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Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.

Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.

It's a pretty silly argument to say that Google have been unfairly singled out, and quite wrong too. The companies that you mention have all had their share of regulatory intervention, especially in the EU. Your first example, Microsoft (exactly who was inconvenienced by their OOXML standard?) is the first company that springs to mind when thinking of EU intervention. Remember the browser choice screen or the two billion dollars in fines?

They are also keeping their eye on Apple in the eBook market, although I maintain that the consumer has benefited from Apple being able to strong-arm the record industry on removing their DRM. Facebook's privacy problems have also been the subject of scrutiny in the EU. And for Oracle...

No, I can't bring myself to even appear to defend Oracle!

So the idea that Google should be given a free pass because they are being unfairly picked on is just rubbish. That doesn't mean to say that the EU's complaint isn't without issue. The fact that Google displays links to its own vertical search services doesn't seem too unreasonable, and it is a practice that has gone on in the industry for years. I first saw this used by Yahoo when they linked to their own services in their results (eg. Yahoo Finance). And when I search for "microsoft stock price" on Google, I got links to an assortment of financial sites at the top of the results (eg. Yahoo Finance).

Similarly, when they include reviews or news from other sites, they always link to the source. That said I can see that there would be a concern if they show the entire news story or review which means that you never have to follow the link. I guess there is a legitimate concern about some of Google's practices, but I am wary of the heavy handed, simplistic approach that the EU regulators sometimes utilise.

Orthodox Jews don't rape nine-year olds, ...
No, they wait till they are 12 before they rape them, and then the community closes ranks to protect the guilty... Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jews rally behind accused in child abuse case
So does this mean that Judaism is savage too or do we need to find evidence of a Jew who kidnapped someone first?

"Orthodox Jews don't rape nine-year olds" - just read this article to see how wrong you are:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/brooklyn-orthodox-jews-child-abuse-cover-up-feature/

Silence and self-rule: Brooklyn's Orthodox child abuse cover-up

This happens to most -- if not all -- closed off religious communities. When people are above the law, and they fear no prosecution because their followers will protect them even when they are caught red handed, they will abuse their positions of authority and victimize the weak. It's human nature.

That's why the civilized world aims to use third parties to administer the law equally, regardless of who the perpetrator is. It's an idea hated by religious people, because it often exposes their leaders as the flawed and sometimes evil human beings that they are. Once reality becomes your enemy, you're doomed to a life of obedience to the power structure that lets you live in a fantasy world, which can lead perfectly normal people to protect monsters. In their minds it's not possible for their rabbi or pastor or priest to be evil, because acceptance of that fact is too damaging to their worldview.

It lets people find out things like this

FUCKING SICK jews. SEND THEM BACK TO THE DEAD SEA SO THAT THE MUSLIMS THERE CAN ABUSE THEM BACK.

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like pussy. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like ham. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like slashdot. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like weed.

Does this one work? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/brooklyn-orthodox-jews-child-abuse-cover-up-feature

It lets people find out things like this

I'm an agnostic and I agree with you that Santorum was a threat. That being said, to say that Islam is not a threat or that many Muslims do not seek to enforce Shariah in the United States would be a lie. Americans who seek to establish anti-Shariah legislation are merely seeking to avoid a situation like in the UK where there are already Shariah courts. The GP does have a point in that people like you who selectively criticize religion do come off as prejudiced. If you're going to criticize religion, at least criticize them all.

"The problem is that there are hostile, sometimes crazy, nations that have nuclear weapons"

Like the USA? :-) If not today, maybe after the next election? What about a country that has institutionalized torture, that has about a quarter of its population food insecure, that is becoming completely dependent on other countries for consumer goods, and that is blowing up people around the world with killer robots, is sane?

