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There... you're doing it again.

The 'funny' part is in the fact that you are treating this as if it is a technical problem with a technical solution.
Namely, "let's wash our hands off this and give them a jailbreak button"-solution. It isn't.

Apple is a corporation - first and foremost.
THEN, after we establish that, we determine what kind of a corporation they are this day, month, decade... Are they more into technical business, artistic, musical, IP rights... etc.
Being a corporation, their main (possibly only) goal is MAKING MONEY. And that means make it NOW! FUCK THE CSR!

And there is no money in giving users a 'jailbreak button'. Not for Apple that is.
In fact, you can probably bet your ass that somewhere in the wast field of corporate spreadsheets there is a column (or several) that would suddenly dip into 'red' should Apple users get such an option.
Say... something like... 'planned number of apps/products bought through the app store per user'.
Apps/products they will no longer have access to as they have chosen not to accept the EULAs that give exclusive salesman rights to Apple stores and services.
And suddenly, with each (now thoroughly documented) 'jailbreak' - Apple starts losing money.
Sure, it's only perceived spreadsheet money to us - but not to the stockholders and bankers.

Apple's customers are not tied into Apple's services because of their own convenience or safety - they are LOCKED IN because that makes sure they don't spend their money somewhere else.
And a 'jailbroken' iPhone gives them exactly that option - to go somewhere else.
Besides, that stinks a lot like that obscenity that Google is doing.

Actually I've been lurking around here since the late 90s

Even funnier.
All it lacks is a "Back in my day..." or a "Get off my lawn!" to tie into a classic Slashdot meme.

The comparative readability of Arial is not the same on-screen and on paper. Here's the account in the Economist: Learning difficulties. It mentions "tests" that had determined readability, but alas no reference to the specific study.

We all know how reliable the Business Software Alliance and IDC's piracy figures are... in fact, according to The Economist they're totally BS. So why would China even believe its an issue to the point where they'll agree to IP agreements that are nothing more than protectionists movements by companies to make more money? Or is it lawyers trying to prove their worth in a company making an issue out of something they really have absolutely no control over? Can you really stop companies from underlicensing products by scaring them into going legit through government laws?

When I see this, I roll my eyes and keep on thinking what total BS all these laws really are. I mean, if I make a copy Windows 2008 SP2, I could go to jail for 5 years with a $250,000 fine. If I kill my neighbour with a crowbar in a fight, I could get a year or two sentence in jail. Is it me, or is something not quite right about this?

alling down. See this Economist article where we learn all sorts of interesting things that most people in this discussion clearly don't understand.

>And ulcers did eventually turn out to have a bacterial origin - so you just never know.
However, highlighting the odd relationship between bacteria and the human body some research now points to the fact that the drop in number of people infected with Heliobacter pylori is directly related to the increase in people suffering reflux as the bacteria helps regulate the strength of sotmach acid.
The Economist -subscription required
So you do just never know...!

using it would have to be a better deal than just schlepping the parts fairly close than airlifting them with ordinary heavy-lift helos.

"Heavy-transport helicopters, such as the Mil Mi-26 or Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, address some of these difficulties, but their payloads are limited to 20 and nine tonnes, respectively, and the huge rotors create a powerful downdraft that makes handling that payload rather tricky. So people have long been looking for other ways round the problem."

Falcon

They just had to make it look like a traditional Alien 'U.F.O.' didn't they?

TFA, the Economist article at least. It explains why a flying saucer shape is used. Unlike traditional balloons with cigar shapes the flying saucer shape can go in any direction. The Goodyear blimp has to be pointed in the direction it is supposed to go.

Falcon

Get off your high horse. Even the farking Economist agrees with me:

"America looks likely to avoid a second recession. But with households still overburdened by debt, years of slow growth lie ahead"

http://www4.economist.com/node/17041738

Mr Wilson now realises that his boom-year sales were a by-product of the state’s housing bubble. Dealers reckon that before the crisis a third of new cars in California were bought with home-equity loans. “Now there’s no home equity,” says Mr Wilson, “there’s no down-payment for cars.” He foresees no sales growth for another two to three years. “The country is not optimistic. If you’re not optimistic you don’t buy a new house or new car.”

