jamotto

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pfc. Chassan S. Henry, 20, of West Palm Beach, Fla., died Feb. 25 in Ramadi, Iraq, from injuries sustained from an explosion while he was conducting combat operations. Henry was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division, Camp Hovey, Korea.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Alexander B. Crackel, 31, of Wilstead Bedford, United Kingdom, died Feb. 24 in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, from injuries sustained from enemy small arms fire. Crackel was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, Camp Hovey, Korea.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Feb. 26 in Abertha, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while they were on patrol. Both Soldiers were assigned to the Army's 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. The Soldiers are: Pfc. Min S. Choi, 21, of River Vale, N.J. Pvt. Landon S. Giles, 19, of Indiana, Penn.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:Originally posted by Asso: MoBoI see it's not P4P8VX-X but p4v8x-x ok, just took what you had in your sig. Glad you got it up and running.

WING COMMANDER BATTLE STATION quote:Wing Commander Battle Station is a fan made Shooter. Taking place during Wing Commander 1 Era, You will encounter numerous foes, but you are not alone in the battle, you will be Aid by other Confederation Fighters and Carriers in a battle to save Vega Sector from the Kilrathi. Right Know the Game is still in Creation progress, where is not much to see, please come sooncan get the techdemo here quote:There are no enemies or levels implemented, but you can fly a couple ships and shoot a few guns to get a feel for how the game will control. You select ships with Enter, fire with Control and move with the arrow keys. G switches guns in the Rapier.

quote:Originally posted by Asso: My nVidia adapter properties parameters are just like yours: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0. But there's something in the bios I don't like very much... The AGP setting is "auto". And it's grayed out,That is most likely the AGP driving strength, and should be set to auto. You can read about what the settings do here This leads me to a question are you sure this is a Asus motherboard? Your motherboard board is not listed on the Asus website. Tried to search for it on google and got no hits. I don't wish to give you any suggestions without knowing what I am working with. To that end I find this software useful EVEREST Home Edition It can report back information about your system including the status of the AGP controller, What model your motherboard is etc. It can also generate a report that you can E-mail to me if you wish. Using the Report button on the toolbar.

Link quote:James Niccolai, IDG News Service Jef Raskin, the lead designer of the first Macintosh computer and a pioneer in the development of user interfaces, died Saturday at age 61. He had been diagnosed recently with pancreatic cancer, his family says in a statement. Raskin joined Apple Computer in 1978 as employee number 31 and headed the company's Macintosh development team from its founding in 1982. He named the project after his favorite type of apple, changing the spelling for copyright reasons. He is credited with significantly advancing the design of user interfaces, which in the early 1980s were largely text-based and required users to memorize complex commands. Raskin convinced his peers at Apple that to reach a wider audience, the Macintosh needed an interface that was elegant and easy to use. "Up to that time, at Apple and most other manufacturers, the concept was to provide the latest and most powerful hardware, and let the users and third-party software vendors figure out how to make it usable," he wrote later on his Web site. Raskin left Apple in 1982, two years before the Macintosh went on sale, but he continued to influence the design of computers through his writing, lectures, and consulting work. Soon after leaving the company he founded Information Appliance, where he designed the Canon Cat computer for Canon USA, although the product was not a commercial success. His consulting clients have included Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and many other big names in computing. In 2000 he published a book, "The Humane Interface," that is widely assigned at universities. Raskin was currently at work on a project called Archy, where he hoped to put many of the ideas expressed in his book into software. Archy uses simple commands for common operations in word processing and e-mail, but "doesn't work like anything else on this or nearby planets," meaning users would have to learn it from scratch, he wrote on his Web site. His son, Aza Raskin, will continue to develop the project, a preview version of which is due out later this year, his family says in the statement. Raskin's interests were not restricted to computers: He taught the recorder, harpsichord, and music theory at San Francisco Community College in the 1970s, and his family described him as an orchestral soloist and composer. He also founded a company that designed and sold radio-controlled model aircraft. Along with Aza, he is survived by his wife, Linda Blum, and his other children, Aviva and Aenea. Raskin lived most recently in Pacifica, California.

