Slashdot Mirror

NFL football is more like a blend of chess and raw violence.

No, chess boxing is more like blend of chess and raw violence.

Federally funded Nevada geothermal plant sponsored by Harry Reid triggers massive earthquakes in San Francisco and causes the giant Yellowstone caldera in Wyoming to rise another 50 ft.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/15/swiss-geothermal-power-earthquakes-basel

And I concede the point again.

No, you continue to ignore it.

And you still have no data proving that there were indeed exploits in the wild.

I didn't claim that there are exploits in the wild, only that systems were vulnerable, particularly to skilled adversaries who are likely to find exploits on their own.

You need that data to prove that the disclosure was not damanging.

Well, I didn't make the claim.

The only justification for Ormandy's actions is proof-positive that there are exploits in the wild.

Matter of opinion. It depends on how big of a threat you consider targeted stealth attacks to be compared to automated attacks against known vulnerabilities.

You need to provide that proof, or concede that your stance is incorrect.

Proof of what? That vulnerabilities have been exploited within overly long "known issue to patch" period? Here's a recent one. Proof that it had definitely been exploited before? I didn't make the claim and didn't base my stance on it.

I ask you again -- are you done playing word games?

Are you done unduly placing the burden of proof onto everyone who disagrees with you?

Nope! A crime must take place within US jurisdiction for US to be able to have someone extradited.

O RLY? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/20/computer-hacker-gary-mckinnon-extradition-on-hold

It reported there had been an internet image showing a gun-toting man with a hand-written message reading: "Tomorrow last day of school. We gonna fuck up the bullies and leave this world 11/06/2010."

Another message said: "Tested it at firing range, we have two shotguns as well, it's locked in but tomorrow I have a key. St Aelred's Catholic Technology College, England, watch BBC."

If anything like that is posted publicly I would hope more than just the FBI would report it to the authorities.

Not to mention possession of offensive vegetables

I guess someone did the math on paid tax income vs the risk of more unknown, unregulated, western influenced groups waiting for the next election.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa showed what happens when groups can form.
Best to get them integrated with the state or made illegal.

Irrelevantist, more than anti. And I cringed (incorrectly - see later) mostly because of what that said about the scientist who named it (again, incorrectly). But that's neither here nor there, you see. Courtesy of a poster further down this thread, it turns out that Leon Lederman originally called it the "goddamn particle" (presumably because of how difficult it was to look for). His editor changed it to the "god particle" for obvious reasons. [source]

Now that I think about it though, it wasn't such a bad name and I shouldn't have cringed at it. After all, in the realm of science, the concept of god has been a convenient placeholder for everything that is (as yet) unknown, regardless of how people actually view it. It is the dark area on our map - "here be dragons". If and when it is actually observed of course, we should probably switch back to its proper name by honoring its postulator [sic?].

It is of course amusing when physicists, who are renowned for their underhanded sense of humor, bestow strange labels upon their creations that - a few iterations of Chinese Whispers later - are treated dead seriously.

Coming back to my cringe, wouldn't one cringe if people called ${your favorite prophet} "the atomic messiah"? It's a simple matter of "what sounds right" and in that respect, is a personal matter.

More seriously though, it is a horrible idea to label entirely new phenomena/concepts with old names. This is why labeling effects with it's creator's name is much more than just an homage - it prevents old concepts from infecting new ones with their (sometimes obsolete) baggage. Laypersons (and even scientists) are fucked over by this kind of tomfoolery. Words have meaning, and when used in a half-assed way, wreak cognitive havoc. The science writer John Gribbin once wrote that after the quantum mechanical nature of particles was confirmed, the electron should have been renamed (to a "slithy tove" was his tongue-in-cheek suggestion) to get over the "particle-ness" inherent in the "electron" appellation. My irritation arises from that deeper issue. The god stuff is a minor annoyance at this point, not worth the trouble.

Mark my words, there will be at least one "cult of the Higgs" that will worship this particle merely because of the popular name. I haven't decided yet if that's a bad thing or just plain awesome =]

not the portentious/pretentious "God Particle".

Leon Lederman called it The Goddamn Particle because finding it---or them---is so vexatious.

His editor changed the title of the book, removing the -damn, to make it more commercially successful.

quoth Peter Higgs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern

Shall y'all moderate this "Informative" or "Funny"?

Unless you're muslim, those fuckers do it all the time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/22/south-park-censored-fatwa-muhammad
There is one example with 1.0 seconds of google, I will leave it as an exercise for karma whores to find other notable examples.

What's killing Apple's Time Capsules after 18 months?

No kidding.

