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I don't even mind high frequency trading. What I mind is them getting to see stuff before others and act on it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/business/05flash.html

Go ahead, send your orders as fast as you want. But being able to see other people's orders AND cancel your orders accordingly before the rest of the market gets them is cheating.

I don't even mind high frequency trading. What I mind is them getting to see stuff before others and act on it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/business/05flash.html

Go ahead, send your orders as fast as you want. But being able to see other people's orders AND cancel your orders accordingly before the rest of the market gets them is cheating.

I don't even mind high frequency trading. What I mind is them getting to see stuff before others and act on it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/business/05flash.html

Go ahead, send your orders as fast as you want. But being able to see other people's orders AND cancel your orders accordingly before the rest of the market gets them is cheating.

Whether or not to play in Apple's iOS garden is a business decision companies like Amazon or B&N will have to make. There's no reason for them to offer iOS versions of the e-readers. Oh, except for the large customer base. If that customer base is big enough I'm sure Amazon and B&N and others will agree to Apple's rules. 70% revenue for a customer pool of millions of iPhone and iPad users is better than 100% revenue for zero of them.

Apple's iOS customer base, while large, is much smaller than the general book buying customer base. With this move, Apple is trying to control the pricing on all eBook products sold. If Amazon or B&N want to continue to offer their iApps, they will have to make their eBook prices the same both in-app and on their storefront. To cover the 30% that goes to Apple they'll have to either lose money on every eBook they sold in any way to an iOS device basically, or raise their prices for everyone.

I seriously doubt Amazon or B&N either one is going to find Apple's iOS customer base large enough to justify the money loss or lowered sales due to higher prices. I'm sure they'll be complaining to regulators (I doubt this is going to fly in Europe, even if it does in the US), and more than likely dropping their apps when they come up for renewal. Apple already refused to approve Sony's eReader app last month, that was probably the first shot across the bow.

This move hurts consumers, hurts developers, and hurts publishers. The ONLY thing it benefits is Apple. I don't think this will end well for Apple though, even if the massive power grab doesn't get regulatory attention (and it's likely to do so, Apple's trying to command pricing on the entire eBook market with this move) it's likely to end with either higher prices for everyone, or the removal of some very, very popular apps. Apple may think that doesn't matter, but I just can't see people buying their eBooks from Apple just because Apple essentially demands they do so.

Apple takes a 30% cut of charitable donations made through an app. Disaster relief, feed the hungry, all of it. Everybody pays. In an era where credit card processors are getting hit by regulators (correctly!) for charging 2-4% transaction fees, Apple says it's 30% or nothing.

You'd think the phones were free.

I welcome the mass exodus of developers from iOS to alternative platforms, and then I welcome the later transition to HTML5 instead of "apps" to deliver what should have been web pages anyway.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/technology/09charity.html?_r=1

I am not making sweeping generalizations. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tierney%20haidt&st=cse

Furthermore, why should someone be tolerant of other beliefs when they are insane? Should we also tolerate Schizophrenics being allowed to obtain government positions when they refuse to take their medication? A prime example of how insane the Republican party truly is is how they continue to push for Intelligent Design in schools as an "alternate theory". It is not an alternate theory. Maybe god exists and set things in motion, but there is overwhelming evidence that evolution is the most correct model we have, yet these people continue to deny it. That is textbook insanity. Sure, not all Republicans are like that, but a significant enough number of them are and it continues to be tolerated by the party.

1. Glenn Beck works for Fox News

2. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp

3. Saudia Arabia is deeply unnerved by the revolutions sweeping aside the old crusty strongmen in the Middle East

So Prince bin Talal gets on the phone with Glenn Beck's bosses. Next day, Glenn Beck starts spouting off against internet tools that Middle Eastern revolutionaries use.

Yes, the same Glenn Beck who wears a Revolutionary War era Tricorner Hat and wraps himself in the American flag.

