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Do you also make a loss per unit but make it up on quantity? What sheer nonsense. Do you really think Apple prefers to sell a fraction of what they can sell at $650 instead of selling everything they can at $650?

Unlike how the Nexus 4 sold out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/03/google-nexus-4-phone-sales

or zune, windows phone 8, surface rt, etc etc

I've neither seen nor heard evidence that any innocents were damaged by the publication of materials that were outed by Wikileaks.

Then you haven't been paying attention, because Assange himself has admitted that innocents have been killed (not just 'damaged') by the publication of materials outed by Wikileaks.

The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange.

(source)

He goes on to whitewash that figure by citing malaria statistics - I guess in Africa, if you're responsible for killing fewer people than the average yearly death toll from malaria, you're eligible for sainthood, and all your sins are forgiven.

You can't play it both ways - either there are real world consequences for the publication of the data that you own the responsibility for, or there are no real world consequences and all you're doing is play-acting in front of a camera. Which is it?

I live in the states, and I've been listening to people call for accountability[...]

So you've noticed that there's a difference between what people say, and what they do, have you? Welcome to conscious existence. People have been calling for accountability, and re-electing the same bunch of retards and crooks every couple years, because "it's not MY GUY who's the problem - he's helping us out here! It's those R's or D's from other places who need to get tossed out on their asses!"

Until the public understands and accepts that accountability means more than "bitching to my co-worker who agrees with me while we have lunch," the accountability won't happen. There need to be actual teeth behind the threats of "voting for the other guy," "initiating recalls and impeachments," and other penalties for behaving badly.

In informing people of things governments need to be held accountable for, Wikileaks *does* provide a valuable service. The problem is, that value is often overshadowed by Assange's attention-seeking and grandstanding behavior.

Yeah, those rapists.

I remember a guy who made a speech calling for a global currency to challenge the dollar. Turns out he became a rapist too, just a few months after making that speech in fact. Well, he was a rapist for a while anyway. The DA later admitted that the previously "rock solid" case against him was completely bogus--exactly three days after his successor at the IMF took office. Coincidental timing, I guess.

But then I guess I would be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat if I suggested that there was anything suspicious about the timing of some rape charges.

I agree it is an extension of GWB's due process free indefinite detention policies likely rooted in the same theories. I agree that just having the CIA "handle" things is a rotten system too. I also agree that merely writing the memo, like expressing any opinion, should not be the basis for any kind of legal proceeding (certainly not execution as Al Alwaki was subjected to for youtube vids). However, we are not talking about an abstract discussion -- this has been and continues to be used to kill people in violation of fundamental principles in our Constitution that go all the way back to the Magna Carta.

One point of disagreement I do have, is that it is not a legal framework of any sort. This memo is merely the opinion of Obama's lawyers and although it is treated as a secret law (a huge can of worms on the side as ignorance is no excuse etc. etc.), it ought not be. As Glen Greenwald put it:

This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one's lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo

I am not bothered by this nearly as much as I thought I would have been.

Then you need to read a little bit more. This is the most serious issue of our time -- it is the a historical dividing line between an America with three competing branches, and an America with an imperial presidency with unlimited power to do anything at all.

Here is Glen Greenwald's take on it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo

Greenwald is not particularly easy to summarize, and you'd be better off to read his analysis and check his sources. It would really take all day. But as a weak attempt to summarize it, the article cited above is broken down into six parts, and maybe the headings with some excerpts will serve that purpose.

1. Equating government accusations with guilt

Those who justify all of this by arguing that Obama can and should kill al-Qaida leaders who are trying to kill Americans are engaged in supreme question-begging. Without any due process, transparency or oversight, there is no way to know who is a "senior al-Qaida leader" and who is posing an "imminent threat" to Americans. All that can be known is who Obama, in total secrecy, accuses of this.

2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor

The memo explicitly leaves open the possibility that presidential assassinations of US citizens may be permissible even when the target is not a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat and/or when capture is feasible.

