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Everyone knows open source is the equivalent to piracy.

Sorry, but what the fuck? How did you comment get modded insightful? It's completely ignorant.

The EU doesn't control Britain, it can however lay down rulings against it if it doesn't comply with laws it has agreed to comply to as a member of the EU. The EU has no power to act against a member nation if a member nation is not breaking any EU rules or agreements. The EU has absolutely no blame in the state of Britain as a surveillance state.

The EU has however acted against Britain when the British government has allowed illegal interception of people's data. It has acted to rule against the UK on it's DNA database. It has moved to block Britain and France's 3-strikes policy being supported globally by ACTA. Now, it is moving to block street view from taking pictures without warning as this very article states, and is another ruling that runs counter to the UK position on street view

Now, I'm British, it's quite clear Europe is actually of net positive benefit with respect to privacy and rights, the real problem with the UK is the British government and the people that support it. Blaming the EU for the UK's problems is so utterly idiotic and ignorant, when it's quite clear the EU has done everything it can within it's power, to prevent the British government from further eroding the rights of British citizens. But here's the problem, most people in Britain are impartial to it, most of the people here are their own worst enemy.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the fuckwads that keep voting in Labour and the Tories over and over. Blame the idiots here who don't bat an eyelid when their government steals yet more fundamental rights away from them. Sure as hell don't blame the EU though, because it's the only entity with any power that actually does anything in our favour- certainly more so than the government of any member state, or of countries like the US, Australia and so forth.

And also in this time, I've seen it shift from "Global Warming" to (when the former turned out to be too hard to prove) to "Climate change" which is pretty much irrefutable, and pretty much useless as well.

Interesting interpretation.

The phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist", because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behaviour... that turns off many voters".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

What the scientific community needs is better PR and stating that essentially those who think AGW is not happening are gullible, misguided people, whackjobs and paid ex-tobacco lobbyists.

You mean something like this I presume.
This was actually difficult to find: Woodward & McDowell lobbying firm, AB 32 Implementation Group.
Other maybe interesting links:here, or this slightly more activist website.

care to show me an instance of a western run nuclear plant that put nuclear waste in someones backyard where it leaked? oh right you can't, because they put them deep under ground in them middle of no where, in geologically stable areas in multiple casings which can't leak.

I suspect that he was being figurative - but:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/19/nuclear-waste-landfill-threat
http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=12578
I guess it can't leak if they just dumped it into the soil though.

No, I am not against the use of nuclear power.

They already fail to agree on saving one EU country (Greece), so do not expect them to agree on anything unless it is trivial.

buy more U.S.A. weapons.

Brilliant !

Yours In Ashgabat,
Kilgore T.

... That Berlusconi, beside being the president of that country, is too the manager of almost every TV stations in Italy (Mediaset).
I live in Switzerland, and I cannot find it again, but I read some weeks ago that a law was to be enforced to regulate the viewing of on demand video.

The article was relating the big amount of money that where being put into a on-demand video platform for mediaset at the same time, and how youtube was the first competitor to put aside.
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=450891
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Berlusconi-s-Government-Plans-to-Severely-Restrict-Online-Video-in-Italy-132350.shtml

Given the fact that Berlusconi says all the time that "The bad journalists are attacking me without reasons all the time" http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/15/f-berlusconi-saga.html, and how he consider that the fist in face he received some times ago was "organized and planed via facebook" http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=alDDK9lGqxtY I am not that surprised of that move.
After all, he passed a law giving him immunity in every lawsuit for corruption that where opened against him when he came back to the government.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/18/silvio-berlusconi-immunity-prosecution

Dara O'Briain said it best.

We tested all those vast arrays of herbs and treatments and the ones that worked we called "medicine". The ones that didn't we called "placebos".

