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That's the biggest clue, the lack of liberals to properly predict how anything (weather, the economy) will work, while unheeded conservative warnings come true time after time.

You don't read much Krugman, do you? Like the part where he predicted the stimulus would fail because it was entirely inadequate, or how the current austerity push would cause a self-reinforcing cycle of lack-of-growth followed by more austerity? Let alone the predictions he made in the Bush years about things like the Iraq war (but that's admittedly political commentary moreso than economic prediction).

I would argue GDP per capita isn't all its cracked up to be in terms of a societal indicator. Yes, the GDP per capita in the US is higher than in Germany, but I would argue that quality of life is much higher in Germany than in the US. Consumers in the US spend a huge amount of money on frivolous things, and waste quite a bit on things like overpaying for healthcare. This article from a few years back gives a good overview of why GDP per capita is quite flawed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16GDP-t.html?pagewanted=all

It's not an Apple problem, it's an industry problem, and Apple does better than most at identifying and correcting these conditions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?pagewanted=all

"Many major technology companies have worked with factories where conditions are troubling. However, independent monitors and suppliers say some act differently. Executives at multiple suppliers, in interviews, said that Hewlett-Packard and others allowed them slightly more profits and other allowances if they were used to improve worker conditions.

'Our suppliers are very open with us,' said Zoe McMahon, an executive in Hewlett-Packard's supply chain social and environmental responsibility program. 'They let us know when they are struggling to meet our expectations, and that influences our decisions.' "

So the company known for its ability to immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, ... and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day is now going to take 487 days (or 1 year, 4 months) to make this change?

It's taking that long because they're passing on a portion of the profits to the right officials or perhaps are being squeezed for a little more. Hopefully it'll all just blow over. If not, some inspectors will come in and everything will be "legal" for a few days. A little while down the road someone will make waves again and the process keeps on repeating.

Capcha: Patrons.... heh.

So the company known for its ability to immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, ... and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day is now going to take 487 days (or 1 year, 4 months) to make this change?

I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.
By BENJAMIN NUGENT
New York Times
Published: January 31, 2012

"FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.

I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).

The biggest single problem with the diagnostic criteria applied to me is this: You can be highly perceptive with regard to social interaction, as a child or adolescent, and still be a spectacular social failure. This is particularly true if you’re bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking.

But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome."

"We" (we being the west) cannot fix Africa short of turning it into east Carolina. They need to come up with their own functional modes of government and funding, whatever those are, on their own. The people have no chance when their local tinpot dictators are being propped up by someone with 100x their power and economy.

Good points, but let's give them a chance. They're working on it, but it will take a while. Didn't most countries in Africa only break away from colonial rule in the last 60 years or so? Here's a NY Times article from a couple of days ago describing the slow progress they are making toward being stable democracies, which would be a first step toward making the improvements you mention: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/world/africa/africas-steady-steps-toward-democracy.html

"An awful lot of Africa's problems would diminish if they could just disburden themselves of the thugs with the guns. It doesn't do any good to teach a man to fish if you own the lake as your own private reserve."

This comment reminded me of an article I read a while ago in the NYT that presented an interesting theory about how to avoid famines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/does-democracy-avert-famine.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

I agree with much of what you posted.. but even in 1990, when Microsoft passed $1B in revenue, they had a profit margin 2x of RH: 337 million vs 144 million
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/26/business/microsoft-net-increases-76.2.html

Of course, adjusted for inflation, that was almost $2B in 2012 dollars, so MS hit it even earlier than that (mid 80's).

I agree with much of what you posted.. but even in 1990, when Microsoft passed $1B in revenue, they had a profit margin 2x of RH: 337 million vs 144 million
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/26/business/microsoft-net-increases-76.2.html

Google bought double-click, idiot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick.html

Thanks for playing.

26 million people die each year to malnutrition and lack of clean drinking water. The cost of saving a life of one person each day is .33. So the cost for a year is $100. The cost to solve world hunger for a year is 3 billion. The cost to put into motion long term projects to solve world hunger is 30 billion as posed by the UN. The thing we should examine in ourselves is,"Based on the way I live, could I spare some money to help the poor?" It is similar to when Oscar Schindler broke down because he didn't sell his watch and car to save more lives. World hunger could be solved if enough people worked towards a solution.

