Slashdot Mirror

Really? Because, you know, multiple other sources say that Zuckerberg started the prototype in September of 2003, and what we know as Facebook was launched in February of 2004.

If I recall rightIy, my vt.edu email address allowed me to register sometime in late 2004 or early 2005. On campus, it was starting to generate a lot of buzz as a great tool to bring lots of people together on short notice.

Your response is typical of what I was talking about though -- memory is a strange and elastic thing. You've been on Facebook for so long it feels like it's been 8 years, but it hasn't, and it really couldn't possibly have been.

Anyone have a 'Religiousness Cure' app handy that can help people become atheist? Would be fun to watch the reactions when Apple approve that one...

Apple has approved a number of atheist apps, including one using the mildly derogatory term "BibleThumper": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/technology/03atheist.html

Troll?

Oh, so sorry.. didn't mean to offend your sensitivities.

What I meant to say was, relax, enjoy it, roll over and take it like a man..

You might be surprised: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html?_r=1 There are, very surprisingly, qualified scientists, including paleontologists (plural) who are also young earth creationists.

It's actually unclear how many have developed radiation sickness because it's clear that TEPCO and the gov't are not reporting much of anything, but it sounds like at least three. Five are dead and 22 have been hospitalized for "various reasons."

So far there have been no reports of workers getting sick from radioactive exposure.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16workers.html?_r=1

Five workers have died since the quake and 22 more have been injured for various reasons, while two are missing. One worker was hospitalized after suddenly grasping his chest and finding himself unable to stand, and another needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation near a damaged reactor. Eleven workers were injured in a hydrogen explosion at reactor No. 3.

That's a little vague, though it does suggest at least one incident ("needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation"). (I suppose it could have been purely precautionary.)

The real danger on this planet are not terrorists but nuclear islamists like yourself who believe their own bullshit, are too fucking dumb to educate themselves (it took me five seconds to locate the above articles on Google) but insist on force-shoving their crap down everybody's throat.

Nuclear power is the safest form of power generation we have.

Educate yourself on renewable energies you asshole, our kids and grand-kids might thank you once in the future for changing your mind.

This was on the front page, on the right side, just below the fold. I believe they have since rotated in a movies section.

I do agree completely, though, that the NY Times is better than a lot of the papers and news sources here in the US. USA Today is terrible, and just recycles everything from Reuters. CNN has lost their way in their bid to fill 24 hours a day on a 2-hour a day budget. And Fox sets a standard.

But we're on a world news standard now. News.bbc.co.uk and guardian.co.uk are excellent. Google news is a great aggregator, bringing in dozens of sources on any topic you might be interested in. And the opposite, news specialization, leads to great sites like Human Rights Watch, Groklaw, etc. Compared to a lot of the available news sources, the NY Times might as well be The Sun.

If you wish for your opinions to be taken seriously by an asshole like myself, you have to be able to talk about relevant issues using appropriate terminology.

FTFY

No fissile materialis stored on top of the building

TEPCO seem to disagree with you (they introduced the term re-criticallity) but you probably know better.

Spent fuel pools are low

I don't understand what you mean by "low". They're on top of the reactor buildings, do you mean "deep"?

plus a bit of fission products,

A.k.a. "nuclear waste"

Active cooling is not required on spent fuel pools,

Possibly. They seem to have water recirculation though. The emptying of the pools are currently not well understood it seems.

Swimming is not allowed

You probably think of yourself as someone very smart, don't you? Please answer honestly. Will you?

Loss of Coolant has occurred already at three reactors

If was thinking total loss of water recirculation in the ponds. Let's say "total loss of water in the ponds", whatever the cause.

Pronouncements such as "exactly one hydrogen or steam explosion away" are preposterous - radioactive release could occur without either, but both might occur without radioactive release.

You're definitely the most pretentious asshole I've read today. But I guess you got my idea (in fact I know that you did and only quip on trivialities to stroke your sense of superiority; which is a granted for you, but who knows where the discussion might end up?)

much of what you have said is utter nonsense.

Much of what you wrote is utter bullshit.

It is conceivable that a significant release of radioactive material will occur

That's the only relevant point in the whole discussion, which you needlessly polluted with all those childish twits that you seem so very pleased with. And I notice that you didn't address it, wasting your time and mine nit-picking on the form and totally overlooking the content. So to repeat myself, in a way that you may be able or willing to understand and/or answer: what consequences?