The new Mac Mini is about the same size as Apple's Time Machine which also has an internal power supply and a well-earned reputation for suffering heat-induced death after an average of about 18 months http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/nov/04/apple-time-capsule-failures-early

You might be joking but... 'Oral sex' definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools

It's well known that great mineral wealth is highly correlated with corruption in government (esp. in 3rd-world countries). This is terrible news for the people of Afghanistan -- foreign armies and powers now have even more reason to be permanently in the country, extracting this wealth for their benefit, and poisoning poor residents with the waste products.

Graph of GDP/Capita-corruption correlation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3758798.stm

"In these countries, public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3758798.stm

"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention... This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta. The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

Suicide is the main cause of death among young adults in China, the state media said yesterday in a report that highlights the growing pressures to succeed in love, work and education in one of the world's fastest changing societies.

Here's one source -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data

And while I think of it

EUROSTAT EU statistics - http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/

Just to chip in with the perspective of someone who has been dealing in health care data for the past several years: Most of the analyses of this open data will be done by people and groups with an agenda. Which will be good because they'll be motivated to actually do the analyses, and will be bad because their analyses will be at risk of intended and unintended bias in practice and reporting. Doing good data analysis is hard, as the health care field has learned to its cost. See, eg, Gary Taubes on epidemiology, PLoS Medicine on writing and reporting practices in pharma, Ioannidis on "Why most published research findings are false." (Google the title). Results of open data analysis may be released on the Internet with minimal review or quality control, and misinformation has a prodigious ability to spread and persist. Even those who don't feel qualified to critique the analysis itself can still insist that analysts are open about their intentions and disclose potential conflicts of interest. Those able to do a technical critique should insist that we are told enough about the methods to reproduce the analysis in full.

Aside from the fact that the Army had no reason whatever to believe that the "unarmed civilians" featured in "Collateral Murder" were "unarmed", and the fact that he skipped out on a planned appearance at a panel today in Las Vegas, NV...

In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.

When an individual, on his or her own, decides that some secret information should be leaked -- no matter the reason -- they subvert that process. It is nowhere near akin to leaking sensitive information from totalitarian or repressive regimes, or even from corporate entities.

Some might assert that information is overclassified, or classified such as to hide wrongdoing or illegal or questionably behavior. Fine, but:

1. You don't get to make that determination yourself. However...

2. ...if you do, this kind of decision is a moral/ethical one which must necessarily be tempered with consequences. I.e., if, in a free and democratic society, you really believe that a piece of classified information should be released, and you're going to unilaterally decide to do release it because of your own personal beliefs or convictions, you should be willing to pay your society's consequences for it.

People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences (unless they stupidly out themselves, as Manning did). This creates an unhealthy environment for any kind of legitimately protected or sensitive information -- indeed, the rule of law -- in a democratic society.

Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.

Just about the only thing WikiLeaks believes should be protected from leaking is negative information about WikiLeaks itself.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I hope for intelligent responses to this post that actually acknowledge the need for some information to be protected, and for processes to protect that information, of which the government is the steward. Or, for any reasonable alternative other than any and all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal.

(flame retardant suit on)
(flaming retard resistant suit on)

Hear me out. For nontechnical or even somewhat technical users, "Linux" has been represented as a monolithic entity, with different distributions of Linux seen as badge-engineering at most. It's certainly true that under the hood, Linux has forked dramatically... and in the end, Linux is just the kernel. However, when only a very small number of people (compared to the pool of computer users in general) understand what that really means, and what you have to do differently depending upon your Linux distro, there's a problem. Mass adoption simply cannot occur when an end user has to concern themselves with nuances like that, especially when all the outward-facing information and evangelizing presents Linux monolithically.

I assume we're all familiar with Emo Phillips' routine on religious sectarianism. Linux distros are like that (sometimes right up to the punchline). It's intimidating enough as an end user who has only used Windows to make the big step into a whole new operating system (and God help you if you're hoping to preserve your data while doing so). When the Night of a Million Zillion Distros raises its ugly head, and when you go onto the web to try to get support for a problem with your distro or an app you want to install into your shiny new Linux box... and you discover that the answers are different for the various flavors of Linux... yeah. That's a problem. And it's one which the Linux community has created for itself.

Go pick one of your non-technical friends who is running a Linux desktop of some sort (probably on a netbook). Ask her/him/it what operating system it is. "Linux!" Now ask "which distribution?" Blank stare. Okay, assume they answer correctly. Now ask "Do you know why that question matters?" and see what answer comes back.

"User-friendly" distros like Ubuntu and the various flavors of netbook-optimized Linux are easy enough to install. It's three months down the road when you're wrestling with trying to get an app that works fine on Fedora to work on Debian that the real depth of the problem becomes apparent. "It shouldn't be this way!" True. And being told that by following advice on manual installs on various websites they have transformed their system from Ubuntu into some weird nondiagnosable hybrid (and therefore unsupportable) is only going to add to the frustration. Nontechnical users cannot administer their own systems, technical users cannot diagnose a problem without administrative access to that individual system, and getting help requires a technical buy-in which a non-technical user does not have the time, inclination or (to be bluntly honest, since we all have different gifts but not all of us have a computer-facing gift) ability to master.

