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Gerald Joyce, a chemist and molecular biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said the work “shows in principle that you could have a different form of life,” but noted that even these bacteria are affixed to the same tree of life as the rest of us, like the extremophiles that exist in ocean vents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html

This appears to be bacteria who can knock phosphorous out of their DNA and downstream molecules and replace it with some form of arsenic. Neat trick and probably very useful when surviving in high arsenic low phosphorous environments? But not a new tree of life, just plain old tough-as-a-boot regular life doing what it does best: surviving.

"...her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today."

Not really, the structure is still most the same, except phosphorus is very likely swapped out for arsenic. They don't have a direct proof that phosphorus is used in DNA yet, but it's very likely. It has been a theoretical possibiltiy, and now they very likely have found the example.

"...this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology."

Err.... no, it changes some concepts, but a lot of what we know about biology is still the same. Eating arsenic is still going to kill people.

I am not disputing the importance of this finding, but as NASA scientist said, it expands what we know about biology, rather than "change(s) everything we know".

Why not just link to NASA? http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html

Even NY Times has a better write up: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html?src=mv&pagewanted=all

and is compatible with sharia law

OOPS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29mon1.html

If Google's change does what's intended, downrank URLs of merchants who invite furious web opinion as a marketing ploy to game search engines, only the losers, like bile-thriving DecorMyEyes' Vitaly Borker will seek alternative means of self promotion. Frankly, I suspect that's a pretty small contingent of potential astroturfers -- 'hundreds' according to the Google blog.

I suspect that Google has indeed applied Sentiment Analysis, but done so narrowly, targeting only (1)merchants described with (2)domain-specific epithets and phrases from (3)buyers who are unhappy.

BTW, here's the link to today's NYT article. It and Sunday's original article are an worthwhile read.

Its a long interesting read.
Quite the character mr. Borker is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html

"Not one single Iraqi ever physically harmed an American outside of their sovereign border." I'd like to see your proof for that universal and categorical negative. Further, almost all of the Iraqis killed were killed by other Iraqis and not NATO troops (there isn't a great source for that statement but here are two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War; http://www.iraqbodycount.org/). As for how many Iraqis Saddam Hussein killed? Estimates rage from the high 100 thousands to the millions: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07MAKIYA-t.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=310195565a77e9ff&ex=1349409600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.

You may or may not agree with the war in Iraq (I certainly don't) but what is occurring cannot compare to what occurred before.

This was done because of pure and simple political pressure.

It's not even the first incident of its kind this week: the Smithsonian removed a piece of artwork selected by historians for its significance because they were pressured by several Republican representatives with increased meddling from the new, more conservative house.

There's something wrong when politicians don't even have to pass or debate controversial legislation or regulations to censor private business or public museums. All they have to do is call them up.

Vegetarians are a whole different and sad subspecies of humankind, they try to deny we've been eating meat from animals since many millions of years.

Remember that raw meat is instinctualy repugnant; it's only with the technologies of fire and weaponry that we began eating meat at all - environmental conditions positioning it as a good source of protein. All these years later, we have better, and more future proof means of satisifying our caloric and protein needs.

There are many reasons not to eat meat these days. Here are some

Meat production requires 10 to 20 times more energy per edible tonne than grain production and is estimated to have a 54:1 protein inefficiency ratio (54 units of protein are required to produce a single unit of meat protein). Each cow raised requires (directly and indirectly) 90 to 180 litres of water a day and passes 40kg of manure per kg of edible meat. It's been estimated by scientists that that 1kg (2.2 pounds) of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometers, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

Soya has 4 times more calories than red meat so the amount of soy that could be grown using the same amount of land would feed far more people than if used to raise cows. Moreso, a meat-based diet requires 7 times more land on average than a plant-based diet. Ironically much of the meat eaten world-wide is raised on soya grain anyway. According to The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, livestock production is at the heart of almost every environmental stress confronting the planet: rain forest destruction, growing deserts, loss of fresh water, air and water pollution, acid rain, floods and soil erosion.