3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield

The president, it claims, "retains authority to use force against al-Qaida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities". In other words: there are, subject to the entirely optional "feasibility of capture" element, no geographic limits to the president's authority to kill anyone he wants. This power applies not only to war zones, but everywhere in the world that he claims a member of al-Qaida is found.

4. Expanding the concept of "imminence" beyond recognition

The only reason to add these limitations of "imminence" and "feasibility of capture" is, as Heller said, purely political: to make the theories more politically palatable. But the definitions for these terms are so vague and broad that they provide no real limits on the president's assassination power. As the ACLU's Jaffer says: "This is a chilling document" because "it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen" and the purported limits "are elastic and vaguely defined, and it's easy to see how they could be manipulated."

5. Converting Obama underlings into objective courts

A president can always find underlings and political appointees to endorse whatever he wants to do. That's all this memo is: the by-product of obsequious lawyers telling their Party's leader that he is (of course) free to do exactly that which he wants to do, in exactly the same way that Bush got John Yoo to tell him that torture was not torture, and that even it if were, it was legal.

That's why courts, not the president's partisan lawyers, should be making these determinations

6. Making a mockery of "due process"

...Holder actually said: "due process and judicial process are not one and the same." Colbert interpreted that claim as follows:

"Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them."

Yes, the racism is in the fact that blacks get arrested much more than whites.
There are many factors. Racial profiling means that blacks are more likely to be stopped and questioned then arrested for minor offenses ("resisting arrest", etc.).
Also, more likely to be arrested for drugs... (see this article on marijuana: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/nyregion/23about.html)
Another article about drugs from the UK but reporting on the US: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/31/race-bias-drug-arrests-claim
Another reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2981137/

No, the death of Ned Agha-Soltan is widely disputed.

Disputed? Yes. Widely? No. It's disputed by the mullahs and their supporters. Who, incidentally, have banned prayers for her, and are probably responsible for repeatedly descrating her grave.

I should also mention that dehumanization of Muslims is a nasty policy and that has nothing to do with criticism. It's used a part of harassment policy that Muslims face in the west and also a tool for covering up everyday killings of Muslim civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other countries. When they are call animals (monkeys, etc) who cares about many of them who are killed by US attacks everyday by various weapons ranging from rifles to missiles and drones.

Funny, none of my relatives in the US (some Muslims, and some who aren't but would likely be assumed to be Muslims due to their ethnicity) have ever, to my knowledge, been harassed at all. If anything, when the subject has come up, they're rather less worried about it than most people. And the "Ahmadinejad is a monkey" meme originated in Iran.

The same is true for Barack Obama and his spouse Michelle Obama; They have been many times depicted as monkeys. As you may know, Google apologized for Michelle Obama monkey picture.
Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just AIPAC "trained pet."

Steven Chu was a Nobel Prize Winner. Clearly Obama has gone power-mad and demanded that Chu build him an Army of Super Drones powered by the Arc Reactor in Iron Man. Chu refused, and when Obama threatened him Chu resigned in protest. Truth is Chu didn't do it on principal. He did it because the Arc Reactor is impossible and Iron Man is just a movie, but how could he explain that to a lawyer? Now as Steven Chu drives back takes the long and lonely drive back to St. Louis, if he looked in his rear vision mirror, he might see a star. A star closer than it should be, following him. The Drone Lord does not take "No" for an answer. TO BE CONTINUED...

PS. This is a joke.

So is this: "Obama Begins Inauguration Festivities With Ceremonial Drone Flyover" http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-begins-inauguration-festivities-with-ceremon,30974/
So are these: "Obama’s CIA pick calls drone attacks ‘ethical and just’" http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/02/01/czar-of-the-drones/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-cia-drones-obama

Cremated remains are already run through a cremulator, to reduce obvious-looking chunks of bone into a fine powder.

Probably another Blendtec product.

