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Believe it or not, the biggest proponent of keeping the current leadership in power is South Korea.

I do not believe it because that's complete nonsense. South Korea does not enjoy having an insane, WMD-equipped power constantly threatening them with nuclear/chemical annihilation. They do not enjoy having their submarines sunk, their citizens shelled, or assassination attempts on their leaders. They do not enjoy being infiltrated by spies, having their families torn apart, or spending enormous sums to defend against the North. The fact that South Korea and the US have not acted just might have something to do with the thousands of North Korean artillery batteries armed with chemical and incendiary shells within range of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, a city of 10 million people. North Korea has promised that, if war ever breaks out, Seoul will become a "sea of flames".

As an American, I would love it if we had a gun policy like Japan or UK etc, (ever hear of a drive by stabbing?) but the U.S. has been so gun crazy for so long and there are so many guns out there, getting rid of all them would likely be impossible. Not to mention the gun nuts that would rather go down shooting than hand over their guns. I just can not buy into, "more guns will make us safer"...

Not only is it morally reprehensible, it is not even effective.

And yes, it is torture.

The Senate report's findings are not some surprisingly new or unforeseeable result. This was well established and repeatedly pointed out to the Bush administration.

And No, the greatest US generation did not do this.

Only in a deeply warped society would some weasel lawyers construct the kind of twisted logic that you are espousing. Your definition is so far outside the mainstream, it doesn't even qualify as a joke. So yes, it is irrelevant.

And while I am happy that you are not happy about this state of affairs, it doesn't make a yota of difference. Your rational is irrational and the method profoundly wrong.

As to being able to catch terrorists without torture, you didn't pay attention to what I earlier wrote. We got all the RAF bad guys and one of the worst terrorists before Bin Laden was caught the old fashioned way, with solid intelligence and diplomacy.

Terrorism was always a reality in most Western countries (but North America) and we dealt with it without misplacing our values.

If you never even heard of Hitchens it's a pretty save bet that you never heard about any of this foreign history, and live on a Faux News diet.

Maybe you should try to travel the world a bit.

"It's just complete nonsense, anyone working with smartphones at the time was completely unfazed by the iPhone - the first edition wasn't entirely dissimilar (and was notable underfeatured compared to) offerings from companies like Nokia, and HP with their iPaq phones.

Though 'nobody expected anything remotely like the epoch shifting device' is over the top, the main point is hardly complete nonsense. Most of the speculation was indeed heavily influenced by the iPod and older style smartphones:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Apple was seriously considering a clickwheel-based design 15 months before the iPhone was unveiled:

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2...

I should point out: Coal itself is playing out in several parts of the US. Coal, like pop music, is eating itself.

While the number of apps downloaded is coming from 3rd parties we are still left with Google's financial reports indicating $900M paid to developers compared to Apple's claim of $5,000M paid to developers.

Plus its not just Forbes indicating a huge disparity.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://techland.time.com/2013/...
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ay...

Obviously we can't have the idea of the fringe Left engaging in political violence floating in polite company. After all, what would that do to the "peace" movement?

Bridge bombing case: Appellate court upholds the sentences of 4 terror suspects

The men had pleaded guilty in federal court in Akron to conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and other weapons charges.

A federal jury convicted a fifth man, Joshua Stafford, of similar charges. Dowd sentenced him to 10 years in prison in October.

22% of U.S. School Districts using Chromebooks

Why Half of Our Company is Using Chromebooks

Chromebooks capture 20% of commercial notebooks

Re: WHY DO THEY GO ON RECORD
If you make a fuss you join
"Only One Big Telecom CEO Refused To Give The NSA The Access It Wanted... And He's Been In Jail For 4 Years"
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
NSA Domestic Surveillance Began 7 Months Before 9/11, Convicted Qwest CEO Claims
http://www.wired.com/2007/10/n...

Already happened.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

However it happens with Taxi drivers also.

http://www.wcax.com/story/2457...

Sorry no complete security in any system. However with Uber the driver that shows up has a reputation one can review... with a taxi company you have no control over that. I would prefer Uber. IMHO.

But you didn't get ripped off and thats not what happened.

Did the original kick starters get what they paid for? (Dev units I expect?) If so, how did they get ripped off?

It's not what they're saying.

But some others agrees with you, namelly Nicholas Negroponte.

