Slashdot Mirror

Fast Company had an article last month about Kodak saying just that. The only way they're holding on is to sue others. They haven't innovated in years. The article also talked about how this guy in their labs invented a device that allowed you to take a picture and see it on a TV screen. They looked at it and said, who would want to take a picture and store it digitally? Throw that in the pile with all the other ideas we aren't going to pursue. Here is the article: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/photography-digital-tech

There are some great infographics that show the debt over time and the effect Bush's unfunded programs had on the debt. I think it was even shown on the Daily Show one night. Looking at the first graphic, the white area at the bottom is what the deficit might look like if neither Bush nor the economic downturn hadn't happened. You might have a hard time seeing the white area, it's very small. Looking at the second chart, you'll noticed the single largest contributing factor to the debt is the Bush tax cuts, and it's contribution gets larger each year. In theory, if Bush had been replaced with an inanimate carbon rod, the U.S. debt would be almost half of what it stands at today.

Of course, there are other informative graphics, like this Debt as a Percentage of GDP graphic. The most important fact to note from this graphic is that the rate of growth of the debt is actually slowing. If Obama were making the problem worse, the debt should be growing faster.

There's also a pair of infographics on this article from the New York times. The first one shows the difference between Clinton's policies and Bush's policies. At the end of Clinton's (Jan 2001), the Congressional Budget office was predicting 10 years of surpluses, if Clinton's policies were continued and the economy continued to grow at the same rate. At the end of Bush's term (Jan 2009) the congressional budget office was predicting 10 years of massive deficits if Bush's policies were continued even if the economy returned to normal growth.

The second New York Times graphic shows the contributions of Bush and Obama to the debt by policy change ($5.07 trillion for Bush and $1.44 trillion for Obama). $1.136 trllion of the Obama's debt contribution is stimulus spending and stimulus tax cuts. $0.278 trillion is non-defense discretionary spending and $0.152 trillion is health reform and entitlement changes. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Bush tax cuts each were responsible for more debt by themselves than all of Obama's policies combined (projected costs across 2 terms to make the numbers comparable).

I think the Department of Defense would beg to differ. They just designed a new reactor for their latest ship. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/how-does-navy-design-nuclear-supercarrier-future

Fast Company wrote about IGN looking in non-traditional places for excellent programmers: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/ign-self-taught-coders. There are probably others like them.

It is widely rumored that siri's speech-to-text is performed by Nuance's Dragon Dictation, which has been available (for free) on iOS for a few years now. That, plus Dragon's presence on the market for over a decade, would have provided a substantial database of colloquial english (and other languages) to get started. Plus, Siri was available as its own standalone app for a while on iOS before Apple bought the company. The technology behind Siri has been in development for quite a few years and had ,DARPA backing. Siri didn't just spring out of nothing in Cupertino. I think they've got enough of a database of colloquial english to get going with.

No, I think limiting it to the iPhone 4S is mostly to drive sales to the new device. Limiting the rollout to avoid crushing their servers, as you suggest, is another very plausible reason. I don't buy the argument that Siri requires the extra processing power of the 4S.

I did not mean to imply that such a device exists. Merely that its possible using existing tech to trivially lock iOS/OSX down such that its really hard to screw up the device. Such a feature would be in great demand in the corporate world.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1717416/apple-patent-reveals-restricted-enterprise-app-store-plans-rim-beware

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/01/apple-creates-customizable-access-to-the-app-store-for-enterprise.html

Also my personal preference is immaterial here. I was only talking about how 'grandma' users can best be accommodated. At a basic level I can imagine a PC/Laptop/iPad like device that has a slot like a SD card or something that holds your apps/data/preferences/settings etc. The OS will be part of the firmware of the device which you can update over the air.

