Slashdot Mirror

These charges were systemic, not accidental.

Read David Pogue's article on how this happens:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/verizon-how-much-do-you-charge-now/

Exactly.

This has been going on for years. Why wasn't the problem rectified long before they raked in a several hundred million.

Anybody who believes this is only a 90 million dollar issue is delusional. Do some web research.

David Pogue made a compelling case a year ago that Verizon could rake in as much as 300 million per month due to mistake keystrokes.

But Verizon is not alone.

AT&T is now loading their Android phones with sneaky-pay services that never clearly state you will see additional charges. AT&T Navigator can't hold a candle to Google Maps, but they want 9 bucks a month for it, and the words free trial pop up, but the price is never mentioned, and you can't delete the app.

Don't give me any of that recycled, dumbed down bullshit you hand to everyone else. You're either too unethical to care or too dumb to know that you're full of shit.

Palestinian has always meant people who lived in Palestine. There are Palestinians who are not Muslim or Arab. Here's an article from 1903 about establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and bringing Zionism to Jerusalem. Here's a link to 1200 newspaper references to "palestinian refugee" before 1966. Here's a link to an article written in 1868 that refers to the land of Palestine.

What "provocative actions in Lebanon"? Monitoring Hezbollah's violations of the UN resolution that prevents it from operating in south Lebanon?

In June 2005, an Israel Defence Force paratroop unit operating near the Shebaa Farms engaged three Lebanese it identified as Hezbollah special force members, killing one. Videotapes recovered by the paratroopers contained footage of the three recording detailed accounts of the area and "fooling around".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

Keep in mind, this is fooling around on land that Israel took by force in 1967. There's a reason it's still disputed.

Israel handles its water problems by efficient irrigation and water desalination (which in both it is a world leader) much better than any country in the region, and willingly shares its knowledge and expertise. Trying to blame it for the world's problems is nothing new.

Israel has fucked up it's water supply. Do you know who I learned that from? The Israeli government.

...current cumulative deficit in Israel's renewable water resources amounts to approximately 2 billion cubic meters, an amount equal to the annual consumption of the State. The deficit has also lead to the qualitative deterioration of potable aquifer water resources that have, in part, become either of brackish quality or otherwise become polluted... ...policy for the water sector, particularly in the past decade, combined with the absence of adequate action facing the impending water shortage situation, has contributed to the severity of the present crisis...

The agricultural sector has suffered most because of the crisis. Due to the shortage, water allocations to the sector had to be reduced drastically causing a reduction in the agricultural productivity.

The current crisis has led to the realization that a master plan for policy, institutional and operational changes is required to stabilize the situation and to improve Israel's water balance with a long-term perspective.

That report was from 2002. Recently the Jerusalem Post had this to say: "We are witnessing an incomprehensible ongoing failure to conserve existing resources."

Canada doesn't have an ultra-conservative supreme court majority that rules against campaign finance reform laws to defend the "free speech of corporations."

President Obama called it "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

On the plus side its always a 5-4 vote for things like this and hopefully one of those 5 will retire or die soon so Obama can put in a non-conservative judge in. Real campaign in the US reform is decades away in the best case scenario.

Then try googling east german border guard trial and learn something instead of lazy comments like that. Surprise surprise there have been prosecutions. Are we learning history yet?

The game punishes the border guard retroactively.

That doesn't honestly reflect why he was chosen for a station on the wall or the choices he was likely to make at the time.

Projecting your fate and that of East Germany 40 years into the future scarcely seems probable.

There were prosecutions.

But the outcome of these trials seem both morally and legally ambiguous.

The verdict set a legal precedent, establishing that officials from what was once the Communist state of East Germany could be punished for actions that were not only legal under East German law, but which were compulsory for them to carry out. 2 East German Guards Convicted Of Killing Man as He Fled to West

This was the last fatal shooting at the wall. (February 1989)

One conviction was on a manslaughter charge, the other a suspended sentence for attempted manslaughter.

