Slashdot Mirror

Maybe not.

But consider this: the folks whose job it is to make predictions tend to think that the impact will be felt sooner, rather than later. Folks like those who work in the Pentagon and the CDC, not to mention an overwhelming majority of the world's scientists.

The number 0 in terms of civilian drone deaths comes from one source: the CIA. Do you trust them on this number? Why or why not? The US government is not even consistent on this number. Others place the number of civilians far higher.

These myths (of zero casualties) are familiar to those of us who have watched the US government justify its wars over the last 20 years. During every conflict since the first Gulf War we were promised that this time, technology meant we were only going to hit the Bad Guys but somehow this has never really panned out. It's almost as if these statements were mere propaganda to popularize the current conflicts in the face of opposition to past conflicts.

The number 0 in terms of civilian drone deaths comes from one source: the CIA. Do you trust them on this number? Why or why not? The US government is not even consistent on this number. Others place the number of civilians far higher.

These myths (of zero casualties) are familiar to those of us who have watched the US government justify its wars over the last 20 years. During every conflict since the first Gulf War we were promised that this time, technology meant we were only going to hit the Bad Guys but somehow this has never really panned out. It's almost as if these statements were mere propaganda to popularize the current conflicts in the face of opposition to past conflicts.

But wait. As far as I know, most people don't consider entitlements to be a moral excuse. So what you're saying is that we're all terrible people because we don't buy every work we can possible afford.

That, or I'm not saying what most people say (or at least I'm not using the same terminology). Actually, I think you find, if you actually explain what entitlements actually mean, most people would agree. Otherwise, like I said, you get Santa from Futurama: almost any action is immoral. There must be some mechanism that people use to distinguish between harmful moral actions and harmful immoral actions. Every action we do has some kind of detrimental consequences for someone else, but for most things, they are considered things that we have some kind of a right to do. Hence the role of entitlement.

One must remember those who decided to go into debt with their money and time was the band, not us, and nobody promised them anything.

We promised them implicitly with our laws. We may not have drafted them ourselves, but while we live under them (and reap their benefits), we are responsible for them.

Does it really?

Well, it's not exactly clear in general. I was more referring to a specific action occurring that could cause harm, or at least could cause harm, in order to debunk your absurd inaction theory of morality. But if you want a specific answer for this study, I read it as evidence that:

a) Piracy doesn't currently kill all demand
b) More significantly, music fans are almost all pirates

There needs to be a fair bit more to establish that piracy is not harmful. I also consider it fairly possible for piracy to become ever increasingly harmful as it becomes more of the social norm, and as people realise that it's not socially expected to repay people for their work. So, in short, it doesn't completely convince me that it's harmless.

It can lead to that. But, again, we're not responsible for the artists' need for sales - he chose that path, not us. We can't be held accountable for other people's poor decisions.

He chose that path on the good faith that you would abide by what we promised him, and that wouldn't copy his work without his permission. You subsequently made the decision to disregard his good faith expectations, and in breaking this promise, you are completely responsible for all consequences that occur. As yet another example, your employer promises (but not personally, but it's not like that's any excuse to weasel out of it) to abide by the law and deliver your pay cheque as agreed when you started working for them. If they decide not to pay you, they are responsible for negative consequences. The courts would completely agree if you decided to sue; you could charge them for damages for any misfortune that beset you after they stopped paying you.

Read it again. It's not the absense of action (file sharing isn't absense). It's the potential for such absense that results from my action.

I read it the first time, but I read it again. Exactly what is wrong with the potential for absence? I have already argued fairly comprehensively both that potential factors into harm, and that an absence of action does not excuse you morally from the consequences of your decision. Do you have something particularly against their combination that is not present in their parts?

You still haven't found a real analogy.

Actually, I haven't been arguing by analogy. I've been avoiding analogies deliberately, for this very reason. The aptness of analogies are almost completely subjective. All it takes is a stubborn debater to simply continue to point increasingly trivial differences between life and the analogy, and the analogy simply becomes more pro

Wouldn't mind them helping with awareness of the RWA, where publishers are basically trying to make public access policies illegal. Read more here.

No, think back to my original argument, before we went off on this tangent about harm. Harm is only sufficient to make an action immoral if there is no entitlement behind it. With lending and second sale, we are entitled to these actions (to varying degrees given the laws and customs of the society you live in), so much so that it outweighs the harm. If we made only truly harmless actions morally good, you basically get Santa from Futurama. That aside, lending and second sale does indeed harm artists, as does simply choosing not to buy from them. It's an unfortunate, but unavoidable truth.

