Slashdot Mirror

Except it's not BS. I'm multilingual and follow some main online news publications of different European countries. What the US has witnessed now has been happening in Europe since Russia annexed Crimea. Russian government trolls are flooding discussion forums with pro-Putin and anti NATO / western propaganda, linking to phony stories on Russian news websites for "proof". They try to undermine trust in our democratic institutions spreading all kinds of wild conspiracy theories while accusing others of conspiracy theories when they are called out.
Russia is leading a full-scale propaganda war against the west, trying to change public opinion while funding far-right groups across Europe. They are basically trying to destabilize us. It's no joke:

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://www.businessinsider.de/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

I guess Russia has recently extended its operations to the US and has been disturbingly successful. The weakest candidate - Trump - became president, and the Duma applauded and cheered:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

The "jobs" argument for fossil fuels just doesn't make sense though. There's already more jobs in renewables than in oil or coal (Either one by itself. Not combined, yet.). We hit that tipping point this year. Jobs growth in renewables has been crushing fossil fuels for the last several years. Investments in renewables are growing exponentially. And if you look out past five years or so (Yeah, I know, most MBA types are congenitally incapable of looking past the next quarter. Whatever.) we're close to profit growth; and not long after, profits being larger than fossil duels. Renewables ARE where the jobs are, and it's where the money is fi you play the long game.

Clean-Energy Jobs Surpass Oil Drilling for First Time in U.S.
Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels

Governor Schwarzenegger put it brilliantly. Even if you *don't* believe in global warming (Which is still a stupid-ass position.) fossil fuels are eventually going to run out. Before they run out, they're going to become more expensive to extract. Renewables are the future. Renewables are where the jobs and investment opportunities are, moving forward. And what sort of moron wants to be the last investor in Blockbuster when Netflix is about to crush them?

The "jobs" argument for fossil fuels just doesn't make sense though. There's already more jobs in renewables than in oil or coal (Either one by itself. Not combined, yet.). We hit that tipping point this year. Jobs growth in renewables has been crushing fossil fuels for the last several years. Investments in renewables are growing exponentially. And if you look out past five years or so (Yeah, I know, most MBA types are congenitally incapable of looking past the next quarter. Whatever.) we're close to profit growth; and not long after, profits being larger than fossil duels. Renewables ARE where the jobs are, and it's where the money is fi you play the long game.

Clean-Energy Jobs Surpass Oil Drilling for First Time in U.S.
Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels

Governor Schwarzenegger put it brilliantly. Even if you *don't* believe in global warming (Which is still a stupid-ass position.) fossil fuels are eventually going to run out. Before they run out, they're going to become more expensive to extract. Renewables are the future. Renewables are where the jobs and investment opportunities are, moving forward. And what sort of moron wants to be the last investor in Blockbuster when Netflix is about to crush them?

"They are fantastic assets," Whitman said in an interview. "They're just not core to our strategy."

Not true. USC-LA times poll got it right.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Other polls were closer when actually run, but published results were skewed by editors and partisans.

You can't read can you?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

First Paragraph

"Volkswagen AG admitted to systematically cheating U.S. air pollution tests, leaving the automaker vulnerable to billions in fines and possible criminal prosecution.
The company sold diesel versions of Volkswagen and Audi cars with software that turns on full pollution controls only when the car is undergoing official emissions testing. During normal driving, the cars pollute 10 times to 40 times the legal limits, the Environmental Protection Agency said. EPA called the technology a “defeat device.”

Other articles talk about the same thing being done in UK and Europe.

If it's a lie then every news organization on multiple continents and many governments are in on this "made up lie."

That settles it, I'm switching to maple syrup!

I wouldn't trust that either.

When that story broke I like most people was surprised to find out that a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve existed.

It's not my magic way. It's VW's magic way. You do know they admitted to this don't you?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/v...

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-n...

Automation makes no business sense unless it contributes to the bottom line. Meaning it should be better, cheaper, or faster than existing human labour (preferably all three). If the total amount of (wage paying) man hours per unit of output isn't lower than without automation, it's not competitive. In all three cases it will mean a net reduction in human labour in a particular niche plus support jobs (insofar as they are billed through to the work they're replacing),.

