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Should sexist developers have their projects censored or removed?

Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

and

* What are the consequences of not doing this

Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"

With all the proactive steps being taken to improve society for the benefit of the fae, another question must be asked:

Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

and

* What are the consequences of not doing this

Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"

Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

and

* What are the consequences of not doing this

Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"

Not so good for men.

OpenSource release story removed due to developers opposition to Social Justice.

A story on the Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was manually removed after a few days.
The reason cited was the developer's views on social issues such as gender equality (1).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(2).

Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

Citations:
(1) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(2) https://webcache.googleusercon...

Removed story URL:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

OpenSource release story removed due to developers opposition to Social Justice.

A story on the Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was manually removed after a few days.
The reason cited was the developer's views on social issues such as gender equality (1).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(2).

Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

Citations:
(1) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(2) https://webcache.googleusercon...

Removed story URL:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

Anyone not on the "SJW" bandwagon is "blackballed" and their free software projects taken down. ( early example: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6537 ) gnu utilities (unix utilities even) are being binned and replaced with systemd, choice is gone.

It was good while it lasted.

----

OpenSource release story removed due to developers opposition to Social Justice.

A story on the Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was manually removed after a few days.
The reason cited was the developer's views on social issues such as gender equality (1).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(2).

Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

Citations:
(1) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(2) https://webcache.googleusercon...

Removed story URL:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

Watch out! A bunch of sickos are writing the law..

Bullshit. The chart came from one Dr. Roy Spencer, who is not only a climatologist who has made a career out of claiming he's right and most scientists are wrong, but is also a noted creationist ("intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism" is my favorite quote from him on the topic).

Here's a nice summation of how he fudged numbers in order to come up with that bogus chart: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...

To your point of "I may be wrong", let me say, yes.... yes you are.

For those wanting a similar graph of models versus measured there is a graph from the IPCC AR5 report here. It shows models aren't as bad as the grandparent, but it DOES clearly show the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.

Models compared with reality.

Which is a graph that has been lampooned as grossly inaccurate for calibrating against a 5 year temperature average instead of a 30 year temperature average which shifts things a good deal.

To bypass that controversy compare a graph from the IPCC itself then instead, you can verify it in their AR5 report here. Not nearly as bad, but very clearly showing the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.

It's an interesting graphic. But there's no clear attribution. Even for the couple of lines where there is explicit attribution, it's not clearly defined what the attribution means. Were it the part of a larger article in which the missing data were provided, and with links so it could be verified, it would be very interesting. (I'd still wonder exactly what it meant and, I admit, I might not follow up. But that graphic is so cryptic that it could mean many different things. And it's not clear that the predictions are even predicting the same thing (measured feature) as the measurements are measuring.)

How about a graph from the IPCC itself then instead, you can verify it in their AR5 report here. Not nearly as bad, but very clearly showing the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.

Bad graph. Explained here:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...

How about a graph from the IPCC itself then instead, you can verify it in their AR5 report here. Not nearly as bad, but very clearly showing the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.

All the assholes are in the immigration department.

Er...not Archlinux... ( cached page as the original seems to be down )

In fact, Arch adopted it pretty early on. Its Slackware, Crux, or Gentoo these days, unless you head on over to BSD land...

http://webcache.googleusercont...

Coming soon...

https://lh5.googleusercontent....

(notice the kernel version)

What's so dangerous about trampolines?

Obligatory.

...believing they'll ride on a dragon's back and live in a magical castle, we give them therapy and some pills.

I recently returned from a vacation, and drove home from the airport to return to my house filled with small robots, vision-enabled game consoles, and mechanized automatons of all kinds. I guess I need some pills.

Sci-fi nerds think they'll ride on a spaceship and live on Mars

No, I don't think I will live on Mars, but I think that some human will, someday. The ultimate distinguishing feature of a human is the extent to which it modifies itself and its environment, so I find it perfectly reasonable to expect that the hostilities of another planet can be overcome with the right technology. There will need to be advances in several fields (rocketry, communications, biotech, medicine, and logistics, to name a few offhand), but we're close.

