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The CIA has apparently gotten away from that (especially with public figures). Public discrediting works just as effectively, doesn't leave behind a martyr, and isn't as obvious. So if some asshole is criticizing the value of the U.S. dollar, you don't send up a guy with a gun to his room, you send up a maid shaking her ass. Much cleaner that any bullet to the head, and just as effective.

Carreon says, in the interview, he's "very fortunate to be at the forefront of a lot of technical development"; I guess that means perhaps he no longer wants to go back to the days of dialup. (Sadly, The Grauniad removed his wife's rant-tastic comment on an article about the case, but some replies quote some of the better bits.)

Carreon says, in the interview, he's "very fortunate to be at the forefront of a lot of technical development"; I guess that means perhaps he no longer wants to go back to the days of dialup. (Sadly, The Grauniad removed his wife's rant-tastic comment on an article about the case, but some replies quote some of the better bits.)

The plans for monitoring communications (and they are just plans) have been reported extensively in the national and international media - which presumably is how you found out - and there's a very good chance that public pressure (stirred up by the same media) will render them unworkable. Consider for instance the withdrawal of ID cards, and (a good time ago now) the poll tax riots.

But it doesn't really matter, read up about Echelon. While the UK government can't monitor UK citizen's net activity (yet...) there's nothing stopping the USA from doing so. (Or the UK reading USA data of course.)

Regarding the CCTV meme, they're mostly useless - we had a break-in recently and the recovered footage from a nearby (private) camera appeared to have been recorded on a twenty-year old video-tape loop.

Not sure who you're referring to wrt extradition for IP infringement, McKinnon and O'Dwyer are both still in the UK.

Correct. Reversed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jun/15/school-meals-blogger-council-ban?newsfeed=true

That her last blog gave a score of 10 out of 10 and a very favorable review didn't hurt either.

Morons. What's come to the UK, that the knee-jerk reaction is to censor, arrest, shut down?

Nature

National Academies

And to be balanced:

Guardian UK

(Note that the debate against focused on the logistical causes for food shortages, arguments that ignore current population and climate trends and focus on socio-political conflicts at specific geographic regions)

If trends continue, populations will grow, fresh water supplies will decrease, and deserts will take over a greater percentage of our landmass. While GM won't be the key to solving every problem, I have seen nothing that refutes its worth as a tool. Furthermore, if you look at traditional means of genetic modification, what some refer to as "organic methods", the net result is the same: the genetic code of an organism is altered to achieve specific properties. Current GM techniques simply allow much greater latitude. I suggest that the debate focus not on the means of alteration, but on the risk-reward profile of a given product. Introducing a pesticide into the very structure of a plant may not have been in the best interests of humanity. Engineering drought resistance, on the other hand, will have a much greater benefit with perhaps much less risk.

There are those who would prohibit by default access to all legal, consentual pornography: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/04/pornography-online-cameron-opt-in-plan
Sure, it's "opt-in"... until someone decides in 10 years to tighten the noose tighter.

I think this was an unfortunate effect of the most dangerous drug in Britain.

I expect you mean the ANPR cameras that check for valid tax and insurance. These are always accompanied by signs letting you know they're there, just like speed cameras.

Firstly, they are not all accompanied by signs. Many trunk roads have fixed ANPR cameras which aren't marked. All the police's traffic cars (including unmarked cars) have ANPR cameras and don't have any signs. Even back in 2010 there were over 4000 ANPR cameras operating with absolutely no regulatory oversight.

Secondly, the cameras are hardly just used to "check for valid tax and insurance". Some are operated by the Ministry of Defence, FFS. Every plate checked has its location, time (and in many cases a photo) stored on the ANPR database. This data is held 'routinely' for two years, but you can bet your bottom dollar it's held in perpetuity if you are a suspected 'person of interest'. If it was just for checking tax and insurance there would be no need to store data for anyone who was taxed and insured.

Nor would there be stories like the one where an 84 year old peace protester with no criminal record is tugged because the ANPR database flags him as “of interest to public order unit Sussex”. The story goes on say that Sussex Police alone record over 1.2 million car positions a day.

The 'tax and insurance' excuse is just like the terrorist/child pornographer excuse. If you disagree with widespread invasion of privacy by the state you must be untaxed or uninsured, right?

Nothing happened; the press still use sensationalism and the people are still subject to about the same level of surveillance as in most other First World countries.

