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So what does a coach being murdered say about cricket supporters? Or the countless riots over soccer/football games?

This copy of a New York Times article discusses the matter in detail and provides a lot of the surrounding history and reaction of the physics community: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/science/at-lawrence-berkeley-physicists-say-a-colleague-took-them-for-a-ride.html?scp=2&sq=Smolanczuk&st=cse

I never took flu shots my whole life. I would get the occasional cold or flu, but nothing severe lasting more than 3 days or so that bed rest and lots of fluids and chicken noodle soup couldn't take care of.

One time, 5 years ago I came down with Pneumonia, and that was by far the sickest I have ever been in my life, and the most physically exhausting pain i have had to endure for a week and a half straight. My doctors didn't diagnose it correctly until after my temperature hovered for 103 degrees for two straight days. I almost could feel myself passing out from my body heat. It was horrible. They gave me the correct antibiotics and my temperature dropped within 24 hours.

5 years since then i have not had any seasonal flu/sickness and still refused to take flu shots. I see no need to since i don't see a large risk of becoming very sick and missing out on work or dishing out money on OTC/prescription meds unless necessary. I'd rather let my body get exposed to it if it happens and deal with it as it comes. I am fairly healthy and always up and moving at work so I get tons of exercise throughout the day without even trying. FYI, I am an IT Director, and yes I am at peoples desks every day, touching keyboards, laptops, monitors, etc. I am never the one getting sick in both of the building complexes I manage. I'm always washing my hands before eating and often throughout the day. Its always the sales/accounting/marketing departments where people end up going missing for days because they are at home sick with the flu; the same people that were the ones that jumped on the chance to get the company sponsored flu shots; and also the same people sitting all day at their desks eating donuts for breakfast and only getting up out of their cubicle to refill their coffee cups. See the relation...?

I also don't trust pharmas that spend more money every year on Marketing then they do on R&D, and I sure as hell won't trust them to stick a needle full of a product they produced for the sole purpose of capitalizing on this "pandemic" and inject it into my body. I'll take my chances...and so far for 27 years, I've been doing pretty good without their annual "miracle" shots.

Secondary Education is free in Ireland

Apparently you missed the "prop 8" debacle in California. Sunshine laws were used to create maps to the HOMES of people who donated to support prop 8.

That's not intimidation?

The article you linked clearly states the maps give the approximate location of the contributor. This information can be used for intimidation, but, speaking as a gay male, it can also be used to withhold my business from the hair stylist up the street that donated, or avoid classes with the teacher, or pick a different carpet cleaner, business analyst, etc.

I will certainly be checking this mashup before I spend my money with someone that will turn around and spend it to restrict my rights.

The extreme actions of small fringe groups should not completely overshadow the benefits to the rest of us.

I think you have a ways to go though before intimidation or especially violenc gets called up for use. I don't think we've quite reached that level.

Really?

Apparently you missed the "prop 8" debacle in California. Sunshine laws were used to create maps to the HOMES of people who donated to support prop 8.

That's not intimidation?

Or how about when Vandals sprayed anti-prop 8 graffiti on a church in San Fran?

That's not intimidation?

Or how about the tragic story of El Coyote restaurant? and what has happened to the elderly owner because she was following her beliefs. THAT IS NOT INTIMIDATION????

Or what happened to a group of Christians who were following their beliefs and went out, in kindness of spirit, to PRAY for the Gay community. They were surrounded by an angry mob, had DEATH THREATS hurled against them and were ASSAULTED. That is not Intimidation? That is not VIOLENCE?

Come on. Where have you been?

The implications could not be clearer; While supporters of traditional marriage use legal and ethical means to promote their agenda, supporters of gay marriage use illegal and unethical means the moment it appears that doing it the legal way isn't winning support. It was all over California during the prop 8 battle, and now it's going to start in WA. I guarantee.

P.S. To mods: Negative mod points do not equal "I disagree with you". If you disagree, have the courage to log in and post. You demand sunshine on votes and political support, it's only consistent to shed sunshine on your opinions. Show courage, be consistent.

When one votes in a way which significantly limits or changes the way a large population is allowed to live, it must be expected for there to be some form of public response.

