This is outrageous! Don't the cops have better things to do? I seem to recall that NYC has things like murders and robberies and such. Y'know, real crime.

Also, I'm no lawyer, but...if the cops place these decoy purses to get felony collars, isn't that entrapment?

Heh...yeah, the Roanoke Times is always good for a laugh. Or fish wrap.

As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate IGE and their gilsellers...

Those of us on Alla need to hit them HARD with their links to IGE. Also somepage.com, who also sells ad space to IGE.

More info on this here:

http://www.massively.com/2007/12/11/was-cory-linden-fired-or-did-he-quit/

From the statements made, it sounds like Cory got fired. There could be any number of reasons for this -- SL's changing, and not necessarily for the better.

...which necessarily involves the right to transfer information that's been generated regarding their online life.

Talk of interoperability? Not bloody likely at a Microsoft-funded conference...

OK, so here's what I've noticed:

The US rejects the UN as being contrary to national sovereignty....unless, of course, we want to ram something down someone's throat (ie. WTO, WIPO, etc.).

Instead of negotiating with countries for their natural resources, or to defuse a potentially dangerous situation, the US goes to war with them instead (ie. Iraq, Iran, sabre-rattling on N. Korea). In some cases, like Venezuela, the US tries engineering a coup instead.

Finally, the US has just now acknowledged that it can kidnap citizens of other countries with impunity, despite a formal process for requesting their extradition.

So...why does the US have a State Department anymore? It seems like they've all but abandoned diplomacy as a means of policy change. I haven't seen Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell doing anything to advance the cause of diplomacy (except when it's to put a multilateral face on a US-prosecuted war). So why even bother? To fool other countries into thinking the US is still committed to diplomacy? You'd have to be a complete moron of a world leader to believe that the US wants to negotiate with countries in good faith.

The US is an empire. The sooner they admit to that, the better.

PS to Mods: Would it be possible to get HTML list tags (ul, ol, li) on the approved list?

Wow. That is one well-designed laptop. I'm kicking myself now for not getting one when I had the chance. Here's hoping there's another round of this sometime. Not that I'm too hopeful...they prolly only did this to get rid of the laptops with the AES module that they'd have trouble exporting.

*sigh*