Wilfried Tews, who was just 14 years old at the time of his escape, was hit eight times as he swam through a canal under the Berlin Wall in 1962.
West Berlin border guards provided covering fire for a passerby who pulled the boy to safety. In a statement from East German records that was read to the court, a border guard who has since died said he heard shouts from the West of "Stop shooting! You are Germans too, aren't you?"
An East German border guard, the 21-year-old Peter Göring, died in the firefight and the communist authorities turned him into a secular martyr. Schools, streets and barracks were named after him.
Hundreds of former East German border guards and officials have been convicted since 1990 for shootings at the former border. Most have received suspended sentences. 40 Years On, Boy Shot at Berlin Wall Faces Attackers

Thanks to self-interested politicians like Utah's Orrin Hatch and others who'd rather fatten up on pork, China has a viable space program, while the US just has a money sink that keeps corporations flush in fat lobbying budgets.

Now, since this was a malfunction, the people who lost 90% instantly and the people in the other side of those trades who made 80% did so by foul play. The flash crash trades were busted (market regulators ordered them undone) and the world went on like this never happened.

So when their programs work and they make a profit they get to keep it, and when their program doesn't work and they make a big loss they don't get to keep their losses?

That's nice. I'd love to have the regulators step in for me when I lose big on the stock market too.

The fact is many firms are already cheating in so many ways: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html (basically front running and other cheating techniques by other names).

So it's even more unfair that when they lose big because of THEIR bug, the regulators roll back their mistakes. That's what I call foul play.

Now if it was a bug in the stock exchange software or system itself, then sure you have to roll things back. But a bug in your fancy trading programs? Too fucking bad, eat your losses and die - don't all these free market capitalists always say let the companies that screw up die?

Thought it was obvious by their flagrant tactics...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/26friedman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

They also found the word "Myrtus" in the code which refers to the book of Esther , which is part of an old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

New York Times

I still don't think it is enough to point the finger at Isreal though. It could very well be that someone put these references in the code to get people looking in a different direction or to actually see if they could stir up a fight between Iran and Isreal.

There's lots of gaming going on with high frequency trading, or really high frequency price pinging, bids and asks which are tossed out and canceled to simply mess with the quote queues. High frequency algorithms can flood the queues to get artificial imbalances and quote delays. There might even be some arbitrage possibilities based on differences between different quote systems time stamp transactions. Some timestamps are the time of the quote when queued, and others are the time the quote leaves a queue. This can lead to price inversions or other information queuing distortions.

According to Eric Scott Hunsader, the founder of Nanex the Chicago data firm that first identified strange patterns, "This surge in orders may not have been intended to cause the general market rout. Instead, it may have been intended simply to slow down some markets so that traders could profit by arbitrage with other exchanges."

There's way too much potential for gaming the queues if there is no cost to fake a bid or ask. When the cost is zero you get the same thing we have with spam email. If email cost a fraction of a penny to send, spam would drop drastically. If bids cost a tiny amount and were forced to remain open for the time a bid could electronically circle the globe, then that small bit of friction would eliminate many of the system's instabilities. And, all price queues should use the same time-stamping method.

Here are a few good links to more information:

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/troubling-trades-found-ahead-of-flash-crash/

http://www.nanex.net/FlashCrashFinal/FlashCrashSummary.html

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10876642/4/the-5-dumbest-things-on-wall-street-oct-1.html

I'm trying to get the clearest objective picture I can about what's going on the food industry, and it doesn't look pretty. Sorry. I'm sure you have access to information that I don't, and follow these things more closely. I rely on reports by journalists, researchers, government agencies, and activists who also have access to information that I don't, and who also follow these things more closely than I do. Just because I'm not in the field doesn't mean I can't try to find what's going on and form an opinion. I will see if I can find the Journal of Dairy Science report you're talking about.

Anyway, you can accuse me of FUD, but there are real, serious, and ongoing health consequences to food industry practices:
* Mad Cow Disease: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3355625.stm
* E Coli in Spinach: http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/4198816.html
* Salmonella in Eggs: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/business/23eggs.html?_r=1&ref=business

People die when industry cuts corners and regulatory agencies don't do their job.

More of my resources:
* Agricultural Antibiotic Use Contributes To 'Super-Bugs' In Humans - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705010900.htm
* Denmark's Case for Antibiotic-Free Animals - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/10/eveningnews/main6195054.shtml
* The above article cites Professor Ellen Silbergeld - http://faculty.jhsph.edu/Default.cfm?faculty_id=648
* The true cost of cheap chicken - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-true-cost-of-cheap-chicken-768062.html
* Agriculture Pollution report from Defra (UK government) - http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/landmanage/water/csf/index.htm
* Wikipedia page on Factory Farming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming

Activists (I am listing them separately, to be fair):
* http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp
* http://www.ciwf.org.uk/
* http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/
* http://www.iowasource.com/health/CAFO_airqu_0805.html
* Food, Inc. (movie)
* Ominvore's Dillemma, Michael Pollan
* Eating Animals, Michael Safran Foer

Which is called Freenet, of course. The problem, of course, is that a government can just effectively outlaw useful encryption on the internet like the FBI is aruging we should do right now, and like Obama seems to be friendly towards. We're really doing our best to be a shining beacon of oppression when it comes to new media, sadly enough.