Let's see what time has to say about it.

Kickstarter is not an investment website, its a donation website. Not really sure how they got ripped off other than you don't like Facebook (me either!)

Yes and no. People does donate with something in mind. And they want this state of mind enforced.

You don't donate money to homeless if they're going to buy booze, do you? Most of us don't donate money to them even if we're sure they're going to buy food. Why?

With Kickstart it's the same thing. The guys can be right under the Law, but they have to face the public opinion about the matter. Kickstarters are feeling ripped off, and since they were the very simple reason Oculus managed to get a 2 Billion USD company, it's God Damned Good to spend a good fraction of this money trying to explain themselves - and perhaps, giving something interesting back to these guys.

Bad P/R can be good just to politicians.

uh, the kickstarters didn't buy stock, they donated money. they got exactly what they payed for.

It's not what they're saying.

I used this in another post and I think it's a really good analogy: http://www.businessinsider.com...

This article is a bunch of Chinese expressions that make zero sense in English when translated literally. But we're able to translate them because of the context in which they are used. All languages have metaphors and idioms like that all over the place. If the universal translator really wasn't capable of using context to figure out meaning, it wouldn't be able to translate any languages at all. That's why the episode is so dumb. If I heard you say "Picard at Farpoint" a few dozen times over the course of a conversation, I could figure out what it meant, even if I never found out what "Picard" and "Farpoint" meant. I'd learn what the phrase meant and ignore the literal translation. Using a phrase to convey a meaning is functionally identical to using a specific word for it. If a person can do it, the Enterprise's computer could do it. The entire premise of the episode is idiotic.

It's not about idioms. It's about meaning. Meaning can be conveyed either through a set of words or a single word. Either way it still requires context and can be translated using that context.

Read this article: http://www.businessinsider.com...

We don't have any trouble turning those literal Chinese phrases into common English phrases, despite the fact that their literal meanings make almost no sense without context or prior knowledge. By the logic in that episode, the TNG Universal Translator would fail to turn Chinese into English. It'd be a useless piece of shit and not work for any language.

Craft beers have not killed off major breweries but they have an impact on the economy. Craft Beer The Craft Beer Boom Added $34 Billion To The Economy Last Year

Can we get slashdot off Musk's nutsack please? This nutswinging on Musk and Tesla is the greatest car ever is horseshit is getting old. Now he's changing the design great, work the problem Elon. Let us all know when your cars don't catch fire from just sitting there.

What? Like a Porsche GT3? You speak as if gas powered vehicles don't randomly catch fire all the time, and nobody says boo. Troll.

Citation here:http://www.businessinsider.com...

If you drill down to the actual study, what they found was that Target was cheaper than Wal-Mart by 0.46% for ONE MONTH. The preceding months, Wal-Mart had been cheaper by over 2%. So this was apparently a blip caused by some one-off sales at Target.

Citation here: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Facebook makes plenty of revenue from ads, just like Google. http://www.businessinsider.com...

The digital economy has its own economies of scale, just like other industries. Whatsapp is also big enough to make money. Oculus? Dunno, maybe Zuckerberg is feeling nostalgic about the 90's VR hype.

No it doesn't beg any questions. The Film studios hate first sale doctrine. Netflix can buy DVDs from anywhere and rent them out. Just like Redbox:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

The UK has a problem with Islamic extremist gangs in prisons. Printed material from external well-wishers and visitors is a huge contributory factor. This problem is far, far worse than any right-ring white gangs in US jails.

Bedwetting bullshit. If you go to prison, you're going to try and make friends with people like you to keep the resizing of your asshole to a minimum. And there's no shortage of crazy christian proselytizing in prison, or violent gangs of wasps, but ZOMG MOOOSLIMS!

But if you really want to complain about fundamentalist Islam, start with the nearest mirror. Because it's either directly supported by western imperialism (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria) or in direct backlash to western imperialism (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan.) But hey, anything that allows you to point your finger at somebody else.

how much would you be willing to pay for Google?

How much does google search really make off me? I'd probably be willing to pay that in exchange for an ad free experience.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

$30 per YEAR... $2.50 per month. Yeah, I'd pay that much.

And realistically, my own value is even less. I use search and maps daily, but I don't use google drive, or google apps, or hangouts. I watch stuff on youtube, but not daily. I have a gmail account, but don't use it much. (my android phone is connected to it for the play store, but i don't use it for email, contacts, or calendars, and its not even setup on my phone) I have yet to spend money in the app store.