I have to wonder what it would do to an iPhone.

Cremated remains are already run through a cremulator, to reduce obvious-looking chunks of bone into a fine powder.

"The remains are raked into a steel bin at the bottom of the cremator to cool, before being transferred into a machine called a cremulator, which contains steel balls that grind down the remains into a fine ash. [...] The cremulator may sound callous, but breaking down the remains is important because if you are going to have a scattering it means the remains can be dispersed as a fine ash rather than as bones, which is less distressing for the family."

A blender might also do the job.

Police is not perfect, but machine guns in every house is not a solution. Better police work is a solution, that seems to be working quite well in civilized countries.

Yes, I'm sure that will work great! Women are twice as likely to be raped in the UK as they are in the US. Burglaries which take place while the occupants are home are virtually unheard of in the US, but in the UK they are more common than break-ins when the occupants aren't home.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-worse-Britain-US.html#axzz2Jg0nIXQx
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922755/England-has-worse-crime-rate-than-the-US-says-Civitas-study.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales

All that "better police work" they have over there, right? Let's agree to live and let live. You keep your "better police work" and I'll keep my guns.

And coincidentally, Dyson is about to launch a "top secret revolutionary product" you know like Kamen did with the Segway. So I guess this aricle is hyping up Dyson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/pentagon-cyber-security-expansion-stuxnet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/obama-guantanamo-pentagon-cyber-yemen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/pentagon-cyber-security-expansion-stuxnet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/obama-guantanamo-pentagon-cyber-yemen

Relatively recently the British have created a "Get Britain Working" program that includes both "working for volunteer/charity organizations" and "working in the private sector". As you said, "by law" they aren't to be used to replace staff on normal income. But it's the private sector, there's little supervision, and it gets a lot of abuse. See also this recent court decision.

Note that to retain "jobseeker benefits", even people who had held down a regular job for a significant time might be required to work unpaid for 4 or 6 weeks (depending on which article you read). Asking someone who held a job for 10 years to work "to develop working skills" is asinine.

And? It's THEIR money. As long as they earn it legally, pay the taxes and fees that are due, comply with all other laws ( antiterrorism, money laundering, etc[1]), what's the big problem with them sending THEIR money to their families and friends elsewhere? Especially if you're not going to let their families and friends come over.

I suppose you only buy products that are >50% USA made to prevent most of your precious money from leaking out of your precious country?

[1] If you want to complain about people sending money out of the USA, you should complain about the Banks (Wachovia, HSBC, Bank of America, etc) illegally helping mobsters launder billions of money. Mexico is in a shittier state than it would be if the banks didn't help send billions of money to Mexico and help fund the drug mob armies and wars there. And the crappier Mexico is, the more Mexicans want to leave Mexico and go to the USA. Whereas if an illegal Mexican worker in the USA sends money to his family in Mexico, that makes their life less shitty and they are less likely to try to move to the USA.

You might also give the US Federal Reserve a call. For some reason they gave trillions of dollars worth of cushy loans to _foreign_ banks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/02/us-federal-reserve-bailouts-multinationals
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/federal-reserve-gaddafi-owned-bank-disclosures_n_843400.html

Lending money at low interest rates is practically the same as printing money. And that affects YOUR money. Printing money = inflation = making your money worth less compared to the goods you want to buy.

It's a shame that the review is so poorly written, when the subject is of interest to so many.

Yes, what I wrote applied to the review only of course. I was fortunate enough to read Wright's 2011 piece in the New Yorker. It was a trial of strength, not because of the writing (far from it), but because you (or at least I) don't expect a magazine article to take up 40+ pages. That being said it was a must-read.

If you did not have the opportunity to catch that piece buy the book NOW!