To make an analogy, if we were walking from New York to Los Angeles, we've probably hit the California state line by now. The road ahead is still going to take a lot of effort, and it's still going to take a long time. We're not done yet, and everybody knows it. There is some uncertainty as to exactly how long it will take to make those last few steps, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about what we'll do when we finally arrive at our destination.

I dream about the leisure society with basic income and healthcare for all, because we already have the technology and resources to do so.

Interesting. Are you actually an expert in what it takes to have a "leisure society with basic income and healthcare for all", and do you understand the sheer amount of resources required to make that happen? And you want that to happen for all people... Let's do some math*.

If we all split everything equally, then every human gets 71,538 square meters. That's it. That's your whole life. From that area's resources, you must derive your "basic income and healthcare" using today's technology.

Of course, much of that is ocean, which really means you only get around 24,000 square meters of land If you want to use the ocean's resources, you'll have to build suitable boats from the resources on the land. About a third of of that area, though, is practically devoid of easily-accessible resources since it's desert. That leaves only about 16,000 square meters of usable land with resources.

Do realize that's a square patch of land about 415 feet on each side. It's roughly double the area of a FIFA-sanctioned international match soccer field, and that is your whole fair share of non-desert land.

Looking toward your "healthcare" need, you only have about 2000 square meters of arable land, most of which overlaps your 5000 square meters of grassland.

For illustration, that's a square patch 146 feet on each side. 1.6 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and that's going to feed you (fairly) for your whole life. If you need to grow raw materials for your medicinal needs, that will come out of your food supply. If your "leisure society" includes grilling a steak in the summer, you're going to have to devote quite a lot of your farmland to rais

Rates are more or less unregulated. An individual under LA DWP pays less than an individual under SCE. SDGE has the highest rates in the nation. If I lived across the street in the next city, my rates would be much less(SCE rates rather than SDGE rates).

Actually KitKat does run on devices with less than 512M (it requires only 340MB), and it claimed to be more efficient than previous versions of Android ("project svelte").

If they had developed a small patch for the problem, I'm pretty sure OEMs wouldn't have a problem pushing it to the users.

Hahahahahahahahaha, seriously? This is fixed in 4.4 [...]

It's not really a fix, if the H/W requirements have been changed/increased.

Android 4.3 vs. 4.4.

Check this for more.

Or more to the point: how do you know that your device is compatible with official golden blessed Android 4.4? CyanogenMod guys can do whatever the hell they want - except calling it "Android".

If they had developed a small patch for the problem, I'm pretty sure OEMs wouldn't have a problem pushing it to the users.

Hahahahahahahahaha, seriously? This is fixed in 4.4 [...]

It's not really a fix, if the H/W requirements have been changed/increased.

Android 4.3 vs. 4.4.

Check this for more.

Or more to the point: how do you know that your device is compatible with official golden blessed Android 4.4? CyanogenMod guys can do whatever the hell they want - except calling it "Android".

There's another Debian fork without systemd that has already got a RC1 release: TRIOS, see https://translate.googleuserco... It's from Serbia and maybe they will join with Devuan. Looks pretty good to me!

Good job, guys. You broke it. At least I was able to load one page before the DB rolled over and died.

Google Cache

There is no space savings. You can't put oxygen in the hydrogen tank. In fact, Skylon has to carry extra hydrogen for cooling, and the extremely low density of liquid hydrogen makes it an enormous vehicle. This coupled with the need to stay in the atmosphere to breathe air vastly increases losses from aerodynamic drag...something that is actually almost insignificant for a non-airbreathing rocket (only around 100 m/s total, considerably less in some cases) becomes a major loss. There's also the little problem of the oxygen not moving along with the vehicle, it starts off with high relative motion in the direction you're trying to accelerate it in (and is also diluted heavily with nitrogen, and is in the form of low density gas that has to be compressed many times over...). Energy that goes into accelerating oxygen carried by a rocket isn't wasted, it gets that oxygen moving with the rocket so it can later produce full thrust when it is burned. And then there's all the extra structure and equipment that you have to carry to breathe air, which in the case of SSTO vehicles has to be hauled all the way into orbit, and that still has to be done mostly on pure rocket power.