Even better, Ben Goldacre in Bad Science talks about the dilution factor of homeopathic remedies, which are diluted so much that a sphere of water with a diameter equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun would contain about 11 molecules of the original material, with the rest being water. Any benefit conferred by these diluted solutions, which are literally just water, are purely down to the placebo effect.

I can't remember the exact passage, and my copy of the book is on my bookshelf downstairs, but I'm sure it's online somewhere. Ah here we go, google to the rescue - from here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/16/sciencenews.g2

Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called "30C": this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their "What is homeopathy?" section, they say that "30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance."

This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in 10030, or rather 1 in 1060, which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or - let's be absolutely clear - a dilution of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths' terms, we should say: "30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance."

At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.

Homeopathic remedies are *literally* water - they have *no* medical benefit whatsoever apart from as placebos. (and placebos can be pretty powerful - but there is no magic - you could replace all those remedies with tap water and say it was a treatment and the effect would be the same).

Out of hundreds of "probiotic" strains of bacteria under consideration, not one was shown to improve gut health or immunity. Taurine, the amino acid added to energy and sports drinks, was not found to boost energy. Nor was there evidence to support the claim that glucosamine is beneficial for joints, although it is widely marketed as such.

The benefits of vitamins and minerals on the other hand do have evidence backing them up, but members of the alt-med community goes so far as claiming that they cure AIDs.

Plenty of proof of professional misconduct there, including source code.

Nope.

The flames from the forum could heat several countries, thus saving the need for petrochemical or electric heating.

In order to fill so much need they're going to need a lot of servers and other equipment...

There's actually a direct spacial mapping from steradians in the visual field to particular areas on the surface of the visual cortex. Under each "pixel" on the surface, if you will, there are several physical layers that each have a specialized function: one detects lines; another circles; another changes in perspective; and another compensates for white point balancing. These layers then send the processed signals to another portion of the brain for interpretation. (It's not a bad architecture, actually.)

Many blind people can still "see" with their memories and their imaginations. What happens in this context is that recorded (or synthesized) sensory inputs are fed back into the same areas that process the higher-level processed signals from the eye's "live" feed. Memory, really is a process of re-perceiving.

It seems plausible that computers could take over the function of not only the retina, but also the visual cortex and send high-level processed signals directly to the area of the brain responsible for interpreting them.

Hell, that might be better than normal vision. Imagine knowing more colors than we are able to naturally perceive, or being able to "see" arbitrarily fine details, as if in a dream. Augmented reality would be trivial.

All that and more might be possible if we bypass the visual cortex.

Why can't people use standard units of measurements like millimeters, or even inches?

Perhaps because regardless of minor variations- which I haven't really noticed- the vast majority of playing cards are close enough to the same size and any normal person would understand the approximate scale that the authors meant.

I mean, seriously, most people would know they didn't mean cards this size or require precise measurements unless they were some way along the autistic spectrum of literalness.

Some context: New Scientist is a UK-based publication, meaning it isn't protected by the first amendment, and is subject to some of the tightest libel laws around. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/10/libel-law-reform That being the case, you'll notice that a lot of UK news sources are extra cautious with any story that could potentially maybe cause an expensive lawsuit.

Tired of discreditng the fallacious arguments of the AGW deniers.

There's and app for that!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/17/iphone-app-climate-change

The ihone has a useful app, whodathunkit.

I'm fucking sick of people comparing the US government to the Chinese government. Get a fucking clue. The US government has made some mistakes but the Chinese government killed 30 MILLION of its citizens, it attacks protesters with tanks, executes the mentally retarded, and jails those who protest their own children's deaths at the hands of the government corruption.

Are you paid by the Chinese government to write these posts or just ignorant?

Except that the phrase was coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman.

... well sort of. It seems that he used that in a "popular science" book to get a snappy title. Journalists seem to like it, presumably because it helps encourage a nice religion vs science flame war. Personally, I tend to dislike "popular science" books; too many catchy phrases, not enough science.

I can't speak for scientists, but the mathematicians I know all tend to cringe and mutter under their breath whenever the phrase is used.

