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It will regulate content, whether directly or indirectly. Consumer pressure will be enough to get adult-themed games off the shelves in mass retail shops, which means that no one will develop those games.

Sorry, it will only regulate content that isn't neccesary. If the creators of that content are not directly prevented from creating that content, then they are not censored. If they decide to change their content in order to sell more games, then they made a marketing decision that either compromised the original intent of the game or alludes to the content being a marketing tool in and of itself. If a Game or Movie or Song NEEDS the adult content because it's an integral part of it and the creator has intergrity, they will accept the loss in revenue for creating the work that they wanted.


"The major target of video game companies are 28-35 year old's"

Not true, you've got to shift that range lower considerably. A quick Google of video game market demographics will help you clear that up.

It did, and I'm still right. The major demographic IS NOT kids.

Source 1
Source 2
Source 3

Legally, he can go purchase Scarface at a store. The MPAA rating system is voluntary, just like the ESRB. The difference is that many parents are not as aware of (~concerned about?) adult content in games as they are of adult content in movies.

I think you're correct about this.

Canada is not a socialist country and it has a pretty damn good economy. Here is a graph of the Toronto Stock Exchange vs. the S&P500. By your metric, if Canada is Socialist then almost every western country other than the US must be too. Checkout The Economist's factsheet for Canada. Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world.

I did a search for the "Initiative for Software Choice" and found this.

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=2054746

It mentions the Initiative is backed by Microsoft.

So if the Economist could work it out, why could CNet not work it out, to the point of getting one of the Initiatives to write an article on something they would clearly have a biased opinion on.

Either CNet is biased, or they let one fall through the cracks. Either way, we should _all_ let them know it's been spotted.

Here's there contact page:
http://news.com.com/2040-1096-0.html

Give some of the editors an email. I'm sure an email slashdotting will make them see the light of day.

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=2054746

"It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further "develop" it."

"confiscatory government policy" ??? Mandating a standard (open) document format for government use is "confiscatory" policy? What in heavens name is "confiscated"? Not the holy IP anyway.

What is "confiscated" is the possibility for the currently dominant Office software vendor to maintain a lock on office software through proprietary document formats. And how is that bad? Every software writer on the planet can use the Open Document standard for free. Including the current heavyweight. Funny thing is ... if the document format becomes standardised, then you loose an argument for buying the next version of MS Office. Competition will be more on price and performance. Bad news for Mircrosoft, the firm wich currently has market dominance, good news for everyone else. If that is "confiscatory" then I can live with it.

But who is this Initiative for Software Choice anyway? According to the Economist, the Initiative for Software Choice, is a Microsoft-supported lobby group that also made itself heard to decry the adoption of Linux in Munich. (see http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=2054746)/

Ah, now it starts to make sense. If you want to villify something in US public perception, call it "Socialist", or even better "Communist". "Anti-property" will do nicely too. If you can make that stick, then you have them on the defensive no matter what. In the absence of credible evidence try the next best thing ... and call it "confiscatory government policy".

What better way to try and rub off a scary association onto Open Document than to have an innocuously sounding "initiative" worriedly denounce it as "confiscatory". It doesn't make sense but that it doesn't matter. PR pieces don't have to make sense, they have to make a splash.

Well done Initiative for Software Choice, and well done News.Com for publishing it without comment or research!

I don't know if this is such a great idea...Microwaves from multiple sources bouncing around in big metal cages may lead to "hotspots" where people get exposed to many times the "safe" energy levels. http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?stor y_id=4078811 Maybe it's unlikely, but I'd like to see more safetey testing before everyone who takes public transportation is subject to that risk (not to mention everyone's inane phone conversations).

But if you design and export much more cool crap in aggregate, you create favorable trade balances, larger economies, and have more clout in how the de facto and de jure rules of international trade work, and can set them in your favor, among other important benefits.

Any other story? Such as this one from The Economist which talks about how the weight of evidence clearly shows that UN peacekeeping is extremely effective and cost-efficient at stabilizing and rehabilitating failed states, and has a much better track record at doing so than the US despite spending orders of magnitude less money?

How, exactly, does THAT story make the UN look bad? You made the blanket claim that "any other story" about the UN made it look bad, so clearly you'll have a detailed counter-argument to the study referred to in the article?

