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That'd be because you tax the hell out of it.

If we (Americans) were to internalize all the negative externalities into the price of gasoline, how much would it cost? Add $20 per ton of CO2, which comes to 19 cents per gallon, for global warming. Add in the cost of air pollution, up to $1600 per person annually. Because gas taxes and user fees only make up 65% of the cost of the roads, add the other 35% into the cost of gasoline. And so on.

With all the externalities added to the price of gasoline, I think we would see gas prices similar to Europe's, and we would find that their gas taxes are more fair than ours.

And, let be serious, if that particular person didn't go on to boast to a snitch, he probably would have had a decent chance of getting away too.

Actually, the evidence is indicating that Manning never spoke let alone boast to Adrian Lamo. Lamo just happens to work for the vigilante group Project Vigilant who monitors and logs internet conversations of over 250 million US based IP addresses per day. They picked up the chat logs between Manning and one or more MIT students, then handed them off to Lamo to take public soon after the Collateral murder video went public.

While not subject to the same organized "burying" effects, most even vaguely political stories on Slashdot are so filled with irrational and diversionary comments I'd be shocked if some of that wasn't an organized attempt to render this a hostile environment for actual throughtful discussion.

I'd love the chance to datamine the IPs of Slashdot's comments. After all, the governement already does for their own purposes.

Adrian Lamo worked as an Analyst for Project Vigilant - which specializes in collecting any and all data from major ISP's where the EULA permits third parties (i.e. pretty much all of them).

Lamo also just happened to turn in chat logs for military whistleblower Bradley Manning. There is already decent evidence to suggest that Lamo never talked to Manning, but was given the logs by this secretive private catch-all spy network "Project Vigilante" and told to turn them in.

Two links with some more reading on Project Vigilant.
"that it monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers, hands much of that information to federal agencies, and encouraged one of its "volunteers," researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April."..
but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies.
from:
Stealthy Government Contractor Monitors U.S. Internet Providers, Worked With Wikileaks Informant
http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/08/01/stealthy-government-contractor-monitors-u-s-internet-providers-says-it-employed-wikileaks-informant
"Elite US cyber team courts hackers to fight terror"
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hKoXQdL-L1HFYObz0_UUHMactSWg

Top tip, stop chatting to strangers, try a sneaker net gap and again stop chatting :)

100 billion every year? have a citation to quote?
here's a counter citation

http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/04/05/big-oils-tax-bill/
"Yet before you thank Big Oil for financing Uncle Sam's profligacy, get this: Exxon paid none of its 2009 income taxes in the U.S., while Chevron sent the U.S. Treasury just $200 million."

can you supply ANYTHING to back up your claim of 100 billion a year?

Russia's deficit is about 7% of GDP compared to our 60% of GDP. Or is there something more to an economy than it's public debt...

(See what I did there?)

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/19/russia-eurobond-auction-markets-bonds-deficit-putin.html

Moscow expects the budget deficit to hit 6.8% of GDP this year and wants to lower that to around 3% by 2012. Officials have not said exactly how much they intend to raise with the bond issue, or at what yield. But according to some reports, Finance Ministry officials are looking for a yield of 200 basis points above the benchmark German bund, (the 10-year yields 3.28% and the 30-year, 4%), to launch the bond in April at the earliest and to raise a total $18 billion this year, most likely in various tranches...

The last time Russia issued a Eurobond was in 2000. It was two years after the country's infamous 1998 financial crisis which saw the country's export-dependent finances crumble after a huge drop in oil prices. In August 1998, Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and suspended payments by local banks to foreign creditors.

But it wasn't long before the devalued ruble helped boost exports, oil prices rose again and the economy was back on its feet.

Anyway, here in North America, Blackberry's market share is still more than double that of the iPhone, so I doubt RIM is particularly "galled".

From Forbes: "iPhone Could Overtake BlackBerry Market Share in 2011". iPhone, BlackBerry slip as Android market share surges tells a different story. Personally I don't care who leads in marketshare as long as there is competition in a relatively free market.

Falcon

The Forbes article has a Google spreadsheet of the routers.

*looks through list* Oh cool. Buffalo isn't on it.

DD-WRT N/A N/A v24 YES

Uh oh, time to switch to tomato.

The important info

Heffner tested his attack against 30 router models and found that about half were vulnerable. Here's his chart of which are and aren't subject to attack. ("Successful" in the far right column means that the router was successfully hacked.)

