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4.7% unemployment rate also includes the tens of thousands of us that are in "alternative" careers like working at the Gap. There is lower unemployment for programmers. Take them out of the STEM group and the un/underemployment rate is deep into the double digits. Defeat of this bill is an extremely good thing. We already have tens of thousands of STEM workers with advanced degrees and years of experience who are long term unemployed. We need instead the crafting of bills to deport excess foreign STEM workers and more importantly bills to strictly limit the gross overproduction of STEM graduates by our universities. That and jobs training bills since an advanced degree in science does not put you on a track to gainful employment. Research (public and private) has imploded. Teachers are in year five or so of what is essentially a hiring freeze. Patent law is splitting at the seams with broke and desperate JDs...and PhD/JDs that flooded law school in the late 2000's when pharma collapsed.

Face it: yesterday's underwater basket weaving degree is today's science Ph.D. Now you'll excuse me as I must go off to work. The lunch rush is starting soon and I am Dr. Burgerflipper, Ph.D.

Can't speak for Openheimer but neither Feynman nor Einstein had any time for the Jewish faith. They were Jews by accident of birth, no more. People of the Jewish faith are not necessarily immune to fuckwhittery.

Are you exaggerating when you say "massive handouts"? My understanding is that the oil industry is allowed tax breaks that are equivalent to what other industries get, and they do not get the direct subsidies that say wind and solar get. Depending on what tax break that is being considered this is 2-4 billion a year, maybe 2% of their profit.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/03/29/why-big-oil-should-give-up-its-tax-breaks
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-obama-energy-idUSBRE82S11P20120329
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_prez_oil_tax_break_lies_Y2Yj6KCU9QIO0BKHs1Be7M
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/oiltax_05-12.html

Didn't realize that I was talking to Antonio Cromartie! I've been inspired. I'll trade in the minivan for a bitchin' camaro, ditch the wife and kids, and try to be more like you every day. Thanks for setting me straight.

There was just one two years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_plane_crash If that's not enough, here's some more TSA Fail: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/newark-airport-terminal-shut-baby-checkpoint-unscreened-article-1.1068800#ixzz1tHJ5bW5z http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/new_jfk_security_breach_PB8L58gzpwjmyqktLHRssN http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/TSA-Agent-Slips-Through-DFW-Body-Scanner-With-a-Gun-116497568.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357012/TSA-causes-outrage-confiscating-pregnant-womans-insulin-ice-packs.html http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120509/10161518848/congress-tsa-is-wasting-hundreds-millions-taxpayer-dollars.shtml http://consumerist.com/2011/12/tsa-agent-finds-pot-in-rappers-bag-leaves-note-rather-than-confiscating-it.html http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/boarding-pass-arrest-nigerian-slipped-jfk-airport-security/story?id=13963831

I first learned about this on a TV show about crime in prisons. They had a gun made from a steel shaft pen, fired a .22 bullet. Google pen gun and see the variety of sites that come up. Here's one of the more interesting links I came across. I would be unsurprised if the pen gun there was presented because the program gives $200 for a handgun, and this probably only cost about $25 to make - pure profit.

I think the reason we don't hear a lot about this kind of stuff is that reporting for crimes in prison aren't very popular, and outside of prison it's simply easier to get a manufactured gun, with all the benefits of reliability and ease of use that implies.

when was there a case where a dude stabbed 50 people to death

Why 50? I find 8, 7, 4, with a couple seconds of searching on google.

Killing 50 people with a firearm still gets you into the record books.

Guns are only designed to kill things.

Not worth it to try to change your mind, but as long as you hold this, yeah, we're not going to agree on things. Especially when you get somebody like me who's convinced that sometimes killing something is the best solution, so it's best to have a proper tool for the job when you do have to kill something/someone.

Has this been suggested? That's a requirement for HBO Go, but I've never seen that suggested for Netflix.

Oops, that was a typo. I meant Hulu Plus.

Whats left for 300 million people to do?