You may be unable to see the forest of my point for the trees of your strategic reply, perhaps because you are caught up in short-term thinking about the rationality of military planning (each point making sense by itself) while missing the overall increasing systematic risk? That is the kind of thinking that lead to the recent global economic crisis --- every local economic decision making sense locally, but then the whole house of cards collapsing as the system collectively passes some phase change boundary (like heated water starting to turn into steam). Like pollution, increasing systemic risk is an externality often unaccounted for in local decision making (whether economically or militarily).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is based on rationality at all levels of the system (except that the whole approach is crazy for reasons I mention below). You just said there are crazy people out there. So MAD will not work. It can not keep working indefinitely for exactly the reasons you mention ("hostile, sometimes crazy"). Seriously, why should a crazy leader of either North Korea or the USA not just start nuking other countries because they think they are on some mission from god or something and everyone else is to terrified to stop them? Example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
"George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month."

Another source from before Bush's election:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
"''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' "

You're also ignoring the bigger issue is that WMDs is no longer purely a national problem. Like has happened so many times before, the technologies like nuclear weapons, designer plagues, nanotech, cyberwarfare, or killer robots, that once were only in the control of big countries are going to eventually filter down to the average small country or even small group or individual. Our entire military doctrine is out-of-sync with emerging 21st century realities.

Or, as George Orwell said:
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/george-orwell
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

An essay I wrote on that general issue:
"Problems of the MAD doctrine, their consequences, and positive alternatives"
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/browse_thread/thread/6b18338b6b947931
"The policy of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) wi

Yes I meant the British government. CSA springs to mind wasting £539M, along with the Fire Services failure costing another £500M. Apparently the last Labour government managed to waste £26bn in botched projects and 7/10 UK government projects are failures.

The Brits in the private sector are quite excellent. However they are rarely used with government contracts outsourced abroad (usually EDS).

Phillip.

Yes I do, sadly however it is only recently that I started seeing just how much of our political history is just on repeat. And how little it changes. Example in the 1960-1970s there was an enquiry in to the amount of Freemasons in the met office, and while goggling for some more information I find this, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/08/phone-hacking-scandal-jonathan-rees I am not some conspiracy nut here there is a direct link between Government and MET office via freemasons lodges. There have also been some freemasons who have become prime minister such as Churchill who was rather proud of this connection (tho his family now state he left the lodges in 1912) and rumours are that Blair is also one. Did you know that 4 weeks before Blair got voted in he joined the world exclusive club of the Bilderbergers in the USA? It was reported at the time but very little of this now remains findable

Regardless of their ties I don’t think we have had a government in a long time that cares for the people. Labour and Tory both help their friends first or however gives them the most money or the biggest platform to sell their warez from (newsCorpDiggHere) . Anyway if anyone is still reading here is some fun links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandals_in_the_United_Kingdom funny. Also this has amused me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Freemasons look how many prime ministers there are all over the world :/

Truth be told let’s get the Pirate Party going, its working in Germany and Sweden it’s time to merge Labour and Tories in to the same party because they have been for the same party for a while. I think Libdems are cheerleaders and a bad attempt to pull in the younger voters. I think if we could get the younger voters awake then we could start knocking out labour and tories from local MP seats in the next election. My hope is after the recent TPB block the PPUK website got a lot more more views (http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/tt26k/as_a_direct_result_of_the_pirate_bay_ban_the/). I beg to god, the Creator, and The man running the matrix, that this is the start of a change that will put a government back in the role of serving the people instead of serving businesses and banks. Because at this rate the government will spend so much money that if I ever have children they will be in the same place I am, paying for debts that the generations before me racked up

L

"How can Facebook even be on a list of worst companies?"

You should re-read your subject line. It is more insightful than you realize. Facebook doesn't offer a FREE product. Now, on to answering your question:

A) They are a company
B) They are one of the worst
C) If you use Facebook, you pay for it in many ways, not the least of which is Zuckerberg using you as ammunition against personal freedoms to line his pockets
D) I pay for your use of Facebook, even though I don't use it (See C above)

Don't know about Brown not being as bad. From The Guardian;

Sarah Brown, the then prime minister's wife, hosted a "slumber party" at Chequers attended by Brooks, Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng, and his daughter Elisabeth in 2008.

Last month Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp chairman and chief executive, quipped at the Leveson inquiry that it was probably nothing more than a "bunch of women complaining about their husbands".

Did they shoot him, claim it was self-defense, and ship his remains to Gitmo?

No; when they do that, it's a different kind of story. :-(

I love the way you throw around the word productive a though it meant anything other than rich. I love the way Ayn Randers equate productive with "reaching the apex of a money-making hierarchy" as though that had a god fucking thing to do with being "productive".

