Slashdot Mirror

Look as closely at the "footprints" as you can in these images:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

And then consider this statement:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"Of the 50 or so examples recorded, only around a dozen were reasonably complete - and only two showed the toes in detail. Tragically, although a full photogrammetric and photographic record has been made, all but one of the prints were rapidly destroyed by incoming tides before they could be physically lifted."

Sooooo .. they existed (presumably buried by the seaside) for almost a million years .. appear, and then are DESTROYED by the next incoming tide?

Riiiii-ight.

Look as closely at the "footprints" as you can in these images:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

And then consider this statement:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"Of the 50 or so examples recorded, only around a dozen were reasonably complete - and only two showed the toes in detail. Tragically, although a full photogrammetric and photographic record has been made, all but one of the prints were rapidly destroyed by incoming tides before they could be physically lifted."

Sooooo .. they existed (presumably buried by the seaside) for almost a million years .. appear, and then are DESTROYED by the next incoming tide?

Riiiii-ight.

This may look a little contrived, but the new management team at Bletchley Park also seem to wish to "improve" things by making them worse.
For example, they recently sacked a long-time volunteer guide because he insisted on showing guests the nearby National Museum of Computing, (which is where the Colossus is replica is actually housed).

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

Oh, and double fuck beta....been here for decades, and whilst I'm all for progress the classic site never struck me as broken, (apart from special character support - is that fixed in "beta"? )
The last I heard progress meant IMPROVEMENT. Listening DICE?

Go across the street, there's another Starbucks hiring.

Don't have stats for Starbucks, but at another well-known coffee chain, it might not be quite as easy as you think...

Yes, the mass hysteria in Britain is terrifying.

Children evacuated from swimming pool after prosthetic leg mistaken for paedophile

Good morning:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Hello world:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

At which point the defence refers the jury to the repeated lies the police tell and the need for an independent witness to any conversations.

UK police : Corrupt.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

All the powerful countries played this game. Students from around the world found their way to the US, Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK for total access to top quality education.
They where to return home with expert skills (linked to the host nations brands), a glowing personal account of their academic and new lifelong friendships.
Over time it was hoped the once young students would move up in their nations public or private power structures reflecting fondly recalling their education and years abroad.
This would give exports from US, Soviet Union, France, UK an edge or direct contact via friends, academics during trade negations, loans, weapons sales, imports, shaping the left or right wing of an emerging country.
The real issue is the total leaking of expensive emerging science and engineering technology over time for 'free' to emerging countries.
"Bob" or "Sally" return home with much more than a degree - long term contacts and sensitive technology finds its way out of top US, Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK institutions over time due to 'funding' pressure.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/american-universities-infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-fbi.html
Peter the Great is the warning from history - don't let your trade become a flood of raw materials out and have overpriced fashionable trinkets as imports. http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-romanov-dynasty/peter-i/
The Cold War was is littered with efforts like/under, funding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Committee_on_United_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Policy_Coordination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Student_Association
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples'_Friendship_University_of_Russia
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html via International Organisations Division (IOD)

If you want to see whats wrong with Oracle look whos running it.

Compared with Larry Ellison...Bill Gates is Mahatma Gandhi.

"A few months ago, a female ex-employee with whom Ellison had had an affair launched a lawsuit in which she alleged that he tempted several female employees into bed with the offer of an Acura sports car. Ellison claimed the offer was a joke but, when questioned, admitted that he had bought four Acuras in the previous year."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/network-meet-larry-ellison-the-software-supremo-with-an-ego-to-match-his-income-1269887.html

That's not true!

Very educated climate research scientists like Dr. David Viner say things will warm so much that "Children just aren't going to know what snow is".

How dare you argue with educated climate change experts!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-corruption-of-britain-uks-key-institutions-infiltrated-by-criminals-9052617.html

Or, if they're going to have him testify, they have diplomats collect him and bring him in on a plain covered by immunity, move him around in diplomatic cars, and house him in diplomatic residences.

