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Rubbish. Apple did that in 1989.

I wanted to validate the claims that Gates is guilty. Gates related money is actually limiting the health of people in nations the West considers poor. If Bill Gates really wanted to save the lives of people in poverty he would agree that patents don't matter for medicine in many situations. It's a myth that progress in medicine depends on putting patents before people. We must allow generic and patent free drugs to reach more people, and it would not cut into the massive profits of the drug company stocks held by the Gates Foundation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/06/mother-jones-daily-briefing-0?page=3
>> see the reporting by John Litchfield of the London Independent 2003
Litchfield quotes Doctors without borders and notes the lack of affordable generics

>> Read reporter Greg Palast
"let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called "Foundation." Gate's demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called "TRIPS" - the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him a monopoly that the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4103.htm

"The Bush Administration has also prevented a positive resolution to one crucial issue left unresolved at Doha. Currently, TRIPS allows countries to produce generic drugs through compulsory licensing, but requires that such drugs be used predominantly for the country's domestic market. That means that countries cannot export generic products thus produced - even to countries where there are no patents"
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/vi/node/285

As an English intellectual property and antitrust lawyer I read the piece by David Resnik and Kenneth De Ville (2002) with both interest and surprise. It is startling to suggest that a country with the democratic credentials of the United States should, as a matter of public policy and indeed on apparently "moral" grounds, prefer private monopoly rights to the lives and welfare of its citizens.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ajb/summary/v002/2.3smith.html

By pouring most contributions into the fight against such high-profile killers as AIDS, Gates grantees have increased the demand for specially trained, higher-paid clinicians, diverting staff from basic care. The resulting staff shortages have abandoned many children of AIDS survivors to more common killers: birth sepsis, diarrhea and asphyxia.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gates16dec16,0,3743924.story

None of the above is counter to philanthropy - these are Foundation investments, not Bill's personal portfolio.

*ahem* It is called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The name is a clue to who's running it. Hint: His name starts with Bill.

Have you also considered that the Foundation disagrees with your viewpoint that these investments have practices running "counter to the foundation's supposed charitable goals and social mission"? Last I checked, it didn't intend to create an egalitarian utopia, where the poor weren't being exploited by the rich, but to solve a few fundamental problems.

The goal is to solve problems which kill people by making investments in corporations which kill people .

Every charitable mission can be identified as in some way contributing toward some sort of nastiness

[citation needed] I can think of real counterexamples, such as Food Not Bombs. They're often met with nastiness, but that's not the same thing.

Stop with the apologism. This issue is as old as the Gates Foundation. When the aforementioned article came out the foundation posted a press release stating that they would review their investments for ethical impact. Literally the next day they removed it from their site and then dropped another one that said they would do no such thing because it would be difficult.

One could even look at it as a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul -- taking the oil company's own profits to develop the technology that will put them out of business.

No, that is also bullshit. The oil company isn't profiting from disease, and nothing Gates is doing threatens to put them out of business either.

I don't think providing extended-extended support for a customer base who is migrating away from microsoft products is going to make microsoft very much money in the long term.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9 "Piracy also prevents free, open-source alternatives such as Linux from chipping away at Microsoft's monopolies, especially in developing nations."

Nothing has changed simply because Microsoft is heading towards a self generated deadline.

and your damn car freedom, for that matter:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-soccer-player-josie-seebeck-dies-20130806,0,3385811.story#axzz2bJ3jiLrB

The U.S. supported Pol Pot.

Cold-war anti-Communism worked against the interests of the U.S. The U.S. is worse off because of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-the-diplomacy-pol-pot-s-end-won-t-stop-us-pursuit-of-his-circle.html
DEATH OF POL POT: THE DIPLOMACY; Pol Pot's End Won't Stop U.S. Pursuit of His Circle
By ELIZABETH BECKER
Published: April 17, 1998

In one of the cold war's proxy battles, the United States took China's side against the Soviet Union, which meant accepting the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Government of Cambodia in opposition to the Vietnamese-imposed regime in Phnom Penh. Previously, the United States had sided with China to punish the Soviet Union for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-thatcher-helped-pol-pot/5330873
How Thatcher helped Pol Pot
By John Pilger
Global Research, April 11, 2013

Declassified United States government documents leave little doubt that the secret and illegal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it was critical in Pol Pot’s drive for power.

“They are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda,” the CIA director of operations reported on 2 May 1973. “This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of young men. Residents say the propaganda campaign has been effective with refugees in areas that have been subject to B52 strikes.”

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-06-24/local/me-6271_1_pol-pot
In the Dock With Pol Pot: Uncle Sam
An immoral connivance between China and the U.S. allowed killing fields to flourish.
June 24, 1997
Robert Scheer

Pol Pot's major war crimes were committed between 1975 and 1979 and the U.S. government knew the full extent of that horror during all the ensuing years in which it tried to bring him back to power as part of the U.S.-China sponsored coalition

President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has admitted, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. . . . Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could." But the U.S. did support Pol Pot covertly, including whitewashing his crimes. As Ben Kiernan points out in an indispensable Yale University Law School monograph entitled "Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia," the CIA in May of 1980 "denied that there had been any executions in the last two years of the Pol Pot regime." In fact, half a million innocent people were killed during that period. Even well after the "killing fields" were unearthed, the U.S. continued to legitimize the Khmer Rouge, voting at the U.N. Geneva Conference in 1981 to defeat an ASEAN proposal that the Khmer Rouge be disarmed.

