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"The biggest expense to Big Pharma is not research and development (which mainly takes place in universities, including a lot of public ones. Big Pharma does not fund those. You and I do.)"

I call BS. Where is your source for this? Name one drug that was discovered in an academic setting. The VAST majority are discovered by industry, universities simply cannot afford to cost of discovering/developing drugs. Believe me, if not for pharma, we wouldn't have ANY drugs.

"At least a third of the drugs marketed by industry leaders were discovered by universities or small biotech companies, writes Angell, but they're sold to the public at inflated prices."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_401. html

So 1/3, and this writer includes small biotech in that 1/3 (which is still pharma, just not "big" pharma), so you can hardly support your claim.

Raises 26 Million, jerks a guy around who's been helping him for free, and then just takes what he wants. Do you want that for a "democrat" leader (you know, looking out for the little guy?). If the guy's not even bright enough to lie convincingly, how the hell does he think he's going to get elected?

I mention this because today's story shows that sites like Reddit and Digg actually make life a lot easier for spin doctors and propaganda.

We all know there's quite a lot of propaganda in the U.S., such as the U.S. army funding Hollywood movies. (I think /. ran this story before. See here, here, and and here). Also, some people think prime time television is getting audiences to get used to the idea of torture. See here.

The point is that sites like Digg, Reddit and Wikipedia are maybe things that actually makes the a government's propaganda job easier, by making authority and authoritative opinion a more diffuse concept. There's no such concept as "reputation" or "editorial independence", like you have in the press.

IMHO, this is a twist on things. In particular, the younger generation that is growing up with such sites and with little or no concept of the traditional media outlets concern me the most. Newspaper sales are going down all over the world, for instance.

Jesus Christ dude. Are you that out of the loop into the bush is evil BS that you haven't even hear of this? I didn't think I had to cite sources and references because it was common knowledge to almost everyone informed enough to make a comment on the matter.

If you must, Here is an account describing Georges Sada'sclaim of what happened. He was a Iraqi airforce general. And here is another by Dr. Mahdi Obeidi.

There are many other sources such as weapons inspectors and such. The gist was that Iraq was hiding former WMDs but didn't develop new ones. Even the yellow-cake story which has been thrown around as discredited by the Anti bush people has been proved to have been creditable.

I'm amazed that people like you still exist. but sadly it is the truth about people today. Try looking the information up and being current with it before jumping into some bashing. It is not my job to educate you, it is your job to come to play after you have done your homework.

Years later, with the embattled Clinton administration faced with numerous allegations of impropriety, including charges that it had illegally obtained FBI files on prominent Republicans for political purposes--this controversy became known as Filegate--a White House whistleblower came forward claiming that the administration had suppressed 100,000 emails related to ongoing investigations. Sheryl Hall, who helped to supervise the computer system in the Clinton White House, reported being told by a colleague that "if the contents of these e-mails became known, that there would be different outcomes to these scandals, as the e-mails were incriminating and could cause people to go to jail." Congressional Republicans, then in the majority, cast the alleged cover-up as a worse scandal than Watergate, concluding in a report by the House Government Reform Committee that "the e-mail matter can fairly be called the most significant obstruction of congressional investigations in U.S. history."

Democrats and Republicans are they really different?

Mother Jones published an article some weeks back about the "hypermilers," a number of automotive enthusiasts whose method of madness is getting as much gas mileage out of a car as possible.

Some of the techniques they use include avoiding use of breaks whenever possible, attempting to stay at 50mph a much as they can, taking turns at the fastest possible speed, and strategizing as they drive to hit traffic lights when they're green as often as possible.

In short, a very very Slashdot way to drive....

These guys already get 100+ mpg easily:
"Wayne honks to get a judge to run through the rain to record his fcd. It reads as high as the Insight can record: 150 mpg. Afterward, the Insight's owner hits a switch that shows Wayne's mark in kilometers per liter, which has a higher limit. It reads 1.3 L/100 km. That's 180.91 mpg. "

so either the x-price people have never heard of hypermilers or they plan on having special obstacle courses and requiring drivers to accelerate at a certain speed.