What a fucking joke,. If being well positioned in society were in any way related to "being productive" then every woman in Africa would be a millionaire, a point that was made here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.

The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves â" that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive â" are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible.

Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves.

He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years.

He found that the consistency of their performance was zero.

"The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill."

Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him.

"The illusion of skill ⦠is deeply ingrained in their culture."

The CEO f my company made 86 million a year I made 86k. That means his labor was 1000 times more productive than my own. Since I worked not less than 12 hours a day, it's hard to imagine how it could be true. Obviously such people could recreate the last 1000 years of human progress in just one year. Well, at least they think so.

The idea that some cokehead " Hey, I made a yearbook-on-the-internet" "genius" is somehow one of society's "most productive members" is such a joke that we just have to say that anyone who seriously entertains the idea is irremediably idiotic.

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Fac

G8/G20 Summit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G-20_Toronto_summit

McLean's article: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/06/27/torontos-g20-summit-a-failure-all-around/

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/g20-rioters-toronto-protests (Note that the video attached to this article is now unavailable because the Guardian "no longer has rights to it". Isn't that another lame example of DRM?). Note the law concerning coming within 5m of the fence mentioned at the bottom of the article never existed, and was a fabrication of the Toronto Police Dept.

Police assaulting a reporter: http://www.thestar.com/news/torontog20summit/article/902236--toronto-journalist-witnessed-police-brutality-at-toronto-g20

Parliamentary Committee Slams Police Brutality during the Summit: http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2011/03/parliamentary-committee-slams-g20-police-brutality.shtml

Amnesty International: http://rabble.ca/news/2010/06/amnesty-international-wants-g8-g20-security-reviewed

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxuYOoNk7U
  Notice that most of the people are really there to watch the spectacle and take pictures on their cellphones. Only a handful stand up at the police line and passively protest. The police presence here (almost 1Bn spent on security for this event - although a lot of that was misappropriated pork-barreling by politicians as well) is a bit overboard.

Police as Agents Provocateur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbLU9tdDwxo

Just some quick grabs from the Interwebs.

An urbex group in London was exploring subways in the early morning a few days before the royal wedding when security was high, to put it mildly, and were arrested when they were seen on a security camera. Info here They are not allowed to speak to one another for the duration of the anti social order which is 10 years.

Nah. I get my news all over. Pretty much everything is better than the BBC, though. Well, they have some good shows, but their news is biased, evil shit masquerading as truth. Seems you're too dense to see it.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/islamic-movement-head-charged-with-incitement-to-racism-violence-1.238209
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/29/sheikh-raed-salah-arrest-london
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3733099,00.html
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/europe/3629-leader-of-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-congratulates-sheikh-raed-salah

The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...

That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:

UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."

UK university applications in 'steepest fall for 30 years' - "The proportion of UK students applying to start degrees in the autumn will drop by 10% this year, a university leader has predicted – the steepest fall for 30 years."

Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."

The University of Cambridge has offered all academic and non-academic staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy (can you imagine - one of the world's top universities - offering *all* employees cash to volutarily leave employment?)

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts : Post-graduates to replace professors

The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...

That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:

UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."

UK university applications in 'steepest fall for 30 years' - "The proportion of UK students applying to start degrees in the autumn will drop by 10% this year, a university leader has predicted – the steepest fall for 30 years."

Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."

The University of Cambridge has offered all academic and non-academic staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy (can you imagine - one of the world's top universities - offering *all* employees cash to volutarily leave employment?)

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts : Post-graduates to replace professors

The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...

That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:

UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."

UK university applications in 'steepest fall for 30 years' - "The proportion of UK students applying to start degrees in the autumn will drop by 10% this year, a university leader has predicted – the steepest fall for 30 years."

Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."

The University of Cambridge has offered all academic and non-academic staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy (can you imagine - one of the world's top universities - offering *all* employees cash to volutarily leave employment?)

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts : Post-graduates to replace professors

On the other hand, making their nonsense very public can put pressure on their backers. At least one group which gives/gave some sort of support to the HI has now backed away from them, even though the HI was expecting more financial support from them this year.