How would you know? Under the RIP Act, the authorities can monitor any and all private communications without a warrant from a judge (merely with permission from -- for example -- "any customs officer designated for the purposes by the Commissioners of Revenue and Customs"), and no figures on how many people have been affected are available.

Depends if you filmed him... http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/aug/31/do-we-have-right-to-film-police

This article touches on that in the last paragraph. In a nutshell: maybe. This is pioneering work so there are a lot of things that need to be evaluated.

>The Lib Dems are pretty strongly opposed to this

The Lib Dems are FUCKING LIARS.

If you're Black in the US you may want to know what tribe or area you ancestor was kidnapped from in africa.

I assume this would be as specious an idea for Americans as for Brits.

None of this should be taken to diminish Chomsky's work in linguistics which was altogether very impressive.

I think you misspelled "mostly wrong". Interesting, sure. But mostly wrong: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/10/daniel-everett-amazon

I realize there is still ongoing debate about this because Chomsky has always fiercely defended his theory-of-the-moment, but whole notion of a "language instinct" is pretty tenuous on purely evolutionary grounds. All features of organisms are genetic tendencies that elaborate themselves in a particular developmental context. The insistence that there is a single, genetically determined "deep grammar" would make language completely unlike every other aspect of all organisms everywhere.

Arthur C Clarke predicted this first.

In Profiles of the Future, he pointed out that within my lifetime, it would become a serious offence to drive a car yourself on a public road..... and not have a computer drive for you.

Of course, racetracks would still exist for Freudian reasons :-)
However, operating a car manually on public roads will undoubtedly become an offence equivalent to drunk driving. Whether you agree or disagree with Dr Clarkes time-line, you have to agree, that this IS what will happen in years to come.

I find it a bit odd to describe a man as an "unrepentant criminal" and a "supervillain" because he was CEO of a company that was the subject of proceedings for anti-competitive practices. I find it even more difficult to see that that implies that any outwardly philanthropic act on his past must be merely a ploy to make a personal profit.

I don't think your sources are quite as damning as you think. The second one is not reporting an investment by Gates at all - the purchase is by the Gates Foundation not the individual. The other article sounds like it might be referring to the same investment and simply have mistakenly omitted the 'Foundation'; other contemporaneous accounts sound like they are referring to the same investment and make it clear that it is the foundation that invested not the man.

That's not the big problem with this though. Even assuming that the Register article is correct and he did personally invest in pharmaceutical companies in 2002, your account remains inherently implausible. We have to believe that Mr Gates - an experienced businessman - could find no better way to make more money than to give away almost $30bn to try to boost the value of less than a billion dollars of pharmaceutical stock. We have to believe that in the face of the fact that from what we know of his current investments he certainly isn't investing heavily in big pharma. We have to believe that Warren Buffett is presumably in on the scheme. And then we come right back to the big problem again, which is the inherent implausibility of the claim that the richest man in the world would give 40% of his wealth to a charitable foundation in order to make a profit.

>[citation needed]

I was talking about the iOS app store not Mac. Here are citations.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-android/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jun/10/apple-developer-wwdc-schmidt-android?newsfeed=true

>You really quoted a gawker article? You hopeless tool.

How about find the same news posted on every damn news site? Why not address the facts, that Apple is making it harder for non App store programs on the Mac? What has Gawker to do with this except as a way to avoid answering my point? You dumb ass.

>Good thing there's an alternative that many find to be not just equal, but superior, which is available at a lesser cost.

You mean like Linux was always available for Windows?

>People are finding it less and less palatable. Apple is I think inadvertently doing us a favor because people get grumpy when Apple prevents them from doing things.

Maybe you should look at Apple's sales figures. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/wow-apple-turns-over-its-inventory-once-every-5-days/257915/

A few geeks and devs are going to find it unpalatable just like used to find Microsoft unpalatable. It won't hurt the sky rocketing sales and revenues one bit.

Tell me more about the status of the Roma in your racially equal utopia. Here let me help:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17roma.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/forced-evictions-of-Roma-in-Italy

http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/18/dale-farm-travellers-lifestyle?cat=uk&type=article

In fact, no.

