Slashdot Mirror

Oh give it a rest, troll. You already look like a retard.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=apple+privacy+gps

Web result #1:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/06/apple-location-privacy-iphone-ipad.html

Even most children wouldn't fess to being that Google-illiterate. If the LA times (and half the Internet) is too untrustworthy for you, they point you at the relevant parts of Apple's own privacy policy.

And in case you want to take a shot again that the data is "anonymous" and pretend you didn't see the article I just linked (or was discussed ad nauseum on slashdot), they "anonymize" it by assigning you a new random ID every 24 hours. Once again, nothing is anonymous when the GPS trace probably starts and ends with your home. So, their anonymity attempt is absurdly stupid, or deceptive, you decide.

Like I said:

Stone had a brilliant mind. In 1957, when he was a graduate student studying space physics at the University of Chicago, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. "Just like that, because of the Cold War and our need to match Sputnik," he says, "a whole new realm absolutely opened up."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0414-ed-stone-20110412,0,2806518,full.story

Genuinely a brilliant lifetimes work, here's a nice write up by the LA Times on Ed Stone the Voyager lead scientist.

Depends if it's allowed in the EULA

Hah! Captcha is "disperse".

Too bad the record industry spoiled it with lousy packaging. Flimsy plastic jewel boxes covered with shrink wrap and security tape that is really a pain (occasionally, literally) to remove.

You weren't around to remember how CDs were originally packaged? The jewel case was put in a 12" long cardboard box up until 1993, quite wasteful since you would immediately throw out that big box. It was probably designed so that record shops could use their old record bins for holding the box (and to visually justify the 50% more expensive product that cost less to produce.)

What is unfortunate is that is that for an equal amount of plastic as the jewel box, the design could have included putting the disc into a caddy, floppy disk style; the end product could have had real art printed right on it, and would have been less susceptible to scratches and dust.

I remember not being able to figure out how to get my first cd out of the jewel box.

So, here is what we hear from the proponents of government run socialized medicine:

I would like to second what you said. I'm currently in Venezuela, and the health care here is way better than what I had available when I lived in the US. First of all, it's really cheap, the doctors are top of the line, and maybe the only thing you can complain here is that when they actually see somebody here with insurance they really squeeze them dry, but you still get your medical attention. If you don't have insurance you can still pay the bills since they have a different rate so to speak.

And here is the reality:

Healthcare suffers in Venezuela

Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut.

On one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator, said Dr. Jesus Mendez Quijada, a psychiatrist and Palacios staff member who is a past president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

The deaths of the six infants "were not a case of bad luck, but the consequence of an accumulation of circumstances that have created this alarming situation," Mendez said.

He and others say the problems at Concepcion Palacios are symptoms of a variety of ills that have beset the public healthcare system under leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez. Cases of malaria nearly doubled between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period.

Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.

More: WikiLeaks Embassy Cables Reveal Venezuela's Health-Care System Collapsing

And the UK?

US surgery safer than under NHS

By Thair Shaikh 12:00AM BST 07 Sep 2003
Patients who have major operations on the National Health Service are four times more likely to die than Americans undergoing such surgery, according to a new study.

The difference in mortality rates was blamed on long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds.

The joint study, carried out by University College London and a team from Columbia University in New York, found that patients in Britain who were most at risk of complications after major surgery were not being seen by specialists and were not reaching intensive care units in time to save them.

Thousands of NHS operations cancelled because of blunders as complaints about standard of treatment rise

10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care

The Grass Is Not Always Greener - A Look at National Health Care Systems Around the World

However, a closer look at countries with national health care systems shows that those countries have serious problems of their own, including rising costs, rationing of care, lack of access to modern medical technology, and poor health outc

James Cameron wanted to do Avatar at 48FPS. Avatar II, or whatever, will be. He's been pushing 48FPS for a while.

It's about time; 24FPS is way too slow. A big problem with 24FPS is that pans over detailed backgrounds have strobing effects unless the pan is very slow. Sometimes blur is inserted to mask this, either in camera or in post. Cameron likes richly detailed backgrounds ("Titanic", etc.), and this limitation has annoyed him.