The "Assange solution"? How is that working out?

Do you *really* think that it is impossible to basically "fuck you" and bring him there safely if there's the political will?

Its totally possible, as long as various European nations don't want to honor their treaty obligations and don't care about insults to allies. (I thought Europeans were always in favor of honoring treaties?) That can end up working both ways too, and not always in the way of a fantasy great triumphant either. Always keep in mind that the arrival of the future won't stop anytime soon, and it almost always has surprises in store. You may want friends around to help meet some of those surprises.

Is it 1914 all over again?

No one is seriously doing that.

Except when they do.

Like when a Lack of snowfall becomes a sign of global warming. Until it gets cold, then cold winter is a sign of global warming. And those are scientists quoted in both those articles, it's not just some 'unscientific journalists.'

Every time some 'weird weather' happens, it's a sign of global warming. If you don't realize this, it's because you aren't paying attention. Hurricane Sandy, Japan Tsunami, whatever it is, you see articles popping up about global warming.

The proof is in the absolute fuck-ton of easy to validate wide scale observational data, core sound principles(like absorption spectra of greenhouse gasses), and the staggering accuracy of mainline predictive theories.

The core principles are sound. We know that CO2 can have an effect on the atmosphere. We know that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

The mainline predictive theories are not staggeringly accurate (as the snow problem in England, mentioned above, shows). As graphs like this and this and this show, it's seeming more and more like the climate change models are overly pessimistic (which of course is a value judgement; if you like warm weather, then you might say they are overly optimistic).

There is also plenty of unscientific behavior among scientists, as the Chris Landsat hurricane situation shows, and the CRU emails show.

Problem is it's way beyond terrorism and well into commercial espionage. Here a politician used Australia's spy agency to spy Timor Leste's government to help Woodside Petroleum screw them over in negotiations. The politician is now an employee of Woodside Petroleum. This is one case we know about. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/lawyer-acting-for-east-timor-is-raided-by-australian-agents-8983566.html

Three seconds with Google.

The actual EU site for it is here but doesn't you have to dig for specifics. Basically a company doesn't have to worry about each state's tax rules, they just go by the common EU rules and the EU distributes the money based on where the company did business. As a side effect it no longer matters where the company is registered for funnels its profits to, it still has to pay in the EU.

You're probably just trolling, but you're currently modded +3, so I'm going to reply.

Such as the US just had one of the 10 coldest years on record.

Minima and maxima are by definition outliers. While there is an entire body of statistical literature on outliers, they're not used to determine trends or draw conclusions, because they are essentially (bad) luck.

The UK getting record snowfall despite AGWers claiming the UK wouldn't see snow after 2008.

Sources please. Because no serious scientist would ever make such a definite statement. A mathematician might, but science, including climate science, is all about statistics and probabilities. In any field. Perhaps you mean this article in the Independent? The scientist quoted says that in 20 years time, snowfall will become a rare and exciting event. So I think that we can consider him proven wrong if it snows in southern England for say, five out of ten years from 2020 onwards?

Antarctica getting within .5 degrees of the coldest recorded temperature on earth.

Antarctica is a huge and largely unexplored continent. Finding a new minimum in a situation where very little information was available is hardly suprising, and certainly shouldn't be used to draw any conclusions.

Along with 2000 record low temperatures recorded over the last couple of months.

Among how many measurements? Record since when? And see above about outliers.

Add that to the IPCC report showing no warming for 17 years.

Indeed. They also investigated why, but you're conveniently leaving that out since it doesn't fit your agenda. I'll give you a hand as to the causes according to the IPCC: an exceptionally quiet sun (there's another of those outliers), several smaller volcanic eruptions increasing the amount of dust in the upper atmosphere, and an increase in dust in the lower atmosphere, probably due to industrial pollution. According to the IPCC, the discrepancy is partially explained by these three causes (which weren't put into the models when the prediction was made), and the remaining difference is small enough to fit within the natural variation (stochasticity) of the models, or be attributed to errors in the models.