Vendor Model H/W Version F/W Version Successful
ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. C 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES
ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. D 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES
ActionTec GT704-WG N/A 3.20.3.3.5.0.9.2.9 YES
ActionTec GT701-WG E 3.60.2.0.6.3 YES
Asus WL-520gU N/A N/A YES
Belkin F5D7230-4 2000 4.05.03 YES
Belkin F5D7230-4 6000 N/A NO
Belkin F5D7234-4 N/A 5.00.12 NO
Belkin F5D8233-4v3 3000 3.01.10 NO
Belkin F5D6231-4 1 2.00.002 NO
D-Link DI-524 C1 3.23 NO
D-Link DI-624 N/A 2.50DDM NO
D-Link DIR-628 A2 1.22NA NO
D-Link DIR-320 A1 1 NO
D-Link DIR-655 A1 1.30EA NO
DD-WRT N/A N/A v24 YES
Dell TrueMobile 2300 N/A 5.1.1.6 YES
Linksys BEFW11S4 1 1.37.2 YES
Linksys BEFSR41 4.3 2.00.02 YES
Linksys WRT54G3G-ST N/A N/A YES
Linksys WRT54G2 N/A N/A NO
Linksys WRT160N 1.1 1.02.2 YES
Linksys WRT54G 3 3.03.9 YES
Linksys WRT54G 5 1.00.4 NO
Linksys WRT54GL N/A N/A YES
Netgear WGR614 9 N/A NO
Netgear WNR834B 2 2.1.13_2.1.13NA NO
OpenWRT N/A N/A Kamikaze r16206 YES
PFSense N/A N/A 1.2.3-RC3 YES
Thomson ST585 6sl 6.2.2.29.2 YES

from http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/07/13/millions-of-home-routers-vulnerable-to-web-hack/

The Forbes article has a Google spreadsheet of the routers.

Here's a list (SUA) sudden unintended acceleration complaints to the NHTSA

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/nhtsa-data-dive-3-117-models-ranked-by-rate-of-ua-incidents/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/05/sudden.acceleration.fact.check/index.html

Atop that, most of SUA complaints to the NHTSA are a sham.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/89-dead-in-the-nhtsa-complaint-database-it%E2%80%99s-a-sham/

Its not about a design flaw, some people are on their cell phone, distracted, and in some cases plain DRUNK. One Toyota SUA had a driver with a blood alcohol level of .103 (link above). Its easier to blame the car rather then admit you were drinking or were texting on the cellphone.

In other cases it turned out to be a complete hoax (in the case of the California Prius incident):

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/12/toyota-autos-hoax-media-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento.html
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/fox-is-sikes-a-balloon-boy/

Beware, if you don't hold iHistory with an iron grip could be public reception problems.

Why is it the university's job to police this stuff ... ?

It's not. It that there are many after the dot-bomb period and the ongoing Bush Depression that see the Universities as a captive market for failed business models that need greater than 100% subsidy to stay even in sight of being in the black.

In the digital era, the cost of making a new copy in not only negligible, but the copy itself is made with 100% fidelity and indistinguishable from the original. MPAA, RIAA and the companies they represent, like Microsoft and Disney, have a very out-dated business model based around an attempt to create an artificial scarcity for electronic media. Back when physical medium was important and reproduction and transport costs were high, the model worked. Now it is just stupid. Around 10 years ago, the sale of physical media took off due to the old (real) MP3 services. MPAA, RIAA not only did not see numbers but also went to great lengths to bury the facts and even go against the interests they claim to be defending.

The real bite from the current war against the Universities will hit a generation down the road. The pipe from basic research, to research, to applied research, to development, to product development, to product packaging, to training and maintenance, is long. The tap has been turned off and the pipe is filling with air while some flow is still visible. By the time the flow stops completely, there will be no mechanism or skills left to get going again. We're already seeing this in "IT" and Microsoft Resellers ponce around pretending to be teachers or developers, making sure that no one with skills is allowed through.

Or maybe we could get the couple percent of americans who actually have all the money to pay their fair share of taxes. No, that would be unamerican.

Screw their income... confiscate 100% of their wealth! That'll show 'em... and you will barely even dent the $2.5 trillion in debt generated in just the last year and a half, much less the full debt and worse, future unfunded obligations. Bill Gates is worth about $50 billion, Warren Buffett around $40 billion. The Forbes 400 have a combined net worth (not income, total worth) of $1.27 trillion. I think you seriously underestimate just how much the government is spending because the numbers are too large to really grasp.

Sounds like all that matters is the interests of the shareholders, and the customers are irrelevant.Actually, the law was using against Skilling for deceiving shareholders. Sadly, in the eyes of the court it seems the law is vague, because no one knows what the definition of honest is anymore. I know many people who thing intentionally deceiving someone isn't lying or even wrong as long as what you say is literally true.

Here's a Forbes Blog post from Henry Blodgett, CEO and Editor in Chief of Business Insider: Could Microsoft Collapse?

Verizon: 7.6%
AT&T: 10.5%
Sprint: (17.4%)

http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=vz
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=T
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=s

Verizon: 7.6%
AT&T: 10.5%
Sprint: (17.4%)

http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=vz
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=T
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=s

Verizon: 7.6%
AT&T: 10.5%
Sprint: (17.4%)

http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=vz
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=T
http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=s

I believe the GP is arguing about the lost opportunity of that $10 billion. There is a finite pool of cash, and many other projects that are asking for funding. Something else got the axe so the super collider could get built... given the light of the debt crises in the western nations, maybe that cash would have been better spent later rather than right now.

Fair enough, let's address those claims.

The construction of LHC was approved in 1995, way before there was a crisis in Europe. The total project cost (about half of the $10B figure according to this) is therefore spread across more than 15 years (assuming not all experiments have been run) and 20 countries. CERN's budget for last year was about $1B (see previous link) and a similar figure in 2008 and I fully expect them to spend that money on nuclear research, as per their charter; there are other organizations that concern themselves with world hunger, bank bailouts, etc.

