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From http://www.express.co.uk/news/... "John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel, shocked academics by insisting the theory of man-made climate change was no longer scientifically credible." Also, http://www.nationmultimedia.co... to quote: ***===> "New studies flip climate-change notions upside down The sun will go into "hibernation" mode around 2030, and it has already started to get sleepy. At the Royal Astronomical Society's annual meeting in July, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University in the UK confirmed it - the sun will begin its Maunder Minimum (Grand Solar Minimum) in 15 years. Other scientists had suggested years ago that this change was imminent, but Zharkova's model is said to have **near-perfect** accuracy." and "Our sun doesn't maintain a constant intensity. Instead, it cycles in spans of approximately 11 years. When it's at its maximum, it has the highest number of sunspots on its surface in that particular cycle. When it's at its minimum, it has almost none. When there are more sunspots, the sun is brighter. When there are fewer, the sun radiates less heat toward Earth. But that's not the only cooling effect of a solar minimum. A dim sun doesn't deflect cosmic rays away from Earth as efficiently as a bright sun. So, when these rays enter our atmosphere, they seed clouds, which in turn cool our planet even more and increase precipitation in the form of rain, snow and hail." ******* I'll trust these guys over Bill Nye, thank you. *******

That's amazing! Especially, given the complete lack of correlation with the satellite datasets:

UAH RSS

The satellite datasets directly integrate temperature over almost the entire globe, with no interpolation and no revisionist "adjustments". They use laboratory grade instruments, and are frequently calibrated against balloon soundings. And no, there is nothing magic as far as detecting temperature trends gained by measuring at ground level only.

It's beyond ironic that NASA is trumpeting ground-based measurements while ignoring better data gathered from space.

And the first satelite was launched when?

Ohhh certainly not in the late 1800's.

Certainly. However, since the last adjustments, the surface datasets of record have been diverging from the satellite measurements:

The Diverging Surface Thermometer and Satellite Temperature Records
The Diverging Surface Thermometer and Satellite Temperature Records Again

Interesting that this is taking place going into another big climate conference complete with demands for "climate justice", and also while we're on the eve of a solar Grand Minimum...

A quote from that last linked article:

Scientists at the Climate and Environmental Physics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Berne in Switzerland have recently backed up theories that support the sun's importance in determining the climate on Earth. A paper published last year by the American Meteorological Society contradicts claims by IPCC scientists that the sun couldn't be responsible for major shifts in climate. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, rejected IPCC assertions that solar variations don't matter. Among the many studies and authorities she cited was the National Research Council's recent report "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate".

Other researchers and organisations are also predicting global cooling - the Russian Academy of Science, the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Scientists, the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism Russia, Victor Manuel Velesco Herrera at the National University of Mexico, the Bulgarian Institute of Astronomy, Dr Tim Patterson at Carleton University in Canada, Drs Lin Zhen at Nanjing University in China, just to name a few.

I also lived in a monarchy for quite some time, and despite the efforts of and the respect for said monarch*, the country has all sorts of "rage-level divisiveness" these days.

* The lese majeste laws that reddit/4chan got wound up about are an unfortunate sideshow. The laws were established to demonstrate respect for the institution of the dynasty when the constitution was written, but are not enforced appropriately. The king himself says he is worthy of criticism.

How can a company as big as Foxconn think that the way to improve smartphone sales in Indonesia is to start mass producing Blackberries in Indonesia? Can't the Indonesians just skip Blackberries and go straight to Android? I'd recommend iPhones, but I doubt many Indonesians, living on $4,000 a year, could afford a phone that costs about two months wages. http://www.nationmultimedia.co...

This also occurred in Thailand a few years ago, and it's a very sad story of (military) politics triumphing over reason.

During the early years of the Thaksin Shinawatra government, Pornthip Rojanasunand, a very high-profile CSI official, claimed that there was corruption in the Thai police. She became something of a media personality, and a National Geographic documentary was even made of her. She became very popular with the Thai military, who are rivals with the police and eventually launched a coup to remove Thaksin from power. After the coup, the military government spent over $20 million on the "bomb detectors" (not including "commissions") for and gave them to patrols in the deep South to deal with Muslim insurgents.

