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I'll bet you defended Hans Reiser, as well.

And I bet you though Dominique Strass-Kahn was a rapist, and not a guy being set up for daring to question the viability of the U.S. dollar--whose "rock solid case" charges were dropped just one month after his U.S.-friendly IMF successor took office.

The bidding process for the UK 3G auction was specifically designed to extract as much money as possible in the short term for the licences. Ofcom did what they were told, the process worked spectacularly well, but the buyers overbid and couldn't afford to roll out 3G. Do the networks get criticised for overbidding? No, it was obviously Ofcom's fault.

This time Ofcom were specifically told not to run the same process and to ensure takeup and competition. Again they did as they were told, the process worked well, but unfortunately the UK chancellor's department had made some unfortunate over-optimistic predictions of revenue:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/20/4g-auction-smartphones-george-osborne

Apparently this is Ofcom's fault again.

However, I would be willing to bet my mortgage and my left testicle that the mobile carriers will say "this service is x% better than the 3G network, so we need to charge the consumer at least x% more than they paid for 3G services"

I'm not interested in your left testicle, but what do you mean by 'bet my mortgage'? Do I get the mortgage, and you keep your home when I show this to you? Three to offer 4G mobile connections at 3G rates. Or will I get the home too?

Except intent is not determined by what you claim you wanted to do regardless of what you did and how you eventually did it.

With drones you have things like "signature strikes", where they have absolutely no idea who they are killing. Or what about those double tap tactics where they target the same place twice, the second time when rescuers arrive. And if someone is or was terrorist/militant is defined by the same people who are killing them, the same people who have Guantanamo full of terrorists and militants they aren't able to charge of anything let alone convince them even in these farcial kangaroo courts. The same people who, by the way, are know to lie about these matters.

So if you really believe all this can result into anything other than massacres of civilians, you are indeed delusional.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/09/iran

Hmmm ... some random dork on /., or people who spent years in the __GWB__ administration dealing with Iran?

TLDR: you're wrong and brainwashed.

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett are two of the nation's preeminent experts on all matters relating to Iran. They have also become the nation's most unlikely yet compelling critics of US policy toward Tehran and particularly the misconceptions shaping political and media discourse in the west. What's most amazing is that they come directly from the belly of the National Security State beast: they both were Middle East officials in the National Security Council and State Department during the Bush years, while he also worked as a CIA analyst and she for the US mission to the UN and as one of the few diplomats to directly negotiate with Tehran in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. With their top secret security clearances, they both had front-row seats to the run-up to the Iraq war from inside the US government.

They have now published an extraordinary new book entitled Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Drones killing civilians is an accident; people thought there was a military target there.

For definitions of "believe" that require no evidence or actual knowledge, then yeah sure, your comment is accurate. For rational definitions of believe, it's pure crap. Look up what "signature strike" means -- they have no idea who they are killing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/three-lessons-obama-drone-lies

The inquiry will report to the UN general assembly in New York this autumn. Depending on its findings, it may recommend further action. Emmerson has previously suggested some drone attacks – particularly those known as "double tap" strikes where rescuers going to the aid of a first blast have become victims of a follow-up strike – could possibly constitute a "war crime".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/24/un-examine-uk-afghanistan-drone-strikes

Google decides to stop allowing their customers to use products after an average of 1,459 days:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/22/google-keep-services-closed

This means that in less than four years on average we can expect Google to no longer allow us access to our data or do any processing on that data. If you're working with worthless, short-term data then using Google makes sense. If you need a product for more than four years, then history has proven Google to be unreliable.

It is safe when cooked or canned properly. It looks quite delicious actually.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jul/03/african-land-snails-video

Firstly, Apple is now moving manufacturing to the US.

Secondly, Steve Jobs said the problem in the US was:
  - NOT the wages, which only increased the cost by a few dollars
  - lacking infrastructure (for JIT mfg)
  - lack of experienced mfg. engineers, in large numbers
  - lack of sufficient numbers of trained staff able to work mfg
  - suppliers (integrated and co-located)

The US education system just doesn't produce the right kind of engineer or skilled workers because it hasn't been in demand. The Chinese have a larger pool of workers of every kind, combined with better infrastructure.