There's an interesting article on it here including quotes from Professor Higgs.

I know I shouldn't reply to trolls, particularly not to those with room temperature IQ, but I have karma to burn.

Find a Goyim Oligarch. I dare you.

Learn to Google.
Of the top 6, 4 are definitely not Jewish and Deripaska is alleged to have some Jewish ancestry (but that does not make him a Jew).

And by the way, if you want to use a foreign word, try to use it in a grammatically correct way.
Goyim is plural, Oligarch is singular.

In short, you are not only a dickhead (by your own admission) but an idiot as well.

That's not what he's been saying at all. ""The science still holds up" though, he adds. A follow-up study2 verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant. "They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion," says Jones of his critics." http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100215/full/news.2010.71.html "But Jones is adamant that this doesn't actually change the conclusion of the analysis. In a subsequent paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008, Jones verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant to the outcome." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/16/hacked-climate-science-emails-climate-change

and the security it gives you in terms of who you're talking to.

Which is to say: none. Does anyone here believe that Facebook wouldn't sell data mined from your logged chats down the river if they thought that it would make them a buck? I also have no doubt that they would roll over immediately if certain three letter agencies demanded their user data; heck, they would probably roll over for a phony DMCA notice. Facebook doesn't care about privacy; their founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said as much.

I was thinking it had something to do with the almost entirely Democratic California state representatives who refuse to cut spending, even at the point California is at now.

I don't know what California you're talking about, but the state budget has been in free fall for years now

Reagan Domestic Policy advisor Bruce Bartlett calls your thinking unrealistic. The fact is that California has more demands placed on it by the will of the voters, yet a tiny minority refuse to act like adults and make any move to pay for it.

That isn't conservatism, that's recklessness. Or as the Guardian put it, a recipe for America's first failed state.

The lab results are in. The GOP policies are unpopular and ad hearing to them as slavishly as the as the "purity pledges" that the CAL-GOP requires, has been a disaster.

IANAL - The UK laws on libel are that the truth trumps all, with quite a few exceptions.

There are injunctions to protect crime victim's privacy (which I agree with to some degree; if I was sexually abused or raped I would think I'd have the right not to have the entire country know the details).

There are laws on privacy and laws on public interest, and neither actually takes precedence over each other. It's basically up to a judge to decide... meh.

However, there is a growing trend of "super-injunctions", which prevent even the mention of something happening. The recent John Terry fiasco was one attempt to get one of these, which failed, and resulted in the judge deciding the entire story could be reported in full. I've no idea why this was put under an injunction in the first place, but those are the privacy laws.

I'm most worried about the gagging orders placed on newspapers regarding things like the Carter-Ruck Ivory Coast toxic waste. The Guarian

Read all about it. It's nasty.

In relation to the Jean Charles de Menezes case, the officer in charge, Cressida Dick, has actually been promoted:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/12/menezes-london

Not much accountability going around in the U.K.

...but the idea of armed police is an absolute no go...launching Tasers from the sky would be public relations disaster.

First, the UK's armed police is significantly on the rise (for the Met, deployments have risen over 50% in six years, despite firearm incidents falling), and they're almost part of the landscape in London. Most of them are still static patrols of high-profile locations, but the Met has been actively planning for routine armed patrols.

The UK Police also seem immune to legal boundaries - their retention of DNA and the use of 'stop-and-search' have both been ruled illegal, with no discernible effect to date. More worryingly, even in high-profile cases of physical abuse, manslaughter and credit-card fraud, officers have been quietly rewarded rather than disciplined.

Secondly, they're getting much better at PR. If the Guardian is right, they started using the spy drones to scour the coast for immigrants: "There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a 'good news' story to the public rather than more 'big brother'." And, since then, they've been practicing on the BNP (paradoxically an anti-immigration minority party with a poor reputation).

