Slashdot Mirror

This reminds me of an article I read recently about the “illusion of explanatory depth," which is an idea that "...we understand how complex systems work even when our true understanding is superficial. And it is not until we are asked to explain how such a system works — whether it’s what’s involved in a trade deal with China or how a toilet flushes — that we realize how little we actually know." Asking questions in such an earnest way, it would seem to me, invokes that same self-realization.

Anyway, great post.

Speaking of lobotomy, in the fifties there was a "lobotomy fever" in the USA, thousands of men, women and children had their frontal lobes severed in an outpatient operation. Until the fifties it was still normal to sterilize undesirables - again in the good old USA. And it really hasn't been that long since mainstream physicians prescribed Camels and mercury pills. Even today you're likely to have a dentist try to lodge mercury amalgam in your mouth if you go in for a filling. Some of them still think fluoride is good for you too. Mine gave out fluoride pills when I was a kid, we didn't know better back then but soon learned about dental fluorosis.

Given the spotty history of American medicine I guess you can expect a bit of reticence from people who have been bombed back into the stone age by American bombs and munitions - either in American hands or by American-sponsored terrorists. Maybe it's understandable they'd have a few reservations about being jabbed for a vanishing disease.

Hm...people complaining about GUI changes....AHHH I found it "A totally new screen design begins with a desktop even less useful than the one on the Mac, whose icons, folders and document orientation have been "borrowed," lock, stock and subdirectory. Desktop icons let you explore files on My Computer and in the Network Neighborhood. You can also click on a Recycle Bin, where deleted files are stored until you empty them; a Briefcase, which lets you pack files for travel; an electronic Inbox, which stores your mail and faxes, and, unless the Justice Department intervenes, the Microsoft Network on-line service. The Start button at the bottom left of the screen launches a list of programs and documents. A Taskbar beside it shows what programs are currently running and is supposed to be visible at all times. But in just one of many maddening inconsistencies, multimedia programs often make the Taskbar mysteriously disappear." This was taken from the windows 95 UI review....back in AUGUST OF 1995. Seriously people...idiots who are afraid of change shouldn't be reviewing new software. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/01/science/personal-computers-personal-computers-what-is-windows-95-really-like.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

There are a lot of factors, and the direction of causality is not always so clear. For example, if I lived in an area where people tended to be shot, and moving out wasn't an option, I'd be more likely to arm myself. Is this a cyclical, compounding problem? Of course. But there also isn't an easy solution, especially in a country where the police aren't obligated to protect you.

But the whole craziness following CN makes no damned logical sense! We are supposed to be geeks and look at things logically so lets do that.

1.-The woman whose guns the dirtbag son stole was 100% allowed to own guns and had passed EVERY background check, so tougher laws would do nothing as she was clean as a whistle, not so much as a speeding ticket from what I've seen of the case. 2.- The most important thing which is CRIMINALS DON'T CARE ABOUT LAWS which is why they are called criminals and not Easter Bunnies. Think you need a gun to rack up a big body count? Look at the crater in OKC, that was diesel and fertilizer, the recipe is all over the net and the ingredients can be bought or stolen anywhere, any small town in this country has enough of both to build a bomb several times larger than would be needed to turn a school into a crater and it could be carried in an SUV no problem. 3.- If you want to make it harder to own guns one should look and see if it has worked elsewhere on your continent and in this case Mexico gives us the perfect example as it is practically impossible for a law abiding citizen to own a gun. Do you see THEIR criminals throwing rocks at each other? NO! Because they are criminals and don't care if you add a gun charge when they are racking up their crimes! 4.- Finally to me the "smoking gun", the undeniable proof that all those who argue for gun bans are completely full of shit, I am of course speaking of Castle Rock v. Gonzales. In that case the woman did EVERYTHING those that are for banning guns tell you to do, she filed a restraining order against the scumbag and when he started to kick down her door she called the police. They showed up FOUR HOURS LATER and the SCOTUS ruled that is 100% okay because the cops aren't here to protect you they are here to protect the interests of the state, PERIOD. Thanks to Castle Rock the cops don't even have to show up AT ALL to stop a crime, or even show up on the same day, because the SCOTUS said its NOT THEIR JOB to protect you its YOUR JOB to protect you.

What SHOULD be done to prevent cases like this? Its so simple if it were a snake it would have bit you as we say in the south, armed security should be placed in all schools. Considering how many kid snatching pervos and dope dealers we have this is frankly common sense and should have been done after Columbine, instead we get everything from guns to VIDEO GAMES, swear to God some are bringing video games into it yet again, instead of using common sense. If there would have been an armed security guard at each entrance he would have had to blast his way through the first guard, if the first guard didn't kill him first,giving the second guard time to call back up and take the guy on. Odds are unless this nutball was Rambo you'd have had one security guard dead or wounded and the shooter toast instead of a room filled with dead kids.