The tragedy is the people who reject, for example, Barack Obama as a "communist" and "secret muslim" and "antiamerican who wants to destroy the USA" and doubt he was born here. Incredibly low IQ lies and smears. Low IQ lies and smears spread by people who wrap themselves in the American flag, but who are of course working for corporate and foreign interests, corporate interests squarely pointed against what is good for Americans and American interests. And millions of Americans beleive this nonsense! Why? Because the "information" is presented to them, not by appealing to their sense of reason, but by appealing to their emotions: fear, hysteria, panic. Classic propaganda psychology.

The tragedy is people who view Fox News as "American" and don't know they are basically being propagandized and programmed against, for example, their own self-intererests, like higher quality, more affordable health care. Because the insurance industry might make less money. Better that Grandma die 10 years earlier than we succumb to evil SOCIALISM. Seriously?!

Sheep, whose Real American (tm) opinions are bought and paid for by Saudi Oil money, fat cat corporate dollars, and yes, the Chinese Communist Party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/asia/26murdoch.html

So to summarize: Obama is a Communist and a Muslim Terrorist and anti-American... propaganda deeply believed by millions of Americans whose brains are basically programmed via a regular dose of fear and hysteria by smearmongers like Glenn Beck, whose ideological whoring... drum roll please... is paid for by actual Saudi Wahhabists and Chinese Communist controlled corporations!

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be hilarious.

And it doesn't do as much a netbook. No one's gonna buy a device like this.

"The NY Times has an interesting story (reg. may be required) ... what google did to them when they found out.

Copying a New York Times article wholesale, and then using a Slashdot post to bait-and-switch readers into visiting your website rather than the Times?
Ballsy.

Doing so when the article's content is about using malicious links to artificially inflate your site's visibility?
Just. Not. Cool.

The original NY TImes article is here. Whether you approve of the Times' registration policy or not, you shouldn't support people who steal their content and use it to make money.

It makes no mention of which coffee shops are making such bans, and offers no other citations on the "issue". It's mostly a wiki-dump of the history of coffee shops going back to the 16th century. This is about the only article I could find noting this "trend" - from August 2010, a lifetime ago tech-wise. The main issue being that some shops banned "computers", either outright or during certain hours, with no differentiation between laptops, tablets, or e-readers (or smartphones for that matter).

It's a non-issue, a bump in the road. These shops, what few there are, will eventually adjust their policies. Nothing to see here, move along.

.

clearly he was also not responsible for his Senate vote in favor of telecom immunity from violating the law to help with warantless wiretaps and dragnet domestic surveillance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/politics/02fisa.html

clearly he is just a victim in all of this. he has no real power to e.g. order us out of our foreign wars. apologize for him if you want, but it's pretty clear he's a willing participant.

MS got: IE as the default browser on the Mac, and the end to patent lawsuits.

Not just patent lawsuits. Microsoft had been caught stealing QuickTime source code and putting it in Video For Windows.

"MMS, B17 and DCA are all unpatentable. The FDA drug approval process is patent-based. Without a full patent and full ownership no pharmaceutical company will invest in drug development as they do not own the rights to the drug. The costs of drug testing are very high, with figures running from several hundred million to over a billion dollars. The FDA expects drug companies to have patent protection to allow them the ability to recover the high drug research and testing costs. Even orphan drugs need patent protection and the FDA often goes one step further by granting marketing exclusivity to compensate for the smaller markets those drugs serve.

There is no system in place for the development of unpatentable drugs, materials currently in the public domain. These potential therapies do not qualify as generic drugs either, as generics were patented drugs for which the research data has been submitted and the patents have expired. No data is in place for drugs that are not patentable."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100809202210AA7A6h9

While it doesn't cover unpatentable drugs, the purpose of the Orphan Drug Act is an attempt to add incentive where Big Pharma can't find any on their own to develop drugs for less well covered diseases. It is a recognition by the government that without patents, drug companies and the universities they partner with are less willing to pursue research where there is no money to be made by a temporary monopoly on the drugs resulting from the research.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C0CE4DF1F3EF933A05757C0A966958260
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_drug

= 9J =

Patents Over Patients
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html?_r=1

Patents Over Patients
By RALPH W. MOSS

State College, Pa.