Finally, meat eaters generally consume more than twice as much protein as they need, increasing likelihood of kidney failure, cholesterol, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, stress. Legumes, especially soybeans, contain the largest percentage of protein among the vegetable foods and are in the same range as many meats. If legumes are a central part of a vegetarian's diet, there will be plenty of enough protein in the diet.

Alaska balances their budget by taking more federal dollars than the other states. They are the number one recipient of federal pork.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/19stimulus.html

Plus, she is only a supporter of the Constitution when it's the parts of the Constitution she likes.

She is also under the mistaken assumption that we only have rights because the Constitution gives them to us. Which is exactly backwards- those rights are fundamental, we already have them, the Constitution prevent government from taking them away.

It might seem like a minor point, but they are entirely opposite philosophies. Her statement shows that she believes that Government is what grants rights and powers to the People, when in fact it is the People who grant rights and powers to the Government.

As for their budget, I'll defer to the Simpson's movie as to how they keep it balanced.

Border Guard: "Welcome to Alaska. Here's a thousand dollars."
Homer: "Well, it's about time, but why?"
Man in Booth: "We pay every resident a thousand dollars to allow the oil companies to ravage our state's natural beauty."
 

Because the Clinton candidacy was strong when he chose Palin, and McCain assumed (with good reason) that if Clinton got the Democratic nomination that the election would end up being about opening up a new era of equality in politics with regards to female candidates.

McCain didn't choose Palin until mid-August 2008. Obama had nearly enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic nomination by early June. Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama in June, 2008.

Alaska balances their budget by taking more federal dollars than the other states. They are the number one recipient of federal pork.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/19stimulus.html

Plus, she is only a supporter of the Constitution when it's the parts of the Constitution she likes.

Good article on the flaws of using GDP per capita to measure quality of life: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16GDP-t.html?pagewanted=all

That being said, 'socialist' Europe comes out way ahead when you consider the amount of vacation and leisure time all workers get, 'free' education, cheaper health-care, better public transport, etc (all which generally would decrease the GDP per capita).

American Exceptionalism isn't that "America, by its very nature, can do no wrong."

Its the idea that the United States is different than any other nation and in some ways it is true, for example

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/opinion/04blow.html

The US has the highest GPD coupled with high rates of religiosity. 65% of Americans polled are religious yet the US has a high GDP, the chart there shows a classic example of American Exceptionalism.

Anyone with the phone number of Xe and a slush fund has ready access to those things.

That's proving a bit difficult, because there's just so much violence. It wasn't this attack I was thinking of. (It also definitely wasn't this one, or this, though both did involve the IDF standing by and doing nothing. This act of sabotage under the supervision of IDF troops is interesting but irrelevant.)

Note that Palestinians don't get off so lightly if they attack settlers; sometimes the whole messy business of trial and evidence is skipped and they're just shot in their beds.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll find the right link eventually, but it's a lot like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Yes in the beginning users had options, now Google has massive market share and not many alternatives out there. Users are locked in and Google is expanding into new verticals highlighted by recent moves into Fashion, and Travel (amongst others). When growth in display ads are not meeting quotas, Google has to look into taking over new markets and easy to reach search verticals. Makes it very dangerous for freedom of information if Google is also plugging its own products.

Can't help but notice that you didn't include any actual citations. If you're going to bother quoting, then the least you could do is provide links.

You should be able to verify any of these quotes easily. This is a slashdot comment, not an academic paper. But just so everyone knows what I said is accurate:

At its launch, WikiLeaks said it was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa", and that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East". - Source

Steven Aftergood, a veteran crusader against excessive government secrecy and director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, notes, "WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals." - Source

And no, their efforts haven't just focused on the US because of the volume of materials involved. I don't care what has or hasn't been pulled from the web; the point is that the focus of WikiLeaks' efforts have changed to target primarily the US, instead of "oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East". Julian Assange's single-minded crusade against the US has caused rifts within WikiLeaks itself:

Despite latest coup, WikiLeaks facing challenges, Washington Post

Indeed, as WikiLeaks is trumpeting its latest coup, a number of former WikiLeaks activists are painting another picture of an organization that is out of control, still too driven by the personality and ego of its mercurial founder, Julian Assange.