One solution that doesn't work great is dumping food into areas. By exporting food to impoverished areas, you solve the problem for the short term, but if you stop doing it, there will be no farmers. Why will there be no farmers? Supply and demand kills the demand for food and farmers can't stay in business when dumping occurs. Think to devious competition schemes people have in capitalism when you want to make your competitor go broke. You simply drop the price on your goods where everyone is losing money, but you'll make it back after your competitor goes broke.

This is not to say all dumping is bad. You can dump food into crisis areas, and also provide a version of food stamps too so local farmers get paid. Food stamps is a great way to drive up demand for local foods.

In all this, depending on how much governmental aid or resistance you get is a wild card.

I like the notion of growing fruit trees. In case a farmer dies, or wars and revolutions, fruit trees remain.

The whole matter should be treated seriously. When you look at the US budget 30 billion to solve world hunger doesn't seem like a whole lot, and maybe it is deceptively small. You'd think the UN would have a bunch of countries teaming up to solve hunger, but do you think the reason they don't is the guns/butter slider? If you donate food to someone like North Korea, they'll just build more weapons with their extra money. I'm not sure I buy this argument.

Anyone know the popular arguments why governments don't band together and try and solve world hunger?

But oil? That has subsidies?

Yes, the united states has a long history of encouraging petroleum extraction.

Currently the industry get $4B per year in tax credits specifically designed for oil companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?pagewanted=all

We are spying but.....we don't do the same kind of spying they do. Our spying is okay, theirs is evil.

Since the Communists of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China managed to kill about 100,000,000 people between them in about the last 80 years, you could state that pretty much literally, yes.

The Gruesome Consequences of a Political Idea
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
A Tale of Red Guards and Cannibals

Dishonesty has become a real problem in science. Some recent cases (Judy Mikovits, Luk Van Parijs, and Dipak K. Das (aka the red-wine researcher)) reveal some serious misconduct from high profile researchers. Certainly, part of this is due to the increased pressure on scientific researchers. The other part of this is generational. Cheating and misconduct are certainly more prevalent .in younger generations (or perhaps its always been this way and they are just not quite as clever).

Dishonesty has become a real problem in science. Some recent cases (Judy Mikovits, Luk Van Parijs, and Dipak K. Das (aka the red-wine researcher)) reveal some serious misconduct from high profile researchers. Certainly, part of this is due to the increased pressure on scientific researchers. The other part of this is generational. Cheating and misconduct are certainly more prevalent .in younger generations (or perhaps its always been this way and they are just not quite as clever).

Don't want to be targeted? Don't use Facebook.

Oh, and don't shop at stores.

Yes, women newly pregnant for the first time are highly desirable and targeted demographic. That link describes the lengths Target goes to in order to identify those women, even if they haven't told anybody yet (on facebook or otherwise). But after the spike of one-time purchases and brand adoption during the pregnancy, most of the purchases for actually raising a child are recurring and made from habit, so advertising is less effective.

Also, whoever modded me "Flamebait", that looks an awful lot like "I disagree with this person's political leanings", when everything I wrote was simply verifiable fact about Rick Santorum's Google problem:
Rick Santorum's original comments
Dan Savage on why he found those comments offensive.

So? That has nothing to do with AC's contention that the phrase didn't appear in TFA, was, in fact, wrong. As to the US Marshalls presence, they were only threeto serve the warrants. It was Microsoft employees that collected evidence and carried out the seizures:

Microsoft lawyers and technical personnel gathered evidence and deactivated Web servers ostensibly used by criminals in a scheme to infect computers and steal personal data. At the same time, Microsoft seized control of hundreds of Web addresses that it says were used as part of the same scheme.

and

Microsoft attacked three botnets in the last couple of years through civil suits. In each case, Microsoft obtained court orders that permitted it to seize Web addresses and computers associated with the botnets without first notifying the owners of the property.

They'll just spam public internet services to suppress what they view as dissent, ramp up coordinated cyber attacks, make their lawyers swear oath to the Communist Party, force real name registration on internet services, continue censorship of social networks when deemed necessary, and continue to massively build out CNO and espionage capabilities, all while on track to exceed even the United States' defense spending by 2025.

But yeah, no big deal.

