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There are different degrees of "high predictability" (plus OECD report didn't talk only about education, also economic status)

Apparently in nanny states only around 20% of status is determined by family (vs. around 50% ... and certainly even more in developing places)

I believe this study is what you were referring to.

Unfortunately, because the author put in a bit of opinion on the whole mess, people tried (and still try) to discredit the entire paper rather than just ignore the opinion pieces.

Since the science holds up, it's obvious that the only real difference between Palestinians and Jews is their religions.

Former undercover police officer Mark Kennedy is a prostitute. Spread the word.

Note that if you read TFAs, the police were using sex to infiltrate "anti-racist groups". Oh the humanity!

And as to trying to provoke illegal behaviour, everybody knows (or should know) that the Met (London Metropolitan Police Force) do this. A reporter from the Guardian a few years back actually caught a policeman undercover showing some protestors how to unhook the police barriers and trying to get others to charge the police. And a Member of Parliament last year states that he saw two undercover police officers trying to lead people into throwing bottles at the police link. These are just the ones that are in the mainstream news. You have to ask yourself how it is that in a protest of hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes over a million, where over the course of an entire day there are perhaps three or four notable incidents of vandalism, it is that a few press photographers are always in the right place and time to grab the pictures of a few balaclaved men kicking in the windows of a McDonalds or somesuch. The intelligence services in the UK even infiltrated the Green Party. Note to Americans, the Green Parties in Europe are not the equivalent of those in the US. The UK Greens have an MP elected and do reasonably well at the council level, and in Germany and others, they're respectable groups. But in the UK, legitimate parties are fair game for undercover infiltration / subversion.

If you want to see some despicable behaviour, witness the police dragging a disabled man out of his wheel chair at a recent protest. Really - it's worth watching the BBC interview with the victim. Note the police claim that he was rolling toward them threateningly. The guy can't even move his wheels on his own.

But that people in the UK have been paid to lie their way into sex with unsuspecting people, usually pretty young people at that, seems there's nothing the UK authorities wont sink to.

I hate to be a consequentialist, but I think their uses outweigh the potential harm in some people's liberties.

On what evidence to you make such a conclusion? Given that London's pervasive use of CCTV cameras has failed to make people there safer and that other cities have also found them ineffective in preventing violent crime, why do you think that putting a CCTV camera in a drone has positive benefits that outweigh the chilling effects of their certain use to spy on political dissidents? If you want to know how something like this will really be used, check out the recent Frontline report on domestic surveillance.

Without a corrupt government, corporations do not have the powers you mention.

Then this is for you

How naive you are. On paper, (democratic) governments are "one person, one vote" and a corporation is "one dollar, one vote". So, on paper, I'd clearly prefer governments.

In practice, alas, corporations have learnt that sometimes it's cheaper to buy laws than to do their jobs properly.

My argument is that they use religion largely as a banner, and only in so far as it doesn't cost them too many votes. ... However, at the same time a good share of the CDU/CSU doesn't really care all that much. Don't tell me that political and power aspects didn't trump religious fanatism on that decision.

Your interpretation of their behavior is wrong (and you aren't even consistent about it). It's not the case that these parties are Christian in name but liberal at heart; rather, they are Christian at heart, but pretend to be more liberal than they are in order to be acceptable to a wider range of voters.

And apparently they are able to fool you and many others. Until a couple of decades ago, all parties other than the CDU/CSU had stronger separation of church and state in their programs (after all, it's mandated by the German constitution); now only the communists object to the status quo. The CDU/CSU have been very active and vocal in promoting Christianity at the EU level. They even invited the pope to speak in front of German parliament, and I don't see a groundswell of protest.

I must have missed a lot of memos.

Yes, we already have established that you're living in a German media and educational bubble. Here is one of the many memos you obviously missed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jul/20/genetics.europeanunion

The fact that, so far, liberal elements have been able to keep the Christian parties somewhat in check doesn't change what those parties are trying to achieve.

they vote on parties in our fucked-up Partyocracy.

Well, so we agree then: Germany just doesn't function well as a democratic society. Once you admit that, what you do about Christianity is really like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And there is no shortage of other ridiculous and irrational philosophies to replace it, many of them already tried in Germany.

Separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of democracies and it needs to be implemented in Germany. Ridiculing Christianity out of existence is at best treating one symptom, it isn't fixing the real problem.

The giant West Antarctic ice sheet has melted several times in the past, and will do so again if temperatures continue to rise, new research shows.

Such a change would raise sea levels by some five metres around the world, but scientists have struggled to predict when it might happen. The new study suggests a 5C local rise in ocean temperatures could be enough to trigger a collapse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/18/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-melt

Apparently, dropping H.264 support in Chrome was a decision taken by the Chrome Engineering team and not a decision from the top level. Youtube and Android are never going to drop support for H.264. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/jan/19/google-h264-webm-video-answers

I do not agree. First, working in a team increases human pain threshold twice.
Second, when you're a given a "stop" button, you can endure more pain and actually finish the given exercise. I cannot find the study that showed this, but can give you a short description - a control group of people were given electric shock (or other form of pain) until a certain threshold. Another group of people were going through the same exercise, but were given a button that could make the pain stop right away.
The group that did not have the button, gave up much earlier than the group that had that button. The latter group actually went through the end of the exercise.

So, if you're working in a group (first study above) and you're given a way out, I'd say it's much easier to endure the trip.
Thus I disagree with the parent post.

As for this study, I really think the test subjects should've been told they wouldn't be able to make it out, even if they wanted to..
This, however, could very well be the next test.

You know, that's a terrible argument. You're saying it's wrong, but you're not giving any supporting evidence. I'm assuming that you know both Green and Latin to make such a statement. The good old "I'm smarter than you, so I'm right" doesn't cut it, especially when your audience may be as smart or smarter than you.

    If virii is wrong, at least give us the translation of what virii means. In Latin, virii seems to translate to "The men of...". In Greek, it doesn't translate to anything.

    So how correct or incorrect is virii? Well, if you consider "the men of..." would seem to convey the same idea of the biblical Legion demon (my name is legion, for we are many.). If a virus is one attacker (attack vector, or soldier), many could be conveyed as a legion. That would imply many men of. We are always very comfortable anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, would it be wrong to consider multiple virus to be the men of, or the army of, or the legion of? It would seem appropriate to follow that with the name of their creator. Virii haxor? Dear god, I hope I don't give an uber-leet script kiddie any ideas. Ok kids, be good, stay in school, m'kay?

    I guess the most important thing we should remember is that language is what we've made of it. There are people who want to be linguistic purists. What are you being pure about? You've picked an arbitrary point in history, and have romanticized so much, you too believe there is to never be progress. I won't argue against the idea that many modern linguistic trends are wrong, but words adopted into common use, regardless of how badly they are spelled, or how awful they may be, they become words. Search on Google for "new words in [year]" (replace year with a number), and you'll find all kinds of interesting words that you probably believed existed "forever".

    New words in 1806 2006.

    I'm very happy that "cougar" and "tramp-stamp" became official words in 2010. Now I don't have to say "A lovely older woman with sexual interests a younger men, who has a tattoo on her lower back". "Cougar with a tramp stamp" not only has a nice ring to it, but it sounds real dirty. :)

    So... It doesn't matter if you think you know Latin, Greek, or English. If everyone else says it's right, and the use is continued, in time they will be right. I'd be willing to bet the majority of what we say now (including this message) would have been impossible to decipher based on linguistic standards even a few hundred years ago. Don't even consider looking back more than about 450 years, "Modern English" didn't even exist.

There's no "story".

From the "question":

So Google can't retaliate against aggressors such as Oracle.

There's the link to the story.

You forgot to link to a gold for bread video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/feb/11/zimbabwe-gold-panning-starvation-food

It simply was in the news, after OECD reports. Very quick Google search (I'm sure you can easily find more; and Wiki article "Social mobility" doesn't look bad either) gives:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8162616.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

(now we can start guessing the reasons why it apparently(?) went unnoticed in the US)

Surely you don't look at 9/11 as an isolated event? (Iran, for one, being part of the general background too)

I didn't claim they were the only group to get backing. But at the least - reports of...inconsistencies (considering them, it is pretty damn close to backing primarily this one group) were ignored.