If a proposition was passed allowing coal companies to dump toxic waste in my drinking water, and my child lost all his/her teeth due to heavy metal poisoning, should I not know who voted for or against it?
  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html

If a proposition was passed that annulled my marriage to my wife because she is 5 years younger than me as that is *insert conservative reason for this to be sick and wrong*, I would want to reach out to any one who voted for the proposition and make my disappointment known.

Your republican views have been tailored for you as a good fit for your hatred of homosexuality. However, all you are defending is the right of our elected leaders to act in ways that do not represent their electorate. That is the true republican ideal.

  Imagine the laws restricts your freedom and you may not see it the same way.

Allegations of misconduct have appeared regarding key IPCC dendrochronological 'evidence.' Several widely publicized papers may be based on a single flawed survey of cherry picked samples. Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org has been analyzing long withheld data and has draw some disturbing conclusions.

The story involves, in part, the exposure of raw data left unprotected on a file server by jealous researchers. One would think it might be of interest here on Slashdot given that the NYT is talking about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27friedman.html -- basically, while in the US obstructionists are still yelling "climate change is a myth!", China is going green because it's realized it has poisoned its citizen enough. Look forward to them exporting their tech to the rest of the world...

Gotta love MS, always two steps behind when they crib their strategy from elsewhere (in this case the big box stores that love overpriced accessories).

Marking the hell out of cheap commodity accessories stopped being a viable business model a few years ago.

Here's hoping that extended warranty scams and increased online competition force some sense into the big boxes at some point, but the writing's on the wall.

Amazon's already trialing same-day shipping in major markets. Other etailers won't be far behind.

Not everywhere in America.

Vulnerability to malware is very profitable for Microsoft and its main customers, computer manufacturers. When people have problems with their computer, they often buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of Windows, which, of course, still has security risks. See the New York Times article Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster.

Vulnerability is a business model for Microsoft, in my opinion and that of many people.

But that doesn't explain everything about Microsoft's manner of doing business. Windows Vista was released against the wishes of some Microsoft managers. Remember Windows ME and DOS 3.0 and DOS 4.0? The problems in those products made a huge amount of money for Microsoft. Because of the problems people migrated to the next version quickly, and paid the full price again. Releasing bad versions, apparently deliberately, is profitable when a company has a virtual monopoly and many buyers lack technical knowledge.

But, as they say in late-night informercials, there's more. Windows XP had serious problems until the release of service pack 2, only four years ago. Maybe Windows XP SP2 could be called the first release version.

Windows 7, apparently a small update to Vista that fixes the most annoying problems, allows no easy path to migrate from Windows XP. Anyone who doesn't want to re-install and re-configure all programs must migrate to Vista first, then to Windows 7, and pay the full price again for two versions, not just one.

So, maybe just being evil is another part of Microsoft's business model.

sorry, i can figure out what connection you mean by that, but i don't see how that discredits the theory that if you don't have economic freedom, you don't have freedom at all.

Economic freedom not only isn't predicated on, it doesn't necessitate, political freedom.

Let me indulge in a bit of history. Back in the 80s and early 90s when Wall Street was lobbying to remove embargos on investing in China, the argument was that the US was actually opening up a giant market, not promoting trade with the regime that just slaughtered a pro-democracy movement, and by opening trade, the Chinese would see how the West lived, and then would force the dictatorial regime to fall. Then it was about how by deindustrializing and moving all production to China, they would get money in their pockets, start to make economic decisions on their own, and soon would stop wanting to only "vote with their wallets" but want to "vote with their ballots" instead. But that's not what happened, now is it? The standard of living along the coast has rapidly improved, but far from weakening the regime, it's actually strengthened it, because the average person (rightly) says, "We've got a good thing going. My life is better. My child's life will be better than mine. Why would I want to take a chance and mess that up?"

Ironically though, China is the perfect lab for what would happen in an unregulated market that libertarians argue for when they want to eliminate the EPA, FDA, and every other regulatory industry.

Many other criminals don't get caught either.

As for insider trading, to me the following is just as unfair and should be as illegal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

So who is going to jail for that?

In the finance trading world, knowing something 1 day before the rest of the market isn't so different from knowing something 30 milliseconds before everyone else in the market.