Another interesting article.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1788419/what-it-takes-to-get-a-job-at-google

That's just silly, every single article you link to. The specs for the code were such that there would be no year-end-crossing missions, that's all there is to it. This has nothing to do with when was the flight software designed in. It simply wasn't in the specs back then, and there was no funding to change it any time earlier than when they did actually change the specs and implemented it. You're providing a straw man for an argument. Space Shuttle's flight software was probably the best engineered piece of software there ever was. See here. Or we can cite Feynman, who had quite low bullshit threshold and would not be impressed if there was nothing to be impressed about:

The software is checked very carefully in a bottom-up fashion. First, each new line of code is checked, then sections of code or modules with special functions are verified. The scope is increased step by step until the new changes are incorporated into a complete system and checked. This complete output is considered the final product, newly released. But completely independently there is an independent verification group, that takes an adversary attitude to the software development group, and tests and verifies the software as if it were a customer of the delivered product. There is additional verification in using the new programs in simulators, etc. A discovery of an error during verification testing is considered very serious, and its origin studied very carefully to avoid such mistakes in the future. Such unexpected errors have been found only about six times in all the programming and program changing (for new or altered payloads) that has been done. The principle that is followed is that all the verification is not an aspect of program safety, it is merely a test of that safety, in a non-catastrophic verification. Flight safety is to be judged solely on how well the programs do in the verification tests. A failure here generates considerable concern.

To summarize then, the computer software checking system and attitude is of the highest quality. There appears to be no process of gradually fooling oneself while degrading standards so characteristic of the Solid Rocket Booster or Space Shuttle Main Engine safety systems. To be sure, there have been recent suggestions by management to curtail such elaborate and expensive tests as being unnecessary at this late date in Shuttle history. This must be resisted for it does not appreciate the mutual subtle influences, and sources of error generated by even small changes of one part of a program on another. There are perpetual requests for changes as new payloads and new demands and modifications are suggested by the users. Changes are expensive because they require extensive testing. The proper way to save money is to curtail the number of requested changes, not the quality of testing for each.

One might add that the elaborate system could be very much improved by more modern hardware and programming techniques. Any outside competition would have all the advantages of starting over, and whether that is a good idea for NASA now should be carefully considered.

(emphasis mine)

Read the following article....

http://www.fastcompany.com/1779611/priming-whole-foods-derren-brown

You only think you're not being influenced.

Google's Cache saved the text of your blog post

Steve Jobs, an inspiration to artists and business leaders alike, had a hero of his own. According to this article from the New York Times, Edwin Land, the creator of Polariod was a role model for Jobs. Land was also a college dropout who developed great products, simply and elegantly designed to appeal to an enormous market. It's an interesting read, as is the linked Fastcompany book review.

Like Jobs, Edwin Land had numerous technological and commercial achievements. However, the NYTimes article calls the Polaroid SX-70 folding camera Edwin Land's 'supreme achievement'.

[Broken Image]

I happen to have a vintage Polaroid SX-70. After reading the article, I pulled it off the shelf to take another look. It's a really beautiful piece of design. It even came with this handsome leather case.

[Broken Images]

This camera was my father's, and I've handled it hundreds of times since I was a child. Today, pulling it out the case I was immediately struck with a question:

Why does a 40 year old camera have an Apple 30-pin connector port on it?

[Broken Images]

There is a port, just above the lens, that seems ready for any iPod accessory. It's not as obvious when the camera is open, but the port to connect the old fashioned 'flash bar' is very obvious when the camera is collapsed. In fact, the collapsed SX-70 looks like a piece of consumer electronics Steve Jobs would have created if he'd been born a generation earlier.

It's not just similar. It's almost an exact match. You can even put the tip of a 30-pin connector in the Polaroid and it's a snug fit. I know that this seems like Apple fanboi wishful thinking -- that something could be this specifically thought through. Perhaps it is, and that thought occurred to me. So I tried other things that could be similar in size. An SD card. Close, but it doesn't fit. You don't get snug fit of the 30-pin connector.

Keep in mind that this is the only port on this device. And it's designed to allow the camera to interact with accessories. And this isn't just any device. It's the 'supreme achievement' of the man Steve Jobs called a 'national treasure'. Now, this port of nearly identical proportions is the common denominator three devices that could each, along with the original Macintosh, contend as Steve's 'supreme achievement.' And out of all of the sizes available for peripheral ports (micro-usb, etc), this is nearly an exact match, within micrometers (if I had the appropriate tools, I'd measure it for you). Here's a video to give you a better sense of the fit:

Perhaps there was never an explicit intention to mimic the SX-70. Of course, if this similarity is by design, I am sure someone like Jony Ive would know. The port could have been a result of teamwork, but if Steve Jobs obsessed over Edwind Land's creations the way we obsess over his, there is a reason that this could have felt like the right size for an accessory port according to Steve's aesthetic sensibilities.