If you do the math, it turns out you need air breathing engines with extremely high thrust and lift surfaces with very high lift to drag ratios at hypersonic speeds (not typical characteristics of hypersonic engines and lift surfaces) in order to avoid having aerodynamic losses eat up all the specific impulse advantages of air breathing engines. The main thing you accomplish by breathing air in an orbital launch system is replacing dense, easily handled liquid oxygen with low-density, tricky liquid hydrogen and adding vast amounts of complexity to the system.

They didn't. In fact, Google's White paper (which I printed out and keep on my desk since I work in the file server world) has them mention that they explicitly wouldn't release that information when the published it (they didn't mention this in the document itself). I wish they would, but I'd bet there's too much potential for legal problems and Google is just covering their own butts. Backblaze on the other hand, might not be a target that is worth suing, and the top brass at Backblaze just doesn't consider it something to worry about. I seem to remember something about it being mentioned that tracking it down to model and brand wasn't worth the effort as there were too many other variables that would make the comparison invalid (but don't quote me).

For all we know Backblaze takes off and grows massively in 2015 and the next bit of info that Backblaze releases to the public is sanitized of brands and models.

The white paper for anyone that hasn't seen it: http://static.googleuserconten...

Posting anonymously as my name is too well known and I don't want the fact that "I" am a source of info to dissuade the bigger topic.

In Google's big paper on drive reliability, they claimed "we do not show a breakdown of drives per manufacturer, model, or vintage due to the proprietary nature of these data". I'm not sure exactly what that means. Might be part of their purchasing contract, to reduce liability for naming bad vendors, or it might be considering that information a competitive advantage.

I'm surprised Backblaze has published so much without getting into lawsuit trouble already. If you wonder why you haven't been offered a better deal on drives...have you considered that it's because you're not playing the big commercial buyer secrecy game? The best deal isn't necessarily the one you get if people are worried you're going to rat them out as a bad vendor. It's often the buddy who watches out for them that companies want to do large amounts of business with.

60ms is kind of bad now days. I'm no where near Chicago. The lowest in game ping I've seen while playing was 8ms.

https://lh3.googleusercontent....

The open-source x-platform server announcement was revealed on Scott Hanselman's blog in August 2014. But oddly, the permalink now points to this new announcement. Is there some conspiracy to pretend this wasn't already announced?

Google cache of the August announcement

Mail your representatives to build modern nuclear reactors. Nuclear has come a long way. Passively safe designs have been around for a while. With a combination of breeder reactors, waste transmutation, and glassification, waste is a non-issue. And let's not forget that nuclear has the lowest number of deaths per Terawatt-hour of energy produced--lower even than wind/solar/hydro**

**Sources:
http://webcache.googleusercont...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

I did, it's cheap. Dedicated line + dedicated bandwidth with a "best effort" SLA is cheap. $100/month for a 50/50 connection with Level 3 as the trunk.

Here's are some PFSense images of my latency. The packet-loss and ping spikes are because I was running BitTorrent way too hard. I have recently enabled traffic shaping and latency spikes and loss are no longer an issue.

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

Here's my recent traffic shaping attempt. While my quality graph is a local server, the ping at the bottom is to an external server. YouTube to be exact, which is in a completely different state, many hours by car away. You will also notice that the speed tests were at 9:33pm, prime time.

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

They also have 100/100, 200/200, 500/500, and 1gb/1gb options.

I did, it's cheap. Dedicated line + dedicated bandwidth with a "best effort" SLA is cheap. $100/month for a 50/50 connection with Level 3 as the trunk.

