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It has been known for some time that the various intelligence agencies of the Anglosphere cooperated on various projects. Common enemies make for common cause. The annual support doesn't appear to be that significant - equivalent to about 10-15% the cost of a Eurofighter Typhoon per year. I have no doubt the support is welcome, but probably not vital. It looks like HM government are prioritizing spending for the intelligence agencies in any event.

George Osborne To Give MI5, MI6 And GCHQ Extra Money, As Other Budgets Are Cut

Chancellor George Osborne will today draw up the battle lines for the next general election as he sets out his final spending plans before the country goes to the polls in 2015....

It is reported that the intelligence agencies - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - have emerged among the winners in the carve-up of expenditure with a real terms increase of more than 3% - reflecting continuing concerns over the threat of terrorism in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby outside Woolwich Barracks, London..

I think there is less mystery here than the death of Gareth Williams and a few others. Williams mystery solved?

Well, here's hoping there will be no more 7/7 events.

Cheers

Or to put it another way, fragmentation is an especially big problem for developers. Users just have to put up with an inferior platform. Developers have huge amount of hassle.

e.g. BBC iPlayer requires 3 times as many developers of the Android version of the app as the iPhone requires. And that for an experience that is still significantly worse.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Video-on-Android-Devices-Update

Why not just open the blinds before bedtime and turn off the lights progressively at night... or whatever the magic is... that does this?

It may not be as simple as staying indoors and opening blinds or reducing lighting at night. The article I read yesterday (here) said the test subjects were exposed to 400% more sunlight when camping outside compared to their usual indoor environment... so sun exposure may also play a role. Considering that Vitamin D (which the body synthesizes in the form of cholecalciferol from sun exposure) acts contrary to melatonin levels (which spike during sleep), perhaps sun exposure provides a strong natural cue for the body's melatonin level to surge at sunset.

Oddly enough, the law doesn't need to explicitly mention such distractions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7888653.stm

Well it just so happens that I was listening to The Philosopher's Arms show on iPlayer (BBC) last night, and they were discussing these kinds of choices. It's classic Prisoner's Dilemma stuff, isn't it. I think they even mentioned the medical sector too.

Well, IANAL, so I can't comment on the various legal complexities. All I know is if he'd been a Russian agent and spilled Russian secrets like this, he'd have found Polonium or Dioxins floating in his soup the next time he went to a Happy Eater. Given the publicity in this case, I very much doubt he'd have been taken to Gitmo.

You can demand higher and higher pay but unless you also achieve higher and higher productivity, the capital will go elsewhere. Detroit would be a prime example.

So, what you're saying here is, the reason the city of Detroit is in the horrible fiscal shape it is in is because of workers, not piss-poor governance and city management?

Cognitive dissonance, or are you really just that much of an asshole?

You can demand higher and higher pay but unless you also achieve higher and higher productivity, the capital will go elsewhere. Detroit would be a prime example.

There is only one part of what I posted that was speculative, and that is the link between Manning and Assange. It isn't much of a leap, is it?

Taliban prepare to punish WikiLeaks Afghan informers

I assume you prefer that terrorist attacks against Australia and Australians fail, rather than succeed? (Hate to ask, but can't really assume on Slashdot, can we? Plenty of people (narcissists?) are actually indifferent.)

Transnational Terrorism: The Threat to Australia

Cats look a lot like rabbits after they've been cleaned. ;) I believe the alternative comes one of the world wars where people couldn't be so picky about where their protein came from. (Pidgeons are by the way known as roof-rats.)

Sure, there's biomagnification, but that applies as much to tuna, shark and other sea-living creatures that we eat without any ill effects. (If we don't overdo it of course.) I've been googling a bit myself, and though I did find a couple of recipes for dishes with cat, I found nothing to indicate that they are "highly toxic" as you previously stated. The closest I found was:
"Scientists have said that those eating wild cats could be exposed to harmful bacteria and toxins.",
which is true about all wild animals that we eat.