Its become pretty obvious which side has been lying. Now they are grasping at straws to report ANYTHING that shows their side "might" be right.

Sorry, this is not the 18th century anymore. Science is a quantitative affair, and necessarily so, because our world isn't binary. The question is not whether there is human-induced climate change, the question is how strong an effect humans are having on the biosphere. Maybe it's small enough to be negligible (probably not, according to what we currently know), maybe it's huge and a danger, but it's a quantitative question.

I'm going to ignore the alarmists and look at the evidence myself. If AGW was real, they wouldn't have to lie as often and at least ONE of their predictions would have happened.

Excellent idea. Try reading the IPCC report instead of The Drudge Report and you might find some.

The UK getting record snowfall despite AGWers claiming the UK wouldn't see snow after 2008.

It goes back and forth. In 2000, they were saying that AGW would get rid of snow. In 2008, they were saying the snow was a result of AGW.

No doubt you will see a reversal again when there is no snow.

Perhaps I should cherry pick my examples in the same way you have, so I can show that Catholics (in the form of the IRA) kill many people every year?

It was the GP that cherry-picked (by having a cut-off date that excluded 2001) - I used National statistics. I think that if you wanted to show that Catholics killed a lot of people you would have to cherry-pick a few decades ago. We used to be evacuated from shopping centres and things fairly frequently with bomb scares, but haven't been for years

Or would it be unfair, because many/most of those Catholics are white, which would show that religious extremism isn't limited to those evil Muslims?

You seem to have a hang-up on race here. It may surprise you to know that not all Catholics are white, and not all Muslim terrorists are brown. people like Richard Dart, Samantha Lewthwaite, Colleen Renee LaRose, to name only a few are just as much murdering muzzy scum as any other muzzy.

STFU
"The internal memo reported that Android attracted 79 per cent of all malware attacks, followed by Nokia’s Symbian software with 19 per cent. Apple’s iOS software attracted just 0.7 per cent of attacks."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/android-devices-attract-79-of-malware-attacks-ios-gets-just-07-8788158.html

Thatcher never called Mandela a terrorist

That's interesting, because the Tories apologized for her having called Mandela a terrorist.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-we-were-wrong-to-call-mandela-a-terrorist-413684.html

and it's even been argued that she played a pivotal role in ending it.

How funny is it that people post links without reading them. Here's the headline of the story you link to:

How Margaret Thatcher helped end apartheid - despite herself

And here's an interesting quote from that story:

A close aide once told me that she opposed apartheid more on the grounds that it was a sin against economic liberalism rather than a crime against humanity. She also was bitterly against sanctions of any sort â" they were a crime against free trade. She even went on denouncing them after Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth had imposed a ban on sporting contacts and other marginal sanctions. She boasted that she alone had managed to fight off demands for stronger sanctions.

Advised by her husband, Dennis, who had business interests in South Africa, she felt that anything that damaged wealth creation must be bad for South Africa. She was also a great admirer of Laurens van der Post, the South African writer and traveller later exposed as a fraud, who also opposed sanctions on the country. He introduced her to Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu leader, who played an ambivalent role in the struggle against apartheid, splitting from the ANC in 1979 and accepting "homeland" status for Kwazulu. His movement, Inkatha, helped the South African police repress ANC rebellion in the townships.

That's right, Margaret Thatcher's household income came in part due to South African investments under apartheid.

Like preventing adults from viewing porn without having to register as a pervert by british authorities first.

Nope. That's not happening.

Technically, it's not legally required, the PM has just coerced all of the major ISPs into doing it. So yes, it is happening.

JAMES VINCENT Author Biography Friday 29 November 2013

Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space.

If successful, the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team will make history by seeding life from Earth on another celestial body for the first time, paving the way for humans to set up more permanent habitation. “If we send plants and they thrive, then we probably can,” says Nasa.

Scientists, contractors and students will work together to create a small 1kg “self-contained habitat” containing seeds and germination material to send to the moon. To get there Nasa plans to ‘hitchhike’, delivering the payload via the Moon Express lander, a commercial spacecraft enrolled in the Google Lunar X Prize.