Nope. Most people don't realize it, but financial crimes in the US are punished pretty severely. Enron's Skilling got 24 years in jail for conspiracy to defraud investors. You can get less than that for killing somebody. Martha Stewart got six months for lying to an investigator (while she wasn't under oath) about something that wasn't a crime. As with drunk driving for awhile people have this idea the penalties are light, but in the meantime legislators are reacting to public anger and jacking up the sentences. It takes awhile for reality to sink in to the public consciousness. From here:

"You can certainly make the case that things have gotten too harsh," said Samuel W. Buell, a former Enron prosecutor who now teaches law at Washington University in St. Louis. "But the reason why things have gotten so harsh is we went through these years when sentences were too light. Maybe we need a correction in the other direction to get a happy medium."

I think the drug laws are pretty stupid, too, but where I live first time offenders never get jail time for possession. You can usually avoid jail on the second conviction as well if you don't have a bunch of other stuff on your record. By the third one, well, you're an idiot who's going to jail for being an idiot. But only for a few months.

The United States of America.

At last! After years, nay - decades, of trying, I finally got my own personal stalker. You are very endearing, stonecypher, if a tad predictable.

I hope you'll do us the service of shutting up about your fantasies about our police. You know nothing about them, and we have enough of them that individuals who make poor choices which are regurgitated by the media can make us look a lot worse than we actually are.

Yes, the media, along with the knaves at your supreme court sure do make it seem so.

Go flip through an Orwell book and masturbate to how urbane you are.

Ouch, stonecypher, that hurt! Are you accusing me of infidelity? I really thought we had a good thing going, especially since you've been piling on the attention. I could never choose Orwell over you, sweetie.

IMHO, the problem with the "stranglehold the Republican and Democratic parties have on the machinery of government" is the result of corporate influence on those parties ...
"We need to limit federal legislation of states and depend upon each state to make the decisions ... "

when some corporations have revenue (and sometimes profits) greater than entire nations (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/worldbusiness/01iht-exxon.4.9679416.html), state budgets (http://www.nasbo.org/Publications/PDFs/FSSpring2009.pdf), and global influence, the various state gov'ts will be immune to this ... how?

most government hand out per capita than the rest of the USA.

what are you basing this on? last I heard California had the highest percentage of welfare recipients in the country something along the lines of 30% http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/us/07califwelfare.html

Verizon installed a fiber node this past year in my neighborhood, yet I cannot get FiOS because "it's not done".
To make matters worse, I cannot use my preferred ISP (Speakeasy) because of the infrastructure hurdle mentioned above.


In my mind, this is anti-competitive behavior by a monopoly (Verizon, obviously) to prevent me from choosing a different ISP. I really wish I could because Verizon's service and reliability is absolutely horrible.

One point of irony in all of this is that when the Verizon tech tested the copper line, the automated voice is still "Welcome to Bell Atlantic", the PREVIOUS established monopoly. (and it was James Earl Jones' voice no less.)


As Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Krugman noted today in his column, competition is always a good thing.

i see whistleblowing on corporations and where they do evil all the time in western media. the same would be completely covered up and whitewashed in china. do you understand the level of pollution chinese companies get away with in china? if chinese companies tried to pull in the west the kind of crap they get away with routinely in china, the media would start a firestorm. oh, in fact they did: melamine in food, ethylene glycol in medicine, lead in toys...

witness:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/showcase-65/

look at those pictures. this is what companies get away with in china. if you showed such pictures in the west about a western company doing that somewhere to people in the west are you going to tell me they get away with anything near remotely as murderous in the west? i'm not asking for historical examples, i'm asking for the here and now. plenty of western companies pollute outside the west... and chinese companies just as much if not more now. here in the west, western companies are sued and erin brockovitched to death. while in china its carte blanche, standard operating procedure: poison poor chinese with impunity

and deny this:

one of the most influential and deeply historically entrenched american businesses has been systematically dismantled over the last 20 years in the usa. its media edifice hamstrung and turned against itself, all of its entrenched political players and lobbying and propaganda utterly defeated. i'm talking about the tobacco industry. where's this amazing western corporate control of our lives again?

i am very sick of this meme that companies control everything in the west

it is in fact the solid truth that in china, companies have much more influence and arrogant assumed right to pretty much murder, while in the west they are regulated and hounded by the media constantly. no such hounding in a government monopoly media in china, regulations only after they prove embarassing and hurt the bottom line in china

"Never do upgrades, it's the best opportunity to clean the trash out of the registry."