They could spend their time reading about economic fallacies. Prosperity and economic growth come from more efficient production of goods and services. Not from "keeping people busy."

This will simply result in increased competition for resources, in this case - jobs. Those who can compete successfully will, those who can't ... will have more babies. But don't worry, socialism will make sure their children will have a comfortable life and continue to extract resources through forced wealth transference thanks to economic fairness which eventually results in the the shifting of sound principles to mob rule.

Of course, this won't continue indefinitely

A "reasonable and articulable suspicion" that the suspect is armed.

These stop-and-frisks are not Terry stops.

There is no basis for them under the law.

I may agree with you, but my opinion matters less than a judge's opinion.

That being said, judges have thrown out convictions based on stop & frisk, such as this young thug with a rap sheet who was caught packing an illegal, unlicensed handgun: http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/local/manhattan/judges_nix_second_stop_frisk_verdict_7WdPuqTdfCKaY9W4WgnToI

If it isn't a Terry stop, then sue the bastards. I believe the ACLU is doing just that.

There are some law enforcement personnel who are allowed to do stops like this in the post-9/11 era... The Customs and Border Protection arm of the DHS.

False. CBP can search you at the border, but they always had the power to do that.

Lately CBP has been claiming that they can do the same thing within 100 miles of the border, but no court has (yet) said they can do that.

Those are a couple of the typical talking points, but they are highly dubious.

Health care is highly regulated in all developed countries, including the US, and so the price of care doesn't reflect anything like its actual cost in economic terms. It's therefore almost meaningless to directly compare per capita health care spending between countries.

Outcomes are also not as easy to compare as some people think. For example, it's common to see life expectancy and infant mortality compared. By some ways of reckoning, the US ranks pretty poorly among developed countries on those two metrics. But it turns out that once deaths by fatal accidents and violent crimes are removed, and we account for differences in what countries consider a "live birth", the US looks pretty good. The first link also shows that the US has the highest survival rate for a wide variety of cancers.

(Note that I am not defending the claim that " the simplest procedures runs into the tens or hundreds of thousands". I'm just saying that things are not as simple as some people who want to change the US's system to be more like some other country's would like you to believe.)

Let us know how it goes, NYC!

It's going pretty well so far.

In the US students are being told that they can be arrested for criticizing Obama. So yea, who cares.

What's been causing the fall of Bittorrent as a share of internet bandwidth in the US is the rise of legal streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu, etc), alternatives which don't exist in most of the rest of the world.

For the time being...

As I already said, Jews do not generally impose their religious rules on non-Jews, and the ultra-orthodox are not an exception.

Yeah, sure they don't.

This is an attitude that puzzles me. The game companies are the ones making these decisions. If anything, the blame mostly lies on them. They're the ones who implement the DRM and make the software, not the pirates. The pirates may indirectly cause them to change direction, but they still make the final decision.

Do not pretend as if no blame rests on the developers.

I suggest you consider dropping a bit of your own arrogance. Obviously a developer will always want to earn more and a customer will always want to pay less. DRM, as irritating as it is sometimes, can be born of an honest motivation: to limit game use to the person who purchased it. To say there is no excuse for the 'punishment' of 'draconian' DRM is a pretty nice bit of rhetoric but ignores entirely the fact that some DRM goes unnoticed by most (e.g., streaming a movie from netflix) and that unauthorized copying and distribution of games has a critical relation to the profitability of game development and this, in turn, has a critical relation to the desire of developers to make games. You may love your single-player, non-networked games a great deal, but if the prevailing business climate makes these games unattractive projects for developers, you won't have much to choose from.

As for your other post, I think you get a few things wrong:

I cannot fathom how anyone could perceive that as being a much more severe problem than jaywalking. They may or may not be losing potential profit, but that is all.

You don't seem to realize that game development, music, tv, and movies are considered high-risk/high reward investements. In some cases, it's not "potential profit" that is at stake but the very business itself. For every blockbuster game/movie/song/show out there, hundreds go belly up.

I cannot see how copying music is a "huge" problem even as someone who supports copyright.