I've never giving much thought to the 30-pin connector. It wasn't any more interesting to me than a USB port. But now, I'd be very curious to know the background of the only physical trait that latest iPhone shares with the early iPods... and with a forty year-old camera.

[Broken Image]

Of course, if you don't agree you can always go start your ISP.

Sure, just as soon as I get the same billion dollar check from our government they all did to put in their networks back in the Clinton years.

You think they'd even let you do it if you could? Not likely.

No. The only salvation is professionalism.

I realise that I will be shot for saying this, but how come that the only thing that's running horribly in an entire company, is the IT department?

There is a way to just make near-bug-free software on time and the evidence for that rediculous claim is NASA.

I took the liberty of finding the answer to everyone's horror. But before you click on it, you do have to realise that your playground will be over once implementing the solution.

All text-only print-format before your head realy explodes out of anger (ofcourse): http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

It's nigh impossible to create 100% bug free code.

No it's not, it's just very expensive.

There's a good article here...

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

...that talks about the nearly bug-free code that ran on the Space Shuttle:

But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved.

Actually, yes, in some cases they do:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/can_this_be_true_of_wal-mart.html

This is not the best article on the subject, but it is common for Walmart to contract for a cheaper version of an item with sometimes an identical model. Another mention would be here, in an article about the Snapper mower guy not wanting to sell to Walmart:

"The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html?page=0%2C3

It's actually Wichita, Kansas. Here's the link:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html

That is utilizing conventional hydrocarbon liquid fuel in a much more efficient way than the traditional internal combustion engine. The energy/lb/ft^3 is magnitudes higher for gasoline/diesel than the most advanced battery system even in the R&D labs. Coupling a microturbine generator to a small battery/super-capacitor combo to drive an electric motor (high torque at low speeds) is perfect for driving. A normal gasoline engine only makes high torque at high speed - really only good for race cars.

I'm hearing lots of news releases for hydrogen, but I'm not seeing any real leaps of engineering. Hydrogen requires either bulky, heavy, expensive, storage tanks, or it's chemically bound, requiring processing to release (slow). H2 fuel cells are barely controlled bombs, so those won't be allowed to run around loose in these terror stricken times. The only current way to generate the industrial quantities of hydrogen needed to run a fleet is to "crack" natural gas. Not too green.

Hydrogen also tends to seep right through metal, causing embrittlement (it is the smallest molecule out there), so you can't store it long before it's gone. It has a HUGE range of combustion ratio with air, so a little leak or a huge leak will still go BOOM! A car fire is deadly hot now, but a H2 vehicle will explode and kill everyone around it. Good times.

I used to be a real proponent of hydrogen, it really appealed with the simple "we can make it with solar hydrolysis" line. It's locked up in water, which is all around us. But I finally got hold of a book which actually pointed out the engineering difficulties, and dangers of it. These are real problems that aren't going away, and aren't being addressed. If someone comes up with a magic method of generation and safe storage, I'll be first in line. Until then, it's still the empty 50-year-old promise the marketing shills of the car and energy companies have been making. It's the old whore on the corner they trot out every couple of years in new makeup.

If you want to look at a potential fuel that's all around us, but can be used without the billion dollar infrastructure of the energy companies, look at carbon monoxide. It's a proven technology (since WWII!) and can be created from any bio-waste feedstock: chunked wood, grass clippings, sewage, dead politicians, etc... Some of the "fringe science" enthusiasts call it Bingo fuel (rapid hydrolysis using a welding arc and carbon electrodes), but the gases are still carbon monoxide, H2, and water vapor. Thermal depolymerization is also a possible way of creating liquid hydrocarbons to replace natural oil (uses optimized pressure cooking process to simulate a million years of natures "hit-or-miss" process). Don't put too much hope in Hydrogen, but don't give up, either.