And above all I practically never click on ads or sponsored links. If I paid google $1/per month, they'd probably be ahead on me. But yeah, if their average ad revenue per user is $29/year I'd still spring for that.

Fortunately, the author included a perfectly sensible and falsifiable prediction along with that theory:

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.

Unfortunately, that prediction got falsified almost immediately. The plane changed course at least twice according to radar (the second time an hour later), and this latest development implies at least a third course change southward. It's nowhere near the route that Mr. Goodfellow predicted.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

That story might have explained the first course change to the west, but it doesn't explain the plane turning south over than an hour later. This theory is basically dead.

Here's a map of the possible flight paths (which they've now narrowed down to the southern one).

Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.

Checking the math...

Let's assume 50 40-hour productive work weeks each year. High-school work isn't as good as college, which isn't as good as professional work, so we'll assume wages of $10, $20, and $30, respectively.

High school is 4 years * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 10 dollars/hour. That's $80,000. College is 5 years (assuming a 1-year master program) * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 20 dollars/hour. That's $200,000. A fresh graduate therefore has invested $280,000 in time with no return. Then they enter the workforce, and start getting the return.

The entry-level position is 3 years * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 30 dollars/hour. That's $180,000, but the subject is actually being paid for their time, now. Rather than adding that to the investment cost, that's the first three years of returns. We'll extrapolate that out for further insight.

After a total of five years in the workforce, even without any raises, the investment is fully reimbursed, and any additional returns are profit (reaching 7% ROI in ten years). In contrast, the employee could have simply dropped out of high school, and worked at $10 the whole time. That comes out to $20,000 per year, compared to the college track now earning $60,000 per year, so there's a profit of $40,000 per year for a college education.

With the initial investment cost of $280,000, the time investment in college is recouped in 7 years. Add a $40,000 investment cost for tuition and other expenses, and the investment is recouped in 8 years, still assuming a constant $60,000 income.

Of course, then there's taxes. Interestingly, since taxes aren't being paid during schooling, that actually lowers the relative value of the time being invested. Rather than an education costing $280,000 in lost income, it only costs $168,000 in post-tax lost income, assuming a 40% flat tax. Even with the lower take-home pay rate, that cost is recovered in only six years, and after ten years the ROI is 11%.

Your estimate of $50k to $100k to get a 5% to 10% ROI is close, but extreme. The low end of the salary range puts you in the high end of the return. However, the estimate of $750,000 for an education doesn't seem to make sense. Perhaps that's why a 6-figure salary for every employee seems unreasonable to the political and management folks - they've already done the math.

Of course, math is only a part of the issue. The costs and profits involved here are assuming that $10/hour is an acceptable baseline for wages. We've assumed that without a high school education, a baseline employee could sustain a $20,000 annual income, but we have not considered whether this is a suitable income for an acceptable standard of living in the modern age. That, however, is a discussion for another time.

NSA LAWYER: Tech Companies Knew We Collected Their Data http://www.businessinsider.com...

Crimea has been autonomous within the Ukraine precisely because it is more ethnically Russian than Ukrainian,

How Russians Became Crimea's Largest Ethnic Group, In One Haunting Chart

Crimea may have a majority Russian population today, but it hasn't always been that way.

The peninsula's dark history of ethnic cleansing is visible in the following chart from Reuters.

The chart shows a collapse in the population of native Crimean Tatars from 34.1% in 1897 to zero in 1959, marking brutal harassment leading up to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's forcible deportation of the entire population in 1944, with nearly half dying in the process. It took decades for the population to climb back to 12% by 2001.

While the population of Ukrainians and especially Russians rose, the percentage of the population falling into an unlisted category also fell from more than 20% in 1921 to around 5% in 1959. This was a consequence of the deportation of Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and other groups.

Who are the Crimean Tatars, and why are they important?

Whatever the Tatar grievances against the Ukrainian state may be, when faced with the choice of being under either Russian or Ukrainian control, the Crimean Tatar leadership has consistently and unequivocally chosen Ukraine. Since the Soviet period, attempts to split the Crimean Tatar movement and persuade some of the Tatars to support a pro-Soviet, and later pro-Russian, agenda has not borne fruit.

