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http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/080204Haaretz_oligarch.shtml

http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/020305JPost_Rus.shtml

Who set this ball in motion?

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B02E0DF1E3CE533A2575AC1A9649C946395D6CF

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B03EEDC153CE533A25756C1A9679C946095D6CF

http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/080204Haaretz_oligarch.shtml

http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/020305JPost_Rus.shtml

Who set this ball in motion?

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B02E0DF1E3CE533A2575AC1A9649C946395D6CF

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B03EEDC153CE533A25756C1A9679C946095D6CF

There is an artificial shortage of doctors maintained by restricting admissions to medical schools and even more so by restricting the total number of medical schools as well as increasing tuition for medical school much faster than costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/29/business/curbing-the-supply-of-physicians-who-said-we-have-too-many-doctors.html?&pagewanted=all
While [the AMA] is devoted to improving the quality of medical care, education and the profession, it also operates as a cartel to protect the economic interests of its members.

http://wallstreetpit.com/5769-the-medical-cartel-why-are-md-salaries-so-high
The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries So High?

By Mark J. Perry|Jun 24, 2009, 2:47 PM|Author's Website

Greg Mankiw features the chart below on physicians' salaries in the U.S. vs. various European countries and Canada, showing that MDs in the U.S. make about $200,000, which is between 2 and 5 times as much as doctors make in other countries. How do we explain the significantly higher physician salaries in the U.S.?

The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries So High?

One explanation is the restriction on the number of medical schools, and the subsequent restriction on the number of medical students, and ultimately the number of physicians. Consider the difference between law schools and medical schools.

In 1963, there were only 135 law schools in the U.S. (data here), and now there are 200, which is almost a 50% increase over the last 45 years in the number of U.S. law schools. Unfortunately, we've witnessed exactly the opposite trend in the number of medical schools. There are 130 medical schools in the U.S. (data here), which is 22% fewer than the number of medical schools 100 years ago (166 medical schools, source), even though the U.S. population has increased by 300%.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/08-90.html
"During the great depression, as Milton Friedman notes, the AMA ordered the remaining medical schools to admit fewer students, and every school followed instructions. If they didn't, they risked losing their AMA accreditation."

During world war II, they needed doctors quickly and they created so many (about 16,000) that there was a glut until the 1970's.

---

The nursing shortage takes care of itself because pay sucks and hours are terrible. You work long enough to get experience to go work somewhere besides a hospital. A friend of mine's wife is an RN and basically works when she wants to now that she has left the hospital system.

Not to mention, does that comparison mean anything to anyone else? I've never stood in front of the LHC personally and don't know anyone who has. I can -assume- it wouldn't be healthy, but... well, it doesn't really ring home with me.

Reading this reminded me that I had recently read about the nasty effects of the LHC on any target unlucky enough to get in its way. Apparently particle physicists are just waiting for something to stumble in front of this unreasonably large, essentially unaimable sci-fi-esque weapon. To wit:

The collider's own prodigious energies are in some way its worst enemy. At full strength, the energy stored in its superconducting magnets would equal that of an Airbus A380 flying at 450 miles an hour, and the proton beam itself could pierce 100 feet of solid copper.

Source

How hard would it have been to make a more visceral if less accurate car metaphor. "99.999998 percent of the speed of light through hydrogen atoms would be like trying to drive your car at 90 miles an hour into a concrete wall." ...although I haven't done that either recently...

Because the car is not going to punch a small, hot hole into the concrete wall, and the 99 walls behind it. I suspect the point that was being made, and was edited out, is that you're not going to be able to shield a living person from things that will impact the vessel with those sorts of energies.

The apparent cost of the project is $7/Watt http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/17/17climatewire-doe-delivers-its-first-long-awaited-nuclear-71731.html with Japan providing other loan guarantees. Since Japan has been escalating pricing for the South Texas project, we can guess the same will happen in this case. I'd guess that $14/Watt is about where this will end up, completely uneconomical. The loans will default and the taxpayers will pay.

While the science around climate change deserves scrutiny and probing, this probing should probably be done by scientists, not legislators. The last time I checked, the scientific method didn't include debate, Robert's Rules of Order or passage by majority. Freeman Dyson makes some interesting points against climate change in this NY Times Article. If you agree with him or not, at least he's engaging in scentific skepticism over uninformed legislation.