We're talking about Malcom Gladwell here, of "Igon Value" fame. Some of his arguments are interesting entertainment, but just because he is writing about something doesn't mean he knows much about it.

While you're at, maybe just cut the Pell Grants, too.

Read Andrew Hacker on the sorry state of higher education.

http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+hacker+higher+education

All the grants, loans, and whatnot seem to have done is a 439% increase in higher ed costs, 3x the median family income's increase.

Lifelong learning is an admirable goal which should be opensourced, crowdsourced, and meetup'd.

Supporting argument: The 750 billion dollars the United States has spent on the war on terror vastly outweighs the relatively trivial amount we spent reacting to the economic crisis of 2008 and onward. The 700 billion dollar Troubled Assets Relief Program ended up costing taxpayers far less than initially expected. In August the Congressional Budget Office downgraded the expected cost to approx. 66 billion dollars. Now, the treasury expects the bailout, the main reason for the tea party reaction, to cost less than 50 billion dollars, as the WORST CASE SCENARIO. So, not only has the Obama Administration stabilized the U.S. economy, the king-pin of the world economy, and probably staved of a worldwide fiscal implosion, but now stand to potentially turn a profit from TARP. Under that new light, the huge public debt tea party activists so abhor is mainly due to the Republicans new, but actually old (thanks Mr. Stewart), idea of military expansion and tax cuts. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/business/01tarp.html?_r=1&hp

Speak of the devil: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/science/space/01nasa.html

It is better to change people thru inspiration and education rather than by force and control. Always has been, always will be.

While I agree people should be educated, it's often not enough.

"Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables." -
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries.

So one method, which is less extreme than using force, is to provide incentives (like putting a tax on junk food to reduce how much of that people eat).

In the case of texting-while-driving, educating people about the dangers hasn't worked, and as this article showed, neither has increasing the cost of getting caught texting while driving. So now what? It seems people really want to communicate to others while they drive, so alternatives to texting could be tried - like voice to text programs. Although, cell phone use isn't that safe either...

Ultimately, computers will replace people as drivers, as people are simply the most unreliable part of any car.

You forgot about the illegal wiretaps already ?

My immediate reaction was "they've been leant on". I'd imagine the US government has been putting pressure directly on any individual involved in the hope of a) weakening Wikileaks and b) causing dissent and reducing their credibility.

NYT:'The civilian also said that the Army had offered him “a considerable amount of money if I were to keep my ear to the ground and be an in with them with WikiLeaks.” He said that he had turned the Army down'

So there is some precedence, there is a plan and a 120 strong department working around the clock to make it happen. Does not sound far fetched to me.

Domscheit-Berg: what are the agreements re iraq? i need to understand what the plan is there, and what the constraints are Assange: "A person in close contact with other WikiLeaks activists around Europe, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive topic, says that many of them were privately concerned that Assange has continued to spread allegations of dirty tricks and hint at conspiracies against him without justification. Insiders say that some people affiliated with the website are already Assange: brainsorming whether ther e might be some way to persuade their front man to step aside, or failing that, even to oust him." Domscheit-Berg: what does that have to do with me? Domscheit-Berg: and where is this from? Assange: Why do you think it has something to do with you? Domscheit-Berg: probably because you alleg this was me Domscheit-Berg: but other than that just about nothing Domscheit-Berg: as discussed yesterday, this is an ongoing discussion that lots of people have voiced concern about Domscheit-Berg: you should face this, rather than trying to shoot at the only person that even cares to be honest about it towards you Assange: No, three people have "relayed" your messages already. Domscheit-Berg: what messages? Domscheit-Berg: and what three people? Domscheit-Berg: this issue was discussed Domscheit-Berg: [Redacted] and i talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it Domscheit-Berg: lots of people that care for this project have issued that precise suggestion Domscheit-Berg: its not me that is spreading this message Domscheit-Berg: it would just be the natural step to take Domscheit-Berg: and thats what pretty much anyone says Assange: Was this you? Domscheit-Berg: i didnt speak to newsweek or other media representatives about this Domscheit-Berg: i spoke to people we work with and that have an interest in and care about this project Domscheit-Berg: and there is nothing wrong about this Domscheit-Berg: it'd actually be needed much more, and i can still only recommend you to finally start listening to such concerns Domscheit-Berg: especially when one fuckup is happening after the other Assange: who, exactly? Domscheit-Berg: who exactly what? Assange: Who have you spoken to about this issue? Domscheit-Berg: i already told you up there Assange: those are the only persons? Domscheit-Berg: some folks from the club have asked me about it and i have issued that i think this would be the best behaviour Domscheit-Berg: thats my opinion Domscheit-Berg: and this is also in light to calm down the anger there about what happened in 2007 Assange: how many people at the club? Domscheit-Berg: i dont have to answer to you on this j Domscheit-Berg: this debate is fuckin all over the place, and no one understands why you go into denial, especially not the people that know about other incidents Assange: How many people at the club? Assange: In what venue? Domscheit-Berg: in private chats Domscheit-Berg: but i will not answe