"I'm too busy ending two wars," is the response one reporter got in an e-mail from Assange after asking for clarity on an issue, according to a source who saw the e-mail, and thought it captured Assange's crusading and peremptory nature.

[...]

But the phenomenal rise of WikiLeaks over the past six months has come at a price, former activists say. At least five people from the core group have left because of disagreements over the way Assange was running the operation, said Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old Icelandic activist who moderated a WikiLeaks chat room until about a month ago. "Quite a few others" who were more tangentially involved have also left, he said.

He said too many editorial decisions were being made solely by Assange, including to title the Baghdad video Collateral Murder, a move that suggested to some that WikiLeaks is not neutral. "It had unnecessary effects on how the project was perceived," he said.

Former colleagues questioned the focus on high-profile disclosures such as the Afghanistan records, which, they said, not only meant smaller projects languished but that the rushed staff was ill-prepared to vet so many records to ensure that names of civilians had been redacted.

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety, New York Times

Mr. Assange’s detractors also accuse him of pursuing a vendetta against the United States. In London, Mr. Assange said America was an increasingly militarized society and a threat to democracy.

[...]

In an encrypted online chat, a transcript of which was passed to The Times, Mr. Assange was dismissive of his colleagues. He described them as “a confederacy of fools,” and asked his interlocutor, “Am I dealing with a complete retard?”

"I am the heart and soul of this organisation, its founde

FBI assassinating American citizens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Deaths due to torture
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability

Extra-judicial assassinations (not including daily drone bombings)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html

Of course, no one really knows what The Agency is doing right now. What is known is that the secret prisons still exist, and that the legal process of "extraordinary rendition", known to the rest of the world as kidnapping, still occurs. Our terrorism suspects are regularly flown to dictatorships like Egypt and tortured with our approval.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States

What's funny is that apparently Wikileaks contacted the US government to see which documents exactly had names of people who would be endangered, and instead of telling them, they responded to them with threats. Yeah, they really care about these supposed people and their freedoms...

There's a such thing as responsible disclosure, and Wikileaks blew it. They're irresponsible. We do need to know about wrongdoing, yes. But there's a huge difference between reporting and disclosing serious wrongdoing and just throwing hundreds of thousands of documents at the world and saying here, read this! I don't know what agenda Wikileaks really has, but it's not a good one.

http://documents.nytimes.com/letters-between-wikileaks-and-govWikileaks tried to be responsible and gave the US government a chance to redact anything they though would endanger lives or should be not be disclosed for national security reasons. The US government threw away the chance and decided to throw a tantrum instead. So if these disclosures cause anyone's life to be put in peril then the US government should be held responsible.

They only released 220 documents on Sunday of of those not many were in their entirety.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?src=me

WikiLeaks posted 220 cables, some redacted to protect diplomatic sources, in the first installment of the archive on its Web site on Sunday.

I'm all for the "information wants to be free" mantra, but when it can come to a considerable cost to others, the disclosure can't wipe their hands completely of responsibility. Airing a politician's dirty laundry is one thing, but releasing documents that may have names of people that may be endangered unawares should be handled with some discretion.

considerable cost. like the one below ?

Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

excuse me, but any country, anyone, engaging in shit like the above, already pre-deserved any cost they are going to pay. people reap, what they saw. the only thing preventing the people in administration from reaping what they sow was that these were being hidden behind secrecy with 'national security' excuses.

and now, they came out, and they are saying that 'its irresponsible'. actually meaning 'inconvenient' of course, since they are those who are responsible for the filth exposed. they wouldnt like it to come out.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the leak "not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community."

somehow it suddenly became an attack on 'international community'.

says the secretary of the country that grabbed german citizens in germany and tortured them abroad.

Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

if, exposing the above filth was an 'attack on international community' what the fuck was going and grabbing german citizens in germany and torturing them abroad ?

filth. nothing but filth. and if ANYone listens to their bullshit about 'risking countless lives and freedom', they will be able to perpetuate that shit. notice - freedom. freedom of grabbing people abroad and torturing, she means, probably.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html

Reported April 11, 1954 New York Times: "Pakistan and Afghanistan Said to Plan Confederation; PAKISTAN PLANS AFGHANISTAN TIE".

Only boring people are bored.

The Chinese government has proven that they'll do anything to stop distribution of negative information about them.

the only difference in between the us government and chinese government, is how they approach the concept of 'doing anything' to stop distribution of negative information.

one does it directly, by arresting or killing those who distribute it, the other does it through underhanded, but improvable means.

Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Better than death by IRS building.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html

The document are out, and The New York Times is already reporting on the good stuff.

One of the more embarrassing items is this: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."

How is having diplomats collecting "internet and intranet ‘handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.” from officials in allied countries "least disruptive and most beneficial"? Allied countries which have no motive nor means to threaten the US.

http://documents.nytimes.com/letters-between-wikileaks-and-gov

WikiLeaks provided ample opportunity for the US to state which documents are "putting lives at risk". They instead responded with threats. If there really are lives at stake here, this is incredible irresponsible of the US, especially since it was very likely that WikiLeaks would release the information no matter what.

It just needs to inflate itself out of debt.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Zimbabwe_%24100_trillion_2009_Obverse.jpg

LOL - Zimbabwe, which got indebted in US dollars and Euros (i.e. currencies Zimbabwe cannot print (legally)), ruled by a madman dictator, is the only recent historic example you can cite? Is there no developed nation in your list, really? Wow!

The fact is that inflating out of debt is a hugely successful approach, as long as the country is indebted in its own currency - like the US is today. The UK did it in the early 90s, successfully. Sweden did it successfully, Korea did it successfully, etc. etc. - there's many big and small examples of that approach.

Here's Krugman's take on the right-wing hyperinflation fetish Zimbabwe.

And here's fun fact for you: most mandatory spending takes in more money than it spends. Medicare, and social security, as I mentioned, pull their own weight. They are a surplus.

Social Security isn't pulling its weight this year. Supposedly, Medicare will stay solvent till 2029, though the report notes this is based on assumptions that haven't been true in the past. Just getting rid of these two programs almost balances the 2009-2010 budget on its own. Roll over these taxes into the standard income tax. With a considerable cut from defense as well (it is bigger than these two entitlements taken separately), then the US is solvent.

The best solution is to add semantic information to hyperlinks - but that's not supported yet...

From TFA (which CAN be linked without the loginwall):

“If you have a lot of people who hate Obama, for instance, and you decided to rank on love or hate, you might not be able to find the White House and that would be terrible,” he says.

Going default will be a short-lived remedy. The country will go back to 1990 in terms of market appeal and productivity. And yes, if the big tech companies leave, the hope of reacquiring a high-tech knowledge industry will go away as well.

Paul Krugman's latest column addresses this. The main point is that Iceland let the banks default, while Ireland took the banks debts as public debts and guaranteed it. In the end, Iceland has recovered while Ireland's people have to bear the burden due to austerity measures.

Except that Iceland has its own currency, which it "let" (or chose to) devalue. Ireland (and Greece, etc.) are stuck with the Euro.

As Krugman points out in one of his weblog posts, devaluing is what many countries to when they're in a financial pickle, but that's not really an option for the Eurozone:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/devaluing-history/

P.S. WTF is up with disabling of pasting? How the hell am I supposed to put in URLs? The NYT isn't so bad to type out, but there are a whole bunch of others where it's a pain to. There's also the problem of selectively quoting the parent.

NO, absolutely not, you need to get modded down into the dust and I hope you get pneumonia from it.

It was caused by an asshole at Enron calling the plant manager and telling them to shut down. When they did, the price went up, and Enron profited.