Obviously the majority of Utah's Assembly has no idea how science works, as it takes a majority to pass an obviously useless law. It's too bad that method doesn't work or the Utah State Assembly could go ahead and legislate the Higgs-Boson into existence right there in the chambers. I think this problem is a symptom of our terrible science education in our schools. Perhaps they could go ahead and legislate some scientific thinking into themselves while they're redefining physics.

Cite that please. You're arguing that they make little to no money from content distribution through iTunes? I think you're full of it.

Sure. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/steve-jobs-tries-to-downplay-the-itunes-stores-profit/ ...is an article where a NYT pundit postulates that despite Apple having publicly stated they make little money on the operation, he thinks they might actually be making a billion dollars a year (they make 25 billion or so a year as a company). Be sure to read the update at the end where he acknowledges he was mostly wrong after someone explained to him how much credit card transaction fees cost.

Aww, what's the matter, AC? Are you too afraid to flame someone with your name attached? Don't want to get modded down and lose your precious karma?

It's "Big Pharma ".

Hm...yes, I do remember saying Big Pharma right before I said Big Farma. I would imagine someone with a command of the English language such as yourself would be able to infer that I was discussing three separate lobbies - oil, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture - instead of repeating one twice.

I considered "Big Agriculture" but it had too many syllables and ruined the flow (much as we shorten Pharmaceuticals/Pharmacy to Pharma). Certainly, though, there is an agriculture lobby, and they are there to push for their own profits even at the public's expense. There are a lot of folks who consider High Fructose Corn Syrup a terrible thing made possible only by the agricultural lobbies' push for insane corn subsidies and tariffs on sugar from abroad.

I'll admit that the bit at the end, about the War on Drugs, veers a bit towards hyperbole. There are many reasons for that war, and maintaining the prison business is just one. I'm sure police like having jobs, too. Judges certainly like to collect fines. Politicians like to be elected. Lots of various little selfish reasons.

If you think this is a half-ass conspiracy theory, then there's a story in the NYT I'd like you to read, about a judge who was being paid by a juvenile detention facility to trump up charges and increase the number of kids being sent to the facility because the state paid the facility per head.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

If some people don't mind unnecessarily imprisoning teenagers for cash, certainly there are many, many more people who wouldn't mind imprisoning adults.

Even further than that, this article in the New York Times argues that it was only because of the FBW system in the A320 that the miracle on the Hudson was even possible. The author argues it wasn't just human intervention but computer assisted human intervention that allowed all those people to escape.

To play devil's advocate, giving tax breaks to attract/keep major businesses is a normal thing for state governments. After all, these businesses bring in major direct (income taxes) and indrect revenue (local employees' property taxes, sales taxes etc) to the state. Nine years ago, Boeing ditched Seattle and moved to Chicago partly because of tax breaks offered by Chicago.

That's right the guy who got caught with the performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France had a warrant issued for him today for hacking. I don't know what it is over but maybe his attempts to tamper with the committee who tested him maybe. I don't know all the info but I just saw it on the news channel.
Nevermind here it is

France Issues Arrest Warrant for Cyclist Floyd Landis
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/sports/cycling/16landis.html

PARIS — The United States cyclist Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but the fallout from his doping case has lingered.

Thomas Cassuto, a French judge, issued an arrest warrant for Landis last month, in connection with a computer hacking case, said Astrid Granoux, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, which is handling the matter.

“That means he would be arrested if he came to France,” Granoux said Monday, adding that the warrant had not been distributed outside of French territory.

Landis, who raced for the Ouch Pro Cycling Team last year, parted ways with the team last fall. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

Cassuto is seeking to question Landis about the data hacking that occurred in the fall of 2006 at the Châtenay-Malabry antidoping lab, which is the facility that conducted the tests on Landis’s urine samples from the 2006 Tour.

A very public dispute between Landis and the lab’s officials was the crux of Landis’s defense in his doping case, which ended in his being barred from the sport for two years. Landis and his defense team had alleged that the lab’s testing procedures were sloppy, so its test results could not be trusted.

Pierre Bordry, the lab’s director, said a security breach of the facility’s computers occurred because hackers wanted to obtain data to discredit its scientists. He said that some of the stolen data had been altered to make it seem as if the lab had made errors.

In November 2006, lab officials filed a formal complaint saying that its computer data had been stolen and used in Landis’s defense. That confidential data was also sent to other labs and news media, officials said. A subsequent search of the lab’s computers turned up a Trojan horse, which is a program that allowed an outsider to remotely download files.