WE could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market — no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result.

The reason for this problem is that bringing a new drug to market is extremely expensive. In 2001, the estimated cost was $802 million; today it is approximately $1 billion. To ensure a healthy return on such staggering investments, drug companies seek to formulate new drugs in a way that guarantees watertight patents. In the meantime, cancer patients miss out on treatments that may be highly effective and less expensive to boot.

In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf compound called 3-bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover, the investigators estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents per day. Yet, three years later, no major drug company has shown interest in developing this drug for human use.

Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical, dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent. However, as a university news release explained, dichloroacetate is not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical. So the university is soliciting public donations to finance a clinical trial.

The hormone melatonin, sold as an inexpensive food supplement in the United States, has repeatedly been shown to slow the growth of various cancers when used in conjunction with conventional treatments. Paolo Lissoni, an Italian oncologist, helped write more than 100 articles about this hormone and conducted numerous clinical trials. But when I visited him at his hospital in Monza in 2003, he was in deep despair over the pharmaceutical industry’s total lack of interest in his treatment approach. He has published nothing on the topic since then.

Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific merit, not on their patentability. One solution might be for the government to enlarge the Food and Drug Administration’s “orphan drug” program, which subsidizes the development of drugs for rare diseases. The definition of orphan drug could be expanded to include unpatentable agents that are scorned as unprofitable by pharmaceutical companies.

We need to foster a research and development environment in which anticancer activity is the main criterion for new drug development.

Ralph W. Moss writes a weekly online newsletter about cancer.

More references here...
http://www.thedcasite.com/Unpatentable_drugs_and_the_FDA.html

= 9J =

Flat out wrong.

Public opinion polling shows the majority of Egyptians want to keep the peace treaty with Israel
Also The New York Times is publishing statistics that Egyptians are liking the US more than before; 45% positive rating vs 29% negative rating.

of course we can't have that because its nuclear

Wrong, you can't because nuclear is too expensive:

Exelon [largest nuclear operator in USA] said it needs natural gas prices to reach about $8 per million B.T.U. — almost double today’s price — and a carbon fee of $25 a ton to make the project worthwhile economically. “We don’t have the right stimulus right now,” said Christopher M. Crane, president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview.

Drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground as part of a controversial drilling technique, a Democratic congressional investigation has found.

Injecting diesel as part of "hydraulic fracturing" is supposed to be regulated by U.S. EPA. But an agency official told congressional investigators that EPA had assumed that the use of diesel had stopped seven years ago.

"The industry has been saying they stopped injecting toxic diesel fuel into wells," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who led the inquiry. "But our investigation showed this practice has been continuing in secret and in apparent violation of the [Safe Drinking Water Act]."

But heh, don't let oil/gas companies poisoning US citizens for profit keep you awake at night.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/31/31greenwire-fracking-companies-injected-32m-gallons-of-die-24135.html

"disgruntled volunteers were gruntling very publicly"

Would that include the one with the competing site, who can also afford the entrance fees for Davos?

the Tea Party has shown Americans know where things are headed

Pardon? The Tea Party has been wrong at every turn. They talk about federal taxes being high, when in fact they are at a 60 year low. They got fired up over "death panels" and "a government takeover of healthcare", both of which are lies.

The Tea Party shows nothing but that Americans are easily led by astroturf campaigns set up by billionaires.

Planned Parenthood doesn't use government funds for many of the abortions it performs as it can't per the Hyde Amendment.

Probably should have included a citation...

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/government-backs-1-billion-plan-to-make-gas-from-wood-chips/

The four plants the "loan" is for are to be located in Texas, Georgia and two in Mississippi. This sounds very sketchy to me...why not build the plants where there are actually trees? Sounds more like a contract scam--the plants are never meant to be profitable. More then likely the builders make their money (paid for with our taxes) from the construction, the plants fail to make money (for whatever reason), plant operators default on loan, story over, we're out a billion dollars.