I'm pretty disappointed this link didn't show up in the first 5 posts on this topic, it's a sad day on /. when an article about 100+ mpg cars has more threads about "EuroEnglish" than about cars.

On the other hand, Dubai, together with its emirate neighbors, has achieved the state of the art in the disenfranchisement of labor. Trade unions, strikes, and agitators are illegal, and 99% of the private-sector workforce are easily deportable non-citizens. Indeed, the deep thinkers at the American Enterprise and Cato institutes must salivate when they contemplate the system of classes and entitlements in Dubai.

At the top of the social pyramid, of course, are the al-Maktoums and their cousins who own every lucrative grain of sand in the sheikhdom. Next, the native 15% percent of the population -- whose uniform of privilege is the traditional white dishdash -- constitutes a leisure class whose obedience to the dynasty is subsidized by income transfers, free education, and government jobs. A step below, are the pampered mercenaries: 150,000-or-so British ex-pats, along with other European, Lebanese, and Indian managers and professionals, who take full advantage of their air-conditioned affluence and two-months of overseas leave every summer.

However, South Asian contract laborers, legally bound to a single employer and subject to totalitarian social controls, make up the great mass of the population. Dubai lifestyles are attended by vast numbers of Filipina, Sri Lankan, and Indian maids, while the building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians working twelve-hour shifts, six and half days a week, in the blast-furnace desert heat.

Dubai, like its neighbors, flouts ILO labor regulations and refuses to adopt the international Migrant Workers Convention. Human Rights Watch in 2003 accused the Emirates of building prosperity on "forced labor." Indeed, as the British Independent recently emphasized in an exposé on Dubai, "The labour market closely resembles the old indentured labour system brought to Dubai by its former colonial master, the British."

"Like their impoverished forefathers," the paper continued, "today's Asian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery for years when they arrive in the United Arab Emirates. Their rights disappear at the airport where recruitment agents confiscate their passports and visas to control them"

While we are fairly buddy buddy now, the way our POWs were treated was very very bad.

What do POW camps have to do with the concentration camps for citizens of Japanese ancestry to which the GP post was refering?

The prisoners in Gitmo...Are not in daily, constant fear of being beaten randomly

Yes, we mostly outsource the beatings to other prisons. Gitmo's torture is more psychological.

Some prisoners went insane. Abdughaffor was one of them. He would throw himself against the door and scream. He tried to hang himself. He wouldn't eat. He became somebody Umarov did not know. Others took off their clothes and sat naked in their cells. "These people became like children," he says. "They did not understand their reality."

...

"I was taken to the dark room," he says. "The soldiers took all my clothes and left me there." The room was made of iron; it measured three feet by five feet. At night, frigid air was pumped through a hole in its ceiling, and its small window was covered by Plexiglas so the air couldn't leave. Two electric coils provided dim light, and during the day, they were turned up to heat the cell to a very high temperature. But night was worse. "Some prisoners wouldn't last the night and had to be taken to the doctor," he says. "They kept me there for 10 days--and for no reason."

...

"What I've already said should be enough for those who want to know about this prison," he says softly. "It was like being in a zoo, with people coming to stare and laugh at you." I keep pressing. His voice rises. "There is no point in telling more of these stories. Such a prison has never existed in the history of mankind. No one has ever written about such a prison. Why did they keep a man for two years with no reason? Why? They caught me and kept me as a prisoner of war. What war, may I ask? When was I involved? I was sleeping when they came and dragged me out of my bed. People who understand the laws will have already made up their minds about who is who."

From 2004 : " Uppsala universitet betalar mindre än en tiondel av ordinarie pris för Office. " , which translate to English as "The University of Uppsala pays less than a tenth of the ordinary price for {MS} Office"

Word on the street was that UU was going to go completely FOSS, or at least completely non-MS, on its workstations. Many other institutions were heading that way until 2000-2002. Turku was a notable case, but there were quite a few others that weren't able to move even that far before MSofters flew in and thus didn't get as much press.