That might explain why people in California are unhappy but it is really not as applicable to other places. For example here the median house price is $101,000 at that price you get a fairly nice house. Here I think it is benefits that people are most unhappy about.

Link quote:By ADAM GELLER, AP Business Writer NEW YORK - U.S. workers, pushed to produce more and uneasy about new technology and other changes, are markedly less satisfied with their jobs than a decade ago, a new survey says. But the decline in on-the-job happiness, which continued through economic cycles in recent years, has at least temporarily leveled off, according to the survey released Monday by The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group. Half of U.S. workers are happy with their jobs, down from nearly 59 percent in 1995, according to the survey. Of those, about 14 percent say they are very satisfied, on par with the group's last survey in 2003 and down from 18.4 percent in 1995. The number of those satisfied is slightly higher than in a similar survey done in 2003, when 48.9 percent of workers indicated they were content with their jobs. Compared to a decade ago, job satisfaction has declined among all types of workers, but the drop varies by age and income. The biggest decline in on-the-job happiness was among workers earning $25,000 to $35,000 and among workers between the ages of 35 to 44. The workers most satisfied with their jobs are those earning $50,000 or more and workers at least 65 years old, the survey found. The long-term drop in job satisfaction has been driven by rapid changes in technology, employers' push for productivity and shifting expectations among workers, said Lynn Franco, director of the group's Consumer Research Center. "As large numbers of baby boomers prepare to leave the work force, they will be increasingly replaced by younger workers, who tend to be as dissatisfied with their jobs, but have different attitudes and expectations about the role of work in their lives," Franco said. "This transition will present a new challenge for employers." The survey, conducted for The Conference Board by market research firm TNS, is based on a representative sample of 5,000 households surveyed in July. Workers are generally content with their commutes to work and the relationships with co-workers. But they voice substantial discontent with their companies' bonus plans, promotion policies, health plans and pension benefits. Only about one in three said they are satisfied with their pay. The decline in satisfaction, though, also reflects harder to quantify factors like stress, the blurring of lines between work and home life, Franco said. "It's not just about money anymore. It's not about wages. It's about much more than that," she said. "It's about overall job aspects, both monetary and kind of these softer issues as well."

Link quote:The following is a large collection of stories and anecdotes about clueless computer users. It's a baffling phenomenon that in today's society an individual, who might in other circumstances be considered smart and wise, can sit down in front of a computer screen and instantly lose every last shred of common sense he ever possessed. Complicate this phenomenon with a case of "computerphobia," and you end up with tech support personnel having phone conversations that are funny in retrospect but seem like perfectly valid motives for wild machine gun shooting sprees at the time. You will read stories in this file that will convince you that among the human race are human-shaped artichokes futilely attempting to break the highly regarded social convention that vegetables should not operate electronic equipment. And yet, amidst the vast, surging quantities of stupidity are perfectly excusable technological mishaps -- but that are amusing nonetheless. After all, even the best of us engages in a little brainless folly every once in a while. Most of these stories are true. Some happened to me personally. Some happened to friends of mine. Some are considered urban legends, but even most of these are more likely to have happened in some form or another than not. Skeptics look at such stories and doubt their truth. But reason, common sense, and experience tell me that if you sit someone who isn't computer literate (even a smart someone) down in front of a computer, you're bound to accrue anecdotes no less outrageous than these. You'd be surprised.

Link quote:LONDON (AFP) - A groundbreaking -- and deadly -- Poison Garden threw open its doors in northeast England with a much talked about collection of cannabis plants, opium poppies and the coca plant that is the source of cocaine. Mind-bending magic mushrooms, poisonous foxgloves, deadly nightshades, tobacco plants and wild lettuce tranquillisers are also among the 50 dangerous plants cultivated in the garden at Alnwick Castle, designed by Belgian landscape artist Peter Virtz. To highlight its hazardous nature, the Poison Garden's beds are laid in the shape of flickering flames. Visitors will be also escorted through the grounds, where the most deadly plants are being kept behind security bars. The 400,000-pound (560,000-euro, 768,000-dollar) garden is the brainchild of Jane, Duchess of Northumberland, who is turning Alnwick Castle -- a backdrop to Harry Potter (news - web sites) movies -- into a major draw for Britain's legion of horticultural enthusiasts. "The garden's appeal of danger presents teachers and parents with a new avenue to tackle drug awareness with young people," said the duchess, who had to get Home Office permission to create the garden. "After all, young people are more fascinated by what plants can kill you than what plants are good for you.