  I accidentally posted this anonymously farther down, but in fact Bill Gates has done tremendous harm with his so-called "philanthropy"; his real contribution is "leveraged philanthropy", where you use philanthropic donations to control something so that you make more money. This is true with his vaccine so-called "charity" - which forces poor nations to spend money from other sources on expensive foreign vaccines, rather than on development of local vaccine manufacturing or of general public health infrastructure, and thus actually degrades the quality of 3rd world health care while making Bill Gates his "charitable" money back and then some. This is true of his education so-called "charity" - which forces poor school districts to spend money from other sources on high-tech gadgets and expensive consulting services, which are sold by Bill Gates' various partners, but which are actually worse than no services at all.

The Gates' foundation has announced a partnership with Pearson (for profit-education company) to develop and market materials aligned to the common core. These are the materials that your school district must agree to purchase (this particular test cost $32 million state wide) in order to qualify for Race to the Top.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-19/news/31369375_1_answer-silly-question-pineapple
    So, Bill Gates is using a small amount of his "charitable" money to force public money in much larger amounts, to be wasted on this crap.

Bill Gates wants to fit teachers with galvanic bracelets:
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/09/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get-crazier/

Bill Gates needs vaccines to be a "profit center" for his pharmaceutical buddies. I spelled this out above but read the comments.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/10/what-bill-gates-says-about-drug-companies-2/

Oh, hey, Bill Gates is using his agricultural charity to force the 3rd world to buy Monsanto's crops:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto

She had the aid of Panties for Peace though, obviously this tactic successfully sapped the Junta of their masculine power, just as they feared.

Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.

You despair for the wrong reason.

Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."

I think you would be shocked to actually learn what is going on since you don't actually seem to know, or really have a good idea. This ultimately isn't about the US, it is about them - the Islamist extremists, their goals, and aspirations. Their kind was conquering and killing for hundreds of years (more like 1,000) before the US came along. Read Bin Laden's demands in his Letter to America. His first actual demand is that the United States convert to Islam. Second, he wants the Constitution replaced with Sharia law in all its glory: stone the adulterer, crush homosexuals under walls or throw them off of buildings, whip the immodest, chop off the hands of thieves, no drugs or alcohol, no interest charged on loans, and all the rest. That isn't a demand to "stop smearing shit on my face", that is the demand of a man determined to see the world under Islamic rule even if it takes 1,000 more years. This was a man who wanted to see the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, which existed until ~ 1924. Their grievances is that Islam has fallen from its former glory, and they intend to restore it. They want to retake Spain which pushed out Islamists rulers hundreds of years ago.

  What al-Qaida Really Wants

If you want to despair, then do it over the fact that this conflict could easily continue for 20, 50, or 100 more years as these flare ups of Islamist extremism do. Or Londonistan , or Eurabia

In a shrinking world, the extremists will probably never be far away.

Think about this: POVERTY, EDUCATION, AND TERRORISM

These facts should be well known by now. How is it that people keep getting this wrong eleven years after 9/11/2001?

At the The Other September 11th, the Battle of Vienna, the Islamist attackers were outside the gates trying to get in. In future battles, we will find them inside the gates, and too many of the defenders of the West ignorant and in doubt, or even ready to throw in with them.

As I wrote, you despair for the wrong reason.

Well if there was any sort of meaningful political and economic consequence for representing private interests at societies general expense, then this behaviour might stop. But as it is, the same two parties representing slightly different business interests flip in and out of power as they screw up the living standards further, while retired politicians go on to make millions from their time in power. This is not just a Canada/US phenomena, and big mainstream media keeps us all fearful and voting for the same clowns time and again. Sigh.

Right. But Earth is between Mars and Sun. 10 November 2084: Transit of Earth as seen from Mars "It will be the first and only time this will occur this century, with the next one predicted for 2394. Something for the first colonists of Mars to look forward to." http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/shortcuts/2012/jun/06/transit-venus-what-next

Any third option for the foreseeable future is a hippie pipe dream

I don't get it, all the free market preachers are promising that my energy problems will shortly be solved by the free market but your view is such a fatalistic-don't-even-try-jaded response that you seem to doubt the free market can provide.

And if anyone thinks that solar panels and wind turbines are going to supply Tokyo with even a fraction of its power needs, you've obviously never been there.

I haven't been there. But no one's asking those solutions to go from zero to powering Tokyo over night. Look how gradually it's taken wind power to start in the United States (current numbers here). Japan is comparable at our state level and is looking at connecting with Korea, China, Russia and Mongolia power grids to buy more renewable energy. So why call these hippie pipe dreams? If these are hippie pipe dreams, when will our innovation kick in and 'save us' from nuclear and coal?