He’s right: Americans are not optimistic. Official statistics say that the economy has been growing for nearly 15 months, but so sluggishly that most people seem to think it is still in recession. For a few months it looked as if the economy might even shrink again, as growth slowed to a mere 1.6% (at an annualised rate) in the second quarter, job creation almost stopped and home sales plunged.

Do you really think the Chinese workers will stand up for their rights? Hell, the idea of human rights in general is a purely Western concept.

We aren't talking about human rights in general, but the inevitable fact that as labour gets more scarce, workers' power increases. This is very much happenening now in China - interesting article from the Economist: The rising power of the Chinese worker.

With that said, where America is lacking is that we are not looking at Cargo and doing it across all of North America. Basically, we should be putting a high speed rail on the common cargo routes, rather than common human routes.

Can't do it, signalling and track loads on cargo lines are not useful for high-speed trains. To get anything near "high speed" you need separate lins.

Cargo in general is dying in the US. Since delivery over the last mile generally requires a semi-trailer to haul the container, it's typically cheaper in the long run to build a new container port than it is to trans-ship through trains. Then you ship the containers to the port and truck them the last 400 km or so. This doesn't work for mid-west areas, but the amount of cargo flowing there is limited to the point that it's not a serious consideration.

The same is not true in Canada where the coastal loading areas are seriously limited, basically to Halifax, Vancouver and a few ports on the St. Lawrence while the main industrial areas are all inland 1000's of km away. As a result the railways up here are making money hand over fist, and they're slowly but surely buying up the US companies. Soo Line cars are very common in Oshawa.

Really? This Economist article makes it sound like what's happening is just the opposite of what you said:

"Rail’s share of the freight market, measured in ton-miles, has risen steadily to 43%—about the highest in any rich country. [...T]he fastest-growing part of rail freight has been “intermodal” traffic: containers or truck trailers loaded on to flat railcars. The number of such shipments rose from 3m in 1980 to 12.3m in 2006"

check the answer from the paper's author in this week Economist. they clearly state that the journalist misunderstood the conclusions...

Links are fun! You should try them sometime!

Link to the aforementioned response. Note you have to scroll down to the letter by Dr. Tsao...

Making lighting more efficient could increase energy use, not decrease it

But precedent suggests that this will serve merely to increase the demand for light. The consequence may not be just more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption, rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting.

check the answer from the paper's author in this week Economist. they clearly state that the journalist misunderstood the conclusions...

But precedent suggests that this will serve merely to increase the demand for light. The consequence may not be just more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption, rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting.

The only hope for Mexico is if prop 19 passes cali, speads east followed by the other recreational drugs.

I'm not so sure - it is possible that the people of Mexico will simply get fed up of the violence and decide to end prohibition by themselves. It seems like there is a real global momentum towards decriminalisation and legalisation at the moment. Last year Mexico decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs including marijuana, cocaine and heroin. In the past few months, the Presidents of Peru, Mexico and Columbia have all called for debate on legalisation. There is some amount of popular support in Mexico for legalisation of all drugs (The Guardian - Mexico looks to legalisation as drug war murders hit 28,000, The Guardian - War on drugs: why the US and Latin America could be ready to end a fruitless 40-year struggle, The Economist - Mexico and drugs: Thinking the unthinkable, BBC News - Vicente Fox backs Mexico drugs legalisation). And it's not just Mexico BBC News - Britain looks at Portugal's success story over decriminalising personal drug use.

The whole thing has the feeling of a house of cards. If prop 19 passes, California legalises cannabis, and Peru, Mexico, and Columbia legalise all drugs, and the U.K moves to decriminalise all drugs, then things could move quite rapidly. If legalisation significantly reduces crime and violence in those nations, the ripple on effects are going to lead to people everywhere questioning why they should continue to be part of the global drugs prohibition regime. In a decade the world's approach to drugs could look significantly different.