“After landing in late 2015, water will be added to the seeds in the module and their growth will be monitored for 5-10 days and compared to Earth based controls. Seeds will include Arabidopsis, basil, and turnips,” said Nasa officials in a press release.

The difficulty for the scientists will be encouraging plant growth in the harsh environment of the moon. Partial gravity and lunar radiation will need to be accounted for, although the plants will travel with their own water reservoir and enough air for five days of growth. Cameras and sensors will monitor the plants and send data back to Earth.

Nasa has outlined the importance of completing such experiments, noting that “thriving plants are needed for life support (food, air, water) for colonists,” and that such greenery also provides “psychological comfort, as the popularity of the greenhouses in Antarctica and on the Space Station show.”

Getting the seeds to the moon will be accomplished via the help of the Moon Express lander, a spacecraft being built by the private company Moon Express to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize. The $20 million prize will be awarded to the first team to “land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth,” with a deadline of 31 December 2015.

The experiment will help Nasa not only to learn more about how plants grow in testing environmental conditions, but will address broader questions about the possibility of establishing human habitats elsewhere in the universe.

“Can humans live and work on the moon? Not just visit for a few days but stay for decades? A first step in long term presence is to send plants,” says Nasa. “They carry genetic material that can be damaged by radiation as can that of humans [and] can test the lunar environment for us, acting as a ‘canary in a coal mine’.”

The project is also noteworthy for its relative frugality. Speaking to Forbes's Tarun Wadhwa, planetary scientist Dr. Chris McKay estimated that such a project would have cost $300 million two decades ago, but will only set Nasa back $2 million today.

In a move that Wadhwa described as "a brilliant mix of creativity and frugality," Nasa will also be sending duplicate habitats to schools across America, so that children and students can grow and monitor the same plants being sent to the moon.

This part of the project kills two birds with one stone: it allows Nasa to crowdsource the control experiments necessary for any scientific investigation, whilst also involving and inspiring a new generation with dreams of planetary exploration.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/nasa-to-grow-plants-on-the-moon-by-2015-if-they-can-thrive-we-probably-can-too-8972642.html

NASA Talks Astronauts O

You utterly fucking fail at understanding security. [...] The only known threats on iOS devices have come to jailbroken phones and the jailbreaks themselves.

It ain't just a river in Egypt.

And that's not even considering threats that come from Apple itself, without any need to install apps or change settings. Something magical happens and things just work.

So what you've got is malware requiring physical access to the device, a dodgy app that slipped through the accreditation process but was subsequently pulled and a theoretical vulnerability that Apple have patched.

If you thing that compares to the privacy sham or security shambles that is Android then you really must be a Google or Samsung shill. (It was obvious from the links you included in your post.)

Know how many people get viruses or malware on their iPhone (without jailbreaking) ... 0.

Looks like you don't know enough people. It has been done, without jailbreaking, and we only know because the developers publicized that fact themselves.. If you want to keep the same answer, perhaps you could rephrase the question as "How many times that Apple admit that they served up viruses or malware in their App Store?"

So you think its better to run extra software, waste more ram, cpu and storage space ... so that you don't get something that iOS users just aren't going to get in the first place?

But what if I don't _want_ a misplaced sense of security based on faulty assumptions?

You utterly fucking fail at understanding security. [...] The only known threats on iOS devices have come to jailbroken phones and the jailbreaks themselves.

It ain't just a river in Egypt.

And that's not even considering threats that come from Apple itself, without any need to install apps or change settings. Something magical happens and things just work.

Until then [I] just make it obvious [I'm] nothing more than a fanboy.

No argument here.

The oil spill did not happen in the United States. It happened in International Waters under the supervision of a British petroleum company.

A British company?