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html is the direction.
All a server needs is a government surveillance option to get the IP of all who showed interest in loading eg. protest images/vids of undercover cops ect.
P2P is not really the issue, trying to track and find the origin of a file seems to be.

Ok asshole, your rebutal.

We wanted the population to be free, not repressed.

They still arn't free, and they still are repressed.
Repression and Violence Against Journalists in China on Increase
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/42042/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/movies/01spring.html

CENSORSHIP has long been a fact of life for filmmakers in China, but in recent years no director has clashed with the Chinese authorities as often, or as visibly, as Lou Ye. At two of the last five editions of the Cannes Film Festival, with the global media spotlight trained on the south of France, Mr. Lou, 45, has walked up the red carpet to present a movie that was being screened, in competition, without the permission of the Film Bureau in Beijing.

Every one of those were easily found by doing a google search.

Now along with having the largest population in the world still not being free, they are all becoming sick from all the polution from their industrialization.

China's 'cancer villages' reveal dark side of economic boom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/07/china-cancer-villages-industrial-pollution

Would you like to try again with your comment about westerners and china.

Sadly, they're pretty damn common. The job is self-selecting. You generally need to be a cocky, power hungry bastard to want to be a cop. There aren't a lot of white knights becoming cops. Plus, it's pretty well documented that people get excused from being cops for I.Q. test scores that are too high. If you want to be scarred for life, here are a blogger couple who document as many of these morons as they can. They're pretty hardcore libertarian/anti-government, but they do link to all primary sources in the way of local newspapers. Unknown News: Cops you won't see on COPS.

...bashing the administration for being fascists...

Well, you know what they say, "If it walks like a duck..."

"Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception."

yes, and drinking radium water and smoking cigarettes were both recommended by doctors at one point.

We know mercury is bad. The article you referenced assumed people recycle the bulbs. Some do- a lot don't. A lot just toss it into the trash. I've had 3 broken at my house in about 10 years - I didn't get out a hazmat team, I just cleaned the floor normally. I probably got some additional mercury exposure but i'm old so that doesn't matter too much.

Article on more efficient incandescents...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html

Apparently part of my information is incorrect- they may be allowed to make more efficient bulbs (the last article I read indicated it didn't matter- the entire technology was just banned which sounded very "P.C.")

You don't address the fact that the light is putrid until the bulbs warm up and the CFL's don't glow at full levels for anything like the rated lifespan. They are apparently chewed up fast in locations where you switch them on and off a lot too.

There's no need for the personal attacks. I would think it's clear that I use a variety of technologies including CFL's ...

where it makes SENSE.

CFL's are not "all that".

If you want people to use CFL's recommend brands which actually work.

One of the other people recommended Halogens which were counter intuitive (since they are so hot) and use 25% less energy.

Finally- energy is cheap. $70 to $80 a month all but three months a year. Why should I sit in dismal lighting that depresses me to save $15 bucks a month?

No single group should ever presume to claim special ownership of the founding fathers or the Constitution they wrought with such skill and ingenuity. Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes. The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl once famously asserted that history was an argument without an end. Our contentious founders, who could agree on little else, would certainly have agreed on that.

