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Yep! But we need to spend $13.5 TRILLION over the next 15 years so we can cut the predicted temperatures by 0.05 deg C - an unmeasurable amount. So spend trillions, wait 85 years, get nothing. That sounds like a great plan - if you want to force massive wealth redistribution....

That doesn't mean that the majority of the refugees are terrorists, nor even a sizable minority, but the argument does seem to have some merit.

...to tell that someone is a prejudiced racist cunt?

If they tell you a thing like "You are an idiot if you don't imagine some terrorists are coming in with the hundreds of thousands" as if it is a rock solid argument - BEFORE any identification has taken place.
I.e. Prejudice [prej-uh-dis]
noun
1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group.

Oh and BTW, no. One of the attackers, at this time, has NOT yet been identified as a Syrian refugee.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22a0...

Ahmad al Mohammad, 25

A Syrian passport in that name was found near the body of one of the men who detonated a suicide vest at the stadium.
Fingerprints from the body matched those of a man who entered Greece via the island of Leros as an asylum seeker in early October.
He is said to have travelled through Turkey, Serbia and Croatia on his way to Paris.

FranÃois Molins, Paris public prosecutor, said the authenticity of the passport "had yet to be verified".
Unconfirmed reports from AFP suggest that the passport may have belonged to a Syrian soldier of President Bashar al-Assad regime who was killed several months ago.

At the same time, the same passport is found at another location hundreds of kilometers away from Paris.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
With another guy's face in it. On another guy.

So... Why not another guy's hand at the scene too?
I mean... if we're gonna make wild unconfirmed guesses about smuggling guns (which are much easier to just buy locally), finding a refugee with a passport, already in France, and cutting off his hand there in France...
Seems a lot easier than marching across a dozen borders just to be the only non-local to blow himself up in Paris.
As far as wild unconfirmed guesses go... it seems a lot simpler.

But not in the mind of our resident prejudiced racist cunt, SuperKendall. Or his pal, gay358.
Nah... see... they imagine brown people smuggling guns and bombs across borders - cause that is what they LIKE to imagine.
That is the way they are set in their minds, and that is the way they see the world.
As racist, chauvinist, prejudiced cunts they are.

Oh, and congrats to the idiot Slashdot editors. The primary source for the article is paywalled: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0...

Oddly, why didn't you suggest a story on how Taxi drives are on strike right now at this very moment over Uber, which you mysteriously, inexplicably failed to mention! http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/84e1... https://www.bostonglobe.com/bu... http://algarvedailynews.com/ne... http://www.chicagobusiness.com... http://www.cbsnews.com/picture... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... http://www.theguardian.com/tec... https://euobserver.com/connect... http://www.wftv.com/videos/new... http://in-cyprus.com/nicosia-t...

It isn't US only issue, they've messed things up in other countries as well.
3.6m european cars need hardware fix:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/v...

Before that, there was (mostly unnoticed) "oscar scandal" with ADAC rigging votes in favour of VW Golf:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/774a...

VW is rather "known" in German auto industry for having cars that perform on par (e.g. VW Sharan vs Ford S-Max) yet are regarded as way better cars by many journalists "for some reason".

The cost of solar has fallen dramatically, so lots of people will build solar even if the government doesn't do anything.

The government could best encourage solar by streamlining regulations, and possibly with some sort of low-interest loan program to help people get past the initial cost. If solar makes sense, people could save enough money on their electricity to pay back the loans.

My big fear though is that if the government tries to force this, it will turn out like the similar program in Germany. Because of the lack of practical grid-scale energy storage, Germany has simultaneously managed to produce huge amounts of free renewable power while making the German citizens pay far more than ever for power and while burning more coal than ever. (Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants; solar and wind aren't dependable enough; result, more coal burned.)