I have pretty liberal attitudes toward music copying, but believe it's pretty telling that music industry revenues peaked in 1999 and plummeted for years. In fact, music industry revenues are down over 60% from where they were 13 years ago. In any other industry a 65% decline would be seen as a complete catastrophe. Maybe that's not a huge problem for you, but it certainly is for people who worked in the music industry.

Laughable. What do you suggest? Even as someone who supports the idea of reasonable copyright laws, I do not believe it is possible to stop.

Actually, it was legislation (the DMCA) that set the stage for the current legal situation vis-a-vis content sharing. In particular, the safe habor provision of that legislation is what protects companies like Google and the Pirate Bay and Megaupload from enormous civil actions by the MPAA and the RIAA -- that is why they have resorted to suing individuals instead. The DMCA says that these internet companies are not liable for the actions of their users and that has resulted in the proliferation of services that people can use to share copyrighted material freely. A reversal of this provision would immediately result in some colossal lawsuits.

I heartily agree with you that a legal alternative to downloading is the only way forward here. The suits in the motion picture business are screwing this up big time.

Hulu will soon no longer be an option for those with no cable at all. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/tv_in_real_dime_ph0GiKk7rC9agDUEkHae2I

Actually Canada is less free than the U.S. in many respects. I'm too lazy to dig-up the details, so I'll just pull it out of my memory, from when I read the articles 2 years ago.

There was an author wrote a book that he considered inoffensive but a Muslim priest filed a charge anyway. No big deal; it's protected as free speech right? Nope. He found himself drug into the Canadian court for charges of hate speech. They did eventually let him go, but not until he had wasted half-a-decade and nearly $100,000 fighting the charges. LINK - http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/item_6dD0aACtm0IHKpZ76wqqaM

Also PEI? You won't find much use for your college degree there. That's a farming state... I mean province. They have about as much electronic industry as Maine.

The US Government never proved that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and never said so.

Except for the fact that WMDs were found in Iraq and it is common knowledge. But don't let facts get in the way of your ignorance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_did_find_iraq_wmd_AYiLgNbw7pDf7AZ3RO9qnM

Trayvon Martin's killer claims teen punched him, slammed his head into ground

SANFORD, Fla. — The controversy surrounding the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin took a new turn Monday when the Orlando Sentinel reported Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman told police Martin decked him with a single punch, then repeatedly slammed his head into the sidewalk.

The Sentinel said much of Zimmerman's account had been corroborated by witnesses, according to authorities.

Trayvon Martin Shooter Told Cops Teenager Went For His Gun

In addition, an eyewitness, 13-year-old Austin Brown, told police he saw a man fitting Zimmerman's description lying on the grass moaning and crying for help just seconds before he heard the gunshot that killed Martin.

The initial police report noted that Zimmerman was bleeding from the back of the head and nose, and after medical attention it was decided that he was in good enough condition to travel in a police cruiser to the Sanford, Fla., police station for questioning. He was not arrested.

Martin's girlfriend had said in a recording obtained exclusively by ABC News that she heard Martin ask Zimmerman "why are your following me, and then the man asked, what are you doing around here." She then heard a scuffle break out and the line went dead.

Oh, and the whole fight happened on the grass.

Intesting, in light of the police report:

police report that states Zimmerman was injured and treated at the scene:

"While I was in such close contact with Zimmerman, I could observe that his back appeared to be wet and was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and back of his head. . . .

Zimmerman was placed in the rear of my police vehicle and was given first aid by the SFD.

Note - "his back appeared to be wet and covered in grass" Hmmmm Grass for the back, concrete for the head.

Besides, the police let him go BEFORE there were any eyewitness reports.

Read the police report at the link. It is clear that the police at least knew who was there as they took names. Do you think they stopped at just taking names after someone was shot?

Sorry, this has nothing to do with the post above me, but the instead the parent of the parent of the.... you get the idea, but if I replied to it this message would be at the bottom of the page and no one would see it.