You build a wind-generator, you get something for your money. You build a pipe-dream, you get smoke.

Make that "a disheveled computer geek who smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days ..." I've always thought that Swedish women had better taste than this. According to the NY Times' Eric Schmitt: “He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days.”

I want to know why Obama hasn't closed the damn place yet. One of the major reasons I voted democratic in the last presidential election was to put an end to this sort of thing.

Because Obama is not the dictator of the United States but must faithfully execute[1] the laws passed by the Congress when they are within the power of Congress to regulate. As it happens, Congress has the explicit power to determine what happens to captures[2] during a time of war. So blaming Obama here is somewhat ridiculous as he is simply not in an office charged with

So far, Congress has forbidden the Executive from moving detainees from Guantanamo[3,4] by huge supermajority votes (90-6 in the Senate, for instance). The actual statutory language[5] is quite clear (quoted below). So if you want Obama to close Gitmo then you are essentially asking him to ask in open defiance of the law.

SEC. 1032. PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FUNDS FOR THE TRANSFER OR RELEASE OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA.

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act for fiscal year 2011 may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the United States, its territories, or possessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee who--
(1) is not a United States citizen or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; and
(2) is or was held on or after January 20, 2009, at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the Department of Defense.

[1] Article II, Section 1.
[2] Article I, Section 8.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21detain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html
[5] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:5:./temp/~c111aSU9NC::

I want to know why Obama hasn't closed the damn place yet. One of the major reasons I voted democratic in the last presidential election was to put an end to this sort of thing.

Because Obama is not the dictator of the United States but must faithfully execute[1] the laws passed by the Congress when they are within the power of Congress to regulate. As it happens, Congress has the explicit power to determine what happens to captures[2] during a time of war. So blaming Obama here is somewhat ridiculous as he is simply not in an office charged with

So far, Congress has forbidden the Executive from moving detainees from Guantanamo[3,4] by huge supermajority votes (90-6 in the Senate, for instance). The actual statutory language[5] is quite clear (quoted below). So if you want Obama to close Gitmo then you are essentially asking him to ask in open defiance of the law.

SEC. 1032. PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FUNDS FOR THE TRANSFER OR RELEASE OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA.

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act for fiscal year 2011 may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the United States, its territories, or possessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee who--
(1) is not a United States citizen or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; and
(2) is or was held on or after January 20, 2009, at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the Department of Defense.

[1] Article II, Section 1.
[2] Article I, Section 8.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21detain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html
[5] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:5:./temp/~c111aSU9NC::

I wonder how much attention Nokia will pay to Maemo if it makes Win7 its default mobile platform:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/technology/04nokia.html

The police's job during the 2004 RNC was to keep the peace, protect property and allow the convention to take place.

So you agree that providing false testimony, editing videotape evidence, or spying of dissident groups would not be under the police's lawful duties?

As for the Rand Paul supporter... Try this.

I'm not sure what that has to do with Rand Paul. If you want to learn about unions and violence, this would be a more useful link. Here is a good historical overview. For the motive behind the FUD about "union violence", see this and this.

Of course, we can't really blame the conservative half the country on the acts of a single member.

Of course. Conservatives may be, by and large, mistaken in their views, but I certainly do not wish to suggest that they all are directly responsible for the reprehensible acts of a few -- any more than everyone on the left is directly responsible for the reprehensible acts of a few.

But that's not the proposition you put forth. Your claim was that you has not seen evidence that anyone on the right was in favor of forceful censorship. That can only be true if you are living in near-isolation from the world, or if you were -- consciously or unconsciously -- closing your mind to highly visible evidence. And you specifically named Palin; a few minutes with Google could have saved you from looking pretty ignorant there.

People who have opted to send information to microsoft used google (and various other search engines) to search for something. The Bing toolbar, or whatever was collecting the information, noted that person X searched for term Y, and eventually ended up at page Z. It makes perfect sense to connect Y and Z, regardless of the search engine used, or even if they asked a friend to point them to a page about the subject.