Here's are some PFSense images of my latency. The packet-loss and ping spikes are because I was running BitTorrent way too hard. I have recently enabled traffic shaping and latency spikes and loss are no longer an issue.

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

Here's my recent traffic shaping attempt. While my quality graph is a local server, the ping at the bottom is to an external server. YouTube to be exact, which is in a completely different state, many hours by car away. You will also notice that the speed tests were at 9:33pm, prime time.

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

They also have 100/100, 200/200, 500/500, and 1gb/1gb options.

Just an FYI... I've no reason to disbelieve the story, but it would be simple to fake the evidence presented...

I also wonder why the hotmail.com certificate was mistakenly created for the hotmai.com domain... that seems rather amateurish for a nation state. (Of course, perhaps plausible deniability is the reason.)

Regardless of whether or not it's fake, it does serve to point out the intentional flaws of Qihoo’s Chinese 360 "Secure Browser" pointed out by Rosyna above -- certainly a good thing to publicize.

The numbers shown on the charts embedded in your link are consistent with what I was saying. Germany, overall, is worse than our NE. You can see it all together at one time right here;

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

And the actual capacity factors of German PV bear out that at best they get 3 - 3.5 hr/day (or 0.13 capacity factor). Real world data is always best.

It's not Metro.

It's SVCHOST.EXE

But that's a little too arcane, for people who neither debug their own system, or who are not security specialists of one stripe or another.

How about "systemd is a BSOD" :-)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-bZId5j2jREQ/U-vlysklvCI/AAAAAAAACrA/B4JggkVJi38/w426-h284/bd0fb252416206158627fb0b1bff9b4779dca13f.gif

The (late) Pictures For Sad Children had a very relevant comic.

Thankfully, you can get climate data here http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

And even more thankfully, you can see how both satellite and balloon data for atmospheric temperatures have consistently tracked each other since satellite data became available in 1980:

Graph of satellite, balloon, and climate model temps since 1980

You'll also note how climate model temps don't agree with reality.

I disagree with this faith in SMART to provide aqueduct warning. So does Google.

Out of all failed drives, over 56% of them have no count in any of the four strong SMART signals, namely scan errors, reallocation count, offline reallocation, and probational count.

We conclude that it is unlikely that SMART data alone can be effectively used to build models that predict failures of individual drives.

http://static.googleuserconten...

Google's analysis was of spinning hard disks, but I can not believe that SMART is somehow better at monitoring SSDs than spinning hard disks. I have personally had drives that pass every smart test and hard drive scan, but click and buzz in unnatural ways. Likewise, I have had SSDs suddenly fail that were, by all external tests before and after the failure, operating within expected parameters. It doesn't help that many SSDs have a habit of rendering the stored data inaccessible with no chance of recovery when they loose power. Spinning HD manufacturers solved that problem decades ago with self-parking read-write heads. Then again, there is no SMART test that's going to predict when an electrical component is going to suddenly burst into flames. (I've seen it happen!) With a spinning HD I could replace the logic board or send the disk out for recovery and get that data back, probably unscathed. With an SSD the odds would be in no-one's favor.

When it comes to SSDs, the PC vendors need to step up their game on data redundancy. SSD Raid 1 arrays or integrated backup to cheaper storage should be standard configurations.

Good.

I'm reminded of one encrypted E-mail provider in this regard. They did nothing wrong, but were given the choice between having people face jail time or hand over data... I still use them...

For a moment there, I thought you were talking about , Lavabit. (That citation is from Google's cache, of their website, that explains why they chose to go under)

It's free from http://windows.novellshareware... . There are also other app-building tools out there. When I had a Palm, I used several programs from Tealpoint Software. Their web page is dead tonight, but the Google cache copy from yesterday shows dates from 2013. Perhaps your question provoked a huge run on Palm software and their server couldn't handle the load. https://webcache.googleusercon... Palm had the best calendar program (DateBk, not to be confused with DateBook) I've ever used on any platform.

a bit of research and I found
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/r...

used this search on google.... MIT robot ants walking

came up with this

http://webcache.googleusercont...

history repeating itself LOL

Ack, didn't see your comment until after I had replied above: Here's a cache link so you can see the image/diagram : http://webcache.googleusercont...