Apparently the parent of the parent of the etc, missed the news that the words "home computer" have been banned from use on tests in New York City Schools
"Homes with swimming pools and computers are also unmentionables here — because of economic sensitivities — while computers in the school or in libraries are acceptable."

So there you have it, your children can not use computers at home because some children do not have home computers and that is such a sensitive subject that the word has been banned from school tests.

Except that it's Obama's Federal attorney who got the money back. It's Republican Bloomberg who helped SAIC rob it.

Modding him flamebait pretty much proves his point. Jesus, guys, wtf is wrong with you?

Now waste some mod points on me so you'll not have so many left to mod down other informative comments. You won't hurt my karma.

Except that it's Obama's Federal attorney who got the money back. It's Republican Bloomberg who helped SAIC rob it.

You Republicans have a very limited playbook: commit a crime, and blame the Democrat who catches you. It's a mental disease.

Calling Bloomberg a Republican isn't exactly accurate... until 2001, he was a Democrat. Then he switched to the Republican party--until he declared himself an Independent in 2007. I think it's fair to simply call him a corrupt, opportunistic scumbag. Of course, this is true of most politicians.

Except that it's Obama's Federal attorney who got the money back. It's Republican Bloomberg who helped SAIC rob it.

You Republicans have a very limited playbook: commit a crime, and blame the Democrat who catches you. It's a mental disease.

I live and work in NYC. The Washington Post might love kissing billionaire technocrat ass, but Bloomberg didn't get this money back. In fact Bloomberg is responsible for letting SAIC rob over $600M on this contract, all the way until the bitter end while Bloomberg defended SAIC and its "cost overruns". As he finally admitted last Summer. It's the Federal prosecutor, Manhatttan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who clawed back this money. Though indeed even Bharara couldn't get it all back: the ripoff claimed $652M, the court awarded $540M, and the city might get from $466-518M. Meanwhile Bloomberg whined that getting the $500M wasn't done "in a more pleasant way". (FWIW, when his bankster cops were macing women on public sidewalks last Summer, he had no complaint that it couldn't be done in a more pleasant way). Bloomberg says we now have a functioning system "at a very reasonable cost", because he's not including all the costs of recovering the money in court. He defended this ripoff until the bitter end, and continues to spin it.

Josh Bloom's editorial disagrees, as do the 300,000 laid off in biotech and pharma. Your report, just like every one like it, lumps all of STEM together. What's true for computer programming or particle physics has no bearing on any other STEM occupation. There is no shortage of scientists in the USA. There is a critical shortage of jobs for scientists, and every week there are at least two announcements of more biotech and pharma mass layoffs, numbering from hundreds to tens of thousands. Your own report states on page 4 that 81% of physical and life science degree holders don't work in STEM careers.

Can you cite any report of looting in Japan after the tsunami? The only instance of "looting" I have seen was this ant that falls under my "necessary supplies" exception. Some may say that beer is not necessary but when most of the potable water in the area has been contaminated bottled beer is a safe alternative.
The other issue is that in every society there will be people who do not follow the social norms; they are called sociopaths. Are there sociopaths in Japan? There sure is. My point is that the social norm in Japan is to not loot. The social norm in most other societies is to loot.

World record is a mile and a half. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/sniper_kills_qaeda_from_mi_away_sTm0xFUmJNal3HgWlmEgRL

5 miles? That's pushing the limits of physics just a little too much. It would take a shitload of luck to get a hit from that far away. Farthest I've personally seen done is just over a mile (1800m).

And as others have pointed out, it takes time and money to train a sniper. It also takes a *lot* of luck at the upper ends of distance. You have to account for ballistic trajectory, air resistance (which changes with the temperature), wind (which can change directions remarkably easily), moving targets, etc.. Even at the speeds a bullet travels at, it still takes a discernable amount of time to reach the target at that distance. Having something you can fire and forget, and let your spotter guide it to its target with a laser pointer is a huge improvement, IMO. And besides, it's not going to cost a million bucks a pop once it's in production. Development may have cost that, but nothing in the device is all that expensive to actually make.