Now, let's put the numbers into perspective.
There are *individuals* that can finance the LHC 5 times over. Speaking about countries, in 2009 Germany was the largest contributor to CERN with ~$200M, which was roughly 0.006% of their GDP.

Oh, and by the way, the discovery was made at Fermilab's Tevatron, which is both older and significantly cheaper than the LHC.

Get some info first

The reason why a lot of players are complaining is because of the Jabulani ball and because of the grass quality. The vuvucelas are a problem for some of them too, but is not the one and only reason.

That is not a typo.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes_2.html

Mod parent worse than troll, it is an outright lie. Microsoft and General Electric both avoid paying any US taxes by provisioning their income to overseas accounts, where the income tax is then deferred indefinitely.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html
I'm sick of hearing this right wing lie. Big companies do not pay their fair share, the have developed their own legal welfare system that sucks money from Americans, all the while being helped by their sheep screaming how things like health care is too costly. I'm not sure who is dumber, the people who support welfare for rich corporations/people, or the people who allow it. I would say the latter.

What exactly is their job that needs to be done in your perspective, Mr. has to post AC because he can't even stand by his own rant and own up to it? The way I see it, their job is to improve their software and provide their customers with the functionality that the customers need to run their businesses with. Last I checked, XP is dead. It is still out there in production and is still getting patched, but there isn't any new development happening.

Put the shoe on the other foot. If someone went to Google and said, "I found this vulnerability in Android 1.5, fix it." Do you think Google is going to put much effort into it? They'd probably just point out the fact that 1.5 is obsolete and recommend an upgrade to 1.6 or 2.1. Maybe someone can cry about flaw in Chrome 3.0 and we'll see how much weight Google puts on fix that.

Heaven forbid Microsoft takes more than 48 hours to patch an obsolete OS that most competent IT administrators are in the process of phasing out.

Even if you put the fact the XP is on the way out aside, how long do you think it takes a huge organization like Microsoft to regression test a patch? How many different departments need to sign off on something before it gets pushed out the door? I'm not saying that being big gives a company a pass for being inefficient, but be realistic. If they screw up a patch there are millions of people that can be impacted by it. It's not like Google where they enjoy the good will of the IT community and can just hang up a, "We're working on it, bare with us for a few moments" sign.

For an example read this article written by someone who is almost completely happy with Google apps.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/25/microsoft-email-spreadsheets-technology-business-intelligence-google.html

So, we've been waiting a little over seven years to skewer those who we knew were on the wrong side of the SCO vs. IBM issue, both here and on the broader Internet.

Now that it's decided, it's time to see who was right. Daniel Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, seems like a good place to start. "Crunchy linux users" indeed.

IS IT OK FOR GOOGLE TO REMOVE NEGATIVE PRESS ABOUT ITSELF, WHILE THE REST OF OUR LIVES ARE EFECTED BY WHAT GOOGLE DISPLAYS ABOUT EACH OF US. THEY HAVE WON IN THE BUSINESS WORLD, BUT NOW THEIR MONOPOLY EFFECTS ALL OF US AND THEY HAVE A FEDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE WORLD TO ACT ETHICALLY AND THEY ARE NOT!!! I NEED HELP AND ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT GOOGLE. I THINK WAHT THEY DID WAS ILLEGAL AND JUST WRONG!! My name is Rob Shambro, I am the CEO of GenosTV (www.genos.tv) a global broadband cable operator launching on January 6, 2011 at the Consumer Electronics Show. GoogleTV Invigorates the IPTV Market and Genos' CEO, Rob Shambro, Dissects the AlternativeTV Space. Here is a link to hte article. It was an upstanding, educational release just stating the FACTS in the IPTV marketplace. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2010/05/21/prnewswire201005211326PR_NEWS_USPR_____AQ08961.html In the press release I state, "A quick Google search on GoogleTV today, shows very mixed emotions on the service, leaning towards the "not so impressed." A. Do you think I would even dare to say that if it were not true? Absolutely NOT! B. I issued the release around 9am PST. Here is the good part, at around 10 am I go back to Google and do another quick search on GoogleTV and every single negative press article was gone. I could not believe it. C. On top of that the search results were nice and neatly organized in near chronological order! Do they not have to live by their page rank software? I printed out everything, 30 search results pages deep, before and after. The change would have been IMPOSSIBLE using their software. D. My press release above ranked in the top 100 releases for MAY in PRNEWSWIRE. This release was picked up everywhere, yet it’s nowhere to be found on Google unless you absolutely search for it. E. Then I went to Bing.com and did a search on GoogleTV and Google TV and printed out the search results pages, 30 deep. This how their software would display the search results. F. The NUMBER ONE article about GoogleTV is HULU Unlikely to Run on GoogleTV on mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/hulu-google-tv-android/ In the past I had some negative articles posted by some anonymous people that showed up first every time you did a search on my name. This was like that for years. It has cost me millions of dollars in financing and stress. I almost gave up and never started another company again because of Google.. Just recently a 10 year old negative article that came up first in my search results and CAUSED ME NOT TO GET a $500,000 investment from a local investor. I can prove it. You hear horror stories about Google ruining people's lives because of negative press showing up first in their search results. I am sure I am not alone here!!! I wish I could go into my search results and change them around so they all look positive and neat, JUST LIKE THEY DID. This is NOT fair. You hear about doctors that can not get a single patient because on Google is some old domestic violence case that happened 20 years that comes up first on a search on their name. Google should have to live by the same rules as everyone else. I think this is illegal. They have caused me soo much stress in my life. I am an entrepreneur, I love GOD, I help every person in the world I can, I try to do great things, I really try to create things and put it into motion. I am a doer not a talker yet a simple search on Google throws that all in the trash and makes me out to look like a really bad person. I want answers, compensation and I want the rest of the people around the world to stand up and get behind me on this issue. They are playing with people's lives and yet the first time their software works against them, they log in and delete delete delete, and put positive press first. We all wish we could do that. Tha