Aside from base assumptions, what makes you believe that Snowden entered employment with the NSA with the intent to release data he was exposed to?

Because he said that.

Snowden to newspaper: I took contractor job to gather evidence

Also, what gives you the impression that he has an interest backing him

He did manage to steal an enormous amount of wide ranging data in only 90 days of employment, don't you think?

Who Helped Snowden Steal State Secrets?

In my opinion, the fact that the US gov't has hunted him so furiously and has taken the exact opposite approach that they mandate regarding any other nation's political refugees ...

He isn't a political refuge. He stole national defense secrets and has revealed a few of them. Nobody really knows what he is doing with the rest of them.

Charles Moore: Snowden is a traitor - The beneficiaries of his betrayal are not civil liberties, but those who wish to embarrass us.

Snowden leaks give edge to U.S. rivals, officials say - Russia, China and terrorism suspects have altered how they communicate to evade U.S. detection, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

Snowden’s Nuclear War on Intelligence

Geoffrey Ingersoll: It's Now Clear That Russian Intelligence Speaks For Edward Snowden

If you want instant, as it happens [...]

Fortunately, "instant, as it happens" is frequently inaccurate and generally a waste of time.

I'm not in Venice, CA. No one I know is in Venice, CA. So I don't really need "instant, as it happens" information on things that happen in Venice, CA. I can certainly wait until the next day to find out what happened. I'd rather have accurate information the next day than misinformation now.

Actually: "Scientists at the Toronto center have uncovered a series of associations that suggest pedophilia has biological roots. Among the most compelling findings is that 30% of pedophiles are left-handed or ambidextrous, triple the general rate. Because hand dominance is established through some combination of genetics and the environment of the womb, scientists see that association as a powerful indicator that something is different about pedophiles at birth." source: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/14/local/la-me-pedophiles-20130115

Rather, he emphasized that because the patent in question was now a widely held technology standard, banning the products in question would be too disruptive to consumers and the economy

That argument could be used to sooooo many other patent litigations, and somehow never is, except when the affected part is a big American company.

Actually, only recently have big corporations started trying to use standards-essential patents as tools of corporate warfare. The EU is investigating Samsung for just this kind of behavior.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/03/nation/la-na-cyber-security-20120803

U.S. Chamber of Commerce leads defeat of cyber-security bill

Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among those who pressed for a White House-backed cyber-security bill to regulate privately owned crucial infrastructure, such as electric utilities, chemical plants and water systems.

If the senators didn't act, they argued, it would make it harder to stop hackers, criminals and hostile nations from wreaking unimaginable havoc, such as knocking out sections of New York City's electrical grid for days during a summer heat wave. But theU.S. Chamber of Commerceand other business groups strenuously opposed the measure, condemning it as excessive government interference in the free market and arguing that cumbersome federal regulations could hamper companies trying to defend against cyber intrusions.

Democrats overwhelmingly supported the legislation, but for Republicans, it meant a stark choice between competing constituencies: national security officials and business leaders. Even after the bill's backers made the standards voluntary, the Chamber of Commerce, which spends more on lobbying than any other trade group, opposed it.

On Thursday, the Senate cyber-security bill failed to overcome a Republican-led filibuster. Analysts say the bill couldn't breach a wall of anti-regulatory sentiment that proved resistant to the dire warnings.

The measure fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate, 52 to 46, with 40 Republicans joined by six Democrats voting in support of the filibuster.

"Rarely have I been so disappointed in the Senate's failure to come to grips with a threat to our country," said Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and one of the bill's chief sponsors, who had tried in vain to sway her GOP colleagues. Just four sided with her.

But theU.S. Chamber of Commerceand other business groups strenuously opposed the measure, condemning it as excessive government interference in the free market and arguing that cumbersome federal regulations could hamper companies trying to defend against cyber intrusions.

.... for the crime of causing the Surveillance State a little trouble.

NSA chief says leak damage 'irresponsible and irreversible'

National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander said Thursday the damage from recently leaked information is "irresponsible and irreversible" because it has given terrorist groups the intelligence community's "playbook."

Snowden leaks give edge to U.S. rivals, officials say

Among the disclosures from Snowden that were published in the Washington Post and the Guardian was that Skype, the Internet calling service, was among the systems that provided data to the NSA's secret PRISM database. That disclosure contradicted a widespread belief that calls made via Skype were difficult or impossible to intercept.

Some suspected terrorists the NSA was tracking are no longer using Skype, U.S. officials said. Others have stopped using email, said one U.S. official who has been briefed on the damage.

"The Skype thing was really bad," the official said.

You don't think you're downplaying this just a little, do you?

Yet I noticed a stark absence of the actual "proof" he claims to have.

Reminds me of one of my uncle's, a psychologically diagnosed pathological liar; always claims to know the information you want, and always has some bullshit excuse on why he can't tell it to you.

Only a child or invalid would accept "We have the information to prove our claim, but we can't show it to you" as a legitimate response.

Or a sucker.

I think that General George Washington was wiser than the people that you get your ideas from.

In a letter to one of his officers written in 1777, Washington wrote that secrecy was key to the success of intelligence activities:

"The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of the kind, & for want of it, they are generally defeated, however, well planned...." [letter to Colonel Elias Dayton, 26 July 1777]

The issue isn't that the national intelligence leadership isn't willing show anybody, and almost certainly isn't that they have no proof. They simply won't show you - CanHasDIY, and people similarly situated. Why? Because you have no security clearance, you have no "need to know" based on the rules of handling classified information, you have no responsibility that requires it, you perform no oversight of them.