(I apologize for any typos in there... for some reason Chrome isn't letting me paste into the comment for on slashdot, so I had to type the whole thing out... anyone else having this problem?)

This is what I get for not reading the article first. Faux News. Where's my salt lick?

This will cause me mod damage, but I'm going to dive in here one more time: numbski, don't be a jerkwad.

There are several other sources for this same story. And yet, you are going to deny that it is true because the single link above is from 'Faux News'.

Forget Google, logic, or even a mild interest in the actual article itself, it's FOX BASHING TIME. WHOOOAAAAHHHHH!

Partisanship is a disease of the mind, and it just made you do something stupid. Reflect on that.

Some body at the pentagon "Oh, shit, this has classified intel in it. Call up the publisher... "The question we should be asking is not "Should the pentagon be burning books?", it's "Should the pentagon have (so much) classified information?"

According to the NYT article,

The Defense Department’s handling of Colonel Shaffer’s account of his experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 appears to have been bungled from the beginning. The Army reviewed the manuscript, negotiated modest changes and approved it for publication in January.

Then, in July, the Defense Intelligence Agency saw a copy, showed it to the N.S.A. and other agencies, and decided that some 250 passages contained classified information. But advance copies were already out to potential reviewers and the Military Book Club, and the first 10,000 copies were in a warehouse. Those are the copies the Pentagon is arranging to buy and pulp.

So the Army cleared it, but then the nebulous "Homeland Security" apparatus decided that the Army didn't do a good job. Keep in mind, this is the same intelligence community that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, missed the WTC bombing in '93, missed the attacks in Kenya, missed the attacks on the Cole, missed 9/11, missed WMD in Iraq... do I really have to continue?

There's a fucking secret army of contract killers that aren't part of the government, a vast secret police that has virtually abolished every thing we pretended was civil liberties and due process, but in newspeak, that's called patriotism.

Paying your fair share of taxes while our nation is engaged in two wars which supposedly are an existential threat to our way of life... well, that's fucking communism.

It's enough to drive a person insane.

Oppenheimer was an American born in New York City. Einstein took the oath to achieve American citizenship in 1940.

Oppenheimer was an astrophysicist who was hired for his administrative abilities, Einstein had nothing to do with the atom bomb program, aside from signing a letter (which he did not write). Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Teller, Ulam, Von Newmann, Bethe all left Europe and became Americans, it is true, but it's important to recognize they came to America for essentially negative reasons -- their home wouldn't tolerate them anymore. If Germany had been merely totalitarian and persecuted Poles instead of Jews, do we dare guess how many of "our" atomic scientists would have simply stayed in Germany? Most of these people also made their critical insights while still in Europe under the auspices of European governments, like Lise Meitner.

By that logic, the Cypriots must have the most powerful military in the world.

This doesn't follow.

Not really. The problems within the USSR were largely caused by pressures due to their participation within the Cold War. In a sense, the U.S. won the Cold War by out-producing the Soviets.

This is still debated, and even granting that it's true, it's basically impossible to apply this lesson to conflicts with, say Iraq or Iran. Or Al Qaeda. I was reading a quote from George F. Kennan recently:

The suggestion that any American administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic-political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is intrinsically silly and childish. No great country has that sort of influence on the internal developments of any other one.

I'll take an actual cold warrior's opinion over some glib, handwaving slashdotter.

The First Gulf War was nothing but a display of muscle to show Saddam Hussein that he didn't know who he was messing with.

And an opportunity for us to promise to come to the aid of anti-governemnt Kurds and Shiites in the North and South, which we promptly refused to support and allowed to be slaughtered, belatedly imposing no-fly zones. And an opportunity for the US and UK to impose ineffective and internally radicalizing sanctions which hollowed out Iraqi society. And occasionally drop bombs under the auspices of "Desert Fox" et al. And draw Hussein into closer alliances with muslim militants.

It depends on how you define success. If by "success" you mean did the U.S. achieve regime change? No failure there. If by "success" do you mean did the U.S. achieve peace in Iraq? If so, I'm fairly sure that was never a goal of the U.S. military.

As long as we define success in terms that would be unrecognizable to someone who was present at the decision to go to war, we have succeeded. And it only cost $800 billion and a few hundred thousand lives, and we are left with a nation state that teeters on the edge of sectarian civil war, and will likely settle as a client of Iran.