I think this quote applies here: As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal "U.N. Declaration of Rights" source

IS IT OK FOR GOOGLE TO REMOVE NEGATIVE PRESS ABOUT ITSELF, WHILE THE REST OF OUR LIVES ARE EFECTED BY WHAT GOOGLE DISPLAYS ABOUT EACH OF US. THEY HAVE WON IN THE BUSINESS WORLD, BUT NOW THEIR MONOPOLY EFFECTS ALL OF US AND THEY HAVE A FEDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE WORLD TO ACT ETHICALLY AND THEY ARE NOT!!! I NEED HELP AND ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT GOOGLE. I THINK WAHT THEY DID WAS ILLEGAL AND JUST WRONG!! My name is Rob Shambro, I am the CEO of GenosTV (www.genos.tv) a global broadband cable operator launching on January 6, 2011 at the Consumer Electronics Show. GoogleTV Invigorates the IPTV Market and Genos' CEO, Rob Shambro, Dissects the AlternativeTV Space. Here is a link to hte article. It was an upstanding, educational release just stating the FACTS in the IPTV marketplace. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2010/05/21/prnewswire201005211326PR_NEWS_USPR_____AQ08961.html In the press release I state, "A quick Google search on GoogleTV today, shows very mixed emotions on the service, leaning towards the "not so impressed." A. Do you think I would even dare to say that if it were not true? Absolutely NOT! B. I issued the release around 9am PST. Here is the good part, at around 10 am I go back to Google and do another quick search on GoogleTV and every single negative press article was gone. I could not believe it. C. On top of that the search results were nice and neatly organized in near chronological order! Do they not have to live by their page rank software? I printed out everything, 30 search results pages deep, before and after. The change would have been IMPOSSIBLE using their software. D. My press release above ranked in the top 100 releases for MAY in PRNEWSWIRE. This release was picked up everywhere, yet it’s nowhere to be found on Google unless you absolutely search for it. E. Then I went to Bing.com and did a search on GoogleTV and Google TV and printed out the search results pages, 30 deep. This how their software would display the search results. F. The NUMBER ONE article about GoogleTV is HULU Unlikely to Run on GoogleTV on mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/hulu-google-tv-android/ In the past I had some negative articles posted by some anonymous people that showed up first every time you did a search on my name. This was like that for years. It has cost me millions of dollars in financing and stress. I almost gave up and never started another company again because of Google.. Just recently a 10 year old negative article that came up first in my search results and CAUSED ME NOT TO GET a $500,000 investment from a local investor. I can prove it. You hear horror stories about Google ruining people's lives because of negative press showing up first in their search results. I am sure I am not alone here!!! I wish I could go into my search results and change them around so they all look positive and neat, JUST LIKE THEY DID. This is NOT fair. You hear about doctors that can not get a single patient because on Google is some old domestic violence case that happened 20 years that comes up first on a search on their name. Google should have to live by the same rules as everyone else. I think this is illegal. They have cau