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant now at the centre of the crisis - the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) - has had a rocky past in an industry plagued by scandal. ... Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing to prevent a full meltdown ... In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/955468--japanese-power-companies-hid-nuclear-safety-problems-wikileaks?bn=1

In one case, workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine, so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Two later died. ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_nuclear_scandals

That's what they want you to believe, at least.

Actually, what they do is offer you a really fucking low "plea bargain" sentence, with a shit-ton of "extra added nastiness" if you force them to go to court. The Plea Bargain long ago stopped being a valid option and is now just a tool of coercion that leads to innocent people pleading guilty out of coercive fear.

And any judge, at any time, can decide you are "noncooperative" and simply throw the book at you. So your lawyer had really be damn good to get you out of that. IF you can afford a lawyer.

Reader srwellman writes "A large plume of radioactive smoke is heading from Japan to the West Coast of the US. Officials claim the plume is not dangerous."

The linked source does NOT validate that assertion whatsoever. The 'plume' is a forecast of the way a plume would take shape across the pacific, if it were to exist. No-one is saying that there is a radioactive smoke plume of any magnitude, including undetectable. It is a weather forecast, meant for internal consumption by various national nuclear agencies for contingency planning and leaked to the NYT, nothing more.

I am very circumspect about any article without citations. The first article has none. I am not dismissing it out of hand, but I don't go for hearsay from a source that I have never heard of. Here is substantially the same information presented authoritatively.

The second article addresses earthquake design basis, there is nothing to suggest at this point that the plant sustained any failures due to the seismic event per se. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency analysis of the safety of the plants appears to be correct but, in hindsight, (like the warnings) too limited in scope.

As reported in the NY Times - it looks like this is Japan's Katrina. From reading the article, I get a sense that this is worse than what happened with Katrina in the US. Any readers from Japan care to comment? It seems like, even if there are very dedicated and smart people working the problem, this wouldn't be something that can be handled simply by nuclear experts. Effective management of this as a crisis is needed, and the people in charge need to work together as a team to solve a national crisis. Neither of which seem to be happening.

The nuclear bit hasn't produced much in the way of damage, at this point, but the tsunami did far, far more damage to Japan than Katrina did to the United States. Katrina isn't even on the same order of magnitude. I've been shocked to see tv news sources suggesting that Japan wants to avoid a Katrina-scale disaster as if this weren't already ~hundreds of times worse.

As reported in the NY Times - it looks like this is Japan's Katrina. From reading the article, I get a sense that this is worse than what happened with Katrina in the US. Any readers from Japan care to comment? It seems like, even if there are very dedicated and smart people working the problem, this wouldn't be something that can be handled simply by nuclear experts. Effective management of this as a crisis is needed, and the people in charge need to work together as a team to solve a national crisis. Neither of which seem to be happening.

wMind actually showing who was put into what sort of risk? I know of one Iranian fencer from a prominent family that was used as a contact. He can probably be identified by authorities. So far, that's it.

And if you even THINK about throwing back some vague "endangering our troops" comment, you need to re-examine your entire argument. Because I can quite equally and vaguely say that he's a great force for freedom and liberty. The difference is that I can point to specific examples of transgressions that he brought to light. Although you might have to dig around, it appears the powers that be have decided to move a lot of stuff to various subpages.

As requested....

Taliban Study WikiLeaks to Hunt Informants

Updated | 12:36 p.m. A spokesman for the Taliban told Britain’s Channel 4 News on Thursday that the insurgent group is scouring classified American military documents posted online by the group WikiLeaks for information to help them find and “punish” Afghan informers.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid, who frequently contacts news organizations, including The Times on behalf of the Taliban, said, “We are studying the report.” He added:

We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them.

Steve Coll, an expert on the region and a former senior editor of The Washington Post, said in a New Yorker podcast on Thursday, “my reading of the disclosure of these informants in the context of Taliban-menaced southern Afghanistan is that people named in those documents have a reasonable belief that they are going to get killed, or — actually the way it works with the Taliban is, if they can’t find you, they’ll take your brother instead.”

Although various professional news outlets attempted to redact the documents, there were documents put on the Internet without redaction. Names were named.

Having informants against the Taliban is a good thing, and not just because of what is going on in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Taliban paid $12,000 to Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad

You picked the wrong "hero".