Chinese labour accounts for a tiny proportion of the company's costs: $7.10 for each phone, which accounts for about eight hours of assembly. So what would it cost to make the same iPhone in America? The Cresc team took the average wage in the US electronics industry of $21 per hour and calculated that the total production cost would increase to $337.01. That is a big jump – but it still leaves Apple with a gross margin of 46.5% on each iPhone – a level that Cresc's Sukhdev Johal estimates would probably still make it the most profitable phone in the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/bad-apple-employ-more-us-workers

Half of them may soon be dead anyway. With no chance of release, what good is life in prison as a PoW?

Professor Wadhams at Cambridge already predicted the collapse by 2015. Here is a reference. This site predicts 2030 at the latest.

Climatology isn't a dart board, you don't make a ton of predictions and then claim you are right when one of them hits. You go back and do further research to understand the climate better.

You are uninformed.

Non-citizens are protected by the constitution: http://www.asil.org/insights080620.cfm

Obama's definition of imminent: page 7, par 2, first sentence:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf
Analysis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo

Obama's definition of militant:
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/
which should be put in context with the recent CIA document leak which confirms that the Obama administration kills random people and calls them militants:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html

Argentina is not China, Russia, and has never been an enemy, or at war, with USA.

At least officially.

If Argentina would have gotten lucky and sunk a carrier you might have found out whose side we were really on. It is probably a good thing you didn't, or you might glow in the dark. Hell, we even gave them access to Vortex. The relationship doesn't get any more special than that.

Seriously, President Kirchner is shaping up to be a replacement Hugo Chavez. You're not a US or UK ally. Do not overplay your hand.

You know, I know the US plays hardball in its own interests.. most nations do. But I would not count on screwing around with the UK, Australia, or Canada and not expect to end up with the US in the fray on their behalf.

or 25% chance of been federal informant.
Get more than a few Western hackers together and enjoy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/06/us-hackers-fbi-informer

Therefore -- and this is the heart of the matter -- Bitcoin should not fluctuate at all in DOLLAR value, except to the extent that computation time fluctuates in dollar value. And since computation time has not fluctuated much in value, then Bitcoin should also NOT have changed in $$ value.

Even if your statement about the price of computation was correct, which it's not, you forget that many (most?) miners don't live in the US and don't use dollars as their local currency. So Bitcoin would still fluctuate simply because various currencies do.

The upshot of this is: the Bitcoin market has been an utterly irrational "bubble", with the market valuing Bitcoins far higher than their actual intrinsic worth!

Bitcoin is designed to be a means of exchange. It's not useful for anything else; specifically, you can't get back the computing time used to produce it. It's value is thus purely the product of a network effect: the more people use Bitcoin, the more useful it becomes, and the more people use it. Given a tendency towards such virtuous (or vicious) circles, and that Bitcoin is starting to get accepted amongst less fringe services (like Wordpress), it's hardly surprising that its value rose so fast.

Also, European Union discrediting its own banking system probably caused at least some of that - people have to store their wealth somehow, and Bitcoin shares many qualities with Swiss bank accounts, yet are useful for the little people too. Risking volatile exchange rate might seem better than risking total cutoff and confiscation.

It is almost as if, with the gold standard having been gone for decades now, people have somehow forgotten how standards are supposed to work.

They work by some credible entity guaranteeing that you can get a certain quantity of the standard (e.g. gold) for certain amount of the pegged item (e.g. one dollar). No entity guarantees any kind of exchange rate between any combination of Bitcoins, computing time or dollars, so I'd have to say that you're a prime example of your own assertion.

Related question - what would make a good fundamental "minimum altitude" to say "space"?

From SpaceWatch(the website I linked to in my parent post):
"The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), formed 107 years ago and widely recognised as the governing body for aeronautics, astronautics and related activities, puts the beginning of space at 100km. This is now sometimes dubbed the Kármán line after the person who calculated that aerodynamic lift was impossible at higher levels without attaining orbital velocity. "

Also see
"The Kármán line, or commonly simply Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space."