Yes the same china where a small kid was run over and Many people in China are hesitant to help people who appear to be in distress for fear that they will be blamed. High-profile law suits have ended with good Samaritans ordered to pay hefty fines to individuals they sought to help.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/watch_child_run_over_and_ignored_8fVgzdy3ipdh9NPDGEwlZL#ixzz1kWOR8hJr

Not even to mention that your snarky statement is ironic considering you got your replies transposed with respect to the quotations to which they applied (planes to trains and vice versa), I'd be interested in knowing how you intend to get internet on a typical plane between 0 and 10,000 feet.

Without ending up like this guy, I mean.

You have a strange interpretation of Jim Crow since Occupy protestors clearly appeared involved these crimes:

1. NY: 10/1/2011 Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
2. Madison, WI: 10-27-2011 Madison Occupiers Lose Permit Due to Public Masturbation
3. Phoenix: 10/28/2011 Flier at Occupy Phoenix Asks, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?”
4. NY: 10/18/2011 Thieves Preying on Fellow Protesters
5. NY: 10/9/2011 Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters Accused of Living in Filth as Shocking Pictures Show One Demonstrator Defecating on a POLICE CAR
6. NY: 10/7/2011 Occupiers Rush Police More
7. Cleveland: 10/18/2011 ‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped
8. NY: 10/10/2011 ‘Increasingly Debauched’: Are Sex, Drugs & Poor Sanitation Eclipsing Occupy Wall Street?
9. Seattle: 10/18/2011 Man Accused of Exposing Self to Children Arrested
10. 10/12/2011 Iran Supports Occupy Wall Street
11. Portland: 10/16/2011 #OccupyPortland Protester Desecrates Memorial To U.S. War Dead
12. Portland: 10/15/2011 #OccupyPortland Protesters Sing “F*** The USA”
13. Chicago: 10/17/2011 COMMUNIST LEADER Cheered at Occupy Chicago
14. 10/15/2011 American Nazi Party Endorses Occupy Wall Street‘s ’Courage,‘ Tells Members to Support Protests and Fight ’Judeo-Capitalist Banksters’
15. Boston: 10/14/2011 Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents
16. Boston: 10/11/2011 Boston Police Arrest Over 100 from Occupy Boston
17. New York: 10/11/2011 You Can Have Sex with Animals.
18. New York: 10/15/2011 Harassing Police with Accusations of Phony Injuries
19. New York: 10/9/2011 Occupy Wallstreet Protesters Steal from Local Businesses
20. New York: 10/25/2011 Three M

Given recent history the only way biotech can be said to be booming is in the same sense as a hand grenade in a crowded area. Jobs in the biotech industry and it's siamese twin pharma are disappearing every day, never to return. 300,000 jobs lost in the last decade, and getting worse with new rounds of layoffs announced all the time. Josh Bloom tells it like it is.

BTW, here is your highly educated OCW crowd.

I'm not sure I see the flaw.

TSA's job is to prevent passengers from bringing weapons onto the airplane. They have some successes and notable failures in doing this. Apple's job is to prevent malicious code from running on our iPhones and iPads and I'm sure they have some successes and failures.

What you're saying is that it's okay that the TSA might fail every now and again because the passengers will spot the malicious person and prevent him from performing his dastardly task. Of course, passengers tend to generate more false positives because they are not trained in security.

But if you want to go with this analogy, Android would be a better secure environment than iOS. Android has various tools that smart people can use to find malicious software So, to carry this into your analogy, using Android is like flying on airplane with a group of passengers who understand security and can spot the evildoer and warn others. iOS is like flying on an airplane where everybody says, "Oh, they made it through the TSA checkpoint. They must be okay."

Let's rename the war on terror to be more accurate too ...

Virtual strip-searches, ball-fondling, never-ending but ineffectual id checks, forcing women to drink their own breast-milk, arbitrary rule enforcement, making everyone go bare-foot, singling-out people by the clothes they wear, forcing people to remove nipple rings with pliers, torturing injured flyers, making people piss on themselves, the list is practically endless.

