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thanks for giving me a place to put this. This exemplifies your argument. professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x

Dear Editors,

A NY Times link that looks like this will always take you to a login page:
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html

A NY Times link that looks like this should not take you to a login page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html

Please consider editing the summaries accordingly.

Most Respectfully,
Tubesteak

Dear Editors,

A NY Times link that looks like this will always take you to a login page:
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html

A NY Times link that looks like this should not take you to a login page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html

Please consider editing the summaries accordingly.

Most Respectfully,
Tubesteak

When this guy was appointed, was there any doubt in anyone's mind that his SOLE responsibility would be to act as a shill for the big media industry? It's not like anyone believed for a second that he was EVER going to represent consumer interests or the rights of the general citizenry.

Sadly, that doesn't make him any different than the Congress or President. Hell, even the Supreme Court is ruling that corporations have a *right* to bribe as many public officials as they like. If you want to find someone representing the unwashed-masses-without-lobbyists, you'll have to turn to the EFF. The U.S. government is just a corporate subsidiary now.

Oh boy, some people never learn. Android voice functions is literary the same things that has been in the archaic nokia phones from back in the day.

Voice Actions for Android is almost identical to Siri (another example). The iPhone actually had Siri before Voice Actions came out for Android, only difference is now Siri is built into the 4S and Apple bought Siri and removed it from the App Store and made it only for the 4S :( That's a pretty jerk thing for apple to do

George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, and the U.S. Senate have all made it plainly clear that the government no longer wants to or thinks they have to abide by the constitution. Some folks are trying to disagree but.... Anyway, like any government bureaucracy, after it has been around a while it tends to create its own group mind, and usually that group mind tends to forget or disregard annoying things like constitutional rights or just plainly doing the right thing. After all, these annoyances just get in the way of doing things, which is already hard enough to do in a bureaucratic institution. And the problems just get exacerbated by the rectilinearlly rigid thinking robot-like people that seem to excel in a bureaucracy; and no-doubt is the type of person who is causing this bullshit maneuver that NASA is making right now. (And corporations are just narcissistic/egocentric bureaucracies... extrapolate from there.)

So start your own business. I did.

I can't, nor can many of Slashdot's audience. Why? Because of a law IBM bought in 1986 prohibiting programmers and software engineers from working as self-employed individuals. (Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html ). So, once again we see regulations bought by corporations to steer things in their favor. Which is kind of the whole point of the protest.

Where did you get this from?

I've worked self-employed as a programmer for years. I know someone who's done it for 20.

I'm going to work for a company for my next gig, but not because any imaginary law is making me do so... :)

Yes, and there were lots of "coincidences" that pointed to him as well, the sorority angle in particular (and the mailing location aspect), and the odd statements about his psyche, by himself

CNN

NY Times

He's dead, it can't be proven, but it also can't easily be dismissed, as the poster of this article did, with zero contrary links.

Simultaneously, the NYT is also reporting this.

The part that involves a naturalized citizen makes it on topic, malcontents.

Far, far, FAR longer than that. Almost since the dawn of photography in fact, let alone the advent of the war correspondent as a profession. The NY Times (no registration required, for once) has a rather interesting tale of what might be the first instance of this in three parts, part one here, about whether or not Roger Fenton manipulated a post-battle scene for a more interesting image. The image in question was taken during the Crimean war, in 1855 - over a century and a half ago.

Really? Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that? You know, the universities sitting on multi-billion dollar endowments yet are raising tuition many times the rate of inflation? In an age where information is vastly cheaper and easier to acquire, they are making it much harder and more expensive.

The fact they are blaming Wall St, which has absolutely nothing to do with their degrees' cost, shows their university did not provide them with the necessary critical thinking skills to make it in the world.

A better question is, why didn't the national media cover the numerous protests against universities? It isn't limited to the US either. In some countries, students simply sue the universities. But, none of these stories fit the narrative, so they don't get the same coverage as, say, politicians whose policies are responsible for the multimillion dollar salaries of the talking heads that are supposed to keep us informed about these things.