The consitutional rights of life, liberty and the persuit of happiness apply here. People have a right to eat hot dogs, congregate in parks and sing songs, dance along the side of the street, watch birds in a park, even if its not expressly listed. The rights of the constitution and open ended and anything not listed there is assumed to be a specific right. The bill of rights is there to limit government expressly, anything not expressily written about is assumed to be OK under the constitution.

These people have a right to play video games online with their friends in groups and in public.

Specific services have the right to stop them from using their products, this is the caveat.

To see why this is so, we need only look to the text of the Constitution. It defines our most fundamental rights and protections in open-ended terms: “freedom of speech,” for example, and “equal protection of the laws,” “due process of law,” “unreasonable searches and seizures,” “free exercise” of religion and “cruel and unusual punishment.” These terms are not self-defining; they did not have clear meanings even to the people who drafted them. The framers fully understood that they were leaving it to future generations to use their intelligence, judgment and experience to give concrete meaning to the expressed aspirations.

Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/opinion/14stone.html?_r=0 If someone can come up with a better citation and example feel free to contribute.

I do not condone or express any opinion on the actions of anyone on any sex offender lists, however, by shunning people and ostracising them from normal public interaction you are creating a subclass of people. These people will segregate further, and it could lead to potential psychological justification and rationalization of horrible acts in their eyes.

Somewhere you have to draw the line, I think kids should be protected in virtual space, but companies can do this by not allowing people to communicate with text or voice, or designing games with logging and allowing parents to only unlock communication with trusted friends.

It is entirely outside the bounds of the LAW to determine this, its outside of the bounds of the constitution to dictate even the use of specific applications.

This is bad, and most un-enlightened of us. We really are slipping and loosing touch with reality.

Really? Where is the DEMAND that no car exceed "x" MPH? Where are the calls that nobody needs a car that can go 200 MPH?

The first would be speed limits on public roads. And don't even pretend for a moment that you can argue that automobile safety isn't regulated. The second...is so rare as to be a non-issue, the only places it is a concern are race tracks, including NASCAR. Why just this year, they thought they might need to slow down the cars at Michigan because they didn't want to go too fast during races.

Private driving sessions on other tracks are also regulated, and if you want your KKR to flat out, you will have to clear it with the operator.

If Guns were so comparatively treated though, there would be a lot of changes.

I am of the belief that gun control is hitting your target. Being a SAFE owner I know how to handle my firearms, and when I let somebody handle my firearms I make sure they do the same things I do to make sure it is safe. You cannot legislate away stupidity, see here.

And yet there are tens of thousands of laws and regulations meant to deal with just that. Strangely the world hasn't ended, but many lives have been spared. You'll never know, because they don't report fires that don't happen, they don't report non-injuries, and that's just hard to believe.

Back to the article, I find it absolutely amazing that he compares using the CPSC to sue manufacturers of a non-defective product. Hell given the CPSC's ability to keep lead paint out of toys.

Give the CPSC the authority to deal with problems, and they can. Make them a paper tiger, and they can't.

Is this a surprise to you? They covered it on this week's episode of Leverage.

What we already do for cars today goes well beyond any gun control measures that are even being considered. Which is odd.

Really? Where is the DEMAND that no car exceed "x" MPH? Where are the calls that nobody needs a car that can go 200 MPH? I am of the belief that gun control is hitting your target. Being a SAFE owner I know how to handle my firearms, and when I let somebody handle my firearms I make sure they do the same things I do to make sure it is safe. You cannot legislate away stupidity, see here. Back to the article, I find it absolutely amazing that he compares using the CPSC to sue manufacturers of a non-defective product. Hell given the CPSC's ability to keep lead paint out of toys.

Which begs the question: "Why were the police doing the same thing in 1999?"

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/16/2145221/judge-rules-that-police-can-bar-high-iq-scores
    which links to the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/09/nyregion/metro-news-briefs-connecticut-judge-rules-that-police-can-bar-high-iq-scores.html

Now, I have deliberately avoided most of the coverage of this event but this is literally the first time I've heard any mention anywhere about Adam Lanza's father. And you mention him only indirectly. Before now I had to assume immaculate conception, which helped explain a lot, but now all my theories are laid to waste..

Naturally now I'm very curious. Did he have a relationship with his father? Was it close? How did his father treat his mother? With kindness, compassion and respect? Which came first: sociopathic child or broken home (indeed, I imagine if there is causation it can go either way- some marriages destroy kids, some kids destroy marriages...)?

FWIW the video game connection has been studied and reported on extensively. Two examples:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/17/ten-country-comparison-suggests-theres-little-or-no-link-between-video-games-and-gun-murders/
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/us/they-threaten-seethe-and-unhinge-then-kill-in-quantity.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
If congress feels the need to revisit the question then I smell a pork barrel.