What is says is that monogamy hasn't evolved in other species because they don't practice infanticide.

Except that other primates and animals do practice infanticide -- in fact it's quite common.

That humans generally don't do this is different enough to be worth noting.

As to if monogamy "evolved to" prevent infanticide -- well, I'm more inclined to think the two happened in parallel. Evolution happened, and it changed our behavior -- but it's not like nature said "hmmm, how do we stop them from killing their young?"

But let's not pretend that "monogamy hasn't evolved in other species because they don't practice infanticide" -- because that's not the case at all.

Fuck Why the capital 'F' I do not know.

If Apple genuinely gave even the slightest fuck about improving working conditions in China they'd take some of that $100billion cash pile and produce their own or buy out a manufacturing plant and show how it should be done.

The fact is that despite with their massive cash pile and their gigantic profit margins they're still going for the lowest bidder highlights how much of a fuck they give about workers rights compared to turning the biggest profit imaginable.

In fact, part the reason Apple has such high profit margins is precisely because it doesn't give a fuck about the environment or workers rights, and because they go out their way to avoid paying taxes and have simply not bothered to pay for patents on legitimately patented things. Your attempts to try and justify to yourself that you're somehow being ethical by buying Apple are laughably desperate.

And it's all apparently okay anyway because we're told that's what companies do, they just have to turn the biggest profit for their shareholder and if that means making up a bit of documentation about how they do care to try and turn away accusations of worker abuse then so be it, but that's simply about balancing the cost of said PR against the profit increase in using such a low bidder.

Again, if they really genuinely cared, they wouldn't keep using the lowest bidder that has to carry out such abuses to turn a profit at the price it bidded for the contract with Apple at. If they keep using these factories rather than cut their margins to actually deal with the root cause of the problem then they don't care, no matter how many reports they churn out, it's that simple. Stop trying to pretend otherwise, you're just deluding yourself and as much as you think otherwise you're no better than anyone else by buying Apple - in fact, even your original premise is true, most other companies have also done the same bare minimum Apple has, you've obviously just not realised this because you are as usual so far up Apple's ass you can't see anything else. See here for example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19475556

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/about-us/sustainability/health-safety-and-labor-conditions/labor-conditions

They're all doing the same bare minimum - audits every once in a while where the employees are treated normally for a day then back to sweatshop conditions when the auditors have fucked off, Apple is no better and no worse than any of the others and the fact people like you like to pretend it is is precisely why Apple gets singled out - because if you want to be known for being better you actually have to be and Apple has the money to do so, simply pretending and continuing to sit on a cash pile that could resolve the problem tomorrow doesn't exactly cut it.

In the article:
"The judge, Colin Birss, ultimately sided with the car companies, despite saying he "recognized the importance of the right for academics to publish.""

This is very misleading. The judge did not "ultimately" side with anyone because this is an *interim* injunction during the course of more prolonged litigation. Citation:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23487928
and
http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/20291/vw-gets-high-court-bans-scientists-revealing-luxury-car-security-codes

The purpose of the interim injunction is to temporarily maintain the status quo while further evidence and arguments are presented, prior to any actual and significant judgement.

Once again slashdot avoids objective reporting and instead offers its readers what they actually prefer and craze: dishonest, misleading, untrue versions of the world that play to the infantile prejudices of the average self righteous and privileged pseudo liberal.

Please enlighten me and give me links to that proof of backdoors. (That's what this is about, not virii or trojans.)

I found this BBC Radio documentary to be extremely enlightening. Not proof as in "evidence admissible in a court of law," but pretty convincing.

In other News UK has installed Huawei equipement for censorship.

But that's the point, these stylised maps are to navigate the transport system, not to get around at a surface level. They serve different needs. When you've a map where all the lines are geographically correct it makes it hard to understand how to get from station A to station B, make out the station names and there is a lot of wasted space! Have a look at the London underground geographical map vs the actual tube map for example.