That's a weak argument. It's like that story about Alison Chang and Virgin Mobile. Just because the person who took her picture gave a free license to use those photos, doesn't mean you automatically get the permission of the people in the picture. Likewise, just because people opted into using the Bing toolbar doesn't mean that all the info it collects is free for Microsoft to use. If that reasoning worked, I could ask my friend for permission to videotape everything he does for a day, follow him into a movie theater, record the movie, and when the MPAA sues I could just claim I was recording my friend's activities, not the movie. When Microsoft saw the Bing toolbar returning results from google.com, they should've been smart enough to think "This is a competitor's site. It would be downright unethical to copy results from it, if not outright plagiarism and illegal."

See my other comment too, but this is from some stuff I sent Freeman Dyson, people won't get some of the references without having read his books, but seem my point on a new defense directorate. :-)

=== Beginning ...

In "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet", which I'm currently reading aloud to my kid, you talk about how those three tools can bring about a revolution in global abundance, which I have no doubt has truth to it. But, the fact is that we have known for a century how to harness the power of the sun for unlimited energy. Through thousands of years of selective breeding we have created a diversity of abundant agricultural crops like hundreds of flavors of apples including ice cream flavor and loyal dogs to be our playmates and guardians (all currently being lost to monocultures of MacIntosh apples and Golden Retrievers). And we put in place postal services, telegraph lines, printing presses, and rail lines that were in many ways better than the internet because they had less spam and you had to be less of a stegnographic expert to wade through the junk. So, why was the 20th century full of war, whether two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, ethnic wars, and so on? Why did we not use all that potential to create universal abundance? Why did people in Prussia instead invent compulsory schooling to turn humans into factor drones and mindless soldiers, and try twice to take over the world? Why is the USA still obsessed about having an empire? I'd suggest that the missing piece of all that is the idea that we now had the tools of abundance (even bureaucracy that efficiently gassed the Jews while it schooled the Hitler Youth Corps was a potential tool for abundance), but we were using those tools of abundance still from a scarcity perspective. And when misused, such tools of abundance could make terrible weapons, like nuclear bombs instead of nuclear batteries, and weaponized plagues instead of cures for malaria, and killer robots instead of factor robots making food and goods for all.

I guess, if you wanted to be charitable and not consider this complete lunacy, you could see this as some sort of wacky PhD thesis resulting from the times we talked in your office and you gave me a physical design for a sustainable community (Ted Taylor's Micropolis). This is sort of a thesis on the ideological and social design of such a place, or the larger network of such communities and larger entities that it might be part of. Either that or it is a heap of autobiographical creative writing. :-)

Anyway, maybe I should bill it as a sort of Christmas present? :-) At a risk of getting this reply: :-)
"You Shouldn’t Have. I Mean It. (Worst Gift Ever.)"
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/you-shouldnt-have-i-mean-it-worst-gift-ever/?partner=rss&emc=rss
"This week, City Room’s James Barron asked readers to recall the worst Christmas gifts they had ever received. Here is a selection, lightly edited. Merry, um, Christmas." ...

=== A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene

Albert Einstein's said: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

When I first heard that (really just the first part, as people rarely quote the last, I thought what he was saying was, essentially, we should learn to be nice to each other and stop being warlike by an act of will. I don't know if that is what he really meant, or not. But, I now have a somewhat different generalization of his suggestion.

My generalization of Einstein's insight is to suggest "the biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those th

1. many countries complain about the downside of immigration. but japan is one of the few countries that actually polices it obsessively, such that there is very little, and what little of it that there is, is strictly temporary and vigorously policed. as such, japan has a greying population and has to build robots, because they fear koreans or chinese or filipinos will somehow destroy their country. nonsense. there's nothing wrong with controlled immigration, but the japanese have a very weird hang up about it. still, considering their racial hang ups, you have to wonder what bothers the elderly more: a nonjapanese nurse or a robot?