[J]ust how British is BP? Obviously it’s listed in London. And it’s got a British CEO. But BP employs 23,000 people in the US, compared to 10,000 UK workers. Around 40 per cent of BP’s shares are held in the UK. But around the same proportion is held in the US. And a glance at BP’s 2009 report (p29)shows that 26 per cent of BP’s crude oil production comes from the US (665,000 barrels a day out of 2,535,000 globally). A similar proportion of BP’s natural gas comes from the US. And 18 per cent of its oil is sold in the US too. And BP’s entire US operation is largely an inheritance from the 1998 merger with Amoco under Lord Browne.

So we have a company with a large number of American workers, a large number of American owners, which sells American oil and gas to American customers, which is being attacked by an American president for polluting the American coastline.

[source]

*cause winning 100 million is worth my time, but splitting 100 million? bah

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. If the payoff for the obscure sequences goes above 1.0, then you could participate in a syndicate to purchase the tickets and divvy up the profits, thus spreading out both the risks and the rewards. This happened with the Irish Lottery in May 1992, when a syndicate bought up 80% of the tickets, and made about a 30% profit for the participants.

I've just googled for the Independent coverage of the christening, and am glad to see it has got the respect it deserved.

I am personally generally pro-royal, but I don't want to read about them in my paper doing mundane things.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/13/jesse-kline-u-k-surveillance-state-goes-too-far-by-putting-cameras-in-school-bathrooms/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/spy-cameras-are-used-to-target-student-protesters-2290783.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

I started out looking for a story from a few years ago. The United Kingdom child services was installing cameras into the homes of troubled youth. Has the internet been "sanitized", or was that a false story? Even false stories are usually available to find again. Things that make you go "Hmmmmm".

But, yes, the government can install surveillance equipment into your home. The UK has apparently done so.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/204775/Surveillance_Camera_Code_of_Practice_WEB.pdf That PDF only applies to surveillance in "public places". It does make reference to yet other regulations that might not be "public places".

The original poster said "The Olympics".

Cites for Sochi:

Billions stolen in Sochi Olympics preparations. The opposition alleges that Putin's buddies have stolen US$30b from the Sochi preparations (over half the $54b budget.)

"Corruption and censorship cast shadow over Russia's Games". Corruption, censorship and human rights violations.

Russia Cracks Down On Journalists, Activists Exposing Corruption Ahead Of Sochi Olympics. Putin's response to corruption claims, shoot the messengers.

And more generally:

Wrestling with corruption at the Olympics. Gives a more general overview of the long history of Olympic corruption. Put simply, it's baked into the DNA of the entire organisation.

The satire was not subtle at all - how did so many people miss it?

My experience is that Europeans recognized the satire immediately, while Americans thought it was a serious movie glamourising American militarism.

Do americans get irony?

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/442099/air_force_scraps_massive_erp_project_after_racking_up_1_billion_costs/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Integrated_Military_Human_Resources_System#Some_Key_Features_of_DIMHRS

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/27/1228219/

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243855/_War_Room_notes_describe_IT_chaos_at_Healthcare.gov

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html

My pet theory is that the key is knowing your requirements, understanding the difference between what it does and how it does it, and being able to distinguish genuinely important ones from "we've always done it like that, if you change it I won't be important any more"

I get bored in lines and if there are advertising that I am interesded in displayed I will be more entertained. I can do without adds for tampons and justin bieber albums. That is the usefulness to me.

What benefit are some people being denied. The benefit of seeing ads they are not interested in?

Would you not be better served by a worker that you can say "no thanks" to as opposed to a CCTV system that will scan your face and pop up ads as you browse for your butter as it feels fit, not as you see fit? I think you are making my argument for me, though you may not realize it. The "automated" system will not be yours to turn off as you see fit, it turns on as the company sees fit.

Reference please. Where is your proof that the government was involved when it was the government that found it and stopped it.

You did not try very hard.

No, I am claiming that they will be easily caught and stopped if they tried it.

Because everything that the GCHQ does is public information available for you to scrutinize? Even if you knew something you would receive data on request? Come now, you can't be that daft can you?