"But it's still all Linux!" Well... no. Not really, at a user-level. And that's the problem. We either label it all as Linux (incorrectly) and have the situation we have right now with unsupportability and deep confusion, or we fragment the "brand" and suddenly we have dozens of little islands, none of which is large enough to warrant the attentions of major software providers or of end users who want their efforts in learning to be portable.

And worst of all, "open source" has been improperly conflated with "free", and by people who should have known better. The two are not the same! "Why are you charging me for open source software?" That's a long conversation, and the conversation is usually cut short with "I don't have time for this. It's more trouble than it's worth, and I shouldn't have to consult an intellectual property lawyer to select a software package." Then they go off to Microsoft or Oracle or some other commercial provider which has an up-front price list, boilerplate licenses, and a huge community of people who know how to use and maintain their s

The PcPro number are stupid and dumb. They assume that all 26 million customers are on 3G data plans which is fucking nonsense.

The Guardian has more realistic numbers, which judging by the nerd rage in comments above, might make Slashdot explode.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/11/mobile-data-unlimited-end

Consider: This is the UK mobile network, so NO tax dollars spent on infrastructure.

So the FBI cut Joran Van der Sloot some slack, but this is worth pursuing?

The guy would rather go to jail in the UK then one of your rape prisons for decades, what a surprise!

He may find the UK prison no safer:

British jails are failing to investigate serious allegations of male rape, according to the prisons ombudsman.

Stephen Shaw's concerns, which are expressed in a report into the alleged rape of a prisoner who had Asperger's syndrome and learning difficulties, are likely to place a new focus on a subject that is hardly ever discussed within the prison system.

His comments are made in an official report into the case of "Mark", a 21-year-old man with Asperger's syndrome, learning difficulties and a history of self-harm, who was remanded to Altcourse prison in Liverpool in 2007. It was recommended that Mark, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, be remanded into a psychiatric unit, but there were no places available.

Despite his vulnerable nature, he was placed on a wing with sex offenders and was allegedly raped by a cellmate who had attempted to assault him several weeks earlier. He attempted to throw himself off a prison landing shortly after the alleged incident and is now in a psychiatric unit.

Files relating to the case have gone missing, making the job of investigating the rape allegation an almost impossible task. Merseyside Police attempted a scientific examination after the incident but, according to Jane, her son's mattress and clothes were swapped within hours of the alleged assault having taken place.

Mark's case has been pursued by the Howard League which, following a two-year battle, believes it has won vital recognition of the issue from the ombudsman.

Experts say it is likely that incidents of rape in British prisons are heavily under-reported. According to figures released by the government in response to parliamentary questions, there were 119 allegations of sexual assault in prison in 2008, but only 33 were subject to a PSO1300 investigation.

"There are clear reasons why rape and sexual assault would go unreported in prison," [the assistant director of the Howard League] said. "Not only will it be difficult to prove in many instances, but telling a member of staff that you have been raped would see prisoners ostracised and vulnerable to bullying. We believe the 119 recorded incidents of sexual assault in prison are likely to be a serious underestimation of the problem. In that context, the fact that only 33 internal investigations were then commissioned seems a pitiful response from the authorities."

'My son was raped in jail - the crime was ignored' [May 2, 2010]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Stay clear of failbook.

1. Excepting oil, the two richest countries in terms of natural resources are the United States and Russia. The United States infrastructure is also vast and the US has incredible agricultural assets.

2. The US military is the most powerful, most fighter aircraft, most airlift tonnage at once, most bombers, most aircraft carriers, most guided missile destroyers, most cruisers, most special forces units, most ballistic missile submarines, most attack submarines, largest amphibious warfare group

Because of the unified nature of the US military (one giant military, each branch having its own role), the US military is much more efficient than say the combined national forces of the EU.

As for "no war ever solved anything", thats a load. Couple quick ones - wars decided who would rule the central and western United States, war ended slavery in the United States, war ended the systematic execution of European Jews, war ended the Japanese enslavement of Korea, war unified Germany in the 19th century.

As a measure of the GDP of the United States, the US military isn't that "expensive".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/01/information-is-beautiful-military-spending

Part of this is due to the public perception of McKinnon being that he's a "bumbling nerd", the asperger's thing merely being seen as medical confirmation.

But there's other things going on here. It's not at all about him facing some appropriate punishment, all his supporters simply want that to be decided and carried out in the UK.