It took weeks for Occupy Wall St to become national news because, again, it doesn't fit the narrative; didn't you know, Wall St paid back TARP!*

*Using some of the $17 trillion in low/no-interest loans from the Fed, which supposedly exists to keep unemployment low.

How many will also buy the official line about why they did it, which likely includes 'public safety or protecting the children'

It's hard to argue that public safety is enhanced when you're releasing tens of thousands of prisoners because the state is broke. If you live in California and haven't yet invested in an alarm system and a firearm, now might be a good time.

My thunderstorm predictor also works fine - it always predicts that storm is coming. And about once a month it's right!

Paul's predictions are totally bunkum. He was predicting that the currency would implode because of the Ponzi scheme of the Fed. That hasn't happened, not even close.

This year he was predicting that commodities would skyrocket because the Fed was 'debasing the dollar' by QE1/2. And right now commodities have fallen almost back to 2008 levels and dollar is stable against other currencies.

"Outside of CPI, inflation has been going up significantly."

No it hasn't. Since 2008 commodity prices are basically flat: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/way-off-base-2/ (don't believe Krugman? See http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24 for another example).

So Paul's economic theories were in essence tested by experiment. And proven to be false.

"They are now. If they had been implemented earlier we might have had a chance. As it stands, the middle class in America will be all but completely wiped out in the next generation. "

And Paul's recipe is: "Wipe out that suckers. We don't need no stinking meedle class". Because he's basically advocating not just continuing the policy of deregulation and concentration of power in corporations' hands, but dialing it to 11. What exactly could have been done in Paul's universe to prevent the bubble?

Let's see:
1) Deregulation - that's what allowed banks to create CDO bubble.
2) Invisible hand of the market - like the rating agencies grading junk as AAA?
3) Gold standard and hard currency - the bubble has happened in the shadow banking system that over-leveraged the debt. Nothing in gold standard could have prevented it by itself.
4) What else?

Now, I agree that Ron Paul is _mostly_ sincere which seems to be rare these days. But that doesn't help in itself if his position is insane. A sincere madman is still a madman.

Some things to consider. Businesses can come and go as they please, people can not. But it is a standard method for businesses to be charged a license fee to do business in an area. Government are going to have to do their job of "Community First" if this wave of Economic Locus is to be marginalized.

If Corporations want to be treated like people, then let them experience Capitol Punishment for murder.

You will have to do some work to find out the answer to your question.

I suggest you start out with Paul Krugman's columns at the New York Times, since he's an economics professor and can explain these things well. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html

Thats strictly a paper loss, the Wilpons profited from their relationship with Madoff. They deposited about $700 million and withdrew about a billion over the course of 5 years, their only losses were the ficticious profits they hadn't yet withdrawn. A recent ruling limited their liability to only what was invested in the last 2 years, and likely only the profit they made of about $83 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/business/mets-ruling-may-reduce-payout-to-madoff-victims.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/madoff-ruling-a-big-win-for-mets-owners-2011-09-28

Obama wanted a class war and now he's got it.

There's nothing I can say without provoking someone on the "other side" into an ad hominem attack. Dialog, or what remained of civil dialog, on any of these matters is pretty much suspended until after the 2012 elections.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

That was Buffett, a billionaire, in 2005-2006, expressing views that predate that date, that predate the Obama administration. Newsflash for ya: You have been having a class warfare, or more appropriately put, a degradation of the standards of livings for the working class for the last 3 decades, and only morons choked up in GI-Joe kool aid seem oblivious to it.

Bernie Madoff is sitting in jail right now for ripping off the rich, and they all got their money back.

The Wilpons allegedly lost as much as $700 million, so maybe you want to substantiate that claim with something.

So start your own business. I did.

I can't, nor can many of Slashdot's audience. Why? Because of a law IBM bought in 1986 prohibiting programmers and software engineers from working as self-employed individuals. (Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html ). So, once again we see regulations bought by corporations to steer things in their favor. Which is kind of the whole point of the protest.

Except that it is starving the company of funds. According to this article, DVDs cost almost $1 just to ship. Factor in the cost of the disc, the infrastructure, etc. and it barely pays for itself for normal customers. With super-users who can get 2 or 3 DVDs per week on a one disc plan, Netflix is practically hemorrhaging funds to keep the system around. Hence, the plan to split and, soon after, sell-off that half of their business.