Uranium mines aren't any better.

Sure they are: they're smaller. Also, they might become unnecessary, since you can extract uranium from seawater.

There is some good science supporting this... if you believe in science. If you're a denier then keep your head in the sand.
From the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences":
"We found that a 21-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment,"says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the result of business-as-usual warming would be 7 degrees by 2100, eventual warming over several centuries of 25 degrees is feasible, says Huber. The new research calculated the highest tolerable "wet-bulb" temperature that humans can withstand."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/report-climate-change-could-render-much-of-world-uninhabitable/1#.UnRNdCS-Pfk
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-may-be-too-hot-for-humans-by-2300-study-1970969.html

Looks like vampire slayers were at the top of their game back in 2004, but now it appears that vampires have the upper hand.

Thats the question, how to get down past all that messy 'atmosphere' stuff. Too low and the Soviet era weapons get lucky, too high and you need a larger system.
Some form of heavy lift blimp with solar, a big energy system and big laser double tapping regional targets 24/7?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outrage-at-cias-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-8174771.html

NHS has clearly been under pressure for quite some time. Strange that it rarely comes up in discussion.

Complaints about doctors 'double in five years'

Crackdown on migrants rights to NHS and council homes
Patients facing eight-hour waits in ambulances outside A&E departments
Watchdog issues NHS with financial health warning
Why do the UK's cancer survival rates still lag behind the rest of Europe?
Thousands of NHS operations cancelled because of blunders as complaints about standard of treatment rise
The frightening truth: NHS-managers are incentivized to ignore problems
Hungry, thirsty, unwashed: NHS treatment of the elderly condemned
Dying for a drink: Over 12,000 killed by dehydration in hospitals every year

Labour must bear the blame for the shameful decline of the NHS

Actually, if you follow international news at all, there has been a strong Conservative/Tory assault on the NHS for several years now. The assault comes in the form of privatization and the introduction of the 'free' market to the health care ecosystem. This system, if anything, is attempting to emulate the system put in place with the ACA, and the right in the UK has made it clear that they would like do what the right in America has been arguing for this whole time in terms of health care. Would the Dems have desired to emulate the original NHS, prior to its evisceration? Yes. Now? Not so much. Here's a bit of light reading on the topic, which is anything but hard to find. (Yes, they do tend to be from more leftwing sources, however, they have good information on what has been done to the NHS recently.) http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11935 http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/farewell-to-the-nhs-19482013-a-dear-and-trusted-friend-finally-murdered-by-tory-ideologues-8555503.html http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=676:people-will-die-the-end-of-the-nhs-part-1-the-corporate-assault-&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69

Or, to put it more cynically, US health insurance is a great deal, right up until the point where you need to make a claim.

Tell it to the people waiting in ambulances, dying of thirst, and the elderly. (And that is barely scratching the surface.)

Since 2000, we have seen serious major acts of terrorism in this country typically once or twice a year.â

Really? I don't recall one or two major acts of terrorism a year since 2000. In fact I only recall one (7/7), and maybe you could count the bungled attempt to bomb an airport but those guys were laughably dumb. So what are the other 20 odd major acts of terrorism that I somehow slept through?

( Note to moderators: The question was asked, I'm answering it. )

Here is a starter for you. I'm quite sure there are more out there since this was just a hasty search. When I started this post I was assuming that plots would count as "acts," but it looks like the number goes well over anyway between the various Islamists and the Real IRA. (As this was done in haste I may have posted something redundant, but it really doesn't alter the outcome much. A more careful search would no doubt turn up more.)

Bomb plot: Life sentence for Irfan Naseer, ringleader of Birmingham men planning wave of UK suicide attacks

London terror bomb plot: the four terrorists

Four men pleaded guilty to plotting a Christmas bomb attack on the London Stock Exchange and causing a 'Mumbai-style' atrocity.

Fertiliser bomb plot: The story

Five men have been convicted of plotting to build a bomb which police say could have killed hundreds of British people. The men were caught after police and MI5 launched a massive surveillance operation.