Why has everyone been so negative?

I am having difficulty locating the historical records of any successful (let alone dominant) sports teams, businesses, or nations whose philosophy was "Que sera, sera.". Assuming the best will yield you this

Sharply raising the stakes in a dispute over Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain, the Chinese government has blocked exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles.

Chinese customs officials are halting shipments to Japan of so-called rare earth elements, preventing them from being loading aboard ships at Chinese ports, industry officials said on Thursday.

which is hardly a good thing when the opposing business has leadership that is not blinded by greed and so thinks far longer term than your business leaders do:

Amid such elemental abundance, your correspondent could not help pondering, as he turned for home, the recent moves by the Chinese to restrict their exports of rare-earth elements--scandium, yttrium and lanthanum, plus the 14 so-called lanthanides. Today, China supplies 97% of the world's demand for rare-earth metals, thanks to a far-sighted government policy going back to the 1960s that envisaged the rare earths as "the oil of the twenty-first century".

Again, America is cursed with individuals who think that their greed is of paramount importance and if they should endanger America in satiating that greed, then that's not their problem. The essential characteristic of America's right - of America's Republicans - is they feel that they are entitled to accumulate more wealth faster now without any constraints or guidelines whatsoever, and somebody else can worry about tomorrow.

To repeat myself, it is my judgment that China concluded that predominant characteristic of America's right was and is the greatest weakness that America has and so decades ago they set their hook (in Nixon!). Precisely as anticipated, ever since our right has been eagerly pursuing their twin goals of getting fabulously wealthy while hurting American "labor" (a.k.a. consumers and soldiers; hence, the shortsightedness).

We decline as China rises, which is an entirely predictable result when you gamble in the Orient using their cards...as anybody who has been in that area eventually learns.

A Tale of Two Sisters
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2009/09/farewell_to_feer.cfm

In this case I dont think it's that nefarious. I think it's easily many layers of middle managers trying to do a bit better than the last guy tossing on one more layer of tracking until you get a hairball of cookies, HTML5 DBs, Flash LSOs, etc. Most do not seem particularly intrusive alone, but added together the big picture is kinda creepy.

Still the WSJ article makes it sound like 50 mom and pop web sites using Google Analytics. They don't seem to differentiate that two cookies does not equal twice the tracking. One cookie is all you need to track many metrics.

The stuff I find really unnerving is the social network mining and analysis. The economist had a great story on it: http://www.economist.com/node/16910031?story_id=16910031

Now this isn't just cookies on facebook, but actually recoding how long people talk on the phone to identify them as "influencers".

Between things like Radian6, Experian/Equifax/TansUnion, and RingLeaderDigital, there is some very shady tracking going on. And some of the companies are most definitely trying to tie in personally identifiable information. Certainly, the credit unions are committed to keeping just about every fact they can about you. They mine publicly available court records, work with your credit card companies, and they would love to know your browsing history. Their whole purpose it to create as complete a profile of you as possible. They say they delete the info in 10 years but I think some have been caught being less than diligent.

Anyways, for SOME of the more reputable* ad companies you can opt-out here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

*Relative term

Just scanned this from the Economist, Google trying to muscle out a competitor on Android platform for their ad (their whole) business

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/09/skyhook_sues_google

The Economist did a really good piece on this. To sum it up, while all nations use laws to moralize to a certain degree, the Americans seem to be one of the few ones in the Western World so to speak, that do it to excess. It at Saudia Arabia....yet(give the Republicans time and it will be pretty damn soon).

http://www.economist.com/node/16910031?story_id=16910031
Mining social networks
Untangling the social web
Software: From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly useful

It's still and interesting article.