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will prevail. E

Yes, it couldn't possibly be adversaries, and people want to do harm to the United States, in an environment where people like you firmly believe that everything must be a "false flag" operation designed to somehow take away your rights.

...

Or, it could be this:

Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation
http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2009/NorthropGrumman_PRC_Cyber_Paper_FINAL_Approved%20Report_16Oct2009.pdf

Occupying the Information High Ground: Chinese Capabilities for Computer Network Operations and Cyber Espionage
http://www.uscc.gov/RFP/2012/USCC%20Report_Chinese_CapabilitiesforComputer_NetworkOperationsandCyberEspionage.pdf

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Chinese Espionage Campaign Targets U.S. Space Technology
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-18/chinese-espionage-campaign-targets-u-dot-s-dot-space-technology

Report: Hackers Seized Control of Computers in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/jet-propulsion-lab-hacked/
http://oig.nasa.gov/congressional/FINAL_written_statement_for_%20IT_%20hearing_February_26_edit_v2.pdf

Chinese hackers took control of NASA satellite for 11 minutes
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/chinese-hackers-took-control-of-nasa-satellite-for-11-minutes-20111119/

Chinese hackers suspected of interfering with US satellites
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/27/chinese-hacking-us-satellites-suspected

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Attacked Internet Security Company RSA, Cyber Commander Tells SASC
http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/27/china-attacked-internet-security-company-rsa-cyber-commander-te/

Chinese Counterfeit Parts Keep Flowing

• dodgy deals in Kenya
• search neutrality issues on several occasions (i.e. favouring own products)
• WiFi sniffing was first an unintentional mistake, then a single individual action, then the supervisors knew about it ...
• circumventing Safari privacy protection ...

So, while I do not like simple comparisons like "is Google the new Microsoft?", they have their share of morality issues like most large corporations...

Can't decide if I agree or disagree. We are generally in the same insurance pools, it will generally save us money (and cut down on the societal awfulness of car crash deaths) if more people wore seat belts.

On the other hand, in the grand scheme of causes-and-numbers-of-death, it's just not that big a deal. The simple act of driving the car instead of walking, biking, or even just standing on a subway or bus (just plain sitting turns out to be bad for us) kills more people by far. One estimate of the risks and rewards of bicycling (crashes, vs health benefits) was 20 years of life gained for each year of life lost. Given that bicycles offer little protection from crashes other than their low speed, this suggests that lack of exercise is really bad for you, and that driving cars to excess is one reason for this lack. Another study found a 28% lower mortality rate for bicycle commuters even after adjusting for other cardiovascular risk factors.

Probably the best plan for saving lives would be mandatory helmet laws for car drivers and passengers. Head injuries from car crashes are a significant cause of death and disability, so this is not an outlandish thing to do. Australian researchers have even developed a prototype helmet for just this purpose that is less expensive and less cumbersome than your average motorcycle helmet. What makes this plan "best" is not that it is necessarily super-effective at reducing car deaths, but that encouraging just a fraction of car drivers to use some healthier form of transit will save many lives through their improved cardiovascular health (if we believe the 20:1 figure for bicycling rewards:risks, and assume that bicycles and cars have the same risk of crash death, diverting 5% to cycling would save about as many lives as are lost to car crashes in total. Similar ratios probably also apply for walking).

And yeah, I know this is an inflammatory proposal, that's why I included all the links to back up my argument.

US is not immigration friendly, not even relatively:
http://usvisa-info.com/en-MX/selfservice/us_immigrant_visas

Most Chinese students are actually on student visas. They usually get a 1yr extension for work, and from there they go to H1B if hired somewhere, and Green Card if they really want to stay, but that costs a lot to a company so it must be really worth it.
The question is, do most of the Chinese students stay in the US? or do they go back to China and work there?
If this means something: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/28/china-us-publisher-scientific-papers , I don't think most are staying.

Yeah! Just leave that to the birds! :-)

My question is that, how dare someone at a top position tell such a big lie? Aren't people supposed to provide a copy of their degrees when they get a job in USA?

Nowadays it is so easy to find out whether a degree is real or not. A simple email, online alumni lists ...