Rick Perry's campaign, for instance, is well-known for using social-science methods to rigorously test various campaign tools, including controlled experiments on what actually worked and what didn't.

As, as long as we're talking about Perry, you know that "Perry cut firefighters budgets" story that went around a month ago? It's not true. The Texas legislature authorized, and Perry signed, an 80% increase in wildfire fighting and prevention funding for the 2012-2013 biennium.

Disclaimer: I am NOT choosing sides in this post.

The notion that the Obama team is the only one in the prospective 2012 race to understand data mining and acting on numbers is pretty shallow. Rick Perry has a well documented (and apparently very well run) data mining team that he has used in the past and would no doubt use again in a presidential bid... More info here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/rick-perrys-scientific-campaign-method/ and here: http://www.thevictorylab.com/ and in this E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Perry-His-Eggheads-ebook/dp/B005HE8ED4

Individual parents and teachers do teach. Well, some of them do, anyway.

But what the institution of US public school does is force conformance. Through any means necessary, including killing or imprisoning those children who can't or won't follow meaningless orders. These insane, anti-child "zero tolerance" policies are literally driving kids to suicide.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/a-zero-tolerance-policy-and-a-suicide/
http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/Downloads/NationalReportsArticles/CFYJ-Jailing_Juveniles_Report_2007-11-15.pdf
http://www.stopschoolstojails.org/content/background
http://www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/education-on-lockdown-the-schoolhouse-to-jailhouse-track

The level of control that principals and school boards are required by law to exercise has always attracted sadists and child abusers; the evil schoolmaster is an archetype. This is because we legally empower them to exert humiliating emotional and psychological abuse on entire school populations. The sick need of such people to dominate children is valued by the public school system, so why wouldn't they gravitate to where their evil compulsions will be rewarded? Remember how the Cub Scouts used to attract paedophiles, before they reformed their leadership system to put a stop to it? This is the same principle at work; our system (particularly the "zero tolerance" nonsense, and "No Child Left Untested" initiative) selects for and rewards despotic, control-freak school administrators.

I have two kids in school, and I'm a product of the US public school system. My sisters are schoolteachers. I know of what I speak.

Top 5 2009 Estimates, Citation, of the percentage of adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV/AIDS followed by a news bit lending no credence to any claim of traditional values as we define them.

25.90 - Swaziland - 23 August 2005, Swazi girls celebrate as king lifts ban on sex for under-18s - Citation
24.80 - Botswana - 1 December 2010, Botswana mulls legalizing prostitution to fight HIV - Citation
23.60 - Lesotho - July 20, 2004, in Lesotho as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, early sex is the norm. - Citation
17.80 - South Africa - 9 October 2011, 30% of people would use condoms for their first coital sex versus 4% for oral sex - Citation
14.30 - Zimbabwe - 12 June 2009, girls as young as 12 to sell their bodies for as little as a packet of biscuits - Citation

Not too sure about those traditional values. It just looks like the dazzled approach isn't being worked.

Google's Cache saved the text of your blog post

Steve Jobs, an inspiration to artists and business leaders alike, had a hero of his own. According to this article from the New York Times, Edwin Land, the creator of Polariod was a role model for Jobs. Land was also a college dropout who developed great products, simply and elegantly designed to appeal to an enormous market. It's an interesting read, as is the linked Fastcompany book review.

Like Jobs, Edwin Land had numerous technological and commercial achievements. However, the NYTimes article calls the Polaroid SX-70 folding camera Edwin Land's 'supreme achievement'.

[Broken Image]

I happen to have a vintage Polaroid SX-70. After reading the article, I pulled it off the shelf to take another look. It's a really beautiful piece of design. It even came with this handsome leather case.

[Broken Images]

This camera was my father's, and I've handled it hundreds of times since I was a child. Today, pulling it out the case I was immediately struck with a question:

Why does a 40 year old camera have an Apple 30-pin connector port on it?