Investigators concluded that the program could have originated from an e-mail message sent to the lab from a computer using the same Internet protocol address as Arnie Baker, Landis’s coach.

Landis and Baker, who continue to insist that Landis did not use performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour, deny being involved in the computer hacking.

Well, it is normal for uncertainties to behave that way. But it sounds like it would take several bottles to settle this. More discussion here: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/the-distracting-debate-over-climate-certainty/?permid=228#comment228

Sure, Apple's had some really bad products over time - but what do you expect from a company that big which survived that long?

Funny how quickly we forget this article, hmmm? The Apple of Microsoft's Eye.

Exercise has a lot to do with keeping fit, but not so much with maintaining weight. How much you eat has a LOT more to do with that.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/exercise-still-doesnt-work
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/

And there's plenty more you can find with a quick google search, as I just did.

After all these years... it's still Windows and Office.

It's the Windows, Office and Server divisions.

Think of SharePoint as the jack-of-all-trades in the business software realm. Companies use it to create Web sites and then manage content for those sites. It can help workers collaborate on projects and documents. And it has a variety of corporate search and business intelligence tools too.

Microsoft wraps all of this software up into a package and sells the bundle at a reasonable price. In fact, the total cost of the bundle often comes in below what specialist companies would charge for a single application in, say, the business intelligence or corporate search fields.

Microsoft declines to break out the exact sales figures for the software but said that SharePoint broke the $1 billion revenue mark last year and continued to rise past that total this year, making it the hottest selling server-side product ever for the company.

Crucially, Microsoft has found a way to create ties between SharePoint and its more traditional products like Office and Exchange. Companies can tweak Office documents through SharePoint and receive information like whether a worker is online or not through tools in Exchange. These links have Microsoft carrying along its old-line software as it builds a more Internet-focused software line.

"SharePoint is saving Microsoft's Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in," said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. "It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping."

Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession [August 7, 2009]

I wouldn't be too fond of the MS development model from what I hear from those who were on the inside:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?pagewanted=all

Inside Microsoft, political infighting trumps common sense. If you really want to hold up a closed source development model as an example of "what works" take a look at Apple. They crank out far better products with a fraction of the resources.

So don't use multi-stage and only use Orion in deep space?

The I remember talking around a plan for a Saturn rocket in the late 60s had several redundant steam-rockets. I don't know if that was actually what NASA was talking about. It appeared that by the late 70's we could have had a vertical takeoff and landing single stage to orbit Saturn class space craft with just water as an emission. Fully re-usable. It would have had the power and fuel to leave orbit with a vehicle which could return intact. If one thinks a Saturn V taking off would be interesting to watch, imagine seeing one land?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket has some info about NERVA rockets. Saturn C-5N is a Nuclear version of the Saturn 1st stage, http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm I don't know what it's propellent was supposed to be but I'm sure that info is out on the web someplace.

Damn Jane Fonda for convincing the public that nuclear power was bad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16wwln-freakonomics-t.html

First, your post makes no sense. It's clear you never advanced past high school English. Read back what you wrote, especially the sentence discussing "you Christy and Douglas".

Second, it's time for a fact check from the NY times. Here's just ONE notable figure in the global warming profit model, Al Gore:

"And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."

Now before you respond to that quote, READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE THE QUOTE WAS IN!

Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor

THAT'S the get-rich-quick scheme! There are plenty more examples out there, but I picked this one because it's from an "objective source".

Now why was parent's post modded down?

What private company do you expect to fund the GPL and send probes to the outer solar system? Or Hubble, for that matter?

Yes, reasonable people can argue that LEO launches are so routine these days that they should be turned over to private industry. Fine. But there are tons of other NASA programs that have no profit potential whatsoever, yet tremendously enrich humanity culturally and scientifically. Because private industry would never fund these programs, NASA must. And we're better off for it.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-26/davos-too-big-to-fail-as-bankers-recoil-in-political-backlash.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/business/economy/26big.html NY Times

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528373595925623.html WSJ 2009 before the crash

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-ikenson-wial4-2009jun04,0,4807351.story June '09 before the crash

Forgive the formatting, but it's Saturday AM and I went drinking with my sons yesterday.

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

We are all in a global recession. As such, there are no "Glory Days" for anyone anywhere. I wouldn't count Silicon Valley out just yet.