The summary doesn't say if accuracy goes up with more tweets, and if you RTFA it actually doesn't say either, but it turns out the article itself is just a summary of *another* article http://www.fastcompany.com/1769217/there-are-no-secrets-from-twitter. That article mentions that reading all tweets brings accuracy up from 65.9% to 75.8%. Not bad... although not exactly amazing, either. Some of it's sort of dead obvious. Possessives like "My hubby" "my bf" "my yogurt" and "my yoga" are correlated with being female and stuff like "my wife" "my gf" "my jeep" and "my beer" are correlated with being male. And if that's a lot of the algorithm is going off of, the whole premise of outing someone pretending to be female is sort of silly in that case... obviously if you're a dude pretending to be a girl, you're going to tweet stuff like "OMG I love my bf" not "My gf can't tell me not to drive my jeep while drinking my beer, dude."

I'm totally going to hell for this but in order to re-enforce my manhood, I must say:

My zipper was down and my wife found my gf. My nigga wanted my beer and my shorts! I took my jeep and my woman to my vegas timeshare.

(Here!)

You used an exclamation mark you are clearly a woman.

I'm totally going to hell for this but in order to re-enforce my manhood, I must say:

My zipper was down and my wife found my gf. My nigga wanted my beer and my shorts! I took my jeep and my woman to my vegas timeshare.

(Here!)

I just saw a comparing the US and China when it comes to renewable energy. The upshot, China is crushing us when it comes to renewable energy, has more operating now, is investing more than us, is investing a hugely larger portion of their country's resources, and we're pretty much screwed. Solar is the one area where we're actually ahead of them, and there not by a lot. They just invest in a wide range of green tech where we focus only on one. My favorite graphic was the one showing how they spend 1 dollar on renewable energy for every 3 they spend on defense, compared to the US which spends 1 for every 41.

The problem with this mostly pie-in-the-sky article, is that it presumes linear increases with iteration. But the data he is working on, was a one-time thing: his experience with being seen as "smarter" than his peers, because of computer learning.

The thing is, that isnt anything special to a computer. That's just the result of what is effectively a "personal tutor".
but if you keep doing it, you dont get the same amount of increase per "loop". You just gradually approach the maximum potential of the human individual. (in an asymptotic fashion)

So, this article isnt completely useless; it has some value, in that it reminds us that if we focused more on getting children onto computerized, individual-paced learning that actually INTERESTED them, we could almost eliminate the problem with public schools producing so many ignorant people.

This is relevant to the other slashdot article today:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/25/1348228/Gates-Not-Much-To-Show-For-5B-Spent-On-Education

The article it links to,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1728471/change-generation-bill-gates-favorite-teacher-wants-to-disrupt-education

is one example of what is needed, rather than more union-protected incompetent idiots teaching children.
(yes, there are some good teachers in public schools, but the bad ones destroy more than the good create)

Oh yeah Android is kicking iOS arse and now everybody is quiet about the numbers.

Um, not exactly correct. On either point.

If this is true, the parent should be modded up (there are plenty of articles suggesting it needs more research - eg http://www.fastcompany.com/1710746/bayer-our-bee-toxic-pesticide-is-actually-safe-for-bees)

http://www.fastcompany.com/1766379/can-breeding-a-better-honey-bee-save-us-from-the-food-crisis

You're welcome. ;)

I'll be impressed when it's in 3D. Wait — are they calling 3D without glasses 4D these days? That would be better. No, wait — why don't we just have holodecks already? We've got the tech... http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/holograms-you-can-actually-touch

How about carbon-negative geothermal?

I'm still a fan of using nuclear power, but for a different purpose - space. How else are you going to get several TWh of reliable power to another celestial body that isn't interrupted by dust or improper alignment?

Does Germany have some secret plan to replace all their their nuclear power plants with a huge pile of Bloom fuel cells stashed all around the country taking a load off the main power grid? I would love to see mass production of these fuel cells so that everyone or at least every apartment complex would have one and reduce the load on the power grid and reduce the miles of power lines needed to provide power. The amount of power lost due to power lines over a large distance isn't insignificant. Not to mention in the US so many power lines are not buried, so weather and other disasters cause problems with the power lines.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1557348/bloombox-bloom-box-fuel-cell-60-minutes-kleiner-perkins-kr-sridhar-green-energy-google

They are not pie-in-the-sky. E-bay, Google and a few other silicon valley companies are already using them to help reduce their load on the power grid. Not to mention I would assume reduce electrical costs as well.