Again, no. The goals in Afghanistan were: 1) overthrow the Taliban (check) 2) bring various members of Al Qaeda to justice (check) 3) capture Osama Bin Laden. The status of the 3rd item is, at best, inconclusive, but the other 2 goals have been largely achieved.

And it only cost $300 million, maybe 40k lives, and has occupied our military for 9 years. The magic thing about war, of course, is that it evades all cost-benefit analysis. No matter how many hajis you kill, it never seems to make the cockpit doors any stronger.

But let's not beat around the bush. The project of redefining success is to protect the stainless reputation of our military, despite the fact that the US's strategic position in the world has been in

Why has everyone been so negative?

I am having difficulty locating the historical records of any successful (let alone dominant) sports teams, businesses, or nations whose philosophy was "Que sera, sera.". Assuming the best will yield you this

Sharply raising the stakes in a dispute over Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain, the Chinese government has blocked exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles.

Chinese customs officials are halting shipments to Japan of so-called rare earth elements, preventing them from being loading aboard ships at Chinese ports, industry officials said on Thursday.

which is hardly a good thing when the opposing business has leadership that is not blinded by greed and so thinks far longer term than your business leaders do:

Amid such elemental abundance, your correspondent could not help pondering, as he turned for home, the recent moves by the Chinese to restrict their exports of rare-earth elements--scandium, yttrium and lanthanum, plus the 14 so-called lanthanides. Today, China supplies 97% of the world's demand for rare-earth metals, thanks to a far-sighted government policy going back to the 1960s that envisaged the rare earths as "the oil of the twenty-first century".

Again, America is cursed with individuals who think that their greed is of paramount importance and if they should endanger America in satiating that greed, then that's not their problem. The essential characteristic of America's right - of America's Republicans - is they feel that they are entitled to accumulate more wealth faster now without any constraints or guidelines whatsoever, and somebody else can worry about tomorrow.

To repeat myself, it is my judgment that China concluded that predominant characteristic of America's right was and is the greatest weakness that America has and so decades ago they set their hook (in Nixon!). Precisely as anticipated, ever since our right has been eagerly pursuing their twin goals of getting fabulously wealthy while hurting American "labor" (a.k.a. consumers and soldiers; hence, the shortsightedness).

We decline as China rises, which is an entirely predictable result when you gamble in the Orient using their cards...as anybody who has been in that area eventually learns.

interesting graphic from the NYTimes related to format shifting in music by sales.

My guess is that "download album" and "download single" will end up cannibalizing the most from CD formats, not vinyl.

People keep clamoring for a Verizon iPhone, but Verizon is the last company you would want to see get its hands on something like that.

Verizon has good coverage, but their customer service is, by all accounts, absolutely atrocious. And now it has gotten to the point where a CSR can get in trouble for helping you save money:

link

"Effective this past month, all CSRs [customer-service reps} were versed on the usage of blocks. A new policy has gone into effect regarding how to handle Escalated Calls regarding data charges. Now, a representative can be reprimanded and even terminated for proactively offering to block any of the following:

Web Access Blocks
Data Blocks
Premium SMS blocking
Application download blocking
Vcast Music or Vcast Video download blocks

"Essentially, we are to upsell customers on the $9.99 25mb/month or $29.99 unlimited packages for customers. Customers are not to be credited for charges unless they ask for the credit. And in cases such as data or premium SMS, where the occurrences may have gone months without the consumer noticing, only an initial credit can be issued."

Verizon has also shown time and time again that it will lock down phones to an extreme degree. If you think AT&T's reluctance to allow tethering is a problem, wait until Verizon gets to dictate terms.

The company nickels-and-dimes its customers to a degree that is shameful even by U.S. cell phone company standards. I have my fingers crossed for an alliance between Apple and T-Mobile. Verizon is just a terrible company.

The very reason ebook prices are so high is because publishers won't let Amazon drop them further, as that would cannibalise their book sales in which they get much larger margins.

This NYTimes article broke down prices of ebooks -- showing that a $10 ebook nets them about as much profit as a $26 hardcover. It goes on to suggest that they're keeping prices high to slow down adoption -- their whole infrastructure is built around dead-tree books right now, and they fear they won't be able to adapt fast enough to scale down their own DTB-related costs. I suspect though, that when they do figure out how to scale down, they'll be just as happy keeping the prices high.