As an example of high profile fake degree owners, a few years ago Iranian interior minister was impeached and sacked by parliament for a fake degree: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/04/oxforduniversity-highereducation-iran

If the US government is so horrible, why are people still trying to move there?
Obviously, there are worse places, but the Chinese shills on this site don't want people to believe that.

So go ahead shrieking "9/11 NEVER FORGET!" To remind us how we let the terrorists win.

Because they did.

Actually no, the terrorists haven't won, not even close. You'll know the terrorists have won when you are offered the choice of convert to their brand of Islam or die, the Constitution has been replaced by Sharia law, and the Muslim Caliphate (which existed until 1924) is reinstated. That is what they are fighting for, not to inconvenience your air travel by forcing people to wait a bit longer in line. They keep announcing their intentions, and people keep ignoring it as if in denial.

Why shouldn't this be forgotten?

I think it's high time we got over it.

You are apparently the type that thinks that the time to get out of the boat is once you are half way across the river. Tell us, when did Al Qaeda withdraw their declaration of war against the US, Europe, and various other places? If they didn't withdraw their threat, their declaration of war, they are going to continue to try to kill people. They are still very active in Chechnya, Pakistan, Yemen, the Philippines, North Africa, and plenty of other places. To drop one's guard against Al Qaeda and its maniacs is a stupendously bad idea.

I also think it's high time we got rid of the Patriot Act and the TSA

Yes, just like that - a stupendously bad idea.

Try not to feel like a criminal the next time you undress yourself at the airport while waiting in line to get your nads zapped with a healthy dose of radiation.

This, on the other hand, is the right place to insert that line of yours: "I think it's high time we got over it."
Searches and screenings have been going on since at least the late 1960s - they aren't going away anytime soon. Get over it.

Since there is some room at the end of the post, lets throw in some recent legal activity:

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery. Full Story

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

1.Tampa: Florida Resident Charged with Plotting to Bomb Locations in Tampa

A 25-year-old resident of Pinellas Park, Florida was charged in connection with an alleged plot to attack locations in Tampa with a vehicle bomb, assault rifle, and other explosives. Full Story

2.Baltimore: Former Army Solider Charged with Attempting to Provide Material Support to al

You must have missed the /. post about China's growing submarine fleet, like this one, or the news of their nuclear submarine programs on the Guardian and others, like this one. Or the news that they launched a new class of nuclear ballistic missile subs here, here, here, here, and here.

So, there is no threat to the East Coast, because China is so good about not selling things for profit to other nations, like Iran, Syria, Libya....

Precisely why I chuckle darkly every time I hear the phrase, "We must do X or the 'terrorists' will win!"

Obviously, they already have.

If you believe that then you obviously don't know what you are talking about.

You'll know the terrorists have won when you are offered the choice of convert to their brand of Islam or die, the Constitution has been replaced by Sharia law, and the Muslim Caliphate (which existed until 1924) is reinstated. That is what they are fighting for, not to inconvenience your air travel by forcing people to wait a bit longer in line. If you are "chuckling darkly", thinking the terrorists have won, you aren't getting it. They keep announcing their intentions, and people keep ignoring it as if in denial.

The United States is incredibly dependent on its space assets in support of national objectives. Directed energy weapons can not only provide offensive ASAT capabilities, but can serve as a significant defense against missile- or even space-based kinetic ASAT weapons. The advantage of a directed energy weapon is that it has the ability to travel at the speed of light and target missiles during their vulnerable boost phase within seconds. During the 1990s and 2000s, the United States pursued directed energy weapons based on megawatt-class chemical lasers. Two of systems, the Airborne Laser (ABL) and Space-Based Laser (SBL), were complementary, but never made it beyond the early testing phase.

The concept of the Airborne Laser came to fruition on a modified Boeing 747 known as the YAL-1A Airborne Laser Testbed (ABLT). In early 2010, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that ABLT successfully destroyed two test missiles, saying at the time that "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies." Unfortunately, ABLT was $4 billion over budget and eight years behind schedule. Political and economic realities meant that the US could "no longer continue to do everything and explore every potential technology". On February 14, 2012, MDA announced that the ABLT program was terminated, transitioning into long-term storage at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis Monthan AFB — "the Boneyard".