Cameron will use higher frame rates well. He's used 3D well. Other directors, probably not so much.

I really hate people that go fear mongering based on modern news media, any geiger counter will go 'ballistic' when you turn the gain up to max.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aIF-UV7D4E

the video you linked showed that is was hovering just above 30 uSv/h (30 microsieverts an hour) which means in one hour at that location, you would receive about the same as you would receive in airliner flight from NY to LA. (in the duration of that flight, you would absorb about 40 uSv)
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/15/world/la-fg-radiation-comparison-20110315

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(radiation)

or hell just take a look at xkcd : http://xkcd.com/radiation/

I would have to sit in the reactor cooling liquid pool for an HOUR to get radiation sickness. (1,000mSv/h or 1,000,000 uSv/h) that's IN THE FREAKING POOL.

note to accuracy freaks, I know I used the 'wrong' u for uSv, slashdot seems to eat the right one, at least in preview;
Sv

Several points:

-- Glenn Beck is not a "mainstream politician on the right". He's a guy who's payed to say provocative shit in the media to generate viewer numbers. Those ratings are turned into profits by the Fox News Channel through the magic of advertising. Much like Howard Stern's detractors listen to him for long stretches of time "just to hear what he's going to say next," Glenn Beck is in the same business.

-- He uses violent rhetoric because it's provocative: it's attention grabbing, it's sensationalist, and it gets people watching. This does not excuse it, in my opinion, but he is no more making "violent threats" than any of the examples below are *actually* threatening violence. Read on.

would you care to cite some examples of left-wing politicians or their supporters inciting their audience to violence on a mainstream news outlet

I would!

-- Rep. Mike Capuano, Democrat, my home state of Massachusetts. Remarking on the collective bargaining legislation in Wisconsin: "It's more than just sending an email that gets you going. Every once in a while, you gotta get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Speaking to folks at a fundraiser: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Talking about Republican prospects in the 2010 midterm elections"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate. If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."

-- Liberal talk show hosts like Beck are fewer & harder to find, but looking over various comments made by Randi Rhodes, Charles Bouley, Mike Malloy, and others... there are examples of violent rhetoric being used.

-- Famous recent example would be where a supporter of Pres. Obama's health care plan bit off part of a conservative protester's finger in an apparent fit of rage over their disagreement.

-- You could also check out the video embedded in this next link: in which a MoveOn supporter allegedly "chokes" a conservative protester. I'm inclined to believe there's not a lot of "choking" going on, but certainly there's still no need for him to be putting his hands around the other man's neck at a political protest, is there?

Look, it's easy to characterize violent rhetoric from liberals as "far, far left" activity, that's way out of the mainstream - nobody wants to believe that "their team" could be capable of the sorts of things that "those people" do, and so it's a natural reaction that you'd want to distance yourself from it. Much like conservatives will distance themselves from anybody who is *actually* preaching violence against liberals, and agree with you that it's the "whacko right nutjobs" who are talking like that.

The fact of the matter is that it's not just the whacko fringes using the rhetoric, on EITHER side. It's absolutely appropriate to be as disgusted with it from Republicans as it is to be disgusted with it from Democrats. Both of them should know how to behave better. But if you're really going to say that you don't mind if "your team" uses that kind of rhetoric, but you're going to object whenever the "other team" does, then you're just a hypocrite.

Didn't Soulskill or 0wait or anyone involved with this on slashdot read to the end of "Disposing of 55 thousand tons of radioactive water"" and see in bold type Los Angeles Times? For no reason I can see apart from laziness, this great piece of investigative reporting is now all over teh webz as a story from the plucky Aussies at the Sydney Morning Herald who seem to have done nothing but some light editing. Searching latimes.com for "Ralph Vartabedian" coughs up the original, two days earlier:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-water-20110407,0,873990,full.story

Credit where credit is due, show some respect, Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times, etc.

I thought Cali's problem wasn't the current budget, but the huge debt they've accumulated, and have no way of paying.

(op-ed from about a year ago) http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/opinion/la-oe-crane6-2010apr06

The government and press is so unreliable that the population is subject to panics:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/18/world/la-fg-china-iodine-salt-20110318

I call "same kind of thing."