Being a citizen and a voter is not a magic pass to personally supervise federal employees, nor does it entitle you to know all of the nation's secrets. You get to vote for your Congressional representatives, and inform them of your views. You can even volunteer for them, or form groups to lobby. But it is up to the representatives in Congress to pass the laws governing government activity, and to perform oversight of the government. That is it, unless you actually have a job that entitles you to greater responsibility in that regard as recognized by law and regulation. If you don't like that, you can always run for office.

Now as to evidence, I might be able to help a little, but no more than is in the news:

Snowden leaks give edge to U.S. rivals, officials say

Among the disclosures from Snowden that were published in the Washington Post and the Guardian was that Skype, the Internet calling service, was among the systems that provided data to the NSA's secret PRISM database. That disclosure contradicted a widespread belief that calls made via Skype were difficult or impossible to intercept.

Some suspected terrorists the NSA was tracking are no longer using Skype, U.S. officials said. Others have stopped using email, said one U.S. official who has been briefed on the damage.

"The Skype thing was really bad," the official said.

The full damage from Snowden's revelations has yet to be seen. I think that neither General Washington, nor Benjamin Franklin - a spymaster in his own right, would be amused.

George Washington: Spymaster and General Who Saved the American Revolution

Upon his appointment as Commander-in-Chief on June 15, 1775, Washington immediately began efforts to build an intelligence capacity to assist in obtaining information on the British Army. He accomplished this by creating, directing, and managing spy networks, along with deception, and misinformation efforts in order to mitigate and offset the British military advantage. An additional benefit of serving in the British Army was Washington’s appreciation of their military capability. He knew at the outset of the American Revolution that he could not defeat the British Army in Europe

If bothering to actual look before writing... There are quite allot of single people out there... http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/12/news/cl-24234

In major parts of the developing world they still have arranged marriages.. That might account for quite a high percentage too....

But the major thing i think about people pairing up is that there is a human urge to reproduce, and people only pair up with one of the opposite sex might be due to social acceptance and learnt behavior.

The problem with GMO is not the science of it, not the benefit of it, it is that GMO is driven by short term profit, plain and simple. If a company can splice in a beneficial trait for short term profit, they will do it. No questions.

The problem arises in not requiring or possibly even being able to conceive the mid or long term consequences.

An example is a story I read a few years ago... basically an ecosystem had collapsed because of the elimination of wolves. The strange part was that the system was collapsing because of the rivers running dry. An excerpt from Here
The chain of effects went roughly like this: No wolves meant that many more elk crowded onto inviting river and stream banks. A growing population of fat elk, in no danger of being turned into prey, gnawed down willow and aspen seedlings before they could mature. As the willows declined, so did beavers, which used the trees for food and building material. When beavers build dams and make ponds, they create wetland habitats for countless bugs, amphibians, fish, birds and plants, as well as slowing the flow of water and distributing it over broad areas. The consequences of their decline rippled across the land.

The point being, we are introducing unexpected consequences to a system that has come to balance over millions of years.

Its not the Oranges today we should worry about.. its the new breed of resultant pine trees in 20 years that kill all the butterflies and cause the grass on the plains to stop growing... wild example.. but did you really think exterminating wolves would make the rivers run dry?

Ericsson worked with Verizon to create LTE which could operate with Verizon's legacy CDMA network. By working with the telecoms to create LTE, Ericsson is going to benefit from decades of contracts to provide support and equipment to telecoms worldwide in the adoption of LTE.

Nokia chose to anger the telecoms by backing WiMAX in an alliance with Intel, WiMAX being promoted as a technology that could disintermediate the major carriers. Considering 9/11, this was an EXTREMELY bad time to threaten the US telecoms. Think about it. Nokia did not get access to Intel's fabs. Unfortunately for Nokia, in 2008, it became clear that its fab partner, Texas Instruments, was bowing out of its alliance. One can follow the ugly story of the Nokia-Intel alliance here. By backing the wrong technology, WiMAX instead of LTE, Nokia went from owning the IP for the entire wireless stack to selling it all off. So now Nokia has to go to another party for its wireless chips, in particular, for the upcoming LTE.

Only Nokia was at the same time engaged in an IP battle with Qualcomm, its real mortal rival. Qualcomm possesses the IP for interoperability with CDMA, Verizon's network. And Nokia lost that battle, an unprecedented IP settlement to the tune of a massive instant payment of roughly $2.3 billion USD.

So Nokia by not developing an LTE chipset found itself at the mercy of its mortal enemy, a company that would have been glad to have seen Nokia disappear from the face of the Earth a few years ago, especially as Qualcomm's business of licensing IP could be threatened previously only by the likes of European Nokia. And Nokia made itself into the mortal enemy of the US telecoms by pushing for WiMAX in its alliance with Intel, in the decade following 9/11.

What could have possibly pushed Nokia into making such an alliance with Intel and such a technologically and politically mistaken decision of pursuing WiMAX? I speculate it was all due to a fateful decision by the previous Nokia leadership to (badly) follow the advice of a fellow Finn, none other than Linus Torvalds . (And yes I get the irony that Torvalds was at one time working for a competitor to Intel, that's why Nokia's leadership clearly followed his advice horrendously.) "But it had a "Plan B", and had been considering it for years. In 2002, I'm told, Linus Torvalds convinced Nokia to create a Linux unit."