Or are you exactly the type of deluded, jingoistic anti-UN fool that the grandparent poster was talking about, and felt like you should provide an example to illustrate his point?

(As for the oil-for-food scandal, yes, that's bad; however, considering that similar bribery and kickbacks were occurring in the Coalition Provisional Authority within months of the invasion, I humbly submit that such corruption is a problem related to large sums of money sloshing around, rather than somehow unique to the UN.)

> Don't keep your mind too open, buddy, or people will throw a lot of trash into it.

Yeah, can't have those damn facts polluting the purity of your ideology, can you?

I was looking for a link to http://economist.com/, especially with all the links to escapistmagazine.com That would have been your publication for you.

Economic conservatives endorsed Kerry mainly because Bush was and is so incredibly bad. The damage from Bush deficits will be with us for years to come.

Clinton, while less than perfect, at least had some economic sense. Republicans now attribute his success to luck. From Clinton's 2000 DNC speech: "The Republicans said then they would not be held responsible for the results of our economic policies. I hope the American people will take them at their word."

The Economist a few weeks ago ran a great article on the nascent field of biosimulation, which promises to yield highly accurate computer models of human biology and pathology. Obviously, this would be of great help in medical research, replacing the cross-your-fingers shotgun approach to pharmacology.

Sorry I don't have a subscription to give out. Anyone?

As the voting form requires to vote for all categories it is not a good thing to do this if you have no clue who all these people are. Even I, as a overaddict news consuming European, have no clue what to choose for most of the categories because here in Europe news sources are mostly nation minded and therefore very fragmented.

Oh please, give me a break. There are a huge number of fantastic EU focused news-sites that have excellent coverage on all matters pertaining to the Union. Not to mention the EU's own news pages.

http://euobserver.com/
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/
http://www.european-voice.com/
http://europa.eu.int/geninfo/whatsnew.htm
http://europa.eu.int/newsletter/index_en.htm
http://europa.eu.int/news/index_en.htm
http://www.eubusiness.com/
http://www.eubusiness.com/

And of course most news sites (such as BBC news) have an EU portal. And of course you can use google news with a custom filter for 'European Union' to get your daily fix.

Thats absolutely right. Since the dawn of time humans have been trading in a free competitive market economy, sharing ideas, changing (modding) their tools to better suit themselves and their needs, and overall pushing forward technology and innovation.

The US of A, became powerful, just like Britain before it, by having a competitive free market economy where ideas are shared and move everyone forward. But now the US is leading the world in restrictive laws and monopolies on ideas - i.e. restricting others from using ideas.

This trend is indeed bad for all of society. For society to improve, it must be able to freely share ideas and to change (mod) and their tools in the way the people see fit.

These restrictive practices will become evident within a generation how negative an effect it can have on society and the USs technological lead.

And some links:

1.1 Free Matter Economy, Part 1:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_07/free_matter_economy/
1.2 Free Matter Economy, Part 2:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_08/free_matter_economy_2/

2.
A Groklaw article complete with discussion:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510251 65105685

3.
An Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

4.
Slashdot discussion on Economist article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/23/17 37218&tid=187&tid=155

5.
The GNU Organisation for the development of software, its official stance on the negative effect of IP on software development:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

6.
A longish non-academic article, but starts getting to the point eventualy:
http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml

7.
A pdf:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.pdf
( http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm )

8.
Discussion on the above pdf:
http://activeclub.homeip.net/forums/view.php?bn=ac discussions_activeclubreflections&key=1046014645

"My point is that Microsoft's primary source of income is Microsoft Office, "

Last I checked it was windows.

It seems that the sale of new machines has been more than a little flat the last 5 years, so where is the money coming from? Is it magic Enron money magicked into place by cooking the books? Or is much of it made by buying and selling its own company stock? In that case, a flat or sinking stock price will be taking its toll as well.

The article in the Economist, linked from the Slashdot summary, is clearly cribbed from the Wikipedia entry that immediately preceeded its publication (or a common ancestor). Just look for common phrases like "an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology". Neither the Wikipedia nor the Economist stories are definitively attributed, so perhaps they are the work of a single author. But more likely the Economist just stole the IP from Wikipedia without giving credit to its actual author.