His claims that he practically wandered in, left a few embarrassing messages and that's about it is widely believed. The accusations of damages are thought to be more the cost of the US putting in place security which needed to have been there anyway. The US justice system does not seem to be very highly regarded by Americans, and even allowing for the normal distrust of any foreign justice system, internationally the opinion is even lower. (Even if it is just due to the anomalies that get reported - UK papers tend to print articles about ridiculously lenient UK sentences, American media tends to report the ridiculously harsh ones, whatever, this is an observation of perception, I'm not claiming that is or isn't a fair assessment of reality).

This is amply reinforced by the US's mishandling of the situation. It seems attorneys do not do diplomacy, you say 2-4 years, but US authorities said life and that some want to see him "fry" for "the biggest computer hack of all time". Charging him as a cyber-terrorist very likely didn't help, internationally (and certainly here on /.) there's not a lot of trust for the US when the T-word comes up. The perception is that the US are all fired up up to beat up on him as hard as they possibly can because they're embarrassed and he's to be made an example of. This is fundamentally opposite to the UK sentiment towards justice.

On to domestic UK issues, there was the resentment over the one-sided (at least on paper) extradition treaty with the US. Note also when the act was committed there was no extradition treaty covering this, so the game has changed after the event, and it's widely believed that the US deliberately delayed action to take advantage of this, which as the saying goes, simply isn't cricket. There is also, especially at the time, annoyance at other countries' lack of extraditing people to the UK (ironically, it seems in practice the US has actually been throwing them over to us with vigour).

Then there's the UK government mishandling. Like the way the appeal was arrogantly and off-handedly thrown out by the disliked then-Home Secretary Jacquie Smith. This gave the papers an opportunity to have a go at her and the tired Labour government widely felt to be all too autocratic.

It's now considered a test of the new government's principles, its thumb on the pulse and its willingness to stand up to the US.

I'm not sure how much of this is the doings of his lawyer's PR efforts, but time and again the case has being striking a nerve on numerous issues and he's been on the front pages for years now. It's got to the point that if he does get extradited despite that level of support it's definitely going to seem like something is very wrong somewhere.

Wow... simply wow... Ixtoc 1 would beg to differ. That was in 160 feet of water and it took them 9 months to cap it. I know you wanna blame the liberal environmentalists but that is simply not the reason oil is being moved offshore. You ever wonder why the current rig we are dealing with is licensed in a foreign country? The Marshal Islands is home-base for the revenue which is conveniently not taxed.

Given that Ixtoc 1 happened 30 years ago and they are using the same exact techniques to deal with it I have zero faith that it would have been resolved by now if this spill were in 500 feet or less of water.

It's amazing the depths of rationalization going on in BPs favor. They have a history of bad behavior and somehow you come to the conclusion that it's the environmentalists forcing them to take risks? Just four years ago BP was shown to be negligent in many of the same ways. It appears little has changed from what should have been a dramatic wake-up call. Regulations for offshore drilling exist for a reason and it's not to make drilling near shore expensive.

However - engineers engineer things to a spec. They won't build a road with sight-lines and curves for cars moving at 60mph if notified that the project will be signed for 40mph.

Several years ago in West London a scheme was tried on several roads where white lines were stripped from the tarmac and other roadway features drivers would normally use to align themselves in a lne were toned-down or removed, leaving a smooth road surface where pavement was separated from carriageway by a change in surface material (smooth edge between black tarmac and grey traditional pavement-stones), no barriers marked the limit of pedestrian travel, and 'traffic islands' were removed from the centreline where they separated directional traffic

the result was a road thhat forced drivers to consider the flow of traffic ahead, clearances, the actions of pedestrians - in short forcing the sort of situational awareness that good driver training instils as a matter of course. The average speed of traffic did not significantly change but the flow improved, with a detectable reduction in contact incidents with other cars or pedestrians (walkers were generally reckoned safer as drivers could rely less on their commonsense and had to watch them instead) . I think health and safety concerns were an issue though nonetheless. Here's a contemporary news link

I wonder what their sentence will be? I hear in the addiction boot camps they use to get shock treatment [1]. So I kind of wonder what will be the punishment for this act? [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/china-electric-shock-internet-addiction

Yes, How Peter Cathcart's Uxbridge offices became the base for a coup:

"California Strategies, a US west coast PR firm, has been employed to use blogs, Twitter accounts and a multimillion pound PR and advertising budget to this end. "

"California Strategies set up a website for him – rakforthepeople.com – and a Twitter account. It placed adverts on the side of municipal buses in Washington featuring Khalid's face and the quote: "Thank you America, our people will soon be safe, secure and prosperous again". He attended Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009, took out full-page adverts in US newspapers congratulating Obama and embarked on "a friendship tour of the US"."

There you go.

(coming soon)

The Guardian newspaper have already built an interesting tool for exploring the data.