It would be utterly wrong to conclude that the UK police are power-hungry, trigger-happy thugs with mental deficiencies, lethal toys, immunity from sanction and slick PR skills. But it would be incautious not to consider the possibility.

...but the idea of armed police is an absolute no go...launching Tasers from the sky would be public relations disaster.

First, the UK's armed police is significantly on the rise (for the Met, deployments have risen over 50% in six years, despite firearm incidents falling), and they're almost part of the landscape in London. Most of them are still static patrols of high-profile locations, but the Met has been actively planning for routine armed patrols.

The UK Police also seem immune to legal boundaries - their retention of DNA and the use of 'stop-and-search' have both been ruled illegal, with no discernible effect to date. More worryingly, even in high-profile cases of physical abuse, manslaughter and credit-card fraud, officers have been quietly rewarded rather than disciplined.

Secondly, they're getting much better at PR. If the Guardian is right, they started using the spy drones to scour the coast for immigrants: "There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a 'good news' story to the public rather than more 'big brother'." And, since then, they've been practicing on the BNP (paradoxically an anti-immigration minority party with a poor reputation).

It would be utterly wrong to conclude that the UK police are power-hungry, trigger-happy thugs with mental deficiencies, lethal toys, immunity from sanction and slick PR skills. But it would be incautious not to consider the possibility.

Iran called for the extermination of all Jews.

No, they didn't and the quote of Ahmadinejad that Israel should be wiped of the map was a
mistranslation that has been quote way too often. Specifically:

"The fact that he (Ahmadinejad) compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favor Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out,"

Besides:

Though Iran doesn't recognize Israel, and Iranian citizens are not legally authorized to travel to the Jewish state, ... Jews in Iran are not in danger.

Iran's Jewish community of about 25,000 people is protected by the country's constitution and remains the largest in the Muslim Middle East. Synagogues, Jewish schools and stores operate openly. Morsathegh said in Tehran there are 20 synagogues, eight butchers, five schools, four youth organizations and two restaurants.

Morsathegh said Iranians, including Jews, immigrated from Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution that brought hard-line clerics to power but said there had not been an exodus of Jews from Iran in recent years.

"We are one of the oldest communities in Iran. We are free to practice our religion. Anti-Semitism is a Western phenomenon but Jews have never been in danger in Iran," said Morsathegh, who spoke in his office in the Sapir Charity Hospital, which is run by Iranian Jews.

Source

My opinion is irrelevant. However, all the opinions expressed by UK citizens in The Guardian indicate that the US definition of a billion is now the accepted standard. But relax, the UK still sets the standard for the prime meridian.

That's weird. I could swear the shuttle performed a rather significant mission recently that did not involve going to the space station.
 
I have to confess, while watching the launch this morning I didn't really care about what's practical or needed. A night launch of the shuttle is the most impressive feat of human engineering I have ever witnessed. When I was a kid working on an aircraft carrier I thought that was pretty cool, and it is to some extent, but the shuttle is in a completely different league of awesome. Lighting up the night sky is not hyperbole. I live an hour drive from Kennedy and it looks like the sun is coming up when they fire the engines. Then, when the shuttle lifts from the pad, it gets even brighter. Which my head has a difficult time taking in. I'll be sad to see it go, even if it does make sense.

Facebook runs on PHP

Actually, Facebook runs on C++ these days. Turns out that it is actually PHP that does not scale. ;)

"We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."
[...]
"With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago."
[...]
Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of "climate change deniers and school boy science".

And yes, the IPCC claims to have "scientific rigour." Are you aware that their definition of rigor includes citations and conclusions based on so-called "gray literature"? Does that fall within the scope of your definition of scientific rigor?

• If not, then you are mistaken about your judgment of the IPCC.
• If so, then your definition of scientific rigor, and the IPCC's definition of scientific rigor, reflect a HUGE departure from the conventions of science; you have redefined "scientific rigor" to no longer match its traditional meaning.