James Boyle, a legal scholar at Duke Law School in North Carolina, claims that the current increase in intellectual-property rights represents nothing less than a second "enclosure movement". In the first enclosures, in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, the commons--open fields used by many, belonging to all, owned by none--were fenced in, and nearly all land became private property. By analogy, the granting of property rights on ideas, to the extent it is happening today, is plundering the intellectual commons of our public domain.

Before the 18th century, innovations were mainly kept secret through trade guilds. Sometimes monarchs capriciously granted indefinite exclusive rights to someone they favoured. Intellectual-property law was meant to remedy this by requiring the invention to be vetted by experts, limiting the right to a set period and making knowledge more widely accessible through public disclosure. Its development was part of the drive towards democracy and capitalism and the abolition of royal privileges and monopolies.

America has offered olive branches to its critics. This summer, it acknowledged that other countries have sovereignty over their national addresses, and said it would never disrupt the system (ie, kick France's .fr address offline). And, at the meeting last week in Geneva, it supported the idea of a forum in which all governments can discuss these matters in an "evolutionary process". That sounds like an excellent scheme: just as startling as the speed of technological development is the slowness of decision-making in international forums. If this move works, it should succeed in parking the issue harmlessly for many years.

... and also the same country that brought you the internet. Or one bit of it at least.

Apparently there are more politics going on with this conflict than most of us realize from reading slashdot stories about it.

The Economist had a pretty good editorial about the whole thing here:

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =E1_QQRRGQQ&tranMode=none

unfortunately it's content you have to pay for. The gist of it is that things are working pretty well right now, and that the countries who really want to change the current situation are countries like China and Iran. If someone were proposing to hand over ICANN to Switzerland or something like that, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but a big UN committee? That's not likely to improve the situation.

The ideal solution would be less government intervention from everyone involved, the US included, not more from a bunch of authoritarian regimes.

Yet because the system runs under American auspices, other countries are unhappy with this arrangement. Many of those who want to relieve America of its control think ICANN's job should be taken over by a United Nations agency.

To anybody who has spent much time observing the UN at work, this sounds like a poor idea. It is no accident that the world's telephone systems remained so expensive and static for so long. They have been heavily regulated nationally and their international links have been controlled by the International Telecommunication Union, a UN body which once rejected the idea of the internet in favour of a more controllable and less efficient system. That standard never amounted to much. The ITU's approach reflected the interests of state-run telecom monopolies, which themselves are now being shaken to their foundations by the internet.

It is also no accident that many of the countries loudest in their demands for the internet to be taken out of American hands are those, such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that are keenest on restricting its use by their own citizens.

Maybe it's just my Anglo mindset, but I've found the Economist to be roughly right on just about every issue I care about, and well worth the subscription price. I just wish I had time to read something else besides...

I am sorry to say your anti-Chinese rhetoric is absurdly naive, as it is. No offence.

I'd agree that you want to do some reading outside programming but related to the industry you're working in. Outside of technical knowledge, you can advance your career knowing two more things -
*By better understanding your industry and its current climate, you can provide technical solutions that better meet your employer's needs. If you're a contractor, your clients will appreciate it if you understand some basics about their industry.
*By knowing about other players in your field, you can better identify opportunities both inside and outside your organization. Inside your company, you can better identify projects that will really affect the company (and provide you with opportunities for advancement). If you decide to change jobs, knowing your industry will let you find employers that have a strong business and may be doing things that interest you.

On the business side, CIO magazine's good (and CFO isn't bad if you work in the financial industry). While it's a little fluffy, Fast Company is both informative and entertaining. If your local paper has a well-edited business section, that can be useful as well. I also like The Economist both for it's general and business news.

The New York Times has had its problems, but their reporters are some of the best in the business, and while there is an editorial slant, it isn't extreme. The Atlantic provides good monthly material, and The Economist does so on a weekly basis. Those are my picks for daily, weekly, and monthly news, but there are other sources. The Christian Science Monitor is a great daily paper, for example. You may agree or disagree with my picks, but the profession of journalism isn't dead, and good sources of news are available.