Link quote: WASHINGTON, D.C. - Scientists may not have to go over to the dark side to explain the fate of the universe. The theory that the accelerated expansion of the universe is caused by mysterious "dark energy" is being challenged by New York University physicist Georgi Dvali. He thinks there's just a gravity leak. Scientists have known since the 1920s that the universe is expanding. In the late 1990s, they realized that it is expanding at an ever-increasing pace. At a loss to explain the stunning discovery, cosmologists blamed it on dark energy, a newly coined term to describe the mysterious antigravity force apparently pushing galaxies outward. This repulsive, unknown force is believed to make up more than 70 percent of the mass-energy budget of the universe. But the existence of dark energy is far from proven, and some researchers believe they and their colleagues simply don't understand gravity at larger scales. The gravitational pull between any two objects becomes less with distance. But in Dvali's view, it weakens more than standard theory predicts. Dvali would modify the theory of gravity so that the universe becomes self-accelerating, eliminating the need for dark energy. He presented his work here earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites). Dvali borrows from string theory, which states that there are extra, hidden dimensions beyond the four we are familiar with: three directions and time. String theory suggests that gravitons -- hypothetical elementary particles transmitting gravitational forces -- can escape to other dimensions. Dvali says this would cause "leaks" in gravity over cosmic proportions, reducing gravitational pull at larger distances more than expected. "The gravitons behave like sound in a metal sheet," says Dvali. "Hitting the sheet with a hammer creates a sound wave that travels along its surface. But the sound propagation is not exactly two-dimensional as part of the energy is lost into the surrounding air. Near the hammer, the loss of energy is small, but further away, it's more significant." The effect is to alter the space-time continuum, speeding up universal expansion. "Virtual gravitons exploit every possible route between the objects," Dvali said, "and the leakage opens up a huge number of multi-dimensional detours, which brings about a change in the law of gravity." The speeding up of the universe suggest that Einstein's laws of General Relativity, describing the interaction of space and matter, must be modified at large cosmic distances. "It is this modification, and not dark energy, that is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe," Dvali concludes. The idea might be testable. Gravity leakage should create minor deviations in the motion of planets and moons. Astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission installed mirrors on the lunar surface. By shooting lasers at the mirrors, a reflected beam can be monitored from Earth to measure tiny orbital fluctuations. Dvali said deviations in the Moon's path around Earth might reveal whether gravity is really leaking away.

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Iraqi Freedom. They died Feb. 25 in Taji, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while they were on dismounted patrol. Killed were: Spc. Adam N. Brewer, 22, of Dewey, Okla. Spc. Jason L. Moski, 24, of Blackville, S.C. Spc. Colby M. Farnan, 22, of Weston, Mo. Brewer was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas. Moski and Farnan were assigned to the 4th Battalion, 1st Field Artillery, Fort Riley, Kan.Link May you rest in peace...

I assume that the AGP driver checkbox was checked when you installed the 4in1 right? It will ask you again if you would like to install the AGP driver.

quote:Originally posted by Wolferz: I think every state should add a few more questions to their written licensing tests, al beit; [*]What is the correct speed for eating? [*]What is the correct speed for Cell Phone use? [*]What is the correct speed for settling the children down? [*]What is the correct speed for applying makeup? [*]What is the correct speed for perusing reading material? heh, I am all for that. Need to add: What is the correct speed for getting fully dressed?