But regarding more directly "...is responsible for ...everyone that died in Afghanistan and Pakistan in military actions since 9-10-01" and "I didn't say anything about pre 9-10-01" - of course you did. Surely you must realize how the course of action was set before that date? That perhaps (regarding further link) the date was mostly set & some forces in place?

after an 18-month battle with cancer, which he had tried to treat with a homeopathic diet before finally agreeing to undergo surgery and hand over temporary control of Apple to someone else."

I guess you were just too lazy to look things up and still wanted to disagree.

It has never been proven that Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuges where damaged by Stuxnet. The Iranians deny it. I wouldn't rely on the NYT for information about such topics. It might well be a propaganda spin.

That's funny, because the president of Iran admitted it. He said

Ahmadinejad admitted the worm had affected Iran's uranium enrichment. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," the president said. "They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that, and today they are not able [to do that] anymore."

That means very little, other than that you probably shouldn't rely on an Iranian news source for actual news about Iran.

The clear point the article above is trying to make is that Microsoft have basically nothing at all to do with Nevada, but have set up some shell office there simply to avoid paying tax to Washington State (which is where most of there software development is actually done). Seems wrong doesn't it? They get to use all the public infrastructure paid for by Washington State taxpayers but they themselves feel like they shouldn't have to contribute...

Your point is well made.

However, the question remains as to whether the US and Isreal, (not to mention the Saudis) were already engaged in military action (covertly), and about to be engaged overtly.

Perhaps there was already military action, just short of lethal weaponry?

The Guardian has a story that suggests there may have already been an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities by this time had it not been for the success of Stuxnet, as well as targeted assassinations of key scientists.

Add to this the Iranian's claim to have shot down more than one US Navy UAV, and various reports (never proven) of special forces missions, and you might be on firm ground to suggest that there is already military involvement.

So while in this case, as you point out, the British researchers' opinions look false on their face, perhaps they are simply working on a different definition of "Military Involvement".

Here's a recent example. For some dodgy reason Vodafone had their tax bill reduced by £6billion, which happens to be the amount local government spending was cut by.

(Obviously the two aren't directly related, but it made a good headline.)

'What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures. I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion. I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also. Once you become part of senior management, and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy ... Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy.'

Assange is now talking: he is explaining how Julius Baer, Elmer's former bank, tried to use a US court in 2008 to take down the WikiLeaks.org domain. He said it was then WikiLeaks realised that the techniques it had developed to deal with Chinese censorship would be needed for operating in western countries too.

The bank lost their injunction on first ammendment (freedom of speech) grounds with WikiLeaks supported in the case by US campaigners and media organisations, Assange tells the conference. He compares this to what he calls the "McCarthyist" state of play today.

Karma's a bitch ...

how many of those look legal to you?

You can't make an assumption of a files copyright status simply by looking at the filename or even the content. The songwriter Edwin Collins is often prevented from sharing his own music because of a belief that it MUST be a big companies "property".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/06/edwyn-collins-sharing-music

What if I create a movie/song/ebook/document and want to share it but the filename makes it look "illegal"?

Surely the assumption must be innocent until proven guilty?

Here's the real thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-adjustable-glasses-josh-silver

Chill out technofreaks! It's probably much more ground breaking if it doesn't include electricity.

Maybe the paper is a troll, like Mobile phone radiation linked to people jumping to conclusions.

> No, I did-- and assange isnt "this sort of thing", as he wasnt selling nuclear secrets

Also, the spy swap meant that we got something for letting them off the hook. Who, exactly, would Assange get swapped with?

You've never even tried to rebut the fact that it's an offense for which one can be executed, you've merely pointed out that they don't usually seek it.

Don't get me wrong, though. If they have to take it off the table to have him extradited, they will. But not before then.

> None of them citizens, not once their citizenship has been established.

You mean because they made one of them renounce his citizenship?

The fact that you know all this and are arguing anyhow doesn't exactly repair your credibility, you know. I'd say it's a bit worse than grabbing the wrong link out of a set.