But wait. As far as I know, most people don't consider entitlements to be a moral excuse. So what you're saying is that we're all terrible people because we don't buy every work we can possible afford.

I think that's absurd. One must remember those who decided to go into debt with their money and time was the band, not us, and nobody promised them anything.

We're not morally responsible than you are because I gave away my house expecting you to buy me a new one.

Well, there is a definite act of copying. Copying causes people to demand what they copied less, which results in the artist being starved of money.

Does it really?

It can lead to that. But, again, we're not responsible for the artists' need for sales - he chose that path, not us. We can't be held accountable for other people's poor decisions. Was bailing out the banks a morally imperative too?

That aside, it is a very shallow and narrow-minded definition of causality when you exclude inaction. For example, can I morally be excused for running over a blind kid (with a puppy) because I cannot be held responsible for my decision not to brake? Or could my favourite restaurant be excused for deciding not to clean their crockery? Perhaps my failure to stop my finger moving was responsible for the aforementioned brains on the aforementioned whitewash? You can see, with such a vague distinction, the definition can easily be co-opted to justify many clearly immoral acts.

Read it again. It's not the absense of action (file sharing isn't absense). It's the potential for such absense that results from my action.

You still haven't found a real analogy.

It's a fine point, but clearly not one that I share. Like I said, I require more than simply the causing of harm in order to justify making something illegal. There's also the point that piracy is, in one sense, the most harmful, since it is the one that people are most likely to choose over buying. Don't get me wrong, if second sale was as harmful as piracy, I would judge the harm of second sale to outweigh the entitlement of people to have the right to it. But, as it turns out, in order to have a successful second sale market, there needs to be plenty of first sales, and plenty of people want a first hand copy more than a second hand copy, so there is more justice in having it legal than illegal. For this reason, I am fine with banning piracy but not second sale.

I shall dedicate my life to produce CDs and sending them to you. I hope you see the harm you're causing me by not sending me $1000 for each.

They're the same people who believe they "hate us for our freedom".

There's even a bunch of them here on Slashdot today. I'll probably get a nasty reply here from one of them.

Here is Bin Laden's Letter to America. His first demand is that Americans convert to Islam. The second is that the United States ditch the Constitution (and all of its rights) and impose Sharia law. (Including ban Alcohol, whip the immodest, stone adulterers, and kill homosexuals.) You seem bright - figure it out.

Not just the British Empire. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, The Russian Empire, The French Empire, The Spanish Empire, the USSR.

Empires rise, and then they fall again. The USA is on the same path as all the empire before it. Only the timing varies.

There's "the US" and there's "the US empire". The British, French, and Spanish empires had nation-states ruling over a bunch of colonies; the colonies split off, but the nation-state remained. (Well, perhaps the jury's still out on Britain.) The Russian/Soviet empire was somewhat similar, but without the overseas colonies; Russia still exists as a nation.

what happened when bp fucked up the entire mexico gulf ecosystem ?

They did the only thing logical, and sued another company (Halliburton)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/03/bp-sues-halliburton-over-deepwater

Except the Military has been training and using dolphins for decades, so why waste your investment?. Check this over-the-top story from The Guardian.

+ Informative. Still, at least they're dead. It's when the living are treated that way that it gets horribly disturbing. I don't know if many of us could sleep if we saw atrocities against the living.

I don't know what is better... Knowing so we can try to help (but can we really?), or not knowing so we can live in relative bliss.

Either way, it's good to know that humans are so socially evolved. <sarcasm>

Here's something worth knowing, that I only found out about recently but that is not publicised...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men

"Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on."

"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Also, maybe:
"NASA seriously believes in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)"
http://mnispel.net/neengineer/?p=320
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2832338/posts

And:
http://energyfromthorium.com/

And there are others. Energy is not a big issue if we want to solve that. Lack of imagination, will, and social consensus is more of the problem:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

As well as the diversion of most of our resources into guarding, competition, and war...

As to your quote, I answer it with another quote: "The woods would be pretty quiet if no bird sang there but the best." :-)

Also, who is to judge what "best" is?