Crimean Tatars fret over Russian domination again

Crimean Tatars living in Turkey said Monday they worry of a return to the terrible oppression they suffered in the Ukraine province the last time it belonged to Russia and the Soviet Union.

"We've seen this movie before and we don't want to see it again," said Celal Icten, 59, head of Crimean Tatar Association of Istanbul, whose parents were born in Istanbul and Romania but both draw direct lines to the ancient city of Bakhchisaray, the pre-Tsarist capital of Crimea.

Once Victims Of Stalin, Ukraine's Tatars Reassert Themselves

You do realize that those guys in tight pants in college, for bringing in money that paid for your science, engineering and arts labs...

Except that it was exposed that barring only a few schools, the vast majority of sports programs were a financial net negative for the school.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

I certainly see the similarities in their business ethics...

The evidence is clear: when has an American startup auto company ever succeeded by selling through auto dealers? The last successful American car company was Chrysler, which was founded almost a century ago, and even they went bankrupt a few years ago, along with General Motors. Since the founding of Chrysler, there have been dozens of failures, Tucker and DeLorean being simply the most well-known. In recent years, electric car startups, such as Fisker, Coda, and many others, attempted to use auto dealers and all failed.

Tucker's failure had to do with problems with the SEC and his own board of directors. Not because of anything having to do with dealerships but initially about selling accessories for cars he never produced. He had sold over 2000 dealerships at up to $30,000 a pop and it generated revenue, net inflow but because of these other problems he could never deliver the cars. The Dealerships weren't even a factor.

The DeLorean failed because of questions about the financial stability of DMC again by the SEC and selling a piece of crap that had reliability, quality and pricing problems. The DMC 12 had an MSRP of $25,000 which was pricey territory considering you could buy a full on European sports car for about $5,000 more that didn't have all of the problems the DMC 12 had. That and the fact that John DeLorean was caught up in in a drug scandal in 1982 didn't help the cause either. Ultimately DeLorean Motor Corp failed because nobody would invest in them because of these problems. The dealerships were actually on the side of consumers because they got tired of fixing problems that left the factory, so again, dealerships contributed to DeLorean's failure? No.

Fisker is recent history and it wasn't the failure of having dealerships. It was again, a $100,000 pile of crap that broke down and that coupled with the Obama Administration pushing green solutions (remember Solyndra?) agreed to loan money to Fisker so they kept expanding. When Solyndra blew up on the administration they stopped pumping money into Fisker citing delays. Fisker ran out of money because no more investment money was coming in and nobody was buying what they had because of the quality issues.

CODA failed because they built an ugly, overpriced vehicle that nobody wanted. Using an existing cheap Chinese car and making it electric while pricing it ridiculously high wasn't what the consumer wanted so it failed because of that. Were dealerships to blame for that strategy? No.

Given the author's dubious linkage to dealerships being a root cause of failure for these companies is disingenuous and it would seem more likely that:

1) Government Interference by Scrutiny/Questions about financial condition or impropriety and also including pushing your company to grow faster than you can.

- or -

2) Horrible/Overpriced Product with bad quality or lousy design that nobody wants to buy.

Are the more likely culprits here. We all agree Dealerships give people a licensed, well regulated licensed, way to print money by inflating costs to consumers. They don't really serve in the consumer's best interest and that's why all states have very strict laws governing how dealerships must operate and things like lemon laws should a vehicle become so deplorable that the consumer has a way out. In this day and age they are more outmoded considering other mechanisms for purchasing things that have evolved over the past 10 years however the guys who own dealerships have money and that money buys political influence. To a politician, a guy who gives you regular, large campaign contributions is somebody you'

My phone just erased everything it had in it and rebooted. One of the sickest feelings I've ever had in my life!!! ~ Lebron James via Twitter. He later erased the tweet.

Anyone know if this was how NBA player, Lebron James, Samsung was wiped? Its been covered on CNBC's SqwakonStreet today. For those that had not heard, King James basically tweeted the quote above, yesterday(3/12) at 5:03PM, and later erased the tweet. Guessed he realized as a "Famous Samsung Endorser", that might not look great.

End result, his phone was restored...when they announced this I was wondering when his last backup was taken and how many daysold it might have been.