That petition alleges that the Chinese government unfairly subsidizes crystalline silicon photovoltaic solar cells and modules by providing cash grants, tax rebates, cheap loans, and other benefits designed to artificially suppress Chinese export prices and drive U.S. competitors out of the market.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/15/445193/us-decision-chinese-solar-panel-imports-tariffs-partial-solution/?mobile=nc

Why was the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge built in China?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Why is American infrastructure in general being built by Chinese?
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads

Why are these jobs subsidizing China?

Because we can't find welders,

Watch the video.
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads

Finally, men and women being equals doesn't mean they're the same

Then do not use the word "equal," because it is misleading -- perhaps "equal access," "equal opportunity," "equal rights," but not simply "equal."

It just means that they shouldn't earn 20% less than a man for doing the same job

Sure, let's start by figuring out how to convince women to negotiate higher salaries -- something that men are more likely to do than women. Let's also address the various contributing factors, like the fact that women are more likely to take time off, less likely to confront their bosses about raises and bonus pay, etc. If after all that is addressed, we still find that women are earning substantially less than men, we can point to some sort of discriminatory practice.

Of course, feminists would say that I am "blaming the victim" and that therefore the entire argument is specious. Clearly, the fact that women are less likely to negotiate a higher salary is irrelevant to them getting paid 20% less.

One in which you, a white male, is a victim

Which is clearly not possible, because only women and minorities could ever be victimized, right? There is no way that white men or men in general could possibly be victims of feminism in this century...except when those white men are forced to pay alimony and/or child support to a woman who left them for the man whose children she brought into the world:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22Paternity-t.html?_r=1

In the 80s and 90s, men were in an even worse position: thousands of men were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for...satanism. Yes, that's right, following a poorly-thought-out attempt by feminists to raise awareness about child sexual abuse, everyone panicked, men across the country were arrested for molesting children, and then somehow people conflated sexual abuse with satanic rituals and we had an all-out moral panic. Some women were also accused, but the accusations were overwhelmingly directed at men.

Now, modern feminists are not so interested in child sexual abuse, probably because of the disaster that the feminists of the 70s created. It did not help that Michelle Remembers turned out to be a complete fabrication. We are still feeling the effects of the moral panic feminism created, still having knee-jerk reactions when it comes to sex offenders and still going around doubting the intentions of men when they are around children.

So do not even try to say that men are not victims of feminism. It was, after all, feminists who pushed to create a system where women could end their marriages and still receive alimony. Feminists pushed for child support laws that have made life that much harder for working class men. Feminists created the moral panic that imprisoned thousands of men across the country for no reason whatsoever.

WORLD SERIES; Marines Rally 'Round the Maple Leaf, Easing a Flap
By CLAIRE SMITH
Published: October 21, 1992

In a stirring show of understanding, the United States Marines and the citizens of Canada buried the flap of the upside-down Canadian flag with gestures of goodwill tonight before Game 3 of the World Series.

As a Marine color guard from Buffalo stood in the shortstop area in the Skydome, a statement from the Commandant was read saying that the corps had requested the privilege of presenting the Canadian flag. This, the statement said, was an effort to make amends for the incident on Sunday night in which another Marine color guard had carried a Canadian flag onto the field at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium in an upside-down position before Game 2.

When the announcement of the Marines' request was made, the crowd of more than 51,000 cheered, applause that grew louder as the announcer revealed the Marines had also asked that the American flag be carried by a color guard of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The fans then made it clear the amends were accepted. After being asked by the public-address announcer to stand and honor both nations during the singing of the anthems, the predominantly Canadian crowd not only stood without protest but also joined in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" . . . . .

The gesture by the Marine Corps was all but unprecedented since Marines are usually prohibited from carrying the flags of other nations. But for the second time in three days, the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Carl Mundy Jr., had given his troops permission to carry the distinctive red and white flag that is adorned with a maple leaf, the Canadian national emblem.

But Bush and other Americans obviously felt that more needed to be said today. Bush expressed understanding for any bruised national pride Canadians might be experiencing, commenting during a television interview this afternoon on a campaign trip through Georgia.

"If that had happened in Canada and we'd have seen the United States flag shown upside down, Americans would have been very, very upset," Bush said in comments carried all day here by the Atlanta-based Cable News Network.

The President went on to say that he welcomed the opportunity to address an issue that the day before caused Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada to confess sadness and dismay even after accepting the snafu as "an unfortunate technical error." So, Bush said, he wanted to let all Canadians know "how badly I feel about it, how badly all the American people feel about it. This was a mistake." Apology and Explanation

He was not alone in issuing apologies. Mundy formally issued regrets Monday on behalf of the Marine Corps to Derek Burney, the Canadian Ambassador to the United States. And a Marine Corps spokesman, Chief Warrant Officer Randy Gaddo, also apologized for the color guard's action, with an explanation.