The Space-Based Laser (SBL) concept is the notion of locating a high-powered laser in space, with a similar ability to target missiles in their boost phase. A constellation of 20 SBLs would be able to provide continuous global coverage, and target nearly any launch -- including ASAT weapons. A test firing of a Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX) was originally schedule for 2012 to demonstrate SBL's capabilities. This project became so complex and expensive that MDA suspended research and development in 2002 — another victim of economic priorities, and a desire to focus resources on existing, proven kinetic systems.

If such systems are thought to have so much potential and capability, why are they no longer pursued? The answer is primarily one of cost. Further, if the US possessed such a comprehensive anti-missile and anti-ASAT capability, it is unlikely that an adversary would use a kinetic ASAT weapon. As adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran turn to cyber, it becomes more likely that cyber, conventional jamming, and EW capabilities would be used to target US space systems. It is reasonable that the US response should be in kind. One example: China is currently fielding the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). Instead of using complicated missile defense systems or directed energy weapons to target it, and the current US strategy is indeed one of jam, spoof — and then shoot, if necessary, with the idea being to "break as many links as possible" in the chain, including via cyber and EW. Cyber can act as a significant force multiplier against even conventional weapons systems — which can work both for and against us. China has already demonstrated the potential effectiveness of cyber capabilities against US space systems. Resources devoted to enhancing our offensive and defensive cyber capabilities in the context of space systems and missile defense is money well spent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/30/snipers-patrol-skies-london-olympics

"Military snipers are to be deployed in helicopters during the London Olympics and if required will shoot pilots of low-flying aircraft that might be involved in terrorist attacks, it emerged on Monday. "

we should off had them in the riot's last year.

According to the Guardian in November last year SAMs have been deployed since 1996 at the Olympics.

Wahabbism, had you ever made a proper study of it - or any of the topics you gloss - had no significant impact, following or currency until the late 20th century. The doctrines were anathema to most Muslim cultures (plural), until reaction to post-colonial conditions (politics not ideology) and the utility it provided for the Saudi despotism established and supported by the UK and later US.

Your worldview is built on misinformation and the self-seeking rationalizations of post-colonial era empires.

The towers were crashed by Saudis, inspired by a former CIA asset, funded by royals, who were and still are under sponsorship of your own government. No Afghans were even peripherally or logistically involved. They offered a host country after Sudan ejected a few dozen zealots

The Taliban were not tremendously happy with the Arabs and were eager to rid themselves of them PRIOR to 911. They actually wanted to extradite Bin Laden to international justice before Sept.- but were turned down by the US. The US ALSO rejected such an offer AFTER 911!

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2011/09/20119115334167663.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

By the way, do you SPEAK Pashtun or Dari?

Ke suhma chereh nagoo, kharajee?

It's very convenient to claim an authoritative view of a people's character, intentions and meaning - when one can only receive this knowledge through intermediaries with an antagonistic agenda.

The saddest thing is that you will wake up, crying in the middle of the night, for the rest of your life. And the institutions that fed you this shit and pointed you to the kill won't have time for your troubles. They'll be too busy burning though more screws like yourself, in some other trillionaire's adventure - while they make the States resemble a gulag evermore closely by the day.

This was covered by the guardian a whole two months back. Link Partly debunked here

However much "good" religion has done, there are far worse that is done in the name of religion, for instance witchcraft, which was practiced by Christians as well. The mockery by the atheists you speak of has none of this kind of injustices, but merely points out that stupidity of posts like yours. http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sg4u0_RHotex_ev4Q2pP53Q/view.m?id=15&gid=%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fapr%2F19%2Fsaudi-arabia-beheading-woman-withcraft

Religion leads to persecutions like this http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sg4u0_RHotex_ev4Q2pP53Q/view.m?id=15&gid=%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fapr%2F19%2Fsaudi-arabia-beheading-woman-withcraft Critical thinking leads to moronic thinking. Which do you think the morons would prefer?