...they never claimed it actually ran out of charge during testing (which is what tesla is disputing). They showed a simulation of it running out of charge, but they could have easily just run it down! Who would say that they couldn't? That's not the point they were making. The visuals are for dramatic effect.

I remember NBC installing incendiary devices in pickup trucks for 'dramatic effect' while reporting on the dangers of certain GM trucks exploding in a crash. They could have crashed 100s of trucks but they didn't.

I guess it really boils down to how the public perceives their reviews. Much like how the public perceives the news from NBC vs Comedy Central. There seems to be many shades of gray between the two nowadays.

This is part of the planned failure mode of the reactor.

Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far. Why should we believe the company now? How do we know that this is really all part of some planned failure scenario and not simply another unexpected disaster beyond their control and indeed understanding?

But this is not going to be a Chernobyl-level catastrophe.

They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have? These people--and quite a few nuclear proponents around here--told us all that there was "no danger" of any major leak in the days after the tsunami hit. Three weeks later the reactor is a molten puddle on a concrete floor, and now they're telling us we don't have to fear something else. Do you believe them? Would you beleive them if your home was near the exclusion zone?

Need I mention that four weeks ago, all involved would have scoffed at the notion of even the possibility of a meltdown.

Even the Japanese Prime Minister has lost patience with the plant owners and their slipshod operations. How much credibility can we give these people, give to nuclear power? How much can we afford to give?

Please state why you think a 9.0 earthquake was a strong possibility - especially when expert geologists didn't think this particular fault was capable of more than an 8.5-8.6 or so prior to this - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-japan-earthquake-20110310,0,7154967.story

Japan has been preparing for "the big one" for years - however, both geologically and historically, this has meant an earthquake in the Tokai region, with none known beyond an 8.5 magnitude. This quake was a major surprise to geologists, both its strength and its location.

Why Gilbert Godfrey, you little asshole, lost your cushy two-syllable Aflac job but still at it?

Ah really? Another arrogant know nothing..

FTFL:
In May 2006, then-President Vicente Fox, of the same right-wing party as Calderon, vetoed a similar bill that he initially had supported. He backed down only under pressure from the Bush administration, which complained that decriminalization for even small amounts could increase use.

We had to "sneak" it through this time to keep you people off our backs. So please, accept responsibility for the people you elect to high office. In other words, curb your dog. And put a muzzle on it..

You're talking about the same NASA that built The Space Shuttles? The same NASA that crashed a probe because of a math error?

There is a third possibility: A private company that isn't incompetent, politically connected, and held liable for any damage they do their neighbors. As things are today, no company in the business could come close to that standard. By definition.

Do Fukushima I or II have containment domes? The LA Times makes it sound like it doesn't.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-japan-quake-nuclear-20110312,0,2627198.story

Even though the wave may be only 3 feet high, it can come inland more than 3 feet above sea level. Also, remember that it's not just the beach that's a few feet above sea level. Large portions of coastal cities can be just a few feet above sea level. "Avoid the beach" may not be adequate to avoid the tsunami.

Our politicians ARE all right-wing. That's the only way that abortion of a "health care" plan could possibly have been passed last year. You know, the one that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars to the insurance companies? And the fact that all politicians in both parties will only ever talk about cutting taxes, never about the need with our huge deficits to, oh I dunno, INCREASE income to pay for things?

Your first sentence contradicts the last. Democrats are constantly trying to raise taxes. It's that Republicans have been consistent at *blocking* tax increases that makes it look like we can't do that.

Not that we really need to - the government takes in plenty of money, at all levels. They really do have spending out of control. And the media are in on it. Case in point, look at the LA Times "balance the budget calculator": http://www.latimes.com/news/local/budget/

Even if you check every single check box for cutting back programs, it will not allow you to take more than a third out of the budget, forcing you to raise taxes if you leave even a little money left in education.