From a German Twitter user, Shibumi @Sh1bumi #Backdoor in #Samsung Smartphones http://www.golem.de/news/samsu... poster, (thank you Google Translate):

Because the modems are always connected basically with a mobile network operator , the backdoor can be used virtually any time . As a possible attack options Kocialkowski lists, in addition to accessing the device memory, the switch on the microphone, activating the GPS module and the access to the camera.

My phone just erased everything it had in it and rebooted. One of the sickest feelings I've ever had in my life!!! ~ Lebron James via Twitter. He later erased the tweet.

Anyone know if this was how NBA player, Lebron James, Samsung was wiped? Its been covered on CNBC's SqwakonStreet today. For those that had not heard, King James basically tweeted the quote above, yesterday(3/12) at 5:03PM, and later erased the tweet. Guessed he realized as a "Famous Samsung Endorser", that might not look great.

End result, his phone was restored...when they announced this I was wondering when his last backup was taken and how many daysold it might have been.

From a German Twitter user, Shibumi @Sh1bumi #Backdoor in #Samsung Smartphones http://www.golem.de/news/samsu... poster, (thank you Google Translate):

Because the modems are always connected basically with a mobile network operator , the backdoor can be used virtually any time . As a possible attack options Kocialkowski lists, in addition to accessing the device memory, the switch on the microphone, activating the GPS module and the access to the camera.

Yep. There are lots of people with no running water and no electricity who have a phone.They charge them up using solar panels, car batteries, or get them charged at stores.

What this article is totally glossing over is the fact that Google is making a lot of inroads, not just through Android devices that are tied into Google services and apps, but also through their iOS apps which have gained a lot of traction as well. Two of the top iOS apps of 2013 were Google Maps and YouTube, both huge ad revenue generators for Google. In the long run, this could be troubling for Apple as it boxes them in to remaining mostly a hardware company. Hardware gets commoditized much faster than software and services do.

There have been a lot of materials developments in battery designs over the last year or two. Some of them are providing 10x or better power storage with varying lifetimes. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of this make it into production. It would be better if they could couple improved batteries with some minimalist portable computer designs. People comfortable with Unix would get by with something with much lower specks than is typical today (assuming a minimalist interface), and the battery could probably last for hundreds of hours. I wouldn't mind that a bit.

Some of the other battery tech could be very useful for emergency situations.

This might be one to keep an eye on: A Battery That Runs On Sugar Could Soon Be Powering Your Electronics

Disclaimer: Lifelong Android user, fully moved to iOS with purchase of iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and use rMBP as main computer.

Apple Maps continues to give inaccurate directions with implications ranging from incredible inconvenience to downright life threatening danger.

A lifelong Google Maps user, I bought an iPhone 5S on launch day. I switched to Apple Maps largely due to the tighter integration and full screen mode. I wanted to give it a fair shake. Let me share a few brief observations.

A large regional hospital in my home town closed down several years ago, and moved into a new building nearly ten miles away in a different city. The original facility was purchased by the city, and converted into a high school. Apple Maps continues to list the old location - now a high school - as the location of THE HOSPITAL, despite it having moved YEARS AGO. That is the kind of error that could quite possibly KILL SOMEONE.

I continue to receive weird route selections and inaccurate directions that would add miles and several minutes to my drive. Incorrect or inefficient exits. Favoring 55 MPH state routes full of small towns & numerous stop lights over interstate 80 running fully parallel a mile away with 70 MPH speed limit and traffic moving smoothly. Head scratching, bizarre route choices without the deep options available in Google Maps to correct it.

I think this is the problem - Google's army of of > 6,000 contractors endlessly driving & mapping the roads of America vs. Apple's flyover algorithmic mapping. http://www.businessinsider.com...

I still use Apple Maps, but largely only to keep track of distance driven/remaining and ETA on routes I'm already familiar with. It is, overall in my estimation, about as accurate as Waze - which is to say both products are damn far sight worse than Google Maps.

So have you actually taken the time to report these inaccuracies and errors to Apple -- using the not so hard to find Report A Problem button *right in the maps app* --or do you just vent your spleen on technology sites about how shitty Apple Maps are, complete with relevant examples?

If you can take this amount of time to document and bitch, surely you took the 10 seconds to tap the Report A Problem button? I can assure you that someone inside Apple does read those reports.

You might be surprised as to how much "road attention" you lose performing such a simple maneuver.