In the past there were always new investment opportunities (new things to do; often new natural resources to exploit) that would absorb that labour, and offer a return on investment. In other words: it would drive up our collective wealth to more than pay for those new jobs.

For better or worse I don't quite see where the next big economic expansion is to come from (and if I did I wouldn't be telling you until I had secured a slice of the pie). I fear it may be absent.

Unfortunately some of the biggest niches in US labour market are in manual work: manufacturing things, mining, driving trucks, warehousing, janitorial work, and the service industry.

Ever read about the time when so much employment was in farming jobs? Mostly gone. Automated. Jobs absorbed by industry.

Manufacturing jobs are shifting. Some offshore. Some to automation. As far as I know, the bulk of shop floor manufacturing jobs (just look at the automobile industry) are assembly-type jobs (i.e. not skilled machining). Which can be automated as pick and place robots become more affordable and more capable.

Warehousing: same thing. Jobs being automated. Just ask Amazon. Easier to run 24/7 and no more restroom breaks.

Driving trucks seems on its way to being automated too. According to this site http://www.alltrucking.com/faq... there are about 3.5 mln. truck drivers in the US. What if we can eliminate just the easiest 10% of those? See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/te... and http://www.latimes.com/project... and https://www.wired.com/2015/05/... and here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... . Any ideas where about 350k former truck drivers will find employment? That's a lot of low-skilled jobs to offset by generating new demand. In fact, it's about 2% of the labour force (see http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat0... ).

I believe that mr. Trump's recent win is mostly because whole groups of US citizens are facing the problem that what they have to offer (their labour) is no longer in demand. It can be (and often has been or is being) replaced by automation, different products, even cheaper competition offshore, or illegal immigrants. That should at least tell us that people are feeling the squeeze.

To continue a bit with mr. Trump: his promises seem to hinge on three economic pillars: erecting trade barriers, exploiting the commons for commercial gain (as in exchanging environmental protection statutes for operating profit), and injecting a trillion

Obama set the record for an active president campaigning for Hillary Clinton . http://abcnews.go.com/Politics...
Obama in 2011 Trolling Trump, funny Trump has his job now http://time.com/3991301/donald....
Obama Feb 2016 , Trump won't be president http://www.bloomberg.com/polit...
Obama "at least I will be a president" http://www.politico.com/story/...
Obama playing the KKK card https://www.theguardian.com/us...
Obama continuing his un-presidential arrogant tone http://www.businessinsider.com... .

Focused military spending that isn't supported by actual economic strength is a pointless exercise in wasting money on assets that can't and won't be maintained. See here. If you live in Russia you should see personally that prices are increasing and pay is not, at least outside of the Russian state-sponsored internet brigades and hacking houses that are similarly inflated by defence spending focus - they also have no future without the economy recovering, so you should really start looking for a new job.

China didn't invent climate change, they have just been funding the useful idiots (Democrats) to hobble our economy with onerous environmental regulations (far beyond clean air and clean water, which we all want) a la CO2 cap and trade while they steal our jobs and manufacturing capacity by manipulating their currency and producing our products with 10X more pollution while those same Democrats say nothing.

If we are smart, and heres hoping Trump is, we will start assessing an import tax that not only accounts for the currency manipulation of other countries, but also accounts for the actual amount of pollution that the country generates. Clean, green countries get no environmental import tax, but China, that creates nearly half of all pollution on the planet and who is killing nearly 4000 people per day with their pollution, should get slapped with a massive import tax.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

If we put barriers on Chinese goods, they will put barriers on American goods.

They have trade barriers, incuding tariffs.

If a real trade war gets going

We are in a real trade war, and we need to respond effectively rather than do nothing. The "free market" will not magically solve all these problems by itself.

I've heard that TPP and TTIP are already going through their death throes thanks to Trump.

You are incorrect.

TPP is dead.

