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Amazon is in a death spiral, or is already dead to technical people? Dude, you know how to tell a funny story, I'll give you that. I am more troubled by Bezos's inconsistent stand on patents than knee-jerk characterization of his personal politics. Hint: is he a conservative Republican tool, or a super rich liberal? Labels are so tricky.

That's why the 100m run in the Olympics has people of all races winning it, isn't it? Anecdotes doesn't matter. Look at this and stop spreading this equality bullshit.

Advocates call the law a necessary control on hate speech in an age where the Internet makes the spread of messages easier and faster. Opponents say it's censorship and has no place in a free society.

Not only are we divided on whether it should be legal, we are divided on what it should be.

Is it hate speech to call other races subhumans, but legal to note in a scientific paper that there IQ differences between races, moral evolutionary differences, or even that statistically, crime is not distributed evenly between all groups?

Half of scientists say race doesn't exist, the others keep quiet.

The bigger issue here is what we're obscuring the pursuit of truth with all sorts of social pretense. Let's look at the facts and keep emotion (true hate speech) and censorship out of the debate.

What better way to shut down any future competition than to tell would-be entrepreneurs to pack up their toys and go home?

Perhaps the IBM way?

1. Provide a good service, a tool, a format.

2. Make it cheap.

3. Wait 'til everyone uses it because it was cheap.

4. MAKE MORE MONEY by destroying value

5. Jack up the price.

6. Profit.

This story to me is so similar to the IBM one. Skype seems to be the reason the iPhone is not in China yet, and that it will have no wifi. Telecoms despise skype. Why do I suddenly visualize this meeting of world telecom hotshots in Davos arranging to get 1B/year to shut down skype???

Not that it will work on the long run, of course. Google/Ekiga/even MS and Apple and Facebook are probably interested in this space.

The Half Sigma blog points out a serious flaw in the design of this poll...

There is a Pew research study purporting to poll "scientists." The question I immediately want answered is, what's a "scientist?" The answer, as far as Pew is concerned, is anyone who is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The AAAS is a liberal organization with stated goals such as "Increase diversity in the scientific community," "Use science to advance human rights" (sometimes in collaboration with leftist-sympathizing Amnesty International), "Sustainable Development" and "Women's Collaboration".

You don't in any way have to be a real scientist to be a member of this organization. All you need to do is send them $146. School teachers are especially encouraged to join, and no one should confuse a grade K-12 school teacher with a real scientist.

Wikipedia is self-correcting, isn't it? I knew IBM would respond; they after all make money by destroying value

Congratulations on your ignoratio elenchi convincing the mods to troll me out. By the way, are you really neutral to IBM?

"Hi Blaxthos, On slashdot: "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." In any case, there is plenty of material concerning IBM's dubious patents: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/06/ibm_paper_or_plastic_patent/ http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/30/ibm-applies-patent-offshoring-math http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/ibm_patents_sys.html;jsessionid=4BEPM0NZUXQDAQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/ibm-patent-policy-apparent.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2002/10/13/ibm-eliminates.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/03/ibm-makes-more-money-by-destorying-value.html I've assembled them all here: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1227341&cid=27885503 But I don't think that a larger number of dubious patents is needed to make the case. I think one is enough. I am not biased against IBM, but I am biased against claims to have record number of patents and no wishes to see the highly dubious exposed in a NPOV. (My opinion: Society is not being improved by these patents, neither IBM.)"

In my little david vs goliath here, that's what I'm getting, and the page keeps being reverted. And here I'm thinking CowboyNeal is a reliable source...

In any case, if I lose, there are reliable sources for the "paper or plastic" patent, the "but I only had soup" patent, the offshoring patent, the "who is going to poo next" patent, the "terry is a boy, jeena is a girl" patent, etc. And here's a comment on IBM's patent schizophrenia. And here's another comment on how IBM makes money by destroying value.

I have nothing against IBM or other patent trolls, I just want them to look in the wikipedia mirror to see if they are happy with who they are. This will only stop with a big streisand.

Well, this individual story might not tell us much but there's a lot of evidence that creationists are in general dumber and less educated than the general populace. (This is assuming that we define creationist to not mean "belief that God created the world" but rather almost any statement that makes more or less concrete claims about the role that God had in the universe). The GSS data is very strong in this regard, showing that there's a strong correlation between having a large vocabulary (which is a useful proxy for intelligence)and acceptance of evolution.http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/02/who-believes-in.html. Similar results occur when you look at SAT scores and IQ tests. In particular, Protestant denominations which are avowedly Young Earth Creationist have lower average SAT scores and IQ scores. See for example http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/05/biblical_literalism_or_low_iq.php which shows an extremely strong inverse correlations between the fraction of a denomination that ascribes to Biblical literalism and the IQ score (seriously, R^2 is around .86. You almost never get social science data that shows that strong a correlation).

One thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't necessarily mean that this doesn't necessarily imply that evolution is more likely to be correct or that the smart people are paying more attention to the evidence. Razib Khan, who put together the quick little analysis linked to above about IQ and Biblical literalism, has suggested (can't find link right now unfortunately) that smart people are more likely to believe ideas from other smart people and that this accounts for some of the strong correlation between intelligence and acceptance of evolution.

A PhD doesn't make a good teacher. It is much more likely to make a really bad teacher.

Citation? I had a lot of great university teachers. 8.5 years (4 BS, 4.5 MS/PhD) at the university level insured that I saw many of them. Nearly every class was taught by the professor themself. It was very rare a TA lectured. The vast majority of professors (all PhDs) were good to great - 75%. What may be true about a PhD is that they are no more likely than average to be good teachers. However, they will have many preresiquites a good teacher needs that a person of average to below average intelligence may lack. For this reason, I doubt your statement is true but I will read your citation when posted.

I've yet to see a law firm give a job to a person who doesn't pass the bar. Should we start blasting lawyers, too?

Law firms hire paralegals, legal secretaries, custodians, and many others without law degrees. Many law students get hired on the basis of passing the bar exam. Do you HONESTLY think (or, "do you honestly THINK"?) that headhunters are going to wait for a formality like that? No fucking way. Hire then worry about that shit. Their employment contract will spell out whether and when a bar exam has to be passed. This link suggests Michelle Obama (!) had a job lined up prior to passing the bar. It still meets your criteria - sort of. She had the job but had to pass the bar exam but the offer was not extending on the basis of having but on the basis of getting in the future.

http://www.lawfirmstaff.com/articles/index.php?id=50100&cat=75
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/10/03/a-call-out-for-jds-no-bar-passage-required/

NH: Eh, we don't need the bar exam:
http://www.piercelaw.edu/news/posts/2008-06-23-chronicle-on-daniel-webster-scholar-honors-program.php

WI: Sort of the same deal:
"It's the same way nearly every year, thanks to one of the first legalities that students at both schools commit to memory: Wisconsin is the only state in the country to maintain a "diploma privilege" that exempts most graduates of the state's law schools from taking the bar exam."

I am curious. Upon what do you base your statements?

Diamonds? No, feel free to do further research but diamond prices, like drug prices, are purely a matter of marketing, greed and disrespect for human life.