Cached, so you can see the image: http://webcache.googleusercont...

Here's a Google cache, including the diagram: http://webcache.googleusercont...

"In the area Torrez just downed plane An-26, lying somewhere in the mine" Progress. " Also warned - do not fly in "our sky." And here is the confirmation of the next video "ptichkopada." Bird fell for waste heap, the residential sector is not caught. Civilians are not injured.
And also have information about the second downed aircraft, like the Su. "

Yes we do.

https://translate.googleuserco...

Well I for one want to make sure the Streisand effect is in full force so...

1) Il Giardino, the Italian restaurant in Cap-Ferret, France mentioned in this article could sue Caroline Doudet for an opinion expressed in Les Chroniques Culturelles ( link) itself is pretty bad. You read the article and the review gives specific examples of terrible service and recommends that people avoid the restaurant. That is fundamentally what free speech is all about.

2) The war on Scientology. The whole concept that governments have the right to regulate religious beliefs.

3) The idea that objecting to policy by writing articles critical (for example being opposed to the Geneva conventions) constitutes war crimes.

4) Calumnia laws or the idea that defense witnesses can be charged with a crime for disagreeing with the police about what happened.

European countries lack free speech protections. Their system is terrible and it deserves criticism.

There's nothing "traditional" about the depth, pervasiveness, or reach of the USG's spying. If it's anything like military spending, the U.S. spends more than the rest of the planet combined.

Maybe you can use this to start bridging your information gap.

Russia, China engaging in industrial espionage

Germany is full of Russian and Chinese spies working to get information about top business and technology developments, according to the country’s domestic intelligence service.

Studies show that the German economy loses around €50 billion a year as a consequence, Burkhard Even, head of the counterintelligence section of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the audience at a recent security forum in Bonn.

The spying is a mix of official, intelligence service agents, and unofficial business spooks, he said.

Even estimated that of the 500 registered staff of the Russian embassy in Berlin, at least 150 were working as intelligence agents, disguised as diplomats or journalists.

He said that more than four million Russians live in the country as a whole, leaving him unable to guess at how many agents might be hidden amongst them.
 

China's Growing Spy Threat

But according to analysts and officials, the communist-controlled People’s Republic of China operates the single largest intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world—and its growing appetite for secrets has apparently become insatiable.

From economic and military espionage to keeping tabs on exiled dissidents, China’s global spying operations are rapidly expanding. And, therefore, so is the threat. Some analysts even argue the regime—which is also gobbling up such key natural resources as farmland, energy, and minerals—has an eye on dominating the world.

Estimates on the number of spies and agents employed by the communist state vary widely. According to public statements by French author and investigative journalist Roger Faligot, who has written several books about the regime’s security services, there are around two million Chinese working directly or indirectly for China’s intelligence apparatus.

Putin's Secret Weapon

Britain under attack from 20 foreign spy agencies including France and Germany

"It is estimated that at least 20 Foreign intelligence services are operating to some degree against UK interests. Of greatest concern are the Russians and Chinese. The number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since the Soviet times."

A Whitehall source told The Sunday Telegraph that Russia uses its massive spy network as an "extension of state power" in an attempt to "further its own military and economic base".

The source said: "If a country, such as Russia or Iran, can steal a piece of software which will save it seven years in research and development then it will do so without any hesitation. Russian agents will target anybody that they believe could be useful to them. Spying is hard-wired into the country's DNA. They have been at it for centuries and they are simply not going to stop because the Cold War has ended."

Officials say Chinese spies have targeted every sector of the U.S. economy

Since that link has already been slashdotted, and goes to a Korean "traffic exceeded" page: Google cache