Yes I would be surprised. And I wouldn't take your word for it. Especially as you example is of taking your eyes off the road, not a long press of a button that is already at your fingertip.

Yea, too bad there's not a plethora of existing studies that show how non-visual distractions are just as bad (if not worse, in some cases) as vision-based ones, huh?

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://mentalhealth.about.com/...

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

Disclaimer: Lifelong Android user, fully moved to iOS with purchase of iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and use rMBP as main computer.

Apple Maps continues to give inaccurate directions with implications ranging from incredible inconvenience to downright life threatening danger.

A lifelong Google Maps user, I bought an iPhone 5S on launch day. I switched to Apple Maps largely due to the tighter integration and full screen mode. I wanted to give it a fair shake. Let me share a few brief observations.

A large regional hospital in my home town closed down several years ago, and moved into a new building nearly ten miles away in a different city. The original facility was purchased by the city, and converted into a high school. Apple Maps continues to list the old location - now a high school - as the location of THE HOSPITAL, despite it having moved YEARS AGO. That is the kind of error that could quite possibly KILL SOMEONE.

I continue to receive weird route selections and inaccurate directions that would add miles and several minutes to my drive. Incorrect or inefficient exits. Favoring 55 MPH state routes full of small towns & numerous stop lights over interstate 80 running fully parallel a mile away with 70 MPH speed limit and traffic moving smoothly. Head scratching, bizarre route choices without the deep options available in Google Maps to correct it.

I think this is the problem - Google's army of of > 6,000 contractors endlessly driving & mapping the roads of America vs. Apple's flyover algorithmic mapping.
http://www.businessinsider.com...

I still use Apple Maps, but largely only to keep track of distance driven/remaining and ETA on routes I'm already familiar with. It is, overall in my estimation, about as accurate as Waze - which is to say both products are damn far sight worse than Google Maps.

I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix.

Really? Well, no and no.

One must be careful not to confuse the frequency of spills with the quantity spilled, or the size of a spill with how much press it gets.

Dr Bronner's is a great travel soap--you can do laundry with it, wash your body or hair (if you are not picky about how it rinses out), and even brush your teeth (if you are brave)

LOL !

You sure can wash your dog or mop the floor with the soap, but if you try to brush your teeth with it ... See this link --- http://www.businessinsider.com...

3. Use As Toothpaste: You can do this (just put a drop on your toothbrush), and some people do. However, not only will it foam a lot, but it does not taste like peppermint or citrus or almond - it tastes like soap.

Several reasons:

1) OK, has anyone - preferably someone with solid crypto/math credentials - ever audited the fscking crypto behind Bitcoin? Anyone? Not that I know of.

The basic crypto behind bitcoin is sha256 it's the same crypto used behind TLS and SSL, PGP, SSH, S/MIME, and IPsec. If sha256 is compromised the fact that your bitcoins are now double spendable is the least of the world's problems.

2) Even if the basic crypto is sound, what about the wallet software? Surprise, surprise, it seems this is how Mt Gox was attacked... And wasn't a TV talking head wallet hacked after he showed the number on the air? Oooops...

The 'official' wallet software is open source, and is not subject to the sort of transaction malleability that affected MtGox. In short the official software is sound, however, the official wallet software is not designed to handle the volume of transactions that an enterprise environment like an exchange needs to be able to process. It simply isn't fast enough to keep up with hundreds to thousands of transactions per second. To this end MtGox like most exchanges used the official source code as a reference point and created their own custom wallet software to interact with their exchange. Unfortunately they made shortcuts in their coding to do this, which allowed this particular vulnerability to be exploited.

3) Any "market" where the majority of the "product" is owned by a very small group of people is not a free market - it's a cartel. And cartels usually are up to no good...

So, no, Bitcoin IMHO is not to be trusted.

And that's different from the over all distribution of USD how? Most of the people with large bitcoin fortunes are early adopters, and frankly why shouldn't early adopters be rewarded for taking a risk on something that ultimately may not pan out. You don't have to go far to find plenty of people who think Bitcoin is a scam, scheme, or otherwise 'no good'. You yourself imply as much. Like anything early adopters take a big risk, if BTC never got to be worth more than chump change they're out time and possibly money if they invested anything heavily into it. As another analogy, 25-35 years ago there were plenty of people who insisted personal computers would never be popular and there was no market for them. You don't begrudge people like Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates who took a risk on fledgeling technology and came out on top do you? Maybe in 10-20 years BitCoin will have gone the way of the betamax and vhs, but then maybe it won't.