I know this article is a little old, but it looks like GA is/was having a very hard time continuing the program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07hope.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

There is no such thing as a free college education. Someone has to pay. We could make it cheaper by cutting expenses. Instead of fancy and ornate college campuses, we could build cinderblock boxes. Instead of trying the hire the best and brightest teachers, we could settle for whomever will work for cheap. I'm sure we could cut the costs down from 10k a year to 3-4k a year.

Calling the police is only useful if you have a reasonable expectation that the police will show up and help you. In the United States, that is not the case. Therefore, people who feel unsafe will find other ways to protect themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

The 85kWh Model S can already do a range of 300 miles. And some have taken it to over 400

Battery performance over time is reportedly 70% of full capacity after 7 years. That's not 100%, but it's certainly not bad either, and ignoring the advances in Lithium Ion, Lithium Air tech is fast approaching too.

Do you remember what happened with LCDs and SSDs? They were extortionately priced at first, but you can now get a 256GB Samsung SSD for £180, and dropping. I think most importantly, in the public's eye, the electric car and the Model S in particular has defeated practically most or all of its shortcomings (other than price). And we all know what happens when the rich start to buy expensive things...

People need to quit repeating that myth.

Scientists say, "Myth confirmed."

Many dickheads are quite happy to be a mong under their own name.

This is also true.

"These scanners should have to go through the same FDA approval process as any medical device."

Is merely approving the device nearly enough? Do you really trust poorly educated, overworked, and underpaid TSA employees to properly calibrate, use, and maintain these machines?

Even with medical-grade x-ray technology that's FDA certified, and operated by way more qualified technicians than the TSA is ever likely to bother with has had accidents when massive overdoses of radiation have been administered... sometimes to lethal effect.

Germans have a very different attitude towards corporate power and influence. It seems almost quaint.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/world/europe/berlin-tour-raises-awareness-on-lobbying.html
Berlin Journal
And on Your Left, Behind Those Walls, Lobbyists Are at Work
By NICHOLAS KULISH
November 22, 2012
(Timo Lange, campaigner LobbyControl, gives tours to sites of lobbyists. German Brewers Association, cigarette lobby. German Chemical Industry Association. Germans suspicous of propaganda and paid advertising. Money in campaigns is seen not as free speech but as buying access. Merkel lives a modest life.)
“The problem is the linkage between economic power and political power,” said Daniela Haug.
“We are very thin-skinned when it comes to any form of propaganda,” Claas Lorenz, 25, a student on the tour, said in a succinct reference to Germany’s Nazi history. “We had very bad experiences with it in our past.”
Andrea Römmele, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, said: “Money in campaigns in the United States is freedom of speech; it’s seen as a way of expressing oneself. In Germany, giving money in politics is always seen as trying to buy access.”
German attitudes toward politics and money help explain the enduring appeal of Ms. Merkel, who still lives in the apartment she got before she became chancellor, and who hikes on vacation. “Merkel is so beloved for her sober, unglamorous style of governing,” said Frank Decker, a professor of political science at the University of Bonn. “With her, you would never imagine that she might use politics to become rich.”
The Christian Democrats

Forgot to include the cite.

The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.

In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States

NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html?_r=0

Strat

In the UK, people have been convicted and/or found liable on the basis of conspiracy to defraud and/or encouraging or facilitating criminal copyright infringement.

At trial, one person has been convicted on the basis of conspiracy to defraud. There is no "facilitating copyright infringement" law per se. That case was a private prosecution and is pending appeal (something like 20-30 different grounds), which will hopefully be heard before FACT Ltd can do too much bullying on the basis of it (it was a very dodgy conviction; the judge instructed the jury that what he was doing was illegal because what he was doing was illegal, basically). The only other criminal cases that have gone to trial resulted in acquittals or dismissal of charges.

As for civil cases, there's really only the Newzbin 1 case, which found a company running a website was liable for copyright infringement mainly due to the extra steps they took to help their premium members. In any case, "contributory copyright infringement" isn't the right term; you're looking at either direct (or secondary, but that usually involves businesses) copyright infringement, or joint liability for someone else's infringement. There is no blanket "you were somehow involved in someone else's infringement therefore you must be liable!!" thing.

The s107(2A) offence is an interesting one - to my knowledge it has never gone to trial. While there have been a couple of summary convictions under it, they don't really count (and, to be blunt, neither do un-appealed cases at trial). It's only been in the last couple of years that the police (or rather, FACT Ltd / the BPI) have realised this is the correct offence, and before that managed to get some summary convictions under s107(1)(e) - despite it not applying.

However that is not their main purpose, and there is no reason why the courts have to treat them the same way, any more then convicting a rioter for handing out bricks at a riot means they have to convict every building site foreman in the country.