I wouldn't be so sure... Apparently, even if you disappear from a boat during the night and live in a tent 6,000 feet up in the Alps, you can be found. OTOH, nobody would bother if you don't owe $5 million.

the cut off between mercury and all other planets is a severe drop off

likewise, if it doesn't orbit the sun, its a moon. completely different issue

and yes people have constant arguments over what constitutes a mountain, in fact it spilled over into farce because of national pride in one case:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/19/wales

they even made a movie about it starring hugh grant:

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

so what you do, to avoid all this pointless hullabaloo, is you pick the most obvious simple cut off, and go with it. and that cut off means there are eight planets

endless mindless posturing to the contrary

Where does Jobs fit into this? I mean, apart from conspiracy theories and what you reckon might happen.

The iPad and iBookstore. Here's a Guardian article.

The minor advantage over one or the other is moot.. because unless you've got something of actual importance (in which case it shouldn't be on your home computer) no one is going to go through the bother of trying to break in either way.

Thats what poor Kenneth Haywood thought, but fate has its own turns and twists.
Agreed that a chance of a terrorist using your connection to send threat emails is quite low, but how about a spammer or an identity thief? Or just an angry X Lover?

Is not privacy essential to a high quality of life?

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the answer is "no". The really sad part is that most of the general public will blithely go along with this asinine assertion.

Privacy is essential to normal human behavior. With the loss of privacy comes extremely altered behavior. I believe in the modern context, if we have no privacy, the multinational corporations will have more influence/control over our own behavior than we do ourselves.

Is not privacy essential to a high quality of life?

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the answer is "no". The really sad part is that most of the general public will blithely go along with this asinine assertion.

Hopefully this'll be available outside of the UK but this is Terry Pratchett giving a lecture on his Alzheimers and legalised euthanasia from a few days ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qmfgn. Guardian article covering the same subject here http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal

Pratchett has done alot to provoke intelligent debate on assisted suicide and related matters, thankfully without much in the way of people shouting him down - I'm a firm believer that one should be able to put a "Please kill me nicely" card in their wallet/will, in the same way that people use donor cards to say "Yep, why the hell not use my liver as I'm not really in a position to care about it any more". Lying on a bed in a hospital for the last five years of my life, forgotten by and an embarrassment to my friends and family is my idea of hell.

Note that I don't know anyone who's been in a coma or a PVS but I know for damn sure that the person and the flesh and blood they used to live in aren't the same thing.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/opponents-of-assisted-suicide-still-convinced-it's-any-of-their-business-201002012428/

"Among the wind farm operators surveyed by Frontier, gearbox failures accounted for the largest amount of downtime, maintenance and loss of power production. Such failures can add up to 15 to 20 percent of the price of the turbine itself, according to Frontier."

Maintaining the wind turbine revolution

The solution a hydraulic "gearbox"? Artemis Intelligent Power.

because Globbal warming studies have been looked at by many different scientist and many studies have been done that show that all the data we have points to global warming being influenced by C02 emissions.

This was just ONE study, done fraudulently in order to support and non scientific anti vaccine movement.

Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years, as we get more data and new data the overwhelming mountain of it points to global warming.

Oh, ye of way too much faith - yes, FAITH:

Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised". ...

But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming."

Interestingly, we now know that Jones probably cooked the books on warming data from China - in the same way:

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced. ...

The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang's 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.

The IPCC's 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that "any urban-related trend" in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two "coordinating lead authors" for the relevant chapter.

Helluva pattern there, isn't it?

IF the world really is warming because of the acts of humanity, then these CLOWNS have destroyed the credibility needed for scientists to produce an obviously unbiased recommendation for what to do about it.

Getting that credibility back is going to require SERIOUS house cleaning in the scientific community.

because Globbal warming studies have been looked at by many different scientist and many studies have been done that show that all the data we have points to global warming being influenced by C02 emissions.