A fair comment, but describing things globally may too generalised. What happens in Silicon Valley does not have to be the same as what happens elsewhere. One data point in the news recently: North Jersey Finds Popularity as Home for Data Centers.

Fly Wars is a decades-old hilarious (and prescient) spoof about this technology.

Thanks to someone with a good memory
who posted this to the NY Times article.

Helene Hegemann's first book has been moving up the best-seller list in
Germany and is a finalist for a major book prize. While originally this
was notable because Hegemann is only 17 and this is her first book, and
so earned praise as a prodigy, what's interesting now about this story
is that she has been caught plagiarizing many passages in the book.
Amazingly, she has not denied it, but instead claims there is nothing
wrong with it. She claims that she is part of a new generation that has
grown up with mixing and sampling in all media, including music and art,
and this is legitimate in modern culture. Have we entered a new era where
plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal? Is this the
ultimate in cynicism, or is it simply a brash attempt to get away with
something now that she's been caught? Is her claim to legitimacy
compromised by the fact that she only admitted it after it was
discovered by someone else? And finally, if 'sampling' is not acceptable
in literature, is this reason to rethink the legitimacy of musical
sampling?

The demand for gasoline is pretty price inelastic. Maybe europe could tax it to the point that people would give it up, but if the US did that, the country's economy would completely dry up.

• From iMarketNews.com, "EIA's revised outlook is for global liquid fuels consumption to grow by 1.2 million bbl/d in 2010 and 1.6 million bbl/d in 2011 after showing annual declines in 2008 and 2009".
• From "New York Times", Prices and gasoline demand, "Given time, however, higher prices could lead to a repeat of the 70s-80s experience, when the US auto fleet became a lot more fuel efficient."
• From The Economist, "Small cars, big question
  Can Americans learn to love small cars? The industry's future depends on it
• Cross-Price Elasticity of Demand VIII
  "For Christy LaBadie, a sophomore at Northampton Community College, the 30-minute drive from her home to the Bethlehem, Pa., campus has become a financial hardship now that gasoline prices have soared to more than $4 a gallon. So this semester she decided to take an online course to save herself the trip--and the money...." "Many institutions say their online summer enrollments have jumped significantly, compared with last summer's, and that fuel prices are a key factor in the increase. The Tennessee Board of Regents, for instance, reports that summer enrollment in online courses is up 29 percent this summer over last year."

That was quick, if I spend more tyme I can find more. Unfortunately I keep getting interrupted, even by my brother-in-law who's a Certified Financial Planner and keeps calling me. Still want to say if not believe "The demand for gasoline is pretty price inelastic"? Quite simply when gas prices go high people buy less gas.

Falcon

If you really wanted to know what "contemporary community standards" in a given time and place were, that would basically be a market research question

It's been done. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/23/technology/23PORN.html?pagewanted=all

Scientists need to realize that if they're going to get public support, they really need to be very careful with their choice of wording. Like it or not, the scare mongers, and I mean scare mongers in the sense that there are people who are trying to scare folks into believing that Global Warming is some sort of wealth redistribution scheme by the socialists, are going to use any hint, real or not, that scientists are making up their findings.

Scare mongers? Let's take a look at some of these "hints" that scientists are making up their findings. From May 7, 2002

Dozens of mountain lakes in Nepal and Bhutan are so swollen from melting glaciers that they could burst their seams in the next five years and devastate many Himalayan villages, warns a new report from the United Nations.

From January 17, 2010:

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.

Do I need to pull the quotes that claim NY and Florida will be underwater?

As for the "fear mongers" saying that GW is a socialist wealth redistribution scheme.

Some officials from the United States, Britain and Japan say foreign-aid spending can be directed at easing the risks from climate change. The United States, for example, has promoted its three-year-old Millennium Challenge Corporation as a source of financing for projects in poor countries that will foster resilience. It has just begun to consider environmental benefits of projects, officials say.

Industrialized countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol, the climate pact rejected by the Bush administration, project that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon flow via that treaty into a climate adaptation fund.

Strange. When did Rush and Hannity start writing for the NY Times?

DNA microarrays (also know as DNA chips) can already identify every virus ever discovered, and it can even identify undiscovered viruses by recognizing genetic sequences that are highly conserved among viruses. This type of chip first proved its worth in 2003 when it was used to identify SARS. The New York Times interviewed the inventor Joseph DeRisi about it:

We had just finished building the full version of our ViroChip, when we read about SARS in the newspapers. We literarily begged the C.D.C. to send us samples of the virus. Once we had it, we immediately put it onto a chip. In less than 24 hours we confirmed that this was a novel coronavirus. We confirmed the ViroChip’s finding by subsequently sequencing this virus’s genome. This had never in history happened before.