(unless you count regular, sustained blackouts as an option)

Did you hear that Japan did actually make small adjustments following Fukushima and called the movement setsuden?

I don't think the situation is as dire as you describe it and, frankly, dismissing all the alternative efforts really undermines what we should be working toward which are transitional phases until some breakthrough comes in fusion or an unforeseen source.

Um, the UK has a massive number of evolution deniers.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism?cat=science&type=article

The rest of the world is a mixed bag as well.

Even the most evolutionist heavy regions still have 20% or more who are not 100% in agreement with evolution.

http://ncse.com/news/2011/04/polling-creationism-evolution-around-world-006634

It's not their fault, the Queen's English committee folded yesterday due to the severe apathy towards actually communicating with people.

Civilians of the enemy nation are indeed the enemy.... the very fact that they are still in the enemy country, paying taxes, is also supporting the war.

Which is exactly the same argument Osama bin Laden used to justify attacking American civilians. Be careful of the company you keep.

It is a countries duty to police their politicians. If they are unable to hold them in check, they must suffer the consequences of the actions that those politicians take. It's a rough reality, but it is true.

That is exactly the same argument used by Osama bin Laden: bin Laden's 'Letter to America' justifies attacking civilians by stating that they are a complicit part in the American military actions abroad because they have chosen their government democratically, and pay taxes to fund their actions.

I really don't see how it's useful when assessing the impact of an application, to consider whether the devices that app runs on run on a platform from a single vendor or one from multiple vendors. What matters is how many people use that platform, and therefore have access to that app. Apple is doing very well, but iOS is a minority platform, and the current trends (extrapolating current trends into the future is very risky, obviously) indicate that the iOS market share, as a percentage, has peaked and will continue declining from here. I very much doubt that concerns Apple -- they're quite happy to keep the most lucrative segment of a growing market.

But, if you really do want to consider a single vendor: Samsung by itself is significantly outselling Apple in the smartphone market, in terms of both units and revenue -- though Apple is making more money. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/27/samsung-apple-smartphone-sales-profit

1) Finances the CIA and similar organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US)

2) Keeps banks and probably financial companies afloat via laundering: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade?newsfeed=true

3) Manages to roll its way into congressional campaigns (http://tomflocco.com/fs/FBILinguist.htm)

So... don't expect rational legalization anytime soon.

Tell that to the pediatricians.

Going back to point 1. The Germans are, of course, devolved Anglosphere.
2&3 Lets leave it as a grey area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derryn_Hinch#Sexual_Relationship_With_Underage_Girl This radio commenter was jailed for (ultimately) the "hate crime" of publicly identifying a pederast.
4. In some cultures (Aboriginal Australian, even 50 years ago) children under 6 or so ran around in public, naked. Look in National Geographic a few decades ago. Finding something to be "pornographic" is largely cultural. (OTOH Finding something to be sexually arousing is personal and partly cultural.) No violence whatsoever. Free speech is publishing images & words.
5. This is the reverse Jailed for free speech about Muslim beliefs. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/20/three-muslims-convicted-gay-hate-leaflets

Your criticism of evidence is fair. In defense, I usually note things in passing, and forget details, so cannot substantiate anti-muslim activity jailings.

Guardian:

Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons British Council poll finds UK adults overtake Americans in wanting science teaching in schools to include intelligent design

Science News

Over the past two decades, science literacy in the United States – an estimate of the share of adults who can follow complex science issues and maybe even render an informed opinion on them – has nearly tripled. But – and it’s a big but -- the proportion of people who fall into this category remains small. Just 28 percent. [...] The U.S. figure is slightly higher than that for Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. And it’s double the 2005 rate in the United Kingdom (and the collective rate for the European Union).

and they are teaching the kids.... its a dangerous race to the bottom of the pit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/30/christian-fundamentalists-plan-teach-genocide?cat=commentisfree&type=article

Will the actual details as presented in the European Arrest Warrant suffice?

For somebody who's "read them all," how exactly did you miss the press release summarizing today's judgement, as well as the judgement itself, which details this information?

Have you just been re-reading Joce640k's AOL News link that he's been spamming all over this article, and assuming that's the only information available?

From the Judgement:
" “judicial authority”, in the context of the Framework Decision, and other European instruments, bears a broad and autonomous meaning. It describes any person or body authorised to play a part in the judicial process."