This story made the New York Times five years ago.

Japan does have quite efficient rail travel despite having train cars with lots of people.

http://www.japanechoweb.jp/economy/jew0210

Remarkably, this punctuality has been a feature of Japan's rail services--day in, day out-- for decades now, regardless of rain and wind. This is a record that spans 45 years for the Shinkansen service and nearly a century (since the late 1910s) for other JR lines. 1

Some countries may laugh at this apparent obsession with punctuality, attributing such fastidiousness to Japanese passengers' maniacal preoccupation with time.

But the real reason that trains run on time is not because of demanding passengers but because it suits the adaptation strategies of the railroad companies. That is, it enables the operators to achieve the safest and most efficient railroad system.

In any country, a system in which all trains run according to schedule is the simplest to manage. 2 This is because it enables rail operators to achieve maximum carrying capacity with the given equipment and with the least likelihood of error.

Most efficient perhaps, but safest? I'm not sure, they still get disasters (but no idea how many per passenger-mile or passenger-trip):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/world/asia/27iht-japan.html

It was perhaps with this in mind that the 23-year-old engineer, Ryujiro Takami, headed for Osaka on Monday morning. Takami, believed to have died in the crash, had only 11 months of experience, and he had been reprimanded once for overshooting a platform by 100 meters.

On Monday morning, at Itami station outside Osaka, Takami overshot the platform again, forcing him to back up and lose 90 seconds.

Apparently aware that he would be reprimanded again, he persuaded the conductor at the back of the train to report that he had overrun the platform by eight meters. Today, officials said that the length was actually 40 meters, the equivalent of two cars.

The train, carrying about 580 passengers, began running abnormally fast after leaving Itami station, passengers reported, so much so that the scenery outside whizzed by. The train was scheduled to arrive at Amagasaki station at 9:20 a.m., in time for many passengers to connect to another train leaving at 9:23.

Seems like JR made the mistake of getting someone too inexperienced or untrained or incompetent to do the job- he made mistakes and then compounded them with a fatal mistake.

That said, it doesn't seem that hard to prevent the train from going too fast at some points.

And if your penalty for speeding (or unsafe train driving) is higher than your penalty for being late then you'd rather be late than speed, and I'm sure the trains are monitored. So bad management also shares part of the blame.

FWIW people in management did resign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_rail_crash#Aftermath

You I miss in your statement is that the society does not hate the business man for making money, he/she angers the populous when greed is applied to the model.

- a bit hard to decipher the meaning from the sentence there, but I assure you that most people actually hate those, who have more money, regardless of how the money was acquired.

For the USA, in the late 50 and 60s there was one of the highest tax rates on the rich, yet the country prospered.

- first of all the rich never paid the outrageous taxes in 50s-60s, everything was written off against expenses and also there is a little thing called 'the dividend', and taxing the dividends is double taxation, because that very income was already taxed at corporate level, so dividends are mostly tax exempt. I argue that the effective taxes in those times were lower than taxes today, that's why so much capital left the US.

AFAIC there should be no income taxes at all obviously.

Raising taxes on the rich is not meant as a punishment, it is meant to stabilize their own growth, even as it helps stabilize a society

- really? What a stupid thing to say. The society is stabilized by having a working economy, and having excessive taxes and thus leaving capital and causing lack of jobs is hardly a recipe for a stable economy.

As far as Warren Buffet goes, the guy has profited from the gov't bail outs, his very company would have gone under was it not for bail outs and he does not deserve to be called a free market capitalist anyway.

Thanks to the NYT's valiant efforts, you can be spared from reading TFA: just check out the comic instead.

Going default will be a short-lived remedy. The country will go back to 1990 in terms of market appeal and productivity. And yes, if the big tech companies leave, the hope of reacquiring a high-tech knowledge industry will go away as well.

Paul Krugman's latest column addresses this. The main point is that Iceland let the banks default, while Ireland took the banks debts as public debts and guaranteed it. In the end, Iceland has recovered while Ireland's people have to bear the burden due to austerity measures.