It is not yet evident what, if any, advantage this other chip that hopes to identify viruses by their size will have.

You have obviously not done any gambling online. A large percentage, perhaps even the majority of online gambling, is poker. When you go to an online poker site, you are not playing against the house/online gambling site. You are playing against other players, and the gambling site gets its money by charging a fee, a percentage of the buy in in a tournament or a percentage of the pot.

I wouldn't even put poker in the same "gambling" category as casino games (online or otherwise), as it was clearly demonstrated that in poker skill dominates luck.
Sure, there is the element of chance but then, it is also present in contract bridge and in backgammon and you don't hear those referred to as gambling.

Of course there is no 100% guarantee that the online gambling site is not putting an employee that can see the cards in on a table, but that would really net them so little money in comparison to hosting 100's or even thousands of tables simultaneously, and getting their little fee from each of them. Not the mention the damage to their reputation if it were discovered (there is great competition amongst online poker sites.)

There can be no 100% guarantees but, given the large number of people analyzing the games for statistical and behavioral discrepancies, it will be hard to pull something like that off. The Absolute Poker scandal shows that cheating will be detected.

Also, the major online poker sites do their best to detect bots, collusions and other forms of cheating using their own server-side analysis. After all, nobody in their right mind wants to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

Paul Colford, a spokesman for The A.P., said that Weatherproof had paid it the appropriate license fee for the billboard image, “but the agreement is that it requires the licensing party, in this case the Weatherproof Garment Company, to obtain the necessary clearances — that is their obligation.”

So it seems the issue is not really about copyright but endorsements, you can take the unedited picture and make a poster out of it, put it in Times Square but you can't put words in the mouth of the subject with out the permission of the subject, they are saying Obama endorses the jacket when they have never asked the President if he in fact does endorse it or would like to. So the claim is not about copyright of a work but about the opinions expressed by the people represented within them. Just because I release a picture of a person I have taken does not allow you to infer your opinions onto subject, both CNN and the Times underline this is not a First Amendment issue but

"From a legal point of view, it's not legal," she said. "It is a violation of Mr. Obama's right of publicity, his right to control his appearance and his likeness"

No where in the text of either article was the word "Copyright" or even "Copy" for that matter. Thanks to the editors for jumping the gun and proving the Slashdot editors creed "TL;DR".

I'm sorry to say you're wrong. Democracy is about one (wo)man one vote, not about one lobbyist one vote, or one corporation one vote.

The US of A recently crossed the thin line between democracy and democrazy, read the NY Times article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/corporation-says-it-will-run-for-congress/

I am so glad to see this. It highlights the flaw in the supreme court decision. Quite simply, a corporation is a fictional person not a real person. Limiting the fictional person's rights does not limit real persons' rights.

Our democracy, in the United States, is stronger than it has ever been in our lifetimes.

I'm sorry to say you're wrong. Democracy is about one (wo)man one vote, not about one lobbyist one vote, or one corporation one vote.
The US of A recently crossed the thin line between democracy and democrazy, read the NY Times article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/corporation-says-it-will-run-for-congress/

Wait long enough and any technology can be lost. Lots of old cities still have wood water pipes. Good luck finding someone who knows where they are or can repair them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18water.html

We get far more exposure from radon outgassing from the granite countertops in our kitchens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html

Let's pay attention to something we can actually get exposed to.

When the President of the Authors Guild went on a rant about how text to speech was infringing on authors "audio rights".
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1
I won't go into the arguments, but suffice it to say I sure as hell don't just automatically trust whatever the authors guild is trying to push. Even if you think he's right, was this issue SO important he had to write a very public article about it in the NYT?

On the other hand, Amazon isn't the must trustworthy company in the world either. The incident with 1984 on the Kindle comes to mind. This incident only makes it crystal clear that the Kindle is essentially like renting books, not owning them. It's just kind of amazing that the entire e-book world is rife with anti-consumer paranoia.