I think these are both workable definitions.

Mind you, none of this pedantic bickering is to take away from Windestål's accomplishment; it's great and he should be proud of what he has done. I eagerly await hearing about further successes from him. It's just that he's nowhere near space, by any accepted definition of the word.

Not to dismiss this guy's accomplishments, but saying his model plane reached the "edge of space" is sort of like saying I've reached the "edge of the ocean" when I'm at Times Square in New York City.

Typically, the "edge of space" is 100km up (the United States is a bit more lenient, and puts it at at around 80km up and you get astronaut wings if you make it that high).

He hasn't even made it a third of the way there.

Still neat, but it could have done without the hyperbole.

It's a culture that rewards "cool ideas" instead of rock solid code (OK, the search engine infrastructure has the latter, but that's the one hit they developed themselves). Pitch or perish.

So Google releases lots of trial balloons that are mistaken for real products (y'know, like they'll be around in a few years) by consumers.

Thunderbird shows will also be canceled

Well these Thunderbirds from International Rescue were cancelled in the sixties. Looks like just in time that we sent that pillock David Milliband to restart the whole thing.

Climate change will increase the number of volcanoes and earthquakes.

This one seemed a little too outrageous, so I looked it up. Sure enough, there's a book about it, published by Oxford University press. Written by a professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards. I'm not sure what that kind of professor does.

Here's a summary he wrote of his book, if anyone wants to read it and figure out the connection. I sure can't figure it out.

The universe doesn't but you are naive if you think that the climate change debate here on Earth, and on both sides, is immune from politics. There is plenty of history of the "environmentalist" lobby, i.e. mostly left groups, using bogus or exaggerated environment related issues to drive their political agenda. See "peak oil" fiasco as an example. I don't know if you are old enough to remember but it was all the rage in the 70s. They are now even publicly lamenting that there is enough oil after all for "capitalism to continue", making it pretty obvious what their true intentions were.

It would seem that scientific publishing in the current model is on the way out. Let's look at some of the problems.

Tenure and status are influenced [highly] on publication. Thus, there is an incentive to publish trivial results, to publish results using shaky statistical reasoning, and to publish erroneous and fraudulent results. (Example)

Because of the emphasis on "quantity" instead of "quality", few results are independently verified. (Example)

Journals demand that scientists turn over the rights of publication in order to get published. The journals, in turn, charge outrageous fees to view the work - so high, that most of the work is inaccessible to the general public. (Example)

The fees are growing so large that smaller universities can no longer afford journal subscriptions. (Example)

The journals do not pay for peer review, or editing, or (in the modern age) even printing and binding. So far as anyone can tell, they are rent-seekers; they provide no services of note to the scientists, their readers, or the community in general. (Example)

It is entirely possible to masquerade as a scientific journal. In fact, journal quality is a spectrum that contains completely bogus, slightly spurious, mostly useful, and high quality. Being published by a notable company such as Elsevier is no guarantee of quality. (Example)

There is enormous monetary value in published papers which validate the particular positions or opinions. (Example)

These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure people can find other problems with the current system. Sadly, I can't think of any way to fix the current system. It has so many inherent problems that we should probably transition to a different model, but I don't know what should be.

This is very easy to understand by looking at Korea. In South Korea, people protest against the government, the US, North Korea, or pretty much anything that they care to, and not much happens. In Communist North Korea, if you make a joke about the Great/Dear/New Leader, you and three generations of your family are likely to be sent to a prison camp where the one of the biggest questions you will face is will you be able to catch enough rats to eat, or pull enough kernels of corn from manure, to avoid death by starvation before death by overwork, abuse, or experimentation by North Korean scientists kills you.

Not as flashy as cartoons about robots and Richard Nixon's head, but a much more meaningful presentation of the question.

And my take on that is the news and Internet itself.

With news indicating "how easy is to find how to make a bomb online" or even running an article explaining it , and on the other hand, geeks making references to little Bobby tables, what do you expect, but people going around and confirm by themselves?