Iceland didn't let it's banks default as part of an act of clever crisis management even if that's what the members of the firmly right wing Icelandic independence party will confidently tell you. What happened was that a series of governments (dominated by the independence party) and stuffed full of free market fundamentalists sat around from the mid-nineties to 2008, deregulating everything, letting the banks grow at a fantastic pace and crippling the various organizations that were supposed to regulate the financial industry. For years they just held their ears shut singing: "lalalalalala... I can't hear you!" whenever somebody criticized the state of the icelandinc banks and the fact that they had become 12 times the size of the national GDP meaning that the state was therefore unable to back them up in a crisis. By the time the crisis finally hit the Icelandic government was completely bowled over. The Independence party had by now formed a coalition with the Social Democrats who proved just as useless as their right wing coalition partner and did little other than watch while the Independence party (who also dominated the central bank) fumbled about and caused things to fall apart. There were no emergency plans in place, nobody had anticipated this. After all, the infallible all-knowing free market should not act like this should it? They finally decided, at the climax of an epic panic attack, to nationalize the most endebted bank, Glitnir, which caused the whole icelandic banking sector to collapse like a row of dominos. Krugman (probably unintentionally) gives you the impression that the Icelandic Government that presided over the 2008 collapse allowed the banks to default by clever design when in reality they simply "pulled a Homer" a phrase which wikipedia defines as: "to succeed despite idiocy". Like Mr. Krugman I pity the Irish for their successful efforts to postpone the pain by a couple of years because it made the problem exponentially worse.

The debts involved are massive, too.

From this article (though note it was written back in September):

"Under the current program, we estimate that each Irish family of four will be liable for 200,000 euros in public debt by 2015."

Ouch.

Going default will be a short-lived remedy. The country will go back to 1990 in terms of market appeal and productivity. And yes, if the big tech companies leave, the hope of reacquiring a high-tech knowledge industry will go away as well.

Paul Krugman's latest column addresses this. The main point is that Iceland let the banks default, while Ireland took the banks debts as public debts and guaranteed it. In the end, Iceland has recovered while Ireland's people have to bear the burden due to austerity measures.

Oddly, that same quote is found here yet there is nothing of the sort on the DHS or ICE website. In fact this story didn't even make the ICE top 5. Source code has Google Analytics and Piwik scripts, something you'd think the FEDs would want to avoid in the case of a trial, seeing as how standard Google TOS claims all rights to the data. What would happen if one these guys went to trail, and you find out 33 children of powerful senators and congressman visited the site via a Google subpoena. Sticky sticky situation. You can even visit the Piwik management portal here, though only if your browser lets you trust unsigned certs... kind of sloppy if you ask me, and not at all like the often well executed ICE programs used to nab BILLIONS in real, tangible, counterfeit goods at our ports. These normal actions are real, as in actions against things actually sold and money actually changing hands. Those things are easy to bring criminal charges against and win. It's very difficult to bring criminal charges against intangible thefts, hence most IP theft takes place in civil court. You don't hear about a lot of DAs making headlines nabbing gangsta torrent pirates outside of Sweden.

Why the Goofy seizure notice with the goofy DHS Special agent badge that lacks a badge number yet is placed in a manner made to represent that specific agent in charge? In all my years I've never seen anything this flashy, and I've got a stack of notices from all kinds of federal and state departments for screwing up some minor thing on nearly every tax or compliance law you can imagine. Federal legal notices are usually quite plain form letters to comply with numerous legal statutes. This is designed to look like the FBI notices on videos, almost as if someone wanted to mislead a large group one way or the other. Besides, why would there even be a legal notice on the site?

Finally, when Operation In Our Sites was launched back in June there was plenty of notice, and plenty of pew-pew over physically taken assets, and seized bank accounts... which is what Title 18 is all about.

The day you exclude 80 year old invalids from the same scans as everyone else is the day that the terrorists start recruiting 80 year old invalids.