I don't know -- it wasn't clear. After Edano, some TEPCO people were on, one of whom stated that the breach in #2 is in the pressure-supression unit under the reactor. The pressure-supression unit is the donut underneath the reactor that was built as a cost-cutting measure so that the primary containment structure could be built more weakly.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/greeninc/hanauer.pdf

But that couldn't happen here because the corporations that build our nuclear plants would never cut any corners on safety because the "free market" insures that every possible safety measure has been taken.

Your sarcasm is well placed. The BWR design with a pressure-supression pool was designed so that a weaker containment system could be built as a, you guessed it, cost cutting measure. This design was been questioned in 1972 by S.H. Hanauer. Of course, because of the weaker design and the requirement for many valves and backup valves (which are notoriously unreliable), Hanauer concluded that costs are probably about the same as the safer dry containment system.

Recent events have highlighted the safety disadvantages of pressure-suppression containments. ... If some unexpected event should result in steam generation or flow greater than the suppression capability, then the steam that is not condensed would add an increment to containment pressure. Since the objective of the of pressure suppression is to permit the use of smaller containment, rated at lower pressure than would be required without suppression, then incomplete suppression would lead to overpressurizing a pressure-suppression containment so designed.

Basically, the only advantage reactors like this have over dry-containment, is that they are cheaper to build at the outset, but probably end up costing as much as dry containment systems.

Wow, you have a direct feed from the Crack News Network or something?

Puzzle me this, if only radioactive noble gasses were emitted, why did the Ronald Reagan have to move even though it is miles off shore? Why was there a spike of radioactivity in Tokyo, a couple hundred miles away -- are the winds really traveling 240km per couple minutes? What about the breach in in the containment of reactor two?

More interestingly, what about the torus half full of water under the reactor -- will the building withstand a steam explosion when the core at some thousands of degrees hits that level, breaches the container, and releases the water? That's a big question that the US Atomic Energy Commission first asked in 1972. Cited from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html

Wow, you have a direct feed from the Crack News Network or something?

Puzzle me this, if only radioactive noble gasses were emitted, why did the Ronald Reagan have to move even though it is miles off shore? Why was there a spike of radioactivity in Tokyo, a couple hundred miles away -- are the winds really traveling 240km per couple minutes? What about the breach in in the containment of reactor two?

More interestingly, what about the torus half full of water under the reactor -- will the building withstand a steam explosion when the core at some thousands of degrees hits that level, breaches the container, and releases the water? That's a big question that the US Atomic Energy Commission first asked in 1972. Cited from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html

The USA broke from England partially because the colonists wanted Jury Nullification. It's part of our founding principles. So, of course, the government is doing it's best to make sure it can't happen. Julian P. Heicklen was recently indicted for passing out pamphlets on New York courthouse steps. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/nyregion/26jury.html?src=me

*Note. Passing out pamphlets is one way that our founding fathers started a revolution. So the government is doing its best to stop that too...

I'm sure they're just going to hold Mr. Heicklen as long as they can, rough him up, and release him. There's no way a real jury would convict him, unless they are gagged, ear-plugged, and blindfolded. (Or Blackmailed and paid off)

Also, how many cable stations in the US is English Al-Jazeera on? Talk about a corporate/government lockdown. Al-Jazeera is banned from the New York Stock Exchange floor as well for whatever reason.

What rank hypocrisy. Five Cubans who were concerned with terrorists like Carilles are locked in US jails right now. I'm sure Cuba would be perfectly willing to do a prisoner exchange. The US should free its political and free spech prisoners and stop supporting terrorists like Carilles before its corporations like Geeknet/Slashdot complain about Cuba. How is this USAID spy a spy who should be free, but the Cuban Five should be in prison. Just the arrogant imperial hubris of the US.

Clearly the editors have a time machine and they knew that the 3rd explosion was going to happen. This also explains the constant dups due to editors becoming confused about the ordering as time as they zip around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html

From the New York Times http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/time-warner-cable-profits-on-broadband-are-great-and-will-grow-because-of-caps/ "Mr. Hobbs tried to strike a balance, saying that while the company is concerned about the cost to maintain its broadband network, investors should not be worried. He said it was “absolutely not” true that Time Warner’s profits were being squeezed by the cost of heavy broadband users. " AT&T's actual release says the following "Lopsided usage patterns can cause congestion at certain points in the network, which can slow Internet speeds and interfere with other customers’ access to and use of the network." Not exactly a convincing argument that they truly have an issue. Especially as their revenues, profits rise and their costs for infrastructure and bandwidth drops. http://stopthecap.com/2011/03/14/stop-the-cap-investigates-atts-justification-for-internet-overcharging/ ""Clear conjecture?" Surely you jest. Unless you've made an enormous breakthrough in networking technology, all existing network interfaces can only handle a finite amount of information at once." No jest of all. What enormous breakthrough is needed. Just investment of their profits. If one of their FTTN cabinets is congested they add another or increase the backend as needed. Not exactly a miraculous trick when you are talking about fiber. The fiber that feeds that cabinet can handle many times the needed bandwidth for now and for well into the future. Best of all backend costs for the additional bandwidth and cost for the hardware drop every year.