Skipping right past whether something can be "more correct" or not--I'll meet those of you who wish to discuss it on the 'inflatable hover fort' at David Mitchell's Soap Box--I felt it might be useful to add to AthanasiusKircher's comment on "sinked" as a "relatively minor historical dialect form". I agree, with the caveat that it's still useful to know, as uncommon (or, dated) usage can still be prominent. In Iowa City, Iowa, the Old Capitol Building sports a plaque just to the right of the west entrance (about halfway down the page, the 1840's plaque is partially visible behind the rightmost pillar). The building is a popular place to study for UIA students, so one afternoon I also found myself there, thought it quaint that the plaque had such a "glaring" grammatical error, then corrected myself with a dictionary later. While trying to find a picture of the plaque--in vain--I discovered that it's not difficult to find other references to that "-ed" vs. "-t" construct from the time (everything from Masonic texts to new settler's constructions). Having been born several generations too late (and not grammar's bitch for the most part), I couldn't possibly comment on the dialect's influence...but they did put it on a rather important building for the time.

Still, I'm definitely not arguing for anything other than, e.g., swim/swam/swum. "Swimmed", to me, just sounds wrong--and in support of your BS call, it would appear the BBC agrees.

This renders the traditional struggle between workers and bosses increasingly meaningless in Marxist terms, because it's no longer a struggle between a wage-earning class and a property-owning class: it's a struggle within the wage-earning class.

Those managers, at least up to a certain level, are still working class (they sell their labour in return for a wage) and we'll still need them after the revolution. The fact that they are on our side of the class divide means we need to build solidarity with them as the so called "managerial class" have the skills needed to organise large numbers of people in productive enterprise.

This split between worker and capitalist within the individual has grave implications for the idea of class consciousness.

This is a form of false conciousness and needs to be defeated through education. That's not newspeak for totalitarian brainwashing btw, I simply mean pointing out how being involved in exploitation is ultimately self defeating.

I mean, the Merrill Lynchs of the world are still doing OK even though the market is tanking. Here in the UK, the 1,000 richest people are 30% richer than last year! Small investors and small businesspeople will almost always get screwed under Capitalism.

Globalisation

Socialism can only have a world historical existence. The Bolsheviks were quite clear that their revolution would only succeed if supported by revolutions in more developed countries. This insight was written out of history by Stalin and his idea of Socialism in one country, but we know where that went - a monstrous, bureaucratic class system of another kind.

Because the whole world is now interconnected, any attempt at a revolution would have to be global. Even new attempts to form Trade Unions in disorganised industries in developing countries would, in my view, have to involve global coordination. The Flint sit-down strikes were successful because the UAW activists were able to target the factories where the car chassis were being manufactured. Those factories represented a bottleneck in the production process and so were a prime target. Any attempt to unionise the global car industry today would have to involve simultaneous action at several factories around the globe. The process of doing that is the process that will build international working class solidarity of the kind needed to eventually overthrow Capitalism.

Financialisation.

This, to me, shows how useless modern Capitalism has become. Money for billionaires is, in the words of Bernie Ecclestone, a way of keeping score. This "financialisation" is just a form of gambling and like any casino, the house always wins.

If Marxist economics is a science, it must learn from its mistakes. To fight exploitation with 19th century economics would be as inappropriate as to fight cancer with 19th century biology.

I agree wholeheartedly. Engels always called Marx's ideas scientific socialism and so open, honest debate is vital to any understanding of real Socialism.

This renders the traditional struggle between workers and bosses increasingly meaningless in Marxist terms, because it's no longer a struggle between a wage-earning class and a property-owning class: it's a struggle within the wage-earning class.

Those managers, at least up to a certain level, are still working class (they sell their labour in return for a wage) and we'll still need them after the revolution. The fact that they are on our side of the class divide means we need to build solidarity with them as the so called "managerial class" have the skills needed to organise large numbers of people in productive enterprise.

This split between worker and capitalist within the individual has grave implications for the idea of class consciousness.

This is a form of false conciousness and needs to be defeated through education. That's not newspeak for totalitarian brainwashing btw, I simply mean pointing out how being involved in exploitation is ultimately self defeating.

I mean, the Merrill Lynchs of the world are still doing OK even though the market is tanking. Here in the UK, the 1,000 richest people are 30% richer than last year! Small investors and small businesspeople will almost always get screwed under Capitalism.

Globalisation

Socialism can only have a world historical existence. The Bolsheviks were quite clear that their revolution would only succeed if supported by revolutions in more developed countries. This insight was written out of history by Stalin and his idea of Socialism in one country, but we know where that went - a monstrous, bureaucratic class system of another kind.