And yet the TSA hasn't caught a single terrorist.

But they sure are doing a bang-up job of destroying human dignity. Therefore I say we rename the War on Terror to The War on Dignity.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/school_creep_bQL5kouK80obW5MhZRyq7J/0

I'm guessing that was what they were talking about.

Bernstein Researchâ(TM)s cable and satellite expert, Craig Moffett, also waded into the debate, pointing out that ESPN and ESPN2 alone account for almost 20 percent of the wholesale cost of the average pay-TV subscription -- but account for just under 2.5 percent of total viewership.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/pn_foes_grow_YIO92AxAE3kOE66mobOoUI

ESPN is currently charging $5.82 ($4.69 main channel, $1.13 other channels) per month, or about $70 a year for their channels for every cable or satellite subscriber in the US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States#Subscriber_fees.

To compete for sports content other networks like Fox are raising their prices as well.

How is this fair?

Personally we opted out, and watch local teams via a real antenna in beautiful uncompressed HD. We just don't watch Monday night football on ESPN, or the games on the NFL network. Their loss.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/thanks_for_the_doctors_new_york_sC24DBxeqpvpApNcd0x5IP

"According to the Texas Medical Board records, they’ve picked up 1,271 New York physicians since September 2003, when Texas voters approved the Proposition 12 medical-liability reforms."

Behavioral profiling is effective.

Considering that TSA can't even weed out criminals during the hiring process I don't have much faith that TSA agents will prove much more adept at picking out terrorists in a 30 second interview prior to boarding an airplane.

Bain reduced Dade's research and development spending to 6 to 7 percent of sales, while its peers allocated between 10 and 15 percent. Dade in June 1999 used the savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million. Dade then turned around and used $365 million from the loan to buy shares from its owners, giving them a 4.3 times return on their investment.

A Dade executive, who requested anonymity, said he confronted new CEO Steven Barnes after a boardroom meeting within a week of the distribution. "You really think it's a good idea to borrow, you know, one times sales?" he asked.

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's fine," Barnes responded. "You know companies do that all the time."

The executive then told Barnes, "Well, that'd be like me going out and borrowing the amount of money I make in a year and then trying to pay it off and pay for my house and feed myself and everything else. That doesn't make sense." The executive said he let it drop after that.

In August 2002, Dade filed for bankruptcy.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ad_mitt_mistakes_jRmd2LHaPIb0bbNn1ZkgaJ#ixzz1VgQ0dMfj

Actually IIRC they tried that in the early 60s but it was a form of LSD. Didn't work out so great. Here is a link talking about it. They had a bunch of weird ass ideas in the 50s and 60s for crowd control. I also remember there were experiments with a "gay bomb" which would have given enemy soldiers such a case of the horny they would supposedly attack each other instead of fight. Weird shit our tax dollars paid for huh?

I just wonder how much nasty shit they have cooked up for us when our own Arab Spring happens. you know they have to be worried about it, you have an economy in the shitter, tons of folks without work, and the budget deal pretty much kills them extending help to the unemployed anymore. I bet they have all kinds of nasty shit just ready in case these "stop and loots' turn out to be the start of something bigger.

Never underestimate the lengths those with power will go through to keep it.

http://m.nypost.com/p/blogs/capitol/free_cell_phones_are_civil_right_htTMcKQFrjdvyl9A6NHPdP

/WARNING: scoffers, "tin-foil hatters" and "don't make me thinkers" should skip this post. Closed minds need not apply.

Many have made the point here that Google can certainly sell my viewing habits as a persona to ad agencies and be just as effective in reaching my eyeballs/wallet without a wallet-name. My profile as a long-maintained pseudonymous writer contains a boatload more information on my viewing habits and pathways than my wallet name would (as I am extremely careful about the security of that data). So, they can sell me stuff; I still control my typist's wallet. There's also a huge difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. Those arguments have been made before and above.