Interestingly, there are wikileaks connections even there.

> Political support....from someone who isnt holding any office whatsoever right now? One or two people dont "much political support" make.

Would you prefer the quotes from the justice department mentioning that they have a task force working on this? Or how about the fact that there's an active investigation, as evidenced by the subpoenas to Twitter?

No, that doesn't mean they will execute him, but it does mean that there are people who'd like to. You won't find many out-and-out calls for assassination, but you will find plenty who wouldn't mind trying him in a death penalty case.

> If you are saying that crazy people will do crazy things, then I agree; but I dont get what that has to do with Assange, especially as he is in custody at the moment. Hes not likely to be randomly shot by some crazy person.

Right now? Probably not. If he's let free? That changes things.

This one is a start. There are some links you can follow from there as well.

Checking facebook is neither an unreasonable search nor a seizure. It is publicly available information.

Perhaps the question is not 'are they' but really 'should they'?

I know the article linked below about an FBI tip off via Facebook was likely done by a member of the public and not FBI search spiders. Still if snooping could prevent this sort of thing, should they?
I expect any response to this question will be a very resounding 'NO' but I feel its a question that needs asked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/16/fbi-gun-scare-merseyside-school

I'm not saying he's a nice guy or perfect - far from it.

I'm thinking "about 180 degrees from it" myself.

But the fact remains that he got a far larger share of the vote than most western leaders

Sure. What percentage did the current President of China win by again? What percentage did Saddam get in his final "election"? Rigged elections are meaningless.

and extremely popular with most of the population

Again, I'm reminded of all the "vocal supporters" of other dictatorial regimes who are only "vocal" because they're afraid of being "disappeared" if someone hears them talking bad about Mr. Dictator-For-Life.

has ploughed money into education and healthcare, and massively improved the lives of the poor

Say what again?

Again, the US is on dodgy ground to criticise, with elections of presidents on less than half the votes with results determined by dodgy courts

I take it you have never studied how the US constitution and election system, in particularly the Electoral College in which the vote is not a "national popular vote" but 50 separate elections apportioning the votes of 538 representatives to the national ballot.

detention without trial in Cuba

Sigh. And you seemed so rational prior to this.

the ever-widening poverty gap

No, most of us agree this is a problem.

denial of healthcare to the poor

All you have to do to have healthcare in the US is to show up to a hospital. The fact is, "health care access" is not an issue: "health insurance", which helps one pay for it, is what is being roundly discussed.

Neither system is perfect, but it seems that Chavez is at least helping the poor rather than the rich

With due respect, if you honestly think this, you need to get your head out of the sand and take a better look at conditions in Venezuela.

And he's not starting wars responsible for the deaths of thousands

No, he's just busy murdering thousands of the citizens in his own country. As for the rest of your assertions, they're offtopic and can be discussed at another time.

If you like someone who murders people, regularly steals from the government to enrich himself, sets up a paradise for criminals, maintains his rule through fear and oppression, and just made himself supreme dictator for life and you'll be shot if you say otherwise, be my guest.

Just don't be surprised if I tend to disagree with you.

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her. According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing. When he was later interviewed by police in Stockholm, Assange agreed that he had had sex with Miss A but said he did not tear the condom, and that he was not aware that it had been torn. He told police that he had continued to sleep in Miss A's bed for the following week and she had never mentioned a torn condom.

On Wednesday 18 August, according to police records, Miss A told Harold and a friend that Assange would not leave her flat and was sleeping in her bed, although she was not having sex with him and he spent most of the night sitting with his computer. Harold told police he had asked Assange why he was refusing to leave the flat and that Assange had said he was very surprised, because Miss A had not asked him to leave. Miss A says she spent Wednesday night on a mattress and then moved to a friend's flat so she did not have to be near him. She told police that Assange had continued to make sexual advances to her every day after they slept together and on Wednesday 18 August had approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her.

The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom". Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."

More here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden

In related news, the Guardian has in-depth coverage of his extradition hearing, including a list of legal arguments he's making and how the death threats he's received from US politicians are particularly worrying in light of the shooting in Arizona. Also, the right-wing blogger behind JulianAssangeMustDie.com has been exposed. The domain was registered by Melissa Clouthier.