Danny Rathjens writes "The Economist cutely writes, "Ye cannae change the laws of physics Or can you?" There was already evidence that the fine structure constant -- a measure of the strength of electromagnetic interaction -- became slightly smaller going back billions of years based on observations of light from quasars. Staggering newer observations provided evidence that the value going back in time actually became larger! The crucial difference being that the new observations were take from a telescope in the other hemisphere and so pointing to a different part of the universe. That indicates that the fine structure constant not only changed over time but it also varies based on position in space! physicsworld.com points out some fascinating implications of this observation. The pre-print of the article submitted to PRL is available at arxiv.org."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071903686.html

This article sums it up well in that it's a group with no official racist views but is filled with an unknown amount of racists: http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/07/tea-party_racism

The tea party, of course will not have an official racist POV because even they know it would be incredibly stupid to have that out in the open. But when one of their top players is stupid enough write a letter mocking black people, gets caught and has to be sacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsPSUxV07x8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38VioxnBaI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUsBvkfQKUw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vrXJ5-EuoE
Anyone could sit here for days posting links to videos and sites showing examples of Tea Party racists. Sure they like to claim there have been plants but there aren't that many plants and the fact one of their highest people was clearly racist to the point where they had to get rid of him goes to show there is a lot of racism in the tea party. If we're going to attack moderate muslims for not tackling their extremists then the same should be done to the tea party.

The tea party won't do that because the people who aren't textbook racists are still the sort that want to just simply keep the brown people out of their country while forgetting their country was stolen from brown people.

Searching for tea party god or tea party christianity will bring up tons of official tea party sites talking about god. Some people like to claim it's not a religious group but it is they mention god often and their mascot, Palin, always talks about god. Like with the racism, it's easy to find links where tea party idiots have been intolerant of other religious beliefs.

http://www.examiner.com/humanism-freethought-in-tampa-bay/atheists-challenged-by-tea-party-patriots
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Holy-water-Two-teachers-tossed-for-allegedly-tossing-holy-water-on-atheist-94795819.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/mark-williams-tea-party-l_n_582591.html
http://race.change.org/blog/view/tea_party_plans_kkk-style_attack_on_muslim_place_of_worship
so much for freedom of religion - http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=3e3c9354-e295-4195-bb8a-0e50fd522cf9

Again, there is plenty of material out there showing the tea party's hate for anything atheist or Muslim.

The mere fact the tea party came out just as we had our first black president pretty much shows their mentality. They had no problem with Bush driving up the national debt because it was money spent on killing brown people who didn't believe in Jesus.

FWIW - Here's an article on recent improvements in brasilian agriculture from The Economist. I thought it was a pretty good article, as far as it went, fortunately some of the comments flesh out some of the parts that the article glossed over. Not that many people here are likely to become corporate farmers in Brazil, but it gives you a sense of things.

While this research takes place in largely uncontested Yellow sea, any success could very well bolster the Chinese government's hawkish stand on naval borders.

The disputes with Japan and Taiwan are well known. It recently claimed sovereignty of regions of the South China Sea that are well beyond common UN agreements on sovereignty and openly challenged by ASEAN neighbors.

Even the Yellow Sea is not without conflict, in which even the US is directly involved. At the heart of the matter is what the article calls ``one element in what appears to be an attempt to turn the seas near it into a Chinese lake''.

While this research takes place in largely uncontested Yellow sea, any success could very well bolster the Chinese government's hawkish stand on naval borders.

The disputes with Japan and Taiwan are well known. It recently claimed sovereignty of regions of the South China Sea that are well beyond common UN agreements on sovereignty and openly challenged by ASEAN neighbors.

Even the Yellow Sea is not without conflict, in which even the US is directly involved. At the heart of the matter is what the article calls ``one element in what appears to be an attempt to turn the seas near it into a Chinese lake''.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

1. July 2010
2. July 2010
3. Aug 2010

Yes, they are news to me :p

Thanks for the articles though, they are good reads. And your points are also well-taken. I can now honestly amend my original statement to

"better than nearly all the countries in the world (except for some of the ones in the list given in the first article)".