President Obama's administration has implemented new rules to reduce coal burning, but the example of Germany shows that this shall really cause a dramatic increase in prices so it will not be politically possible for that plan to be fully implemented. It's easy to talk about it now, but it will be hard for politicians to say "your electricity cost will necessarily skyrocket and you just need to deal with it, and vote for me." (The plan contains "escape hatches" that will allow the utilities to keep producing power with coal if the plan doesn't work out.)

I think that all we really need is practical grid-level energy storage, and the "green energy" solution will take off like a rocket with no government intervention needed. I have hopes for liquid metal batteries but any high-density storage solution would solve the problem.

If we get grid-level storage in the near future, solar and wind power will become much more economically attractive and we will get more of it. Then politicians will claim the credit and the coal-burning reductions will actually happen. If solar and wind power remain economically problematic and government forces us to use more, we will all pay more for power, and politicians will say there is nothing they can do.

But that seems like a stretch given the effective shipping to ports on the west coast.

The west coast ports for North America. are maxed out and need modernization to accommodate larger shipping vessals.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38e0825e-c677-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html

The Chinese are also spending $50B to build the Nicaragua Canal in Central America to bypass the west coast ports.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/nicaragua_canal_a_giant_project_with_huge_environmental_costs/2871/

The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.

The USA can either give Canada back that coastal strip of British Columbia that was expropriated by the UK and gifted to the USA to pay off war debts OR the US can expect to pay very heavy tolls for use of Canadian roads to transport the goods coming over this bridge. Eh.

But that seems like a stretch given the effective shipping to ports on the west coast.

The west coast ports for North America. are maxed out and need modernization to accommodate larger shipping vessals.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38e0825e-c677-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html

The Chinese are also spending $50B to build the Nicaragua Canal in Central America to bypass the west coast ports.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/nicaragua_canal_a_giant_project_with_huge_environmental_costs/2871/

The occasional labor strike at the west coast ports and the resulting backlog doesn't help either. Alternative routes may be worth the money for the Chinese to get their products to U.S. consumers.

The companies that have been doing this are getting investigated for it:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a719...

It's long overdue, but better late than never.

This is the end of the EU. The Germans have killed the entire european project in a matter of six weeks.

You think I'm a lone poster on Slashdot. Here's Wolfgang Munchau in today's Financial Times Greece’s brutal creditors have demolished the eurozone project. That's the title. It gets worse.

A few things that many of us took for granted, and that some of us believed in, ended in a single weekend. By forcing Alexis Tsipras into a humiliating defeat, Greece’s creditors have done a lot more than bring about regime change in Greece or endanger its relations with the eurozone. They have destroyed the eurozone as we know it and demolished the idea of a monetary union as a step towards a democratic political union.

This was the real coup over the weekend: not only regime change in Greece, but also regime change in the eurozone.

In such a system, someone, somewhere, will want to leave sometime. And the strong political commitment to save it will no longer be there either.

Munchau, an economist, used to be not only a europhile, but a supporter of the single currency. I've read dozens and dozen of articles like it in the last month, former mild mannered, center left or right, pro-euro commentators, one by one, writing out end of days laments like these. Previously you'd only hear it from the likes of Nigel Farage and the Iona Institute. It's now mainstream, and the europhile shills are getting harder to find. The twitterati with their "#ThisIsACoup" hashtag are weeks late to a party playing out in opinion pieces for quite some time. Europe has lost the intellectual front, and it never much had the popular one.

The last six weeks have decimated support for the European Union across the whole continent. The europhile class is now scared of what the EU has become, and it has stopped doling out money. People are afraid hegemons like Germany or France taking over the continent again. Hopefully it's not too late to do something about it this time.

P.S. Munchau is German.

That is the most wrong I heard this week. It's demographics 101: when you no longer present a burden to your home country's social services, health care, transportation, etc, and yet you still contribute to the economy by regularly sending disposable income home, it IS VERY GOOD for your home. Salary's are normally used in their own country of origin (where the money "sprouts" from), but in this case it is not, thus being much higher than the disposable income you would have at home, and it still pays full VAT for anything it is used for. Not to mention this money is like an injection that inflates the country's economy: it comes from absolutely no trade of goods. Money comes in, and only you got out temporarily.