Anybody with sufficient technical knowledge has been saying this all along. The other concern from anybody with non-infantile understanding of the issues is that blocking will be abused to cover any content deemed problematic to governments of EU member states.

There are some questionable propenents of such censorship. Presumably their zeal for social conservatism blinds them to the inevitable calls for censoring religious texts once a system is in place.

For example most Australians are completely unaware of Australia complacency in the farce that is the "Copenhagen accord" on climate change as exposed by Wikileaks

Quite off-topic - but I don't see how that link matches up with anything in the paragraph you've written. The article at that link is about the bullying and spying tactics that the US were engaged in to try and push through the Copenhagen accord. There isn't actually a single mention of the Aussies anywhere in it?!

Apart from being a rich state within a rich country: Do they deserve donation money - or is this a classic case of reap what you sow - privatizing profits and socializing losses? Australia and especially conservative Queenslanders are amongst the staunchest climate change denialists out there (from link: "There's been a big swing back towards climate change denialists..."). Further, Queensland is a massive coal exporter - and more than happy to fuel dirty-coal burning both in Australia or at export sites the world over, all to make a quick buck. The costs of this flood will be minuscule compared to the Queensland coal industries profits:

In 2009, the [Queensland] state’s 52 coal mines produced a record 195 million tonnes of coal, generating $33.2 billion in export revenue. Queensland is a major player in the international coal market, exporting 168 Mt of coal in 2009 that accounted for 20% of the global trade. The industry generated $3.22 billion in coal royalties, accounting for 9% of the total income of the Queensland Government for the 2008-09 financial year.

Australian media is divided up amongst a few powerful players (Murdoch included) that don't want any meaningful public debate of climate change. For example most Australians are completely unaware of Australia complacency in the farce that is the "Copenhagen accord" on climate change as exposed by Wikileaks

So you care nothing about these people who have died (thankfully only a few)? And those who've gone missing due to this catastrophic flooding simply because a majority of them do not hold the same view as you do towards climate change? Put aside your political agenda/views and show some sympathy for those amidst tragedy. You sir and the climate change alarmists like you are the very reason I'm very skeptical of man-made climate change.

Apart from being a rich state within a rich country: Do they deserve donation money - or is this a classic case of reap what you sow - privatizing profits and socializing losses? Australia and especially conservative Queenslanders are amongst the staunchest climate change denialists out there (from link: "There's been a big swing back towards climate change denialists..."). Further, Queensland is a massive coal exporter - and more than happy to fuel dirty-coal burning both in Australia or at export sites the world over, all to make a quick buck. The costs of this flood will be minuscule compared to the Queensland coal industries profits:

In 2009, the [Queensland] state’s 52 coal mines produced a record 195 million tonnes of coal, generating $33.2 billion in export revenue. Queensland is a major player in the international coal market, exporting 168 Mt of coal in 2009 that accounted for 20% of the global trade. The industry generated $3.22 billion in coal royalties, accounting for 9% of the total income of the Queensland Government for the 2008-09 financial year.

Australian media is divided up amongst a few powerful players (Murdoch included) that don't want any meaningful public debate of climate change. For example most Australians are completely unaware of Australia complacency in the farce that is the "Copenhagen accord" on climate change as exposed by Wikileaks

Yeah but don't let any of that get in the way of those who like a good old nationalistic rant about how evil BP is whilst they turn a blind eye to the much larger environmental and human tragedies caused by US chemical firms in India, or US oil companies in Africa.

Honestly, it's pointless trying to argue about how sharing the blame is the right thing to many Americans, you get back simplistic arguments about how BP is the owner of the well so take responsibility, but that conveniently ignores the fact BP only owned 75% of the well, the final 25% is owned by companies like the US oil company Anadarko, and the Japanese firm Mitsui. It's like these people are just too mentally inept to cope with the concept of multiple groupings being to blame, and anything other than a single target just fries their brains. It's as ignorant as the "all muslims are terrorists" mindset that completely ignores the fact that there's ~1.3 billion muslims in the world, and I'm pretty sure most of them aren't in fact terrorists.