Other bad decisions were made around that time, too: People got sold a lot of junkj hardware, too: gross income deduction in exchange for last year's hardware, at this years full retail prices, delivered 6 to 12 months from now. That gross income reduction cuts rather deeply into the pensions, given the new pension system.

It would be useful, though nearly impossible, to find out all the places that have been trying to dump M$ junk since 1998, but have been threatened with raids, or threatened with audits, or given 95%+ discounts in order to keep or extend the lock-in. As you can see it's been part of the business model for a long time. The BSA/FAST raids seem not just about licensing but about even getting rid of non-MS commercial software.

Exxon has paid Milloy at least $100,000 (that we know of) to promote global warming denial. And probably several times that.

The topic of discussion is the corrupting effect of $10,000. How much more corruption do you think $1 million would buy?

$35 million for Fraud.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1979/11/do wie.html As you can see, more than 15,000 people have been killed by corporates worldwide directly.

http://www.healthsquare.com/fgwh/wh1ch20.htm The Dalkon Shield device killed 17 people in US. Yet what was done? The product was withdrawn and the company censured.

No Siree! Corporate crimes are meant to be "settled" or "fined".

Corporates should have a criminal sheet and a blotter plus an impact on their credit scores like us.

A criminal conviction should result in the CEO being directly implicated, and the credit scores updated to reflect that. With a score of 320 good luck to the corporate to get cheap loans/raise money by stock.

Your post is an application of the is-ought problem. The fact of the matter is that corporate charters are granted by the government, and it is only the current state of government that a corporation is only required to make as much money as possible with no consideration for social responsibility. This was not always the case, and many people disagree that it is good so it could very well change someday. While I don't disagree that in a very abstract sense a corporation cannot be "good" or "bad," real people are running the thing, and they are capable of making moral decisions.

There was moral outrage when it was revealed that Ford had done a cost-benefit analysis of death settlements against including an $11 part that would prevent their Pinto automobiles from exploding in a collision, and concluding that the settlements were more cost-effective. Would you argue that was the right thing for Ford to to do?

link.

. . . which would be an alternative, if the opponents of net-neutrality weren't so hell-bent on taking away this option. Read this, or this transcript.

No, no, not bible-beating rednecks, well-heeled industry shills! And that stereotype exists largely because there's a well-documented conspiracy to debase science and muddy the waters on behalf of said industry. (There's an analogue for creationism as well.)

You're welcome to question global warming, just as you're welcome to question the theory of evolution. It gets old when the same tired crap is thrown out time and again, designed not to advance anyone's understanding of anything, but to sow public confusion and doubt.

. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

10. Diebol

"The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."

Some do notice, but apparently not enough. Just two examples of the effectiveness of "The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."

Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/ju st_try_voting_here.html

Lie by Lie: Chronicle of a War Foretold: August 1990 to March 2003
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

I won't even yet go into how rotted roofs in Houston (unrepaired because a certain governer would not release or mark funds for repairs of run down police stations) led to destruction of crime scene evidence that led to uncounted illegal or erroneous convictions of people, this under the watch of then gov geo bush. Or, how with zeal and zest he signed off on the executions orders for people because he has complete faith and trust in the judicial system.

Funny Slash image word: "canons"

"The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."

Some do notice, but apparently not enough. Just two examples of the effectiveness of "The US on the other has one thing going for it: constitutional protections, and associated with that, pretty good transparency. Whenever there's a new law project that might touch constitutional protections, there's usually some people that will notice, and there's quite a bit more public debate about it."

Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/ju st_try_voting_here.html

Lie by Lie: Chronicle of a War Foretold: August 1990 to March 2003
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

I won't even yet go into how rotted roofs in Houston (unrepaired because a certain governer would not release or mark funds for repairs of run down police stations) led to destruction of crime scene evidence that led to uncounted illegal or erroneous convictions of people, this under the watch of then gov geo bush. Or, how with zeal and zest he signed off on the executions orders for people because he has complete faith and trust in the judicial system.