Link quote:By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer The family sleeps in a single room, its walls bare and windowless, its cracked concrete floor crowded with plastic storage bins and three mattresses: one for dad, one for mom and daughter, one for the three young sons. Fluorescent lights will flicker on at 6 a.m., to start their new day. This room in an old red-brick factory-turned-shelter in Chicago is home for the Torres family. They consider themselves lucky to be here. They have a warm place to stay. They have three meals a day. And they have each other. The family is among an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 people who, on any given night in America, lack a real home. Homelessness exploded as a politically potent issue during the Reagan era of the 1980s, and according to some estimates, the number of those without a permanent place to live has doubled in the last 20 years. But some experts say more people now fall into that category only because billions of dollars have been spent to build shelters. Americans are troubled by this issue: An Associated Press poll taken Feb. 11-13 found 53 percent consider homelessness a very serious problem, while 36 percent say it's somewhat serious. Some 56 percent see the long-term homeless as victims of circumstances beyond their control, according to the survey. It was conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs among 1,001 adults and had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Who are the homeless? Where do they live? How did they come to this? For a snapshot, AP reporters and photographers spent 24 hours earlier this month meeting with people who live on the streets and in shelters, following them to their jobs, watching them in court and talking with those who try to help them. Here are their stories: ___ AFTER MIDNIGHT: PORTLAND, MAINE. Scotty Partridge is restless and pacing outside a blue tent pitched in the muddy soil among the barren spruce trees on the outskirts of Portland. "Hobo Jungle" has been his home for nearly a year. The months have taken their toll: Partridge's clothes are dirty and frayed. The skin of his windburned cheeks hangs loosely, like someone who has lost weight too quickly. On this 35-degree night, most of Portland's homeless are two miles away in the Oxford Street Shelter, sleeping on rows of mats four inches apart. But Partridge prefers a tent he has furnished with plywood, a radio, a battery-operated television and a discarded propane heater. He has a cell phone, too ÔÇö paid for by panhandling and collecting aluminum cans. Partridge, 36, swigs a can of Milwaukee's Best and reminisces about the days when he had a good job at a printing company in Chicago, a nice apartment, a woman he was going to marry. But when the relationship soured in the early 1990s, he returned home to Maine and moved in with a friend who was using heroin. Partridge soon became hooked, too. On methadone for five years, Partridge survives day to day. "I can't get up and go to work out of a tent," he says. "I need a stable environment to get up and shave, shower, and clean, feel normal and go. When you're in a tent, every day is so hard. ... Your priorities are so whacked out. ... You think about, OK, how am I going to eat today and how are my boots going to unthaw because they're frozen solid? ... "I go and crawl into my tent and then it's another day," he says. "... Being homeless is a full-time job." ___ ALMOST DAWN: NEW YORK CITY. John Mitchell rises for work with a siren blaring inside a homeless shelter in Harlem ÔÇö a signal for the nearly 200 residents to line up for twice-a-week drug tests. A 47-year-old former crack addict, Mitchell says he was in and out of prison and homeless for more than 20 years, robbing people for drug money and digging through trash cans for food. "I was that type of guy that, guess what, you didn't want to see on the streets," Mitchell says. "I came to the conclusion this time around I learned what that word surrender means." Seven months ago, the father of two teens became sober and entered the city's "Ready Willing & Able" program that provides shelter (10 men to a room), hot meals and a job cleaning the streets that pays up to $7 an hour. Mitchell's infectious laugh and ready quips make him the unofficial leader of the crew working the West Side this morning. He sweeps the streets and dumps garbage cans, the steady rain dripping off his nose. His mind is on the future ÔÇö he's studying at night to be a nurse's aide. "I gotta keep saying, this is not going to last forever, there's a bigger picture," he says. "It's like riding a bike ... right now I'm using training wheels. Before I know it, I'll be popping a wheelie." ___ 8:30 A.M.: CHICAGO. A 10-degree wind chill whips through the North Side streets of Chicago as 6-year-old Angelina Torres, in her pink wool hat, and her twin, Angel, in his Spiderman gloves, make their way to kindergarten. Their mom, Eileen Rivera, leads the way on the seven-block walk. Her two older sons, Omar, 9, and JJ, 10, have already left for another school ÔÇö a