I would also advance the notion that just because the editorial bias of a newspaper is disagreeable to you doesn't mean that the organization is corrupt. Newspapers are run by people, and people sometimes make mistakes. Note that during the runup to the Iraq invasion, The Atlantic provided excellent coverage and made many warnings that the Administration's plans were misguided. To me that is proof that following only one news source is a bad idea. You have to read from more than one source, whose biases you know, and make your own assessments from there.

I realize that it's de rigeur to bash on the news media, whether you're attacking from the Right or the Left, but the media is a business, and it gives people what they want. Americans need to take responsibility for at least some of the sorry state of our media. We have consistently voted in politicians who allowed the media conglomerates more and more power. We watch trash like Fox News. We read USA Today. That's not proof of a lack of credible journalism. It's proof that we're lazy.

It is true that science can be done in the space station. But science can also be done dressed in a clown suit atop a large Ferris wheel. The argument ought to be over where is the best place for it. Performing experiments in microgravity does not require a $100 billion platform. Moreover, much of the work that can genuinely be done only on the station is justified through another magnificently circular leap of logic. Research into the effects of microgravity on human health and the growth of soya beans, for instance, is useful only in the context of a manned mission to Mars.

I think that in a couple of years when phones have hardware comparable to say, the PSP, this might be a real possibility. I think the biggest barrier to this will be that manufacturers and service providers will try to control the architecture so it is not open like the pc is. Mobile carriers like Vodafone are scared to death of users using free wifi combined with something like Skype to bypass their voice services, which is where they make all their money (Image taken from Economist article). Sony has already shown they are not keen on having homebrew software.

I think that in a couple of years when phones have hardware comparable to say, the PSP, this might be a real possibility. I think the biggest barrier to this will be that manufacturers and service providers will try to control the architecture so it is not open like the pc is. Mobile carriers like Vodafone are scared to death of users using free wifi combined with something like Skype to bypass their voice services, which is where they make all their money (Image taken from Economist article). Sony has already shown they are not keen on having homebrew software.

I'm going to put some noses out of joint here, but education in the USA sucks, and it doesn't really get better until you've got all the way through a PhD programme.

Not only has China played a role in holding down short-term interest rates, but the People's Bank of China has also supported America's mortgage market by buying vast amounts of mortgage-backed securities.

What does the breaking of the yuan's peg to the dollar mean for bond yields? American Treasury yields rose by 12 basis points after Beijing made its announcement last week. Having played a hand in inflating America's housing bubble, could China now prick it by pushing up mortgage rates, which are closely tied to long-term bond yields?

If abandoning its dollar peg causes China to reduce its purchases of T-bonds, then yields will rise. But this depends on several uncertainties. For instance, will last week's revaluation reduce inflows of speculative capital into China, and hence its need to intervene in the foreign-exchange market by buying dollars? A large chunk of China's foreign-exchange intervention over the past year has been to offset not its current-account surplus but inflows of hot money. Some economists believe that, in the short term, the small revaluation will intensify speculation of further revaluations and so attract even more capital inflows, forcing the People's Bank of China to buy more Treasury bonds to stabilise its currency. If so, bond yields will remain low.

On the other hand, the switch from a dollar peg to a currency basket may cause China to diversify its reserves away from dollars. It is unlikely to dump its dollars, but it could well reduce its new purchases of Treasury bonds in favour of other currencies. And, if China really has broken the yuan's link with the dollar, then this could be the trigger for another general slide in the greenback against the euro, the yen and other currencies, prompting investors to demand higher yields. The fate of American house prices could thus be determined by unelected bureaucrats in Beijing rather than the unelected central bankers of the West.

Uganda's program of "ABC" used to be "Abstain," "Be faithful," "use a Condom." This policy was indeed breathtakingly effective at stopping AIDS from the '80s to the late '90s.

However, since de-emphasizing the "C" part (due not entirely to Bush administration policy, admittedly, but also to Museveni's wife's pro-abstinence views), the virus is once again spreading.

I understand that Uganda is often mentioned as an example of morality and abstinence triumphing over other forms of sex ed, and I don't blame you for not being fully informed. But the truth is likelier the exact opposite.