The plant is now safe and will stay safe

The explanation of the reactor design is nicely dumbed down for us laymen. The author appears to have a grasp of the situation, but is also prone to making obviously false conclusions. We don't know yet if or when the plants will be safe, and he didn't know when he wrote what I quoted. On his statements about the decay of the radioactive plume alone he loses credibility... we already know that the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan received about a month's worth of radiation. If what the author says is true, then it isn't possible... yet it happened. I don't know what that blog post is, but I know it isn't just the facts. From what I can gather from recent stories (within the last hour) we should expect at least one more explosion from hydrogen buildup. I'd hardly call that safe.

The FBI got all up in Wikipedia's business about including an image of the FBI seal in articles about the FBI and, well, the FBI seal itself.
Any issues I may have with the Foundation notwithstanding, this led to a very pointed reply/civics lesson/bitchslap from their general counsel.

Choice quote: "Entertainingly, in support for your argument, you included a version of 701 in which you removed the very phrases that subject the statute to ejusdem generis analysis. While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section 701 that you forwarded to us. "

It's the corporations' money. They should be free to spend it however they choose. Even the Supreme Court agrees.

and with 54% of our taxpayer money going to feed this military machine in a time of nation crippling deficits,

While I would be happy to see the number even smaller, current defense spending is less than 25% of the budget.

we are talking about NUCLEAR POWER. not a cheese factory or a blimp. you poison some people with bad cheese, you crash the hindenburg: ok, lesson learned, some people died, move on. nuclear power, you have to understand, involves the possibility for mistakes that results in vast areas of land uninhabitable for decades or centuries. that's not funny. therefore, you overdesign nuclear plants with safeguards in mind for the most unlikely of events. the fukushima plant? they put the 2 backup diesel generators in the basement. which were flooded by tsunami. because the seawall was never going to fail

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html

(facepalm)

guess what: the walls failed, the generators flooded. all you had to do was put the diesel generators on the roof! or one on the roof and one in the basement

but no. now you have cooling problem. honest mistake? there are no honest mistakes when you are dealing with nuclear power. this is not like you dropped your coffee mug on your pants in the morning. oh well, my bad, move on. there is NO MOVING ON with a nuclear accident. this is a technology where if you make a mistake, you fuck up vast areas of the countryside for generations. you make a mistake, you are stuck with it for a long, long time

so overdesign. then you overdesign some more. then you go back to the drawing board, and you overdesign for the most obscure problem or threat. why? because it's NUCLEAR POWER. if you don't understand why that is so dangerous and so different, stop delivering opinions on it

people better wrap their heads around this idea that you have to be obscenely paranoid about possible problems when designing, building, and operating nuclear plants. there is never an "oops, my bad, carry on" with nuclear power. fi you don't see that, stop talking about nuclear power, you don't understand why it is different from designing a car, a bridge, a computer program

unfrotunately, the NYT is reporting a handful of workers with radiation sickness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear.html

"The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said that three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness."

It seems it's a lot worse than initially thought. There is a probablity of a complete meltdown. In the best case, there will be radioactive discharges for months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html?_r=1&hp

NYT has a well-sourced article on possible impact of containment measures being used.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

I think the issue is more that most of the nukes are off-line and a good percentage of the transmission lines and facilities are just not there any more.

Check out these before/after shots (with a nifty little slider) to really understand that a lot of towns just are not there now.

Even with the best civil defence of any nation, this is going to be a long haul for Japan.

This is also a reminder of why, at least those in the US, should take http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/"?>CERT training, or what ever your local equivalent is. Oh, and get a ham radio and a license too and train with your local EmCommies.

This headline is disingenuous.

I read what this "story" was probably based on here: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/03/11/business/20110313_sbn_GOOGLE-HIRES-graphic.html?ref=business

This is actually brilliant stuff. I wish all managers would read this.