"in respect of both the English words “judicial authority” and the equivalent words in the French text. Those words are “autorité judiciaire”. In the final version of the Framework Decision the same weight has to be applied to the English and the French versions. It is, however, a fact that the French draft was prepared before the English and that, in draft, in the event of conflict, the meaning of the English version had to give way to the meaning of the French. The critical phrase does not bear the same range of meanings in the English language as in the French"

So its all about word picking if the attorney is a "judicial authority” or not.

By the way - does the chief secretary also "play a part in the judicial process" and can therefore ask for your extradition? Never minding the national laws of what would have been done to get a national warrant of arrest?

Apparently, the CIA's 21st century equivalent of assassination is the rape charge. Just ask Dominique Strauss Kahn. A few months after he began criticizing the value of the U.S. dollar as international currency, he became a rapist.

Great, my html is lacking.

First article:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-sea-level-ice-idUSBRE82R13E20120329

Second article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/20/world-aquifers-rising-sea-levels

Sometimes, I make myself weep.

Dude, I don't have any opinion on US immigration. I haven't claimed anything about it. I'm simply pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of of pulling hypotheticals out of your ass in order to justify accusing someone of making things up.

And your response to that is a tirade of empty assertions and the claim that you "don't need any survey" to know something that you just tried to back up with a hypothetical survey.

Also, if you're going cite Wikipedia, you might want to check if it backs up your claims first. Your attitude is one of arrogant assumption that you somehow "know" what the facts are, and don't need any scientific studies to inform your opinion. Where do you think the facts in the wikipedia article come from? They come from the very studies and surveys that you seem to think you're too omniscient to bother reading.

This is the UN survey that's used as the first citation in the wikipedia article. Page 16, table 1, The North America is 3rd of 6 continents behind both Europe and Asia as "the destination of choice", Page 17, paragraph 8, the U.S. is 5th out of 8 countries.

But of course "by almost anyone who can get here" perhaps you mean mexicans. Oops.

Well, as I said I don't really have an opinion on US immigration, but it's amazing how informed you can become with an open mind and 20 minutes of reading isn't it? As opposed to assuming your opinions are "fact", trying to shout everyone down and blithely tossing around admonitions to "read wikipedia", when you clearly haven't done it yourself.

Where to start on this post. Let's kick off with DNA retention. Firstly it was the European Court of Human Rights that ruled on this - and that court is not an EU body, and has nothing to do with the EU. Secondly the UK Supreme Court has also ruled against the UK government on this one, and the government is **still*8 dragging its feet, so by your definitions, presumably the UK is not part of the UK since the UK government dissed a UK court.

Tobacco imports? As far as I can tell the UK is not breaching any elements of EU law on imports and indeed last time it came up the EU courts ruled in the UK's favour http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/24/news.retail

I don't know if it's as simple as childhood encouragement. As a 42 year old female who's been working in IT for more than 20 years you can imagine I encourage both my son and daughter to be interested in maths, science and computers. Boy loves it all and is very interested; girl does not want to know. Why is this? Maybe just natural tendencies - I don't know. Wish I did.

It is definitely (in part due to) natural tendencies. The same response is observed in at least one other primate species. I can't remember the specific species with which I saw this demonstrated, but when these young primates were presented with a selection of toys to play with, the females preferred dolls, while the males preferred to play with toy vehicles.

I'm pretty sure I saw this in an episode of BBC Horizon, but I don't have a reference to the particular episode. However, here are links to two articles that discuss primate toy preference:

Dorothy Lepkowska on Gender and Toys
Chimp "Girls" Play With "Dolls" Too—First Wild Evidence

Good data is hard to find, but even if you adjust for population size, it looks like US is pretty good on pollution.

When comparing this sort of thing, it's important to remember that CO2 is not the only thing that is considered pollution, or even the worst thing. There are many things that are far, far worse than carbon dioxide, by any measure.

It's already happening.

BEEEP wrong answer try again...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android

They made 500 million over the course of 4 years, whereas Google earning 38 billion last year from computers. Even if they were sandbagging it for the court case it is small change...

Sorry dude, but you are the moron... BTW don't let facts stand in your way, ok?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android

"Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011"

"That compares to Google's $38bn total revenues in 2011, almost entirely derived from advertising on PCs, of which there are 1.25bn installed worldwide, according to Microsoft. That suggests an average revenue for Google of about $30 per PC per year, though not all will be capable of accessing the internet or will use Google, so the actual figure will be higher."