Wish I could stay and discuss this, but I have appointments to keep. If you're interested in learning more, I suggest this article from the (liberal? conservative?) Economist.

traditional phone lines are cash cows, so allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers

THE term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that undermines an existing technology--and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers

From the article itself:

"Much more so than fixed-line operators, mobile operators would have to cannibalise their current business in order to generate new revenues from VOIP. Ironically, this means that BT, once regarded as a dinosaur-like incumbent, is now being held up as a shining example of an operator that is embracing the future, while Vodafone, whose pure-mobile strategy once seemed visionary, now stands accused of being on the wrong side of history. At the end of the day, there is no getting around the reality, as Skype's Mr Zennstrom says, that "something that is a great business model for us is probably a terrible business model for them.""

Full article, subscribers only I'm afraid! :(

In the software industry there are obvious benefits - it's clear to anyone implementing an resource based windows dialog that not enough of the design can be changed without resorting to code. The designer needs a deeper and more integrated toolkit in order to enable modern, well designed products to be implemented and modified cost effectively (read: without writing lines of code to change the color of a few pixels).

Of course, MS will probably f**k up the execution of this, as other posters comment, by doing a poor 75% non-standard solution and changing their minds before it matures. Then companies can misuse it to change UI arbitrarily every release and break standards, leaving users confused. Good design practice is ever more important. But the idea is correct. Fingers crossed.

The Economist this week has pretty much the same article, but since it's in The Economist it's, you know, automatically better: "The resurrection of Steve Jobs."

The Economist has a style guide, which I find very useful. The guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist.

This was not the way Jawaharlal Nehru planned it. India's relations with China are still scarred by the bitterness that ended its first prime minister's dream of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai, Indo-Chinese brotherhood, sealed in a treaty in 1954. Sibling tension soon surfaced, and sharpened when India gave sanctuary in 1959 to the Dalai Lama and 100,000 of his followers as they fled China's suppression of an uprising in Tibet. It ended, in humiliating betrayal for Mr Nehru and India, in the war of 1962. The conflict, which grew out of territorial disputes, ended in a comprehensive Chinese victory.

I think you are on to something, here is an article in the economist http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm? Story_id=4054876 where their CEO alludes to this. Not all people use eBay as a place to sell their old TV, some actually run their entire business via eBay.

A related and interesting article on "Smart Jews"

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm? story_id=4032638

It seems that discrimination in Europe may have led to higher intelligence.

What would happen if it said "Sorry but because you're black you can not use this website" ?

Yeah, that would be an issue...

I hope that last line was sarcastic, because to be honest, George Bush simply doesn't care about black people. Except when they pose a threat to him, in those cases, he'll deny them their legal rights.

Some may think this is flame-bait, but I'm being deadly serious. When he doesn't care about black people, what makes you think he's going to care about an even smaller minority (the non-IE users) of America?

Without this barrier, the waters just poured right into New Orleans, killing tens of thousands of people.

For years, ecologists and environmentalists have warned us to preserve nature; otherwise, we will be hurt. Unfortunately, their warnings fell on the deaf ears of politicians in the pockets of big business.

Now, we are screwing up the oceans. The ecologists and environmentalists are warning us about overpopulation. Teaming populutions tend to produce a huge volumes of trash, pollutants (e.g. dioxin), and waste. The oceans have become a huge garbage can. Meanwhile 3 billion people in Asia are eating fish into extinction.

That little salamander, the spotty owl, and the plankton in the sea that you are saving might one day save your life. When they are extinct, you just might be next.

(From The Economist print edition August 18th 2005)

Here's the Economist's take on the issue:

Bouillabaisse sushi
Feb 5th 2004
From The Economist print edition

A site will soon be chosen for a new international fusion reactor. This is a pity

IF AVANT-GARDE cuisine is any guide, Japanese-French fusion does not work all that well. And the interminable discussions over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) suggest that what is true of cooking is true of physics. Japan and France (along with much of the rest of Europe, under the banner of an organisation called Euratom) are supposed to be joining America, China, Russia and South Korea in a project called ITER, which aims to build a fusion reactor.

Such a reactor would generate power by merging the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, and thus liberating the so-called binding energy whose absence, paradoxically, helps to hold complicated atomic nuclei together. This is a process similar to the one that powers the sun. Moreover, unlike previous attempts to do so, ITER would produce more energy than it consumed in getting the hydrogen nuclei hot enough to fuse in the first place.