Which means that a newly born person is still much more likely to be born in a place with a justice system that's a fucking joke. Of course, that's not to say that it's perfect or even tolerable in some cases. But it does put things in perspective about every idiot in every tinpot nation (not referring to you - I'm sure you've seen people like these all the time) who feels entitled to put down the US and then use that to bolster his own sorry excuse of a country. So, yes - not everything is relative, but it's a sad fact that there are VERY few countries in the world (some of them are on that list) that actually have the moral right to look down upon the US in regards to the fair rule of law. That is not to say that things are just hunky-dory over here (I realize that), but if there's ever a fix, it's also going to be self-generated.

By the way, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan do appear to be better than the US in this regard - I fully admit that. What's laughable is that the Economist had the audacity to quote numbers about closed regimes like China and Iran (I don't know enough details of the current political situation in Russia so I'll take their word for it in that instance, subject to later review). For all I know, the reason those two have such low numbers is because of too many secret executions.

Consider something else, just for fun. I'll say explicitly that the following is not meant to support my earlier arguments but should be taken on its own (just as something to think about). In a country with disproportionally harsh punishments for crimes, would you expect a lot of incarceration? Refugees from North Korea tell an extraordinary tale of a populace so dominated by the state that crime is actually quite low. Fear is enough. Raw numbers on incarceration are necessary but not sufficient indicators of the fairness and "justness" of a justice system.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

1. July 2010
2. July 2010
3. Aug 2010

Yes, they are news to me :p

Thanks for the articles though, they are good reads. And your points are also well-taken. I can now honestly amend my original statement to

"better than nearly all the countries in the world (except for some of the ones in the list given in the first article)".

Which means that a newly born person is still much more likely to be born in a place with a justice system that's a fucking joke. Of course, that's not to say that it's perfect or even tolerable in some cases. But it does put things in perspective about every idiot in every tinpot nation (not referring to you - I'm sure you've seen people like these all the time) who feels entitled to put down the US and then use that to bolster his own sorry excuse of a country. So, yes - not everything is relative, but it's a sad fact that there are VERY few countries in the world (some of them are on that list) that actually have the moral right to look down upon the US in regards to the fair rule of law. That is not to say that things are just hunky-dory over here (I realize that), but if there's ever a fix, it's also going to be self-generated.

By the way, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan do appear to be better than the US in this regard - I fully admit that. What's laughable is that the Economist had the audacity to quote numbers about closed regimes like China and Iran (I don't know enough details of the current political situation in Russia so I'll take their word for it in that instance, subject to later review). For all I know, the reason those two have such low numbers is because of too many secret executions.

Consider something else, just for fun. I'll say explicitly that the following is not meant to support my earlier arguments but should be taken on its own (just as something to think about). In a country with disproportionally harsh punishments for crimes, would you expect a lot of incarceration? Refugees from North Korea tell an extraordinary tale of a populace so dominated by the state that crime is actually quite low. Fear is enough. Raw numbers on incarceration are necessary but not sufficient indicators of the fairness and "justness" of a justice system.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

1. July 2010
2. July 2010
3. Aug 2010

Yes, they are news to me :p

Thanks for the articles though, they are good reads. And your points are also well-taken. I can now honestly amend my original statement to

"better than nearly all the countries in the world (except for some of the ones in the list given in the first article)".

Which means that a newly born person is still much more likely to be born in a place with a justice system that's a fucking joke. Of course, that's not to say that it's perfect or even tolerable in some cases. But it does put things in perspective about every idiot in every tinpot nation (not referring to you - I'm sure you've seen people like these all the time) who feels entitled to put down the US and then use that to bolster his own sorry excuse of a country. So, yes - not everything is relative, but it's a sad fact that there are VERY few countries in the world (some of them are on that list) that actually have the moral right to look down upon the US in regards to the fair rule of law. That is not to say that things are just hunky-dory over here (I realize that), but if there's ever a fix, it's also going to be self-generated.