bus picked them up at 8 a.m. at the Sylvia Center, the shelter where the family has lived for eight months. Her arms folded against the cold, Rivera walks briskly, noting her twins have stayed in shelters about half their lives. "They just blend right in." She pauses, then adds: "It's sad." Her husband, Jesus Torres, recently found work operating a forklift, earning $7 an hour. The husky, outgoing father has been a handyman, pizza delivery man, ice cream cart driver, cashier and drug store clerk ÔÇö sometimes working in exchange for welfare checks. The Torreses are on waiting lists for public and subsidized housing. Rivera tells her children this is just a steppingstone. "Guys," she says, "we have to do this just a little longer. We have to go through this to get to the shining star." Rivera knows exactly what that will be: "Your own toilet. Your own tissues. Your own bath. Your own window. Things that are yours. Just yours." ___ 9 A.M.: MIAMI. Retha Ann Cain shuffles her shackled feet into a sixth-floor Miami courtroom. The 19-year-old was homeless before she was jailed for prostitution. And when her latest 180-day sentence is up in March, she will be again. Cain has been on and off the streets, in and out of foster care since she was 14. She says she was molested as a child by two male relatives. She ran away from Akron, Ohio, at 17 with a boyfriend and moved to sunny Miami. The two live in a tent. Her world-weary face belies her youth ÔÇö except when she allows herself a smile. Cain was already serving time for prostitution when she appeared before Circuit Judge Mary Jo Francis to face two counts of obstructing traffic to pick up tricks. She has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for credit for time served. Francis orders Cain to take part in an AIDS (news - web sites) education course ÔÇö Cain says she is HIV (news - web sites)-negative ÔÇö and tells her she'd be eligible for a county residential treatment program that includes housing and job training. Cain isn't interested. She enrolled in the program once and backed out. The judge offers her some free bus tokens. "Thank you, thank you," Cain says. "OK, Miss Cain," the judge replies with a smile. "Good luck." ___ LUNCH TIME: CINCINNATI. Brent Chasteen slings a backpack over his shoulder and heads out on the streets. An outreach worker, the 42-year-old Chasteen was hired by a business group called Downtown Cincinnati Inc. after the city enacted panhandling laws that require licenses for anyone who verbally begs. Chasteen, dressed in cargo pants and hooded sweatshirt, works his way through downtown, handing out discount food cards to the needy, offering help to a woman bundled up and sitting in Fountain Square amid tote bags stuffed with clothes. He later heads west to a desolate place near the railroad tracks where a shopping cart is filled with cans and bottles and covered with ragged green carpet. "Hey, Wolf!" Chasteen calls into the winter air. A purple sleeping bag tucked in a cardboard box moves. A man with a dark beard emerges. Wolf has been homeless for 10 years. "Trying to do what other people do ÔÇö it's a losing battle," he says, sipping a can of beer. "I sit and look at everybody out there and I go, 'Nah, I'm OK where I'm at.' " Chasteen makes no judgments. "I know that we may seem to be in separate worlds on the surface," he says, "but many of them share the same kinds of problems that affect me and everybody else." ___ 3 P.M.: WEST VIRGINIA. A light snow falls in the mining town of Monongah, W.Va., as nurse's aide Harleigh Marsh does a final check on his patients at St. Barbara's Memorial Nursing Home. Finding a plastic baby doll atop a medical cart, he returns it to the waiting arms of a patient named Dora. He leaves and by 3:15 p.m. arrives at Scott Place, a hillside shelter for the homeless in nearby Fairmont. Marsh, a 48-year-old former sailor, is one of nearly 250,000 veterans who are homeless on any given night in America. He lives in a dimly lit 14-by-14 room. A Zane Grey western and toiletries sit on his dresser top. He lost most of his family photos in his travels. After leaving the military in 1979, Marsh tried college, but wanderlust returned. He worked as a drywall hanger and painter, renting rooms by the week, living from a suitcase. In Milwaukee, he met a woman and fell in love. They had a son. Marsh was heartbroken when she found someone else ÔÇö and almost overnight, he was homeless. He ended up in Scott Place last year, struggling with depression. "But with the psychological help of the VA ... and a lot of time to think, I just worked it out," he says. Marsh loves his job but after $300 monthly child support payments, he's left with just $140 a week ÔÇö not even enough to travel to Milwaukee to see his 13-year-old boy, William Ray. They talk, but haven't seen each other since August 2003. "It tears both of us apart," he says. This fall, Marsh plans to apply to nursing programs at two local universities. If accepted, he'll work full time. For now, he has a room, a pine bed, a comforter and a sense of peace. "I have a place to go