I am waiting for one of the micro nuclear power plants to become a reality. I would also love too see the Bloom fuel cells become far more affordable and prevalent on the power grid. It would reduce our need to huge power plants and miles of power lines to feed the grid.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1557348/bloombox-bloom-box-fuel-cell-60-minutes-kleiner-perkins-kr-sridhar-green-energy-google

No they are not pie in the sky. Google is using a few of them, EBay is using a few of them as well as few other companies in Silicon Valley as way to reduce their load on the grid and get power cheaper. I am sure they would need to make a hundred million of them before they could be affordable for homes, but it would be very cool when/if they get to that point.

Apple first with USB? PCs had them a year before the iMac. Plus back in the day, the only portable music player that would dare use firewire was the iPod.

Apple Computer is the new Sony for proprietary f-you lock-in.

Are you still using your Apple Bus Mouse with an ADB connector?

" It FLEW. It didn't crawl or roll."

Hot air balloons fly too "using no fuel" and I'm sure they could be propelled forward using solar too.

Flight distance from Switzerland to Belgium is only 320 miles (487 km). That's only 26 mph (40 kph). A solar powered car is over twice as fast.

At an average speed of 26 mph this isn't an airplane, it's a glider, as you can see from this extremely slow speed take-off

The $94 million wasted on this would have been better spent on improving solar powered cars rather than a 26mph glider.

Software Programming should be handled like all engineering disciplines. Imagine if all engineering firms started building bridges, apartment blocks or cars the way software developers write code. To put it simply, we'd all be dead. The next time you're restarting your computer, upgrading your drivers, installing a new firmware, just think to yourself, when was the last time something purely mechanical stopped working for no apparent reason.

I wish all software was written with the same engineering philosophy which NASA employs. They Write the Right Stuff. Sure we wouldn't have as much software as we do today and it wouldn't be able to do as much, but what it did do would work flawlessly and I wouldn't feel like throwing my keyboard through my monitor at least once a day while at work, only to arrive home to have to restart my Sky HD box because it's crashed or has incredible menu lag.

here's been a "breakthrough" in thin film efficiency twice a year for a long time now, and nothing ever comes of it.

If you think nothing ever comes of it, you haven't been paying attention.

That article is a joke. It doesn't even take into consideration very public recent development like http://www.fastcompany.com/1744745/russia-us-plan-a-nuclear-powered-space-rocket-should-we-worry

Plus Russia announced it created a nuclear reactor that was capable of being transported and used in a rocket some months ago. Plus the sun is an infinite source of energy when you are in space, which should make whatever fuel you are going to use last longer.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1745760/cleaning-up-oil-with-a-swarm-of-autonomous-sailboats It explains a lot more about the technical points, and the goals of the Kickstarter project.

There is an old saw that is accepted by professionally trained managers: "A good manager can manage anything." That then becomes an excuse to hire some MBA who knows nothing about the business or industry.

There is a growing body of opinion and evidence that the MBA is Public Enemy #1. http://www.arifanees.com/featured/mbas-public-enemy-no1.html

MBA education rewards aggressive people who can BS better than anyone else in the class. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/83/mbamenace.html

Professional managers are a one way ticket to doom. If Google wants to survive and prosper, it needs to promote clueful people.

Suppose I'm hiring a driver. I could hire someone who is a good driver with an unblemished record, or I could hire someone who actually knows where they're going. I really care more about getting to the right place more than I care about the quality of the ride.

My favorite example of the damage that can be done by professional managers is Toyota. Toyota used to be run by people who cared about the product. Then it was taken over by professional managers. Quality was sacrificed to short term profit and Toyota's good name was shot. The long term damage to its reputation won't soon be undone.