[Broken Images]

There is a port, just above the lens, that seems ready for any iPod accessory. It's not as obvious when the camera is open, but the port to connect the old fashioned 'flash bar' is very obvious when the camera is collapsed. In fact, the collapsed SX-70 looks like a piece of consumer electronics Steve Jobs would have created if he'd been born a generation earlier.

It's not just similar. It's almost an exact match. You can even put the tip of a 30-pin connector in the Polaroid and it's a snug fit. I know that this seems like Apple fanboi wishful thinking -- that something could be this specifically thought through. Perhaps it is, and that thought occurred to me. So I tried other things that could be similar in size. An SD card. Close, but it doesn't fit. You don't get snug fit of the 30-pin connector.

Keep in mind that this is the only port on this device. And it's designed to allow the camera to interact with accessories. And this isn't just any device. It's the 'supreme achievement' of the man Steve Jobs called a 'national treasure'. Now, this port of nearly identical proportions is the common denominator three devices that could each, along with the original Macintosh, contend as Steve's 'supreme achievement.' And out of all of the sizes available for peripheral ports (micro-usb, etc), this is nearly an exact match, within micrometers (if I had the appropriate tools, I'd measure it for you). Here's a video to give you a better sense of the fit:

Perhaps there was never an explicit intention to mimic the SX-70. Of course, if this similarity is by design, I am sure someone like Jony Ive would know. The port could have been a result of teamwork, but if Steve Jobs obsessed over Edwind Land's creations the way we obsess over his, there is a reason that this could have felt like the right size for an accessory port according to Steve's aesthetic sensibilities.

I've never giving much thought to the 30-pin connector. It wasn't any more interesting to me than a USB port. But now, I'd be very curious to know the background of the only physical trait that latest iPhone shares with the early iPods... and with a forty year-old camera.

[Broken Image]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/deal-sites-have-fading-allure-for-merchants.html?_r=1

Thanks for the comment and reading what I wrote.

Herbert Snorrason might agree with you (and this is not to disagree):
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/b9664aa1473d6d53?hl=en
"But there's another point I want to make: I'm a humanities major; history, in particular. That's a subject not exactly known for clarity or brevity. But even so, you manage to surpass everything I've read during my studies. That includes the writings of people like Karl Marx. In the original.
    Say what you will, but that doesn't seem very practical-minded to me. "

I guess that leaves lots of work for others to say what I say in better ways. :-) Which might be a good thing given stuff coming out of the lab like this: :-)
    "PR2 Fetches Sandwich from Subway "
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYRQC2iBp0

One attempt by me to be less verbose and more clear and simple: :-)
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

It would help to have better tools for everyone to have better discussions:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/-The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc.-/76207-8319

I guess the key point is that cheap energy, like cheap robots, can be in many cases be substituted for human labor and human intelligence and so the economy is fundamentally transformed.

Links you might like about the research-proven value of detailed diverse discussions:
http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Diversity-Creates-Schools-Societies/dp/0691128383
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/researcher-responds-to-arguments-over-his-theory-of-arguing/
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Focused-Conversation-Access-Workplace/dp/0865714169

How often have you seen an IT representative in front of the cameras say, "Well, we see this behaviour, the lights are flashing, the klaxons are going like a cat with its tail in a wringer, but the people who collect 7 figure salaries haven't been taking an interest so far."

I'd love to see someone do that, they'd never work in the industry again though.

Should be criminal charges for management negligence -- and I don't mean just giving the the sack. Those protesters on Wall Street have a point, everyone gets hurt when the bank CEOs screw up, but those most responsible. Thanks to their stalwart defenders in the US Congress no stronger regulation get passed. If that's not sign that government is in the bank's pockets, I can't imagine what could be more clear.

Thanks to the revolving door between Goldman Sachs and the US government the banks are the government. The barbarians aren't at the gate, they're manning the walls.

Do not look upon your users/customers with contempt.

Some corollary concepts:

• Accept that users may be using the product not only in a different way from your expectations, but for a different reason;
• Do not take users' preferences personally;
• Avoid pathological altruism.