The best way to avoid Windows registry problems may be to use Linux.

The registry trashing problems could be easily fixed by Microsoft, if the company wanted to do that. For the apparent reason Microsoft doesn't fix the registry trashing problems, see the New York Times article Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. Corruption and vulnerability to malware is apparently very profitable for Microsoft and its main customers, who are computer manufacturers.

Although you don’t see it with your eyes, the sizes of the keys on the iPhone keyboard are changing all the time. That is, the software enlarges the “landing area” of certain keys, based on probability. For example, supposed you type “tim.” Now, the iPhone knows that no word in the language begins timw or timr—and so, invisibly, it enlarges the “landing area” of the E key, which greatly diminishes your chances of making a typo on that last letter.

from http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/iphone-keyboard-secrets/

... but seriously, how is access to a broadband Internet connection a legal right?

America's Founding Fathers only saw necessary to enumerate the protective rights — they listed the things, the Government is not allowed to do to people. All of them believing in personal responsibility for the famous Pursuit of Happiness, they did not put anything remotely like Right to Shelter — a Government obligation to give citizens something other than freedom to mind their own business — into the Document they crafted.

Nor have they approved of Government's benevolence at taxpayer's expense: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." -- said James Madison in reaction to Congress planning to offer Federal money to French refugees.

Finland may feel different — whatever strikes their fancy... From a Progressive's point of view, Finland is far ahead — while we are still debating "the right" to health care, they've declared the right to speedy Internet access. To the Founding Fathers point, that all rot: "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe," — wrote Thomas Jefferson at about same time...

For instance, a case reported by the NYTimes in which a firm that does something useful is essentially looted by a private equity firm, who bought up the company's stock on debt, and then promptly assigned the debt that they used to buy up the company to the company they just bought.

Private equity firms get $750 million, Simmons Bedding Company gets bankruptcy. It makes the stuff Michael Milkin was pulling in the 1980's seem positively nice and friendly by comparison.

What do you mean?

http://www.justnews.com/news/14708354/detail.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/business/worldbusiness/27iht-drone.4.11474996.html
http://gizmodo.com/5167853/the-draganflyer-x6-uav-police-edition

Except for FAA approval, there isn't much stopping our police state to use them.

I *like* unique, easily-visually-identifiable structures. a@b.c is an email address. If you're in the U.S. you know that XXX-XXX-XXXX is a phone number and that XXX-XX-XXXX is a social security number. You know that X/Y/Z is a date, even if it's not always clear if it's M/D/Y or D/M/Y.

"://", while verbose, is very clear and you always know EXACTLY what it is and what it means--that it's the START of a COMPLETE Web address. If it would have been just a : or a / it wouldn't always be clear because those symbols, by themselves, are often used elsewhere and it would lead to confusion.

Now if we could just teach a planet full of lusers the difference between "slash" and "backslash." People always say "backslash" because they've heard computer guys say it every so often when talking about logging onto MS servers so they call EVERY slash a backslash. Damn you Paul Allen!!!

You're being shortsighted though. While your numbers might currently be true, you're not seeing the big picture in all of this. Apple is 2 years old on the market, they are past their initial launch boost and they have exactly 1 product with different capacities.

Android is less than a year old on the market, many of the Android devices are announced and coming this fall/winter. They have many more carrier deals than the iPhone has, and already more devices. Expect the tables to turn in 1-2 years. Apple will become the niche and Android will be everywhere. That is if they manage to supplant Symbian which right now has 3 times more market share than the iPhone and Android put together.

1. Windows Mobile is on a lot of different devices but according to Canalysis, the iPhone outsold all WM devices combined worldwide last quarter.

2. Rob Glaser, founder and C.E.O. of RealNetworks (circa 2003), ''It's absolutely clear now why five years from now, Apple will have 3 to 5 percent of the player market.'' Plays4Sure devices were suppose to overtake Apple and leave Apple a niche player....

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/30IPOD.html?ei=5007&en=750c9021e58923d5&ex=1386133200&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all&position=

And dont be so droll as to think that cops are going to be pinning crimes on John Q Innocent because he matches 80%...they are going to investigate just as they would any other crime.