IS IT OK FOR GOOGLE TO REMOVE NEGATIVE PRESS ABOUT ITSELF, WHILE THE REST OF OUR LIVES ARE EFECTED BY WHAT GOOGLE DISPLAYS ABOUT EACH OF US. THEY HAVE WON IN THE BUSINESS WORLD, BUT NOW THEIR MONOPOLY EFFECTS ALL OF US AND THEY HAVE A FEDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE WORLD TO ACT ETHICALLY AND THEY ARE NOT!!! I NEED HELP AND ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT GOOGLE. I THINK WAHT THEY DID WAS ILLEGAL AND JUST WRONG!! My name is Rob Shambro, I am the CEO of GenosTV (www.genos.tv) a global broadband cable operator launching on January 6, 2011 at the Consumer Electronics Show. GoogleTV Invigorates the IPTV Market and Genos' CEO, Rob Shambro, Dissects the AlternativeTV Space. Here is a link to hte article. It was an upstanding, educational release just stating the FACTS in the IPTV marketplace. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2010/05/21/prnewswire201005211326PR_NEWS_USPR_____AQ08961.html In the press release I state, "A quick Google search on GoogleTV today, shows very mixed emotions on the service, leaning towards the "not so impressed." A. Do you think I would even dare to say that if it were not true? Absolutely NOT! B. I issued the release around 9am PST. Here is the good part, at around 10 am I go back to Google and do another quick search on GoogleTV and every single negative press article was gone. I could not believe it. C. On top of that the search results were nice and neatly organized in near chronological order! Do they not have to live by their page rank software? I printed out everything, 30 search results pages deep, before and after. The change would have been IMPOSSIBLE using their software. D. My press release above ranked in the top 100 releases for MAY in PRNEWSWIRE. This release was picked up everywhere, yet it’s nowhere to be found on Google unless you absolutely search for it. E. Then I went to Bing.com and did a search on GoogleTV and Google TV and printed out the search results pages, 30 deep. This how their software would display the search results. F. The NUMBER ONE article about GoogleTV is HULU Unlikely to Run on GoogleTV on mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/hulu-google-tv-android/ In the past I had some negative articles posted by some anonymous people that showed up first every time you did a search on my name. This was like that for years. It has cost me millions of dollars in financing and stress. I almost gave up and never started another company again because of Google.. Just recently a 10 year old negative article that came up first in my search results and CAUSED ME NOT TO GET a $500,000 investment from a local investor. I can prove it. You hear horror stories about Google ruining people's lives because of negative press showing up first in their search results. I am sure I am not alone here!!! I wish I could go into my search results and change them around so they all look positive and neat, JUST LIKE THEY DID. This is NOT fair. You hear about doctors that can not get a single patient because on Google is some old domestic violence case that happened 20 years that comes up first on a search on their name. Google should have to live by the same rules as everyone else. I think this is illegal. They have caused me soo much stress in my life. I am an entrepreneur, I love GOD, I help every person in the world I can, I try to do great things, I really try to create things and put it into motion. I am a doer not a talker yet a simple search on Google throws that all in the trash and makes me out to look like a really bad person. I want answers, compensation and I want the rest of the people around the world to stand up and get behind me on this issue. They are playing with people's lives and yet the first time their software works against them, they log in and delete delete delete, and put positive press first. We all wish we could do that. Thanks for your advice, support a

True. I'm sure that secret software mandated by a communist government to be installed at their ISP is entirely in the best interests of their population.

Cisco's Backdoor for Hackers
Cisco isn't actually the primary target of Cross' critique. He points out that all networking companies are legally required to build lawful intercepts into their equipment.

You can proceed with whatever rambling rationalization your reality demands.

A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity... Years of research and fine-tuning are ahead before the idea could be commercially viable -MSNBC

circumstantial evidence strongly favors a [biogenic] origin for almost all found to date. -The Straight Dope

Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat. -WorldNetDaily

Skeptics say that while traces of abiotic hydrocarbons may exist, little data support the idea of economically meaningful deposits. "Companies have been looking for oil for 100 years. If all this abiogenic stuff is there, why haven't they found it?" asks geochemist Geoffrey Glasby, who spent nine months investigating the matter for a 2006 review paper in Resource Geology. He concluded the totality of the evidence did not support the concept. -Forbes (my link)

You may want to read the articles before you cite them.

PS: WorldNetDaily? Really? What's next, Mad Magazine and Star?

Not to say anything against the financial geniuses of the world, but if even objectively successful investors can miss something as huge as the U.S. housing bubble, it just reinforces my suspicion that those financial types are merely experts on the small scale, and ignorant of the big picture.

The big picture being: population grows. Places where you can find gainful employment are growing at a lesser pace because of limited natural resources. Population density grows disproportionally in areas with lots of Big Business and concomitant employment opportunities. Housing in said areas becomes scarcer and therefore more expensive. People get antsy about having to spend more and more on housing, but demographic inertia prevents the decline in population growth that would bring things back into balance quickly; instead, people start focusing on how rising real estate prices could actually work to their benefit, and buy things that are really kinda out of reach. This leads to real estate prices rising even more rapidly, making the expectation of rising real estate prices a self-fulfilling prophecy. People buy outrageously expensive houses yet feel that they've gotten themselves a great deal, will be able to retire 10 years sooner than they used to expect, a win-win all around. Some sane people realize that this cannot continue because it's just another pyramid scheme that will implode once the market runs out of suckers. Those sane people are a tiny minority that everyone else just laughs at -- financial geniuses included. Then the inevitable happens and the bubble bursts. Bankers get blamed because they made the juiciest profits; people who bought ridiculously overpriced homes consider themselves innocent victims. People who stayed in rented apartments while the world around them went nuts end up just scratching their heads and laughing at the stupidity of it all.

A link would be good. Here's one for starters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Tim O'Reilly agrees with you.

steveha

Oh, get over yourself.

[S]tate-owned companies remain a gargantuan force in the economy. In 2003 they employed half of China's 750 million workers and controlled 57 percent of its industrial assets.

from http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/04/cx_1104mckinseychina6.html

And what's with the strawman of "10 million people... who's (sic) sole job it is to annoy and slow down their economy"? I never said anything of the sort. By the way:

State-owned companies grow 70% in first four months [of 2010]

from: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/6993084.html

Which curiously is how BFG got its start, buy selling veideo cards in stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA. The problem was how BFG got its start. It did so by sabotaging the original VisionTek that made nVidia graphics cards. They violated confidentiality agreements, stole trade secrets, saved plenty of files they should not have from VisionTek, used previous contacts illegitimately, managed to get Visiontek's old suppliers, including nVidia, to dump them, and got customers (like Best Buy) to dump them as well. It is disgusting behavior that no one did any jail time for and for which very little money was recovered from BFG, or anyone else in the end. It also appears "John Slevin" is mentioned in the press release in TFA, and is probably the same guy mentioned in the complaint in US Bankruptcy Court documents as being a part of the slime that made up BFG from day one. Interestingly, nVidia and Mitac (the board manufacturer) were sued and settled as well.