By the way, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan do appear to be better than the US in this regard - I fully admit that. What's laughable is that the Economist had the audacity to quote numbers about closed regimes like China and Iran (I don't know enough details of the current political situation in Russia so I'll take their word for it in that instance, subject to later review). For all I know, the reason those two have such low numbers is because of too many secret executions.

Consider something else, just for fun. I'll say explicitly that the following is not meant to support my earlier arguments but should be taken on its own (just as something to think about). In a country with disproportionally harsh punishments for crimes, would you expect a lot of incarceration? Refugees from North Korea tell an extraordinary tale of a populace so dominated by the state that crime is actually quite low. Fear is enough. Raw numbers on incarceration are necessary but not sufficient indicators of the fairness and "justness" of a justice system.

I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

I would pay particular attention to the third article which shows the depths of illogicality to which the American Justice system has plummeted. Justice is often depicted as a blindfolded woman - the idea being that justice is impartial to everything else except the law.A corollary might be that the Judge delivering the ruling isn't important, same cases before different judges ought to produce the same result.The US Supreme court has too much power in terms of the individuals that make it and not so much as an institution. After all its the election / rejection of individual judges that results in endless conjecture about the overturning of the abortion judgement , the outcome of cases before the court etc.

If you consider the President of the England And Wales Supreme Court, Lord Igor Judge, people other than the parliamentary circus , the legal profession and a handful of Times and Telegraph readers don't know him from adam. After all , if personalities were important, One would hardly have a Lord Chief Justice called Judge Judge!!

I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

I would pay particular attention to the third article which shows the depths of illogicality to which the American Justice system has plummeted. Justice is often depicted as a blindfolded woman - the idea being that justice is impartial to everything else except the law.A corollary might be that the Judge delivering the ruling isn't important, same cases before different judges ought to produce the same result.The US Supreme court has too much power in terms of the individuals that make it and not so much as an institution. After all its the election / rejection of individual judges that results in endless conjecture about the overturning of the abortion judgement , the outcome of cases before the court etc.

If you consider the President of the England And Wales Supreme Court, Lord Igor Judge, people other than the parliamentary circus , the legal profession and a handful of Times and Telegraph readers don't know him from adam. After all , if personalities were important, One would hardly have a Lord Chief Justice called Judge Judge!!

I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

I would pay particular attention to the third article which shows the depths of illogicality to which the American Justice system has plummeted. Justice is often depicted as a blindfolded woman - the idea being that justice is impartial to everything else except the law.A corollary might be that the Judge delivering the ruling isn't important, same cases before different judges ought to produce the same result.The US Supreme court has too much power in terms of the individuals that make it and not so much as an institution. After all its the election / rejection of individual judges that results in endless conjecture about the overturning of the abortion judgement , the outcome of cases before the court etc.

If you consider the President of the England And Wales Supreme Court, Lord Igor Judge, people other than the parliamentary circus , the legal profession and a handful of Times and Telegraph readers don't know him from adam. After all , if personalities were important, One would hardly have a Lord Chief Justice called Judge Judge!!

In short:

• Completely useless patronizing first part (if they had proper arguments, why would they need to start with ridiculing people who recycle?).Frankly, what was the point of this first part? Save yourself ten minutes of your life, and skip right to parts 2 and 3.
• Completely bogus numbers about recycling glass and paper
• Stupid "save the trees" strawman about recycling paper. Yes, trees grow back, but recycling paper costs less energy thus saving trees indirectly (due to less polution)
• Stupid bit about "eco-friendly" landfills. Ever wondered why landfills nowadays are mindful of the environment? Maybe because people became concerned of the old ways (which were indeed a stinky mess), and improved their ways? 40 years earlier, Penn & Teller would have ridiculed eco-friendly landfills the same way that they now ridicule recycling.
• When recycling was "new", infrastructure to recycle everything was not yet in place everywhere, and some of the "sorted" trash did indeed end up in the same landfills than its non-sorted counterparts. However, this was a temporary problem which went away once enough recycling capacity was available.