Oh, and for a readable review try this one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/pentagon-cyber-security-expansion-stuxnet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/obama-guantanamo-pentagon-cyber-yemen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/pentagon-cyber-security-expansion-stuxnet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/obama-guantanamo-pentagon-cyber-yemen

The discoveries, algorithms and parameters generated by publicly-funded research is locked behind the paywalls of for-profit publishers. Those publishers won't publish an article unless the academic SURRENDERS THEM THE COPYRIGHT OF THEIR RESEARCH PAPER FOR FREE. The only reason these publishers have survived is because academics want their research published in the most prestigious (read 'expensive') journal they can find. Academics could benefit from 'open-sourcing' their research too.

"Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

"Academic papers are hidden from the public."
http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/

Actually, Ahmadinejad usually is depicted as a monkey in the expatriate Iranian press, and (so I hear from relatives there) commonly referred to as such in Iran by a lot of folks. There was even an incident a few years ago where a girl on a kid's TV show innocently mentioned that her dad had nicknamed her toy monkey after the guy. Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just Supreme Leader Khamenei's "trained pet."

Actually, Ahmadinejad usually is depicted as a monkey in the expatriate Iranian press, and (so I hear from relatives there) commonly referred to as such in Iran by a lot of folks. There was even an incident a few years ago where a girl on a kid's TV show innocently mentioned that her dad had nicknamed her toy monkey after the guy. Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just Supreme Leader Khamenei's "trained pet."

Mr Emami is an Iranian. Whom speake like that about president of his mother's country, is not a reach human.
Who could beleive to this kind of humans.

Actually, Ahmadinejad usually is depicted as a monkey in the expatriate Iranian press, and (so I hear from relatives there) commonly referred to as such in Iran by a lot of folks. There was even an incident a few years ago where a girl on a kid's TV show innocently mentioned that her dad had nicknamed her toy monkey after the guy. Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just Supreme Leader Khamenei's "trained pet."

Actually, Ahmadinejad usually is depicted as a monkey in the expatriate Iranian press, and (so I hear from relatives there) commonly referred to as such in Iran by a lot of folks. There was even an incident a few years ago where a girl on a kid's TV show innocently mentioned that her dad had nicknamed her toy monkey after the guy. Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just Supreme Leader Khamenei's "trained pet."

Mr Emami is an Iranian. Whom speake like that about president of his mother's country, is not a reach human.
Who could beleive to this kind of humans.

Did anyone else see the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie "The Master" and
think scientology? It's a great movie, and seems to parallel the post WWII
development of scientology. Fascinating stuff.

This massive new expenditure of money is not primarily devoted to defending against cyber-aggressors. The US itself is the world's leading cyber-aggressor. A major purpose of this expansion is to strengthen the US's ability to destroy other nations with cyber-attacks. Indeed, even the Post report notes that a major component of this new expansion is to "conduct offensive computer operations against foreign adversaries".

As Wired's Ryan Singel wrote: "[McConnell is] talking about changing the internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and geo-located so the National Security Agency can pinpoint users and their computers for retaliation."

Don't forget that McConnell is the chode who got the telecoms retroactively immunized for their participation in the illegal NSA domestic spying program.

Actually, Ahmadinejad usually is depicted as a monkey in the expatriate Iranian press, and (so I hear from relatives there) commonly referred to as such in Iran by a lot of folks. There was even an incident a few years ago where a girl on a kid's TV show innocently mentioned that her dad had nicknamed her toy monkey after the guy. Part of it is due to perceived physical resemblance, and part due to the belief that he doesn't actually wield independent power but is just Supreme Leader Khamenei's "trained pet."

Academic publishers business plan:


1. Have some academic write a paper using public funding
2. Have academics peers volunteer to check the paper for free
3. Publisher won't publish paper unless academic gives up their copyright
4. Academic gives up copyright FOR FREE to publisher
5. Publisher prints journal article
6. Academic gets acclaim from being featured in journal
7. Universities have to pay $$$ for journal subscriptions so they can see paper
8. Public who paid taxes for the academic to write the paper see nothing at all - Enter Aaron Swartz, and we all know what happened next...