in the morning." ___ MID-AFTERNOON: CHICAGO. With the school day over, Eileen Rivera's four kids are home; the boys watch cartoons, Angela plays with Barbie dolls. Rivera, 38, slips off her long-haired dark wig ÔÇö a stress-related illness has left her bald ÔÇö and sits on a bed in the vault-like room. "Sometimes," she says, "I feel like saying to someone, 'Give my kids a home. Just a taste of it. For a bit.' " After the apartment building they lived in burned down in 1998, they lost their home; Rivera's husband, who was a handyman there, also lost his job. They moved to his mother's home in Puerto Rico but eventually returned to Chicago. Now, Rivera knows the written rules to shelter life ÔÇö and the unwritten ones. "My kids already know we've got to make friends ÔÇö we can't make enemies," she says. Though they have little space, the Torreses proudly save every 'student of the month' certificate, every blue ribbon their kids win. Jesus Torres, 43, also keeps a letter he wrote to social service officials. "I want permanent and stable housing for me and my family," it says. "I want to ... take responsibility as the head of the household. I want to be a productive member of society." Torres is saving money ÔÇö the shelter requires residents to set aside 75 percent of their earnings. He pays $43 monthly to store his family's belongings until they find a home. He's an optimist. His wife tries to be. "Sometimes I feel like it's not going to come and I'm just fooling myself," she says. "My kids will see me sad and say, 'You said we were going to get a home.' ... They make me feel like there is hope." ___ SUNDOWN: HOLLYWOOD. Nicole Hudson has a roof over her head ÔÇö for now. Sitting in Covenant House, a shelter for homeless and runaway teens, she ticks off the places she has lived in her 20 years: eight foster homes, two group homes, two shelters, one transitional apartment. She's also stayed with her mother three times and her grandparents twice. This is Hudson's fourth stint at Covenant House ÔÇö she has been kicked out three times for breaking the rules. She's been on the streets three times in the past year, living on-and-off with 25 other teens in a narrow alley off Hollywood Boulevard. "It's just horrible," she says in a husky voice with a hint of a Southern drawl. "We don't even like to walk past older people on the street and see them still sleeping all wrapped up in stinky blankets, dirty mattresses, their hair not combed." "What happened to the blue skies, you know, and the sun-shining days when you were little? It's like the world just crashes when you get older and your mind comes to reality." ___ LATE EVENING: LAS VEGAS. A few blocks from downtown Las Vegas' casinos, Clarence Woods is on his way to buy a pack of cigarettes. A week ago, he lived on the streets. But work as a day laborer has allowed him to move into a $370-a-month hotel. He doesn't know how long his luck will hold. The 53-year-old Woods is a father of five but says he's too embarrassed to tell his children where he's living. He says he ended up homeless because he was irresponsible. "It's like hell," he says, his cranberry stocking hat pulled snug over his ears in the desert chill. Woods says there aren't places to help homeless people like him. He once did well in Las Vegas and owned his own upholstery shop, he says. But he went bankrupt and ended up without a home. He calls himself a recreational drug user, drinker and gambler. "It's a real trap," he says, the neon signs flashing behind him, "but it's what Las Vegas is all about." ___ 9 P.M.: SEATTLE (MIDNIGHT EST). The lights are about to go out on another day at Seattle University where about 100 people live in a homeless camp on asphalt tennis courts. "Tent City" is both a haven and a political statement ÔÇö the homeless shouldn't be hidden. Volunteers cook meals and students and faculty organize legal and health clinics for residents. Among them are Russell Mace and Angela Cope. He says he once made a handsome living running his own catering and house-painting business in Texas, where he fell in love with Cope. But she returned to Seattle to try to reconcile with her two kids and their father. Mace, 45, says he turned to the bottle for a time. Then he and Cope, 49, reunited. They lived in cheap hotels until their money ran out. Now a tent is home. In recent months, Mace has lobbied city council members and state lawmakers on homeless issues. "I have a sense of pride, a sense of dignity, a sense of community here ÔÇö and a sense of purpose," he says. But he hopes his homeless days are numbered. He's trying to resurrect a Web site he had for handmade eye patches; he wears a silver-plated patch over his left eye, which he lost in a hunting accident years ago. After the camp goes dark, Cope shaves her partner, next to the only bulb still aglow at the front desk. "We gonna get any coffee or are we going to bed?" Mace asks. "Go to bed," she replies. They walk into the darkness, his arm around her back. On the other coast of America, midnight has just passed and another day for the homeless has just begun.