Drollin...
Drollin...
Drollin down the rivah

Personally, I am for a national ID system - and a national ID card. Verify social security numbers and biometric data (and even DNA) - and unless govt screws the pooch - identity theft is a thing of the past. Mistaken identity is a thing of the past. Illegal aliens using false ID is a thing of the past.

That's the same kind of thing people say all the time about new, unimplemented technologies - but real life never works out that way. At the very best, all that will be accomplished is that most peope who circumvent the current system will figure out a way to circumvent the new system.

Think of the logistics of what you are proposing and all of the places in the chain where it can be compromised - at the point of scanning you to put into the database, at the point of scanning you to compare to the database, etc. You have seen GATTACA right? Even their system wasn't fool-proof and it was uber-big-brother - if this country ever gets to that level of big-brother, national-id or not, we are all kinds of screwed - so you can count on any such system being even more flawed than the one in GATTACA.

1. Population control. God for bid we would encourage people to have less Children as a way to help the environment.

You are a liar. I am from Santa Cruz, which is one of the most hippie'd up towns in All Creation. The environmentalists have been preaching zero or negative population growth since before I was born.

2. Cleaning up a place that is already spoiled (not talking about picking up trash in the national park).

You fight battles you can win. There are many such sites right in the middle of populated areas which are not being cleaned up because they are not being designated superfund sites for economic reasons, and selfish bullshit ones at that. But that's not the fault of the environmental movement, and they do in fact bring up contaminated sites every time they think it will be useful.

You are a lying liar, and your comment is made of lies. Is it ignorance and a willingness to speak when you know nothing, or a deliberate attempt to reframe the debate for your own nefarious purposes? There's no third way.

I'd take this as the insufferable attitude of superiority that "victims" have, being the only people on the planet smart enough to be able to detect that they are being victimized. "I'm a victim of XXX, and if you were smarter you'd see how I was being victimized..." "Come see the violence inherent in the system".

It's not about intelligence. It's about education, familiarity, and life experiences.

If you are a man, you naturally have very little experience with the forms of sexism that women face.* That's not an issue of intelligence, but experience. We men tend to underestimate the impact of those experiences. When a feminist tries to educate a man about the many inequities women still face, it's not an attempt to assert superiority. It's an attempt at education.

Of course, this education isn't always phrased in polite terms, and some people object to the idea that there is anything new for them to learn. So the conversation often goes badly. But there is clear evidence that women aren't afforded the same opportunities in society:

C. Megan Urry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale who led the American delegation to an international conference on women in physics in 2002, said there was clear evidence that societal and cultural factors still hindered women in science.

Dr. Urry cited a 1983 study in which 360 people - half men, half women - rated mathematics papers on a five-point scale. On average, the men rated them a full point higher when the author was "John T. McKay" than when the author was "Joan T. McKay." There was a similar, but smaller disparity in the scores the women gave.

Dr. Spelke, of Harvard, said, "It's hard for me to get excited about small differences in biology when the evidence shows that women in science are still discriminated against every stage of the way."

A recent experiment showed that when Princeton students were asked to evaluate two highly qualified candidates for an engineering job - one with more education, the other with more work experience - they picked the more educated candidate 75 percent of the time. But when the candidates were designated as male or female, and the educated candidate bore a female name, suddenly she was preferred only 48 percent of the time. [source]

* Yes they do.

- Among other incidents, at the school with the largest number of African-American students in the Ivy League, nooses and racial epithets have been anonymously scattered around professors' offices.

- Differential prosecution and punishment of drug offenses and other minor nonviolent offenses (with black men incarcerated at eight times the rate of white men).

- Black Americans were specifically targeted to receive sub-prime loans, even when they could have qualified for prime-rate loans, with a differential result that probably pushed a lot of African American families into losing their homes. (another on higher rates: here.)

- The USAF considers it still necessary to actively recruit minorities into the officer corps, which is over 80% white.

I could go on, but I've done enough research for you so far. Similar results can be found for differential treatment of other minorities, as well as women (who are actually a slim majority, but still the disempowered group).

Note that these are mostly instances of institutionalized racism or sexism -- where there is officially no difference on the law books or in the policies, but organizations still have cultures that privilege whiteness and maleness, and corresponding values and attitudes, above women and people of color. This is the kind of racism and sexism that is alive and well today, but is all the more insidious, because most of us white males are trained not to be even remotely aware of its existence, or (when confronted with it) to brush it off as isolated incidents, a few bad apples, etc. The biggest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist, as they say.