Funny Slash image word: "canons"

In the case of Diebold, they made this very clear before the 2004 election, when then-CEO Wally O'Dell said - in writing - to the Ohio Republicans that he would deliver their state to George Bush. He lived up to that promise, and there are good grounds to suspect that this wasn't at all accidental. They want their code secret so that we can't find out some of the things they've got hidden there.

From Mother Jones: "Diebold machines were used in only 2 of Ohio's 88 counties."

So how did Diebold's code 'deliver the state to George Bush'? Or are you just making stuff up?

OK, I'll probably get hit with "offtopic"/"troll" by someone out there, but...

WOW, timely comments. I'm not a regular reader of MotherJones, but I was in Borders and thought I'd read this particular issue. One article is:

"Just Try VOting Here; The 11 Worst Places to Vote (and then some)"

Seems we need even MORE external observers to expose the jokery of the US federal/presidential voting process. Underscores why I think national elections are so rigged and so thoroughly corrupt it's not worth my tim. Unfortunately, that's exactly the result the powerplayers expect.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/ju st_try_voting_here.html

On another topic, for those who might be interested:

Chronicle of a War Foretold
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

hehe, Slash image word: aspire (makes me think of Cyndi Lauper... "I couldn't aSPIRE to anything HIgher..."

OK, I'll probably get hit with "offtopic"/"troll" by someone out there, but...

WOW, timely comments. I'm not a regular reader of MotherJones, but I was in Borders and thought I'd read this particular issue. One article is:

"Just Try VOting Here; The 11 Worst Places to Vote (and then some)"

Seems we need even MORE external observers to expose the jokery of the US federal/presidential voting process. Underscores why I think national elections are so rigged and so thoroughly corrupt it's not worth my tim. Unfortunately, that's exactly the result the powerplayers expect.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/ju st_try_voting_here.html

On another topic, for those who might be interested:

Chronicle of a War Foretold
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

hehe, Slash image word: aspire (makes me think of Cyndi Lauper... "I couldn't aSPIRE to anything HIgher..."

For a (slight) glimpse at the stakes of a game like this, consider the recent Robin Williams film "Man of the Year". The movie was okay, but the truly frightening thing was how likely a scandal like a rigged election, purposefully or otherwise, might take place. However, before I go into some facts I found through surfing about Diebold and electronic voting, I wanted to point out that even if it was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush was elected through vote fraud of some kind (not that many of us need any further convincing), it doesn't mean Kerry automatically gets to take the White House and Bush is out. What would most likely happen, along with a series of investigations and lawsuits, is the Supreme Court court would invalidate the election results and declare a new election, at a reasonable time period. Dennis Hastert would assume the throne until the new election results were confirmed but nothing Bush has done would be invalidated, at least, not right away. Even if he was fraudulently elected, he was still the de-facto sitting President and so his actions would be legal (in a manner of speaking). Congress could take some action to reverse some of his doings, but that assumes they want to in the first place. Now, on to Diebold. Found via a Google of "Diebold facts": 1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold 2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html 3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html 4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886 5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html 6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p 7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candid

Their job was to implant the official industry ideology in the minds of the new officials regulating auto safety. Briefly summarized, that ideology states that auto accidents are caused not by cars, but by 1) people and 2) highway conditions.

The difference between design flaw or human error is just a matter of perception and cost/benefit analysis. It's interesting to find out that it was this case that actually introduced the 'cost' of a human life for corporate convenience (about $300k by the end of the 70's). I wonder if it was the inspiration to the famous Fight Club quote.

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex

I'd find that convincing if you could be a dear and dig up something analogous to the campaign of subversion, FUD and disinformation spread by ExxonMobil. Care to point out the millions upon millions of dollars funnelled to think tanks? The administration sticking its fingers into scientific reports (as it did with the 2003 EPA Report on the Environment) for political reasons favoring those well-connected mustache-twirling climatologists you've conveniently handwaved into existence? Stating your own fevered dreams as if they were fact doesn't make them so.