Far better to have a map that fits the purpose. If you want to navigate at the surface level, buy a proper map.

It sure is a good thing that England controls the entire Internet and that no one anywhere will be able to publish this information now.

I think this is the real reason behind Cameron's porn block. He starts off talking about porn but then when discussing details its suddenly about "illegal content". I'm pretty sure this will include things that the courts (and government departments) decide we shouldn't here

Ever wonder if Nixon might turn out
to be the biggest ratfucker of them
all?

Watergate was nothing. Thousands of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese died because of his manipulation and subterfuge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. ....

In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: "We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move."

He orders the Nixon campaign to be placed under FBI surveillance and demands to know if Nixon is personally involved.

When he became convinced it was being orchestrated by the Republican candidate, the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon.

The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.

Publicly Nixon was suggesting he had no idea why the South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks. He even offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador's phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon.

So they decided to say nothing.

The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler's interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.

And this allowing Nixon to win Presidency and the rest is history

There are no records after Nixon. All US presidents no longer record their affairs.

I'm convinced that he only got that job because Hunt and Health start with the same letter. There was an Embarrassing Incident in his previous role as Culture Secretary.

It isn't censorship. To be considered censorship requires that you cannot opt in or out. Censorship means *compulsion* whereas this is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. You can opt in or out by clicking a link and checking a box.

That's my point. They claim you can opt out of the filtering and it looks like you can, but in reality you can't out out of all the filtering. Load piratebay.org. The site is still there but you can't access it. eztv.it? yify-torrents.com? Those two are also up but blocked from the UK regardless of you opting in or out of the filtering.

They even admit they run all traffic though the filtering system. Why would they if they don't block pages?
'Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon.' -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23452097

Once the government has rolled out its blocking infrastructure they will abuse it to limit the information you have access to just like they have been doing with newspapers more or less since they existed.

40 years ago it wasn't that unusual to take blood samples from an earlobe instead of the finger tips. It's a lot less painful and provides just as good a sample http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/811495.stm

Really it's only disadvantage over drawing from a fingertip is that it takes slightly more skill. I guess causing patients unnecessary pain was less important than being able to use lower-skilled nurses because it fell into disuse for decades. It's only recently starting to get reexamined, particularly for easy measurement of arterial blood gasses.

The net filtering system praised by David Cameron is controlled by the controversial Chinese company Huawei, the BBC has learned.
UK-based employees at the firm are able to decide which sites TalkTalk's net filtering service blocks.

Initially, TalkTalk told the BBC that it was US security firm Symantec that was responsible for maintaining its blacklist, and that Huawei only provided the hardware, as previously reported.
However, Symantec said that while it had been in a joint venture with Huawei to run Homesafe in its early stages, it had not been involved for over a year.

TalkTalk later confirmed it is Huawei that monitors activity, checking requests against its blacklist of over 65 million web addresses, and denying access if there is a match.
The contents of this list are largely determined by an automated process, but both Huawei and TalkTalk employees are able to add or remove sites independently.

The net filtering system praised by David Cameron is controlled by the controversial Chinese company Huawei, the BBC has learned.
UK-based employees at the firm are able to decide which sites TalkTalk's net filtering service blocks.

Initially, TalkTalk told the BBC that it was US security firm Symantec that was responsible for maintaining its blacklist, and that Huawei only provided the hardware, as previously reported.
However, Symantec said that while it had been in a joint venture with Huawei to run Homesafe in its early stages, it had not been involved for over a year.

TalkTalk later confirmed it is Huawei that monitors activity, checking requests against its blacklist of over 65 million web addresses, and denying access if there is a match.
The contents of this list are largely determined by an automated process, but both Huawei and TalkTalk employees are able to add or remove sites independently.