It only apples to ISP's with over 400000 customers of which there are 5 at the moment http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/08/bt-talktalk-challenge-digital-economy-act

Just change to one of the many other ISP's out there http://www.ispreview.co.uk/list.shtml

The fact that you think the two are incompatible shows how much the brainwashing has worked: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

The lack of real mobility is a myth.

Hardly - the United States is on par with petty dictatorships for income inequality and mobility. A young member of the working class can look forward to graduating with $25k or more in student loan debt and then struggling to find a job in a shitty economy while hoping they don't need health care. Whereas the rich don't have to worry about health care or student loan debt or housing and can afford to take a year long unpaid internship - or three - before getting a job.

I can say this because I come from a family that emigrated and came to the United States and started off on welfare, living in government projects, and going to very poorly supported schools.

I can say that's a logical fallacy. I know someone who won a lottery. Therefore, winning the lottery is a realistic expectation for the majority of the population.

They convinced me, my siblings, and themselves, that the government handouts were temporary aids for us, and that continuing to live off the government when we have the ability to eventually make it on our own is shameful.

Nice boilerplate pull-up-by-your-bootstraps talking points. And how about when they are six applicants for every open job? At least you have the self-awareness not to join the tea party.

I think one factor which has really changed publisher's views in the past few weeks on this issue is the success that J.K. Rowling has had selling Harry Potter online. She deliberately waited a long time before allowing eBook versions, as much to get things settled out, but the result is very clean: even Amazon just directs to the Potter site, which then links back to all the DRM'ed eReaders as well as providing direct downloads in ePub.

So she's getting most of the money (well, her and her publisher), not Amazon, she dictates the price, and is no longer affected by the Amazon Monopsony that Amazon has gained by being the most common (but not universal) ebook platform. While a buyer no longer has to worry about DRM lockin: the books they buy will read anywhere, painlessly.

I think one factor which has really changed publisher's views in the past few weeks on this issue is the success that J.K. Rowling has had selling Harry Potter online. She deliberately waited a long time before allowing eBook versions, as much to get things settled out, but the result is very clean: even Amazon just directs to the Potter site, which then links back to all the DRM'ed eReaders as well as providing direct downloads in ePub.

So she's getting most of the money (well, her and her publisher), not Amazon, she dictates the price, and is no longer affected by the Amazon Monopsony that Amazon has gained by being the most common (but not universal) ebook platform. While a buyer no longer has to worry about DRM lockin: the books they buy will read anywhere, painlessly.

Actually, BOTH the size and the location of the earthquake (which was centered off-shore) was known fairly quickly.
What wasn't know was whether or not a tsunami would result.

So issuing an accurate warning ten times faster (they had to have meant 1/10th the time) would have meant little, since the actual ground uplift movement was 80 miles out to sea, where no GPS meters would have been available. The actual quake itself was already known to be very large the instant it happened and the location was pin-pointed within minutes of the quake itself.

There is nothing GPS could have added to speed things up. They don't work underwater. Existing ocean buoy based sensors detected the tsunami as soon as the wave approached shallow waters where it could be distinguished from a normal wave.

So for the last several big quakes which happened off shore, these GPS detectors would not have helped speed the location or magnitude information at all. And as we have seen in recent weeks, large quakes more often then not do not trigger tsunamis.

Since quake magnitude and location are already known with minutes (generally within seconds of P wave arrival at a few sensors), I fail to see how this cuts down warning time. Since the quake is felt simultaneous with P wave arrival, the only thing left to warn about is a tsunami, and that determination is based almost solely on quake epicenter location, which is determined very very quickly by computer.

Says the guy willfully ignorant of the fact that the U.S. has had innocent people kidnapped, tortured, or killed:

The prime minister of Canada apologized Friday to Maher Arar and agreed to give $9 million in compensation to the Canadian Arab, who was spirited by U.S. agents to Syria and tortured there after being falsely named as a terrorism suspect.

Arar, 36, a former computer engineer who was detained while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and imprisoned in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months, said after the announcement that he âoefeels proud as a Canadianâ

Or subjecting alleged whistleblowers to psychological torture while letting actual torturers skate.

Or singling out a documentary filmmaker for dozens of searches and seizures. A filmmaker accused of no crime, which means the harassment is purely political intimidation.