The entire e-book industry is doomed to failure unless they're significantly cheaper than the paper version. How many people really want to buy a book on technology platform for only a little less? We all know these are essentially throw-away devices. In 2 years there will be some Great New "gotta have it" book reader platform that'll make anything right now obsolete. In 5 years Kindles will be essentially worthless and people will turn their noses up at them like it's a Palm Pilot. Meanwhile the paper book holds essentially the same value as it did 100 years ago. So which medium should I buy? If I don't need a new version of a recent book, I can get a used copy on Amazon for next to nothing, or deeply discounted. The e-book I can't re-sell, easily loan to a friend, etc. Inferior technologies can only compete on price.

Don't get me wrong, I love technology. I just consider "paper books" to be technology (a competing technology of course). Newer doesn't mean better, and it's difficult for electronics to compete with paper when the content is completely static.

The paperback edition will eventually cost less than the 9.99 to 14.99 that Macmillan wants to charge.

While it is true that MacMillan claims that their model will have dynamic pricing that will drop the price from the $15 starting price eventually down to $6, I don't believe it. If you look at MacMillan ebooks, you'll find most of them are still priced at hardback prices even years after the mass market paperback has been released. For example, consider the backlist Kinsey Millhone mysteries by MacMillan author Sue Grafton (i.e., all but the most recent one that's not yet been released in MMPB). I compared the prices at MacMillan, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Fictionwise, and Books on Board. MacMillan is charging $7.99 for all of the MMPBs, and $14 for all of the ebooks. The other ebook stores are probably the top selling ebook stores after Amazon. There are probably 50 titles between these 4 stores, and about a dozen are at or below the MMPB price, about a dozen are selling for over $20, and the rest are selling for between $10 and $17. Randomly looking at other fiction at MacMillan's website, if they sell an ebook edition, unless it's only been published as a MMPB, the ebook is almost always priced higher than a MMPB.

Second, despite SF and Fantasy readers tending to be early adopters of tech devices like ebook readers, very few of MacMillan's SF/F imprint Tor/Forge are released as ebooks. About 3 years ago, Tor did some experiments with Webscriptions (primarily associated, but not exclusively, with Baen), but Tor's parent company shut it down. In addition, MacMillan's CEO refuses to sell ebooks to libraries http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/technology/in-lean-times-e-books-find-a-friend-libraries.html.

I don't doubt that ebook pricing is somewhat broken, and Amazon is part of the problem. Whether MacMillan likes it or not, the average ebook consumer does not value the ebook to be worth the same price as a hardback, and probably not even as much as a MMPB. You can't sell it, you can't get it signed by the author, you can't loan it, etc. When a best seller is getting heavily discounted by online and bricks and mortar retailers alike, it's unreasonable for MacMillan to expect that the ebook consumer should have to pay two to three times the hardback price, but that's exactly what they are trying to achieve by moving to the agency model where the retailer is unable to set its own price. And if MacMillan continues to overprice ebooks as they are presently doing, ebook consumers will stop buying.

The chamber of Lords has been busy proving themselves useful, lately, be it with the climategate, for instance.

It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.

I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.
Note that, on the other hand, the US of A are close to the end of democracy. Unless Obama(hahahahaha) finally proves himself useful and just kicks the lobbies down to Hell where they belong.

After reading in the times today about the abysmal culture at MS, shit like this coming from an exec of any kind does not surprise me. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

Because that provides a financial incentive for the government to lock people up. If you fail to see how that could be a problem please read this: Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

RTFA moron. They specifically mentioned her as a case where this does not apply:

The new report, posted online by The New England Journal of Medicine, does not suggest that most apparently unresponsive patients can communicate or are likely to recover. The hidden ability displayed by the young accident victim is rare, the study suggested.

Nor does the finding apply to victims of severe oxygen depletion, like Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who became unresponsive after her heart stopped and who was taken off life support in 2005 during an explosive controversy over patients’ rights.

--NYT (emphasis mine)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04scotus.html?hp

FTA: “Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

I just find it interesting that Democrats are always on the wrong side of racial issues. Always. Whether it's American slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Eugenics, or the modern-day example of how they strive to keep minorities enslaved on the government entitlement plantation. It's interesting to look at the vote totals by party in both houses of Congress for the Civil Rights Act of 1964: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals. Once again, Republicans led the way for racial justice - and as a result the Democrats lost the South. And yet minorities still vote overwhelmingly for Democrat candidates, despite the mountain of evidence that Democrats want to keep them ideologically and materially enslaved, and Republicans want to see them be able to stand on their own two feet. I just don't understand...

"After spending $9 billion on Constellation, the program to return to the moon, canceling the contracts with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems and other companies would cost an additional $2.5 billion, NASA officials said."