You still here? If you questioned the leadership as much as you question me, would any of us be in the situation we find ourselves?
Photo and data manipulation by experts is far more subtler than my blatant attempts. I showed you this photo rather than this one.
Why is it that day after day, hour by hour, the American people were shown this yet not much of the Pentagram other than this, even though many video tapes were seized. What are people hiding?
People are more interested in two train wrecks like Charlie and LiLo and yet, two other train wrecks like this and this here have greater impact on American policy.
Politicians elected to office by 51% of the vote consider it a mandate, so what does this article say about the pissed off American voter? Politicians in office for more than two terms do not care about their constituents, this is my opinion. Two states and possibly three have decided to go back on their contract agreements. Considering how the American people were left with a bag of worms when Wall Street and the banksters tanked the economy and the politicians used taxpayer money to bail them out so the Wallstreeters and banksters could continue with their obscene bonuses, is it possible that the repercussions in Bell, California could escalate across the country all the way to Washington DC, I wonder?
When the Europeans arrived in North, Central and South America, they first de-stabilized the indigenous people and then decimated them. Just ask any Native American Indian what they think of US government agreements. Now, the American people are being de-stabilized, what next?
It's really been fun debating this with you, but I must move on. So long and thanks for all the fish.

I'm glad you found something that worked for you.

But ultimately, is the solution to bullying to create a all-pervasive police state where no one ever says something someone else might potentially find offensive without immediately being labelled and disciplined? Because that is the way public schools in general are heading with conventional anti-bullying approaches based on similar stuff to what you are talking about ("telling is not tattling", etc.) however well it might work sometimes for some individuals.

It's actually quite true that beating up bullies or getting someone else to do it for you (physically, verbally, socially) like a parent or principal may make them stop, but the appeal to authority is fraught with its own issues (a police state, and then what happens when the police are not there, or if the police themselves become bullies?).

Again, no one is suggesting a child suffer significant physical injury, and Izzy Kalman says his techniques only work when the kids doing the bullying are reasonably emotionally stable without a history of serious violence. Also, yes, other approaches may indeed sometimes work.

But see also:
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/sites/default/files/'10-B2BFinalManusciptForSubmission.pdf
"A meta-analysis by Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou (2004) concluded that the majority of whole-school programs yielded nonsignificant outcomes on measures of self-reported victimization and bullying. ... Children who are victims of bullying typically believe that teacher intervention will be effective in countering bullying behavior, and such intervention is a component of most bullying prevention programs. However, research suggests that teachers underidentify bullying behavior, and that, when students report bullying events to teachers, bullying may increase (Smith & Shu, 2000). Although teacher intervention has been shown to reduce bullying in some studies, such intervention must be timely and consistent, and requires close supervision of students. Moreover, teachersâ(TM) attitudes about bullying have been shown to influence their willingness to intervene, as well as the skill with which they do so (Kochendorfer-Ladd, & Pelletier, 2008). Thus, it is not always possible â" and, in some instances, may not be advisable â" to rely on teacher intervention as a means of managing the problem of bullying. [Exactly what you say happened when you asked a teacher for help...]"

Izzy Kalman's approach goes beyond telling kids to "ignore it". He teaches active strategies to respond to events, and also new ways to think about situations. His work is truly applied psychology in action.

Ultimately, beyond the value of asking others for help when you needed it, which is indeed an admirable quality, did you have a chance to learn those other strategies as well? When you asked for help, what kind of help was given?

If a kid breaks a leg, and asks for help, to use your example, do parents respond by putting the kid and all their friends in a straight jacket in a padded room so that it can never happen again?

Well, what is the difference these days in classrooms and our larger society where there is now a move towards "zero tolerance" for "different" and "zero tolerance" for any off-hand or inappropriate comment, where such a thing results in immediate discipline, arrest, or job loss? Is that the kind of society we really want to have? Have we not just shifted around the problem somewhere else, and maybe made it worse overall?

Izzy Kalman says what is going on with stuff labelled bullying is for the most part issues of "dominance" and they are part of how humans interact, for good or bad. Example:
"Study links teenage bullying to social status"
http://articles.latimes.com/201

How hard would it be to find the number of suicides in the US, the number of people in the US, the number of people in China and then (the only hard one) number of suicides by Foxconn employees?

Turns out not hard at all. Foxconn = 400,000 employees, with 12 suicide attempts. US suicide rate is 11 per 100,000.