Wolf howl identification technology excites experts http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/23263266 and on a lighter note Wolves Munch Watermelons to Beat the Heat: Photos http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-species/wolves-munch-watermelons-photos-130723.htm via http://www.metafilter.com/130297/Wolf-Watermelon-Party

Claire Perrys comments may be libellous, as the UK has a more extensive libel law than the US. Fun, games and large legal fees may be forthcoming.....

A recent example can be found on Twitter remarks by Sally Bercow, which cost her lots of legal fees and a substantial settlement. The irony of Claire Perry getting whipped in court over a freedom of speech issue would cause a massive outbreak of schadenfreude across the UK.....

Quis censor censores?

Claire Perrys comments may be libellous, as the UK has a more extensive libel law than the US. Fun, games and large legal fees may be forthcoming.....

A recent example can be found on Twitter remarks by Sally Bercow, which cost her lots of legal fees and a substantial settlement. The irony of Claire Perry getting whipped in court over a freedom of speech issue would cause a massive outbreak of schadenfreude across the UK.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23079610

19.7 Mbps EU average

Or maybe it's just that the media thrives on controversy, not on informing the public.

This is more insightful than you think. Sure it sounds obvious, but since this nugget is not constantly in the front of most people's minds when they read/watch/listen to the media, the manipulative nature of media still has an impact and people still believe the myth that the media are there to inform.

Some media is better than others - I rather like the BBC, but even their journalists/editors do stupid shit like misleading headlines every so often (perfect example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23394233)

We are coming out of a glaciation period (a little ice age if you will) on the order of 100 000 years. Given a fairly predictable periodic pattern we would expect to peak and cool in the next 1500 years leading to another several thousand year glaciation. But due to fossil fuel burning we are likely to skip that glaciation and enter acyclical warming. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16439807

Think in 3D, not 2D. This article appears to reference a decent study http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21692423 According to it, the average depth of ice in the Antarctic is around 2126m, (~6975ft, or ~1.3 miles!) At that depth, it would take the ice contained under a 1 square yard area to cover a football field with over a foot of ice. (6875*3*3 = 62275 cubic ft, 360*160*1=57600 cubic feet)

Oh yeah: that 2.1km average: it's apparently over a 12.295 million square kilometer area. 26.54 million cubic _kilometers_ of ice. while we're at it: surface area of the planet: 510,072,000 sq km (wikipedia).

So. simple math from there: 26,540,000/510,072,000 = 0.052km... or about 52m (170ft) for the planet if all ice in Antarctica melts. The article actually says potential equivalent of 58m, so an exercise to the reader to determine where the extra 6m comes from.. and how many cities that would affect.

BTW: Highly recommend seeing the movie Chasing Ice http://www.chasingice.com/ for a view of how fast the glaciers are changing. Netflix carries it.

Your not thinking fourth dimensionally!

Oh yeah: that 2.1km average: it's apparently over a 12.295 million square kilometer area. 26.54 million cubic _kilometers_ of ice. while we're at it: surface area of the planet: 510,072,000 sq km (wikipedia).

So. simple math from there: 26,540,000/510,072,000 = 0.052km... or about 52m (170ft) for the planet if all ice in Antarctica melts. The article actually says potential equivalent of 58m, so an exercise to the reader to determine where the extra 6m comes from.. and how many cities that would affect.

BTW: Highly recommend seeing the movie Chasing Ice http://www.chasingice.com/ for a view of how fast the glaciers are changing. Netflix carries it.

Even worse is Dubai where woman was raped and then slammed into prison for extra-marital sex

To be fair, she claims to have been raped. Just because it's rape doesn't suddenly reverse the burden of proof, even in US or european jurisdictions.

Even worse is Dubai where woman was raped and then slammed into prison for extra-marital sex. She only go out when the Norwegians kicked up a fuss. I know that I am supposed to respect other cultural values, but some I find very hard.

Still, three cheers for the first enterprising foreign VPN company to offer free VPN services (ad-supported?). I anticipate approximately every single teen male in the UK becoming aware of it within a week of its launch.