Well, it might be the case that some of the funding will come from private companies. I think that's the intent, anyway. NASA seems to have $6 Billion over five years allocated to development of commercial crew transport system(s?). That's half of what has already been spent on Constellation (in four years, plus termination penalties). Presumably they expect private companies to contribute the remaining development investment, in exchange for NASA getting out of the market (and thus becoming a guaranteed buyer, of a sort.)

Here is the problem. The law (in the U.S.) does not work that way. Case in point. In the State of Nevada, if a woman has had anything to drink at all (notice the law does not cover men, but that is a different story), has sex with someone, she can file rape charges up to 48 hours (can not remember, might be 24 hours) after and it is assumed that it is by definition rape because she is intoxicated and could not make an informed CHOICE even if she verbally and physically consented.

US law doesn't always work that way

First, I would argue that rape and sex offender laws throughout the country are - from my limited knowledge and exposure to them - pretty ridiculous and inconsistent. You provide a good example, where someone could - in completely good faith - done everything in their power to be assured of consent, but nevertheless be charged with rape for factors out of their control. That's pretty stupid, and I hope a judge would have the cool-headedness to allow that information to play a part in any verdict.

However, I don't think your example counters my original point: the ultimate responsibility for wrong-doing lies with the one who committed the wrong act. And I can provide an example where the law does work that way, as a law in Florida says that the clothing of the victim cannot be admitted as evidence in a rape trial. More to the point, clothing can't be shown as justification for rape.

And that's my point: making potentially poor choices (for example, wearing revealing clothing in a dangerous neighborhood) does not excuse rape. Making poor social choices at school does not excuse bullying.

-Trillian

Panama is hardly the only place in the world with rainforests, your statement proves nothing except perhaps that Panama in particular has their act together.

But what do I know? Lets see what Bernd Heinrich, emeritus professor at the University of Vermont has to say.

In the end, what was originally intended as a mechanism for slowing global warming has created huge economic pressure for ecocide. And there will be no objections from easily duped bleeding- heart "environmentalists," who absolutely love tree planting because it sounds so "green."

That was from December 2009, and I doubt much has changed in the past few weeks...

The concept can be as sound as bedrock, but if the execution is poor then it isn't worth a shit. Where there is money, there is corruption, and that doesn't get you anywhere.

First, of course get your car serviced if it's part of the official recall. That's a gimme.

More importantly, if your car starts accelerating uncontrollably as if the throttle is stuck all the way open, for the love of god grab the key and TURN OFF THE ENGINE. Yes, you will lose power steering and brakes -- this is still preferable to attempting to drive the car at 100MPH until it runs out of gas. This didn't seem too difficult to me, but apparently a State Trooper in CA decided to call 911 before taking this rather obvious step.

The 911 call came at 6:35 p.m. on Aug. 28 from a car that was speeding out of control on Highway 125 near San Diego. The caller, a male voice, was panic-stricken: "We're in a Lexus ... we're going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck ... we're in trouble ... there's no brakes ... we're approaching the intersection ... hold on ... hold on and pray ... pray ..." The call ended with the sound of a crash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/business/01toyota.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

I know it's not kind to speak ill of the dead, and I understand that it wasn't their fault that their car was fatally defective (and Toyota is completely at fault) but it's hard for me to comprehend how someone could fail to deduce the rather straightforward solution to their problem -- car is going too fast => stop the engine. This has really been boggling my mind for the past week as these incidents pile up -- if someone can explain this to me, I'll be eternally grateful.

I really wondered about this. I also don't want to speak ill or sound like I think I know better, but how did he not at least shift out of gear or turn off the engine? Yes, as someone said turning off the engine can lock the steering, but if you know that ahead of time you can tick the key back to "run" and the steering will be unlocked again. Maybe hard to think that much in a crazy situation, but really, if this guy could operate a cell phone I really feel like he should have been able to operate the key. But i don't know a lot about the situation so I'll admit i probably don't know what I am talking about, it just really seemed weird to me that of all people, a state trooper wouldn't have been able to figure out *some way* to disable the car.
-Taylor

"I'd rather he go on a spending spree that saves the economy (yes, it is working. look at the numbers.) than have him go the Bush route. Your deceptive number game not withstanding, it's clear that we finally have a President who cares more about the American people than the corporations that line his pockets."