A developer working abroad will also eventually come back and spend his abroad-collected fortune on buying houses, cars, funding companies, etc etc. Together with the disposable income he regularly uses on home travels, family helping, and this post-emigration phase, this all translates in the total cost Greece put on his education providing EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER RETURN, than he would by just contributing in usual fashion to the GDP (i.e. working locally).

In case you didn't notice, most countries restrict immigration (ppl in) for a reason, while most country governments incentivize or even preach in speeches emigration (ppl out). To their own citizens, really. The former is usually a bad practice because most governments are supposed to solve problems that create conditions for emigration (this wins them votes), but that doesn't prevent comfortable governments (fresh out of ellection) from speaking their mind, like portuguese Prime Minister Passos Coelho did, telling fresh out of college people to "leave their comfort zone".

And don't forget one thing: your parent's payed for your education with their taxes. A good state system should be efficient enough that, with 1-3 children, 2 adults working an entire 40y of work life can provide enough tax revenue for children education, their retirement, and other social developments in their community. If it doesn't, something's wrong with the country, and the better thing to do is, once again, leave. For different reasons, yet valid ones too.

actual interest payments are somewhere around 2.6% to 4.3% of GDP (depending on your calculation method)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e55...

greek tax revenue as a proportion of gdp is about 30%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

so greek interest payments are approx 10% of tax receipts
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

Here's one source: http://video.ft.com/4194153996...

That's not exactly the story I thought that I heard. Lemme try to find something . . .

You're right, in that the Guardian's article comes up first in a Google search - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

Here, the Guardian again, backpedaling on that story - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

The wikipedia entry seems to confirm what you say - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... specifically, "Dowler's phone automatically deleted messages 72 hours after being listened to.[47]" HOWEVER, "in September 2011 it was reported that the Dowler family had been offered £2m in personal damages.[49]"

Now, is it true, or is it not true, that Murdoch ALSO paid off celebrities, in the same manner, after having "hacked" into their phone/email/other accounts? It sure looks like the Guardian called it correctly - to me, anyway.

Brief statement that falls in line with my point of view - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b5d... "Until now the paper’s illegal actions, while costly and damaging to its reputation, were largely seen as being targeted at celebrities and politicians. The News of the World has been battling to draw a line under a scandal that has already seen two people sent to prison."

I'll admit that it's possible that my take on the story is not entirely accurate. But - unless you come up with something convincing, I'll continue to hold that view. Murdoch's minions were making a lot of money by "hacking" into celebritie's accounts, with his tacit approval, if not his clearly stated approval. He was making more money off those tabloid articles than he was spending on settlements. IMHO - Murdoch's boys and girls did exactly the same thing with Milly Dowler's phone, that they had already done with other phones.

But, right or wrong, Murdoch is still a freaking scumbag. So are all of his people associated with the case.

Low productivity? Per hour French productivity is 25$, US one is 24.6$. It's clear that French productivity is bad.... US debt is 102% of GDP compare to France 93% (reference FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28c0...).

That is correct, but Japan pays a quarter of a percent interest on its debt while Greece pays much more than that (the ft link gives 10% for Greece, but that's the price in the secondary market, Greece doesn't have access to the bond markets right now).

Saudi Arabia is not decreasing production to allow the price to settle at high prices and instead keeping their output strong to depress prices. Here's a reference for you:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63c7...

Saudi Arabia also has proven reserves to keep this up for a long time:

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

Unofficially (meaning I can't cite my source, and hence the reason I'm posting anonymously), they have over 200 years of known reserves, or enough to provide all the world's oil for about 50 years at current consumption rates.

The important thing about the current price war is that the Saudis have basically given everyone else the finger and decided that they're going to corner the market as long as they can (or, for the more conspiratorial among us, the US asked them to do it to crush Putin). They can produce it at lower prices than anyone else. More power to them if they take advantage of that. Capitalism at its finest, if you ask me!