But that's not quite the way the law works; the key thing here is the "mere conduit" (and similar) principles found in the e-commerce regulations (regs 17-19). This one provides an absolute defence to a damages claim for anything done through a mere service provider - such as someone hosting a proxy.

What matters is not whether they transmit copyright information, but whether that transmittion is authorised. If my ISP helps me view the NYTimes website, I am view copyright material with authorisation.

As an aside, this isn't how the law works either. Currently you would need a licence to view the content on the NYTimes website. If you didn't have a licence, you would be liable for copyright infringement (as would oyur ISP, but for the above limitation). Fortunately, the NYTimes website includes a term saying that "You may download or copy the Content and other downloadable items displayed on the Services for personal use only, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein." However, go beyond that - such as by viewing it at work - (and not within the scope of a statutory limitation to copyright) and you're breaking the law. There's case law on that (which, hopefully, the Supreme Court will be overturning in the next couple of months). Interestingly, this also means that were I (or someone else) to email you some content from the NYTimes website while at work, *you* would be liable for copyright infringement as soon as you download the email to read it.

Of course, if the website doesn't have an explicit licence, you have to rely on implied licences. But that can be overridden by an express one -so if you're in the UK (or England or Wales, at least) and see the phrase "All Rights Reserved"

But apparently they grew "hands" (which is apparently what pseudo-journalists call autopods) not hands (sans quotes)...

However, from the truth is stranger than fiction department, a possible reason that it didn't really work might be the lack of a mediating factors like Sonic Hedgehog expression signalling (yes, that's the name of a real gene, which was named after the video game character by the Harvard researchers who discovered it) which has to something to do with making limbs from autopods, but is mostly used in the formation of scale structures in zebrafish.

Well, the US Library of Congress genuinely think so

The whole premise of the article seems to assume that unions are exclusively about 1950s-like factory jobs. How about all those low paying service jobs out there? I don't see too many robots stocking shelves at Walmart.

Have you seen any? Where there's one there's bound to be more, and where there are none there's likely to be one soon.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised by the service jobs that remain. I'm surprised we haven't seen a fully-automated fast food restaurant yet, for instance. I guess they're hiding in Japan and Germany for now.

1) Gun laws aren't an oxymoron by any definition.

This is your opinion, but as you will see, you haven't supported it very well.

2) Being a criminal does not equate to getting a gun.

Obvious. What's the point?

3) Gun laws make it harder for criminal to get guns,. And it keeps getting harder.

Unfortunately, this just isn't true. Criminals have easy access to guns, even in places with tougher gun laws. As the GP rightly pointed out, criminals do not follow the law. That alone does not mean that guns laws have no effect on the ease by which criminals can obtain guns, so your theory could still be correct. However, the reality has shown that gun laws are far more effective at making it harder for honest citizens to obtain firearms for their own self protection than they are at preventing criminals from having guns.

4) Crime drops when gun laws are enacted.

Yeah... this isn't true either, one of the most-cited counterexamples being the steep rise in violent crimes in Washington D.C. after the gun ban of 1976. At best, as the NY Times pointed out, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Of course, this isn't the only counterexample, by far, but I only need one to prove your assertion incorrect, so I'll leave it at that.

5) If having a gun was illegal, you would have an opportunity to know someone was going to kill people when you found them with a gun.

Umm, no... You realize that the vast majority of armed robberies do not end in any shots even being fired, right? The threat is usually enough. Obviously the posession of a gun by a criminal does not imply his intention to kill. These points are so easy to counter, it makes me wonder at how serious you are.

6) Same thing if someone was getting Ammo.

Similarly false, and even more absurd.

7) teacher firing a someone one in a panic situation means more people would have been likely to die.

Most likely, you feel like you would panic in that situation and so you imagine in your mind that others would act as you think you would. Your imagination does not match reality. Common citizens are capable of training with firearms in order to react appropriately, and it really doesn't take much training. This is obviously true because many common citizens do train and choose to carry concealed weapons. Nobody is suggesting that it is a good idea for untrained people to use guns. The scenario you envision where clueless people flail their guns around in "panic situations" exists in some fictional hollywood movies and your own imagination.

In reality, it would have been a very good idea for the teachers to be able to opt to retrieve training (if they wish) and be allowed to keep a gun on their person for such a situation. The body count could have been much lower.

8) How many gun deaths are their in Japan?

Gun deaths are lower in Japan, so you assume this has something to do with gun laws? This is a simple case of the false-cause fallacy. In reality, crime, generally, is lower in Japan than the US. It follows that gun-related crime would also be lower, but it does not follow that gun laws have anything to do with this; that's just your assumption. A much safer assumption is that the US has culture and class-disparity problems, not to mention the dismal state of the mental health industry.