I'm a happy owner of a Nook. The only faults ebooks have right now is that even basic typesetting is almost entirely non-existent on them. Things that could be done automatically by the ereader -- things you don't realize you want until you don't have them, like paragraph-optimized justification, automatic hyphenation, preventing lone paragraph lines on page boundaries, hanging punctuation, and ligatures -- aren't there. Ebooks are displayed either with left-aligned text or with an obnoxiously-spacious justification.

The very reason ebook prices are so high is because publishers won't let Amazon drop them further, as that would cannibalise their book sales in which they get much larger margins.

This NYTimes article broke down prices of ebooks -- showing that a $10 ebook nets them about as much profit as a $26 hardcover. It goes on to suggest that they're keeping prices high to slow down adoption -- their whole infrastructure is built around dead-tree books right now, and they fear they won't be able to adapt fast enough to scale down their own DTB-related costs. I suspect though, that when they do figure out how to scale down, they'll be just as happy keeping the prices high.

I'm a happy owner of a Nook. The only faults ebooks have right now is that even basic typesetting is almost entirely non-existent on them. Things that could be done automatically by the ereader -- things you don't realize you want until you don't have them, like paragraph-optimized justification, automatic hyphenation, preventing lone paragraph lines on page boundaries, hanging punctuation, and ligatures -- aren't there. Ebooks are displayed either with left-aligned text or with an obnoxiously-spacious justification.

This was covered in the Economist last week.

The US has some of the largest deposits of rare earths in the world. One big location is Mountain Pass, California. The mine there was closed in 2002, because it wasn't competitive with the China price. (Or with China's mining with a complete lack of environmental controls.)

The Mountain Pass mine is being reopened under new management. In a few years, this problem will be over.

The problem with rare-earth mining is that, since the materials are rare, the waste problem is huge. The early stages of extractoin are messy. Big acid lakes, things like that.

Because Intel paid AMD to the tune of 1.25 billion to shut up and make the problem go away? And by taking the money AMD just about cleared any ATI debt left on the books which helped their bottom line. The bigger question is whether the US DOJ or the EU antitrust commission are gonna do anything or not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/technology/21cookie.html?
Good old Flash!

This is a dangerous path to follow because the MPAA would have strong backers for something like this, like the US government. Torrent search engines would be small potatoes, how about people/websites that show what your doing is wrong? Again, like WikiLeaks, but others like the EFF? Don't like that they show your dirty little secrets? Just use the ACTA on them and claim something like "they were using illegal software".

Googling for "car colour theft", one of the top hits is an article suggesting painting your car pink. Not sure if the cure is worse than the disease, but that's your call to make for your own situation.

And pay attention to the Apple stock that Xerox got. I've never known a thief who pays you for what he stole.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html

Then he should have said so: "Whatever merit these earmarks might have, but it is irresponsible to promote funding for them on grounds of stimulus."

Instead, he trivialized the idea wholesale by saying:

... their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes ... $140 million for something called volcano monitoring.

Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.[bold added]

WTF?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html

But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

I'd say yes, you are that politically weird.

It's a medical device.

Which, as the mess regarding medical tubes shows, does not mean that it is subject to meaningful safety regulations.

I think the medical tubing issue is a red herring, in terms of safety. Plugging the wrong tube into the wrong device is user error, not a problem with the safety of the tubes. The nurse in question needs to be paying attention. If you look at the original article, the mix-up highlighted was truly moronic. Even a nurse on his/her first day of work should be alert enough not to connect a feeding tube to an IV.

In the case of the exoskeleton, all the legs need to do is support the patient's weight, and walk. Anything preventing the exoskeleton from doing that would also prevent it from leaving clinical trials. About the only failure points I can see would be mechanical, which you can't fix with a firmware update.

Besides that, there's not a lot of DIY going on in wheelchair repair.

Actually, a friend of mine who uses an electric chair has turned to friends for repair a few times, because wait times for "authorized" repair were too long. Now, this was simple stuff like loose connections, but the idea of DIY firmware updates isn't completely out-of-bounds.

I've done repairs on my manual wheelchair, as well. It's not too hard to replace a pneumatic tire, but once you start getting into the solid inserts, there's more expensive equipment involved. And if you're talking about frame adjustments, that's not something the user should be doing by his/herself.

Now, as far as firmware goes, I can't imagine why a manufacturer would even want people upgrading the firmware themselves. A medical device like this isn't something you code a mod for. It's something you leave alone unless you have reason to do otherwise. The most rational way to handle firmware upgrades would be the same way they handle bug fixes in cars: You send a letter issuing a recall, and upgrade the users in the shop where they bought the device.