Look at who started using Drupal in the last year or two: The Economist, The Grammys, Fast Company, The Examiner, House.gov (and all ~535 house websites) recently moved to Drupal, Energy.gov, WhiteHouse.gov, and here's a list of some 120 national governments using Drupal.

But hey, Drupal only has 2% market share of all sites on the web, is being adopted by government and corporate organizations at a maddening pace, and just had their first major release in 3 years. There's no reason why this Drupal shit should be discussed on Slashdot.

The number of jobs removed by automation doesn't support that --- take the page composition / printing industry --- used to require an entire floor of compositors to do a publication --- behind them was an entire industry creating rules, chases, printing presses, and hot metal casting machines. Phototypesetting wiped out the people creating specialty metal pieces as well as hot metal casting machines, and vastly reduced the number of people needed to make flats to make plates to print from. CTP (Computer To Plate) pretty much wiped out everything but the printing presses --- sure, one has a few people in California (and India) coding software, but once it's time to make pages, you need one or two people to lay them out, a copy editor and customer-service rep to oversee the job, a pre-press person to check it, one person in the plate-making room and a couple of people to run the printing press --- a dozen or so people performing a job which used to need hundreds.

My company made the switch to CTP years ago, but I still constantly meet people who used to work their, but now have lower-paying jobs or are un-employed.

Or look at Snapper:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html

In ten years their factory went from ~1,300 employees to about half that, 650 --- do you really think, the companies making the CNC machines are employing 650 people to make that up?

William

Even many environmentalists seem to be realising the potential benefits of a Thorium reactor. E.g. see:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1727914/will-green-nukes-save-the-world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/16/china-nuclear-thorium

Those weren't 'hand picked' over weeks or years, but found after a quick search today in Google news.
Also, afaik, there are still potential economical challenges with Thorium based reactors. Not sure about that though.

I'll articulate that it's extremely rare for the police to break down doors over a lost phone, unless lawyers report it as stolen.

Wagstaffe [the San Mateo County DA] said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated. The District Attorney’s office then referred them to the Rapid Enforcement and Allied Computer Team, or REACT, a multi-jurisdictional, high-tech crime task force that operates under the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.

While WikiLeaks is a current and exciting topic, the clothianidin/EPA leak has nothing to do with WikiLeaks.

Quoting a prominent secondary story linked from TFA:

So how did Theobald (pictured above) end up with such a contentious document?

Bayer, the corporation behind clothianidin (the pesticide in question), published a life cycle study about it in 2006 at the EPA's request. The study was flawed--test and control fields were, for example, planted as close as 968 feet apart. But the EPA continued to allow the use of clothianidin, which has been on the market since 2003 for use on corn, canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat (and which has been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects on bees, birds, and other species).

Fast forward to this year. Theobald wrote an article in the July issue of Bee Culture about clothianidin. Then an employee at the EPA called Theobald to tell him the article had led the EPA to review the pesticide's original life cycle study before approving clothianidin for use on cotton and mustard.

"They told me that EPA scientists had reviewed the original lifecycle study and determined it wasn't scientifically sound, and I asked if it had been documented, if there was a hard copy," he says, "The [employee] said yes, and I asked if I could get a copy." And just like that, he had the proof he needed that the EPA had overlooked something that could be killing America's bees.

While WikiLeaks is a current and exciting topic, the clothianidin/EPA leak has nothing to do with WikiLeaks.

Quoting a prominent secondary story linked from TFA:

So how did Theobald (pictured above) end up with such a contentious document?

Bayer, the corporation behind clothianidin (the pesticide in question), published a life cycle study about it in 2006 at the EPA's request. The study was flawed--test and control fields were, for example, planted as close as 968 feet apart. But the EPA continued to allow the use of clothianidin, which has been on the market since 2003 for use on corn, canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat (and which has been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects on bees, birds, and other species).

Fast forward to this year. Theobald wrote an article in the July issue of Bee Culture about clothianidin. Then an employee at the EPA called Theobald to tell him the article had led the EPA to review the pesticide's original life cycle study before approving clothianidin for use on cotton and mustard.

"They told me that EPA scientists had reviewed the original lifecycle study and determined it wasn't scientifically sound, and I asked if it had been documented, if there was a hard copy," he says, "The [employee] said yes, and I asked if I could get a copy." And just like that, he had the proof he needed that the EPA had overlooked something that could be killing America's bees.