Clearly, even third rate is soon going to be enough to create WMDs (like the biotech, nanotech, or microrobotic equivalent of what script kiddies do with computers). So, we still need to figure out a way to make a world that works better and better for more and more people (including by reducing violence through healthier nutrition); see for example:
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat: Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime

Also, if the brains of the masses are dulled in the 21st century, it is in large part because the "best" put in place systems to make them that way through compulsory schooling; see John Taylor Gatto's writings:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"

How much our resources do you think are currently consumed by guarding, competition, and warfare? I'd suggest over 90%... See for example:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. Ther

Really? If they can be caught spamming some 100-reader blog in India nobody ever heard of, slashdot should be a no brainer.

Robots, making war easier for the public to swallow. It's less icky to wage war when you can send robots instead of people.

It's also less likely to make mistakes and kill innocent people. For those of you who don't know most casualties in war are civilians. The civilian casualty ratio for recent wars has averaged 10 civilians for every combatant. The reasons are many but is basically boils down to who takes what risks.

When a soldier is in a combat zone he has to make a shoot/no-shoot choice for every person he sees. Now of course in a combat zone people are running on adrenaline, they are often exhausted, the situation is chaos, and the stakes are life and death. So if you are a soldier and you see someone, how sure are you going to be that they are not a civilian before you shoot? And remember if you are wrong, you die.

A good example is this story. It is easy to lay blame after the fact. But imagine you are in that chopper, you have had RPGs shot at you all day, and then you see someone in a van pointing a black tube like thing at you. What are you going to do?

But probably the biggest cause is long range weapons like artillery and air strikes. Sometimes sending in people on the ground would be suicide, so you have to use less accurate weapons like artillery and air strikes even though they cause more civilian casualties. This need to minimize your own casualties it just part of how war works, and it always has. The point of war is not to die for your side, but to make the other guy die for his.

With drones however the game changes because you can send a drone on a suicide mission instead of firing artillery. You can have a drone wait and verify that it is a camera and not an RPG. Yes drones will make mistakes, probably a lot of mistakes, but humans only get it right 10% of the time anyway. So please don't pretend that the bar is so high that it will never work.

The argument against drones is like an argument against smart bombs. They get the job done faster, cheaper, and with less casualties for all sides. But then some people will argue against it anyway because its popular to be anti-anything-military.

Here in a S. English city (Bristol), I was digging my garden one autumn day, when just the faintest of traces of engine noise made me look up. Over the next two hours, a Britten-Norman Islander made three very exact circuits over my inner city house. High up (15 000?), in airspace usually used by the local airport, it was almost invisible; very funny I thought.

The next year, I read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/24/uk-based-taliban-afghanistan

And then the taxing part is plain and simply dumb. You can't control corporations, but that the government actively deters local production? That's like shooting yourself in the foot and wondering why it hurts.

The UK and the West as a whole (I'm entirely sure that the UK is not a special case here) should be ashamed.

For those too lazy to RTFA, UK is shooting in the foot using a big cannon then crying big of unemployment:

I’d like to draw attention to one cost in particular that really created problems for us in Britain. Simply put, if we build the Raspberry Pi in Britain, we have to pay a lot more tax. If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all.

There was an interesting article on the academic publishing industry recently. When you get all the material refereed for free (actually, on the dime of the colleges and research institutes who pay the reviewer's salary), there's just no reason why the charges should be soaring up past $20 per article like they have in the last 10 years.

The greed doesn't stop there either. Not long ago I was a volunteer at a fairly prominent IEEE conference. The cost of attendance per person is in the $600-$1000 range. Despite contributing 12+ hours of work, one of the co-chairs had to fight with the organizers just to get them to foot the bill for our lunches.

It is rare indeed that a programmer has the artistic eye for design and are a great programmer.

Is it really that rare, or are you just looking for love in all the wrong places?

John Brockman: the man with a three digit speed dial

I quickly realised, but did not articulate, something the anthropologist Gregory Bateson told me 10 years later: that of all our human inventions, economic man was by far the dullest.

We've had superlative typography since the 1980s, but instead the world standardized on Widow Maker and other typographic abominations. Economic man noted the score, and the rest is WYG will make your eyes bleed. Then Steve figured out how to pour feminine charms back into the genie bottle by making the terms of engagement non-negotiable. That's one way to do it. Who knows what user interface nightmares ensue once you begin speaking with each other.

The contributors to Edge are what I call third-culture thinkers or intellectuals. Not only are they focused on science-minded pursuits based on evidence and empiricism, they are also public communicators, reaching out to the public by means of their books, lectures, etc. They live by their wits, and doing so in the changing times of the digital age is a challenge. Their concerns are very different than, say, the casual user, who has signed up for a social network and by default becomes the product whose private information is sold to advertisers.