Here's a better article describing at least one research project on the topic.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-dolphins-name-signature-whistles-20130722,0,1462053.story

Your assertion still holds that they did not directly show dolphins using names to call one another - but they did observationally identify individual signature whistles that seem to be associated with particular individuals and are used by their podmates. And when playing back synthetic reproductions (not recordings, they wanted to strip out any voice identification) of an individual's signature that one individual would respond by repeating the whistle and sometimes swimming over to investigate - behavior not seen when playing any other whistle patterns from their "conversations". Behavior not unlike what you would expect from a person whose name was called out by an synthetic voice that then said nothing else.

I'll admit that more direct evidence would still be desirable to confirm the claim that they are used as names in the wild, but it certainly makes for a compelling early study.

...one has to consider what a broadcast entity dependent upon advertising revenues will do if those ads no longer generate cash.

That is certainly the argument Fox used. What they conveniently left out is that Fox collects retransmission fees from Dish.

In fact, Dish was at one time forced to drop Fox programming because, according to Dish :-

FOX is demanding a new contract with an unprecedented rate increase of more than 50 percent.

In addition, the broadcast networks including Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC have demanded that its affiliates hand over a percentage of the money they receive from local cable operators that retransmit their signals.

Broadcasters used to be content with the money they took in from advertisers, which supported "free" over-the-air television. But in recent years as broadcasters have lost viewers to cable and advertisers are shifting to the Internet, stations have been seeking new sources of revenue by demanding payment from cable and satellite companies for the right to retransmit their programming.

News Corp.'s Fox is not the only network seeking a slice of its affiliates' retransmission fees. CBS, ABC and NBC are also negotiating for a percentage. However, there is a consensus that Fox is being the most aggressive of the networks. None of the Big Three has yet threatened to drop its local affiliate if it doesn't get the money.

While the corporate skirmishing is waged far above the heads of TV viewers, it is likely to have a real-world effect on households that pay for cable or satellite service — about 90% of all TV-watching homes in the country — in the form of higher monthly rates as local providers look to make up the difference.

Basically, its all about the money. The broadcasting networks have already been paid by retransmission fees and are double dipping into advertising fees.

The best approach for dealing with piracy is making your content easily accessible, hassle-free (i.e., no DRM), and offered at a fair price.

Let me expand on this point. There are broadly 2 kinds of pirates - those who enjoy your product and pirate for personal use (the fans), and those who pirate commercially to make money for themselves (the thieves).

The fans are normally concerned with easy and cheap access to your product. Give it to them and most fans will not bother to pirate because it is risky (exposure to malware), often time consuming (some obscure products can be really hard to find), inconvenient (usually need to assemble from multiple sources) or require technical expertise (eg. applying cracks, rooting). A good example would be Steam which provides cheap and convenient access to games. A counter example would be Game of Thrones - If you live in Oz, you can't get it (no access) and it is expensive (requires cable subscription).

As for the thieves, normally an obscure small technical magazine would not be of interest to them. The exception is if your product is so expensive that even your fans are willing to buy copies from pirates, making it financially worthwhile. Again, reducing your product to a fair price (by market standards) will largely solve this problem. One example is AutoCAD, which has a captive market, ridiculous monopoly pricing and a huge piracy problem.

Since you mentioned "secure", I assume you are contemplating some form of DRM. Just be aware of its disadvantages -its usually expensive (you need to buy/licence the DRM, maintain some way of policing it, maintain customer service to handle irate buyers, have some sort of refund sceheme for customers who cannot run the DRM), it can negatively impact sales (see Sony rootkits), and if badly implemented, can actually cause lawsuits e.g. SecureROM.

Coming from a guy who's company's income is roughly 1/3rd of FB's advertising income. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/27/business/la-fi-mo-twitter-ad-revenue-billion-2014-20130327

Implying Obama hasn't taken care of business?

He's been getting so much done, he's had time to comment on a trial in Florida! Forget about the IRS, Syria, Benghazi, Fast and Furious (fuck everyone involved in this), NSA unconstitutional domestic spying, keeping tax cuts, patriot act garbage. There is a long list of issues that really need to be addressed in this country, and we're too busy squabbling about little shit.

He averted an econopocalypse. There were not runs on the banks. FDIC didn't come into play. The stock market bounced back, if not the job market.

The whole thing began because of pressure from the government on the banks. In addition, 290,000 fewer people were counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work. That drop in those seeking jobs was the reason the unemployment rate fell to 7.6%, the lowest since December 2008. Second Largest Employer In America Is Temp Agency. And the stock market? Is not a bastion for the American middleclass.

He ramped down our military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. In such a way that was a non-newsworthy event. This is a SLAM DUNK.

Not according to the facts. All because of this due to the military industrial complex not to mention the deaths of thousands, for what, freedom?

But all in all he's got shit done. Despite the massive resistance he's facing from the Republicans.

Fuck all the partisan posturing. What's the narrative when he had a democrat majority in the senate and House? Why don't we take an objective look at what both of the hands are doing to for the body they're attached to?

It probably does but not in the "she was dressed like that" manner but more of a this requires further investigation manner. Given the type of weapon, a real assault rifle and not something with different trim, it was (he was a tax stamp holder I assume unless it was an illegal weapon) it would have been highly valuable. Since you are implying he was targeted now the question is how did he become a target?