I was a bit surprised to see it here too - but find it hard to believe you can't see it being newsworthy "anywhere". Not even in the UK?

Would you really prefer another story about Bitcoins?

Can't see her without seeing the Spitting Image puppet of her. Enjoy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8570506/Police-covered-up-violent-campaign-to-turn-London-area-Islamic.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1374443/Police-hid-abuse-60-girls-Asian-takeaway-workers-linked-Charlene-Downes-murder.html
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/muslim-paedophile-gangs-have-been-operating-%E2%80%9Cdecades%E2%80%9D-admits-former-police-chief
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/iran-gay-men-executed-hanging_n_1515207.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/07/iran-executes-men-homosexuality-charges
http://www.gaypatriot.net/2006/11/27/gay-holocaust-in-iran-4000-killed-and-counting/
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/26/disgust-over-muslim-wife-beating-book
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/03/23/19543371.html
https://www.google.ca/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=police+in+UK+scared+of+muslims&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&redir_esc=&ei=PpFhUd0HwpaIAojLgagO#hl=en&gs_rn=8&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=YRHZtAg-ihnWR_44H-nTgw&pq=muslim%20wife%20beating%20canada&cp=11&gs_id=9oj&xhr=t&q=islam+acid+attacks&es_nrs=true&pf=p&client=ubuntu&hs=AVY&channel=fs&sclient=psy-ab&oq=islam+acid+&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44770516,d.cGE&fp=d05afac0920070b6&biw=1390&bih=672r
I could post links for you all day but it would be pointless you love Islam because it lets you be a terrorist and get away with it because people are to scared to stand up to terrorists of the false prophet Muhammad. Your above post is exactly what your Muhammad stands for, way to represent he must be proud.

Yes they do. It was wired incorrectly, but then that's tantamount to calling your buyers idiots. Not good business. Instead, Boeing eats a shit sandwich, the battery compartment is reinforced so even if the airline miswires it and causes the battery to overheat, the problem is better contained, and the airlines keep buying new planes.

I don't think it was even a bad battery design. It was wired incorrectly. After reading the book "Airframe," I understand why Boeing hasn't hyped this more. They can't shit on their customers, so they have to keep their mouths shut lest they lose sales to the people they are (rightfully) blaming.

I'm not in the US, so maybe I'm missing some context here, but...

How on earth are either of the links you've just posted examples of hate speech? The first is a line on the abortion debate that we've seen many times over the years. I'm not going to pick sides in that one; but if you approach the debate (as some people do) with the starting point that foes "life begins at conception" then abortion is infanticide. I think a lot of the lack of civility around that particular debate stems from the fact that neither side recognises just how high the stakes feel for the other side in it.

The second link is a fairly silly take on the gun control debate that somehow slides into an odd reductio ab absurdum take on the gay marriage debate. But again, incoherent though it is, is it really hate speech?

If somebody says "All members of (ethnic group x/social group y) are scum! Let's (kill them/throw them out of our country/deprive them of their property rights)" then that feels like hate speech. That's a hell of a long way from either of the examples you link to.

As a test, let's take an example from a left-wing perspective of somebody linking a (generally supported - the UK public consistently backs a tougher line on welfare in polls) Government policy to murder. In this case, it's the murder of the disabled rather than the infanticide, but I think that's still pretty emotive. So: from the UK's Guardian newspaper. Is that hate speech?

If you answer "yes", at least you're consistent. If your answer is no, then it looks more like you're just demonstrating totalitarian instincts to suppress speech that goes against your own values.

"Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty": http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-really-smart-suckers/1/
"Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off."

Not that science is much better:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. ... What about personal experience? The women that I know who have the IQ, education, and drive to make it as professors at top schools are, by and large, working as professionals and making 2.5-5X what a university professor makes and they do not subject themselves to the risk of being fired. With their extra income, they invest in child care resources and help around the house so that they are able to have kids while continuing to ascend in their careers. The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. "

And:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/sep/28/post-doc-research-job-hunt
"After completing my PhD in 2001 I worked as a post-doc researcher in biological sciences in two different labs until 2006. Despite best efforts, the second post-doc didn't work out research wise and after two years of negative results my funding ran out. Even though I applied for other positions, by the time my contract ended I was officially unemployed. To save money I decided to move back in with my parents and claim jobseekers allowance, a galling process when you are 33 and have three higher degrees."