2. finally, there's this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/asia/28generation.html

japan is a "grey democracy," a gerokelptocracy (made up word): the elderly hoarde the power in corporations and in society's rules such that the young can't get a foothold. young workers are underpaid and overworked in companies purposefully to support the perks for older dead wood in the company. such that many young japanese now just want to leave the country. this of course exacerbates japan's serious problem of a top heavy age distribution: who is going to pay for the care of all of the older japanese?

so robots caring for the elderly might be a funny tech article, and us techies might think of the japanese trying to get robots in all these domestic situations as laudable. but its actually the sign of a social sickness. the whole subject matter really speaks of some very serious social problems japan has, that are only going to get worse, unless japan makes some difficult choices, and soon

A few years ago there was a man who was told to turn right... at a railroad crossing. He dutifully did and the car got stuck on the railroad tracks. Shortly thereafter a commuter train made short work of his vehicle (he had safely gotten out). The line is electrified with third rail (the kind that does not have wooden protection boards) so he is pretty lucky to have not hit the damn thing when exiting the car or even with the car itself.

A very respected psychology researcher recently published a paper producing purported statistical evidence for "psi", i.e. phenomena that cannot be explained by known science. The author carried out a long and detailed study on his students: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html and concluded that the effect of 'psi' was 'statistically significant'. The evidence was severely criticized by his peers - in particular is a dismissive rebuttal to the work cited in the same article. Links to the papers lie therein as well. The outlook I have had, reinforced by these studies is that it doesn't hurt to dab a toe on the other side (i.e., in favor of pseudo sciences) every now and then. It helps you think out of the box of known science and understanding. It's like exploring a landscape by following the stars rather than your GPS and compass. You may venture into uncharted territory more easily with the former.

The inestimable Nate Silver referees:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/how-much-does-bing-borrow-from-google/

It's pretty much the same concept as buying a gift voucher for a store. If Zynga will honour their agreement, and the customer thinks it's worth the money, I don't see what the big deal is.

Right... IF

IF the financial world would have honoured their agreement and would have not wrap toxic mortgages in triple-A bonds to be sold to customers that thought the triple-A rating is real, then we wouldn't have spoken now about world economic crisis.

IF the same financial world suddenly see Zynga-and-friends as a way to get around regulations and escape in an "unregulated virtual world", given that your salary in the bank and pension-funds is as "virtual" as the Zynga-dollars, what is going to happen them (your salary, savings and pension-fund) when "game" gets abused?
You think Zynga (the creator of ScamVille) will have any care about their "virtual economy" as long as they are profiting?... in a real-world in which other "virtual mints" compete for the "customer share"? You think the govts will bail-out again if the Zynga economy crashes and bury under the rubles a good chuck of real world "virtual-money"?

Since it already started, it scares the 5#!t out of me to see that a real-world judge protects them!

Since you're not an authorized sponsor of the NFL, that would be, "Big Game" . . .

Yeah, found the article, it's interesting that they talk about the pitch thing like it's a future possibility, talking to the guys from the Indians they were already doing it in production this year.

In this case, the pathogenic environment of high school is so hostile to this particlar student that it would actually kill him in short order (immunodeficient). Second, able-bodied students have the same problem. Third, the robot has a $1,200 / year maintenance contract. Fourth, you could always add some accessories.

Also, why are publishers still getting most of the money for ebook sales? There's nothing to publish. You still need an editor and a marketer, but there's no text to lay out, no pages to print, no bindings to make, and no boxes of books to distribute.

The numbers might surprise you.
Should publishers stop paying authors?
Should they stop laying out text? (Typesetting is no easier in an ebook than a paper one.)
No more need for marketing, overhead, editors, fact checkers, ...?
The physical costs of paper books are almost nothing, yet many people think ebooks should all of a sudden be priced at their marginal cost of production (zero)!
Don't take my word for it.