Google is hard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/21/science/sci-suicide21

I read in the news today that some new permits have been granted for deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. See here.

If an SDK is available, does that mean sex games are back on the table? The mere thought is giving me a kinection.

"This is asinine."

But sadly, true. For a related example:
"Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance" by Mike Moore
http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-War-Folly-Space-Dominance/dp/1598130188
"Moore warns of the dire consequences of the U.S. drive toward the military dominance of space. Twilight War is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to get smart on a possible new cold war in space. Wide-ranging research and an elegant writing style make for an easy tutorial. This is a marvelous book." (Joseph Cirincione, vice president for national security, Center for American Progress)"

Or;
http://www.cfr.org/united-states/toward-american-space-dominance/p12179
"The Pentagon has avoided specifics about the report, but soon afterward the Bush administration released an unclassified version of its new U.S. National Space Policy, which goes far beyond previous policies in asserting America’s right to respond forcefully to such threats. Bill Martel, a space policy expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, tells CFR.org in this podcast that the new space policy “sounds like a precursor to the weaponization of space.” Supporters readily concede the point. “Space supremacy is now the official policy of the U.S. government,” writes Michael Goldfarb in the Weekly Standard."

Thanks for your other comments. Personally, I would not like to be president. :-) I feel sorry in general for politicians etc.

As I quoted Alfie Kohn here from "No Contest: The Case Against Competition":
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html#Moving_beyond_competitiveness_towards_cooperation_at_PU
"If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. ... I do not want to shy away from the incendiary implications of all of this. To suggest in effect that many of our heroes (entrepreneurs and athletes, movie stars and politicians) may be motivated by low self-esteem, to argue that our "state religion" is a sign of psychological ill-health -- this will not sit well with many people.(Page 103)"

That said, one can learn a lot by playing games and being challenged. So, how to interpret all that in daily life for the rest of us is open to question. Also, it is compounded by this fact:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/07/health/la-he-mean-girls-20110208
"Faris and a colleague studied the relationships among 3,722 middle and high school students over the course of an academic year and found that the teenagers' propensity toward aggression rose along with their social status. Aggressive behavior peaked when students hit the 98th percentile for popularity, suggesting that they were working hard to claw their way to the very top. However, those who were in the top 2% of a school's social hierarchy generally didn't harass their fellow students. At that point, they may have had little left to gain by being mean, and picking on others only made them seem insecure, Faris said."

I agree with you on reflectiveness, and thanks for saying that in such an interesting way about quality. In any case though, if I take credit for anything, it is mostly reading and learning about the ideas of many, many others who have gone before me (including people like Leon Shenandoah).

We need better tools for community-powered reflectiveness IMHO, as I su

"Syria is stable. Why?" Mr. Assad said. "Because [the dictator has to] be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergenceyou will have this vacuum that creates disturbances."

He's probably right.

The lesson other dictators learned, like Kadafi in Libya, is to be proactive in countering the revolution. Organize counter-protests (Iran is trying that tactic too, we'll see if it works). Use violence when necessary. Arrest key people. The Egyptians didn't use violence, the lesson other dictators learned is to use more violence.

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr, which there's no reason to take at face value. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a subtle hint of a muckracking insinuation of the slightest possibility that they've been involved in physical violence.

If the death threat is real, what would make you think that it would be retracted just because Barr decided not to speak? If you and he really think there's a psychopathic killer after him, it's hard to imagine that killer being dissuaded just by the cancellation of a little lecture.

As for having no business enforcing laws, people can actually do so...[link to citizen's arrest]

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like Anonymous or WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a muckracking insinuation that they've been involved in physical violence.

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

In December 2010, California approved the first locations for a high speed train.

1) It connects a grand total of 65 miles
2) It's being built between the towns of Borden and Corcoran. Yes, if you didn't know where that is, that's ok, most people don't.
3) No trains can run on it until some other town agrees to link up to it.

Being an employer does not give you the right to suspend the constitution. We are citizens, not slaves. Running a business does give to a license to be a tin god. The Founders of the US understood this, and they were willing to die for it. People in the middle east are dieing right now in order to have the right to freely express themselves. Your statement puts you firmly on the same side as King Gorge IV, Stalin, and the Taliban. How does it feel to be on their side? I think you fit right in.