The military junta eventually organized an election, which a Thaksin-friendly government won. During an anti-government protest, a lady died in an explosion, and many protestors lost limbs. There was some suspicion that the protestors were carrying IEDs which exploded prematurely. "Our team has used a GT200 substance detector and found no substance used in making bombs. We've already checked the clash scenes and the bodies and clothing of the injured victims," Pornthip Rojanasunand said. She concluded that police tear-gas grenades used by the police caused the injuries and death. Despite evidence to the contrary. The public trusted her and the forensic powers of the "bomb detectors," the Queen attended the funeral of the dead lady, and a military-appointed court soon replaced the elected government with one that supported the military.

Soon, evidence started accumulating the the "bomb detectors" weren't working in the South and civilians and low-level soldiers were dying as a result. Pornthip lended her public credibility to the devices. "Personally, I have never handled the device myself. But my people have used it and it is accurate every time. Long long time ago, people believed that the Earth is flat and anyone who said otherwise faced execution. Things which are not visible does not necessarily mean they do not exist. The devices are there and no one has the right to ban their use. I will continue to use it."

The basic detector costs about $20,000, but additional "sensor cards" can be bought to "detect" things like dead bodies. The military-leaning government later killed many protestors in a large protest a few years ago. There were rumors that even more were killed and their bodies placed in containers and sunk off the coast. When containers was found sunk off the coast, Pornthip put a dead-body sensor card into her "bomb detector" and concluded that the containers didn't have dead bodies. Therefore, it wouldn't be cost effective to actually open one of the containers up to check and see.

In conclusion, people like Pornthip support such non-sense "bomb detectors" - not because they personally have to use them - but because they or people they have a vested interest in have supported the frauds in the past, and suddenly recanting and saying that they don't actually work would cause them to lose face.

This also occurred in Thailand a few years ago, and it's a very sad story of (military) politics triumphing over reason.

During the early years of the Thaksin Shinawatra government, Pornthip Rojanasunand, a very high-profile CSI official, claimed that there was corruption in the Thai police. She became something of a media personality, and a National Geographic documentary was even made of her. She became very popular with the Thai military, who are rivals with the police and eventually launched a coup to remove Thaksin from power. After the coup, the military government spent over $20 million on the "bomb detectors" (not including "commissions") for and gave them to patrols in the deep South to deal with Muslim insurgents.

The military junta eventually organized an election, which a Thaksin-friendly government won. During an anti-government protest, a lady died in an explosion, and many protestors lost limbs. There was some suspicion that the protestors were carrying IEDs which exploded prematurely. "Our team has used a GT200 substance detector and found no substance used in making bombs. We've already checked the clash scenes and the bodies and clothing of the injured victims," Pornthip Rojanasunand said. She concluded that police tear-gas grenades used by the police caused the injuries and death. Despite evidence to the contrary. The public trusted her and the forensic powers of the "bomb detectors," the Queen attended the funeral of the dead lady, and a military-appointed court soon replaced the elected government with one that supported the military.

Soon, evidence started accumulating the the "bomb detectors" weren't working in the South and civilians and low-level soldiers were dying as a result. Pornthip lended her public credibility to the devices. "Personally, I have never handled the device myself. But my people have used it and it is accurate every time. Long long time ago, people believed that the Earth is flat and anyone who said otherwise faced execution. Things which are not visible does not necessarily mean they do not exist. The devices are there and no one has the right to ban their use. I will continue to use it."

The basic detector costs about $20,000, but additional "sensor cards" can be bought to "detect" things like dead bodies. The military-leaning government later killed many protestors in a large protest a few years ago. There were rumors that even more were killed and their bodies placed in containers and sunk off the coast. When containers was found sunk off the coast, Pornthip put a dead-body sensor card into her "bomb detector" and concluded that the containers didn't have dead bodies. Therefore, it wouldn't be cost effective to actually open one of the containers up to check and see.

In conclusion, people like Pornthip support such non-sense "bomb detectors" - not because they personally have to use them - but because they or people they have a vested interest in have supported the frauds in the past, and suddenly recanting and saying that they don't actually work would cause them to lose face.

I would mod your comment slightly funny, overwhelmingly ignorant. Good job playing off of broad stereotypes.

Firstly, Adulyadej doesn't enforce these rules. He has publicly stated he that invites criticism.

Disingenuous? Perhaps, but when you take that comment in context -- the fact that he is a figurehead without any actual power, and he has demonstrated a nobles oblige that, I am guessing, few contemporary monarchs have matched-- then I tend to believe he is speaking honestly.