Link quote: By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer WICHITA, Kan. - A 31-year manhunt for a serial killer who taunted police with letters about his crimes ended Saturday when authorities said they finally caught up with the man who called himself BTK and linked him to at least 10 murders. The suspect was identified as Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old city worker in nearby Park City, who was arrested Friday. Police did not say how they identified Rader as a suspect or whether he has said anything since his arrest. "The bottom line: BTK is arrested," Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said Saturday, setting off applause from a crowd that included family members of some of the victims. BTK ÔÇö a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" ÔÇö stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita, a manufacturing center with 350,000 residents, about 180 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo. Then the killer resurfaced about a year ago after 25 years of silence. He had been linked to eight slayings between 1974 and 1986, but police said Saturday they had identified two more, from 1985 and 1991. Rader, a Cub Scout leader who was active at his Lutheran church, lived with his wife, neighbors said. Public records indicate they have two grown children. Messages left for family members were not returned on Saturday, and no one answered the door at the home of his in-laws. A few neighbors recalled receiving small favors from Rader, but most interviewed Saturday said the municipal codes enforcement supervisor was an unpleasant man who often went looking for reasons to cite his neighbors for violations of city codes. "A part of me was scared when I heard, because I talked to him. It's a little creepy," said Chris Yoder, 23, who once lived nearby. Rader has yet to be charged, but a jubilant collection of law enforcers and community leaders told the crowd in City Council chambers they were confident the long-running case could now be closed. "Victims whose voices were brutally silenced by the evil of one man will now have their voices heard again," Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline said. Rader was being held at an undisclosed location, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. In Kansas, suspects generally appear before a judge for a status hearing within 48 hours of their arrest. Prosecutor Nola Foulston said the death penalty would not apply to any crime committed between 1972 and 1994, when Kansas did not have the death penalty. The BTK slayings began in 1974 with the strangulations of Joseph Otero, 38, his wife, Julie, 34, and their two children. The six victims that followed were all women, and most were strangled. Along with his grisly crimes, the killer terrorized Wichita by sending rambling letters to the media, including one in which he named himself BTK for "Bind them, Torture them, Kill them." In another he complained, "How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?" But he stopped communicating in 1979 and remained silent for more than two decades before re-establishing contact last March with a letter to The Wichita Eagle about an unsolved 1986 killing. The letter included a copy of the victim's driver's license and photos of her slain body. The return address on the letter said it was from Bill Thomas Killman ÔÇö initials BTK. Since then, the killer had sent at least eight letters to the media or police, including three packages containing jewelry that police believed may have been taken from BTK's victims. One letter contained the driver's license of victim Nancy Fox. The new letters sent chills through Wichita but also rekindled hope that modern forensic science could find some clue that would finally lead police to the killer. Thousands of tips poured in, and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation gathered thousands of DNA swabs in connection with the BTK investigation. In the end, DNA evidence was the key to cracking the case, said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. "The way they made the link was some DNA evidence, that they had some DNA connection to the guy who they arrested," Sebelius said in an interview with The Associated Press. She did not elaborate. The two newly identified cases were similar to the early ones with one exception, Sedgwick County Sheriff Gary Stead said: The bodies had been removed from the crime scenes. One of the victims lived on the same street as Rader. "We as investigators keep an open mind. But only now are we able to bring them together as BTK cases," he said. On Friday, investigators searched Rader's house and seized computer equipment. Authorities, who generally declined to answer questions in detail after announcing the arrest, had little to say about why BTK resurfaced after years without contact. "It is possible something in his life has changed. I think he felt the need to get his story out," said Richard LaMunyon, Wichita's police chief from 1963 to 1989.