If it's asking too much to straddle two culture, how about being insanely good at just one? From How (La)TeX changed the face of Mathematics

Big mistakes people should stop making:
1. Worrying too much about formatting and not enough about content.
2. Worrying too much about formatting and not enough about content.
3. Worrying too much about formatting and not enough about content.

Tyler Cowen: Be suspicious of stories

Tyler has a nice riff there about how ditching the "good vs evil" depiction of world events immediately raises your IQ by ten points. There are many writers out there who could raise their IQ by an additional ten points investing less in glassy gassy.

It's a pretty safe bet that many Pakistanis probably feel the same way about us, and they have nukes, too. Are you going to lead the revolution against the powers that be here in the U.S.? No? Didn't think so. Perhaps you'd better be careful what you wish for, and think through the implications of what you're saying before spouting off.

Another concept might be to simply upload the astronaut's neural net into a very high capacity computer.

Indeed, since researchers have already started doing this with cat neurons, there's already a software base to work from, so to speed the work we could combine astronaut brains with the existing IBM cat brain simulation.

Also, for long duration space flights, China has already claimed that females are better than males. So we should make sure to use female astronauts for the baseline neural scans.

We should probably then provide robot humanoid bodies for the simulations in case they need to perform maintenance tasks on any space hardware components assembled by baseline humans on Earth.

Our human representatives to the stars will therefore most likely be robot space catgirls. It's scientific!

I don't "know" in the sense that certain faith based folks "know" that they'll be the ones saved.

I do, however, know in the sense that I've read a lot about it, including impact models ranging from US government predictions (military, civilian), international studies, many of which predict widespread starvation and chaos.

As I've written in this thread, I'll bet that Stephen Hawking has really, really good private health coverage. There's no way that he's going to let himself die in a third-world NHS hospital such as Mid Staffordshire, though he should damn well be required to.

ICO issues guidance about private emails, reminding the public sector that the Freedom of Information Act covers private emails if they are used for business matters.

"Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, said: "It should not come as a surprise to public authorities to have the clarification that information held in private email accounts can be subject to freedom of information law if it relates to official business."

Not really a device thing... but related none the less.

A Nokia employee and, apparently, another from Microsoft have been caught posting anonymous comments boosting their product on a review of the new Nokia Lumia 800 phone using Microsoft's new Windows Phone software.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/dec/19/nokia-microsoft-lumia-comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/09/uk-borders-constructive-dismissal-lawyers

Quite a prominent one as well.

You are assuming that this is a religious issue. In fact, it is entirely logical for the Iranian government to want nuclear weapons. Look at it from their point of view: You have regional enemies, several of which already have nuclear weapons, and some of which have called for attacks on your country. An aggressive and powerful foreign government is allied with these enemies, and has recently invaded and occupied two of your neighbors, rounding up and executing the leaders. Wouldn't you want nuclear weapons under those circumstances? Of course you would.

On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003 and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east; Turkey, America's Nato ally, to the north-west; Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refuelling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet; Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command; Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to "attack Iran" and "cut off the head of the snake".

Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents. The map makes it clear: Iran is, literally, encircled by the United States and its allies.

If you lived in Iran, wouldn't you want the nuclear bomb?

Israel doesn't even consider Iran to be an existential threat:

Tamir Pardo says Israel using various means to foil Iran's nuclear program, but if Iran actually obtained nuclear weapons, it would not mean destruction of Israel.

Mossad chief: Nuclear Iran not necessarily existential threat to Israel

Iran and North Korea are one thing, but Iraq and WMD's?

Curveball admitted to lying and is an alcoholic.

Iran and North Korea are one thing, but Iraq and WMD's?

Curveball admitted to lying and is an alcoholic.

Hell, even suggesting a new world currency to replace the dominance of the dollar can get you that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/may/08/marks-and-spencer-bras-facebook

In the UK a well known clothing store tried to charge more for larger cup sizes.. Which to a point makes sense, more fabric, more cost.. except that the cost of production has almost nothing to do with the cost of sale.. you're paying for fancy shops, head offices and analysts who read slashdot in their lunchbreak.. :)

Interesting, although this much later article says that a venture capitalist group owning Odeon jacked up the rent on EasyCinema's first and only cinema.