All that to become:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education an

Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University professor, theorizes:

Mr. Obama "believed the cartoon version of the Bush critique so that Bush wasn't just trying to make tough calls how to protect America in conditions of uncertainty, Bush actually was trying to grab power for nefarious purposes. "So even though what I, Obama, am doing resembles what Bush did, I'm doing it for other purposes," Mr. Feaver added.

-- The New York Times
(disclosure: Feaver is a partisan with ties to the Bush administration.)

Jennifer Granholm supports this notion:

"We trust the president," the former Michigan governor told the Times, "And if this was Bush, I think that we would all be more up in arms because we wouldn't trust that he would strike in a very targeted way and try to minimize damage rather than contain collateral damage."

-- The Guardian
(The British columnist here goes on to assert: "That many Democratic partisans and fervent Obama admirers are vapid, unprincipled hacks willing to justify anything and everything when embraced by Obama - including exactly that which they pretended to oppose under George W Bush - has also been clear for many years.")

Like every energy breakthrough in the past, someone decided the Big Oil companies would know how to handle and distribute it. Somehow, all those promising alternative energy sources never seemed to work out. BP axes solar power business, Transition from oil to renewable energy 100 years away, says Exxon Mobil and dozens more.

Later in life he looked like Finbarr Saunders..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/19/wankh-awards-rude-titles

I applaud the creation of Bitcoin, but really, would you trust your $10,000 more on a server somewhere or in an FDIC-covered bank?

Neither is trustworthy. However, why would you store your Bitcoins on a server, rather than a memory stick? Encrypt, make a few easily hidden backup copies, and be at ease.

I stand corrected on the number of companies. Apparently, the British Virgin Islands are a major creator for such companies and they've created over a million such companies since the 80s. So 100,000 companies is a bigger share of the entire market over its entire history than I expected.

The data seen by the Guardian shows that their secret companies are based mainly in the British Virgin Islands.

But this might be a quirk of how the data was released (apparently, news organizations have access to the data from their country, meaning that the British Virgin Islands may be the preferred destination for UK money).

So it's only a justice system when it's convenient for you? Swartz repeatedly committed an offense and refused to cooperate, breaking several laws in the process.

As for the supposed Wall Street crimes, can you link a name with a specific crime ? Last I heard greed and stupidity weren't illegal, so unless your planning to jail all the Americans who knowingly purchased properties they couldn't afford along with the Bankers who approved them knowing they couldn't pay along with the Politicians that loosened the regulations because the public demanded it, then you're just blowing hot air.

You're missing the point, I think.

There are a lot of "big fish" which are ripe for harvesting, yet the justice department spends money and resources pig-piling on the weak and vulnerable. They concentrate on the cases that don't make much of a difference, while giving colossal social injustice a "bye".

To respond to your question directly, HSBC was investigated and found to have a long history of criminal activity, including "... senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity.". Prosecutors chose not to press charges, simply because the bank is too important: [Assistant attorney general] Lanny Breuer stating "it could have cost thousands of jobs".

But lets put this into a better context.

Aaron Swartz was harassed to death based on the legal theory that violating a site's TOS is a felony.

At the same time, spammers are allowed to take people's money, despite being relatively easy to track down ("follow the money") and robocall laws are unenforced despite being relatively easy to track down ("follow the money").

The government has excellent tools for following money trails, and could do society a great service by sending a chilling effect to fraudsters.

Instead, they hound a lone engineer to death for violating a TOS.

Besides violating over a dozen international treaties...

Untrue. There are exceptions to WTO treaty obligations, one of which includes national security.

...an unsubstantiated claim that there may be espionage/surveillance capability built into some devices.And let me be clear: No government or private agency has come forward with conclusive proof that any product made in China for commercial resale has these capabilities built into it at the direction of the Government.