From what I have read about him, he genuinely cares about his people. He has an inquisitive mind, and while I wouldn't call him a polymath, his interests are varied and deep. That mindset doesn't lend itself well to someone who lacks perspective and self-insight -- qualities you typically will not see in a despot.

This story should have run nearly a week ago, he was arrested last Sunday GMT +7.

Here's a story about it from the Bangkok Post that ran on the 7th GMT +7 http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/crimes/329622/police-nab-suspect-wanted-for-hacking

Here's another from local media in Thailand. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Hacker-held-pending-extradition-30197522.html

"The lawsuit states the suspect used the "spy eye" software to steal people's financial information through phony Web pages from 217 computer networks worldwide from December 2009 to September 2011. An arrest warrant was issued in the state of Georgia on December 21, 2011. US authorities later called on Thai police to nab him and also requested that he be detained pending extradition."

In the last couple years it seems that Thailand is trying to displace Canada as America's #1 bitch.

As you can see from the photos he's been all smiles from his arrest at the airport to the obligatory publicity photo op Thai police hold when they occasionally do their job and arrest someone.

That's right. Defect from the country that provided you with outstanding developers who were the end product of the best k-12 (and 12- 16 AND into adulthood) educational systems in the world

http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html

and who were willing to work for start-up wages and take risks because they weren't burdened with student loan debt:

From Wikipedia:

The Finnish education system is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students.

The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education.

The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education.[1]

Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.[1]

Yes defect from that system you benefited from so you can save a measly 12.5% on taxes :

FTA:

The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland's rate is 12.5 per cent.

Yes do defect . Because that's coke n' whore money you could be putting up your fucking nose instead of giving it to the most effective and civic minded governments the world has ever known and supporting one of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever achieved. .

In truth, this happens all to time to Finland . Sports stars, recording stars etc etc defect to a low taxation country. They know about it and build in an allowance for it. They STILL like their society better , and as far as the loss of "talent" goes, they know how to print that shit on demand:

"Finland has reached number 1 or number 2, with very high rankings in reading literacy, mathematics and science. If one could make a calculation of the total, comparing different fields, Finland would be number 1. The country received very high marks in this international comparison of students," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Sirpa Maenpaa told The Nation recently.

"Furthermore, the results that come from Finland are uniform. They do not come from some top students, but from the performance of all of the students," she said.

from:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/09/28/national/national_30113177.php

For anyone interested in how the Scandinavians think about taxes, this is a great listen from Planet Money:

Quotable quote- an incredulous interviewer asks a woman "would you like your taxes to be even higher??" to which she replies "...mmmm .. what will I get for my money?"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_tax_me_please.html

Europe does a lot of stuff I like and a lot of stuff I don't like.

What frustrates me is mankind's desire to reinvent the wheel.

We have a fight in America over nationalized healthcare. Obamacare is a half-assed mix between true socialized healthcare like what is in pretty much every European country and our private system. Why reinvent the wheel when we can just copy what has, say, already been working quite well for the UK since the end of World War 2?

We have issues in our schools with... everything. We're looking at more tests and more hours in school like Asian countries that are often near the top of world rankings. Yet Finland is also very much near the top in those rankings but with shorter school hours and more professional teachers. They are doing something quite right and have been for some time. Why don't we have the people who designed this system coming over here and unfucking ours?

I could go on with many more examples. I wish I could say "They can do it, so we should be able to do it as well!" and have someone respond "Right, let's find out how they did it!" rather than "Let's stubbornly try to figure it out ourselves and give private interests the opportunity to corrupt the system!" Related to business, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a great idea that gets nowhere because they are essentially stripped of any real power. Private interests got their hands in the cookie jar.

The charges against Apple.
The fact Apple used a shell company would technically give them some room to manouver in the US but not neccessarily in China.
Additional information - apparently the company was in receivership as of March 2009 so the directors could not sell any assets without the approval of it's creditors (the documents provided by Apple show dates of November and December 2009). If this is true, the best Apple could realistically hope for imo is for the director to be convicted of defrauding them. This would not give them the rights to the name as it would have been illegal to sell the name without the bank's consent.

I wonder if the owner was trying to stuff his own pockets behind the bank's back - hence doing the deal in Taiwan then not having the ability to deliver.

Or by March 2012, tops.

Personally, I'd rather take the estimates of people doing their best to fix the problem...