There are comments about how BP should be punished for the screw up to ensure it doesn't happen again, and that's fine to an extent, they should be punished for THEIR part of the screw up, but those arguing punishment should be harsh to deter it happening again whilst attacking BP and just BP seem to be missing the point that by punishing just BP harshly as they wish and ignoring all the other groups who deserve blame the message they're actually sending is "you can get away with sloppy, dangerous work, as long as you hide it from the people paying you".

The fact is ALL companies involved and the government departments involved need to be punished, but similarly a bit of reflection is also needed from the American people in terms of the fact they use ~20 billion barrels of oil a day and the next biggest consumer of oil, China, only uses ~7 bbl, despite of course China have over 4 times the population. The US' over dependence on cheap oil is just another reason why such risky drilling is done in the first place. It's also why about 3,000 of your sons and daughters were killed in Iraq too.

The simplistic mindset of "it's all BP's fault" is so utterly pathetic and ignorant that anyone spouting that idea is almost certainly incapable of objective rational thought. There's simply no objective metric whatsoever by which BP is the only entity who deserves blame for the disaster.

Perhaps one of the funniest parts about it all though, is the fact that after all the anti-British sentiment from many members of the American public all the way up to and including Obama himself, it's actually now British North Sea oil safety standards that the US Gulf oil spill report has recommended America follows:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jan/11/bp-gulf-oil-spill-final-report

I suspect you have not put any thought into your reply but I will provide you the courtesy of a response in the event that you have and just did not convey your thoughts properly.
I think you need to look at a map of the world, and locate Somalia and that region, and then look at where Venezuela is, and where the US is.
The world is not just Somalia, there are other areas that have piracy happening (google straits of Malacca and piracy for example) hence a reference to Venezuela and U.S. - also note the "in all seriousness" after the comments - that implies something....
When they have the option of accepting ships with small arms on board, or simply not being able to participate in Trade, they will allow the ships with weapons to dock. As for smuggling, you simply require an inventory and a weapons locker, which is checked when entering and leaving the port to make sure no weapons have been removed or added.
You are not serious are you? You seem to be interpreting the intransigence will be from third world countries - most objections will come from major powers that are worried about opening an avenue for arming insurgents
I do not believe small arms will solve the problem - for example. As for inventory, we are not talking about PDW stuff, a cargo ship is large, slow, and generally an easy target so requires a bit more than one machine gun (a browning automatic I believe is about 15K - @25K... bullets not included).
There are only a couple of 'hot spots' where this is even a problem. And I can buy a LOT of weapons and ammo for a million bucks, so we would actually have less out of pocket expense. A couple grand per vessel would buy enough small arms to repel an attack.
Please feel free to let the shipping companies know how you can fix their piracy problems with a "couple grand per vessel".
But seriously these guys are attacking people of all flags, not just Western ships, so making any kind of broad statement about the morals of those being attacked is pretty dumb.
I was talking about the human race, not just "Western" hence the term "collectively".

Please feel free to remove your AC mask and provide details of what you mean by "small arms" and any corroborating links indicating "small arms" ("a couple grand per vessel") could fix the piracy issue.
I am not against arming ships, I did mention that - unlike you, I do not believe "a couple grand per vessel" will fix the issue. The U.S. Navy is patrolling off Somalia, the Australian Navy is, Belgium is, the UK is... the piracy has not slowed by much.

Hey cold_fjord,

Are you white? Born and raised in the USA? Is there no chance whatsoever that you're involved with this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/giffords-shooting-political-violence-polarised

Jared Loughner, the suspect in Saturday's shooting spree in Arizona, was not working alone. True, the rampage apparently emerged from his confused, unstable and troubled mind.

Officials think he was not working alone - who knows, you could be that missing conspirator. Maybe just in case, you should be jailed and tortured until you admit to it. And even though they may find that he *was* working alone, better safe than sorry, right?

I mean, why not? It's not like you're being a citizen should afford you any special rights. It's for the safety of our children, after all.