The amended complaint:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B--kPjOMTMyPNGQzYzdjYmUtYjI5ZC00NzJlLWE3N2MtZTM2MWQ5MjAwNWVl&hl=en

Article in Forbes that mentions Visiontek, but not BFG by name:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0901/048b.html

I suppose Advanced Equities will soon be able to add BFG in as a failure.

A Chapter 7 bankruptcy should not take this long, but it did here (includes payments):
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B--kPjOMTMyPNTg4NmVlZmMtMzRjYy00YzUwLWJhNDQtYzExMmZhNDczMjk3&hl=en

That's just stupid racist nonsense.

Lovely. Zero to 'racist' is 4.3 seconds. What a lovely rhetorical tool! Almost as good as tossing out "nazi" or "Hitler".

Let's not have an honest discussion...

Some background

Re: CRA

According to one enforcement agency, "discrimination exists when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants." Note that these "arbitrary or outdated criteria" include most of the essentials of responsible lending: income level, income verification, credit history and savings history--the very factors lenders are now being criticized for ignoring.

You:

All the feds did was to outlaw redlining. Banks were simply forced to use the same standards regardless of the skin color of the applicant.

Way to totally ignore the amendments to the CRA -- particularly those made during the late 80's and early 90's. It set silly and arbitrary targets lenders must make by location and race. CRA forced lenders to lend to uncreditworthy persons to satisfy the CRA.

Now, I'm not suggesting the CRA was the SINGLE cause -- but it certainly was a major contributor. As well as many other points of government involvement.

Do you REALLY want to discuss? Or just be an ignorant name-calling prat?

Pretty much any ISP level device or IOS/CatOS

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html
http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/cisco-spy.pdf
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/57070

So what you're saying is you are so bound up in your ideology you're incapable of reading what's actually there, and instead leap to an interpretation that reinforces your ideology.

If that were true, then you'd have a point. And here are more unsupported assertions.

Because the government does some things extremely well. I know that's a shock and against St. Reagan's decrees, but there's lots of history around the world of certain services being privatized and the quality of that service plummeting.

Argentina's water system is an example: when the government ran it, water was much cheaper, it had fewer contaminants, and the water system was more reliable. Once it was privatized, the price shot up, water quality went down and they skimped on maintenance resulting in more disruptions.

While your ideology demands that government-run utilities aren't run well, the reality is they are run extremely well.

The problem with the Argentina assertion is that government was extremely poorly run. They were going bankrupt. The quality of the water supply would have gone downhill anyway. Now maybe the government does run some things better than the private world would. National defense, for example, seems to be one of those things. A water supply does not.

All those companies can't legally compete with USPS's core business

[citation needed]

Wikipedia describes it here.

As to government funding of the postal service, there's a few examples (grabbed via Google) from recent years (here, here, and here). These show both federal funding of the USPS and the presence of remarkably large deficits in the USPS budget.

So, Citibank, BofA, GM, Chrysler, Goldman-Sachs, and JP Morgan are all government entities, then? Or in your mind is it only the monopoly that makes it a government entity, which would mean Verizon, Time Warner and my local power company are all government-run.

What do you think? I think any entity that can privatize profit and socialize risk, such as these organizations apparently can, blurs the boundaries between private world and government. Some other examples are the real estate companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had a government commitment to honor their obligations.

I don't think your other examples have much merit. Verizon and Time Warner may have monopolies on their means of providing service (land lines, cable TV), but they don't have monopolies on the service (phones, those TV channels, internet, etc). A number of US locations have competitive power providers and hence are not monopolies. There are almost trivial monopolies associated with intellectual property, particularly copyright and trademarks. I wouldn't call Disney a government entity merely because they own the trademarks and copyrights associated with Mickey Mouse and his cartoons.

Most such organizations I would not consider proper government entities because they are privately owned and intended to be run for profit or other privately determined goals. The USPS fails those two tests since it is neither run for a privately determined purpose (the government selects the people who run it) and publicly owned (as far as I can tell, the US government owns completely the assets of the USPS).

Or movie lines.

Sorry, but $2-36 billion in subsidies for the entire oil industry (from both links, the first I'm pretty sure is extremely inflated given the fact that even Greenpeace gives $35 billion as their highest estimate) doesn't seem that significant, considering Exxon alone paid $30 billion in taxes in 2007.

I don't know about that, but in 2009, Exxon paid $0 in US income taxes, and Chevron only paid $200M.

Why is anyone defending these evil bastards? Does supporting open source, for their own gain, really cover that many sins?

It's about choosing the lesser evil. If IBM goes down, Microsoft will take its place as the world's largest software provider.

If it's a choice between Microsoft and Nazism, I'd gladly pledge my allegiance to the Führer.

http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=AAPL

Funny the very same way of thinking was used to justify the highly priced brokerage and bank stock prices before the meltdown.

Opps.