The current imbroglio is over who gets the reactor, and with it the economic boost of a multibillion-dollar construction project. The two sites remaining in the competition are Cadarache in France and Rokkasho in Japan.

America is siding with Japan, while the French have the backing of the Chinese and the Russians. The South Koreans seem to be sitting on the fence, although leaning--if that is not stretching the metaphor too far--towards Europe. Meetings of ministers in December failed to resolve the issue (indeed, Canada withdrew from the project entirely) and the date for a decision keeps getting pushed back. According to spokesmen from the Japanese embassy in London, early March is now the target.

It is unusual for ministers to be discussing scientific projects of this nature, even ones as expensive as ITER. But the reason for all the attention is not that politicians have suddenly developed a particular interest in physics, but that the question of where to put ITER has become--so observers believe--another proxy for the debate over the war on Iraq. America is commonly thought to be supporting Rokkasho in return for Japan's support in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Russians and Chinese may be trying to spite the Americans by siding with the French. Nor are the French helping the situation by threatening (unlike the Japanese) to pull out of the project entirely if they do not get their way.

One ludicrous compromise would place the reactor in Japan and the data and control centre in France, or vice versa. Such gerrymandering recalls the worst of the International Space Station, a collaborative effort which is a scientific boondoggle, and contrasts badly with collaborations such as CERN, the European centre for particle physics, which is a model for international co-operation on big science projects. So, given ITER's price tag (about $5 billion to build, and another $5 billion in running costs for a 20-year operational lifespan and a ten-year decommissioning period), it might not be a bad outcome if the whole thing did go belly up. Although visionaries have long been lured to the idea of fusion because the fuel, being a constituent of water, is unlikely ever to run out, the economics of the process are dubious.

Boon or boondoggle?

Sceptics (including this newspaper) have pointed out that workable fusion power has seemed perpetually 30 years away since the first experiments were done in the 1950s. Even if the 30-year horizon were actually true on this occasion, the discount rate over three decades, and the opportunity cost of all those billions, would probably make it uneconomic. Nor is the world in obvious need of another way to generate electricity.

There are, of course, arguments on the other side. On the 30-year-horizon question Robert Goldston, the head of the Princeton Pla

Gee, I didn't know DRM is so important ... gotta find out more about it. Hmmmmmmmm .... wouldn't want any economist to fail now, would I?

Oh, and BTW, from what little I do know about DRM ... why are the words "interoperability, and competing standards" in the same sentence alongside it? Just doesn't make sense.

You do realise that you were reading a summary of the topics that TFA talks about, not TFA itself?

You do also realise that it's not about an economist, but The Economist , the most comprehensive and well-respected weekly news periodical in the world (At least among people who aren't complete fucking morons like you)?

The best long-term solution--for America as well as the world economy--would be higher petrol taxes in the United States. Alas, there is little prospect of that happening. America, unlike Europe, has preferred fuel-economy regulations to petrol taxes. But even with those it has failed abysmally. These regulations have been so abused that the oil efficiency of its vehicles has fallen to a 20-year low. This week, the Bush administration announced proposals for changing the fuel-economy rules governing trucks and sport-utility vehicles, but failed to close loopholes that allow these gas guzzlers to use more petrol than normal cars, a shameful concession to carmakers.

America and China, in their different ways, are drunk on oil consumption. The longer they put off taking the steps needed to curb their habit, the worse the headache will be. George Bush once learned that lesson about alcohol. It is time for him to wean America off oiloholism too.

Real Actual Scientific Studies(TM) have shown that greater income does not mean greater happiness.

Basically, once you get above the poverty line, how you spend your time plays a much greater role in your happiness than how you spend your money. i.e. You really can't buy happiness.

Strangely enough, some people have become incredibly wealthy doing this. A lot more have become ecstatically happy.

I work as a CCTV operator here in London, we do traffic enforcement, which is what most of the cameras are for. Everything we do is tightly regulated by the Human Rights Act (1988) and the Data Protection Act (1998) and a comprehensive Code of Practice. We have to respect privacy (or be sacked!)

That's all well and good. But what happens when those human rights laws are repealed, freeing you guys up to do the formerly forbidden in the name of the new law?

You say that won't happen? Think again.