Being an employer does not give you the right to suspend the constitution. We are citizens, not slaves. Running a business does give to a license to be a tin god. The Founders of the US understood this, and they were willing to die for it. People in the middle east are dieing right now in order to have the right to freely express themselves. Your statement puts you firmly on the same side as King Gorge IV, Stalin, and the Taliban. How does it feel to be on their side? I think you fit right in.

What?? There's already been enough fireworks already.

April Fools Day 1991, Hercules Titan IV blows up test facility at Edwards Air Force Base - http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-29/news/mn-2539_1_air-force-officials
August 1993 - Hercules Titan IV blows up after launch at Vandenberg - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-958781.html
August 1998 - Hercules Titan IV explodes during Spy Satellite Launch at Cape Kennedy - http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1998/08/202l-081398-idx.html

Thiokol - SRM Failure in Cold Weather destroys Challenger - we don't need to go into that do we?

October 1994 - ATK acquires Hercules - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ALLIANT+TECHSYSTEMS+SIGNS+DEFINITIVE+AGREEMENT+TO+ACQUIRE+HERCULES...-a015870549
February 2001 - ATK acquires Thiokol - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69838505.html

1) Retired generals don't count as official military spokesmen.

They do if they're being paid as spokesman or being handed a list of what they're supposed to say by the Pentagon. read all about it.

2) No idea what this is referring to. It's sufficiently vague as to be meaningless.

Here's some of it

3) That was a military propaganda operation executed as part of a war -- it was not done to effect anything in the US

Are you telling me this image wasn't widely reported in the US? There's little question it was staged by the army, the only question would be who the target audience was.

4).Lynch's propaganda was formulated by the administration. The military merely executed their orders.
5) The Tillman propaganda was formulated by the administration. The military merely executed their orders.

Last I checked, US military personnel were expected to refuse to execute illegal orders if doing so would not endanger their life (e.g. if the president ordered a soldier to summarily execute a US citizen, the soldier is not supposed to follow that order.) Engaging in psyops in the US is illegal under 10 USC 167, ergo the military should not have carried out those orders.

You still need teachers and mentors. They are just utilized in a different context.
Most teachers would prefer to apply teaching skills to a tutorial focus rather
that standing and performing in front of a classroom full of people who would
rather be elsewhere.

And all that contact is still In Real Life, IRL, where the teacher can see at a glance that a student is having trouble.

Teachers would be online within the home educational system as
tutors. They would also handle examinations and curriculum modeling
within the scope of their academic specialties.

So broadband is required. Forget those who do not have internet access, there's still a lot of people who can't get broadband, Broadband access in U.S. still mainly for the well-off, Pew finds.. And that not including those who do not have computers. Oh, but you're going to require already struggling parents to pay for those too. And pay for chemistry and physics labs as well.

What we have right now is the one size fits all system. We bathe children in the mediocrity of 'big education'. Large systems can only be mediocre, that's the very nature of big-anything.

Wow, I agree finally but your suggestions do not solve the problems. All they do is pass on the cost to those unable to afford them.

Falcon

Bill O'Reilly of course has his own views on science: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2011/02/bill-oreillys-latest-faux-science-lesson-the-other-planets-dont-really-have-any-moons.html

You must of missed this line...

Again, not saying Android isn't doing well...

Of course Android is going to do well. That's not in question. Why can't they state how many phones are "sold" to consumers, instead of saying they "shipped" x units. Most of the carriers don't have access to the iPhone. They're going to jump all over Android and try to push it to market. But, until we know how many "customers" are actually purchasing these things, we really don't know.

Take Samsung for example, they used the exact same marketing speak, but now we find out that actual customer sales were not that great: Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales Quite Small

Why are they afraid to reveal this info?

According to the LA Times, they've blocked the Blackberries, too.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/blackberry-internet-blocked-in-egypt.html

Saying that "free trade" is untested because subsidies exist is like saying gravity is untested because the electric force exists. It's not that complicated to those who understand it. Unfortunately in economics, unlike most sciences, politics tends to have undue influence.