Gaddo said members of the color guard, made up of Marines from the Atlanta area, had been given the flag only moments before they were to take the field, and in their hurry the Marines put the flag on the staff upside down.

"The first inkling they had was when they unfurled it," Gaddo explained. "It was obviously too late then, so they carried on. It was certainly not intentional."

It's a good one, but there are several competing theories out there too. One of the best I've seen is the correlation between acetaminophen use in children and the development of asthma in children. It just so happens that clean, microbe-adverse developed nations have much more access to acetaminophen than dirty, unsanitized third world countries....

Most would-be muggers

And for the ones that aren't deterred, you think a firefight in the street is preferable to carriers simply blocking the phones and making the mugging less attractive in the first place?

No, but as an adult with full cognitive faculties, I don't believe it's anyone's duty but my own to protect myself and my property... especially considering recent SCOTUS decisions, such as the one that determined that police have no duty to protect citizens.

Expecting others to do what you should be doing yourself belongs in the realm of childhood, IMO.

The nyt has an article on the Indian Casinos in New England. Part of it is basically talking about how slots are very profitable due to the fact that they can are computer controlled so can be precisely calibrated to balance user experience and profit(split with the state), while table games are increasingly becoming less reliable. As verified here, the problem appears to be that the casinos are dependent on smaller and smaller groups of people to visit the casinos, and even smaller of people who will play with real money. So the casinos are cutting their advantage with these discounts, and allowing players to split twice, essentially cutting the house advantage to the point where, on average, the house does not win.

Of course the story is that there are too many casino chasing too few players, and given the online competition, the time of the casino may be over.

You should've used HugeUrl to go with that huge amount of link text.

Of course the story is that there are too many casino chasing too few players, and given the online competition, the time of the casino may be over.

"Of course, supporters don’t describe it that way. They say the JOBS Act — for Jumpstart our Business Startups — would remove burdensome regulations that they claim have made it too difficult for companies to raise money from investors, impeding their ability to grow and hire.

Never mind that reams of Congressional testimony, market analysis and academic research have shown that regulation has not been an impediment to raising capital. In fact, too little regulation has been at the root of all recent bubbles and bursts — the dot-com crash, Enron, the mortgage meltdown. Those free-for-alls created jobs and then imploded, causing mass joblessness. "
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/washington-has-a-very-short-memory.html?_r=3&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/business/senate-passes-start-ups-bill-with-amendments.html?_r=1&hp

100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks

Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?

Maybe you like it straight from 'The Lancet': Short-term effects of daily aspirin on cancer incidence, mortality, and non-vascular death: analysis of the time course of risks and benefits in 51 randomised controlled trials, Effect of daily aspirin on risk of cancer metastasis: a study of incident cancers during randomised controlled trials, and Long-term effect of aspirin on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality: 20-year follow-up of five randomised trials.

The NY Times also reported on these studies. Some of the findings of these studies found were that after five years the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by 37 percent among those taking daily aspirin, that over six and a half years, on average, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of metastatic cancer by 36 percent and the risk of adenocarcinomas by 46 percent, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of progressing to metastatic disease in patients with colorectal cancer.

It was found that the risk of bleeding in aspirin users diminished over time, and that the risk of death from brain bleeds was actually lower in the aspirin users than in the comparison group.

Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?

Neither, it was on TV news last night. It's a peer-reviewed study with unexpected results. Here are a couple of more reputable sources than the stupid FA that I didn't bother reading:

Can aspirin really reduce the risk of cancer?
Studies Link Daily Doses of Aspirin to Reduced Risk of Cancer

Unfortunately, many folks seem to pick the least reputable rag they can find as a link for their submissions, often their own blogs.

Aspirin isn't for everyone. Kids under 16 shouldn't take it, especially if they have the flu, and if you have stomach or digestive problems, hemophilia, or a few other conditions aspirin can be dangerous.

I wonder if Naproxin Sodium prevents cancer? I stopped taking aspirin when the patent on Alieve went away.