I've been wondering how this might affect learning since I read Savant for a Day several years ago. Since it looks like you can actually learn using this technique, it might be time to add some magnets to my tinfoil hat!

That's exactly it. Responding to both you and your comment's parent, it's all to easy for us Westerners to point our finger at China for draconian censorship laws and even boot camps for treating computer addiction all without realizing that such measures may be necessary because the cultural characteristics enable increased predisposition to zealotry.

It's a double-edged sword. If, as the stereotype goes, Chinese kids are able to study and be good at math and avoid all social interaction for 18 hours a day, then why would it be so difficult to imagine them playing video games in a similarly passionate manner? You sure as hell couldn't find any American kids with that kind of dedication to anything.

On a related note, I was fellated earlier at around 9:30pm Pacific time. My friends cousin came over for a few beers and, don't you know, we were soon studying Chinese foreign policy under candlelight and covers. She doesn't f*ck on the first date, but man, does she s*ck on the first date. Had to pull the sheets outta my ass afterward.

In summa, we all must exercise restraint when laying judgement on the actions of cultures other than our own. Thank you all for reading.

I have a feeling we'll need one in the US very soon (sometime this decade).

Irconically it may be that in Egypt they won't need it after all. US envoy has told Mubarak they recommend him not to run again, not to participate in transition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02transition.html?emc=na

A woman who is simply plain has no control over her appearance and I would happily go out with one of them if we got along. A woman who is fat has total control over her weight and anyone who says otherwise is full of crap. The problem with the fat woman is not only is she unattractive, but she's unhealthy, probably has poor hygiene and can make you fat as well.

Aside from that, the problem with most guys here is probably not how they look, but how they act. Most women, beautiful or not, don't care what a guy looks like. Shallow ones might like money, but the non-shallow ones (yes, there are single beautiful, non-shallow and intelligent women out there) will like a guy with a good personality and sense of humour. Although I think I'm a fairly attractive guy, I've met most of my past girlfriends primarily because I'm a very outgoing person by nature.

I know many of you read the alarmist stuff in the Drudge Report and NYT but this is not that big a deal really. After all, like the J-20, this is all still at the experimental and prototype stage. It remains to be seen if they can actually get to the production stage with not just a viable product but a product that is a significant threat.

Also, I don't think the Chinese have any ambitions and plans for aggression. Developments like this are just what one would expect of the country with the largest number of people and the second largest economy in the world. Their leaders would be incompetent if they didn't even bother to keep up with the rest world in space and defense technologies.

Also, why would they want to commit acts of aggression and/or invade other countries, rock the boat and upset the status quo and piss away billions when things are going so well for them?
All they have to do is look at what has happened in the last 10 years to figure out that it doesn't pay at all the invade other countries. You lose friends and lots of money in the process and people hate you and get absolutely nothing in return.

Population growth in western nations is also declining faster than at any other point in history.

Apparently that atheism gene isn't quite prolific enough.

I forgot, China is a Western Nation.

a) genetics does not play a role in the formation of religious closed groups
b) it does

False duality.
c) depends on the parity of bits 3,7, and 11 of a crytographic hash of all the other genes.

Since the number of combinations of "all the other genes" exceeds the human population, you can't rule (c) out through population studies. The best you can achieve is "as presently averaged out, but susceptible to the change in the base rate of any other gene".

I'm willing to concede the likelihood that some genetic clusters in some initial conditions dispose a person to the religious M.O.

The other obvious statement is that if this were true, it would have happened already. Societies tend to be more religious during periods of high growth, and less religious when growth slows (which usually correlates with education, health care, and general wealth). I think the author underestimates the defection process.

One could say that religion is the counter-attack of the impoverished.

The Amish are an exception maintained by functioning as a exceedingly closed group. This kind of isolationism works in agriculture, but won't work so well in off-shore manufacture.

The best example we have of this functioning on a large scale is Utah. Appears population growth rate in Utah is high, but only recently the population of Utah surpassed Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Noah's Ark has come under stiff competition from Venter's Ark. Noah can't win. There's more genes than water.