When a Wall Street program loses money for the owners, they eat it.

Not always...

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/0...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a040...

Not saying this is common, Knight provides a good example in the other direction and I honestly don't care enough about the markets to know of anything that didn't make national news, just that it seems it depends on the situation.

If I fuck up and code a program that goes out and buys or trades and buys illegal shit, then it's my fault for being stupid.

Legally of course this depends on the jurisdiction, IANAL. Morally I believe this is very grey area and depends primarily on intent. Obviously it's sort of hard to judge intent in most cases, though in this case unleashing it specifically on a "Dark Web" type site does imply at least some knowledge that it'll happen these days.

Then again I have to imagine part of the point of this exhibit was to counter that assumption, that all these sites are good for are illegal things.

By displaying them in such a conspicuous location also changes things compared to if one had tried to use "the computer did it" as an excuse when caught with the same things in their home.

Basically it's probably legally wrong, but I'd have a hard time being convinced that they should actually be punished for it.

Or let's put it this way, I code a program that looks for and downloads kiddie porn. Cops nab me and I just say, "Oopsie. The robot did it, not me!" So, I should get off...I mean let go?

Again depends on the context and the intent. If you wrote a bot that went out looking for anything it thinks is porn to display automatically in an art installation and it happened to come across kiddie porn, it'd certainly be illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. That said, due to the context of displaying the results of a search automatically as art I'd still be unconvinced that punishment is appropriate. The same excuse deployed by someone caught with a collection of images on their own machine should get laughed out of court and them right in to jail.

Users aren't allowed to secure their own devices. Didn't you get the memo from GCHQ?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c89b...

Encryption and security of any kind are ipso facto creating a terrorist command-and-control centre, apparently.

Also, this not only applies to terrorists. It also applies to child molesters, please think of the children.

I found the original article
The web is a terrorist's command-and-control network of choice

I understand why [the private sector] have an uneasy relationship with governments. They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics. But increasingly their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism.

Yup, he rings that bell.

To those of us who have to tackle the depressing end of human behaviour on the internet, it can seem that some technology companies are in denial about its misuse. I suspect most ordinary users of the internet are ahead of them: they have strong views on the ethics of companies, whether on taxation, child protection or privacy; they do not want the media platforms they use with their friends and families to facilitate murder or child abuse.

Three times in total.

I submitted this summary, but it linked to the BBC because their write up is better. Mr. Hannigan's actual words are published on the Financial Times.

A little inflation wouldn't hurt the economy. As it is, low inflation could be the norm for the next five years.

Bill Gates is a college dropout. While less wealthy by many orders of magnitude I did finish college, and I took an economics course only because it seemed a less unpleasant or less boring of a limited list of choices in requirements for my (non economics) degree. Mr. Gates obviously hasn't checked Picketty's numbers, which are full of errors, many of which are documented by Financial Times here and further discussed by other financial websites such as Real Clear Markets and others. Actually, outside of picking good employees, marketing and business bullying, Gates wasn't really very brilliant at anything. Not even software development. It's no surprise he got sucked into Picketty's fictional account of economics.

two obscure commissioners on a "Digital Agenda" committee no one here has ever heard of?

European Pirate Party is certainly pro-open source and has made some comments:

Oettinger and Ansip are like night and day,” said Julia Reda, an MEP with the European Pirate Party, which focuses on internet regulation. “I am very pleasantly surprised by [Ansip's] level of understanding. He didn’t say anything outrageous in any case, which is a huge improvement over Oettinger.

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0... (if this appears paywalled, try via Google).

I don't think apathy needs an advocate. There really is no sense in loudly proclaiming defeatism. Sure, some people don't care, but the defendants would not have worked so hard to keep documents sealed if *nobody* cared. This case is being widely covered by the media:

Reuters: http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
Time: http://time.com/42322/steve-jo...
Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ee7535...

And over 186 more articles just from the past few days

So I don't know about what you said right there. I don't believe that "no one cares".