It's the deniers who, every goddamned winter, come out of the woodwork with their childlike taunts

This is your personal bias showing. Otherwise you would have seen that, even when it is cold, non-scientist warmists are still taking it as a sign of global warming. If it's too warm, it's a sign of global warming. If it's too cold, it's a sign of global warming.

You might want to look at whatever process is making you think that only people who disagree with you act like idiots.

And yet last year saw some of the coldest temperatures we've had in a very long time. But I didn't see people screaming OMG GLOBAL FREEZING!!1!!1! back then.

Several years ago, when the changes were starting to get wide attention, people realized that it was extreme weather on both ends and changed the description from "warming" to "climate change". We've had several unusual winters, it's obvious that the phenomenon is not limited to higher temperatures.

And last year I do remember news stories on the unusual winter where people questioned if the global climate change was responsible.

The root of the problem is that global average temperatures are increasing, but since that also contributes to unusual cold snaps then it doesn't help the discussion to call it global warming if every idiot who gets cold uses that as evidence that global warming is not happening. Extreme weather changes on both ends are both symptoms of global warming. You only need to look at a graph of global average temperature over a long period to figure out that it is currently spiking.

Greenspan himself said:

"But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform"

New York Times Link

Self-regulation was an experiment that failed. Government however is currently under the control of bought politicians. So any attempts to put some effective regulation in place will be halfhearted at best, and subject to constant undermining from the inside. November 2012 hopefully will bring some changes and some sanity restored to government and its regulatory bodies.

“Politicians are like diapers, they both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”

The same reason you don't want an entrenched imperial presidency is the same reason you don't want an entrenched, imperial Congress.

Though the sample size is much smaller, the success rate is much higher. The theory here is different though: the HIV virus infects only T-Cells. T-Cells are responsible for "marking" bodily intrusions as harmful -- but rather than the traditional AIDs payload of "don't attack anything" going into them you alter the HIV virus's DNA to train the T-Cells to kill cancers. So in essence, it teaches your body how to treat cancer as an infection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13gene.html?pagewanted=all

Can I still access NYTimes.com articles through Facebook, Twitter, search engines or my blog?
Yes. We encourage links from Facebook, Twitter, search engines, blogs and social media. When you visit NYTimes.com through a link from one of these channels, that article (or video, slide show, etc.) will count toward your monthly limit of 10 free articles, but you will still be able to view it even if you’ve already read your 10 free articles. Like other external links, links from search engine results will count toward your monthly limit. If you have reached your monthly limit, you'll have a daily limit of 5 free articles through a given search engine. This limit applies to the majority of search engines.

Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/health/research/viruses-are-recruited-and-flipped-as-cancer-killers.html?_r=2&ref=science

Sounds interesting (especially as somebody who is at high risk for melanoma).

myke

The New York Times begs to differ, if the object to be purchased is birth control.

If you are correct then this means that the fight over the patent on the gene that causes breast cancer is likely to result in an invalidated patent when the Supreme Court takes the case.

LOL @ "stealing".

Tell me, did I sign some kind of a contract with the NY Times where I promise to keep their data on my machine in exchange for their services? Am I "stealing" if I load their results in a browser that doesn't support persistent cookies?

They offer up web pages on a public webserver, and even allow sites like Google to crawl (partnering really, see the robots.txt) their site.

You probably think it is "stealing" to block known advertising sites as well.

Canon NoteJet 486. It even offered an "optional facsimile modem."

It's price,

The little equation most Linux advocates seem to want to avoid is the effect "crapware" subsidies have on the price of the average home PC. On low-end machines for the home (running Win 7 Home) the so-called Windows Tax (cost of the OS license) is offset, for the most part by subsidies from software vendors that load up your hard drive with special offers, trial versions, etc. With "crapware" essentially wiping out the Windows Tax, what you are left with is the cost of the hardware, and small linux system builders don't have the volume to get their hardware costs down to where the big OEMs get theirs.

You can argue that Linux system builders typically use better hardware, and they charge a reasonable premium for that better hardware, but home users simply don't appreciate the "better" system that costs a more. Many home users replace their machines every couple years, so payng more for a technically better product doesn't make sense, because the cheaper system probably won't fail until after it has outlived it's useful life to them.

A few years ago the NY Times had an article about people doing forklift upgrades of their home PCs because getting rid of viruses was a tremendous pain and a very usable replacement machine that was likely faster/demonstrably better than the machine they had could be gotten for $300-400, With the local geek squad wanting $100 or so to "clean" or "restore" your infected 3 year old machine, a $300-400 upgrade starts to make sense,

VISA does not know how many candy bars you bought, retail corporate does.