But I agree that we don't really live in a free market. There are many large, unaccounted-for externalities that still exist, and would need to be eliminated, before that could be the case. Regardless, even in the ideal sense, the idea of "free markets" doesn't mean that everyone always benefits regardless of what they do. It means that assets are transferred from those who squander them to those who manage them responsibly.

It opened Mexican markets to cheap (due to subsidies) American agricultural which was intended. That the price of corn, a staple in Mexico, would go "through the roof" when ethanol fuel was being pushed by the US as an alternative fuel was unintended. As was the inability of the Mexicans to increase production due to the destruction of their agricultural sector.

But this is just nonsensical. Between 1997-2005, US corn was sold to Mexico at 19% less than the cost to produce it. The price (in Pesos) rose for a few years, between 1994-1996, but fell afterwards by nearly 50%. Recent food riots are more the result of notorious corruption in Mexico's own subsidy handouts, and importantly the rising consumption of Asia, than US ethanol subsidies. Food cost and ethanol demand have risen recently with rising oil prices, but those are global phenomena. The US has been subsidizing ethanol at nearly the same rates since the 70s and, if anything, this has only offset a tiny fraction of the massive oil imports that benefit oil-producing countries like Mexico. So there is plenty of wealth in Mexico (now home to the world's richest man), and those who have escaped it's horrible government by immigrating to the US have done very well. But of course free trade doesn't work in a corrupt oligarchy, and it's stupid to believe that this could possibly be the fault of the US or of free trade.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/07/world/la-fg-mexico-farm-subsidies7-2010mar07
http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/nafta-and-the-destruction-of-mexican-farming/

He, too, is from the real universe. This is just some weird parallel world where slashdot editors don't, the US military has giant blimps, the president is black, and the 2004 US civil war never happened.

but perhaps the 8 working hours they do each day, are they going to have to use their personal cell phone? Are you going to cover those minutes? Would it be cheaper?

Well, let's try a thought experiment...

The LA Times reports that the average phone bill for government employees is $36 per month. I pay $40 per month for 450 minutes, or about 9 cents per minute. So if the government has to reimburse me more than 400 minutes in a month, it's worth it for them to give me a cell phone.

Remember that forty percent of government employees have taxpayer funded cell phones. I have a really hard time believing that 40% of employees of the state of California need to be on call 24/7 or are out of the office that often.

I use my personal cell phone for work. I give my employer a copy of the bill and highlight the calls that were work related and they write me a check. Even with personal calls, though, I have never gone over my 450 minutes of talk time even with company minutes added in. So in my case, it's definitely cheaper for my employer to compensate me for the time rather than pay for a cell phone.

The phones are already paid for if they were in use by the employees. You couldn't have just put in an order to NOT get new cell phones?

I'll agree that doing this is grandstanding. The deadline for this is actually in six months, when a new cellphone contract is to be set up, so it's not like Jerry Brown is walking through offices today and saying, "You! Give me that cellphone!" But, come June, 48,000 people who had government cellphones will be losing them.

If you like someone who murders people, regularly steals from the government to enrich himself, sets up a paradise for criminals, maintains his rule through fear and oppression, and just made himself supreme dictator for life and you'll be shot if you say otherwise, be my guest.

Just don't be surprised if I tend to disagree with you.

As for lax government oversight, it's a red herring. (Pun intended.) When there was lax oversight of poultry farmers in the midwest and as a result people got sick from bacteria, the farmers couldn't say "You ignored our bad behavior, so we don't have to pay a fine." They go nailed anyway, it just took longer.

Following up on useless oversight MMS (Mineral Management Services). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/25mms.html

Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms."

Note that this is completely separate from the sex and drug scandal at the MMS that came to light in 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html

So how did this oversight failure happen? It was a product of the Bush administration's conscious sabotage of regulation when they were in control. They appointed "pro-business" officials who had a policy of letting business get away with everything up to and including murder. Remember that people died on that oil rig.

So far, all that has happened is that MMS people have quit or been fired. There have been lots of investigations but no one has been charged with anything.