Nope. In every education catagory, Obama beat McCain.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html

McCain did best in the categories in the college drop-out category ("some college") by only losing by 4 points, but got "pretty handily" beat in the college educated level by an 8 points.

d

International agreements and European regulations have made a dent in the export of old electronics to China, but loopholes - and sometimes bribes - allow many to skirt the requirements. And only a sliver of the electronics sold gets returned to manufacturers such as Dell and Hewlett Packard for safe recycling. Upward of 90 percent ends up in dumps that observe no environmental standards, where shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers are used to recover gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals while spewing toxic fumes and runoff into the skies and rivers.

Accurate figures about the shady and unregulated trade are hard to come by. However, experts agree that it is overwhelmingly a problem of the developing world. They estimate that 70 percent of the 20 million to 50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and African nations.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it is 10 times cheaper to export e-waste than to dispose of it at home.

There's a pretty awesome photo-essay following the process over on Time.

New York Times, November 28th 2009 - 1 in 4 children currently on food stamps

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio -- With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

Half of American Children Receive Food Stamps

Nearly half (49.2%) of American children will, at some point between the ages of 1 and 20, reside in a house that receives food stamps, according to a report in the Nov. 2 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

More than a quarter of American children (26.1%) will receive food stamps by the age of 5, the study found.

39 Million and rising on Food Stamps - Household SNAP participants increased from 12,728,981 in Fiscal Year 2008 to 15,232,105 in fiscal year 2009, a 16.4% increase. For comparison purposes, watch the growth in household participation.

and up higher again - 41,275,411 as of June. - Double digit increases in all but 4 states - average increase 18% year over year.

More from the NYTArticle:

This is the first recession in which a majority of the poor in metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, giving food stamps new prominence there. Use has grown by half or more in dozens of suburban counties from Boston to Seattle, including such bulwarks of modern conservatism as California's Orange County, where the rolls are up more than 50 percent.

Use among children is especially high. A third of the children in Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee receive food aid. In the Bronx, the rate is 46 percent. In East Carroll Parish, La., three-quarters of the children receive food stamps.

I very much disagree with his use of "murder" regarding that dead reporter and associates.

What do you call it when people are unlawfully slaughtered, and then there's a cover up to hide the circumstances of those killings to make it appear that they were justified?

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

''There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

There were no insurgents, no American troops were hit by small arms fire, there was no hostile force engaging that helicopter. It's lies through and through, with a pile of dead and mangled bodies underneath, and the guilty walking free.

Windows fanboy here?

NTFS still is offering features

Like online defragmentation? Like a complete check of 64GB and more in under 3 seconds? Like the ability to delete files that are in use or otherwise blocked (like a stupid application or a virus)?

but important things like GPU scheduling so that the OS controls the GPU and application usage and allows for non-graphical GPU processing without worry that games or the application UIs will suffer, stall, and fail to render.

I run games and 3D effects on my laptop all the time and there are no issues what-so-ever with UIs or whatever.

Linux had a huge chnace here and instead demonstrated what many of us find all too often, for an old kernel model, and an old OS model, and an old graphical protocol, it is not a mature OS for the mainstream. Good concepts, but dated, and too many bandaids to try to bring these to modern computing effectively.

Right, that is why Linux is now number one in servers and embedded devices, also number one in super computers and widely used for 3D effects in moves. That's also why the NYSE switched to Linux. Look around, Linux is now used everywhere except for the desktop and there is mostly because there are missing applications (and missing pre-installations).

Facts are, Linux is not only a viable alternative to Windows, it's more secure (no viruses), it's use less resources (you can run it in a 256MB RAM machine, with under 1GB of HDD space), it's more suited for terminals and virtualization, there are multiple vendors which to choose for support.

The really only thing what users are complaining is the lack of applications, like Photoshop, MS Office, etc. Just look at the other countries and communities that are using Linux very successful and are not only more secure but paying less. Nobody would use Windows for anything, if Photoshop, MS Office and Outlook/Exchange would run on Linux. Windows is just a play system to run your games on, real work is done mostly with Linux.

There's a different version of the story at the New York Times website.

From the article: "On his way to pick up these materials, according to the indictment, he told his wife he was doing the transaction for the money and was no longer an American."