A couple pieces of this puzzle can be set next to each other for contemplation:

1. Google is currently undergoing an FTC probe for antitrust violations concerning its dominance in the web-advertising market.

2. Put that piece next to the piece that shows Google's continuing handling of this issue in the face of a real groundswell of negative opinion and debate from a cross-section of users (including the security community) and the information coming from Skud (aka Robert Kirrily) about the database he is compiling of purged accounts and Googlers quitting their jobs over this issue.

3. The just-passed Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act aka the Data Retention Bill.

There's a pertinent paragraph in the above-linked article about PCIPA:

"The Constitution protects privacy against government intrusion, but it doesn't stop the government from forcing private companies to do its dirty work."

Is that happening? I don't know; I don't think it's "crazy-land" to ask questions about this latest "real names or nuthin'!" push. When the government tried to push Real ID (2006) many states said "no fscking way!" and killed that movement. This latest trend smells to me like it might be an end-run around that kind of resistance; after all, if people are offering their data (on condition of using a "free" service), why then, it's perfectly legal for the government to simply buy it as another customer.

So sure, call tin-foil hat on me; call crazy-nut. There's a lot of questions about this issue that aren't being asked because of the knee-jerk reaction of "there ain't no conspiracies anywheres!" crowd. Perhaps I need to re-brand that in today's terms and call it cronyism, collusion or #trending. I'm not a "true believer" but I do have serious questions about this all being about "marketing" and "ad sales."

Miso Susanowa

We don't expect fools such as you to understand. Feel free to keep living in our shadow, silly internet troll.

I don't think 'the rich' will leave.That argument is just as much as demagoguery as the 'tax-cuts for the rich' sleight mentioned in your post above.

Are you seriously saying that nobody would move from a high-tax area to a lower-tax area? Because there are plenty of examples.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/study_the_rich_are_leaving_new_jersey_a5E4Ti0z6CxWelbf6nGwOL

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23735878-darlings-50-percent-tax-sends-tycoons-to-switzerland.do

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8466160/Rich-Chinese-consider-leaving-China.html

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/20/more-rich-americans-renounce-u-s-citizenship-for-lower-taxes/

It won't be 100% of course; some rich folks will stay, even if taxes get really high. (There's a cynical old rule of thumb: if you want to hang onto your money, do the same things that retired Senators and Congressmen do. There will always be a way for the rich to keep their money, as long as retired politicians have money.) And some people will just pay the taxes. But there are limits, and the more severe the tax rate, the more it will encourage people to leave.

I don't think it's fair to accuse me of demagoguery.

steveha

Oh for Pete's sake. Obama did NOT cancel the Shuttle program, George W Bush did! Obama canceled Constellation, the rocket program to followup on the Shuttle, but he did so because it was overbudget and behind schedule. I have a long-ish article about this in the New York Post today. NASA has some serious problems right now, mostly due to lack of a strong vision and the ridiculous turf wars between the White House and Congress. Most of these problems aren't hard to solve in theory, but in practice, with the rabid partisonship going on right now? Hmph.

And the man wins a bowl of cream soup!

Or try the stew...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/food_lab_goes_to_waste_19Gd58T9IGPUZey5fjEr1N

Here you go!

Remember, this all comes from serial liar Andrew Breitbart [...] This smear has been in planning for several months.

You have just made an extraordinary claim. I require extraordinary evidence before I believe you.

The available evidence:

0) Anthony Weiner tweeted about being on TV, and added a hash tag "#thats545inseattle". He has not denied adding that hash tag; he also has not given a coherent explanation of what he meant by it. He did say it is "pure coincidence" that the young lady at the center of the privacy nightmare is in the same time zone as Seattle.

1) The picture showed legs that seem like the right color and build to be Anthony Weiner's legs.

2) Anthony Weiner has not denied that it is a picture of him, and has not even denied that he took the picture. This is weird right there. If you ask me whether I ever took a picture of my crotch with a Blackberry, I don't even have to think about it; I can just say "No."