One guess would be he liked to show the weapon off to just about anyone who came over and even like to show how secure it was since the criminals came prepared. This leads me to the question of why would bank robbing criminals need a fully auto weapon over the standard handgun, shotgun, or semi auto rifle? The others are much easier to come by and if planning a big heist a fully auto weapon will just eat through ammo and wouldn't be of much use unless they were planning to mow down a crowd. You also mentioned that the criminals were caught aiming it out a window which seems to indicate these aren't the real serious criminals who know to shut the hell up and be low key. Most of your criminals (99.999%) aren't like those in the movie Heat even worse is most (99%) don't even measure up to the barely competent Man in Black Robber so something does smell a bit fishy. You claim they were serious criminals but yet they seem to be exceptionally stupid, as in below the average crackhead gang banger who knows not to wave a fucking gun around where people that can turn you in can see it.

Another scenario that jumps to my mind is insurance fraud given the value of the firearm (probably at least $15,000). As such I would have looked at the connections between your father and the criminals as there probably is a very close relationship with 1 maybe 2 degrees of separation if not directly known by your father. Again this seems to fit with the well prepared but incompetent criminals. The only other scenario that seems to fit might be your father wasn't a tax stamp holder (seems unlikely) then it seems like the person who he got it from let someone else know where to get one in which case I don't have much sympathy. But there that doesn't seem to fit since how would the criminals have known to come prepared to remove a wall.

Also I tried to find some cases of a legally owned assault rifle (even ones that were previously legally owned and registered in the US) being used in crime and that seems difficult to find as I haven't come up with anything yet. This task is further confounded by the nebulous term of assault weapon which idiots in the media equate to assault weapon when they are not the same thing. Here are some of what I have found:
Assault Rifles Are Not Heavily Used in Crimes
Has any Fully Automatic Firearm ever been used to commit a Violent Crime?
Fully automatic guns in the US are highly regulated, and regulation workshardly a right wing outfit
I did find a case where privately owned assault rifles/machines guns were stolen but it seems far more common for the government to have them stolen
Feds release photos of stolen machine gunsThe one case of privately owned ones stolen. incompetent as hell
Hotchkiss man pleads guilty in theft of cop’s assault rifle, SWAT gear
Cop shot looking for stolen police rifle

"I disagree. In this market, you had en extremely dominant player with 80-90% market share [cnn.com] selling products at a loss."

How can this possibly true given that the paperback versions were pretty much always cheaper again and producing a paperback product is always drastically more expensive than producing a digital version.

I think the publishers might have been telling a little white lie about the whole "loss" thing.

The publishers weren't selling at a loss - but Amazon sold at a loss. When Amazon sells a copy, they pay an amount per book to the publisher. If the price is below this amount, they lose money. For the publisher, something similar could potentially apply - e.g. if the royalty is a fixed amount per book.

Also, it's important to know that paper doesn't cost that much. The dominant costs are fixed costs ("running the company", with all that entails of reviewing, editing, marketing, author advances), royalties etc. The same applies to e-books.

I see you are a fan of pulp quality fiction. Well, I can provide you with a general guide to help separate fiction from reality when it comes to war, we'll leave your other fiction for another time. Real war tends to fill these things. There have been thousands of them filled since it started. Many of them are being filled due to bombs, bullets, and rockets used by the enemy to kill American and allied service members. That is a pretty reliable way to separate "fictitious wars" from real wars. Another strong indicator is the use of 500 pound and 2,000 pound bombs being dropped on the enemy to kill them. That also doesn't happen in "fictitious wars." The war against al Qaida is real. Anything you are reading that calls it fiction is fiction or lies itself.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/21/local/la-me-state-computers-20121222

Why is it that we allow morons who don't understand disproportionate effects post on these forums? Don't they teach simple logic in high school any more? I assure you, my experience in vehicle design and as the founder of a Tier 1 engineering and design firm for automotive OEMs almost certainly makes me much less an idiot and much more an expert than you.

And why can't these morons do their own research instead of pouring out ad hominem attacks because the facts presented don't fit the world view instilled on them by their well-meaning but ill-informed educators?

"[N]itrous oxide ... [has] 310 [times the greenhouse effect of CO2] the and it has an atmospheric lifetime of 120 years—10 times longer than that of methane." [source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2007/11/the_other_greenhouse_gases.html%5D

And:

"And motorcycle manufacturers only have to ensure that their vehicles of 179 cc and above meet governmental emissions criteria for the first 18,600 miles of a bike's life, compared with 150,000 miles for cars." [source: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle11-2008jun11,0,6054455.story%5D The bottom line? Cars Catalytic converters get replaced. Bikes - if the even have them - don't. Once the catalytic converter is gone, the NOX emissions explode.

The evidence is compelling that of the motorocycles on the road today have a significantly disproportionate effect on the greenhouse effect, and are far-worse for the environment on a per-unit basis compared to automobiles.

If you want to dispute that, dear non-expert idiot, please present facts instead of ad hominem attacks.

"The only reason Windows gained market share in the 90s was because it went out of its way to not be a closed system."

Sheeit. The reason it gained market share was you could effortlessly copy the OS and Office and whatever apps you wanted then install them on any PC as many times as you liked. I expect many older Slashdotters can still recite Windows keys from memory.