This was just ONE study, done fraudulently in order to support and non scientific anti vaccine movement.

Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years, as we get more data and new data the overwhelming mountain of it points to global warming.

Oh, ye of way too much faith - yes, FAITH:

Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised". ...

But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming."

Interestingly, we now know that Jones probably cooked the books on warming data from China - in the same way:

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced. ...

The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang's 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.

The IPCC's 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that "any urban-related trend" in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two "coordinating lead authors" for the relevant chapter.

Helluva pattern there, isn't it?

IF the world really is warming because of the acts of humanity, then these CLOWNS have destroyed the credibility needed for scientists to produce an obviously unbiased recommendation for what to do about it.

Getting that credibility back is going to require SERIOUS house cleaning in the scientific community.

I know exactly what would happen, as it's happened over here (in the UK). Thanks to Ian Huntley and his wife, "Soft" evidence (Someone once told their wife who knows a man who works for a guy who knows a copper and told him that someone once looked at a child and smiled) is included in CRB checks now. You only have to insinuate that someone once did something remotely similar to the behaviour of a child abuser and it's included in the report.

I don't know if it made any difference. I guess a future with no incidents of child abuse within the education system will prove them corr... Oh, wait. Nursery worker Vanessa George pleads guilty to sexually abusing children

I don't know what the solution is. I just know that criminalising cartoons isn't it.

Faulty logic. People do stuff that they know (or should know) will hurt them all the time. They do it a lot when driving cars, anyway, why should bicycles be any different?

When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of reckless or aggressive riding. But an analysis of police reports on 2,752 bike-car accidents in Toronto found that clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists was the cause of 90 percent of these crashes.

ignoring stop signs

Some cyclists do those things, and I can understand why it is frustrating for other people, but it rarely causes accidents: 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor.

ignoring bicycle lanes when they don't need to turn left.

I suppose you mean "turn against oncoming traffic" - left turns are certainly not a problem here... anyway, the main reason for avoiding bike lanes in cities is people parking in cycle lanes. The Door Prize: Cyclists killed by dooring - a list of cyclists killed because of motorists opening their door in the cyclist's path. It happens all the time - I had it happen to me once, and now I will never use a cycle lane that has cars parked along it or in it.

There's a reason that the 17,000 U.S. troops in Haiti weren't donated to the U.N. mission there

It was more likely the same reason a UN mission didn't kidnap the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, into exile in 2004. There have been 8,000 UN troops fighting in Haiti since then.

just like there's a reason why the only action taken against Sudan has been an arrest warrant in Europe. It's unfortunate that the UN security council is a reminder to so many other countries about their comparative lack of power.

The UN lacks power because the US, currently the only world superpower, has steadily decreased its credibility, cut funding, and defied nearly every vote critical of the US with its permanent veto power. Trying to say that the only action taken by the UN is an arrest warrant is simple dishonesty. They have charted a course of action, but they lack the funding to carry it out.

The United States and Europe standing by while Darfur rages is more of an indictment of our moral character than anything else. They'll watch it the same way they watched Rwanda and Somalia and East Timor and Cambodia. If the resources aren't important, the people who live near them are worthless in the eyes of the West. Other nations act similarly, but it's pathetic that the West is unable to accept their own value system.

Cuba. Sudan. China, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Germany. You're not insane, those things certainly do exists, but you may wish to note they've been notoriously unreliable at actually accomplishing anything.

I really doubt this is evidence of any attempt at diplomacy. Why not point to Turkey or Egypt or Syria or Jordan or even Libya? I guess because it would be counter to your argument. (Incidentally, all those are countries with atrocious human rights records and except for Turkey, no democratic institutions. They all plead fealty to the Empire, so diplomacy is therefore an option.)

I would base it on logistical difficulty, the current tactical impossibility, and that I imagine both sides being armed with nuclear weapons makes the possibility of ever conquering either one pretty unlikely.