There were many claims from many different parties that the Chinese government engaged in active spying/covert intelligence gathering on New York Times, Google, RSA. And those are just the ones we know. Lets also not forget the Mandiant Report that caused such a reaction online not too long ago. None of this is conclusive proof but it sure is a great cause for concern.

The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?

The consequences you paint may well be overblown. There is evidence that the US is not the only country worried about China's activities. Australia, for example, has blocked Huawei from bidding for work on its $38 billion national broadband network, for the same security fears. Germany has sent representatives to the Chinese Government to ask them to stop, unofficially. Even the UK is so worried about the China spying problem that Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5 publicly warned that the West now faces an "astonishing" cyber espionage threat on an "industrial scale" from specific nation states.

Given that China itself uses national security as a reason for imposing restrictions on foreign commercial activities on its shores, I really don't think there is any basis to complain about the present measures introduced by the US.

The real question is should our government buy counterfeit military replacement parts from China?

Until we as a people decide that our national security depends on our manufacturing base and manufacturing capability then what difference does it make? It's all coming from China no matter how you look at it. The subcontractor of my subcontractor of my subcontractor is Chairman Mao. And when you play in a commodity market, the lowest bidding supplier with a stolen formula for capacitors wins as in the case of Dell.

Besides violating over a dozen international treaties

[Citation needed]

I suspect the treaty situation isn't anywhere near as clear cut as that. Those agreements are riddled with exceptions.

Besides, every single one of those treaties, like our Constitution, is not a suicide pact. The President has said "national security" and every one of those documents is trumped. If We The People don't like it we can, through our Representatives, impeach, amend the constitution or march on Washington with pitchforks.

I predict none of those things is going to happen.

And let me be clear: No government or private agency has come forward with conclusive proof

Not relevant. We need not wait until we're exploited by Chinese hardware to justify our actions. We have at least two good reasons to anticipate hostile intent. First, we already know we're dealing with a government that is actively attacking our IT systems. Second, we've done the same to others.

The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?

You have as your premise some deep respect for all these treaties and agreements. I believe most of these documents, particularly the trade agreements, are products of narrow interests creating special conditions for their exclusive benefit. I believe most of them amount to throwing open the ports and hobbling the port authorities to flood the US with stuff from places with no EPA, OSHA, NLRB, IRS, etc. I do not share your reverence for that crap.

As for the economic consequences; we've managed to survive and prosper without running our government on Huawei gear. I predict we can continue to afford to do without it.

This is bitter news, Banks is my favorite living author. You have to admire the way he's handled it, though, with typical grace and a solid infusion of black humor.

Here is the link for his special statement about the cancer diagnosis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-cancer-statement-full

And here is a guestbook where you can leave a personal though quite public message for Iain, this page was apparently set up just for well wishers after the news of the cancer broke: http://friends.banksophilia.com/guestbook/

The news looks bad indeed. One can only hope for some kind of last-minute spontaneous remission. Barring that miracle, he will be sorely missed.

People gotta eat.

Kids gotta learn.

After the trolling of this horrible place. The thing to do, will be to visit DC and try to sit in on Congress's science committee, trolling any members like the idiot that feels, evolution is a lie straight from the pit of hell.

Congressional Ass-hat-ery at some of it's finest

Heh - recently in the UK - 1701 people applied for 8 barista jobs.

Um, that's a BIT of scaremongering... Did this idiot somehow confuse Google with Facebook? Yes, Google has had some minor screwups (and some, such as the Street View mess, could barely be considered a screwup but more of FUD from clueless users who don't understand that ANYONE can see the MAC address of a wifi AP...), but nothing as major and spectacular as Facebook's routine privacy screwups.

And yes, overall - I trust Google, as do MANY other people.

Google has admitted to collecting from peoples WiFi networks “URLs of requested Web pages, partial or complete email communications, and any confidential or private information being transmitted to or from the network user while the Street View cars were driving down streets.” One of many sources on this.. They call it an accident, but this data they have admitted to collecting is quite a bit more than MAC addresses.