The Obama administration seems to be serious about reinstating meaningful regulation, but now with the Republicans in control of the House that might not happen. Congressman Darrell Issa is asking businesses what government regulations they want eliminated (also known as soliciting bribes) http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/05/business/la-fi-issa-business-20110105. So if you like getting sick from bad food or big environmental disasters then you may be in luck.

And how about the United States go back to what the constitution was all about? really? http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/06/nation/la-na-constitution-20110107 It is inconceivable that the Government of the United States is so corrupt and unbalanced that it can not stand in the light and read out loud , in it's entirety , word for word , the most precious document of our country's history "THE CONSITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES" . Not some abridged , chopped up version to suit the needs of a few people who have their own agendas. Are they so afraid of what they are doing that they have to hide it's enlightening words from it's own citizens ?

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/ Between 36% and 93% of guns recovered by Mexican LE are traced to US sources.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081116211345AAiwdoQ How to make a AR15 into a M16. Seems to be pretty easy.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/charged-121070-connection-grenade.html Does this mean there were successful attempts? IDK, but it's been tried in USA...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-arms-race15-2009mar15,0,229992.story This article says that many of the grenade launchers and rocket launchers come from south of the (Mexican) border, but note the gem in par. 5: "Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said."

Wikileaks is the news recovering from decades of chicken-shit ownership and/or FuckUS Plutocratic Corporate Souls controlling the news in the USA.

The USA Congress could have increased protection for whistle-blowers, but decided the real enemy of the STATE is any public-responsible press sustaining our citizen right to know when politicians, diplomats, generals, C*Os, clergy commit crimes, lie, steal, murder, and/or act stupid by personal nature/whim.

As long as the politicians... cannot, or refuse to, protect The USA Constitutional interest of our nation, then they should be greatly concerned the every USA Warrior and Civil Servant swears an oath to "protect and defend The USA Constitution (as TOP priority) from all enemies both foreign and domestic." IOW-IMO all USA Warriors and employees must consider that their sworn oath, prison, and death will all to frequently define a path of life, honor, and authentic-self. If I am ever on a jury in such a big-brother STATE propaganda trial I will acquit our heroes and indite Big-Brother.

There are far to many good citizens protecting US on our streets and remotes battlefields, while a proportional very few (know it all) megalomaniacs and sociopaths seek to manage and control US Citizens with extortion and exploitation policy and law.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Whistleblower-Protections-by-Joan-Brunwasser-101229-343.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-devine-whistleblower-20110110,0,5483256.story
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-985
http://www.whistleblowersblog.org/

Apparently, it will fix itself by January 3

Apparently not.

Is your google finger broken or something? I mean seriously, where do you get off saying "Do something that is so easy for me to do or I'll label you as something you don't want to be labeled as". Hell, you even added the obligatory, If your source is something I don't like because of my perceived biases towards them, I will counter with a sit you should have preconceived biases with.

And while this was supposedly discussed by conservatives as shocking, it was widely reported in the news media and dismissed out of hand so I figured it would be common knowledge by now.

But hey, I'll give you credit. I didn't realize that my google finger would bring up a story on this very topic from Salon.com. Nor did I realize that most of the larger media organizations I could find stories about this at ended up just talking down the the importance of the role ghostwriting plays on a book. And articles debunking it without actually debunking it. IT even goes on to describe the dangers in the values people assign to the authors of books they support. And that was my main point, I wouldn't give him that much credit.

So i guess it is all a conservative conspiracy or something right? I mean a big conspiracy in which Obama's Publisher was in on too. Maybe it was a ploy to build sales. Maybe it was a comment reflecting the truth. It's hard to say, and we all know we can trust the news media right? I mean especially this conservative media outlet.

Anyways, whether it's true or not, it doesn't seem to be that Obama is following his manifesto in practice.

Mod parent up, way up. There are far higher priorities than GPL for lawyers who want to help fight injustices and right wrongs, the previous poster nailed many of them, and you can get attorney fees awarded some of the time. Yes, IAAL, and I did defend Craig Etling, the first guy to be arrested for smoking in a bar in California. You're welcome. If OP's friend wants to wet his beak IP-wise, he could try his hand at defending RIAA/MPAA/Righthaven lawsuits.