Theory on Butterfly Evolution Is Vindicated by the author of Utah's favorite book.

Population growth in western nations is also declining faster than at any other point in history.

Apparently that atheism gene isn't quite prolific enough.

Have you seen AMT? The explanation is a mess.

In general, Intel does nothing well except produce chipsets and processors.

Is Intel CEO Otellini a competent manager? Should he be replaced?

Intel bought what??? A third rate anti-virus company that makes a product that is necessary only because having vulnerabilities makes more money for Microsoft? (The average person cannot fix an infected computer and buys a new computer with another copy of Windows. See the New York Times article: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster.)

Intel bought McAfee for how much? $7.68 billion??? Why? Don't they have competent programmers at Intel? What does McAfee have that would cost more than $7 million to program?

I hope someone can convince me it's all okay, because a lot of what Intel does seems incompetent to me.

FAIL. I'm a non-smoker, and so is all my family (gives me a headache as an allergic response). So when I was growing up I was quite perplexed why my dad was so vehemently AGAINST increases in taxes on tobacco. He explained that increasing taxes on something that was undesirable as a society has the effect of entrenching that item because you are dealing with two selfish motivators that increase dependence on the item and the practise.

First, users of the undesirable item will rationalize that their use of the item is funding a noble cause (government, education, environmental cleanup) through the revenues generated by their usage. This enables them to continue in the vice which in this case is dependence on foreign oil.

Second, an increase in tax revenues related to the item fuel political dependence on that revenue and demotivates the discontinuance of the use based on a reduction in revenues. Some small countries derive over 50% of their tax revenue based on tobacco as an industry. In these countries the politicians are quite beholden to the tobacco interests. An increase in governmental revenues based on oil usage will create a reliance on that consumption in order for those governmental entities to be properly funded.

The other outcome is that it works! and dependence is deterred through the tax. Again, the ones to suffer will be those that are now dependent on that revenue stream. In one instance, I've seen politicians tie an increase in a tax that would benefit schools by penalizing the users. They then cut other funding related to housing taxes that benefited the schools. When the deterrence worked the schools were now under-funded and had to cut programs and teachers.

Just what are you trying to accomplish here?

In my mind the big problem here is not that the US is so dependent on oil, but that we are so dependent on CARS! A million new electric cars means a million consumers of energy. We need a end to unsustainable transportation with a change in our car hungry culture. Regardless of the technology used, an adopted public transportation system is always more efficient in resources than one that proposes a million cars with a single passenger in them.

And for what it is worth, just cause the president says you won't get groped boarding on the high speed train doesn't make it so nor does saying so remove it as a potential target from terrorists. By my count, trains are are more favored target than planes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/world/europe/29russia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings

Most observers would say that is a good start, but is it reasonably doable?

First of all I realize you just copy/pasted the first paragraph from the article but "most observers" sounds a bit like weasel words and I didn't see where in the article anyone was calling this a "good start" nor can I think of anyone who would say that. This (like a lot of them) is a pretty polarizing issue and I'd bet "most people" are going to end up claiming it to be a waste of taxpayer money or too little too late. Not a whole lot of moderation out there these days in political views.

Secondly, sure it is achievable and you don't even have to raise taxes. Shift some of the oil subsidies toward this initiative. If you're afraid of losing jobs in the oil industry, include stipulations of domestic job creation and opportunities on these investments. I think Obama already promised to shrink oil subsidies down so that over the next decade $20 billion is saved by the taxpayer -- why not use that for this? Whether or not it's going to actually achieve a desired effect, now that's the real debate. Not whether or not it's 'doable.'

It is worth noting that the guy who told us ahead of time that there were no WMD in Iraq, Mohammad ElBaradei, is getting hit with water cannons now. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/world/middleeast/29unrest.html Wonder if he is right again?

Heightening the tension, the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest organized opposition group in the country, announced Thursday that it would take part in the protest. ... “Tomorrow is going to be the day of the intifada,” said a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28alexandria.html?hp