George Monbiot: Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist
Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

BTW, "TheLink", thanks for the link to the Zimbabwe 100 Trillion Dollar Bill Banknote 2008" at Amazon. I just bought a few such notes for home education and to give away. :-)

It is unfortunate the solutions to Zimbabwe's economic problems on this Wikipedia page do not include other possibilities of improving the subsistence, give, and planned parts of the Zimbabwe economy, or creating LETS systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

The Wikipedia page on Zimbabwe talks about problems in Zimbabwe with lack of transparency and corruption. It just goes to show that any token is meaningless without some sort of democratically-accountable or otherwise generally-agreed-upon way of defining what it means. That goes the same for bank notes as twitter hash tags. So you are right to be concerned, but that does not mean the issue can not be managed in practice most of the time (at least until we fully transition to a post-scarcity economy where rationing via ration unit tokens like fiat dollars is not very important in practice, similar to how the USA does not generally ration access to public library drinking water fountains). See also on symbols and meanings:
"Data and Reality"
http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm
And on post-scarcity economics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

Still, as you point out, those Zimbabwe 100 trillion dollar banknotes still can be useful in various ways. So, their symbolic meaning may just be different than the original printers intended. :-)

But that example does not mean all printed materials have no meaning depending on the social context. Clearly, LETS dollars can have useful value in local areas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system
"LETS can help revitalise and build community by allowing a wider cross-section of the community -- individuals, small businesses, local services and voluntary groups -- to save money and resources in cooperation with others and extend their purchasing power. Other benefits may include social contact, health care, tuition and training, support for local enterprise and new businesses. One goal of this approach is to stimulate the economies of economically depressed towns that have goods and services, but little official currency: the LETS scheme does not require outside sources of income as stimulus."

Realistically, there are hundreds of trillions of US dollars in the US financial system in various ways (including derivatives and future obligations). Printing even another 15 trillion (the US annual GDP) would likely have little effect overall if, say, the money went to invest in improved infrastructure., education, preventive health care, sustainable energy, rethinking national security to be mutual and intrinsic, and general scientific R&D (including on fusion energy and agricultural robotics) which all would increase the value of the USA as an ongoing community. China has already been doing some of that with great success. I'm suggesting it could do even more to even more success.

More on all of lots of other alternatives here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Expecations in our global society are changing. TFA about expectations rising in China is just part of all that. It is hard to predict where those rising expectations will lead us. Maybe the asteroids and then stars?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/22/space-mining-gold-asteroids

With space craft powered by LENR (aka cold fusion)?

Yes. I'm reminded of this from the Guardian style guide: "Never invent a big figure when a small one will do. Totting jail sentences together ("the six men were jailed for a total of 87 years") is meaningless as well as irritating."

A lot more recent than that:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/23/support-scottish-independence-slumps-lowest

I only have 2 references and have no money. I will accept a lower wage position and be happy I have a job or change fields. If I study I can become a teacher.

I found this while replying to the other post: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/28/canadian-teachers-learn-meaning-bradford

(But Bradford? That's the only place* in the UK (Europe, even) where I've felt uncomfortable wandering around in the daytime -- the immigrant communities seem very segregated compared to most places, and I felt quite unwelcome walking through one. It has some fantastic buildings, but the mood of the place was unwelcoming and tense. I'm pleased but surprised the Canadian guy likes it.)

(I've not walked round that many places, considering.)

umm, I think they're doing this precisely because everybody already knows how much of a bully the US is. But hey, whip out your penis if you want.

US bullies?

It is strange that someone with your interest in penises has such a difficult time figuring out who the real dicks are between the two. As to world-wide? Not even close.

A US made nuke, good!
A NK made nuke, evil!

Got it!

Somehow I doubt it. Maybe this will help:

Good US, made nuke, OK. Evil NK, made nuke, evil.

Do you still get it?