The website linked in the summary cannot even get character encoding correct for en_US.

Nice job posting to an article that is 100% (poorly formatted) copy of a NY times article, with 0% attribution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html

Looks like the article was ripped out (i.e. plagiarized) from the NY Times. original article, with better formatting, is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?hp

Given the rash of medical radiation devices that have been gorking people because they were working incorrectly, I do worry about this.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/health/06radiation.html?src=mv

How about we have an agency OTHER than the TSA provide data on how much radiation in being emitted. Not hard to do -- OSHA rep visits the airport, run the test on each machine, and out. TSA never has to do math again; the radiation output is not a security question anyway.

And you avoid situations like this one, where testing gets somehow... skipped.
Source: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/umdnj_didnt_test_medical_x-ray.html

Compare to China recently where a less powerful quake sent brick buildings toppling onto and killing tens of thousands of people, including government buildings such as schoolhouses that collapsed and killed the children inside.

Building codes are one of the areas where it's almost impossible to argue against the need for government regulation.

I'm afraid you're a few years behind the times.

They were ignoring patents for a long time just as the US used to ignore other countries copyrights back when the US was being hurt by them more than helped.

"If they are innovating, where are the new, high-tech consumer gadgets from China?Why aren't people buying Chinese industrial machines or precision tools? "

Where have you been?
under a vaguely racist rock?

There's massive amounts of innovation coming out of china, so much so that the government is starting to care about patents because now they mean other countries paying china rather than china paying others.
They weren't idiots, they knew damn well that strong IP laws would cripple them when they're trying to innovate fast rather than cash in once they're ahead.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/china-poised-to-lead-world-in-patent-filings/

china has no shortage of incredibly smart and innovative young people.

Shuttleworth notes to that end, "Weâ(TM)ve failed." He adds, "Much of the language, and much of the decision making Iâ(TM)ve observed within Gnome, is based on the idea that Unity is competition WITH Gnome, rather than WITHIN Gnome."

There was a story on The Register today on why Nokia failed. They had the exact same problem - teams that should be working together are fighting against each other and in the end just losing together. That seems to be a large problem in OSS community too, and it's no wonder Nokia had it too (they had many Linux developers). But when a software company, usually proprietary, is ran good, it doesn't suffer such problems as management makes good decisions and gives orders. That is why Windows works good and why the quality is consistent.

Infighting in Microsoft is why we didn't get clear-type for over 10 years after it was available... (Clear-type is the software that gives fonts 3 times the horizontal resolution on LCDs) The Office Suite devs wanted it for their own -- to boost their own team's importance, and refused to fix the the MS Office font system to work with clear-type unless the clear-type devs were placed under the Office Suite team's umbrella.

This is just one small example of MS infighting stifling innovation. Please take your closed source software down from the pedestal. Management is the problem -- That, and a "not invented here" mentality. It can happen anywhere.

Ubuntu and Gnome are diverging because they each have their own goals and any interference with one's goals is not tolerated -- I've found that true collaboration basically requires an alignment of our goals -- Seems to me like human nature.

The difference is that when Canonical and Gnome bicker, I can still use the features that they independently develop... I'm not stuck waiting for 10 years (like for Windows clear-type).

Nope. Sugarcane ethanol gives you about 8x as much energy out as you put in (source). sugar beets are almost as good and can be grown anywhere in the US.

Is education the Silver Bullet? Or is the problem simply going to be the simple fact that there's no going to be enough jobs... for anyone... with any level of education?

I've included a link to a NYT article, but basically automation, robotics, software, the internet, globalization, all are creating situations where more and more "work" can be done with fewer and fewer people.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/falling-demand-for-brains/

Entire classes of workers are either decimated or all but disappear: typesetters, telephone operators, the secretarial pool, news reporters, middle-management. Automotive assembly lines that once employed hundreds are managed by dozens. Groups of lawyers are replaced with software. Hospital radiology positions are outsourced to Israel.

Health care? Japan is already looking at creating robots to do the menial work like emptying bedpans. Surgeons? With telepresence systems, a doctor can operate on someone in NY from his dacha in Moscow.

I believe society is at a tipping point where there will simply be more people than jobs. Unemployment will be rampant across all levels.

And education won't matter. Learn to do what? Cross-train for what? That job space is filled too.

The best and brightest will have their pick. The rest of us???