The stories at the time of arrest indicate that it was Equity Index linked securities that the trader was gambling on, not Swiss Franc like it was widely assumed.
That was also the time when European indices, emerging market stocks and to a lesser extent US stocks crashed. But otherwise you are right - apparently Adoboli had done hidden trades starting as far back as 2008 and they were generally profitable. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/17/kweku-adoboli-ubs-fraud-charges

Your reply is suspect because Catholics must defend their faith and honesty is not required by your Church in dealing with outsiders or the flock.

I cite the ONGOING pedophile scandal(s) throughout the Catholic world as examples. There is zero reason to believe your assertion over the FACT of more than ONE BILLION dollars being paid out in settlements/hush money and the FACT of pedos being hidden from the law and the FACT that this was systematically done.

Even the Vatican's most primitive followers are sometimes having second thoughts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/world/europe/ireland-recalibrates-ties-to-roman-catholic-church.html

Before anyone mods this Troll, use the search engine of your choice and have a look at Church exploitation and corruption worldwide.

So far only one predator got real justice:

http://articles.cnn.com/2003-08-24/us/geoghan_1_joseph-l-druce-worcester-county-district-attorney-defrocked-roman-catholic-priest?_s=PM:US

We can live off roots and berries and wipe our asses with the currency of the doomed!

http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/Zimdollars.jpg

I really do like the tech he introduced to the world, but at least to me, his image is tarnished by the lack of his philanthropic activities.

Mr. Jobs also established a personal philanthropic foundation after leaving Apple but soon had a change of heart, deciding instead to spend much of his fortune — $10 million — on acquiring Pixar, a struggling graphics supercomputing company owned by the filmmaker George Lucas.

link

Their $55M estimate is a complete fantasy, though. If it were that cheap, there would be an awful lot more new drugs out there. There aren't. For example, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?_r=3&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all and look at the graphic. Over the last decade, there have been on average 20 new drugs approved per year. If each one only cost $55M, then any one of the twenty biggest pharma companies could have afforded the lot out of small change. Given the financial trouble that all of them are currently in with existing drugs coming off-patent, you have to wonder why they haven't been doing that.

What about modern African humans?

The negroid type seems to be all homo sapien. The Arab and Caucasian Africans have neanderthal DNA.

Neanderthal are a completely different species.

were.

And the most recent twin study proves that autism is largely environmental.

"But surprisingly, mathematical modeling suggested that only 38 percent of the cases could be attributed to genetic factors, compared with the 90 percent suggested by previous studies."

This study would disagree with you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/research/05autism.html

From the NYTimes article:

“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor,” said Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder. “I will miss Steve immensely.”

Copying S. J. to the bitter end... how appropriate.

Some people is scared that developing nations are getting access to education tech while in some places (USA, France and others) government is about to pay students to go to school and make good grades.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1929454,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/nyregion/19schools.html

The real problem is the kids these days. They just can't find a way to stay off my lawn! Back in my day, we didn't have lawns. Lawns were patented! We just had asbestos tiles.

I bet some people around 1900 lamented that they didn't have the Jules Verne flying ship yet and were sad because there were still piles of horse shit in manhattan. I find all this lamenting of the "demise of space exploration" to be pretty silly. The space shuttle, however cool we thought it was, was VERY OLD technology. Has everyone forgotten that a third of them ended in fiery disaster? Additionally, its payload (to low-earth orbit only) was only 26 tons compared to something around 130 tons for the proposed SLS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

And what about the fact that you can now speak to your phone in plain english and get a response? Or kill people on the other side of the world while piloting a drone from Nevada? Or how about nearly curing leukemia? Big dog anyone?

How about zero guys and ~5 minutes?

Problems... Expensive charging stations and you don't really own the battery.

NY Times:

KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner.

People here remember it quite differently.

“I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.”

Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.

. . .

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

If not war, at least oppression.

Even with the rampant 'piracy' lately, the music/movie industries are making record profits.

Exactly, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them when they and the rest of corporate america are raking in the cash.

Subsidize the steel industry!
Oh wait, that already happens

I know your point wasn't to focus on the steel industry and rather the ill-effects of tariffs on trade. The wonders of history. It's just ridiculous to me that free-market advocates quote the period pre-WW1 as some golden era of free-trade. Also, isolating Smoot-Hawley as the cause of the Great Depression is an exercise in futility. There were many factors involved in that spectacular mess.