Plant managers at Nidec Corp. (6594), which makes motors for disk drives and also has a factory at Rajana, decided not to wait for the water to subside at its seven flooded factories. According to company spokesman Masashiro Nagayasu, they cut a hole in the roof of the Rajana factory, sent divers into the toxin-laden waters to unbolt some heavy equipment, and lifted it onto waiting boats. Some of the equipment is now being used in Nidec factories in China and the Philippines.

...than of CEOs like Seagate's Stephen Luczo who are gleefully rubbing their hands together at the price hike, predicting a year-long shortage of hard-drives.

"People are going to appreciate the complexity of this business," he says.

I lived in small, rural town in Thailand for 3 months last year with my Thai girlfriend and her family and we talked about the King a number of times. Never once did I get any hint that they were afraid of not liking him. They liked him because he was a good man and he had done a lot for his country.

The Lèse majesté trials are known and well publicized. And while you might not agree with the law it is the law in Thailand so while in their country you have to live by their laws.

The 43,000 sites that defame him are only in the opinion of the government, not the King. The King himself has never invoked the law. It was the government that passed the law and it is the government that files the charges. The King has even stated that he is not above being criticised and routinely pardons people found guilty. As a constitutional monarch he can not change the law or stop the government from laying charges but granting pardons is within his power.

No, That's Windows 7 by itself. Office is 3GB extra.

The cited DSL fits in 64MB, all things included.

Damn Small Linux is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:

• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
• Boot from a USB pen drive
• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install * Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram * Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!) * Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

It includes three browsers, document processing, email, spreadsheet, VOIP, and a lot more.

The smallest pendrive I've ever heard of is the 64MB USB 1.0 device I'm holding in my hand right now that I bought my wife more than a decade ago. I paid $79 for it at Fred Meyer, because tech stores wouldn't carry it. Actually, there were 16 and 32MB versions of this, but let's not go there because this was the Windows 95 era.

I am on the record as stating that we've had no productivity increases since the advent of Windows. Let me quote from a wise man:

"Word processing was a solved problem in 1984. By 1987 spreadsheets had all the functions a normal person would ever use. Databases took a little longer, but by 1990 that was sorted. An infant could have been born that day and by now would be almost of age to vote and we've seen no real improvement in productivity since."

64MB is 0.32% of 20GB.

So let me ask you: If the Office team needs 3,000 MB to install their full application set, what can they do with 30MB - 1% of that? Splash? Can they even do that?

The Bangkok Post article is combining two unrelated stories, and gets the chronology of the two events backwards. The kid's suicide has nothing to do with the DSI shutting down gambling websites (both articles in Thai, unfortunately... this may be an English article about the suicide, but it's currently giving me a MySQL error). Also, the Bangkok Post says the court order to shut down the sites is dated May 19, and that "the court order follows the death of a 12-year-old boy". However, the boy killed himself on May 21.

It would take as little as a public statement that he's ok with insults. "Hear me, my people! Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me! So chill out and let those people out of jail mmkay?"

He basically did that, but it didn't seem to have helped any. See his 2005 birthday speech, where he says, "If you say that the King cannot be criticised, it suggests that the King is not human ... If we hold that the King cannot be criticised or violated, then the King ends up in a difficult situation." and "If they get sent to prison, I pardon them. If they don't go to prison, I wonâ(TM)t sue them, because those who violate the King and are punished are not the ones who are in trouble. It would be the King who was in trouble. It is strange, but the lawyers like to send people to prison (for allegedly violating the King)."

The lawmakers have their own reason for keeping the lèse majesté law—it's a great weapon against their political enemies. See for example, the case of Giles Ungpakorn, who wrote a book criticizing the 2006 military coup.

Khun Abhisit has become premier after extraordinary political manoeuvrings and a bidding war for MPs. For a fascinating look at how politics and "democracy" works in Thailand, take a look at this timeline by a Thai newspaper editor. While some details are based on rumours, the cash incentives to MPs and refusal by any body to investigate are public knowledge.

Thai politics has always been corrupt to a greater or lesser extent. However, the corruption reached a new level under the premiership of Khun Thaksin, a level which was maintained under the Thaksin proxy governments of Khun Samak and, briefly, Thaksin's son-in-law.

It has been reported that Thaksin has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, and the UK government's decision to freeze his UK assets based on doubts over their ownership. A cynic might suspect that Thaksin's latest proxies in the Phua Thai party lost out to the Democrat party because Thaksin balked over what winning would cost.