"They'll get addicted, and then we'll collect"

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

I won't speculate on your motives for making such easily disproven claim about Snowden's character.

Snowden to newspaper: I took contractor job to gather evidence

That would be Edward Snowden, the man who took a contractor job under false pretenses to steal what top secret classified information he could in 90 days. He then fled the United States for a city in the People's Republic of China, after which he fled to Russia due to an extradition request. Since his flight he has been dispensing classified information that has resulted in the compromise of secret intelligence programs and strained diplomatic relationships among multiple allied countries. He is currently under the protection of Russia's President Putin, a former career KGB officer, while he awaits the results of his applications for asylum. So far it appears he has three countries willing to offer him asylum, all are Latin American countries with an ideological disposition hostile to the US. The disposition of Snowden's four laptops of top secret data is unknown. The final damage toll of Snowden's actions will not be known for some time as he continues to leak information and terrorists groups are altering their communication methods in light of Snowden's leaks.

Despite applying to at least 20 countries for refuge to avoid U.S. prosecutors, Snowden’s choices now seem to boil down to a "trifecta" offer of asylum by three leftist and vocally anti-Washington, Latin American nations: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. And maybe also Iceland. -- more

What won workers rights was the tendency of most companies to not follow the worst examples and, when those worst examples were exposed, to no longer be forced to compete with that at price levels that were abusive.

In other words, culture won out over greed.

In the meantime, we've gained unions, which are parasitic organisms that in every instance are linked to organized crime, low worker productivity, and the failure of industries.

The lesson of the Twinkie has re-shaped American labor. Unions are not needed and destroy our industry; there is a better way without unions.

Bugs were invented for the purpose of spying on embassies, which were from time immemorial used as a good place to headquarter your espionage operations in foreign countries.

I remember a story from the '80s where a new US embassy in Moscow was so infested with bugs that it had to be abandoned. The very concrete rebar served as antennae for the bugs.

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-29/news/mn-177_1_embassy-building

So it should be no surprise at all that any embassy is buggier than an ant hill.

My favorite story was the the bugged version of the Great Seal Seal given to the US Ambassador, which hung in his residence. Dr Theremin got an order Stalin award for that one.

It's one thing to be bugging private citizens, and another altogether to be bugging embassies.

Obama is explaining right now: "Obama aims to spread electricity to more Africans", http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-electricity-africa-20130630,0,1234807.story

Obama's initiative, dubbed Power Africa, will attempt to double the number of people with access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, White House officials said. The president will announce an initial commitment of $7 billion over five years, federal money that will add to private investment and partnerships in six African countries.

He's explaining to Europe who his true allies are . . .

. . . or . . . the NSA told him that they couldn't spy in Africa without electricity!

You seem to be implying that it's only the naive young kids who want to live in San Francisco, and the older wiser folks are the only ones smart enough to make the decision to live in the suburbs. Maybe you prefer the suburbs, and that's fine, but here's why your younger coworkers prefer San Francisco:

The problem with suburbs in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, is that suburbs don't scale. This wasn't as much of a problem for previous generations, but these days Silicon Valley has grown to a point where it is. The traffic along highway 101 is terrible and is not easy to avoid. Caltrain doesn't go everywhere and the connecting buses are slow and poorly timed. The place is too sparse to get by without a car, so you absolutely have to get one. On the other hand, San Francisco has good public transport within the city (although not so much out of it heading into the valley). And that's only if you need it - it's also the second most walkable city in the country after New York. I think cars were once viewed as a symbol of freedom to previous generations, but these days they are seen as a ball and chain which ironically ends up limiting your mobility.

Also you may disagree with this, but to me it's also a much more pleasant environment - the Victorian housing, the city skyline, the parks and the waterfront along the Embarcadero and the Marina look beautiful compared to the suburban houses, office parks, shopping plazas and the freeways that connect them.

And as for crime and homelessness, if you exclude the bad neighbourhoods (Tenderloin, the dodgy part of SoMa west of 6th and the dodgy part of the Mission east of Valencia), then there's really not a lot of it. There are also an idea that, despite perceptions, the extra driving that comes with living in the suburbs is more dangerous than the crime in the city.

The article is not great, but it's more based around the idea that there is a generational trend towards urban living. It's wrong to think of it as either "everyone wants to live in the suburbs" or "everyone wants to live in the city", but when compared to previous generations more of Generation Y prefers city living.

What about James Eagan Holmes' words? Were those a threat? Or do you think his words were OK under the First Amendment (given that his later actions were most certainly not)?

According to this report in the Los Angeles Times, University of Colorado officials seemed to think they were, because they disabled his access to their campus. They didn't seem to think he was a big enough threat to report to law enforcement, though, which is a shame because then 12 people who are dead today might still be alive instead.

Ah the 80386... I remember when it came out and Compaq said it was bringing minicomputer speeds to the desktop :). http://articles.latimes.com/1986-09-10/business/fi-13177_1_personal-computer

Things were changing quite fast back then. There were plenty of "superior" products which never made it as big somehow. Who really knows why OS/2 didn't succeed? Perhaps if we asked enough of the prospective customers back then we'd know the real reason why.

Actually Intel paid Nvidia over 1 billion in a settlement two years ago. Also note that Nvidia has announced plan for building a new and impressive campus. I am going to guess that it cost substantially less than a billion dollars.