Well, it just follows that, like just about anything on the web, anyone relying on Foursquare as an absolute reflection of reality is being foolish. I think that as a simple social tool among friends its fine, but for government spook work obviously this ain't your playground. Of course, the news is rife with stories about criminals who don't seem to believe they can be caught by anything they do on-line.

First ants, then mice http://www.economist.com/node/16271339?story_id=16271339, next stop your neighbours!

The Economist has a great article subtitled "America's system of rail freight is the world's best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it".

Europe has an awesome high-speed passenger rail network, but a messed-up freight rail network. The US is the opposite, we have one of the world's most efficient freight rail networks, but not a great passenger network.

Passenger rail doesn't tend to pay for itself. Freight rail does.

Freight rail is a much more energy efficient way to haul bulk freight long-distance compared with trucks.

Trying to mix low-speed freight and high-speed passenger trains on the same track results in one or the other losing a lot of efficiency.

On the other hand, a great deal of US freight trains carry huge amounts of coal...should coal ever carry a carbon tax, that might drop off.

A couple of weeks ago The Economist had an interesting article about this: http://www.economist.com/node/16636101. It pointed out that upgrading America's railroads to handle high-speed (or even pseudo high-speed) traffic would have a negative economic impact on freight train service, which is among the best in the world. I had never seen America's train system called "the best" in anything before, but I do think this does point out the dangers of just focusing on the benefits in one specific area.

You'd be surprised

Sentencing reform is a long time coming in America. The Economist recently did a briefing on the U.S. justice system and its failings. Among the observations is that politicians tend to favor tough sentencing laws so they look "tough on crime," but those laws then tend to take power away from judges and put it into the hands of prosecutors:

Even the smallest dealer often has enough to trigger a colossal sentence. Prosecutors may charge him with selling a smaller amount if he agrees to “reel some other poor slob in”, as Ms Dougan puts it. He is told to persuade another dealer to sell him just enough drugs to trigger a 15-year sentence, and perhaps to do the deal near a school, which adds another two years.

The Economist ripped the US a new one last week for locking up too many people, many of them non violent offences. It wasn't so long ago that people were hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, but we backed off from excess punishment (probably a little too far in some cases). But the United States the trend seems to be regressing thanks to grandstanding politicians and bloodthirsty voters who won't countenance even the slightest hint of being "soft on crime". With the way things are going, I truly think that the US will soon bring back public executions before long and will be indistinguishable from countries like Iran in how they deal with crime.

You don't even have to offend anyone for laws to be ridiculously misapplied against you

Whilst this stuff sounds unbelievable the economist agrees with him...

As for the Feds, how long do you think it will be that they hold out? Guarantee you they still have the methods in place to tax this, regardless of the current legality.

They have. See this article. A quote:

North Carolina is one of about 20 states that tax illegal drugs. The cost varies by state and weight, as does the stamps’ appearance (Nebraska’s, with a skull surmounting a syringe and joint, looks like Grateful Dead tribute art). Penalties for non-payment also vary, from being classed as a misdemeanour in Georgia to 200% of the tax plus $10,000 or five years in prison in Louisiana.

My guess is that drug warriors made this scheme up to inflict yet another punishment for drug users. What they didn't see was that the stamp laws would open up the possibilities to gradual legalization.

I guess some times, just some times, unintended consequences are good for you.

> and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).

Citation please? Are we talking about the same paper? I've been reading The Economist for years.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2006/10/who_will_pay_for_climate_chang

As for Iraq... They did screw that up a bit, but not as badly as the other "news" sources:

http://media.economist.com/countries/Iraq/fromtheeconomist.cfm?next=721

> and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).