So, pop quiz. Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything, jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic. (b) A cabal of titanic multinational corporations, standing to lose untold billions if carbon controls are implemented, conducts a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and confuse the public.

I understand that it makes for good airplane reading, but come on. In the real world, Occam's Razor rips the whole mess to shreds. (Plus, isn't it telling that the best bit of media global warming deniers have on their side is an unabashed work of fiction?)

(Also, if you're going to claim the existence of the aforementioned scientist conspiracy, please provide at least as much evidence as there already is for option (b). Thanks.)

I call shenanigans all over that. It's not some vast conspiracy of SUV-loving, gas guzzling eco-terrorists that keeps things as they are

This is the same ES&S who's chairman got into trouble with the Senate Ethics Committee because he failed to disclose his involvement with the company when he, as virtual an unknown in his first bid for public office, ran for and won a Senate seat against two well known and popular opponents in what was widely called "a surprise upset" -- in an election which was counted exclusively on machines manufactured by ES&S. Subsequently, the law in his state was changed to prohibit election workers from looking at the ballots, and outlaw hand recounts. The only recounts permitted by law are on machines manufactured by ES&S.

In case that helps put this in perspective.

--MarkusQ

Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, but Marc Andreessen, who invented the world's first commercial Web browser, gives the former vice president credit for paving the way. "He had people buying into the concept of the information superhighway before anybody had an idea about what it would be," says Andreessen, who profited from the traffic by creating one of the most successful on-ramps, Netscape Communications.

As usual, Brazil is ahead of the rest of the world in social things. Ricardo Semler has been doing open source business for 20 years, as Chief Happiness Officer. Here's a review of his book, The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. Some people are extremely enthusiastic about Semler's ideas: He's my idol.

Normal CEO's are Chief Unhappiness Officers. They steal everything they can, and act out their anger toward everyone they can.

One of the most important examples of a business run in an adversarial way is Microsoft, of course. After all this time, major media outlets are starting to get it right. Here are quotes from the CNN article Microsoft security--no more second chances?:

"By now, Chertoff's people must be thoroughly frustrated that Microsoft still turns out poorly designed products."

"Here's something to consider: If bridge builders or airplane designers applied the same standards to their labors, do you believe that the public would so easily forgive the regularity with which bridges would collapse and airliners fall out of the sky?"

If you like the CNN article, don't forget to D I G G it.

For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.

Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.

Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.

For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.

Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.

Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.

For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.

Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.

Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.

For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.

Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.

Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.

For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.

Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.

Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.

Unix was killed by the high price of licenses ...

... With the license for Windows NT ...

Interestingly, the tide is turning again. Despite the ongoing anti-competitive activities, people realize that they've been burnt by MS, even if only as a result shelling out for software assurance. Though many have a longer more serious list of grievances and disappointments. With all other options gone, that basically leaves only 'Linux'. As a result we are now seeing that sales of Linux servers have shown 15 consecutive quarters of growth. That's sales not general market share which would also include Linux servers installed over other operating systems.

Sorry, your circumstantial ad hominem argument against Driessen should have never received any mod points. But, if Mother Jones (who undoubtedly is seen by the world as an authoritative source) said so, then it must be true. Well, I don't want to be dismissive of them either, but see for yourself as to their bias (or lack thereof) and journalistic credentials...as that is in fact substantial grounds for dismissing their rhetoric.

Driessen is a paid oil industry lobbyist who professionally promotes junk science through industry funded think tanks

"Driessen has also written about the role that think tanks can play in helping corporations achieve their objectives. Such outlets "can provide research, present credible independent voices on a host of issues, indirectly influence opinion and political leaders, and promote responsible social and economic agendas," he advised companies in a 2001 essay published in Capital PR News. "They have extensive networks among scholars, academics, scientists, journalists, community leaders and politicians.... You will be amazed at how much they do with so little."