Also, this is all without getting into stereotypical portrayals in the media. For instance, when was the last time you saw a movie with an Asian American hero who didn't either (1) know kung fu or (2) flail helplessly in the clutches of his own geekery? When have you seen an Asian American love interest? (Outside of Harold & Kumar, which was explicitly intended as a corrective to that attitude in media portrayals). Have you ever noticed that if there's a black character in an action movie, he's almost certainly one of the first to die, and nearly guaranteed to be dead by the end? (c.f. Battlestar Galactica, with plenty of other instances easily discoverable). I won't go on, but these sorts of cases have a powerful effect on society's perception of people of color, and on PoC's perceptions of themselves, too.

Your solution of investing in the infrastructure is completely correct, but is a completely alien concept in modern business practices. Investment is a cost, and so by not investing you're cutting cost and maintaining profit.

AT&T's behavior is endemic in American business today, and has been for god, 20 - 30 years? The US frequently comes in near the bottom, and all too often, dead last when its infrastructure is compared to the other industrialized nations. If you just compare the modernized coast of China, it's infrastructure is better than the United States. Our broadband is horribly slow. Our cell phone system is antiquated and undeveloped. Our electrical system is overstretched and prone to brownouts. Since everyone else can't be "ahead of the curve," we're left with the unescapable conclusion, that we're behind it. We're way behind it when emerging economies are on par with us.

It's not just infrastructure. The auto makers are in collapse (with the notable exception of Ford) not only due to crushing healthcare costs due to retirees, but also because the lack of will to adapt to new trends and technologies. It's embarrassing that after getting their lunch ate by the Japanese back in the 70s when Detroit was turning out crap (in all fairness, American cars today very well made, and can compete in quality with anyone), that they let it happen again by placing all their eggs in the SUV basket while not just ignoring, but actively fighting fuel efficiency standards and slow walking the development of hybrids and all-electrics. Guess who owns that market now?

With electricity, we're told that our infrastructure doesn't suck, but yet a fucking squirrel can cut off 50 million people. Meanwhile we're told to deregulate to decrease costs, but instead we get market manipulation that actually increases costs. (It seems like we always forget why the regulation was put in place the first time, and then we have to repeated learn that companies will screw over the most people in worst possible way, thus harming all of us, all to increase profits.) Then when we do say that we're going to invest in a new electrical infrastructure, and do develop new technologies, we don't. The US is already lagging the world in green technology development.

We make nothing here, except except "exotic financial instruments," and we know how well those work. Yet, people wonder why this is is the second jobless "recovery" in a row. Real unemployment is at 17%, but hey, the Dow Jones Industrials have been on a steady rise since March, so everything is cool. Wages are down, unless you're to top 1%. The Chicago Fed reported that the US has the most unequal wealth distribution of any OCED country. We have government that won't pass reform that 65% of the public wants, because it would hurt the megacorp that bought politician.

We've been asleep at the switch for too damn long, and now we're over the cliff.

When Obama came in and was talking about reform, and infrastructure investment, and new technology investment, I thinking that it was about damn time. Yet, we're not getting it. Instead we get "too big to fail." None of these promises are playing out like he said, because the entrenched interests, and yet you can't vote for the Republicans, because they simply deny there's a problem.

Goddamn we suck.

Ahh, more classic Slashdot snark stupidity. Make a pseudo-rational claim and then insult the opposition by calling them "weenies".

It's not that your idea is all bad, but in the real world corporate America will gladly poison and kill thousands to millions for profit. For a current example consider coal ash/fly ash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash. The coal lobby has bought enough legislation to keep this stuff completely unregulated. Actually it is rather toxic.

It has radioactivity: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste which has been shown to contaminate areas near coal fired power plants. It also has toxic heavy metals:

Fly ash contains trace concentrations of heavy metals and other substances that are known to be detrimental to health in sufficient quantities. Potentially toxic trace elements in coal include arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, radium, selenium, thorium, uranium, vanadium, and zinc. Approximately 10 percent of the mass of coals burned in the United States consists of unburnable mineral material that becomes ash, so the concentration of most trace elements in coal ash is approximately 10 times the concentration in the original coal.