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

What more US can do that has not already done to Finland? I mean, look... isn't enough they pushed Elop as the Nokia head? (grin: it's Obama's fault, isn't it?)

With a AAA credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas (100% dependence on Russia).

Yes, all gas is coming from Russia, but You failed to notice that gas is only a minor player in Finnish energy production. 9.6 % of Finnish energy comes from gas. It can also easily be replaced with other sources if need be.

Glad to see you're a Charlie Brooker fan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/newtown-shooting-helpless-charlie-brooker?mobile-redirect=false

With a AAA credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas (100% dependence on Russia).

And Russia is rather unlikely to do this just because USA wants it. Anything that distances Finland from the west and brings closer to Russia is going to be perfectly fine for the Russians.

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

What more US can do that has not already done to Finland? I mean, look... isn't enough they pushed Elop as the Nokia head? (grin: it's Obama's fault, isn't it?)

With a AAA credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas (100% dependence on Russia).

This increase in aggregate demand leads many economists to believe that technological change, although disruptive of individual careers and particular firms, cannot lead to systemic unemployment, but actually increases employment due to its expansionary effect on the economy

OK just pretend the workers in China, Vietnam, India etc are robots and taking the low end "robotic" jobs from the US workers. How well is that working out for the workers in the USA so far? Things generally getting better?

So if the workers in China themselves are replaced by robots things will get even better for the workers in the USA?

Maybe things might get better for the workers in China[1] but I don't see such a rosy picture for the US low end workers.

[1] As a recent story shows workers in China can do much of the job of a worker in the USA for a fifth the cost: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/16/software-developer-outsources-own-job

Same deal with non-profits ICANN who oversee domain names: In theory non-profit but the people who run it are richly compensated. That JSTOR locks up publicly-funded knowledge to keep it out of the hands of the masses really sucks, and it was started by Princeton!
"Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world?" George Monbiot of the Guardian asks in a recent article. Scanning this week's headlines alone, one would find any number of viable candidates. Monbiot's answer: "While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers...Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities."
http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/thl-administration/lab-blog/academic-publishing-one-big-racket
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/bad-science-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/31/real-cost-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

Same deal with non-profits ICANN who oversee domain names: In theory non-profit but the people who run it are richly compensated. That JSTOR locks up publicly-funded knowledge to keep it out of the hands of the masses really sucks, and it was started by Princeton!
"Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world?" George Monbiot of the Guardian asks in a recent article. Scanning this week's headlines alone, one would find any number of viable candidates. Monbiot's answer: "While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers...Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities."
http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/thl-administration/lab-blog/academic-publishing-one-big-racket
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/bad-science-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/31/real-cost-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

Same deal with non-profits ICANN who oversee domain names: In theory non-profit but the people who run it are richly compensated. That JSTOR locks up publicly-funded knowledge to keep it out of the hands of the masses really sucks, and it was started by Princeton!
"Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world?" George Monbiot of the Guardian asks in a recent article. Scanning this week's headlines alone, one would find any number of viable candidates. Monbiot's answer: "While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers...Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities."
http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/thl-administration/lab-blog/academic-publishing-one-big-racket
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/bad-science-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/31/real-cost-academic-publishing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

To be fair, Carson said that there are big criminals but not on the scale there once were. He said they are easy to arrest, but hard to prosecute. They need big and long police probes to gather evidence, and they are wealthy so will be defended by top tier lawyers. So do Oritz and Heymann go after the drug kingpins of Miami? No. Too much work. Low-hanging fruit like Aaron are much more attractive. He's a frightened kid with a family. They know they can break him easy. He doesn't have much money. Once they decide to go after him they know they can find something to stick him with. They're bullies who choose weaklings instead of other bullies.

White collar criminals have it much easier, but if they make for a career-making photo OP then prosecutors will use the same tactics they used on Aaron to find something to stick: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/17/silverglate-three-felonies-book

Nice incomplete factoid... Perhaps you're missing that China, Iran, and North Korea execute prisoners at record rates. China is the world leader by far in executions, and North Korea and Iran execute prisoners at rates 6-7 times higher than the US. Perhaps we incarcerate more than those countries because - unlike those countries - we don't just kill prisoners...