• H&R Block successfully lobbied to severely curtail an innovative California program to assist poor people filling out their taxes (Source: This article in Mother Jones, a regular National Magazine Award-winner)

• H&R Block charges close to 500 percent for short-term tax refund loans. These loans are predominantely used by poor people claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Source: NY Times Reporter David Cay Johnston's excellent book "Perfectly Legal" and this MSNBC article about the state of California suing H&R Block.)

• I have completed the full 1040 for four tax years, including accounting for capital losses and miscellaneous income and interest, and it's just NOT THAT HARD to do your own taxes.

If I was ill and someone actively prevented me from receiving medical aid then I am sure that that person would be breaking the law.

Thousands of people in the third world die every day because western corporations deny them the right to manufacture patented drugs, and they can't afford to buy them at our prices.

There have also been cases where drugs have been made unavailable at any price, because the patent holder has refused to manufacture them or license the patents. For example, Mifepristone (RU-486) was kept off the US market for a while because the patent holder was unwilling to sell a politically incorrect drug in the USA, and it took a lot of pressure to get them to license the patent.

So I'm afraid if a patent prevented you from getting vital medical aid, you would simply be allowed to die. That's the way US capitalism works.

Something tells me you have a nice house in the burbs or a nice apartment in the city, yet you are telling the roughly one million who are homeless, the one in sixteen who live in trailer homes, and the 46 million who can't afford health care they are well off, what nerve!!!!! Have you ever had to worry about where your next meal is coming from or dying from an infection? I thought not...

As one who has experienced homelessness and eating out of dumpster you are officially invited to bite me.

http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/homele ss.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1993/01/kn ox.html

I don't live in the US but I live very close and almost all of my IP traffic travels through the US at some point and my worry is that any business information collected by the US/CIA/FBI or other US agency would be made available to US companies. There have been court cases in the past of US sponsored spying benefiting US companies. They say they are after terrorist but who knows? With the knowledge of past activities of US spies and the current computing power of the US agencies all foreign businesses would be well advised to encrypt all sensitive information.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1994/05/dr eyfuss.html

http://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/4141_Spring2002. pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/070200-02.ht m

Not using encryption is to believe GWB when he says "Trust me"

Decades of continuous manipulative mass mobilization, affording every citizen a vote but no choice of candidates, produced corrosive cynicism and apathy. Growing technological sophistication undermined government control of ideas: by the 1980s anyone in the USSR could start an underground opposition newspaper by getting hold of a second-hand word processor and a printer, increasingly common tools of the fully developed society to which most Soviets and Eastern Europeans -- and their leaderd -- aspired.

In an announcement that stunned many in Washington and even some in his campaign staff, Hackett declared on February 13, 2006, that he was dropping his bid for U.S. Senate in Ohio, ending his 11 month political career. "I made this decision reluctantly, only after repeated requests by party leaders, as well as behind-the-scenes machinations, that were intended to hurt my campaign," he said, only hinting at what had gone down. The day after his withdrawal from the race, he told me about the backroom battles that forced him out.

[...]

Swift boats soon appeared on the horizon. A whisper campaign started: Hackett committed war crimes in Iraq--and there were photos. "The first rumor that I heard was probably a month and a half ago," Dave Lane, chair of the Clermont County Democratic Party, told me the day after Hackett pulled out of the race. "I heard it more than once that someone was distributing photos of Paul in Iraq with Iraqi war casualties with captions or suggestions that Paul had committed some sort of atrocities. Who did it? I have no idea. It sounds like a Republican M.O. to me, but I have no proof of that. But if it was someone on my side of the fence, I have a real problem with that. I have a hard time believing that a Democrat would do that to another Democrat."