3) Any "market" where the majority of the "product" is owned by a very small group of people is not a free market - it's a cartel. And cartels usually are up to no good...

So, no, Bitcoin IMHO is not to be trusted.

The "majority"? You're fucking kidding me with this shit, right?

I suppose that whole concept of the 99% vs. the 1% in reference to our current monetary split somehow doesn't count as a "majority" in your eyes. Interesting math you have there. Reminds me of a banker.

And I wholeheartedly laugh at the idea that those controlling the USD are somehow not "up to no good", since we've only fined the major banking institutions trillions for violations that they continue to do every fucking day. The whole damn global system almost came crashing down in 2008. Won't be long before they accomplish that feat permanently, because we have done nothing to stop it from happening again. (That would be due to the cartel in charge who are writing their own financial laws in case you were wondering)

Believe me the bullshit we have now isn't any more stable. You just believe the cartel when they say it is.

Several reasons:

1) OK, has anyone - preferably someone with solid crypto/math credentials - ever audited the fscking crypto behind Bitcoin? Anyone? Not that I know of.
2) Even if the basic crypto is sound, what about the wallet software? Surprise, surprise, it seems this is how Mt Gox was attacked... And wasn't a TV talking head wallet hacked after he showed the number on the air? Oooops...
3) Any "market" where the majority of the "product" is owned by a very small group of people is not a free market - it's a cartel. And cartels usually are up to no good...

So, no, Bitcoin IMHO is not to be trusted.

Why is anyone surprised? The more stuff you have online, the more targets you have on your back. This reminds me of the arguments after Stuxnet when people were asking why equipment was online that had no business being online. People are trying to set up their house like the Jetson's with everything automated and controllable from their smart phone. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should! http://www.businessinsider.com... http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

No!! surely not? Not this Rupert - http://www.businessinsider.com...

And Gina? - http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...

Surely they wouldn't be doing back room deals with Abbott for personal interests in the media and mining sectors?

Why are they assuming it was started by the car?

"In fact, the Toronto fire department says the fire didn't originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or electrical receptacle since all of those components weren't touched by the fire"

maybe the fire was cause by something in the garage adjacent to the car?

Looking at the pictures, you see that from all appearances, the car itself wasn't even involved. It simply happened to be there.

The fire department has torn down large amounts of sheet rock, trying to get at the fire, which says they thought it it was in the walls, or
the ceiling. This sounds like an electrical fire, or something hot enough to possibly have ignited the studs behind the sheet rock, so they
have to tear it down to make sure.
The firemen are paying no attention to the car, they are looking as something on the wall or floor in front of the car.

I'm thinking arson or a can of lawn mower gas leaked.

Another instance of there being a fire on the same city block as a Tesla and the press rushing to report it.

Pictures here: http://www.businessinsider.com...

You can clearly see that the car was pulled in close to the rear wall of the garage and the majority of the interior of that wall is fucked, as is the ceiling.
In the first picture, they've torn down the left side of the wall and are looking for shit (such as fucked wiring), but not finding anything.
You can clearly see in all 3 pictures that the interior of the wall is fine - the wood isn't even blackened.
The fire did not start within the wall, it started in the garage near the wall. The only thing nearby is the front of the car.

Actually it looked like the front end was probably involved somehow, they just don't show it directly. Otherwise they would have presumably removed the Tesla along with the Lexus that was parked next to it when the fire broke out.

direct link to the article with photo:
http://www.businessinsider.com...

Wow you can't even quote the first article correctly.

>> The first link states "another Tesla Model S has burst into flames -- this time, while parked".

No it actually says:
Another Tesla Model S Catches Fire -- This Time, While Parked & Unplugged

It also still seems you didn't read the article. It clearly cites the reference it used: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Which says completely unambiguously:

"Earlier this month, a Tesla Model S sitting in a Toronto garage ignited and caught on fire."

>> Just looking at the pictures you can tell it wasn't the car that was burning

I don't see that at all. Unfortunately the pictures dont clearly show the front of the car but look at the ceiling. The burn pattern is clearly right over the hood of the car.

source: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com...