/there is always some subset of people who claim no one cares about any given news story.

Even when Governments see it coming, and try to get out, they still get bent over.

They just made this up. See this which was written by an actual lawyer, not a press office: Is viewing a video a criminal offence under terrorism law? (may be paywalled).

The London Metropolitan Police Press Office released this statement. When challenged by a lawyer, they could only point vaguely to anti-terror laws and say things like "Do you want people to watch it". So it's PR people, probably with no legal training, who are making up laws on the hoof (and with no apparent correction from their superiors).

Fuller story here (free reg required):
http://blogs.ft.com/david-alle...?

I'm always happy to provide citations.

China/Russia dropping the dollar: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c79...

China/Russia dropping the dollar: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

Unfunded liabilities (conservative), with a nod to the horribly underfunded private and municipal pensions: http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...

Keep in mind that once the dollar is effectively an also-ran currency, interest rates will go up on US treasuries. This will make the current debt interest payments unsustainable once the old debt is rolled into newer, higher-interest debt.

What do you have to say when presented with this information?

The word "equality" is meaningless without the clarification: equality of what? Hair color? Penis size?

In the context of politics, the following two equalities are usually meant by the arguing sides — even when neither side makes their own meaning explicit:

Equality of Opportunity versus Equality of Results .

The "all men created equal" concept is about equality of opportunity: you start with (roughly) the same things as everybody else and whatever you achieve (or not achieve as the case might be) is due to your own industry, frugality, and, perhaps, genes. We might be created equal (subject to gene variations), but what we do after the creation is up to us.

The equality of results is the opposite: whatever you do, you will have (roughly) the same things at the end: if you are more successful than average, the State will tax you to ensure the results of the less successful aren't too different from yours — a concept lovingly referred to as "spreading the wealth around".

A large number of politicians made careers of conflating the two equalities — by harping at the absence of latter and implying, the former does not exist. Such demagoguery patently dishonest not only in theory, but also in practice...

"No, it doesn't -- but then I'm a Financial Times reader."

No you're not:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93de...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1d6a...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dc...

The FT covers pretty much everything I mentioned. Why? Precisely because it's not propaganda.

I'll give you a hint: When it's straight from the horses mouth, it's not propaganda. e.g. when Putin admits it was his soldiers in Crimea all along and hence that he was breaching the Geneva convention by earlier claiming they were civilians that's not propaganda, it's a statement of fact.

When you say you're a techie what do you mean exactly? A techie for the FSB or some bottom of the rung helpdesk monkey? Either way you've clearly got some degree of bias if you confuse fact as propaganda, or just aren't smart enough to do anything techie that actually matters. I can see why you posted AC, I wouldn't want to embarass myself with such a stupid post as yours either.

"No, it doesn't -- but then I'm a Financial Times reader."

No you're not:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93de...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1d6a...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dc...

The FT covers pretty much everything I mentioned. Why? Precisely because it's not propaganda.

I'll give you a hint: When it's straight from the horses mouth, it's not propaganda. e.g. when Putin admits it was his soldiers in Crimea all along and hence that he was breaching the Geneva convention by earlier claiming they were civilians that's not propaganda, it's a statement of fact.

When you say you're a techie what do you mean exactly? A techie for the FSB or some bottom of the rung helpdesk monkey? Either way you've clearly got some degree of bias if you confuse fact as propaganda, or just aren't smart enough to do anything techie that actually matters. I can see why you posted AC, I wouldn't want to embarass myself with such a stupid post as yours either.

"No, it doesn't -- but then I'm a Financial Times reader."

No you're not:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93de...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1d6a...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dc...

The FT covers pretty much everything I mentioned. Why? Precisely because it's not propaganda.

I'll give you a hint: When it's straight from the horses mouth, it's not propaganda. e.g. when Putin admits it was his soldiers in Crimea all along and hence that he was breaching the Geneva convention by earlier claiming they were civilians that's not propaganda, it's a statement of fact.