Citation please? Are we talking about the same paper? I've been reading The Economist for years.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2006/10/who_will_pay_for_climate_chang

As for Iraq... They did screw that up a bit, but not as badly as the other "news" sources:

http://media.economist.com/countries/Iraq/fromtheeconomist.cfm?next=721

This is the reverse proportion from just about any other print product and makes them fairly independent and fearless to piss off corporations (yes, they do that too) and even governments.

The Telegraph - 2nd March
New Scientist - 2nd March
Fox News - 2nd March
Popsci - 3rd March
Huffington Post - 2nd March
The Economist - 22nd April
The Daily Mail - 2nd March
Time - 10th March

Etc etc.

In particular, they often report on academic research showing that IP laws are too strong. For instance, this article (subscription required) called "Killing Creativity" is about how overly strong IP laws can smother innovation.

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one can easily say that this time the group they are licking the boots of is RIAA.

The Economist is the world's best weekly newspaper. If you read what they say about the RIAA, including the first article which mentions how the RIAA's agressive tactics aren't working and are a lesson to other industries on what _not_ to do, you'd know that the Economist takes a moderate view on intellectual property.

In particular, they often report on academic research showing that IP laws are too strong. For instance, this article (subscription required) called "Killing Creativity" is about how overly strong IP laws can smother innovation.

one can easily say that this time the group they are licking the boots of is RIAA.

The Economist is the world's best weekly newspaper. If you read what they say about the RIAA, including the first article which mentions how the RIAA's agressive tactics aren't working and are a lesson to other industries on what _not_ to do, you'd know that the Economist takes a moderate view on intellectual property.

In particular, they often report on academic research showing that IP laws are too strong. For instance, this article (subscription required) called "Killing Creativity" is about how overly strong IP laws can smother innovation.

A sole traveling, untrained, non-optometrist Peace Corps kid with a box of donated used glasses could bring a box of glasses.

You almost had it there. You did (almost) stumble blindly on it (no pun intended), but still...

1 - Based on the "Developing countries can't be choosers" axiom, it is not really THAT important to people living there if the eyeglasses really fit their prescription 100%.
Particularly, if the glasses are free.

2 - Based on 1, there is a much simpler way of testing for the right prescription under those conditions (choosers not too picky, choice rather limited anyway...).
It consists of the "patient" trying out several sets of glasses until he/she finds the one that works for him/her.
You know, like you would with a pair of sunglasses.

And, based on my own day-to-day observation from what you might call a "developing nation" (Bosnia) that model works perfectly well even for the paying customers.
E.g. people who can't really afford money to visit a private optometrist or they lack time or health insurance for a visit to a government one.
All of those cases mostly resulting from the case of being employed "off the books".

Only thing is... There is really no need for donated eyeglasses cause Chinese ones are dirt cheap.
Like, plastic sunglasses prices. Often sold side by side on the same stand.

Sure, if you have a rather specific need (different prescription for each eye, or a relatively rare case of visual impairment) you are probably not gonna find what you are looking for "over the counter".
Then again, chances of finding EXACTLY what you need in a "box of donated used glasses" with or without an eyePhone (Get it? EYE-PHONE!) are far lower than that.

Oh... and one more thing.
While there are plenty enough iPhones here (just today I saw one "barely used" 3G 16GB being sold for ~320$) - ALL of them are jailbroken.
Also, you can forget using the app store directly from it even if you have somehow gotten your hands on an actual "virgin" iPhone.
Cause even if your iPhone is perfectly legal, with no cracking/jailbreaking attached - your money is no good.
So, that "non-optometrist Peace Corps kid" should better get all his app-needs before going on his "mission of mercy".
If any of those apps need to "call home", well... sucks to be him in the "developing world".

Again, this is one of those inventions that are pitched by people who have either never been outside of a developed "1st world" country, OR who have only ever been to some village in the middle of the African jungle so they base their understanding of every "developing country" on that one experience or on what they see on CNN. Or in the movies.
Invention is then being pitched as intended for developing countries - where in reality there is no demand or need for it.
On the other hand, hypochondriacs and "I_am_my_own_wikipedia-diagnostician"-people will probably love it.