue, part of this as crowd control, and the rest as 'big game' image security (just TRY to use Super Bowl on any non-NFL events and watch how fast their lawyer calls you). I personally don't care as much about the tailgate issue as I do that tickets are not obtainable for the majority of the fans. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Actually, for once I agree with him on this: I'm tired of the politicing around the war. Those in disagreement with Bush are being just as destructive to the lives of the troops by not submitting a solid plan of their own. Put up or shut up. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Doesn't one get a massive slammer if it opens when you clear the baglock? I think I would have done the same what he did btw, try and clear it. I can't access youtube from work, so I haven't seen the video yet. But the canopy should still have a staged deployment once it comes out of the bag. It might be a little rough due to line twists, but in theory it shouldn't open any harder. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Hint; do NOT look for them on www.whitehouse.gov, they've been removed, white washed and expunged from the web site. I found direct links to the ones from 2006 and 2005, and the press release to the one in 2003. His first four are presented only as pictures from him practicing for them. Luckily there are plent of places on the web to find the ones from the first four years (the 'cache' option on google is an amazing option). But I did find it interesting that the first four were removed. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Know what I found really fun to do....go back and reread the previous GW State of the Union speaches. Then hit up google and read the responses in the media to them. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

back then Nightline was on right afterwards. Programming has changed, "special news departments" are created, etc. Different name, same bag of opinions. I said "if" I didn't say it was 100% negative. It was just something I tossed out there. However, Mr Stein acted as if everyone was negative, nor do I remember him spouting a def for the POTUS in the past either when it was Clinton up there taking a beating (instead it was Pat Robinson defending him). _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I grew up watching panels on Nightline after the SOTUA, its nothing new. Remember in 1993 when the GOP was booing Clinton during the SOTUA? That was a major topic afterwards. During the Regan years there was much discussion afterwards on unemployment and homeless people during the late 80s, etc _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Permission Denied Proxy is your friend. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

If the reaction is 100% negative that is a red flag that something is very wrong with the administration. If the people that elected them are reacting poorly they should be concerned. There has ALWAYS been negaitve feedback to the SOTUA no matter who has done it. There is always a panel of speakers that represent one side or the other and they either pound their fist or speak their mind for/against what was said. Nothing is new. My thoughts are that NPR also had Bush supporters on that show by Stein wanted to slant his story to further his opinion.....which is just more politics. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

And that puts him into a spot to say the media shouldn't be on the opposite side of the fence as the President? Did he go after Fox news or any of their shows for doing the same to Clinton or the dem's over the years? All Stein did was find a very lengthy, verbose way of claiming "the leftist media" is staging a movement against the GOP. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

How can the reporting be neutral if the source isn't? Look at some of the venom that Hillary, McCain and Cheney have dished out in the past week. Hillary bashed only the GOP, esp the Pres/VP, McCain bashed both sides and targeted the VP specifically, and when confronted Cheney went after Hillary because "she is a democrat" and then said McCain is a good guy. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....