Donald Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election has prompted President Barack Obama to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

According to the Journal, the White House had hoped to push the deal forward in the lame-duck session of Congress, assuming Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had won the election. Her loss has already changed the political landscape:

Also of note since Trump won: Canada has said it's willing to renegotiate NAFTA, Mexico said it's willing to renegotiate NAFTA, stock market has hit new highs, money previously allocated by the government for the purpose of building the wall has been found, and two of Trumps scandals (the underage rape, and the muslim hajib thing) were found out as complete fabrications.

I'm waiting to hear the liberals on Slashdot spin the death of TPP as a bad thing because it was due to Trump.

I've heard that TPP and TTIP are already going through their death throes thanks to Trump.

So right there are two huge wins that us average people have been dreaming about for years now. Globalist garbage being brought to an unwilling citizenry by none other than the Democrats that so many people wanted to vote for. Here it is, crushed because of the one the dems told you was Satan: Donald Trump.

I have a feeling some big apologies are going to be necessary by the dems and their supporters.

Here's what they really had to say:

Russia said that it talked with the teams of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the U.S. presidential election as part of routine outreach during a campaign.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Russian embassy in the U.S. held talks with the Trump camp that “were on a sufficient, responsible level.” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, said in an e-mail that she was “not aware” of any meetings by campaign representatives with Russian diplomats.
Ryabkov said the talks were “part of routine everyday work.” There was also “sporadic” contact with the Clinton team, though it was “not always productive,” he said. Calls to members of Clinton’s former campaign team for comment weren’t immediately returned.

Protectionism has mostly "worked" in Japan, at least in terms of jobs.

But the only investment they can get is from their own central bank. They're on a tremendous bubble and their monetary policy makes the Fed look downright sensible.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Lame article and sour grapes bias. I'm no fan of Trump either, but the first example used (future of ISP's) is an easy 5 second google.

http://www.bloomberg.com/polit...

Trump was quite clear it was against future amalgamations and consolidations as it offers no benefit to consumers. He was clear that he said he would be actively in favor of blocking said consolidations. I'll leave it to your common sense what that means for the average person.

As to other areas of science and technology, it is probably a bit more vague, but in at least that one example it is pretty straight forward what his opinion is. As it relates to technology in general the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is his enforcement of "fixing" the H1b issue for tech workers (if you actually believe him is another matter), and how much of an emphasis of how important the whole "Cyber" thing is (if you actually believe he knows anything about what he is talking about is another matter).

At any rate I don't think any of the "science and technology" really featured in any big way for any candidate really so it is kind of moot. I guess in a round about way Hillary adopting some of Sanders education stance may have enhanced academic science in universities through enrollment. Maybe. I don't think Trump was a big Climate Change guy either so you could probably call it a net loss at least in that respect.

They don't restrict voting rights to the military - read it again. I could be wrong, but I think most of the serving military couldn't vote, not having finished their first term. You had to have completed some sort of term of service to the community (military was just one option) to earn the vote.

I actually re-read the portion describing it and they DO restrict rights to those who served in the Federal Service. Though the book does state that most servicemen (as in most real armies) do not see any combat.

It's neither presented as particularly good or bad, just the way things are. It's never "justified", merely explained.

Heinlein quite obviously tries to justify it in-universe and pretty much fails.

I found the relevant piece:

Sally didn't tell it by the book. Finally Major Reid cut him off. "Bring a summary to class tomorrow, three thousand words. Mr. Salomon, can you give me a reason—not historical nor theoretical but practical—why the franchise is today limited to discharged veterans?"

"Uh, because they are picked men, sir. Smarter."

"Preposterous!"

"Sir?"

"Is the word too long for you? I said it was a silly notion. Service men are not brighter than civilians. In many cases civilians are much more intelligent. That was the sliver of justification underlying the attempted coup d'etat just before the Treaty of New Delhi, the so-called ‘Revolt of the Scientists': let the intelligent elite run things and you'll have utopia. It fell flat on its foolish face of course. Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility. I've given you a hint, Mister; can you pick it up?"

Sally answered, "Uh, service men are disciplined, sir."