I wonder when such investigations will occur in areas where Americans aren't affected? How is the behaviour of companies such as Exxon in the Niger delta being tracked, oh wait it isn't. Still that doesn't matter, because it doesn't affect fat American business men!

That's just silly. If a foreign corporation is allowed to do business in your country, it is your government that should perform due diligence and make sure that said corporation is obeying local regulations. If it doesn't, then it should take appropriate action, whatever that might be.

I wonder when such investigations will occur in areas where Americans aren't affected? How is the behaviour of companies such as Exxon in the Niger delta being tracked, oh wait it isn't. Still that doesn't matter, because it doesn't affect fat American business men!

Looks like they are requesting personal data of an Icelandic Member of Parliament

I see a minor diplomatic incident on the horizon.

Birgitta Jonsdottir has quite the attitude and sounds rather full of herself. "Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?" "It is completely unacceptable for the US justice department to flex its muscles like this."

Maybe she should take a moment to reflect that the government of the United States considers it completely unacceptable for a member of the government of a friendly-aligned foreign nation to associate with and support an organization that is releasing improperly obtained secret documents that are the property of the government of the United States.

And she's seriously demanding a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador? I wonder if she's arrogant enough and stupid enough to go meet him inside the U.S. embassy?

Seeing as she is used to the weather in Iceland how do you think she'd fare in a warmer climate? Somewhere like Guantanamo Bay for instance?

Looks like they are requesting personal data of an Icelandic Member of Parliment
I see a minor diplomatic incident on the horizon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

This is a nice, recent attempt to answer that question.

Being beaten by South Korea is nothing to be ashamed of, but being beaten across all three categories by Poland has got to be embarassing.

As for attempts worldwide to change school systems, the talk in the UK at least is in trying to imitate the Swedes and the Norwegians.

Yes, I'm so very thankful... *sigh*

Are they looking at different photos than what were published? The side-view photo certainly doesn't appear to be a high-speed test. Hard to tell with all the grain, but I would expect some blurring of the background and/or jet exhaust if it was traveling at high speed, but you see neither in those two photos. For all I can tell it could be a mockup sitting still on the tarmac. Not to say the Chinese haven't conducted high-speed tests of it, I just disagree with the claim that these photos show any evidence of it.

Other Photos seem to have the same issues - that might be some heat waving in the Guardian photo, but tough to tell.

Claiming that this could be a prototype fighter that challenges the F-22 based on these photos is just ridiculous, and one would think a writer for Jane's would know better. It is quite possible, as China has really made no secret of the fact that they are pursuing aviation technology very aggressively (and I do seem to recall reports of large portions of engineering data for the F-22 being stolen a while back. My mistake - apparently it was the F-35), and no doubt they are working on bringing their high-tech fabrication technology up to speed. But there is a very big jump between putting together a stealthy-looking mockup (all that can really be determined from the photos) and producing an effective combat system, from airframe to FCS to weapons systems and avionics. Like I said, I don't doubt that this is their goal, and I don't doubt that they will be fully capable of it within a relatively short time, but a couple of photos really doesn't prove (or even really suggest) much of anything.

Monte Carlo

Yes, it's just a variant of Monte Carlo, but don't knock it. Recent programs implementing the algorithm have improved their handicaps by up to 5 stones, which is huge. The top bots at the KGS Go server are now ranked up to 4 dan (like a good amateur player) in games against humans.

You may want to read this short article in the Guardian about these recent improvements in the MoGo go bot. In October 2009 (6 months after this article appeared) a version of MoGo finally beat a top-ranking (9 dan) professional in an even game on a 9x9 board.

The Japanese versus Chinese "rules" give very different endgames, but the practice is to simply ignore that and pretend there is no problem.

That's because it would destroy the harmony of the game if you start discussing all the problems with the rules.

I think that if they knowingly take off *all* editorial, but have full log retention of uploads, and fully comply with law enforcement, then they're fine.

Sure they are. Google executives convicted in Italy over abuse video

"Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher."

[Russell:] "The honesty and rigour of CRU as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."

Source (emphasis mine). The worst behaviour Russell was able to substantiate was that the Climatologists weren't very enthusiastic about FOI requests. Oooooooh, big deal! Some conspiracy!