Target certainly knows this - and more. See this NYT article: How Companies Learn Your Secrets. From page 7 of 8:

About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

I need only point at the recent resignation of "Greg Smith" from "Goldman Sachs" that the men in charge of business today, this very day, in many areas of the public sector are interested in only one thing. Protecting their huge salary and stock shares (though the systematic process of squeezing profit out of any damn thing they can.) The will turn on their own customers (tell me that's not a sign of profound insanity), they will lie and cheat and steal to the ultimate death and dismemberment of their own stock holders. All inside the near bullet proof corporate veil.

The men that planned this in 80s, filled our courts with compliant judges and top colleges with ideological clones to teach our best business schools, and now Reaganomics and deregulation is the Koolaid everyone's drinking. The sad part is that when you wipe Ronny's smiling face off Reaganomics what you have left is simple Fascism. Today America passes virtually all the tests for a fascist state. We've demonstrated time and time again, that fascist states destroy human rights and ultimately implode... I'm sorry... suffer immense recessions. Even "Adam Smith" warned about the dangers of concentrated wealth and the destruction of a health working class. Sadly, we don't teach that anymore, that would be sanity, and we're fresh out.

Watching giant corporate interests fighting in court after the last scraps of IP and means of transporting it, seems more than a wee bit like everybody is loosing except the corporate interests.

.

Nevertheless, results speak loudly:

BEIJING - The announcement Saturday that Foxconn Technology - one of the worldâ(TM)s largest electronics manufacturers - will sharply raise salaries and reduce overtime at its Chinese factories signals that pressure from workers, international markets and concerns among Western consumers about working conditions is driving a fundamental shift that could accelerate an already rapidly changing Chinese economy.

Consumer revolts and general blogger whining do work sometimes!

You're right, except for a few points.

1. This wouldn't have gone to trial if Clementi hadn't killed himself. If you think otherwise you're only fooling yourself.
2. From an NY Times article:

The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.

But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.

That's a second way in which it was Clementi, not Ravi, who defined the "crime".

Did Ravi "tamper" with evidence and witnesses? Yeah, according to the book. Just like Al Capone was guilty of tax evasion. Does that mean we nailed Al Capone for tax evasion? No, some huge percent of the population engages in tax evasion every year. It was because of Al Capone's other activities. In Ravi's case, it was because of Clementi's death, which they couldn't prosecute, so instead they threw the book at Ravi for every little thing they could find, regardless of the real importance of it. No mistake about it, this case was about "justice" for Clementi's death. It's nothing more than a witch hunt, and Ravi was the closest witch on hand who had made a few prosecutable mistakes.

"In 2007, one pilot recounted an instance when the navigational equipment on his Boeing 737 had failed after takeoff. A flight attendant told a passenger to turn off a hand-held GPS device and the problem on the flight deck went away." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/business/18devices.html

So now GPS devices *emit* signals?

A blogger citing one instance of a handheld GPS system interfering with the plane-mounted one?

If you had read the article, you would have discovered that the "blogger" is in fact a writer for the New York Times and she was citing instances from a classified IATA report.

Gee, that's a whole lot of trouble given the last ~100 years of flying

Perhaps there are more planes and more personal electronic devices now than 100 years ago? Perhaps modern planes contain more electronic systems which may be subject to interference than older planes did?

"If my $36 phone from Radio Shack can bring down Air Force One, we have bigger problems than we thought."

What if the probability of interference is increased though? It's simple statistics, a 0.00001 chance of failure is unlikely to affect one particular aircraft, but given millions of flights, the probability of a failure occurring in any flight at all becomes likely. This is why the airplane industry is rather conservative when it comes to safety regulations.

Apparently people and groups in China suing Apple for cash (which has close to $100B on hand) is now a thing — witness the lawsuit filed by flat-ass broke Proview over the iPad name it gave up the rights to years ago (via a Taiwan subsidiary so it could try to hide the money Apple paid it from its creditors).

This sounds like a nuisance lawsuit filed against a big company specifically to try to extort a cash settlement out of convenience, rather than suing the actual copyright infringer (which is probably not as well-financed and may not even be known to the "authors' group"). I think they're in for a surprise when they get to court.