Which is why The Terrorists(tm) are now recruiting US Congressmen.

"I'm hard pressed to decide if Microsoft is unwilling, or just unable, to ever fix it."

Microsoft top managers achieve vulnerabilities by not allowing Microsoft programmers to finish their work, apparently. Since Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on operating systems installed on computers you can buy, the vulnerabilities make Microsoft more money because 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.

The solution is to make computers with Linux already installed available. Unfortunately configuration of Linux is quirky and poorly documented, slowing adoption.

Another solution is to use anti-trust law to make Windows more fair for buyers. Should users of Windows Vista pay for an entirely new version of Windows, when Vista was troublesome and a court case showed that Vista was knowingly released before it was ready? There are only small differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7. Why should users pay for an entirely new copy of Windows?

It is my opinion that the present practices of selling something almost everyone with a computer must have are unfair and against the common welfare. Microsoft lost an anti-trust case, but there was never any penalty.

This is one of the more interesting Slashdot stories in a while. I can put myself in your position and feel you emotions on this potential theft. It looks as if IBM is claiming they've made a substantial enough modification to the code/process/design to warrant a patent for them. As far as the USPTO lately, ever since the patented '1 click checkout' , the office has been suspect in my eye. I wonder how big of a potential market this patent has? One thought that I haven't seen mentioned is that, while this might be the more evil of two evils, you could contact the companies/people that are buying companies just for their patents. If this patent had enough value this might be a place to obtain some backing, again the value of this patent is unknown to me. Other than that it's more of a personal pride and justice argument, in these days of the Mortgage crisis and unbridled greed, with seemingly absolutely no consequences, there seems to be no honor, even among thieves anymore. Best of luck. look forward to a future post about the outcome.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/trolling-for-patents-to-fight-patent-trolls/

Given the precipitous drop in home sales in October, they can probably take their time.

No offense, but this is completely speculative, and seems to ignore the fact that these body scanners can cost up to and exceeding $100,000 [epic.org], and that's not even including the costs of hiring and maintaining staff to manage the machines.

So what? A single Predator drone costs $4.5 million, and you don't hear anybody but a bunch of peaceniks complaining about that. There's always money for our friends in the defense/security business.

Unreasonable means that they're about what a dental X-ray would be.

That's funny, the dental x ray sales people are using the reverse argument to compare the safety of their products ;).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/us/23scan.html?pagewanted=all

[Dr. Mah] played down health concerns, saying a cone-beam scan produces no more radiation than a whole-body scan at the airport.

Equating a cone-beam scan with an airport scan is "very wrong -- by a lot," said Dr. David Brenner, who directs the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. In fact, cone-beam scanners can be several hundred times as powerful, he said.

Dr. Brenner said that a child faces up to a 1-in-10,000 chance of developing cancer from a single cone-beam scan.

Maybe we should get Dr Banner's opinion on radiation safety too... ;)

I've yet to have someone show me the information that was not previously publicly known, that came to light because of this, that was so important for the public to know.

The Iraq War leaks provided details of 15,000 previously unknown civilian killings, along with the location and circumstances. That kind of information is invaluable to the Iraq Body Count Project.

That Wikipedia article contains many more "previously unknown or unconfirmed events that took place during the war". One that stands out is:

A number of the documents, as defined by Al Jazeera English, describe how US troops killed almost 700 civilians for coming too close to checkpoints, including pregnant women and the mentally ill. At least a half-dozen incidents involved Iraqi men transporting pregnant family members to hospitals.

I can't recall the U.S. military admitting to killing 700 civilians.

And what about this leaked report:

"On May 14, 2005, an American unit “OBSERVED A BLACKWATER PSD SHOOT UP A CIV VEHICLE,” killing a father and wounding his wife and daughter, a report said, referring to a Blackwater protective security detail.