Part of Nvidia's agreement with Intel was to cease development of x86 compatible devices. Which explains the shift for Project Denver from x86 to ARM. And with ARM came partnerships with Google/Android and that ecosystem which has outlasted any Tegra deals Nvidia has attempts with Microsoft. (Microsoft Kin and Surface RT being two of the biggest flops with Tegra or really in general)

The ends do not justify the means.

Your fantasy futuristic free-content utopian vision does not justify breaking IP laws that society has agreed are valid for 230 years (and longer). We have a system for changing laws if the majority of society agreed with you. It doesnt, which is why those laws arent changed.

Its not that simple. Otherwise gays would be getting married and MJ would be legal. :/
Government is always slow to react.

Just like Standard Oil, MS was targeted by government because it didn't play by the government rules, didn't "share" part of its success with the politicians the same way other companies did.

This is destruction of private property rights, nothing else. Government has no place in 'fighting monopolies', when in reality it doesn't fight monopolies it creates them, and the companies that it does destroy are those who are not paying bribes big enough to prevent the destruction.

roman_mir

Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services

Now you've heard. Of course the Soviets didn't limit themselves to such bourgeois crimes.

Katyn massacre

No indeed.

Soviets Face Up to the Gulag
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened

A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
The Soviet Story (2008)

There is a lot that is hiding in Soviet history.

The Great Terror: A Reassessment

I think one of the most shocking things for people that believe the United States is the great evil in the world is to get a serious look into Soviet history.

The peoples of Eastern Europe are great peoples, but they long labored under the most oppressive of governments.

He's lying, or he's the worst traitor in the history of the United States. It can't be both.

So you think that traitors can't be liars too? Or that liars can't be traitors?

You must be new here. Welcome to earth.

Even if everything he has said has been a lie, and the document fabricated, he has caused enormous damage to the reputation of the United States and stirred up a political crisis that is an enormous distraction from addressing actual demonstrated political oppression in the United State - the IRS Scandal. It will take years for the controversy that Snowden kicked up to die down, if ever. If he hasn't lied, the damage is even worse because he disclosed actual secrets instead of going to Congress, who will have to address it in either case, or the Inspector General. It's hard to imagine how he could cause more extensive damage unless he was to go the route of the Walker spy ring.

Look at the lies told by the Soviet Union accusing the US of creating the AIDs virus. That is still believed around the world to varying degrees.

Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation

In October 1985, the influential Soviet weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Gazette) published an article alleging that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS virus during biological warfare research. The story further claimed that the virus was being spread throughout the world by U.S. servicemen who had been used as guinea pigs for the experiments.

None of that is true but it is the crux of a vicious disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union. It now has appeared in major newspapers of over 50 countries, promoting anti-Americanism. Most unfortunately, it has also distracted attention from the all-important task of educating people on the origin and prevention of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS.

What kind of regulation would solve this? Companies are allowed to sell their products for whatever they want in every EU country.

False.

For example, in France, sales are restricted to certain times: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/31/business/fi-euroshop31

Nothing new there. I'm surprised you bother to comment on it. But if you think that is oppressive, you probably don't have much understanding of genuine oppression. In the Soviet Union, making a joke about Stalin being drunk could get you sent to the gulag for 10 years. A significant number of people didn't survive the experience.

A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
Soviets Face Up to the Gulag
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened

The reach of the 1st Amendment is pretty broad, but there are some justifiable carve-outs. Experiments I strongly suggest you don't try include making jokes about bombs at an airport, or publicly making statements about killing the President. Either stands a very good chance of getting you into an immense amount of trouble.

Mar 2011: "Tokyo Electric, the owners of the plant, said five workers had been killed at the site, two were missing and 21 had been injured." link

Apr 2011: "On March 24, three workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were exposed accidentally to high localised radiation while standing in contaminated water". link

Jul 2011: "A newly released document says the Japanese government estimated in April that some 1600 workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation in the course of handling the reactor meltdowns at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant". link

Dec 2011: "Masao Yoshida, who led the fight to bring Japanâ(TM)s crippled Fukushima nuclear station under control, steps down tomorrow for medical treatment after almost nine months directing the disaster response from inside the plant". link

Dec 2012: "Dozens of workers received potentially cancerous doses of radiation to their thyroid glands during recovery work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to data submitted to the World Health Organization. link

July 2012: "An executive at construction firm Build-Up in December told about 10 of its workers to cover their dosimeters, used to measure cumulative radiation exposure, with lead casings when working in areas with high radiation, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other media said." link

July 2012: "Japanese officials are investigating whether workers cleaning up in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster were pushed to shield their radiation meters so they could keep working for longer on the contaminated plant". link

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-kern-sheriff-fbi-beating-death-20130514,0,7559565.story

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/david-silva-police_n_3280663.html

One woman frantically called 911, telling the operator: "The guy was laying on the floor and eight sheriffs ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead laying right here, right now. I got it all on video camera and I'm sending it to the news. These cops have no reason to do this to this man."

Two cellphones were confiscated by the sheriffs. Although they did get search warrants, they effectively held the witnesses with the video hostage until they gave up the phones. The warrants were not issued until after the cellphones were in police possession. When the cellphones were returned, one of the videos had been deleted. The owners of the cellphones said they watched both videos and at least one other person saw them as well.

Because of the obvious conflict of interest, the FBI is looking at the case. They also examined the cell phones. They have not made any statements so far.