However, the most profit can be made from charging what individual consumers are prepared to pay. The marginal cost of an extra cinema-goer probably is 20p, so any extra ticket sold above that price is pure profit. If you manage to sell them popcorn with the 5000% markup, kerching!

So I'm surprised EasyGroup gave up that easily.

Because people are waking up to the issues in Washington, more and more people are finally starting to get involved. The politicians don't like that, because it can cause bad press (negative reinforcement), challenges during elections (negative reinforcement), and other bad consequences.

Don't blame politicians for behaving that way - they don't have souls.

I think you have struck on key issue... Politicians don't like the idea of a free Internet, they just don't fully understand why right now. The answer is pretty simple, people engaging with each other via social media leads to a population less tolerant of soundbytes and rhetoric. As society becomes more involved in the issues, it demands greater accountability. An activist is born when a personal connection is made to an issue. I for one view SOPA and PIPA as a personal affront to my liberty and will not be satisfied by a hearty speech or weasel words of justification or apology. I want Congress to reject the notion that the US Government has the authority to eliminate free speech anywhere in the world without due process. Especially given that the approval rating for Congress is hovering around 11%, meaning they do not have a mandate to act "for the people" in any case. It remains to be seen if the President is going to act responsibly and veto these bills or kowtow to Congress like he did with by signing in the NDAA -- another liberty smasher that he passed into law while the world was celebrating New Year's eve. The TV channels may not be interested, but politicians can't escape the scrutiny of an entire population via the Internet... at least until they make social media nonviable by enacting something like SOPA, of course.

Yes, but why not? For any given movie, at a given cinema, at a given time, there's an optimal price that maximizes profit: charge a little more, and you discourage enough people that you end up with less profit; charge a little less, and while you may get more customers, you still end up with less profit.

If it were practical to determine this optimal price, any rational cinema would charge it.

You've hit the nail on the head. A rational cinema might charge that price, true. But the cinema business is not strictly rational, any more than any other media business is (think: "agency model" pricing for ebooks).

Some in the UK may remember when the founder of EasyJet proposed to do just what is suggested. He wanted to create a chain of theaters that priced seats based on demand, in much the same way that EasyJet prices airline seats. Theoretically, you'd be able to see a first-run movie for as little as £0.20, depending on time, date, and how well the screening was showing. He couldn't do it, however, because he couldn't reach agreement with the film studios over a flat-rate pricing scheme that would allow him to set his own prices for seats.

the music industry is healthier than ever

Eish! Not according to - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/02/uk-music-sales-decline-2011

I don't know if I agree with your general point either. Game prices drop fast after release - a few weeks/months after release, some drop to below $20, some even to less than $10 (Crysis 2 is retailing at 9 quid on amazon atm). If your statement was true, wouldn't you expect people not willing to pay full retail to rather wait until the price drop, rather than download it?

Presented to U.S. officials by the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based exile group pushing for an American attack on Iraq, the defector says Saddam is close to finishing a long-range ballistic missile that could hit Cairo; Ankara; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Nicosia, Cyprus, or Tehran. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/658542/posts

That was what we were told in 2002. A decade on, we now know that those "intelligence" reports of WMDs from the INC were actually supplied by a double agent working for Iranian intelligence.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/25/usa.iraq10

Oops. And what about those mobile bioweapon labs? It turned out that intelligence came from another unreliable source:

Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.[1][4] On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity.[5] Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

The whole story was made up by one guy who wanted his immigration card, and yet - without any verification - it was used by the Bush administration to justify a war.

And since you brought it up, alll of the intelligence that linked Iraq to 911 was lies as well.... There was no Iraq Islamist link (well, at least until the coalition invaded and plunged the country into a bloody sectarian civil war)

Yes because we all know no one ever got shot in the head @ occupy.

Iraq veteran seriously injured by police projectile is lucid and responding but brain swelling still a risk, say doctors

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/27/occupy-oakland-scott-olsen-surgery

Well I'd trust the mainstream tech media to give some reliable numbers on Lumia sales rather than an MS astroturfing site.

Let's see: El Reg, Grauniad, Gizmodo, and many others..

Van Riper had retired several years before the war games in question. So yes, he could indeed "resign in disgust".

The US's been preparing for this kind of war? Van Riper says it bosh. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/21/usa.julianborger

This whole app sounds like a modern rip-off of Salvador Allende's star-trek-ish proto-internet, Cybersyn

Hell, I'll move there. Not because I'm a junkie, but because in the absence of drug prohibition, it will be one of the safest countries on earth.