Major Reid was gentle with him. "Sorry. An appealing theory not backedup by facts. You and I are not permitted to vote as long as we remain in the Service, nor is it verifiable that military discipline makes a man self-disciplined once he is out; the crime rate of veterans is much like that of civilians. And you have forgotten that in peacetime most veterans come from non-combatant auxiliary services and have not been subjected to the full rigors of military discipline; they have merely been harried, overworked, and endangered—yet their votes count."

Major Reid smiled. "Mr. Salomon, I handed you a trick question. The practical reason for continuing our system is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: It works satisfactorily.

And there's actually a country that's close to what Heinlein dreamed of - it's China. Gaining political power unofficially requires at least some military service... with the expected results: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Or are you talking about the military traditions that set so much of modern military behavior?

Stuff like adherence to Geneva Convention: nuclear bombing a city (with "small" 2kt nuclear weapons), purposefully attacking civilian infrastructure to intimidate the population, that sort of thing. And right at the beginning of the book.

Of course after that Heinlein invents an enemy that is completely alien and unreasonable so that chemical weapons and massive nuclear bombardments against them pose no ethical questions (which is a crime against literature). "Old Man's War" by Scalzi is much more nuanced in this regard.

Existing generators lobby against new technologies being implemented, whether it be through lobbying efforts to get laws passed or influencing RTO stakeholder processes to ensure those technologies are at a disadvantage in unregulated markets (making it harder for them to earn capacity revenue for instance). So your assertion that carrot and stick aren't needed is naïve.

Continuing, incremental improvements in renewables and battery technology, along with an increased focus on energy efficiency will be enough to reduce a countries emissions significantly (whether it is quick enough depends in large part on the will of the people to embrace the changes rather than forestall them). Here are some sources showing the progress we have been seeing in the US already. As you can see from some of those graphs, we are hitting the knee of the curve on wind and solar, and those technologies are new enough that the curve should have a while before it tapers off into an S-curve.

It's bleeding cash so look to them to become more desperate as time goes on. Their model does not work. See Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

What other side? Hasn't Romney endorsed Clinton? The most amazing thing about this election is the validation of the conspiracy theorists who have been saying we have one party rule. It's true, as unbelievable as that is.

Have you ever considered the possibility that Trump is just a completely terrible candidate for President? He is facing a rape trial and a fraud trial along with his many other flaws.

TIL Bloomberg isn't US media.

Its all right here for anyone to see. Germany has practiced priority dispatch of wind and solar for quite some time. This means you must first purchase any available wind and solar before you can use other sources.

http://renews.biz/104349/germa...

China does it aggressively as well;

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

California practices it as well, as do other states;

http://www.martinot.info/renew...

Who does the polling and who reports the polling results?

Lots of different organisations, and they report the numbers themselves. The media usually watch these results and report them too, but you can get the information from the source if you don't trust the media.

The media is telling you this.

Oh you asked a question then answered it yourself. That is not usually how questions work.

You have no way of knowing what the actual vote will be.

Statistical methods are well understood, even if you didn't stay in school long enough to learn this.

The polling itself is set up to favor the two party system and is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Is it? Which part of the method do you disagree with? What method do you think would improve this?

because people like you believe the results.

Instead people should just believe you? What better method to you have, I'm genuinely interested.

If the polling is so darn good, why do we even both voting?

Polls are an estimation with a margin of error. A vote is as close to 100% accurate as you can get.
Under normal circumstances, some polls might have some bias one way, and others might go the other, and the real result is somewhere in the middle. But when all the polls including even Fox News agree, there is a good chance that they represent actual voter sentiment. Or do you think Hillary has paid off Fox News too?

Just poll a couple hundred people (it's ok if you leave out a demographic group or two) and ask them which candidates they would vote for (don't even bother to include all the candidates on the ballot). Should be good enough.