The USA is #5, behind China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen! No, wait, that was 2010. In 2011, the USA is #5, behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq! North Korea and Yemen fall back, but Saudi Arabia and Iraq surge! And in fifth place, bringing up the rear... Beetle Bomb, no, I mean, USA!

Two mutually exclusive thoughts arise:

1) Oh well, so long as we're better than China and Iran, no need to worry. Or,
2) C'mon USA! You can do better! You're not going to let those lovers of democracy beat you, are you?

With both Redhat/Fedora and Canonical/Ubuntu determined to go the touchy-feely route, it's a wonder these two companies don't just roll out their own-branded/skinned Android fork similar to Amazon's Kindle Fire OS. Android 4.x is at least a bit more pleasant to look at and is not that MUCH harder to use with a mouse and a keyboard than Gnome 3.X/Unity. And you get the familiarity of an already widely dispersed graphical interface.

PS: Cory probably thinks differently than you: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/17/computing-opensource

Nice incomplete factoid... Perhaps you're missing that China, Iran, and North Korea execute prisoners at record rates. China is the world leader by far in executions, and North Korea and Iran execute prisoners at rates 6-7 times higher than the US. Perhaps we incarcerate more than those countries because - unlike those countries - we don't just kill prisoners...

I have few dealings with Paypal, but whenver I think of them, this comes to mind: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/04/paypal-buyer-destroys-violin

Speaking as a Brit, I would gladly stand up against this, like many others no doubt, but since when did Government put something forward for our opinion and actually consider it? They just throw money at advisers to decide for them

Very well, but in the end, there is still the disadvantage of being a dirty source of energy. Better than fossil (CO2 isn't a joke), but worse than renewable.

In the ideal world, nuclear is a clean solution, but in reality, waste somehow ends up being dumped by the Italian mafia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_'Ndrangheta
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/shipwreck-waste-mafia-italy

Now how can such a thing happen? Even though governments have very strict regulations, in the end, the safety inspector is easily bribed.

Nuclear power also originated from research done by the military because of its interest in making bombs. No nuclear power, no excuse for a country to buy uranium.

Even though there are strict inspection schemes, a Belgian company still managed to export uranium to Iran:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.standaard.be%2Fartikel%2Fdetail.aspx%3Fartikelid%3DUO321IS9&act=url

Also, there are Belgian companies which make equipment that can be used for making bombs. (uranium still needs to be purified) Iran, disguised as a German company, managed to get a Belgian company to export such equipment by boat to Italy (they said they wanted some pre-processing done there). then, when in the mediterrean sea, they managed to make the boat go to Turkey instead. In Turkey, a truck took the equipment to Iran. I saw this in a locally broadcasted documentary and I wish I could find a link but I can't.

That is not true. You merely have to accept the contract to be bound by it. What you are thinking at the time you accepted it is immaterial. The so called "meeting of the minds" is no longer used as a test for contract acceptance because it was too hard - impossible - for the courts to know what the parties were really thinking. Instead the courts determine whether a contract is formed by how the parties act. For example if you are sending me work and I am doing it the courts will hold we have a contract, even if there was never any written or even oral agreement. http://e-lawresources.co.uk/Offer-and-acceptance.php

Once you accept the contract you are bound by it even if at the time of accepting it you do not intend to adhere to it or were not acting in good faith. For example, if you are selling me a Picasso for $5 because you don't know what it is, and I do know and intend to screw you over big time, the courts will uphold that contract in my favor. US Courts do take consider good faith, but not like that. Other Common Law countries don't place any weight on good faith at all.