Really? You bet the drug gangs will disappear instead of diversify?

"Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/23/mainsection.tomphillips

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

POTUS has pretty good Intel on likely future scenarios, in a dry World what's more valuable than oil? Water.

IMO the answer to all the World's problems is human population reduction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1

In your discussion of synonyms you forgot to include debate of what should be "wiped of the map", namely not "jewish state" but "zionist regime".

OK, apparently you materialized in our universe only yesterday and you are just looking around our reality. So as a start, here you go just for the debate about dealing with Iran regime. Later you can educate yourself about not only what is debated, but what is already happening.

And btw, thanks for that insights about how dropping bombs on another sovereign state is not such big deal. I'll try to remember that when Israel launches another massive attack into dense urban area because dozens of rockets fall somewhere in desert on Israel side of border.

I don't - and haven't ever - worked for any of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Nokia, Google, Dell, HP, ASUS, Acer, Nokia, HTC, LG, Lenovo, nor contractors thereto, nor any of their direct competitors - nor ever held any of their securities to date, nor expect to. I'm a small business kind of guy. My opinions here on /. are my own, and are of no relation (and quite dissonant to) my employer's position. I post here only on my own time and give only what I've got of my own opinion. My account predates my present job, and they're quite tolerant of free speech where I work so they'd be fine with me putting my opinion on their time and dime but I still don't do it because I don't want the suspicion of taint. If you're wondering about some other company then please do reply with the name so I can deny it, because it's unlikely you'll guess who I work for - it's a really small company and way off the radar.

I work in IT of course, so sometimes when some of the above companies have the best answer for the customer I recommend them - but in that case I'm working for the customer, not the vendor - and I have no preference for a vendor. The best fit, the latest reliable tech is what I recommend. I recommend many millions of dollars worth of gear a year and the best recommend for a particular customer is a complex metric best not aired here. You were better off trying to educate me than just calling me a shill.

I'm not in marketing, and I'm not some geek in his mom's basement either. I'm a systems architect in servers, storage and networking. If you'd been paying attention to /. these last eight years you'd know better than call me a shill. Your account is too old to be part of the bangalore astroturf crew, so I'm guessing you're a Microsoft new hire with an old /. account yearning to prove your worth. Try again with somebody else, but don't fight with me here unless you want to lose because I don't put stuff here I can't back up. This is /., and the standards are strict.

I'll close with this recent link, where Nokia and Microsoft astroturfers were calling shill on other blog posters: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/dec/19/nokia-microsoft-lumia-comments

The Guardian article being referenced is probably Dan Gillmor's The great ebook price swindle. You can find a lot more about this by paying attention to the online writings of various authors, including Kristine Kathryn Rusch who write about the business of writing as well as being a (widely) published author.

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any Euroxpean(sic.) Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.

In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.

/facepalm

Yet another misinformed soul parroting whatever it is he heard or read. Overpopulation is not the real problem, it's the fact that we're living in an outdated society with outdated structures (poor space management). Really, a lot of things in our society are inefficient and there's a lot of waste. We produce so much waste it makes me physically ill to think about, especially when you consider the problem could be mostly avoided with better management of our resources.

Inefficiencies like eating meat when insects are a far better at turning grains into protein?

The "Food and Agriculture Organization" (FAO) are making recommendations for the reduction of traditional meat and instead advocate eating insects. Why? To combat the growing demand for protein in world with too many people, which is only growing. This is only one example of one resource limitation... and they are all limited.

I don't know why you think we have a shortage of people or why the existing people need to reduce their quality of life to accommodate them.

And since you like George so much, here is a quote from your hero asshole: "It's irresponsible to have more than one child. Have one. Have one child, replacement value for yourself, that's all." - George Carlin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/01/insects-food-emissions

I wouldn't be surprised if this were a side effect of Europes (not-so) recent Restriction of Hazardous Substances laws, which mean manufacturers need to use unleaded solder, which leads to tin whiskers.

The whiskers grow slowly and cause no harm, until they do cause harm (maybe a couple years down the line) -- and when they do, it is often catastrophic.

Outlawing something pushes it underground. It does not make any perceived problem disappear, in fact it creates more. Some places have actually allowed controlled use of what would otherwise be completely illegal substances such as cocaine and hash because otherwise there would be so many problems the domestic security services would be overwhelmed.