All the evidence shows, overall, people are safer with very strict gun laws. You can make trite logical fallacy all you want, becasue that's all you have.

Thanks for your little list, but it isn't really "evidence" so much as it is a list of incorrect assumptions. If you really want to provide some evidence for your claims, try to avoid taking logical leaps and instead try providing links to some real research or something.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/08/us/soldier-kills-4-people-and-hurts-6-in-a-restaurant-in-north-carolina.html

My cousin and his wife were in that restaurant when Sargent French went on his rampage. He's a gun owner and is extremely responsible and law abiding. But at the time, concealed carry was illegal and just out of respect and common decency, he didn't take his gun with him. But I remember him telling me that, while he was huddled behind an overturned table with his wife, he wished he had his gun with him.

He never goes anywhere without it now.

What happened today was a tragedy. The real problem isn't the guns, it's people. Even if you could completely outlaw and eliminate guns tomorrow morning, sickos would still find some way to hurt others. No, it might not be a mass killing like this, but if you're the one on the receiving end of a sicko's attentions, whether you're in a group of hundreds, or all by yourself in a one-bedroom shack, is irrelevant.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/
"I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several reasons. It didn't seem crucial back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism -- which shouldn't be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications.
    But I think we'd better start paying attention to those implications."

I posted several comments there. Look at my site for ways to deal with the change after understanding it better. Essentially, we will likely hopefully see a healthy mix of local subsistence via gardening robots and 3D printers, an expanded gift economy like with GNU/Linux & Wikipedia & Thingiverse, An exchange economy softened by a "basic income", and better internet-enhanced democratic participatory planning at all levels.

I think there is a good reason why you referenced our grandfathers rather than our fathers. Even then your claim is dubious. My grandfather, on "just" a bachelor's degree, single-handedly supported a family, owned a home in Long Beach and a vacation cabin and a boat, and retired on an inflation-adjusted pension after only 25 years of work at a company, from which he drew for 25 years. He even owned real furniture, not this particle-board and plastic crap of today. Granted, he didn't have slashdot.

Every dollar of profit is not taxed eventually. For the most part, corporations sit on their profits to increase cash-on-hand [1]. This increases flexibility for them, gives them better banking terms, and causes share price to increase. This increases the wealth of those who own the shares, but this increase in wealth is untaxed unless these shares were to be sold. Once you are a millionaire or billionaire, you don't need to sell shares--instead, you can take out loans against them [2].

Effectively, reducing corporate tax to 0% would be a 100% loss. Corporations do not spend more money on cap ex just because they have more cash on hand. Similarly, they do not increase salaries; U.S. wages have fallen by more than 50% since 1970 (in inflation-adjusted dollars) [3].

Here are my references, which are pretty half-assed since I just googled for stuff I'd already read and linked the first similar thing. But hey, it's already 50% more informative than the average post.
[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/07/16/idle-corporate-cash-piles-up/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/the-zuckerberg-tax.html?_r=0
[3] http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has-fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html

To give this more background, the conflict of interest investigation panel's report is here:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/PDF/Review-of-report.pdf
My quick summary is that the white papers produced by the study were not criticized, but mostly said "this hasn't been well studied, and we can't draw conclusions", but the summary presentation by Groat, who did not actually participate in the study, modified this to "there's no evidence of a link between health effects and fracking"

The (almost content free) press release from UT is here: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/12/06/university-accepts-shale-gas-development-report/
It's discussed on the NYTimes blog here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/damning-review-of-gas-study-prompts-a-shakeup-at-the-university-of-texas/

1. Many exchanges have message rate limits.

I'm not sure the details... however, these articles indicate they are seeking sub millisecond response times, and Morgan Stanley is recently citing a study that the percentage of trades in the market that are done by high frequency trading has skyrocketed to 84% of all activity this year (2012). Some people estimate they are "only" 50% of all market trades. Now keep in mind, this is approximately 95 million individuals and companies who are investing vs somewhere between 10 and 20 HFT systems. So they execute at a rate about 5-10 million times what a normal trader would... Meh rate limiting...

2. Send ing then cancelling repeatedly is illegal, and is monitored for by the exchange

From the Wall Street Journal February 23, 2012. Of those 83% from HFT, 90% (or a full 75% of all market activity) are orders that are subsequently cancelled.

(From The Wall Street Journal)

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said a large portion of equities trading has little to do with "the fundamentals of the company that's being traded." She said it had more to do with "the minuscule aberrational price move" that computer-assisted traders with direct connections to the exchange can "jump on" in fractions of a second. Such activity "worries me," Ms. Schapiro said in a breakfast meeting Wednesday with reporters. One solution would be forcing high-frequency traders to pay for the canceled trades that make up nine-tenths of all orders, she said.