true, guess he would then have a bunch of hair in his mouth, nasty!

Ouch is right! Wonder why they destroyed that car on purpose for?

Link quote:By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer NOORDWIJK, Netherlands - Scientists said Friday they have discovered active volcanoes and frozen seas on Mars, and called for a follow-up mission to find out if there is life on the red planet. The recommendations came at the end of a weeklong conference in the Netherlands to analyze results from the European Space Agency's Mars probe. A poll conducted among 250 conference participants showed that 75 percent now believed life in the form of bacteria once existed on Mars, and 25 percent thought it might still be there. Scientists long have theorized that there once was water on Mars, the planet most like Earth in our solar system. Data from NASA's Mars Rovers have recently appeared to confirm it. But most believed the water evaporated early in the planet's history, leaving it cold and dry. Now it appears Mars's core may interact with the surface, meaning there is both warmth and moisture in the planet's recent past. "This mysterious lady is slowly revealing her secrets," NASA scientist Everett Gibson said. "From what we've seen Mars meets all the requirements that are needed for life to exist." The conference revealed ice packs at the planet's poles and the likely existence of a frozen sea near its equator, as well as signs of lava flows 20 million years ago and several recent cones near its North Pole. "You can see baby cones. I think they're still growing," said Professor Gerhard Neukum, who led the analysis of the high-resolution photographs taken by the Mars Express probe orbiting the planet for the past year. "I cannot prove it, but the evidence is very suggestive," he said. News of the discovery of the frozen sea ÔÇö which is the size of Earth's North Sea and appears similar to ice packs on Antarctica in photos ÔÇö made international science headlines on Tuesday. Gibson, an American invited to join in the analysis of the ESA project, said "our perception has changed" because of the week's findings. "The closest thing I can compare it to was when we had samples back from the moon," Gibson said. "This week we had good data back from Mars." ESA's science director David Southwood said the quality of the results from the ESA project and the NASA rovers showed it was time for governments to sponsor a new mission to the planet's surface, and perhaps bring samples back to Earth. "You don't go back to Mars on the cheap," he said, calling for funding. "No money, no mission." The ESA probe, which cost $264 million, featured seven different projects including a chemical analysis of Mars' atmosphere measuring the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases. That experiment also showed that a biological origin for the gases was likely, possibly below the planet's icy surface. Further testing showed the existence of clay and gypsum deposits formed by water in the soil, and indicated that up to 100 tons of matter per day is being blown off the planet into space by solar winds. A French group found that Mars' ozone layer is thinnest where water vapor is thickest, a finding with possible implications for Earth, where water vapor in the upper atmosphere is believed to be rising.

quote:Originally posted by Soback: So, what does the Ipod run on? Build in batteries or AAs? For all you know, it's just a ploy for people to buy new (when the batteries give out) Lithium Ion Batteries. You bet it's called Planned Obsolescence when they are ready for you to buy new devices they change the battery spec to something incompatible.

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Eric M. Steffeney, 28, of Waterloo, Iowa, died February 23 in Tuz, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated. Steffeney was assigned to the 184th Ordnance Battalion, 52nd Ordnance Group, Fort Bragg, N.C.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Daniel G. Gresham, 23, of Lincoln, Ill., died Feb. 24 in Camp Wilson, Iraq, when a second improvised explosive device detonated while he was responding to a first device. Gresham was assigned to the 797th Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), 79th Ordnance Battalion, 52nd Ordnance, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Nicholas J. Olivier, 26, of Ruston, La., died Feb. 23 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while he was on foot patrol. Olivier was assigned to the Army National Guard's 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, Pineville, La.Link May you rest in peace...

quote: The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spc. Jacob C. Palmatier, 29, of Springfield, Ill., died Feb. 24 in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle. Palmatier was assigned to 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3d Brigade, 3d Infantry Division, Fort Benning, Ga.Link May you rest in peace...