Wow *claps* congraz on finding a single comment that might make it seem like Apple did no wrong... thing is a single user comment doesn't equal fact. The reality is that, yes, this bug effected all smartphones. Problem is, only Apple didn't feel the need to patch it before the information about it went live. That means you have every iPhone that could have been attacked (and was ). Since this glitch didn't need the user to cause it, many people would have been left in the dark without knowing the problem (my iPhone died, don't know how...). This is the phone's OS's fault since it would execute code it received from the service provider blindly without confirming the actions contained inside. And from as untrusted a source as a randomly sent SMS.

From this article http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/28/hackers-iphone-apple-technology-security-hackers.html :

The new attacks, by contrast, can strike a phone without any action on the part of the user and are virtually unpreventable while the phone is powered on, according to Miller and Mulliner's research. And unlike the earlier exploits, Apple has inexplicably left them unpatched

Now this article makes mention of the hack being mentioned on Thursday, 2 days later. As mentioned in the article, Apple had known of this problem for more then a month, Apple didn't feel that it's user security was worth addressing until Aug 1st, 48 hours after it went live.

Now, phones where hacked, Apple could have prevent these issues but didn't. So much for having your freedoms taken away from your devices 'for your safety and security'.

If you want more iPhone issues that very well could have been from that hack, try these since they are all from that 48 time frame and all involve iPhones suddenly not working even though the user didn't do anything (signs of that hack in use, though thats the nature of massive computer problems, user doesn't know what went wrong, they know is just doesn't work anymore):

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2101313&tstart=5310

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2100562&tstart=5325

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2099898&tstart=5340

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2097626&tstart=5370

Why does it require government regulation?

Because there has to be a relatively uncorrupted third party to enforce contracts for a market to function properly. That's why strong governments dominate economically worldwide. When a government is unable to enforce it's own laws, either by lack of power or by corruption of it's governing body, it's called a failed state.

Enforcing contracts is not what is being referred to by "government regulation" in this context. And of course you know it.

Well yes, you do need government regulation if the government intentionally fucks over the market correction.

If Glass Steagall had been left intact, there would be nothing to correct. It kept the markets from crashing for well over 70 years, because it forced financial institutions to remain too small to get bailed out. Deregulation of Savings and Loan institutions led to the Savings and Loan Crisis. Deregulation of the banks - The Financial Services Act of 1999 - led to the conditions that make the banks to big to fail.

I don't disagree repealing Glass Steagall was retarded.

I disagree on the conclusion you make from that. The only reason such regulation is required in the first place is because the government fucked up the market already. Remove government setting of interest rates, remove government distortion of lending markets though things like FHA loan guarantees, Freddie and Fannie, student loan guarantees, FDIC insuranc, etc, etc, and you won't need the regulations.

Obviously if the government intervenes it is going to need to them.

You can't have no regulations with ridiculous government interventions. But you don't need those interventions.

Yes you need regulations if you want a society wroth living in. No you don't need regulations to solve every little problem that markets will handle perfectly well.

Loan originators making and selling on bad loans in an obvious thing that will be automatically corrected - the buyers will go broke, then the originators won't be able to sell and will go broke. Simple.

Of course if the government sets interest rates so low that you really can't lose on the spread and couples that with loan guarantees then of course the market won't correct - the "going broke" step can't happen in that environment. Using that as a reason for government regulation is crazy - the problem is caused by government intervention in the first place.

If the Fed had interest rates at 15%, where they should have been, in 2003 - do you really think we'd have a housing bubble to crash? Do you really think wall street would have resorted to ridiculous levels of leverage in order to earn a reasonable rate of return?

[snippage]

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/18/depression-financial-crisis-capitalism-opinions-columnists_recession_stimulus.html

Oh yes, because they know what they are talking about. They pointed out the obviousness of the coming inevitable crash in the US economy in 2002, right? And saw through the bubble building low interest rates? Right???

Why does it require government regulation?

Because there has to be a relatively uncorrupted third party to enforce contracts for a market to function properly. That's why strong governments dominate economically worldwide. When a government is unable to enforce it's own laws, either by lack of power or by corruption of it's governing body, it's called a failed state.

If there are no rules than there can be no coherent markets, since it has the same incentive structure as a casino. Put your money in Blue Chips! Sometimes, you get your money back!

Well yes, you do need government regulation if the government intentionally fucks over the market correction.

If Glass Steagall had been left intact, there would be nothing to correct. It kept the markets from crashing for well over 70 years, because it forced financial institutions to remain too small to get bailed out. Deregulation of Savings and Loan institutions led to the Savings and Loan Crisis. Deregulation of the banks - The Financial Services Act of 1999 - led to the conditions that make the banks to big to fail.

Laissez-Faire Capitalism Has Failed - Forbes.com

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

There is the failure of ideas--such as the "efficient market hypothesis," which deluded its believers about the absence of market failures such as asset bubbles; the "rational expectations" paradigm that clashes with the insights of behavioral economics and finance; and the "self-regulation of markets and institutions" that clashes with the classical agency problems in corporate governance--that are themselves exacerbated in financial companies by the greater degree of asymmetric information. For example, how can a chief executive or a board monitor the risk taking of thousands of separate profit and loss accounts? Then there are the distortions of compensation paid to bankers and traders.