British terrorists conspired in bombs plot - security officials

Counter-terrorism officials said last night they believe British terrorists who are still at large were involved in the conspiracy to launch car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow.
Details emerged as it became clear that five of the suspects under arrest are doctors working and training in the NHS, and one is a doctor working in Australia where he was arrested last night.

Airline terror trial: The bomb plot to kill 10,000 people

On honeymoon in the sunshine, Britons who forged a terror plot to plant peroxide and bleach bombs in Jewish areas

Shasta Khan and her husband also had beheading videos, bomb-making guides and bleach at their home
Police found the terror-related material after being called to a domestic dispute at their house
A satnav showed they had been on multiple trips to Jewish populated areas looking for targets

British soldier hacked to death in suspected Islamist attack

A British soldier was hacked to death by two men shouting Islamic slogans in a south London street on Wednesday, in what the government said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

A dramatic clip filmed by an onlooker just minutes after the killing showed a man with hands covered in blood, brandishing a bloodied meat cleaver and a knife. "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day," the black man in his 20s or 30s, wearing a wool jacket and jeans

This was a somewhat more exciting series of arrests than usual.

Police shoot at car in suspected terror raids

Armed police shot at the tyres of a car to stop two suspected terrorists during a dramatic series of raids to foil an alleged plot to attack the UK.

Officers fired special Hatton rounds – large shotgun ammunition designed to burst tyres or breach doors – to force the vehicle over in east London on Sunday evening. Witnesses also reported seeing police ram the back of the car before it was finally brought to a halt while a helicopter hovered overhead. In simultaneous arrests, armed officers swooped on a man in the street in west London while a fourth man was arrested at a flat south east of the city. A large number of armed officers were used because it was feared the men had access to weapons and were planning a suspected Islamist terror attack, the Daily Telegraph understands.

The head of MI5 is concerned about the diminishing margin of advantage they have to detect such things in the face of a continuing threat.

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Mr Parker pointed out the statistics of the threat from terrorism faced by the UK. The “plain facts”, he said, were that “from 11 September 2001 to the end of March this year, 330 people were convicted of terrorism related- offences in Britain In the first few months of this year, there were four major trials related to terrorist plots. Since 2000, we have seen serious major acts of terrorism in this country typically once or twice a year.”

Bob Geldof doesn't even think it will last a million hours

The Independent is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.

Makes a good reading companion to the Guardian.

No one misses a few semoleans as long as there is enough to facilitate the necessary level of trade among the natives. It's the relative desirability of one currency vis-a-vis any other currency because of its acceptance in its function as a means of exchange that determines its value. That's why it's more important that the USD remained the standard currency by which oil was traded and the threat to this status has greater effect than the fact that the Fed is dluting the money supply by $85 billion each month.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how they figure they can justify $30k in the first place. It just doesn't make any sense from where I sit.

Agreed

What if it only cost $1 would you pay for it? Would you really? Somehow I don't the the price is a reflection of a team of brilliant minds patenting some amazing new learning assessment test.

IQ tests are flawed I'm sure these are as well, my impression is that these seem more like a way for rich people to fleece well meaning but not well grounded rich people out of money. Given the natural desire for people to want the best for kids and everyones desire to want to hear their kid is special/getting the best help/intelligent in their own way/etc I'm sure the marketing on this will be easy and virtually unchallenged.

I don't have kids but I suspect any results from this (annual?) test will be less useful then quality time by the parent spent learning what the child is interested in and encouraging growth in those areas. Something like this might be valuable one day but probably not soon.

"Well no, they likely won't say something absurd and false."

OHRLY?

Check out their list of predictions. Not one came true. Ever. Show me the one that did.

Did you miss this?

"James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years-523161.html
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

And wtf do you suppose this means?

http://news.yahoo.com/best-ipcc-climate-report-leaks-122437372.html

"The draft report said, "There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent."