Some people - especially here on Slashdot -- also seem to believe Google came clean on this on their own. When in fact they first guaranteed the German authorities (the first to pressure them on this) that they were not collecting anything. And first after the German authorities despite this assurance still demanded a full audit of the data anyway, did Google do their disclosure. This sequence of events was covered extensively in European press (one of many sources), and I don't know how mostly US geek sites ended up with an alternative impression.

It still can perfectly well be ascribed to a screw-up on Google's part (although in the FCC investigation report it is claimed the Google engineer who wrote the code knew about the collection and told colleguages about it). I'm not even sure how major I think it is, but it shouldn't be downplayed and described inaccurately either.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/01/the-kernel

Not only do winners get their very own, individually serialized Higgs Boson, it comes complete with an elegant display case, molded to resemble a stale baguette

Actually the South Koreans reckon they are quite close to a deal with China

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-china-reunified-korea

In highly sensitive discussions in February this year, the-then South Korean vice-foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, told a US ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that younger generation Chinese Communist party leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula, according to a secret cable to Washington.

Chun, who has since been appointed national security adviser to South Korea's president, said North Korea had already collapsed economically.

Political collapse would ensue once Kim Jong-il died, despite the dictator's efforts to obtain Chinese help and to secure the succession for his son, Kim Jong-un.

"Citing private conversations during previous sessions of the six-party talks , Chun claimed [the two high-level officials] believed Korea should be unified under ROK [South Korea] control," Stephens reported.

"The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state - a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders. Chun argued that in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly 'not welcome' any US military presence north of the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Again citing his conversations with [the officials], Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance' - as long as Korea was not hostile towards China. Tremendous trade and labour-export opportunities for Chinese companies, Chun said, would also help 'salve' PRC concerns about . a reunified Korea.

"Chun dismissed the prospect of a possible PRC military intervention in the event of a DPRK collapse, noting that China's strategic economic interests now lie with the United States, Japan and South Korea - not North Korea."

Chun told Stephens China was unable to persuade Pyongyang to change its self-defeating policies - Beijing had "much less influence than most people believe" - and lacked the will to enforce its views.

A senior Chinese official, speaking off the record, also said China's influence with the North was frequently overestimated. But Chinese public opinion was increasingly critical of the North's behaviour, the official said, and that was reflected in changed government thinking.

Previously hidden tensions between Pyongyang and its only ally were also exposed by China's then vice-foreign minister in a meeting in April 2009 with a US embassy official after North Korea blasted a three-stage rocket over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang said its purpose was to send a satellite into orbit but the US, South Korea and Japan saw the launch as a test of long-range missile technology.

Discussing how to tackle the issue with the charge d'affaires at the Beijing embassy, He Yafei observed that "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore acting like a 'spoiled child' in order to get the attention of the 'adult'. China encouraged the United States, 'after some time', to start to re-engage the DPRK," according to the diplomatic cable sent to Washington.

You could imagine a deal where US forces stay south of the DMZ to keep the Chinese happy. So South Korean forces would need to occupy the North.

What consequences? Trivial things that are soon forgotten like three people eating a cake outside Ortiz's house (Let 'em eat cake!)? There are no consequences at all for Federal abuse of power and cake eating events like that are probably less annoying to Ortiz than morning traffic.

Here's another person who's getting raped by the Feds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous

But we don't hear much about it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't happening in every major city of the country to dozens of people. But we hear nothing about it except in rare situations. I would probably have barely noticed Schwartz if he didn't commit suicide. What we need is a central location where people can go to learn about all these types of cases.

And once we have that ... one way to hurt the Feds is in the pocketbook. And a great way to hurt them in the pocketbook, is to make these ridiculous prosecutions ridiculously expensive by helping fund a real defense in every such case ... to bury them in costs. Legal protests too -- in ways that require the Feds to spend money or waste employee time (emphasis on "legal" though). It could be like a financial DDoS for the Department of Injustice.

Index funds are balanced by large pension funds like Calpers, hedge funds, activist investors, private capital looking to buy out companies, etc.

HP's board cam very close to being thrown out due to dissatisfaction from these investors.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/21/hewlett-packard-shareholder-rebellion-directors