This crisis also shows the failure of ideas such as the one that securitization will reduce systemic risk rather than actually increase it. That risk can be properly priced when the opacity and lack of transparency of financial firms and new instruments leads to unpriceable uncertainty rather than priceable risk.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/18/depression-financial-crisis-capitalism-opinions-columnists_recession_stimulus.html

I read it perfectly, thank you very much, and when I need the benefit of the doubt from somebody who can't add up I'll ask for it.

Obviously not (for the reasons below). And there's clearly no point in me doing so a second time when I'm faced with a case of selective comprehension. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I can acknowledge my mistakes :p.

1. (Boldface from original).

In fact, for most of history, the idea of marriage (for common folk - not the aristocratic freeloaders) has been rather more pragmatic and as a consequence, more stable than it is today. Mind you, try not to follow your first instinct and take all this as a value judgment. It is merely historical fact and it is also a fact that such practical marriages were statistically more successful in the sense of providing stability to children. Whether that's enough or the only thing desirable in child-rearing is a different matter altogether [new italics for improved readability](for instance, what use is stability if that's all you get and if parents that can barely stand the sight of each other but tolerate it for the sake of their kids then take it out in subtle, passive-aggressive ways on the kids; as you were probably hinting at? - as a practical matter though, not putting a child through the idiotic 'problems' of grownups when he/she has enough to worry about might just be a good idea - call me crazy :p).

2.

But it certainly isn't proven, by you or anybody else, that staying together "just for the sake of the children" is necessarily a good (or better, or even less bad) thing for any of the parties concerned.

And yet it is casually assumed (without equally robust standards of proof) that separating in a bad marriage is automatically good for the children. Huh. I must have missed that memo. The unspoken reasoning seems more like - the kid is screwed anyway. The parents might as well make their lives better. And yet, for cultures that speak of dying for their children, living together is clearly too odious a burden. *gasp* I cannot believe how barbaric I was in hinting that maybe, just maybe, parents could get their heads out of their asses and try to make things work 'for the sake of their children'.

This is one of those few clear cases where you can't say, "Well, it's no one's fault. Just the way things go". There is a clear responsibility here - one or both of the parents fucked up, plain and simple. Of course, I don't know what you're so upset about. So what if I invoked the dreaded "for the sake of the children" phrase? If the idiots can't listen to the needs of their own children, it's not like they're gonna listen to anyone else. What we say here is pretty irrelevant.

I'm pretty surprised to find somebody even claiming that in the 21st century.

Clearly, no one would claim that for something like domestic abuse cases (I hope that's been obvious from what I've written - if not, I apologize for wasting your time). The point is that that sort of thing has been declining dramatically. In the 21st century, spousal abuse is hardly the most common reason for divorce (link1 , link2). In the absence of such extreme reasons as abuse, it is not unreasonable to expect BOTH parents to be the grownups. What amazes me is that people believe they have free will and yet when it is convenient, spout horrible cliches about 'people falling out of love' or 'sometimes things just don't work out' to their children as 'explanations' for the divorce, as if they were no more than mindless automatons powerless in the grips of their unknowable ids and uncontrollable passions. How's that for something out of t

Compensation != Salary, folks. Steve's compensation is 650 million: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-Jobs_HEDB.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_compensation

"An air-gap solution is one quick and simple line of defense, sure. But I'd rather have real cryptographically-secure authentication on all the relevant systems than an air-gap defense."

How about we go back to pure switch-controlled stuff, and get rid of the network completely? You want it safe, make it so the ONLY way to fuck with the system is to either dig up a wire and cut it (enjoy your electrocution knowing most moronic terrorists) or actually be at the control booth flipping the switches.

Seriously, this kind of shit does NOT need network connectivity. Does NOBODY remember some researchers gaining access to the controls of a nuclear powerplant from the outside?

My assumption is that this is intended to give the President the authority to shut down botnet controllers during DDoS attacks. Waiting for the courts in such a scenario is unreasonable.

Why is waiting for the courts unreasonable in such a scenario? We aren't talking about Jack Bauer standing over the nuclear weapon that's about to destroy New York City. We are talking about not being able to access a few portions of the internet for the duration of a DDoS attack.

Well how about the fact that we're slowly computerizing the electrical grid for remote shutoff? (And they're finding security flaws in the smart meters.)

How about those stupid management people who claim power plants unhackable but others prove them wrong.

We're becoming more and more interconnected and from a security standpoint it's not a good thing.

That said I am not in favor of the government being able to turn off a net connection or such at will even if they will "only" use it against cyber threats.

"Did you even look at this thing?

I agree. It's incredibly difficult to build a real life table that looks like an artist drawing of said table."

No, it's real, as you can see in the photos below, but I agree, it's very strange the website has no real photos of a $8,500 table.
http://www.wraithwerks.net/blog/GenCon%202008%20Photos/Sultan%20Gaming%20Table.jpg
http://www.purplepawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/sultan-gaming-table.jpg
http://www.robotviking.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sultan01.jpg
http://www.saveordieradio.com/storage/photo-755372.jpg
http://images.forbes.com/media/blogs/images/digitaldownload/images/2008/08/15/sultan_2.jpg
http://www.robotviking.com/2009/07/08/geek-chic-the-absolute-greatest-gaming-table-ever/
My new Gaming Table: The Emissary from Geek Chic (Picture Heavy)