When you say you're a techie what do you mean exactly? A techie for the FSB or some bottom of the rung helpdesk monkey? Either way you've clearly got some degree of bias if you confuse fact as propaganda, or just aren't smart enough to do anything techie that actually matters. I can see why you posted AC, I wouldn't want to embarass myself with such a stupid post as yours either.

"No, it doesn't -- but then I'm a Financial Times reader."

No you're not:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93de...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1d6a...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dc...

The FT covers pretty much everything I mentioned. Why? Precisely because it's not propaganda.

I'll give you a hint: When it's straight from the horses mouth, it's not propaganda. e.g. when Putin admits it was his soldiers in Crimea all along and hence that he was breaching the Geneva convention by earlier claiming they were civilians that's not propaganda, it's a statement of fact.

When you say you're a techie what do you mean exactly? A techie for the FSB or some bottom of the rung helpdesk monkey? Either way you've clearly got some degree of bias if you confuse fact as propaganda, or just aren't smart enough to do anything techie that actually matters. I can see why you posted AC, I wouldn't want to embarass myself with such a stupid post as yours either.

The shadow banking system is rich. What is their currency? IOUs, backstopped with public money in a crisis, because the Fed buys their IOUs when the market devalues them.

So a few people are living very well off of "leaves" that are just promises to pay, and are often (in the case of CDS, etc.) lies. But the government steps in to make good the promises backing up those lies.

So one way is to simply substitute what the huge cash pools really want, which is T-bills. But there aren't enough T-bills so they create "quasi T-Bills" which end up tanking, and the Fed backstops them.

Instead, just let the government create more T-bills.

The government/Fed is going to end up paying for the privately-created IOUs anyway, when the next crisis comes. Why not simply create the government debt now, which is what the huge cash pools are looking for anyway, and use the T-bills to spend on social services? Backstop individuals now instead of corporations later.

References:
http://www.treasury.gov/initia...

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/201...

I submitted this as a story a while back but it never got picked up:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93f6...

Germany dropped a US carrier (Verizon) over the NSA issue.
The worst part about this whole thing is the spying is worthless. The NSA is alienating our allies, driving away customers from US businesses all so the NSA can record the phone calls of little old ladies talking about bridge.

" As of 2010, the country [the united states] remains the world's largest manufacturer, representing a fifth of the global manufacturing output."

The US was overtaken by China in 2010:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/002f...
http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/...

Non-paywalled link to original FT story
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0...

TL;DR version:

Google is removing them *from the premium streaming platform*, not from YouTube entirely, unless they agree to a specific streaming royalty structure AND agree to some changes to how their free content is handled as well. The objection is primarily to the free content rules, which artists, who are mostly represented by the rights agency Merlin, believe will undercut sales of their music. The refusal to sign away the rights on their free content mean they are being delisted from Google's premium streaming service, which is only a loss for them if that service takes off, and their content isn't their to receive stream royalties.

Because wages are generally only a fraction of the cost of goods sold, raising wages doesn't result in anywhere near as much of an increase in prices

The natural experiment is the fracking lands of North Dakota, where labor is so scarce that the market wage for McDonalds starts at $10.50/hour and they get a $300 signing bonus - but the Big Macs cost $1 more than usual.

Something is wrong, somewhere, IMO. This Slashdot story is apparently about a PR release by Millward Brown, which is owned by Kantar Group, which is owned by WPP. Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look.
 
Not sure what your point is regarding the web site design. There is no way to accurately measure the brand value but these rankings are legit as far as being respected and widely reported in serious press each year.

Here is a better story than the one linked: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d8ea...

Here are the full rankings: http://www.millwardbrown.com/b...

There are 1.8 million British people living in the EU according to this article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cd6.... It would be much more complicated for them if the they were not EU citizens.

With only 52% of our (US) GDP our besty friend green revolution China is now burning almost as much coal as the rest of the planet combined. Since the graph ends with 2012 the lines may have crossed by now.