Because the whole world is now interconnected, any attempt at a revolution would have to be global. Even new attempts to form Trade Unions in disorganised industries in developing countries would, in my view, have to involve global coordination. The Flint sit-down strikes were successful because the UAW activists were able to target the factories where the car chassis were being manufactured. Those factories represented a bottleneck in the production process and so were a prime target. Any attempt to unionise the global car industry today would have to involve simultaneous action at several factories around the globe. The process of doing that is the process that will build international working class solidarity of the kind needed to eventually overthrow Capitalism.

Financialisation.

This, to me, shows how useless modern Capitalism has become. Money for billionaires is, in the words of Bernie Ecclestone, a way of keeping score. This "financialisation" is just a form of gambling and like any casino, the house always wins.

If Marxist economics is a science, it must learn from its mistakes. To fight exploitation with 19th century economics would be as inappropriate as to fight cancer with 19th century biology.

I agree wholeheartedly. Engels always called Marx's ideas scientific socialism and so open, honest debate is vital to any understanding of real Socialism.

Better stats are available here: http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chinurban.pdf A little outdated, but the point remains that suicide rates vary greatly by age,

Exactly. A little less outdated: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/26/china.jonathanwatts

Suicide is the main cause of death among young adults in China, the state media said yesterday in a report that highlights the growing pressures to succeed in love, work and education in one of the world's fastest changing societies.

Increasing stress, loneliness and a lack of medical support for depression are thought to have contributed to an annual suicide toll that is estimated at 250,000 people a year. According to the China Daily, an additional 2.5 million to 3.5 million make unsuccessful attempts to kill themselves each year.

Case in point, look at the current recession? If banks do not have capital people save because the result is a recession. When people save then banks have capital again and the problem corrects itself. When product A is in short supply and too expensive then the market creates competitors that make an alternative.

That's quite an interesting example you've chosen. The roots of recession trace themselves back to the deregulation of financial sector. We have the repeal of Glass-Steagall that allowed the largest banks to underwrite the CDOs and the mortgage backed securities that caused the mess. We also have very people that derailed the world economy continuing to say how "they know better" and off balance sheet structured investments should remain off the record, even though there the very same instruments that Enron used to hide their debt. (More on Enron later.) We have the deregulation in the 80s that ushered in ARMs which caused the Savings & Loan collapse and appeared again in this banking collapse. Without oversight, we now have the financial advisors who are paid by their clients to given them advice, lying to their clients because the advisors are betting that the client will lose money on the investments.

Should we have bailed out the big banks? My initial reaction like everyone is a big "no," but the fact is that they alone account for a significant fraction of GDP. We simply can't let that evaporate. What should have been done, and still could be done, is to simply cap the size of the banks. You can't be "too big to fail," if you're not too big to start. But of course the brain trust on Wall Street and the conservative think tanks say that this would be "too much" and we should simply let these people continue to be rewarded for their expertise. But of course these are the same folks that say that by allowing the largest purchaser of prescription drugs to negotiate prices like every other purchaser, that would now be a government price control.

Enron showed us how the deregulation of the energy markets led to rampant manipulation of prices and energy supplies, most notably in California.

Even these last two months with the Deepwater Horizon and the West Virginian mine disaster, we've seen how deregulation and intentionally lax oversight has led to safety equipment not being tested, inspection reports being filled in by the inspectee.

You say that "the real world" and an introductory economics class taught you that the only way to succeed is to compete is to race to the bottom, and that regulation and safety standards cost jobs. Well the thing is, as someone that has lived in "the real world" all his life, has learned that there's this little thing called "data." We've heard these same complaints for over a hundred years, and yet whenever regulations are imposed, the economy continue to grow, sometimes even faster than before(!). History simply doesn't back this up this claim.

You claim we need "less taxes" but taxes are at the lowest rate in 50 years. FIFTY YEARS! We have less taxes, and yet the economy sucks as hard as every. So that's not the problem. You talk about "less lawsuits," but why shouldn't someone be held responsible for their actions?

You say we should race to the bottom. Well, I've been boogey man China. It's shit. You have bought into the false choice that we can either voluntarily submit to birth defects and carcinogen soups or we can have birth defects and carcinogen soups thrust upon us. That's not the way how history has taught us that economics actually work.

For all your talk about "the real world," you haven't actually examined it. You've only been paying attention to a cartoon version of it. The deregulators have consistently been spectacularly wrong.

"for all who draw the (sword) Wikipedia will die by the (sword) Wikipedia"
Matthew 26:52

  "Some girls are used in nine months or a year. An 18-year-old, sweet young thing, signs with an agency, makes five films in her first week. Five directors, five actors, five times five: she gets phone calls. A hundred movies in four months. She's not a fresh face any more. Her price slips and she stops getting phone calls. Then it's, 'Okay, will you do anal? Will you do gangbangs?' Then they're used up. They can't even get a phone call. The market forces of this industry use them up."[5] Some film studios encourage their actresses to have breast implants, and offer to pay for the procedure.[5]

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porn_actor#Female_performers

That was (like zx-15 said) Jeremy Clarkson, and it was a lie. The car never even ran out of juice. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/24/jeremy-clarkson-top-gear-tesla-electric-car

i'm surprised there are no fucking lynch mobs

Don't worry. They're on the way.