Thaksin's populist policies, helping the rural poor, were a welcome departure from government by an elitist urban elite with contempt for those up country. However, these policies were only pursued by Thaksin in order to gain power and line his own pockets.

The political kingmaker Khun Newin has advised Khun Abhisit to spoil the rural poor in the model of Thaksin. This might defuse the political situation here, but Thailand today is a politically divided country.

Show your people your strength and confidence, repeal the law concerning insults against you and show that you have no fear of your critics and that your people truly love their king.

How do you propose he do that? He has no power to repeal laws (or enact them, for that matter). He does have the power to pardon those who are convicted under that law, and has publicly stated that he will do so. In the same speech, he said that he does not agree with the law: Commentary on the speech and the relevant portion of the speech.

The real reason the lawmakers are keeping the lese majeste law around, despite the king's objection to it, is that it's a powerful political tool. All you have to do is accuse someone of insulting the king, and *bam* they're under investigation. Doesn't matter if there's any evidence or not--they may get acquitted in the end, but you've already gotten the police to hassle them. See this article for a recent example.

Show your people your strength and confidence, repeal the law concerning insults against you and show that you have no fear of your critics and that your people truly love their king.

How do you propose he do that? He has no power to repeal laws (or enact them, for that matter). He does have the power to pardon those who are convicted under that law, and has publicly stated that he will do so. In the same speech, he said that he does not agree with the law: Commentary on the speech and the relevant portion of the speech.

The real reason the lawmakers are keeping the lese majeste law around, despite the king's objection to it, is that it's a powerful political tool. All you have to do is accuse someone of insulting the king, and *bam* they're under investigation. Doesn't matter if there's any evidence or not--they may get acquitted in the end, but you've already gotten the police to hassle them. See this article for a recent example.

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy (or at least it was, until the junta seized power); the king only has ceremonial duties, and has no actual control over the government. He also stated in his 2005 birthday speech that he doesn't believe that the lese majeste laws are right. Despite that, the government continues its attempts to enforce it, and recently convicted a drunken Swiss guy of defacing portraits of the king. However, the king pardoned the guy and has also mentioned that he'd pardon anyone who was imprisoned for lese majeste.

So, it seems pretty clear to me that the king of Thailand is not involved in any of Thailand's anti-YouTube policies.

I suspect the ban is really to prevent people from watching videos protesting the coup--the video showing someone defacing a picture of the king is just a diversion. Protesting the junta was prohibited under martial law, and the media wasn't allowed to report on any protests. If news about the protests were widespread, more people would be emboldened to join in the protests themselves. Restrictions have eased up a bit after martial law was lifted in a few provinces, but the junta isn't happy about it--just a few days ago, the junta leader called for emergency rule to be declared so he can quash the protesters.

A lot of people seem to be unaware of how medeival Thailand is when it comes to morality. Why, just recently a beautiful Thai college student and actress got in a lot of trouble because the dress she wore was too revealing! (obligatory hot pix here)

No, the rich elite in Bangkok were sick of the PM elected by the rural majority, because he was taxing them heavily for social services (e.g., 30 baht or approximately US$0.80 to see a doctor). The People love Thaksin, so media magnate Sonthi Limthongkul is going around spreading FUD about the horrible things that'll happen to Thailand if the rural people's voice is heard. Thaksin running the country badly? He seemed to be doing OK--not great, but better than the current jokers, at least. What have these guys been doing for all the flooding? "Sorry, the government can't help you right now... the citizens should help each other!"

As for the King, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy where the King has no actual power. Rumors have it that the Royal Family didn't learn that a coup had actually taken place until after it happened (although of course, they had the feeling that something might be up... but then, so did the average guy on the street).

Last summer I read from a south asian government press release that Apple would be working with said government to build a cheap system for use only in that market. I firmly believe this rumored, stripped down machine is for that market.

Here's the press release

An outpouring of angry messages from mostly adult gamers flooded Web boards of the ministry and Ragnarok Online when the nightly closure was announced on Monday.

Surapong said that only a small number of gamers played after 10pm and the nightly closure would benefit adult players, as they would now have enough sleep to function efficiently at work. -- ONLINE-GAMING CURFEW: Surapong stands firm

RAGNAROK: FRIEND OR FOE?

The game is re-invigorating the Net Cafe sector, increasing computer literacy, and scaring adults who are on the other side of the generation gap. Oh, and some irresposible kinds are playing the game instead of concentrating on their studies.