Please, show me the numbers. Do you mean these numbers (from your own liberal champion, the NY Times, no less)? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/business/economy/09jobs.html

"Bush was so busy cutting taxes for every billionaire and outsource happy corporation that he couldn't be bothered to pay for his wars, even in normal economic times."

If you'd bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that many of Bush's tax cuts were also aimed at the middle class. Owning dividend-paying stocks and selling houses isn't just a hobby for the uber-wealthy, you mindless jackass.

"Barack Obama is cleaning up the mess that Republicans like yourself left us."

Barney Frank. Chris Dodd. Community Reinvestment Act. Home ownership turned into a middle class entitlement program. 'Nuff said. Also, I don't recall claiming Republican affiliation. Your comprehension skills are just pitiful.

"Show some gratitude, or at least have a bit of respect for your superiors."

Typical arrogant liberal response. Your arguments are vacuous and based on shifting sands, so you instead fling ad hominem attacks.

An another article summarizing some of the proposed changes for NASA and their implications.

That would be Scalia and *Rehnquist*.
Thomas agreed with the majority.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/20/us/justices-allow-unsigned-political-fliers.html?pagewanted=all

First, of course get your car serviced if it's part of the official recall. That's a gimme.

More importantly, if your car starts accelerating uncontrollably as if the throttle is stuck all the way open, for the love of god grab the key and TURN OFF THE ENGINE. Yes, you will lose power steering and brakes -- this is still preferable to attempting to drive the car at 100MPH until it runs out of gas. This didn't seem too difficult to me, but apparently a State Trooper in CA decided to call 911 before taking this rather obvious step.

The 911 call came at 6:35 p.m. on Aug. 28 from a car that was speeding out of control on Highway 125 near San Diego. The caller, a male voice, was panic-stricken: "We're in a Lexus ... we're going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck ... we're in trouble ... there's no brakes ... we're approaching the intersection ... hold on ... hold on and pray ... pray ..." The call ended with the sound of a crash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/business/01toyota.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

I know it's not kind to speak ill of the dead, and I understand that it wasn't their fault that their car was fatally defective (and Toyota is completely at fault) but it's hard for me to comprehend how someone could fail to deduce the rather straightforward solution to their problem -- car is going too fast => stop the engine. This has really been boggling my mind for the past week as these incidents pile up -- if someone can explain this to me, I'll be eternally grateful.

Faulty logic. People do stuff that they know (or should know) will hurt them all the time. They do it a lot when driving cars, anyway, why should bicycles be any different?

When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of reckless or aggressive riding. But an analysis of police reports on 2,752 bike-car accidents in Toronto found that clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists was the cause of 90 percent of these crashes.

ignoring stop signs

Some cyclists do those things, and I can understand why it is frustrating for other people, but it rarely causes accidents: 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor.

ignoring bicycle lanes when they don't need to turn left.

I suppose you mean "turn against oncoming traffic" - left turns are certainly not a problem here... anyway, the main reason for avoiding bike lanes in cities is people parking in cycle lanes. The Door Prize: Cyclists killed by dooring - a list of cyclists killed because of motorists opening their door in the cyclist's path. It happens all the time - I had it happen to me once, and now I will never use a cycle lane that has cars parked along it or in it.

Because of regulations, which are much more stringent for the nuclear industry than anything else, no-one can come with the up-front investment.

If only that were true. But it is not. China, France, India, and Russia do not have the regulations the US does. And even in those countries the government not the market says what gets built.

If France found that gaz turbines or coal were cheaper, they would have switched a long time ago... They went nuclear because of the oil crisis

And nuclear weapons and other military goals had nothing to do with it? Charles de Gaulle, who died in 1970 years before the oil crisis, was a big supporter of nuclear power. The Oil Crisis had nothing to do with it.

And Areva having problems with their new power plant? Yeah, sure. New model. Of course, it is typical for activists (you did quote indymedia above...)

Okay let me quote the "New York Times" which supports nuclear power:

In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble
"The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. The most powerful reactor ever built, its modular design was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build. And it was supposed to be safer, too."

"But things have not gone as planned."

"After four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor's 3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion, has climbed at least 50 percent. And while the reactor was originally meant to be completed this summer, Areva, the French company building it, and the utility that ordered it, are no longer willing to make certain predictions on when it will go online."

to blame civil engineering mishaps on nuclear power. Of course, it must be the curse of nuclear that the concrete mix design was wrong!

Areva is a French government owned Nuclear power company not a civil engineering company.

Falcon