Also, the earlier Firehose articles were more complete (but that's Slashdot editors for ya): BBC News giving a good amount of political commentary, and technological implementation of the blocking by Twitter.

It is now known that sunlight exposure leads to the production of nitric oxide, which is important in blood pressure regulation. The health benefits of nitric oxide are independent of Vitamin D, and in fact may outweigh the risk of skin cancer.

The First Battle of the Atlantic
British submarines in World War One
His German Imperial Majesty's U-Boats in WWI
WWI German submarine has underwater Lake Michigan grave
German WWI Submarines (Pictures)
U-boat Attack, 1916
Anti-Submarine Measures from World War I
Depth Charges

This is a fallacy. It's perfectly possible to have renewables and a better quality of life due to reduced pollution and cheaper, more abundant energy.

No. The energy in renewables is dispersed and unreliable, which requires building a huge capture and storage infrastructure to produce significant quantities of it, which then has to be maintained. This, in turn, is bad for both the environment - because you need larger areas of land to gather a given quantity of energy - and economy - because you need to devote a greater proportion of economic output to said maintenance, rather than consumer goods.

German seems to have the right idea. In a few years they will be almost entirely renewable, but keep around some gas and coal plants for backup. It isn't a "perfect" zero carbon system but it's a lot better than what we have now, and when the weather gets hot like it is now they won't be sweating and worrying about the cost of aircon like I am.

"A few years" means two decades and "almost entirely" means 50 percent. And even that is starting to hurt.

Also, how will you get the air conditioner in the first place? As I explained above, with less industrial output available to making consumer goods, it will cost more to assemble, and it's parts cost more to make, due to simple supply and demand.

Couple that with a move to mostly electric vehicles and not only will their carbon footprint be massively reduced but so will the amount of pollution from particulate matter.

Which requires even more energy to be produced by renewables, thus making even less industrial output available for other things. This combines badly with the sudden need to replace the entire vehicle fleet with new, high-tech (read expensive) ones.

All of the UK's current nuclear reactors use seawater for cooling. Many coal-fired power stations (but not all of them) are also on the coast or estuaries and similarly use seawater for their cooling loops.

Corrosion is not a problem, just use marine-rated stainless steel pumps and piping for the loops and carry out preventative maintenance every now and then. Odd problems with seawater cooling do occur, such as a plague of jellyfish which threatened to block the seawater intakes at a Scottish reactor site and they were shut down for a time as a precaution.

I have noticed that direct cooling (seawater/riverwater/lakewater) is popular in Europe. It fell out of favor in the US a while ago because the permitting was too troublesome. I haven't heard of a direct cooling water plant in the US built in the last 20 years. The US uses mostly air cooling or cooling towers. Air cooling is ideal environmentally, but is not nearly as efficient- thermodynamially it is worse and dozens of fans cost more to operate compared to pumps. Cooling towers are nearly as good as direct cooling and can be made to be relatively water-efficient.

It is a complete mystery to me why direct cooling is still used in environmentally-liberal Europe but is practically outlawed in the global-warming-denying USA.

Direct cooling is apparently popular in Florida - Manatees famously like to hang around power plants in cold weather.

The suicide verdict at the inquest was an awful decision. It is just as likely that his death was an accident. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

Chill out, they already issued an apology a few years ago.

You can't think of another reason?

Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered
Dutch pledge Islamist crackdown
SPIEGEL Interview with Hirsi Ali: "We Must Declare War on Islamist Propaganda"
Violence in Holland: Jihad Behind the Dikes
Dutch anxiety over ‘Sharia triangle’ police no-go area in The Hague
Netherlands, Germany alarmed over Islamist extremists
Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent

Going back to the wiretapping, it also has been common knowledge that its a unhealthy ammount in The Netherlands, but for some reason it has never upset people enough,...

I'm sure there must be a reason or two.

Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered
Dutch pledge Islamist crackdown
SPIEGEL Interview with Hirsi Ali: "We Must Declare War on Islamist Propaganda"
Violence in Holland: Jihad Behind the Dikes
Dutch anxiety over ‘Sharia triangle’ police no-go area in The Hague
Netherlands, Germany alarmed over Islamist extremists

All of the UK's current nuclear reactors use seawater for cooling. Many coal-fired power stations (but not all of them) are also on the coast or estuaries and similarly use seawater for their cooling loops.

Corrosion is not a problem, just use marine-rated stainless steel pumps and piping for the loops and carry out preventative maintenance every now and then. Odd problems with seawater cooling do occur, such as a plague of jellyfish which threatened to block the seawater intakes at a Scottish reactor site and they were shut down for a time as a precaution.

I have noticed that direct cooling (seawater/riverwater/lakewater) is popular in Europe. It fell out of favor in the US a while ago because the permitting was too troublesome. I haven't heard of a direct cooling water plant in the US built in the last 20 years. The US uses mostly air cooling or cooling towers. Air cooling is ideal environmentally, but is not nearly as efficient- thermodynamially it is worse and dozens of fans cost more to operate compared to pumps. Cooling towers are nearly as good as direct cooling and can be made to be relatively water-efficient.

It is a complete mystery to me why direct cooling is still used in environmentally-liberal Europe but is practically outlawed in the global-warming-denying USA.

All of the UK's current nuclear reactors use seawater for cooling. Many coal-fired power stations (but not all of them) are also on the coast or estuaries and similarly use seawater for their cooling loops.

Corrosion is not a problem, just use marine-rated stainless steel pumps and piping for the loops and carry out preventative maintenance every now and then. Odd problems with seawater cooling do occur, such as a plague of jellyfish which threatened to block the seawater intakes at a Scottish reactor site and they were shut down for a time as a precaution.

In my experience this type believes those two are interchangeable. They also tend to use that term for all folks of Middle Eastern or North African heritage and not just Arabs. This is likely because they are unaware other such groups exist. Bigotry and ignorance seem to be highly correlated.

Don't be rediculous. Anyone who reads about Islamic terrorism will be aware of the many white muslim terrorist. If anything they are to be despised more. At least those from Islamic cultures have the excuse that they are abused and brutalised as kids, taught that hatred and murder is good, and that non-muslims are evil.

Two screens to display your car's registration? That seems a bit OTT! I always thought the licence plate expiry thing was also a massive hassle, in the UK cars have permanent plates, registration is simply stored by the DVLA (DMV equivilent) and to show you've paid your road tax you stick a small paper disk on your windscreen

There are far more serious inequalities for women we can focus our attention on...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23347425
[...]
Malala - who is considered a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize - is credited with bringing the education issue to global attention.

Speaking at UN headquarters in New York last Friday, she said that books and pens scared extremists. She also urged education for all, including "for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists".
[...]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/10122549/Gunmen-in-Pakistan-bomb-female-students-bus-then-attack-hospital.html
[...]
Gunmen in Pakistan bomb female students' bus then attack hospital

Militants in Pakistan have bombed a bus carrying female students before attacking the hospital where survivors and relatives of the victims had gathered.
[...]

FWIW ... when I was working on fingerprint recognition algorithms we found that Asian women had very difficult fingers to scan (small, with tiny and tight ridges).

There are people born without fingerprints - or with undetectably shallow ones. 4 August 2011 : Scientists find 'no fingerprint' gene mutation

Unsurprisingly it is sometimes called "Immigration Delay Disease"

Uh-huh.

So can you point to the stories of mass murders committed with baseball bats or swords?

The closest I can think of is this incident, 14 years ago, in which four, count them, *four* people were critically injured before the attacker was overpowered (by a completely unarmed crowd). All four survived.

Do you think, if the attacker had been wielding a gun instead of a sword, those statistics would not look substantially different?