Tony Blair is now going around saying that the first step (not a step, the first step) in fighting terrorism in the UK is to find a way around the Human Rights Act. Citation: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =4277344

If Blair has his way, your job is going to become exactly the kind of evil oppression that the tin hat brigade has been worried about.

At least in the US we still have a chance to keep the cameras from going in in the first place. Its too late for you guys.

Yeah, and the likes of Boeing and Lockheed get the equivalent of subsidies from the US government. There's no outside competition in their market (defense industry), which annoys Airbus no end

Don't be silly. There are PLENTY of foreign companies that sell to the US DoD. They usually have a presence in the American commercial market, but they do not need to be American companies.

For example, see British-based Rolls Royce - the largest customer for their defense division is now the pentagon:

http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=417 5069&CFID=59782316

Most studies done on violence and video games support the conclusion that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior in children and adolescents, especially boys, researchers said on Friday.
...
"The majority of the studies would suggest there are effects," said Jessica Nicoll of Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida, who worked on the study.
...

the economist's cover story on the 06aug05 issue talked about the earlier illinois study. it's a good read -- sounds a lot more confident in its speech and a little less like someone's over dramatizing a weak case. And who exactly is this lady that says the studies "would suggest" that there are effects? and what did she do while "working on the study"? spelling and grammar checking? did she print it out? or is she some kind of licensed professional that actually studied something?!

One study showed that children who played a violent game for less than 10 minutes and then took a mood assessment test rated themselves with aggressive traits and aggressive actions shortly after playing.
...
now that's some convincing facts! these kids rated themselves?! and what were the doctors doing? oh! they were probably on their way to the bank w/ their checks from whoever asked them to rig up this study!

i could continue quoting this article and questioning its accuracy and worth, but i think i'm preaching to the choir. so i'll wrap it up: if you boil down this article to the only thing that sounds solid, you get one line:

The APA also encourages parents, educators and health care providers to help youth make more informed choices
...
which we should all be doing for our children anyway, shouldn't we?

i'm a father and a gamer from back in the day. i will always play games w/ my kids, and i will always talk to them about what's right, what's wrong, what's real, and what's not. the same goes for the tv and movies they watch, the books they read, and the music they listen to. i'm involved in their lives! go figure!

Got any research that support that statement ? I mean, real research as opposed to that crap webpage where some amateur without knowledge of statistics selects data to prove a point ?

Yeah, here it is.

And no, this is not some crap web page. The Economist does not publish crap.

The fact that this 1 degree rise and the continuing trend so closely correlate to the rise of the automobile and industrialization is even more suspicious and alarming.

• The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--and How We Can Survive Them
• Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ (scroll down to "To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis")
• How to spot a psychopath at work
• Is your boss a 'corporate psycho'?
• Psycho parasites lurk in most surprising spots
• USC Study Finds Faulty Wiring In Psychopaths
• The Origins of Antisocial Behaviour, Twin Study
• Original sinners? Evidence that psychopaths are born, not made

"We are also the number one exporter in the world." In fact, Germany has been the highest exporter in the world for 2003 and 2004. The numbers for 2005 aren't out yet as far as I can tell; It could have changed. I seem to recall that the top three are Germany, the US, and China, but Japan could be there in someone else's stead. references (I don't know if you need an account to see this): http://www.economist.com/countries/Germany/profile .cfm?folder=Profile-FactSheet also, a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#Economy

okay, this is my last post.

i can't convice you that oil companies are collaborating because it is only in their best interest and there is nothing to stop them. oh well. guess i'll just give up....

all hail the oil industry, a model of efficiency proficiency, and incorruptability that will never be topped in the history of the world...

pysche.

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/ 596718/fromItemId/2332

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june00/ oil_2-17.html

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.382 2.RFS:

http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story _id=1602123

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AI D=/20050804/EDIT/508040321/1003

oh, and those links work.
unlike this one...
http://articles.roshd.ir/articles_folder/mohandesi Science/mechanic/HowstuffWorksHowGasPricesWork.htm

and they're legit, whats roshd.ir? (i can't read arabic.)

and, this final link...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2908133.stm

you wanted evidence?

well, i don't think you'll be convinced. so i can't change your mind, you can't change mind. and we both wasted time typing meaningless shit on some nerd website. good debate, but not a big fuckin' deal.