-- Wall Street Journal

(From MoneyMorning.com)

HFT players are constantly pinging stocks where their quotes are housed and displayed. They send out their orders to manipulate others to adjust their quotes, which get fed into the HFT algorithms to determine any directionality; then, if an opportunity exists the HFT computers buy or sell shares that someone else has put onto the market.

They aren't quoting constantly as bona fide "market-makers" are supposed to do, which they claim they are acting like. They are simply putting out millions of fake bids and offers which they pull almost immediately, just to read the movement of other market participants who react to the HFT come-ons.

3. ECNs (basically exchanges) charge for TRADEs NOT for orders, quotes or other messages. Infrastructure for high messaging rates costs them, so they have an incentive to keep rates DOWN. In fact, they have a minimum message per trade ratio, to control this.

I don't know the details. Regardless, they profile very well from HFT and don't want it gone. If HFT goes away, so does some insignificant fraction of their income. Hard to argue with, they've said it themselves.

4. There is no way to be a mitn. Each participant sends orders and cancels to the exchange. The exchange matches orders and creates trades, in what's called a matching engine. Participants have no way to access this, and no way to "get in the middle" of other participants orders.

Let me quote again from several descriptions of HFT that professional analysts have written.

(From MoneyMorning.com)

They send out their orders to manipulate others to adjust their quotes, which get fed into the HFT algorithms to determine any directionality; then, if an opportunity exists the HFT computers buy or sell shares that someone else has put onto the market. They aren't quoting constantly as bona fide "market-makers" are supposed to do, which they claim they are acting like. They are simply putting out millions of fake bids and offers which they pull almost immediately, just to read the movement of other market participants who react to the HFT come-ons.

According to this NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/i

Microsoft is an American company.

Being an American corporation, it is their officers' duty to use any means legally available to maximize the profit. This include, without being limited to:
a. tax avoidance - (tax evasion is illegal. "Tax avoidance" using the loopholes but still within the boundaries of the applicable laws is not)
b. cost externalization
c. risk externalization

And, just in case you didn't know: in US, corporations can legally run for Congress ; for the present, the fact they are lobbying instead has to do with their public image; but one cannot exclude a time when one/some corporation(s) are economically strong enough to actually give a fsck about the short term impact on US market and actually get into a body that can repeal a good chunk of legislation that's "upsetting" for them.

No way Westerners would cut corners on something like a nuclear reactor. Especially not in a modern third generation one.

Serious problems first arose over the vast concrete base slab for the foundation of the reactor building, which the country's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found too porous and prone to corrosion. Since then, the authority has blamed Areva for allowing inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor.

In December, the authority warned Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, that "the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons" at Areva was holding up work on safety systems.

firstly, in autumn 2010, detection of a large number of defects in the adapters' welds located on the vessel closure head;
secondly, in June 2011, during repair operations to correct the previous defects, detection of insufficient thickness in the buttering metal layer located under these welds.

Spread a rumor that python meat is an aphrodisiac. They'll be extinct in no time.

You are really not too far off. Consider the serious problem of Asian Carp in the Midwest US. An incredibly invasive species with no natural predator, with an appetite that ends up depriving all native fish of any food source.

The state of Illinois is aggressively fighting back by giving grants to fishermen to catch and sell the fish to China and other nations.

In the last year, Illinois has handed out nearly $6 million to increase the catch of Asian carp in the Illinois River, including a $2 million grant to the Big River Fish Corporation, of downstate Pearl, to expand operations and ship up to 50 million pounds a year to China.

Asian carp, though a hard sell for human appetites in the United States, are among the most widely consumed fish in the world, with China the biggest market.

“It would be silly for our country to have us spend taxpayer dollars to eradicate these things and throw them in a landfill,” Mr. Garvey said. “We might as well make some money out of them.”

Endemic Corruption - How your American tax dollars are spent by Israel.

Fascinating. And you know this how?

You're assuming that those jets were not ones the Israelis purchased? Do you have any grounds for that?

Were these jet engines stolen at an American Air Force base due to "endemic corruption," or the activity of simple thieves?
HAFB THIEVES CANNOT SET THE VALUE OF 3 STOLEN JET ENGINES, SAYS JUDGE

Do you have equal concerns about Venezuela and Iran? Or just the Jewish state?

Do you think Israel is less corrupt, as corrupt, or more corrupt than Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Authority, all of whom receive large amounts of US aid?

Speaking of endemic:
Rising Anti-Semitism on the Left
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
The Full-Blown Return of Anti-Semitism in Europe

Norway and Luxembourg kick your arse my flag waving friend, as does a significant portion of the western Europe. You can't judge a country by its richest members or else Mexico would be #1. A significant percentage of your country live in grinding generational poverty. That just doesn't happen as much in other developed nations, although we're catching that flu more than we used to.

To be fair I found the link on Forbes and the Heartland Institute, and replicas from scientists in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html

Sigh... Forbes and the Heartland Institute... what passes for scientific evidence on Slashdot these days.