Like Nigeria. From that article,

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

.

Rape is illegal in South Africa too and those obscene statistics can speak for themselves. Perhaps porn shouldn't be the priority here?

• The missing carbon
• Graph showing ice age with 12 times more CO2 than today.
• Polar bears
• Ethanol
• Ethanol again
• Climate cultist whack job from "Whale wars" believes quote We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.
• NASA's chief on global warming.
• The IPCC get their their asses handed to them in front of Congress in 1997. A personal favorite is this quote:

  The observed warming since the late 19th Century has only been 0.5 degrees Celsius, or less than one-third of the predicted value. Critics argued, as I did before this committee, that there would have to be a dramatic reduction in the forecast of future warming in order to reconcile the facts and the hypotheses.

  By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

  Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

My links are getting old it seems. I have a folder full of them, but a lot seems to have been eradicated by the cult of climate change. Feel free to use this stuff in your next big flame war, but I think you'll find that arguing with these idiots is pointless. Your best bet is to put together a well reasoned, informative essay... then wait for a related story and top post. You may be marked troll, but it doesn't matter. People like myself who don't agree with /.s group think tend to read at troll +6 anyway. In fact, I would have never seen your response if you had not been marked troll above... anyhow, we'll mod you up if you're hit with -1 disagree mod.

One aspect that must be consider, particularly in relevance to our society, is how these feelings have changed over time. I have no statistics to back my perspective on recent changes, only my experience. Anyway, any statistics would be funded by an organization trying to support there views.

I was born in Midwest America. My extended family is Baptist. My immediate family has a Physicist and a doctor of organic chemistry.

In the past ten years, I have seen my entire family radicalize. Many members of my extended family have become extreme evangelicals and many of my immediate family have steered towards agnosticism.

What has been interesting about watching this unfold over time is the changes in how my immediate family defends the rest of our family. 10 years ago I found myself constantly defending the cultural and religious beliefs of my extended family. That has deteriorated with extremist claims that our nation is a Christian nation. I felt attacked. I felt that all those years of defending there right to their beliefs has been squashed by what is now a threat to my beliefs. I have no choice any more but to actively oppose almost anything said by the relatives I love because they want my child exposed to their religion in our schools. They want our government to over-regulate scientific advancements such as stem cell research. They even want our government to conveniently make changes to History curriculum that support their views and not necessarily History http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history. Exclusion of Thomas Jefferson because he believed in a separation of church and state and was not a Christian? Oh boy...

I have always been willing to accept my relatives affiliations with religion. I have always felt a need to defend their right and acted accordingly. I can not say the same is true for my relatives.

As a brief example: When I was in my late teens I visited my relatives and went to church with them. I was introduced to the congregation. Many very nice people approached me after, introducing themselves personally. Later, while in a smaller group, I was introduced again. But now I had to answer some questions.

First: "Where are you from?" I replied: "New York" The Group: "murmur murmur murmur"

Second: "What church do you attend?" I replied: "I don't attend church" The Group: "Murmur Murmur Murmur"

Third: "Well... What is your faith?" I replied: "I classify myself as an agnostic" The Group: "MURMUR MURMUR MURMUR!"

After that situation, I was ostricized, for the rest of the afternoon I received dirty looks or was ignored. Granted, with a few exceptions but very few exceptions. People my own age wanted nothing to do with me.

What the religious members of our larger society need to realize, is that science does not pose a threat. It may raise questions about specific items written by old men a really long time ago but it does not threaten their beliefs. And there are many people like myself that will defend their beliefs, their right to those beliefs, and the relevance of those beliefs. But with what has happened over the past 10 or so years, the moderates like myself are being radicalized out of a need to preserve their own beliefs.

Actually, part of the negotiations between the ISPs and the various rights agencies - that foundered, causing the government to introduce primary legislation as threatened - was the agencies wanting access to the DPI equipment logs already in use in ISPs for P2P throttling (i.e. sandvining), and for those not using it to have to fit it and use it for that purpose. As far as the agencies are concerned, it is the ISPs responsibility to police their network on behalf of the copyright industry. And the legislation was heavily influenced by the agencies; witness the Lords amendment for forcing ISPs to block 'infringing websites' - i.e. youtube - that was literally written by the BPI.