And herein lies the problem with the average Trump voter. Your lack of education prevents you from understanding how statistical polling works, and it also prevents you from understanding why catchphrase slogans do not make good policy, and also why you tend to just believe anything your cult leader says without question.
It's never dear leaders fault, it's the opposition, and the establishment, and the media, and the statisticians, and the FBI, and Generals, and the CIA, and the NSA, and women, and Mexicans, and Muslims, and black people, and...
So either everyone else is crazy, or maybe it's just Trump.

Two characteristics? Is that all it takes? Well, if that's your metric..

It's not my metric...
If you understood how Conservatism, Liberalism, Authoritarianism and Libertarianism all relate on the political spectrum then you would understand that Trump's political position is the closest to that of Hitler of any modern candidate. But don't just take my word for it
Seen any obvious comparison?

When an American politician establishes their own army to patrol the streets and crush opposition; when they hold Nuremberg scale rallies; when they adopt a policy of territorial expansion...

Yeah yeah blah blah, but by then it's too late. We did actually learn some lessons from that episode, and as they say, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That is why Clinton has much higher support among educated voters . Why do you think that is?

Musk loves himself some HilLIARy!.

Not just that, if they were in the market for an iPhone, they'd have bought that in the first place. And I daresay the iPhone would be more expensive than the note.

Well, Bloomberg says that even Samsung believed they were direct competitors, because they supposedly rushed the Note 7 to market to catch buyers disappointed with the "boring" iPhone 7. So why shouldn't that work in the opposite direction? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-18/samsung-crisis-began-in-rush-to-capitalize-on-uninspiring-iphone

Oh, and the Note 7 only cost $20 less than an unlocked iPhone 7 Plus - but has half the on-board storage.

Its deep in the text of "RT: NatWest to close Russian channel's UK bank accounts"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
"The UK Treasury said it does not comment on individual cases, but added that no new sanctions or obligations relating to Russia had been imposed on British banks by the government since February 2015."
Very careful wording.
The UK wording gets even more interesting in
"NatWest decision over Russia's RT is matter for bank -UK PM spokeswoman" (Oct 17, 2016)
http://www.reuters.com/article... or http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
"It's a matter for the bank and it's for them to decide who they offer services to based on their own risk appetite," ... spokeswoman told reporters."
The term "risk appetite" is chilling.

The US froze his assets. That's why he couldn't post bail.

Not true. He had $39 million in a Swiss bank account, which he didn't disclose. After spending a few months in jail, he turned over the account to the US authorities and was released on bail. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

People may have forgotten that Bloomberg, a Trump hater, reported this activity.

Google itself, has had nearly weekly meetings with the Obama White House.

Google employees were Obama's 4th largest source of cash in 2008, and 3rd largest source in 2012.

More than 250 people have shuffled back-and-forth between the Obama administration and Google.

Massive centralized government is in the process of uniting with the political party of big government, and the multinational corporations who control communications and monitor the public. Those communications companies are running "fact checking" sites that rule opposing views as lies without any legal process or appeals, and frequently putting 10 to 20 times the emphasis on negative news for their opponents as on negative news for their allies. Start shining-up yer jack-boots folks.... we are becoming a fascist nation and it's a good idea to be on the side of the national socialists when they begin to assert full control - George Soros has said so - Google him.

Yahoo, get a competent CEO!!!

The World's Fourth-Largest City Outlaws Billboards, Calls It 'Visual Pollution' (2007)

Sao Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising (2007)

Quote: '... all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses -- even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way." '

Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards (2015) Quote:

Quote: "First it was Sao Paulo, then Chennai. Then Grenoble, Tehran, Paris and now even New York have spawned movements to replace or ban outdoor advertising."

Looks like some have not realized that overpromising is not a good way to get funding and trust in the long term.
I guess they are not happy with a second AI winter anymore, they are going for a fully fledged AI-iceage.

Together with the start-up funding bubble that will probably burst (or at least violently deflate) in the future, I predict a double-whammy that will keep people (and particularly money) out of IT and AI in particular for decades to come.

Startup bubble is not merely naysaying:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Yes. Amazon sells classified cloud services to fedgov too. https://aws.amazon.com/federal... https://aws.amazon.com/securit... http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-c...