Of course Chinas GDP has actually been growing much faster than you claim. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d79ffff8-cfb7-11e3-9b2b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz312W8T5tk "the research placed China’s GDP at 87 per cent of the US in 2011. " - and don't even get to the fact that a lot of the US GDP is generated by moving imaginary moneys to and from, or selling stuff made in China.

[Unfortunately?] No. Though I can't think of any post soviet ally that has actually benefitted or gotten ahead from having debt written off. It also occurs to me that many of those states with debt were basically given the debt - Russia gave them things like gas and lumber at particularly low rates but didn't take payment or only took partial payment. So once the debt built up they'd use it as sort of a threat to not go against them. Case in point: Ukraine just got a huge gas bill from Russia http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c211... .

What they are doing is preparing for an IPO. I realize that as a corporation in a free enterprise economy that makes them automatically suspect in your eyes, but their actions seem to be pretty typical.

If I bought the 3D printer entirely or partially for the purpose of making my own small plastic household goods and saving money, then I absolutely need to take the cost into account when calculating my 'savings'.

Total cost of item = variable cost + _allocated_ fixed cost.

You cannot allocate entire price of printer to the cost of one soap dish. It's a very tricky business. Estimate how many gizmos the printer will produce during its lifetime, then try to __allocate__ a correct share of printer price to your soap dish. There are horror stories of businesses failing because they allocated fixed costs incorrectly. Don't let it happen to you, save the 3d soap dish!

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Professor Tol revealed last week that he had asked for his name to be removed from the studyâ(TM)s summary â" the most widely read section of the IPCC report â" because he believed it was too âoealarmistâ and included âoesillyâ statements about the vulnerability of people in war zones to climate change.

The Financial Times [Paywall] is reporting that a highly sophisticated cyberweapon known as Ouroboros is being used to infect, monitor and potentially attack Ukrainian computer networks including government systems. Forensics mark it as being Russian developed, and the article compares it to Stuxnet in terms of sophistication and capability (though it is not related to that specific software). Websites are small potatoes, nothing more than spray paint on a wall. This appears to be more more like explosives, designed to take out targeted infrastructure.

If [an Independent Scotland's] geographic share of UK oil and gas output is taken into account, Scotland’s GDP per head is bigger than that of France. Even excluding the North Sea’s hydrocarbon bounty, per capita GDP is higher than that of Italy.

So your saying a western European economy of this size would not have been part of the EU when countries like Slovenia, Latvia, Malta are welcome? That's delusional.

Mod parent up.

I'm getting bored of articles about Venezuela's so-called dictatorship. Ask yourself:

1. Why is Venezuela's democracy questioned when former US President, Jimmy Carter, whose foundation monitors these things, says "of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world"?
2. Why does the media spend so much time vilifying Venezuela's democracy when our friends in Saudi Arabia chop off the head of a princess in a car park, ban women from driving and do not have elections but have a rather nasty dictator? "Ignore that man behind the curtain" - apparently it's hateful little Venezuela with their elections that keep voting in socialists that are the real problem not the Islamic dictatorships of the Middle East with whom we can more easily negotiate oil supplies.
3. Does it have anything to do with Venezuela having the world's largest proven reserves of oil? And that despite all the animosity between Venezuela and the United States, it still is the fourth largest exporter of oil to the US? Or could it be that it used to have a habit of threatening to stop selling oil to the United States? A self-destructive move but one which it had every right to do.

Venezuela is undeniably badly run. But in a democracy, a country has the right (within reason) to run their affairs as they see fit.

So far, this hasn't seemed to have happened, but if it does become public, there will be a backlash, especially OnStar which has the ability to track and disable cars in realtime [1].

Ahem. Just a few links that spring to mind. You can easily find others.

TomTom sorry for selling driver data to police

“Government Motors” To Track Drivers With OnStar, Sell Data to Police

OnStar Tracks Your Car Even When You Cancel Service

Busted! Your car's black box is spying, may be used against you in court