Kern County just paid out $4.5 million for a very similar beating death that occurred in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kern_County_Sheriff's_Department

You don't need a crystal ball to know how this will turn out. There will be an internal review that will "exonerate", i.e. whitewash, the cops and no charges or internal disciplinary actions will occur. The family will sue and get a big settlement. It will be resolved without going to trial, so there will be no transparency. The sheriffs office will maintain that they acted professionally and obeyed the law. A statement identical to this one will be issued: "Chief Deputy County Counsel Mark Nations says the jury's findings and the amount awarded to the family are excessive." That was the response to the settlement that was just awarded.

Every cop in California knows about this. They now have a new number one priority: destroying cellphone video evidence of anything they do. Don't be surprised when cops start attacking and arresting people with cellphones so they can delete videos.

If you record the police acting badly, leave the scene as quickly as possible. Upload the video and/or take it to the local news immediately. The people recording in this case thought that by calling 911 and telling the dispatcher about their recording that it would stop the beating and save a life. The actual result was that the officers involved will literally get away with murder.

It looks like time for more facts to fight suppression of speech with more speech.

Carol Browner Goes, Draconian Policies Stay

Carol Browner, former EPA director now serving as a senior Obama adviser for energy and climate change, a formerly nonexistent position created to avoid Senate confirmation to a real position,...

As we have pointed out, Browner once belonged to an explicitly socialist organization, a group called the Commission for a Sustainable World Society that is a formal part of the Socialist International. She worked in the administration alongside "green jobs" czar Van Jones, an avowed Marxist who believed in the government's pushing environmental justice and strangling the private sector.

Browner thinks the government should have absolute authority and control over our use of and search for energy, down to controlling our thermostats. In a March 9, 2009, interview with U.S. News & World Report, she said that with the smart grid, "Eventually, we can get to a system when an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air-conditioner won't operate at its peak." Or the government?

As columnist Michelle Malkin points out, Browner was also caught by a congressional subcommittee during her EPA stint using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grass-roots environmental lobbying organizations. Her agenda was clear, and she had no qualms about using tax dollars to push it ...more

Actually the US is first in nearly nothing, particularly if you prorate things per capita.

Nonsense!

The US is #1 in teenage pregnancies, #1 in gun ownership, #1 in healthcare costs, ...

So where is all the damned money going?

Shrinking the National Debt? More still needs to be done, but this a good start. What we shouldn't do is go back to eating potato chips and drinking pop just when our pain at the gym of budget cuts is starting to pay off in the form of a smaller deficit waistline.

Just another case of government shakedown. It's amazing how easy it is to manipulate the public to make the public believe that there is anything behind any of this than just a case of politicians forcing a company to pay more bribes through the legalised bribery system.

This is about bribes, corruption, government corruption, politicians fishing for money by using the power that they are not actually authorised to have at all. There is no place for government in the market place telling others how to price anything.

How about DOJ actually looks at the REAL PRICE MANIPULATION AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK?

The money. The real price manipulation. Half of every transaction is fixed at an artificial level by the government and you all are confused into thinking that this illegal (AFAIC, because it's unconstitutional) shakedown is something to concentrate on.

Pathetic.

My thoughts on the matter?

Better being bedeviled by badgers blocking bucolic British broadband buildout than buggered bolting blokes being butchered by biting beavers in Belarus.

Old sketch: Copper clappers

As is common in this matter, you have things badly confused. Israel did nothing to Iran to deserve they way the new Iranian government turned on them. If you think otherwise, please provide a list. One hint to reduce the chances of you going down the wrong path again: the Palestinians are not Iranian, and the Iranians are not Arabs.

As to "untermenschen," that would be the view of post-revolution Iranian government, and many Arabs living in Palestine.

Reading Mein Kampf in Tehran

On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry held an international conference. Nothing unusual in that: Foreign ministries hold conferences, mostly dull ones, all the time. But this one was different. For one, "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" dealt with history, not current politics. Instead of the usual suspects — deputy ministers and the like — the invitees seem to have included David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader; Georges Theil, a Frenchman who has called the Holocaust "an enormous lie"; and Fredrick Toeben, a German-born Australian whose specialty is the denial of Nazi gas chambers.

The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited. One Palestinian scholar, Khaled Mahameed, was asked to come but then barred because he holds an Israeli passport — and also perhaps because he, unlike other guests, believes that the Holocaust really did happen.

In response, Europe, America, and Israel expressed official outrage. The German government, to its credit, organized a counter-conference. ...

Hamas video: Killing Jews is 'worship that draws us close to Allah'
The Jews Were Brought to Palestine for the Great Massacre

As to the rest, you should catch up on some reading and get back to me.

UN agency stops aid imports to Gaza, cites Hamas 'thefts'
Looters strip Gaza greenhouses
Gazans seethe over taxes and blackouts
Sewage flood causes Gaza deaths
Hamas Bulldozes UN-Designated Historical Site to Make Room for Terrorist Training Camp
In Gaza, Hamas rule has not turned out as many expected
Rights watchdog accuses Hamas of torture, abuse of Palestinians
Hamas accused of routine torture of detainees in Gaza Strip
Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over
NY Times ignores Gaza's millionaires, hypes poverty, blames Israel (natch)

According to reports in the Arab press, a thriving smuggling economy in Gaza has produced no fewer than 600 millionaires. Hundreds of tunnels to Egypt have become bustling export and import conduits -- with the ruling Hamas elite siphoning off milli