The military never publicised that soldiers had observed Blackwater contractors shooting up civilian vehicles. Or the numerous other indiscriminate killings by Blackwater that the troops observed. What about this incident report, after contractors drove into a neighborhood in the northern city of Erbil and began shooting at random, setting off a firefight with an off-duty police officer and wounding three women:

"“It is assessed that this drunken group of individuals were out having a good time and firing their weapons,”"

Did the military ever voluntarily reveal that drunken contractors had gone out to have a good time shooting in a civilian neighbourhood, resulting in women being harmed?

There have been civilian casualties and the government knows. To this I can only say: DUH! It is war, it is nasty business.

Well, it wasn't supposed to be a war. The war was supposed to have been won, and this was supposed to be a peacekeeping and nation building operation. The troops and contractors and other actors are not meant to be operating under war time rules of engagement. But the leaks show that, amongst many individuals, there is a disregard for life and the rule of law.

The gunship video. If you think that's a war crime, it only shows your ignorance of the rules of war. I see nothing in that video illegal.

I've already commented on the legal issue. It is not as clear cut as you seem to think. But here's the most important issue: it is not for you or I to determine whether these men are guilty or innocent. That is a job for judges in a military court. Where is the prosecutor in this case? In any reasonable judicial system, a prosecutor would decide whether or not to pursue a court case against these individuals, and he would have to justify this decision to the public. Consider if an identical situation happened in the United States - a group of individuals, some armed - but in a state where open-carry is legal - are shot up by a police/army helicopter. A group of passing "Good Samaritans" stop to help a few minutes later, and they also get shot up. And not only is there no prosecution, there is not even an attorney general giving a reason for not pursuing a prosecution. At the very least, that is what we would expect from a civilised society that follows the rules of law.

An actual example of inefficiency in Social Security is fraud

The vast majority of the social security trust fund was spent NOT on social security benefits but on other non social security projects, anything, you name it, roads, defense, welfare, but not social security. Not because of "changing demographics" or anything else, but becuase of fraud. The government continues to 'borrow' from the trust fund even today! They have no plans on paying any of it back and just this year they have started to pay out more than they are taking in. Why don't you explain to me how that is an example of efficiency.

So if you think fraud is a demonstration of inefficiency than this is the most inefficient program the government runs as it has the most fraud (misused funds) of any other programs or agency or anything really, what else is measured in the tens of trillions? It is the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.

Remember the scene from Dumb and Dumber where they spent all the ransom money and filled the suitcase up with IOUs? That is EXACTLY what the government did with the social security fund.

From: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/CreateaPlan/5mythsAboutSocialSecurity.aspx

You may have heard this assertion so often that you'll be surprised to learn that there really IS a Social Security trust fund that collects our payroll taxes and invests the surplus. It's called the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds. What isn't in the trust fund is a big hoard of cash. Three-quarters of the money that's collected in Social Security taxes goes right out the door again in the form of benefits to Social Security recipients. The surplus that isn't needed to pay benefits is loaned to the federal government to pay for other programs.

In return for this loan, the trust fund gets IOUs in the form of special-issue, interest-paying Treasury bonds.
...
The problem, of course, is that the government now owes the trust fund so much money -- and relies on its surplus so heavily -- that real problems will be created when it comes time to cash in those IOUs.

Why you would stand in defence of a program that is quickly failing by any measure is really baffeling. Can you show me anything to support your case that social secuity is not failing?

But even if there were no government program at all, the same problem would still manifest

I think this is a failure on your part to grasp my argument in the first comment. If social security was a private company (401K plan) the people running the plan would have been thrown in prison for embezzling money out of the employees retirement funds, so no, if there were no government program at all this would NOT happen because the perpetrators of this fraud would be brought to account, or more likely the private employers would obey the law because they fear the penalty, the government on the other hand has shown it fears no law, it has sovereign immunity after all.

That you were modded insightful despite your replies being just plain false speaks volumes of the partisans modding on this site. And did you just give up on the post office? Or was that not such a great example? I'm sure despite my use of pure facts, and links to backup my facts I'll be modded troll or I hate you or whatever. I really don't care.