Is this supposed to be a response to the GP's request for evidence supporting the GGP's claim that we've experienced Global Cooling for the past 20 years?

I hope not. Here's what the link contains to support the anti-GW movement:

• “Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way,” read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. [emphasis mine]
• Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and commentator with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, has long chided environmentalists and the media for overstating connections between extreme weather and human-caused warming. [Wow - they have a real climatolotist on board! That's "a" as in "one". One who isn't exactly a stellar player in the field and who exhibits some rather transparent conflicts of interest.]

The word "twenty" does not occur at the link, and "20" only occurs in some dates.

The article, which BTW is a (respectable) science writer's contribution to a magazine rather than a scientist's peer-reviewed publication, does have this to say about cooling:

• The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

The weather in two places is not diagnostic. The "sea ice returning with a vengeance" is further described, later in the article, as (a) "far thinner than the yards-thick, years-old ice that dominated the region until the 1990s" and (b) "still lower [in extent] than the long-term mean".

So that leaves the "sharp drop in the globe's average temperature" as the only possibly interesting claim in the article. He doesn't give any further detail. A strict reading of the grammar requires the claim to be about last winter, not last year, but maybe he wasn't stating himself carefully. If he meant the whole year rather than the winter, presumably "over the last year" means... oops, the article is dated March 2, 2008.

Yeah, in 2008 we enjoyed a dip.Never mind that it was still higher than any year recorded before 1990, making it of necessity one of the 22 hottest years ever recorded. Any plot of annual temperatures shows up and down from year to year; pointing out that one year is a local dip is vacuous. It's the trend that matters.

And what has happened since then? 2001-2011 account for 11 of the 12 warmest years on record. (1998 is the other member of the twelve.) A comparison of the first 10 months of 2012 to the first 10 months of preceding years suggests that 2012 is on track to be the ninth hottest year on record. And we set a new record minimum for arctic sea ice in each of the past two summers.

I seriously hope I misunderstood the intent of your post, because it doesn't provide the slightest evidence that we've enjoyed a 20-year cooling spell. 16 of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 20 years. I wasn't even going to bother replying, until I checked in and noticed that it was up-modded to an astonishing "4, Informative". I'm having a little trouble figuring out what it's informative about, except the extent to which

To be fair I found the link on Forbes and the Heartland Institute, and replicas from scientists in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html

Read the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City. The post-war reconstruction of Iraq was a complete disaster because it was staffed by Bush cronies who had no clue what they were doing. It was as an astonishing, almost unbelievable cluster fuck.

Average welfare spending per poor household IS NOT higher than median income. That is a god damn lie and you fucking know it.

Then perhaps you should direct your fuck-yous to the appropriate liars then.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/welfare-spending-equates-168-day-every-household-poverty_665160.html

Slightly earlier claim, but it depends on what you mean by "welfare"; if you mean the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program - the program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, both programs being what people often mean by "welfare", it's not true. The Republican statement to which the Weekly Standard was referring is using "welfare" to refer to a list of 83 items.

(Of course, if you're a fan of Congressional Research Service reports, you're presumably not going to argue that cutting tax rates for the top tax brackets is a way to boost economic growth, but I digress....)

Here is a NYTimes article about how the US's Carbon emissions are at a 20 year low. Also notice how the US has been growing it's economy without growing its Carbon output.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/a-20-year-low-in-u-s-carbon-emissions/

"The saga of Yucca Mountain's creation and apparent demise, and of the seeming inability of the courts to prevent the Obama administration from unilaterally nullifying the decades-old statutory framework for Yucca"

It's Nevada who is objecting to using the site as a nuclear waste dump.

Netflix had 29.4 million online streaming accounts as of September 2012, and with 720 hours in a month, 1E9 hours works out to each subscriber viewing an average 34 hours of online streaming per month.

You seem to be forgeting that each individual account can have multiple devices streaming simultaniously. Only PC-based playback is restricted to single-instance. I don't know if Netflix users watch the same amount of online material as their TV-based counterparts, but we can infer a few things by assuming they do. The average person watches about 51.1 hours of TV a month. There are an average of about 2.55 people per household. That comes out to about 130.3 hours watched per household. Assuming 1 Netflix subscription per household, you get 3.8 billion hours of viewing per month.

I don't think 1 billion hours from that number of users is all that difficult to believe. Netflix users aren't substituting time in front of the TV straight across; That it's a supplimental activity is not an unreasonable conclusion. The CEO's numbers are well-within believability.

Photovoltaic conversion doesn't convert heat to energy, but instead converts light to energy

...instead of it being converted to heat. Heat and light are just two different forms of energy.

you said that solar panels would kill *all* life underneath it

Where did I say *that*?