I am sure Google was sandbagging the Android numbers so that the Oracle case would go in their favor. BUT say for the moment they earned 5 billion over the entire time, which is a fact of 10, it is still a pittance to what they earn on the desktop.

Residential power here in Iceland is 6-7 US cents per kilowatt hour, so I can only imagine that industrial-scale power is even cheaper. We're really sitting on more power production potential than we know what to do with, it's almost ridiculous. I mean, hot water goes to 90% of houses and people waste it like crazy, there's huge heated pools, etc... and a quarter of this hot water comes just from downtown alone, little sheds mixed in with the buildings. In Öskjuhlíð they drilled a 90 meter pipe into the ground, put a choke in the top, a water drip... and it's now an artificial geyser. Heat is just everywhere. 1/3rd of the lava on the planet in the past 500 years has come from Iceland. Traditionally, we've "exported" this power by making stuff here with it, like aluminum (importing all the inputs and exporting the metal). There are three smelters in the country, and even the smallest uses more power than all the homes and businesses combined. But we're still only using about 20% of our conventional high temperature geo (not counting using magma as an input, which was recently shown to be feasable at Krafla, not counting EGS, etc - and geo exploration has been quite minimal due to there being so much available already), virtually none of our low temperature geo (2/3rds of the country's primary energy is geothermal waters at 100-150C, and the target distribution temperature is 80C, but it just gets mixed with cold to bring it down that low), about 15% of our hydro, essentially none of our huge wind (makes the midwestern US look tame, but there's only one turbine in the entire country), tides (also quite large), etc. This country has just huge amounts of generation potential but nothing to use it on.

I'm sure you know more about the difficulties involved than I. But it's a very serious subject that's been discussed for decades, and now seems to finally be making some headway. There's even a conference going on right now about it.

Now, that's not to say that it's not without controversy on this side. Namely, because people here love having massive amounts of unspoiled wilderness, and up here, even geothermal is controversial just because you have to build roads and lines into it. And people also worry about our cheap electricity getting more expensive if we start selling to the UK.

The West is actually beginning to use them again. They have become more popular recently because they are the ideal solution from an ecological point of view. I used to use them myself for years in south-west Germany. (I no longer do, because I now live in a region where they are not easily available.) They are perfectly convenient if you put them into the dedicated plastic container before opening. Only getting them home is slightly more risky. My first experience with them was in

I couldn't find any up-to-date photos of such a container, but here is one from East Germany before reunification: http://www.braincolor.de/?p=478 . (The one I had ten years ago in the West was more convenient.) You can also buy bagged milk in Switzerland: http://www.onlinereports.ch/OEkologie.113+M52a046ca50c.0.html .

And here is the very recent UK version: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/11/milk-bottle-sainsburys-environment .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia

If this is the incident you're talking about, your talking points don't seem to match the reported facts... Let's just imagine Pakistani ISA agents had shot 2 people in America and imagine how that would have played out...

You have a very weird system over there. In the UK, one company, BT had a monopoly on the telephone system. This was recognised and legislation was put in place that the last 'mile' of the connection could be used by any company offering services many years ago allowing me to choose from multiple ISPs as long as there was space in the junction box for the hardware. Now there is concern that BT again may be able to monopolise the next 'evolution' as we move towards fibre to house, so there are calls to prevent this from happening.

In the US there seems to be a focus on the government doing what is good for corporate greed and not what is good for society. :(

Just a suggestion, but stop fucking up peoples shit around the world and people wont have a grudge against you and you wont have to intimidate people. . . . Contrary to popular opinion in the US, the reason for extremists from the middle east and areas of asia isn't because "they hate freedom", . . . . I swear, how people don't see the cause and effect in all this is beyond me...

The reason it's beyond you is that you really don't understand what is going on. Here is some starter material. Yes, they do hate our freedoms - including the freedom of religion, and self governance under the Constitution. Their ultimate goal is to restore the Caliphate, which existed up until ~ 1924, and conquer the world for Islam.

bin Laden's 'letter to America'
Goal - coerced religious conversion, replacement of Constitution with Sharia law, with an end to drinking, gambling, fornication, etc., etc.. Noncompliance means they will keep attacking.

What al-Qaida Really Wants

Given your handle, you might find this interesting.