If they can outsource their intelligence and analysis, of course they can outsource their data processing!!! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

CIA Chief Information Security Officer Sherrill Nicely: "“Cloud has been a godsend for folks trying to implement systems quickly and for us to secure workloads better. Our agency and other [intelligence community] components are busily working to move their workloads into the cloud, and off legacy and into the new.”

Unless $30K workstation guy is playing the ancient game of 'convince my boss to buy me cool shit I don't really need but want to play around with it'. That I can understand :-)

Trump is a sexist, racist bully and the best you can come back with is, well yeah so is someone else completely unrelated so it's ok for a future president to behave equally despicably? This is your benchmark for ok behavior, whatever the KKK get up to?
Thanks for proving that the Trump support base is the least educated

Some might be curious about the system, the company who deploys it, and exactly how it works and how they coordinate with local law enforcement: https://www.bloomberg.com/feat...

And as I said before: officially? No.
Proof: the ratification was just announced. And through this (again: as I said before) the treaty is now in effect.

Through the addition of the 28 EU countries the 55% limit has been surpassed.

None of that means it was improper for Trump to take the write-off, or for the tax code to include it. If you have a business in a volatile market (pork bellies, solar panels, real estate, whatever) and lose $500k your first year but make $1M the next, should you have to pay taxes on $1M or just on the $500k net profit? (Example cribbed from Megan McArdle, who has more insightful observations on the topic.)

If you don't like the loopholes, change the laws

That doesn't work. Rich people are mobile, and so is their money. Change the laws enough and they all leave your country and take most of the wealth with them. What you have to do is realize that the more you squeeze, the less you get. The higher taxes go, the more people find loopholes or out and out cheat. So stop turning people into criminals or scaring them out of your country and deal with the other end - the end that creates 2 BILLION dollar websites and fails to account for trillions (6.5 trillion - give or take a few hundred billion) without even a shrug let alone a scandal.

Yeah who am I kidding. As if taxation would even begin to cover the budget deficit in the first place.

Ha ha, in fact, Samsung, and Korea techs companies have history tied with Russian/E.European professionals/scientists. They transformed from low quality outsourcing for Japanese to hightech country with Russian "helps".

Maybe they should instead research how they can make revenue exceed expenses, since Uber is pissing money away at a phenomenal rate.

Uber is trying desperately to use up all that money they were given based on their (relatively simple) app. An app that they can't even make profitable. Apparently they lost around $1.2B in the first half of the year.

They have no clue what they're doing and this pie-in-the-sky stuff is just a bullshit distraction before the money runs out.

I don't know why companies aren't happy to just perfect and run an existing product profitably instead of looking for endless and everlasting growth? It's not sustainable. After all, why shouldn't they when there are investors willing to sign $1.5B cheques for a fucking app.

The Echo is a hit? Citation, please.

I have my doubts too, but apparently it is so...

Amazon Echo turns into a sleeper hit, offsetting Fire's failure

Amazon Echo sales reach 3M units as consumer awareness grows, research firm says

She has a name': Amazon's Alexa is a sleeper hit, with serious superfine

How Amazon's Echo Ended Up a Surprise Hit

The Amazon Echo Is Winning the Race to a Screenless Future

There are as many, if not more, businesses than there have ever been before.

I would like to see your source for that observation. Not as a challenge, but because it would provide a welcomed counterbalance to the consolidation I'm seeing in finance as of the past few decades.

Look at Gibson Guitar Corporation. Per this wikipedia article, the global sales of guitars began to decline, so they marshalled their resources and diversified by acquiring a bunch of other companies.

Gibson purchased Garrison Guitars in 2007.[21] In mid 2009 Gibson reduced its work force to adjust for a decline in guitar industry sales in the United States.[22] In 2011, Gibson acquired the Stanton Group, including Cerwin Vega, KRK Systems and Stanton DJ. Gibson then formed a new division, Gibson Pro Audio, which will deliver professional grade audio items, including headphones, loudspeakers and DJ equipment.[23] Gibson announced a partnership with the Japanese-based Onkyo Corporation in 2012. Onkyo, known for audio equipment and home theater systems, became part of the Gibson Pro Audio division.[24]

Every year, I see fewer and fewer independent companies out there. Especially in auto manufacturers. Other than Tesla, not a lot of new companies bringing cars to market. Instead, all the smaller companies are bought out by bigger companies. Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat / Chrysler, which owns a bunch of smaller car brands, is always trying to get more consolidation going in the auto industry.