The FBI and the military are spying on non violent politcal activists now. Given that we have Alito on the supreme court who supports the power of the "unitary executive," and given that Bush lied to us about always getting a warrant before engaging in phone tapping (in New Mexcio 2004 google it), it's utterly foolish to allow Bush to have the power to spy on anyone in violation of FISA. Lists of links showing Bush's FBI and military spy on domestic activists now from a post to William Arkin's excellent early warning blog at the Washington Post: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/ 01/nsa_expands_its.html

American Media Dodging U.N. Surveillance Story By Norman Solomon Media Beat March 6, 2003 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2226&printer_fr iendly=1

###

The unholy trinity of electronic snooping: Bolton, Negroponte and Hayden By Wayne Madsen Online Journal May 5, 2005

###

NSA spy program hinges on state-of-the-art technology By Shane Harris National Journal January 20, 2006 http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33 212&printerfriendlyVers=1&

### NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance Fruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases By Walter Pincus Washington Post Sunday, January 1, 2006; A08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/12/31/AR2005123100 808_pf.html

### New Documents Show FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Targeting Peaceful Protest Activity in Colorado ACLU Press Release December 8, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/22884prs200512 08.html

### New Documents Show FBI Targeting Environmental and Animal Rights Groups Activities as "Domestic Terrorism" ACLU Press Release December 20, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23124prs200512 20.html

### Secret Pentagon Unit May Have Gathered and Kept Unauthorized Files on Thousands of Innocent Individuals and Organizations Newsweek Jan 23, 2006 http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/printer_3073 0.shtml

### Protesters Subjected To 'Pretext Interviews' FBI Memo Shows No Specific Threats By Dan Eggen Washington Post Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A04 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/05/17/AR2005051701 240_pf.html http://www.aclu-co.org/docket/200406/JTTF_file_sar ah_bardwell_08-02-04.pdf

### Battlespace America: The new Pentagon can peruse intelligence on U.S.citizens and send Marines down Main Street Peter Byrne Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.p l?url=http://www.motherjon es.com/news/outfront/2005/05/battlespace_america.h tml

It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago.

Every time I see someone calling CNN "left-slanted", "left-biased" etc, I can't help but laugh at the success of the brainwashing of the American TV audience. "Left" biased?! Mother Jones or CounterPunch are examples of a "left-biased" media not CNN. CNN to many of us Canadians looks like a bastion of inane apologisms for the ruling elites (regardless of which side they are on), generic, incompetent disinformation (mostly right leaning) combined with massive amounts of brainless "infotainment". In short, CNN is a pathetic result of trying to appear "unbiased" while pandering to the lowest common denominator. As opposed to FOX which tries hard to pander to the lowest elements of the right-wing crowds and thus tries to inflame and profit from "us vs them" psychosis, persecution complexes, medieval theocratic throwbacks etc, and yet it loudly proclaims to be "unbiased" and "no spin". While offering nothing but.

In general it appears that the enemies of the liberal phillosophies managed to shift the lanugage so that "left" is now renamed "extreme loony left", "center" to "left" and everything else "conservative". It is an interesting -- albait sad -- Orwellian language war to watch for us outsiders.

All sorts of abuses are discovered, perpetrated by our governments, years after the event when people core to the event have grown old, died, and the event itself sort-of fades from relevance.

Sometimes it leaks out early.

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

The BSA is basically controlled by Microsoft. See this Mother Jones article about the BSA in South America. (Yes, it's a very lefty magazine but I think credible.):

The BSA receives funding from most of the top software companies but appears to be most heavily funded by Microsoft. And, according to Antel's information technology manager, Ricardo Tascenho, the company settled the matter by signing a "special agreement" with Microsoft to replace all of its software with Microsoft products....Antel's situation suggests that when the BSA cracks down on piracy overseas, it's Bill Gates who turns out to be the pirate. Representatives from rival firms complain that Microsoft is abusing its power within the BSA to speed its global dominance...Felipe Yungman, Novell's manager of security for Argentina, says he and another staffer at Novell discovered, while pursuing their own investigation for the company, that the BSA was setting up sweetheart deals for Microsoft. "Companies or government offices had to, as a condition [that the BSA] forgive them of piracy, replace Novell products with Microsoft products," he says.