Funny you should mention Ferran Adria. He seems to like the book, as does David Chang:

Ferran Adrià of El Bulli has said, “This book will change the way we understand the kitchen.” David Chang, the chef and owner of Momofuku, called “Modernist Cuisine” “the cookbook to end all cookbooks.” As Mr. Chang explained, “Only someone like Nathan could do something this comprehensive and rigorous, and we will probably never see another cookbook like it again.”

Blumenthal likes it too (and Wylie Dusfresne, too):

"A fascinating overview of the techniques of modern gastronomy." --Heston Blumenthal

Myhrvold has always acknowledged the contributions of people like Blumenthal, Dufresne, and Adria to modernist cuisine and to the techniques he describes in his book. That's probably why he co-authored the book with one of Blumenthal's protoges.

Don't worry about it. As long as you don't do anything controversial, you don't have anything to hide. Examples of what is controversial really vary. Sometimes it's saying something that's politically wrong (e.g., supporting communists, socialists, any minor party, or the wrong major party), or religiously wrong (taking an interest in an unpopular religion, such as Islam currently, or Judaism historically or in some places), or socially wrong (e.g., sexual practices that your neighbors might disapprove of, even if they do it themselves; or humor or fiction that's politically 'incorrect'). It also depends on who is looking; for example, taking the wrong side of the health care debate might discourage some employers, or of the energy debate might discourage others; what if someone with authority has strong feelings about Guantanamo -- maybe it's better to avoid issues like that; and remember that what's politically incorrect can change -- what's ok today might be wrong tomorrow. What's unremarkable today might be a Congressional hearing tomorrow. When people ask, 'which side are you on?', just be sure you've chosen the right one. Also, make sure it's unambiguous; if someone can misinterpret it they probably will, especially if they don't like you.

Other than that, just do whatever you want online. As long as you do nothing wrong, there is no reason private companies can't log everything you do. In fact, use my computer last thing at night and first thing every morning, so the log is accurate about when I'm sleeping.

Here's NY Times article on why Apple's competing so well price wise.

What's even more disturbing is that the FAA is currently looking to move away from traditional radar and even human air traffic controllers, as part of their "NextGen" system. GPS is just fine as long as there is a redundancy in the system. But the idea of abandoning radar as if GPS were a time-tested system is a little scary.

Of course, just because they have running water and phones doesn't make it "okay" for this division to exist. In the long run, this inequality breeds crime and corruption, makes innovative businesses and ideas less likely, and is overall bad for the economy.

In other words, wealth inequality with or without context is a fine measure of the quality of a civilization.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201102/how-economic-inequality-is-damaging-our-social-structure

Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/business/17view.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1287314086-lFlE4a4AP+wkJ4dprPfTaw I keep saying it. The far right is working hard to make life miserable for their own grandchildren. There are only so many chairs at the big table and your name isn't on one of them.

In a speech last night Gaddafi, an ally of the ousted president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, said he was "pained" by the fall of the Tunisian government. He claimed protesters had been led astray by WikiLeaks disclosures detailing the corruption in Ben Ali's family and his repressive regime. The leaked cables were written by "ambassadors in order to create chaos", Deutsche Press-Agentur reported Gaddafi as saying.

The Iranian government have claimed that Wikileaks is a U.S. plot to destabilise anti-colonislist governments.

the release was an organized coordinated move, adding that such a huge volume of documents could not have been released without the cooperation of intelligence services of Western governments, in particular the US.

A former Pakistanti General has also claimed Wikileaks is a CIA/Mossad plot:

The US has a hand in this plot, and these reports (posted by the WikiLeaks website) are part of the US psychological warfare

Disclaimer: Tunisia: Don't Call It a WikiLeaks Revolution

It's in today's New York Times, a short story in the Bits section about a Congressman who did it. Here's the link.

If you think about it, Jeopardy's a much easier game. It's a question and answer with a 1-to-1 mapping of question to answer. If IBM didn't waste all those millions, they got really close to having 100% of the answers in the database. The hard part might have been some of the word associations to find some answers and real world knowledge to avoid bad answers. In any sports, there's no way to predict what the opponent will do strategically, nor how to discern the moods of the players and the coaches, or deal with slips and errors. How is this coaching Watson figure out who was hung over or sore from too much sex? Or who was madder than hell that day? How is all the data about the way a basketball bounces going to help?

There's an interesting take on how this new item was sort of buried in the newspaper here.