(from the above linked Wikipedia article).

There is a vast amount of this dangerous material in unstable storage and it has already caused big problems. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/01/60minutes/main5356202.shtml and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/science/earth/01ash.html.

So, since you think that anyone who is worried about environmental issues is a "weenie", I propose that you put your money (or in this case your health) on the line. Get some coal ash, a 3 or 4 cubic feet and spread it around where you live. Make sure it gets in your food and in your lungs. The coal industry says that you have nothing to fear, and you can surly trust them with your life. if you choose not to do this then I suggest that you shut the fuck up

"Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it. " - This is not true at all

I took this news as a sign that the Nobel committee determined that the ongoing lengthy engagements with Iraq and Afghanistan are a bloody means to a peaceful end.

Yeah I highly doubt that. It's probably based on his non-war-related foreign diplomacy efforts. I don't agree with awarding him the prize, I think it's far too premature and there has to be a more deserving person at this point in time. Maybe once he has a chance to actually accomplish things and there's even the tiniest bit of hindsight, but not now. Oh well. They gave the prize to Arafat, which is a statement equivalent to "I have little respect for the Peace Prize committee."

I think every president discovers [that the world is more complicated than a sound bite].

And I think Obama already knew this, and it's a lot of the people who support his stated agenda who need to wake up.

I don't think it's Obama who was shocked to discover that closing Gitmo wasn't something that could be done in a day. That would be the ones crying betrayal because he signed the order to close it, but because a lot of those prisoners simply can't be let go, they have to be moved to the mainland and integrated into the justice system, there's a lot of deal-making and planning required. "Close Gitmo now!" is the soundbite that people are unrealistically clinging to.

I honestly have heard no word of [the Responsible, Phased Withdrawal from Iraq]. I guess he got into office and things got too real too fast for him? No word on that although I haven't been scouring his speeches. Now if that's why they gave him the Peace Prize, I'd agree with them. But that was a paragraph buried in his campaign promises (and not in progress yet), not something he's done.

What do you mean "no word"? Forget scouring speeches, did you try googling it? The plan is already being put into effect! Did you miss when Iraq celebrated U.S. troops leaving their cities? The fact that troops are being withdrawn from Iraq is the only reason they can even contemplate sending tens of thousands more to Afghanistan.

Of course most of this is in accordance with the agreement made between Bush and the Iraqi government shortly before he left office. McCain wouldn't have had a lot of leeway to do much different. Not that this really changes that you're slamming Obama for not doing the big thing you voted for him to do, but he's actually doing it and you just didn't know.

I voted for Obama to end the Iraq war and to intelligently address Afghanistan. I voted for him because I think he's a reasonable, practical person. And while I have my fair share of complaints of the "that's not what I would have liked him to do" variety, I don't think the reason I voted for him has been shown to be untrue. I don't think he entered the Presidency wide-eyed and naive and was suddenly slapped with reality. I think a lot of voters did, and it's the disconnect between their dreams and reality that is pissing them off.

There's a lot of comments here of the nature of "He's only been in office 8 months, and also he's failed to accomplish anything!" Not in the sense that one leads to the other, but as separate claims that he's new, and also ineffective. That's unrealistic. It takes time to accomplish anything in politics, but somehow people expect him to undo all that? A U.N. resolution to strengthen the NPT, ceasing to antagonize Russia and thus bringing them to the table as allies against Iran's nuclear program, these are all positive steps. Minor steps to be sure, but expecting more is unrealistic.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world-reaction-to-a-nobel-surprise/

IBRAHIM ASSEM

On the streets of Cairo, there was a sense that the award was for Mr. Obama's intentions, and, perhaps, a bit of wishful thinking regarding the implementation of those intentions.

"Love the dude, but all he's done on the peace side of things is make a few nice speeches and not go to war with anyone else," Ibrahim Assem, 32, who works as a portfolio manager at a London-based equity firm in Cairo. "They are handing him the Nobel Peace Prize because he isn't George Bush."

anyone who came after gw bush in the white house would look deserving of the peace prize in comparison, by simply not being gw bush. that's the sum total of the truth about this prize right there

Just like medical predators and ambulance chasing lawyers, I congratulate them for driving health care costs to the point where litigation avoidance - not patient care or comfort, is the deciding factor in medical decisions

"medical predators and ambulance chasing lawyers" amount to "less than one-half of a percentage point of medical spending" It's hardly the driving force in the cost of health insurance.