That is simply not true (if it were, putting one on a house rooftop would be rather hazardous to the occupants underneath, now wouldn't it?) And unless you can cough up some sort of proof, your latest iteration of this charge isn't all that much better.

So. Try putting a rooftop over a garden and tell me how the plants fare.

As for proof, yes, deserts really are sensitive ecosystems. "The footprint of these solar projects is unprecedented, and obviously they can impact a range of species." Obviously.

Deserts do have life, but not that much plant life... at least not enough to worry about when designing or building a solar array.

Above link totally disagrees. And what makes you think deserts don't have many plants? Idaho doesn't have many people, so it's perfectly alright to nuke the entire state right?

More to the point:
"Deserts have a reputation for supporting very little life, but in reality deserts often have high biodiversity.... protect the ground from erosion... Even small fungi and microscopic plant organisms found on the soil surface (so-called cryptobiotic soil) can be a vital link in preventing erosion and providing support for other living organisms... Deserts typically have a plant cover that is sparse but enormously diverse."

Re space-based power, the article you link to goes on and on and on about cost. My initial post: nothing is free. Maybe we'll get there some day. Maybe we'll get fusion too. Right now, no power comes without a high price.

That is changing rapidly. Cargo ships in North American waters are now required to burn low-sulfur diesel instead of bunker fuel. And there are several different attempts to harness wind power to lower fuel consumption. The link above wouldn't work on big container vessels but could be used in conjunction with biodiesel to drop net carbon emissions to near zero.

There was the Beluga Skysail for container ships that demonstrated a 20% reduction in fuel usage but they appear to have gone out of business.

Meanwhile people cry about HFCS, which is an abomination but relatively harmless

No, it isn't. The high consumption of HFCS and ordinary table sugar are likely a primary component of the high rise in rates of diabetes and obesity, along with associated diseases of the heart and clogged arteries: Is Sugar Toxic?

Those toxic chemicals will go away if you bike to work every day.

Uh huh. Or if you drink a lot of water, you'll piss them all out. Please stop with the homegrown health science.

It is not hardtack. You just apparently don't know bread chemistry.

Take, for example, Leahy's well-known no-knead bread. This is the same as hardtack to you?

How about sourdough? That doesn't even require adding yeast if you're fortunate. Yes, yes, sourdough is exactly the same as hardtack. Or not. Hell, that Wikipedia page even tells you how the yeast gets sugar out of starch.

This is an interesting article: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/computer_securi_2.html and highly relevant to this discussion... Read the linked article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?_r=0 ) and all the comments.

If you look at job creation and when the stimulus ended, there's a clear drop in job creation showing that stimulus was working.

Correlation does not prove causation. Any number of things could produce a drop in job creation. The first two that come to mind that happened around the same period were the enactment of Obamacare as well as the debt ceiling debacle. Both have major negative influences over business, by scare factor alone (we're seeing it again with the fiscal cliff).

Bush had a surplus and a reasonably strong economy given to him and he turned it into massive deficits and the greatest recession since the Depression.

Intellectually dishonest. Or you're just nuts. Presidents don't cause recessions. Foolish banks and over-leveraged property owners do.

Obama is slowly working us out of that, though without literally *any* help from the GOP.

He doesn't WANT any help from Republicans. Once again, like his first term, that stubborn jackass thinks he has some kind of "mandate" from the populace to ignore all Republican input/suggestions. Moderate Olympia Snowe couldn't deal with him. Neither could Boehner: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/magazine/obama-vs-boehner-who-killed-the-debt-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

From The New York Times in February:

Both China and Russia prohibit travelers from entering the country with encrypted devices unless they have government permission.

Well for starters, carbon credits have already turned into a racket, spearheaded by Al Gore:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031307.htm

Second, some industries are selling credits for doing literally nothing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/asia/incentive-to-slow-climate-change-drives-output-of-harmful-gases.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

And finally (I'm only taking a minute here to do this as I'm on a short break, so no time to find the source) some companies have been selling carbon credits for carbon cuts that they already planned on doing anyways just to save on their bottom line by reducing costs. So in effect, the carbon trading didn't do anything at all.

Also, it is inevitable that you are going to end up with shell companies whose business model revolves around nothing but selling carbon credits. Say for example, a money laundering business that does fake business transactions, has miraculously low emissions as a result, and makes money on the side by selling carbon credits.

The whole thing is a joke.

Mary Gates was on the board of United Way with John Opel, chairman of IBM. Microsoft had been trying to sell a port of Unix called Xenix(because they couldn't use Unix as the name). That same year, IBM then hired Microsoft to develop a CP/M clone, which Microsoft bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products and rebranded MS-DOS/PC-DOS.

Oddly enough, IBM didn't own it, only licensed it, allowing Microsoft to become huge.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html

Milk increases mucous production

Uhm, that's a myth
another ref