Another example happened back in the late 2000s when Porsche attempted a hostile buyout of VW, and got too strung out in debt in the attempt and then VW turned around and ate Porsche.

That said, I don't think that justifies attacking the hospital electronically or physically; just through legal channels. But the hospital and courts were complete and utter pieces of shit in this case.

It's an interesting situation.

We've long bemoaned our inability to hold people accountable for their actions. Example after example of big, politically well-connected entities seem to get off scott free, and we the people are powerless to do anything about it, nor can we force the government to action.

(HSBC directors not being charged, Wells Fargo directors not being charged, Oracle paying $95 million in services restitution for wasting $240 million, and so on.)

Note that Justina's parents were issued a gag order that prevented them from talking about their problems, and it was only *after* her father broke the gag order that the situation received public attention.

Do we believe that the father should be prosecuted for breaking the gag order? He was justifiably concerned for his daughter's welfare. The hacker was also concerned, and wanted to send a message and perhaps prevent more abuse and tortures.

We all know very well that the democratic process is lost to us - as anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders found out.

How can we condemn the "last resort" actions of any individual trying to bring about just and proper changes?

Where do we draw the line?

An elevator goes up and down in a finite space and that's ALL it does

Which is why were able to automate them first — decades before coming for automobile drivers.

Some trains were also automated decades ago, though wider adoption is still met with fierce opposition from organized labor and their idiotic sympathizers. Even replacing the "conductors" with video-cameras was deemed to violate labor-agreements in NYC, getting rid of the nice, well-groomed and jovial motormen would've been a non-starter.

it's not in any way shape or form comparable to an automobile

Automobile is comparable in that it is increasingly possible to automate its functioning.

Trains and ships could've been automated even before automobiles, but the cost of crew in those is a relatively minor share of the overall cost of operation, so there was not as much incentive to fight Labor Unions on that. Humans are still involved, though, perhaps, not for much longer.

Uber could cut into its 'billions of profit' and take a small hit by increasing pay to drivers while not passing the costs to customers

They did. Uber doesn't make a profit, they have massive losses (it's losing about $200 million per month). Thus cutting into that profit means taking a negative chunk away - which means INCREASING their revenue and trying to reduce their negative losses. Exactly what would happen when they surge price.

And yes, the insanity of a company that has never turned a profit, and is losing nearly $5000 per MINUTE (60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year) is still worth $70 billion and climbing, is not lost on me...

Wind and solar are only less expensive because of subsidies - which is cheating. They are actually the most expensive forms of energy out there, not only in terms of kw output, but the overall footprint required. http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au... Solar, for example, is 30-40% more expensive without subsidies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... As for my karma, how can I possibly prove to you what I have seen with my own eyes? This is not my first time down this road on slashdot. It's not so much that I'm "pro-nuke", but that I'm "anti-green". The reality is, I'm just "pro-better".

The paper from University Of Sydney is from 2006! You are wrong to be relying on it. It's analysis is way, way out of date.

Wind and solar are only less expensive because of subsidies - which is cheating. They are actually the most expensive forms of energy out there, not only in terms of kw output, but the overall footprint required. http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au... Solar, for example, is 30-40% more expensive without subsidies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... As for my karma, how can I possibly prove to you what I have seen with my own eyes? This is not my first time down this road on slashdot. It's not so much that I'm "pro-nuke", but that I'm "anti-green". The reality is, I'm just "pro-better".

Yes and no. The maximum salary for an ambassador is under $200k, so a wealthy donor certainly isn't in it for the money. In fact they usually end up spending far more than that out of their own pockets to keep up appearances.