"The IPCC projects warming will likely be above 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) and very likely below 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius.) This is a rollback from 2007, when the likely low end of the warming range was pinned at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius)"

"The IPCC also acknowledges a slowdown in warming in the past 15 years, which climate change skeptics say is evidence of a global cooling trend. There's no global cooling, according to the report."

"But even with this variability, the past 30 years were the warmest in several centuries, the report said. (A study published April 21, 2013, in the journal Nature Geoscience confirms this trend — the last three decades were the warmest in 1,400 years.)" - ok work with me here. So, it was warmer 1401 years ago? The Danish tree ring data (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html) shows it was much hotter in Roman times than even way off the end of the hockey stick graph, so the "unprecedented" claim has been falsified.

"The pace of melting glaciers is rising, the report concludes. The Arctic ice pack is shrinking. As mentioned above, the massive Antarctic ice cap is also starting to show signs of responding to global warming by increasing its melting. The Greenland Ice Sheet lost about six times more ice from 2002 to 2011 than from 1992 to 2001 — an average of 177 billion tons a year versus 7 billion tons a year, respectively. "

Oh crap, that sounds serious. What does NASA say?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

"Ice cores from

Five would probably be wonderful. There was story here where 1700 people applied for 8 positions at a Costa coffee shop. Tens or hundreds of applicants per job wouldn't be surprising in a job market where there are far less positions then there are unemployed.

In that scenario, a lot of HR departments really don't care about getting the absolute best, they just want to get people who pass all of their metrics and tests. They aren't going to debate the individual merits of hundreds of people. The problem is really that there aren't enough jobs, and certainly not enough that pay well.

The idea of a physical cable is that it is simple, robust and as long as the connectors fit, it should (given sane engineering) do what is expected. It is fascinating how they violate that simple and powerful idea in a complex way, just to make a few bucks more. It is also utterly repulsive to any principled engineer.

This was my initial reaction as well... And then I remembered the recent cases of people getting killed, or ending up in a coma due to what is likely to be the use of clone power supplies and cables

Apple has gone to great lengths to mitigate its legal exposure... going as far as offering a discount on an Apple replacement for your third party power supply. For Apple to suddenly ignore the risks of being sued (and to your health and safety) after it can be shown that they could have done something to prevent the use of unauthorised chargers and cables would be stupid of them.

Suddenly, Syria looks rational, Russia looks peaceful, and America looks like the playground bully kicking sand in everyone's faces.

Considering that the EU and UN were wringing their hands and ineffective, the folks I've spoken to on that continent seem to think it turned out quite reasonably for all.

Naturally, this didn't go over very well with the war hawks in Congress... but to date, no bombs have dropped.

Hmm.. are you talking about a very few congresscritters or a large group? Once again you're clueless.

China needs someone in their corner with nuclear weapons. Either that, or develop their own.

Wow, we'd better be careful or China might develop their own weapons! You're so fucking stupid it's unbelievable. Hell, they got their best tricks from stealing data our warheads.

They've started developing their economy and cyberwarfare resources at a pace that exceeds America's, and the disparity is growing measurably every few months. It will only be a decade at most before they're left eating the dust of China as it rises to become a global economic superpower.

The NSA owns China like a two dollar Asian hooker. Don't believe your own animus; it's the truth.

As far as your economic arguments go, they're laughable. Talk to me when the Chinese let their currency float. Talk to me when they have solid fresh water supplies that aren't polluted beyond repair. Talk to me when they can feed themselves for the next fifty years. Talk to me when they can put down the political dissent of their aspiring middle class forever.

Psst.. they're just as fucked as the US... actually more so. Fortunately neither of us are as fucked as the EU. The future of the first world lies in South America.

These stories are rutinely removed from the web very quickly, this is one of the few I could find:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/suppressed-report-shows-cancer-link-to-gm-potatoes-436673.html

So ... anything can be true so long as there's an article somewhere on the Internet, right?

In that case I'm guessing this guy is the only person who knows the real truth about AIDS, yes?