Wolf Blitzer asked Anthony Weiner if he had ever taken such a picture of himself; no answer. Wolf Blitzer also said "You would know if that is your underwear or not, right?" No answer.

It would be weak if Anthony Weiner said "That's a real photo of me and I really wonder how that hacker got it." Weak, but far more convincing than the weird dissembling evasions he has been floating instead.

3) The EXIF data in the picture said it was taken with a Blackberry; other pictures posted to Twitter by Anthony Weiner were taken with a Blackberry.

4) Twitter has an easy command to send a private message. Twitter also has an easy command to post a message publicly. Human beings sometimes type one command when they meant to type another. Just as I have many times hit "Submit" rather than "Preview" right here on Slashdot, Anthony Weiner could trivially have made a mistake that would cause a private message to be posted publicly.

5) Anthony Weiner only followed 198 other people. A large number of those 198 people were good-looking young females with no obvious reason why a member of Congress should follow them. I mean, how many members of Congress have friended me on Facebook? None; if one did, it would be noteworthy. The stripper/porn star, Ginger Lee, was followed immediately after she tweeted that she was attracted to a short list of three famous people, one of whom was Anthony Weiner; and she tweeted that she had received a private message from Anthony Weiner.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/weiner_tweet_hearts_UTe6y5bwizh46ycTkIIkxH

6) Anthony Weiner counts Andrew Breitbart as a political enemy. With one phone call to the FBI, Anthony Weiner could unleash a full investigation, including IP address logs from Twitter servers, that would help track down the hacker. I can't think of anything that would destroy Breitbart more thoroughly than to be convicted of computer hacking to publicly defame the character of a sitting member of Congress. Anthony Weiner has not done this, saying that such an investigation would cost money. He is spending hours dodging questions, he is yelling angrily at reporters about this, it has been going on for days, and he hasn't taken any steps to bring the evil culprits to justice?

Oh wait, he hired a private firm! Instead of the FBI, which could get a search warrant to look at server logs, he is hiring a private firm. (I'll bet you that the private firm never finds anything conclusive.)

The FBI presumably could access the yfrog servers and recover the original image file with full EXIF data, rather than the resized one with only partial EXIF data, which would likely help identify the specific Blackberry used to take the picture. Unless the putative hackers knew exactly which model of Blackberry Anthony Weiner has, this would likely help prove the hacker theory; on the other hand if Anthony Weiner took the photo with his own Blackberry, this would help disprove the hacker theory.

Well USA has been enforcing its laws, demands, fancies on other countries for plenty of time. As per new American vision, national sovereignty of other countries means zilch. American citizens can go and illegally spy in other countries, murder innocents and can get accorded diplomatic immunity after the fact and officially get away by throwing some cash around.

Even diplomatic immunity and Geneva convention is being abandoned. Torture is acceptable. Diplomats and their families can be strip-searched, arrested and humiliated if US thinks that there will be no retaliation. Here is just the latest example :
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/diplo_daughter_keyed_up_kgp3ZqKcEx9nVwPoD9g0aM

Apparently American murderers and rapists(check out Okinawa American base in Japan) can get away scott-free, while US authorities decide as per need, whether diplomatic immunity laws do or do not apply, irrespective of International laws and norms.

Mod me flamebait or troll, if you will. But USA has *always* had a superiority complex and believes even its murderers and rapists are sacrosanct. Even in rare cases, when they allowed prosecution, some kind of deal for a compromise has always been worked out. Only place where US chooses to comply to the international laws is where it feels there is a lot at risk or if it can get its ass royally kicked(i.e. in China for example, where USA military might means naught).

And yep, thanks to the internet and US-propelled globalisation, everyone has US assets or eventually will. Paypal happily freezes accounts of whoever the USA government does not likes. Everyone has a Visa or MasterCard these days. And with US based banks operating in almost all the countries, similar pressure can get eventually employed to force the foreign branches of say Citibank to freeze even accounts that are not in USA. It totally depends on whether or not, your government can stand up to the USA.