If you use an alias on a contract, you're still bound by it. You can even have a contract without either party knowing who the other party is. You can still legally use an alias - suppose you want to get away from bad people - though thanks to new laws against identity theft it now means you can accidentally end up on the wrong side of the law - even when no identity was stolen and even when there was no criminal intent. This is a big change in the US that people need to be aware of:
http://news.cnet.com/police-blotter-is-it-legal-to-use-an-alias-anymore/2100-7348_3-6213284.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/17/silverglate-three-felonies-book

> If they furnished false information, eg a fake name, when a real name was required, then they have committed a criminal act that goes far beyond simple breach of contract.

"Fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual." Aaron didn't do what he did for personal gain, or with the intention of damaging JSTOR.

> In most cases a ToS will not be a contract, because nothing prevents you from accessing the site without verifiably agreeing to it. The ToS is something else.

For a contract to be formed it has to be offered to you and you have to accept. If you are presented with the ToS beforehand as a condition of accessing a site, yes, it is a contract and you are bound by it.

> A ToS is more like a "No trespassing" sign; or more like a "No trespassing; No admittance, except if you follow these rules ...." In the event, you don't follow the rules, then you committed the crime of trespass.

If it was never offered to you, then there never was any contract. Also as @Mitreya points out: If they are changing the contract and not telling you let alone getting your agreement, then that's no contract. Civil Law puts a very big emphasis on "reasonable". It's not reasonable to expect consumers to go and check the TOS of every company they buy from every day and sift through thousand work legalese agreements trying to spot changes.

BTW any good lawyer will come up with half a dozen ways to get out of a contract. An easy one with TOS and shrinkwrap agreements is the companies that offer them know most people don't read them and most people wouldn't understand them even if they read them. A lawyer could argue a client didn't know what they were agreeing too and so claim the contract never existed. http://busines

Yes, the law is supposed to distinguish between a non-criminal civil dispute between two private parties (Aaron and JSTOR) and a crime which is "an act so horrendous it is against society" - I am paraphrasing a law professor. Aaron's acts don't come close to that. Yet there he was looking at prison.

ArsTechnica has a good article on this case, which quotes Columbia law professor Tim Wu on the appalling behavior of federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz:
In our age, armed with laws passed in the nineteen-eighties and meant for serious criminals, the federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz approved a felony indictment that originally demanded up to thirty-five years in prison. Worse still, her legal authority to take down Swartz was shaky. Just last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a similar prosecution. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, a prominent conservative, refused to read the law in a way that would make a criminal of “everyone who uses a computer in violation of computer use restrictions—which may well include everyone who uses a computer.” Ortiz and her lawyers relied on that reading to target one of our best and brightest... The prosecutors forgot that, as public officials, their job isn’t to try and win at all costs but to use the awesome power of criminal law to protect the public from actual harm... Today, prosecutors feel they have license to treat leakers of information like crime lords or terrorists. In an age when our frontiers are digital, the criminal system threatens something intangible but incredibly valuable. It threatens youthful vigor, difference in outlook, the freedom to break some rules and not be condemned or ruined for the rest of your life.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/opening-arguments-in-the-trial-of-public-opinion-after-aaron-swartz-death
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/everyone-interesting-is-a-felon.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/17/silverglate-three-felonies-book

Academic publishers have been price gauging universities and students for a long time, but to their credit at least JSTOR had the brains to tell the feds to back off. Oritz should have listened to them. Their behavior is merely greedy. Hers is unforgivable: there is no place in government for public officials who abuse their power and harm the public for their own personal advantage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/knowledge-cartels
http://boingboing.net/2010/01/03/prescription-for-con.html
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2012/ending-knowledge-cartels/

While I think this is a good idea, I think that it's really too superficial. It very narrowly addresses a very specific problem with the law.

There are two really great little tidbits I found online that talk about what the actual problems with the law are:

• The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law - 16A - Problems
• Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann: accountability for prosecutorial abuse

The first link is actually a really great series that provides a very nice explanation for a lot of things about how criminal law works.