People take government subsidies as an article of faith for R&D but nobody can ever point out a single technology or product that would never have happened except for the government stepping in.

This argument is a logical fallacy. There are a lot of technologies that have come into existence due to government funding (which is why I assume you worded your argument this way), and to suppose that they would have found other funding sources is pure fantasy.

The United States has enormous reserves of natural gas which can be easily tapped for our transportation fuel needs.

If they can be easily tapped, then why haven't they already been tapped? Natural gas technology for cars is very old and proven. Natural gas mining has been going on for many years. Fracking is expensive. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11243/1170956-28.stm

If green energy was economically superior, it would be kicking the butts of all of the established energy companies and the private sector would be rushing in to invest without the need for any government subsidies.

You'd have to level the playing field on both sides, because oil production is heavily subsidized as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html

Environmental quality doesn't mean much if you're out of work

It sure makes it a lot easier to live off the land. Unpolluted water and air means you can sustain yourself outside of the boundaries of civilization. Even in cities, it's nice to have clean air and water and freedom from disease. Of course lassez-faire attitudes are what got us into this economic situation, as money to rich has trickled out (not down) to countries that aren't as concerned with environmental quality and working conditions.

You may be thinking of an incident that occurred a few years ago where kids volunteering to help clean up graffiti cleaned up cave paintings that they thought were graffiti. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/22/world/french-youths-clean-a-cave-and-damage-prehistoric-art.html.

We should be breeding this trait RIGHT NOW.

Well, he did refer to himself as a "suburban dad" - so he's been doing his part...

That's what his wife wants him to think anyway. Looking up rates of superfecundation is an exercise for the reader.

you're a simpleton. you really think it's that pat and done with?

the issue is these pictures go far and wide, out of simple high school meanness. you act like these pictures are exchanged in a philosopher's lounge between consenting parties. you're an idiot for thinking of this problem like that

start here, for what is really going on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27sexting.html

get your head out of your ass with your ignorant's understanding of the issues in play here

You're wrong. They didn't encourage anything.

And you would know this how. What I know is that this wouldn't be the first time that yes, they HAVE encouraged exactly these sort of people in exactly these sort of cases. Go watch the Better this World documentary and note the undercover informant who first regales the suspects with his own history of aggressive protesting and then challenges them to do the same.

Citation needed. I don't find it at all hard to believe that he could have obtained real weapons had the FBI not been involved from the beginning.

Sure thing:

NY Times
In what seems an elaborate operation, undercover F.B.I. agents who had been talking to Mr. Ferdaus for months provided him with some of the necessary components for his planned attack, including six assault rifles, three grenades, 25 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives and even an F-86 remote-controlled aircraft. The explosives and guns were provided on Wednesday just before his arrest, law enforcement officials said.

En. Trap. Ment. Without the FBI, this "case" simply would not have happened, deal with it. If this guy had actually come up with an actual plan and actually tried to carry it out on his own, than go ahead and bust him for that plan. Not one written, directed, and produced by the FBI.

Not create a criminal to justify the continued military-industrial-congressional-contractor-surveillance complex.

the guy was calling for the destruction of the US Constitution and the implementation of Sharia law.

The people who have been destroying the US Constitution are George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and virtually all Republican and Democratic members of Congress.[1], [2], [3]

Agreed. From the GP:

To the extent that cash in the political system is driving many of these problems, Republicans are for perpetuating the system.

Say what? Republicans want less government and less regulation.

Democrats come down (mostly) on the side of the larger number of people

Huh? Unions, big donators to the Democratic party, are not supported by the majority of people: http://www.clarusrg.com/sites/default/files/Majority%20Oppose%20Labor%20Unions%20for%20Government%20Employees.pdf
Doctors? Most (87%) do not support AMA and the Obamacare shoved down their throats: http://www.georgiahealthnews.com/commentary/

Getting money out of politics has always been a Democratic issue.

The NY Times, hardly a Republican sympathizer, points out who spends more money on elections: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/us/politics/27money.html