I don't think it's even about rich or non-rich. What Ayn Rand does isn't as much a defense of being rich, as a defense of psychopathy and of not giving a damn about the others or their well being.

And while in her writing she does somewhat tone it down, in her diary she was going all fangirl over people like William Edward Hickman. That was her ideal of superman and she loved a quote from him saying "what is good for me is right."

Just to make it clear, what William Edward Hickman was famous for was kidnapping a schoolgirl and mailing her father taunting ransom notes signed with names like "Fate" or "Death". Then when the father came with the money, and thought he saw his girl sleeping in the abductor's car, she got thrown out of the car... dead. Hickman had cut off her limbs -- by his own testimony, _alive_, as the blood was coming out in small spurts, i.e., the heart was still beating -- hollowed out her torso and strewn her inner organs all over town. Actually living out an earlier fantasy he had told a former accomplice about, to take someone apart and chuck bits of them all over town.

Ayn Rand thought Hickman was some kind of dashing romantic adventurer whose only "crime" was rejecting the unreasonable conformism of society. (Like, you know, not taking live children apart.) She pretty much foamed at the mouth against those boring sheeples who dared so self-righteously criticize her hero. A bit later she blames society for basically not offering him anything better to do than gut and dismember a little girl. I mean what was the poor guy supposed to do? Get a boring job and a boring wife and all that? No, really. That's her justification for Hickman.

And really, that's what her writing is about. Even the economic angle is Bullshit with a capital B. I mean, her utopia needs an infinite free energy source to even function. But she manages to do a heck of a job in lionizing the psychopaths who doesn't give a damn about anyone else, and calling those "statists" and "collectivists" names, and fantasizing about their destruction.

Now consider that a large number of those at the top _are_ psychopaths. See, for example: Is Your Boss A Psychopaths?

If you were one, wouldn't you just _love_ a philosophy that says it's just normal to not give a damn about anyone else, and that it's an _objective_ (or Objectivist) fact that it's all about caring for number one?

The increasingly complex web that's developed from all of the mobile patent enforcement actions is truly mind-boggling. What's more, it all seems rather wasteful, when one considers the fact that the likely result of all these lawsuits will be settlements and cross-licensing deals. How anticlimactic.

See this FastCompany article for more information about the smear campaign against Assange. This has PsyOps written all over it.

Analysts are looking as far ahead as 2014 for XBox Kinnect. Sony has also said that there's 10 years of life in PS3. So if Nintendo comes with a new concept that is as groundbreaking as Wii (in terms of tech and/or marketing) in 2012 then they sure as hell haven't been outpaced by either Microsoft or Sony.

Article with better picture (the second picture in there only looks like a still from a low rez video of a photograph)

It seems some people are making progress on the glucose fuel cell.

Current tech can only produce about 6.5 microwatts per cell, which is not nearly enough for a regular LED, but it's a step in the right direction.

This kind of reminds me of what Monty Python creating their own YouTube channel and their sales going up 23,000%. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/monty-python-youtube-move-boosts-dvd-sales-23000

You're electric company is beholden to the voters, and to greater legislative burden, because you're correct that they are a monopoly.

They're a GODDAMNED MONOPOLY. There's nobody to switch TO. Are you stupid, or just trolling?

How is ComCast prohibiting competing technologies?

You can call it a monopoly, or a chutes and ladders, or a purple-ocracy, or whatever you wish, but this doesn't make it so. Are they your only source for ComCast Cable internet? Yep. Are they your only source for internet period? Not even close. And certainly, absolutely not by the time any legislation you might advocate would actually be enforced.

Too bad the diagram illustrating all the current patent litigation doesn't depict each individual suit; but then, if it did, I guess it would be pretty much illegible.

This could be okay, as long as Apple doesn't go overboard and start applying for patents on technology that would allow teachers to actively spy on students when they off school grounds (as happened in Pennsylvania just this year: see this story), or other such invasions. Patent law and privacy law are starting to intersect in interesting ways, but certain limits need to be observed.