Where exactly did you think the agencies were going to get those logs to accuse people of infringement from? They're going to continue to use 3rd party agencies that monitor torrent streams, initially, but the legislation itself - as apart from the initial code of practise drawn up by Ofcom for the first stage which you describe - is pretty damn vague over what further technical measures can be introduced for both logging and cutting off connections, without further need to introduce primary legislation. It was only the Labour government's promise that any further discussion would occur at all in parliament, and now they're gone all we're left with is a very badly worded bit of legislation that was heavily influenced by the copyright agencies, a group who wanted to force all ISPs to put in DPI equipment and the final decision will not be Ofcom's, for sure.

Warning letters is only *the first step*, and more will be done if that doesn't solve the problem (which obviously it won't). As the legislation is drafted, there are much worse things in the pipeline in the next few years - including potentially making ISPs responsible for their customer's infringement if they don't take sufficient steps to monitor and kick them off the network, which is the situation I'm afraid of.

Let's also just gloss over the fact that making the line owner responsible for the civil offence (i.e. cutting off their service) without making any attempt to identify the actual infringer, or indeed provide solid evidence that an offence was even committed is drastically at odds with centuries of British jurisprudence.

Gary Coleman's dead you insensitive clod!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/28/gary-coleman-dies-child-star

quote regarding the Irish News paywall scheme experience http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/may/28/paywalls-local-newspapers "So there's the context. Now for the substantive point. If you click on the Irish News website up comes a page demanding that you pay for access to a digital edition. There is a choice: £5 for one week's editions, £15 for a month's and £150 for a year's. The result? According to journalism.co.uk, since its launch in December 2009, the News's site has secured just 1,215 paid subscriptions: 525 weekly, 370 monthly and 320 yearly. In other words, whatever positive gloss one tries to put on those figures, they are pretty pathetic. They are miniscule when compared to the print sales, representing a tiny fraction of the paper's total readership."

I'm a developer for The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/ ) - a UK newspaper not owned by Murdoch, which doesn't have any intention of becoming invisible any time soon - rather than erecting a paywall, we've spent the last year putting together a content API that allows anyone to explore our content using search terms, faceting, etc - and then build your own application upon it. Check it out here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform/getting-started

The implementation, written in Scala and based on Apache Solr/Lucene stack was pretty good fun (we plan to opensource it within a few months) - slides with some of the implementation details are here :

http://www.slideshare.net/openplatform/the-guardian-open-platform-content-api-implementation

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, recently gave a pretty deep lecture on the 'open vs closed' & 'authority vs involvement' questions raised by the spectre of paywalls:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger

cheers,
Roberto

(views my own, not necessarily those of my employer, yack yack yack)

I'm a developer for The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/ ) - a UK newspaper not owned by Murdoch, which doesn't have any intention of becoming invisible any time soon - rather than erecting a paywall, we've spent the last year putting together a content API that allows anyone to explore our content using search terms, faceting, etc - and then build your own application upon it. Check it out here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform/getting-started

The implementation, written in Scala and based on Apache Solr/Lucene stack was pretty good fun (we plan to opensource it within a few months) - slides with some of the implementation details are here :

http://www.slideshare.net/openplatform/the-guardian-open-platform-content-api-implementation

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, recently gave a pretty deep lecture on the 'open vs closed' & 'authority vs involvement' questions raised by the spectre of paywalls:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger

cheers,
Roberto

(views my own, not necessarily those of my employer, yack yack yack)

I'm a developer for The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/ ) - a UK newspaper not owned by Murdoch, which doesn't have any intention of becoming invisible any time soon - rather than erecting a paywall, we've spent the last year putting together a content API that allows anyone to explore our content using search terms, faceting, etc - and then build your own application upon it. Check it out here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform/getting-started

The implementation, written in Scala and based on Apache Solr/Lucene stack was pretty good fun (we plan to opensource it within a few months) - slides with some of the implementation details are here :

http://www.slideshare.net/openplatform/the-guardian-open-platform-content-api-implementation

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, recently gave a pretty deep lecture on the 'open vs closed' & 'authority vs involvement' questions raised by the spectre of paywalls:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger

cheers,
Roberto

(views my own, not necessarily those of my employer, yack yack yack)

We are increasingly opening our tools and resources to create more opportunity for application developers. Whether you want to reach wider audiences, engage users more deeply or develop innovative advertising campaigns we have a range of services that can accelerate your digital ambitions...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform
The only print media outlet that I know of that's actually grabbing the 21st century by the scruff.
As mentioned by Jeff Jarvis on This week in Google
http://www.twit.tv/twig44

It'll make it interesting when Slashdot has to start putting up stories from niche websites instead of mainstream if they all go behind paywalls.

Niche?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

If the tories had won the election maybe he'd of been able to get Dave from PR to close down the BBC, but they didn't, and even Dave may have had problems getting rid of the Graundiad.