No one said there would be conquering. There would be a fight, and in fact, the rhetoric just got inched up since we made a 6 billion dollar arms deal with Taiwan, I'm guessing in retribution for the cyber attacks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/01/chinese-us-taiwan-arms-deal

Chinese state media have lambasted the US arms deal with Taiwan, turning up the pressure over the $6.4bn (£4bn) agreement.

Beijing's reaction to the package – which includes Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot missiles and mine-hunter ships – was described by one official newspaper as its toughest in three decades of sales. It comes as the bilateral relationship faces other strains over issues including climate change, Tibet, censorship and trade.

A commentary in the official Communist party newspaper the People's Daily accused Washington of "rude and unreasonable cold war thinking"... China Daily, an official English language paper, said in an editorial: "China's response, no matter how vehement, is justified. No country worthy of respect can sit idle while its national security is endangered and core interests damaged."

1) They don't [have the means]

They do. We are no longer the majority importer of Chinese goods. They are now the largest exporter in the world. What manufacturing sector can we replace theirs with?

2) Why would a one party dictatorship growing rich on the exploitation of their people want to attack the people most responsible for the never ending stream of money that has made their economic success possible?

Because, amazingly, some co

That's very likely true, as the stupidity of the user remains the weakest factor in security.

While that may be true, that is the right answer to a different question.

The original Question was:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the governments of France and Germany about security risks of using Internet Explorer; and whether they will encourage public sector users to use another web browser. [HL1420]

The problem Google and others had was that they were not using "the latest and fully patched version of IE", but instead outdated but fully supported version from Microsoft, full of security holes. Even the UK governmaneprobably isn't using the "lastest and fully patched version of IE"

Also, MIcrosoft has a 6 months check cycle for patches, that simply doesn't correspond to today's security landscape where both criminal organisations and state governments have people on payroll searching for vulnerabilities to turn into money or somehthing more valuable, as soon as they are found.

This was in the news recently, probably what a lot of people are vaguely thinking of. I remember reading a few different reports over a couple of days, and the story changed a lot with who was spinning it.

The Guardian report above seems to be on the he-was-just-defending-his-family angle; the other side I remember is that the defender and one of his mates chased down a fleeing burglar, beat him with a cricket bat, broke the bat from beating him too much, beat him some more after he was unconscious and left the burglar with permanent serious brain damage.

The court case wasn't so much over a man defending his family as a man getting some of his mates and with a degree of premeditation beating the living shit out of somebody who was incapable of defending themselves. It was a matter of "yeah, defending your family... but whoa, seriously?" Logically there must be a line between defending your family and going unacceptably psycho; this case was on the line and they still let him off with a suspended sentence rather than actually locking him up.

Probably not. Even if you assume that some portion unlocked their baseband (which was still impossible on new phones last I checked) and went with an alternative carrier, these are all bandwidth-heavy 3G phones being sold, while the people leaving are most likely older Edge users. So at best you're increasing network load with faster connections replacing slower ones, and at worst you're adding more users AND faster connections.

I'm sure the police would like that.

This is similar to the experience they had over at Salon. This was one of my favorite places to get news until they put up a pay wall, and in December they talked about how it hard hurt their traffic.

This is a great read, for people who actually care about the discussion of pay walls vs free.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/03/memories-paywall-pioneer

It "worked" for us in that it provided some revenue for Salon to survive through the leanest period of its existence. (We'd already completed the latest of three rounds of layoffs, and the entire staff took pay cuts, three weeks before 9/11.) But within a few months, as advertisers began dipping their toes back in the water and the influx of new subscribers who'd flocked to help us out in a crisis dwindled, we could see that the subscription model didn't provide much room for growth. So we tried something new: we put up an ad over the front door of the site. Subscribers wouldn't see it at all; other readers had to watch a 30-second video ad, then they got a "day pass."

The day pass approach was beloved by the advertisers and hated by many, though not all, readers. More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.