No one can afford to get sick without insurance in the US, and frankly not everyone can even afford the insurance.

That's true but tort reform has little to do with the cost of health care.

Thus, the health care system is broken, and thus - it HAS to get fixed NOW.

Yes, health care needs to be fixed; however tort reform is the exact opposite of fixing the system. Tort reform is a dream come true for managed care providers. They can deny care or approve cheaper, inappropriate treatments with less consequence. For example Joe has cancer. Joe's insurance can either pay for two million dollar chemotherapy or deny treatment. With say a $50,000 cap on malpractice suits the choice for the managed care provider becomes a clear. The clear choice being the denial of treatment. Protestations based on the altruism of corporations are laughable, managed care providers are currently denying care under the above premise. Making it easier for them to do so is the exact opposite of reform.

The NYTimes story on the inquiry mentions that they're also looking at IBM's refusal to license their software to run on the Hercules open source IBM mainframe emulator. It ill be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

The case was dismissed by a Federal Judge:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/technology/companies/08antitrust.html?_r=1

CCIA is shill for Microsoft. Thats' why this is happening.

http://mainframe.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/press-reports-us-justice-dept-opens-ibm-antitrust-probe.html

The biggest problem with this sentence is its misplaced prepositional phrase. The Human Genome Project probably cost $3B up to some point, but the sentence may imply that the first sequencing cost $3B. There was a recent article in the NY Times discussing this problem.

But then how are judges going to make some extra money on the side?

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

And what will you find in the prospectus of all modern megacorporations? Morals? No, you will find, "We exist to make money.'

"In keeping with the unorthodox corporate image that Google presents -- the phrase "Don't be evil' was written into its I.P.O. prospectus -- the company used a modified Dutch auction to sell its shares. A Dutch auction is supposed to make it easier for individual investors to buy stock and minimize the usual first-day 'pop' by seeking out the fair-market price."

Perhaps you should read a little bit about the history of corporations.

And perhaps you should learn about history as well as stockholder activism and socially responsible investing. It was partially because of these that apartheid ended in South Africa. Many shareholder activists pressured the companies they owned stocks in to either push for freedom in South Africa or to disinvest from South Africa.

Falcon

Actually, doesn't AT&T have download caps on its cell network? I imagine someone using Skype regularly would hit that wall pretty fast, and end up paying AT&T for the overage anyway. Combine that with the fact that they will probably ultimately figure out a way to override the FCC's recent stance on net neutrality (allowing them to degrade VoIP calls with packet shaping), and it seems that they might not lose anything with this move after all. It's likely more of a PR move to placate the FCC and get Apple off the hook. I very seriously doubt they're just going to roll over and let users bypass their phone network entirely (not that this is even possible, since I don't think they even offer a data-only plan for the iPhone).

not so much recently. here's a review in the NYT from just a few days ago of the one-woman theater version of her recent memoir. check out the clip (you'll need flash).
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/theater/reviews/05brantley.html?scp=1&sq=carrie%20fisher&st=cse&pagewanted=all

that said, if the opportunity arose....

For example, Pacific Biosciences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09genome.html
``There, Pacific Biosciences has been developing a DNA sequencing machine that within a few years might be able to unravel an individual's entire genome in minutes, for less than $1,000."

The "New York Times" reports, "The mastery of light through technology was the theme of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored breakthroughs in fiber optics and digital photography. Half of the $1.4 million prize went to Charles K. Kao for insights in the mid-1960s about how to get light to travel long distances through glass strands, leading to a revolution in fiber optic cables. The other half of the prize was shared by two researchers at Bell Labs, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, for inventing the semiconductor sensor known as a charge-coupled device, or CCD for short. CCDs now fill digital cameras by the millions."

I scanned the winners of all the Nobel Prizes in physics. None are African or African-American. Is this lack of scientific accomplishment by Africans due to low IQ?

Japanese IQ equals European IQ, but both are greater than African IQ by about 20 points. Note that Japan is a barren rock lacking natural resources. Yet, the Japanese transformed it into the 2nd richest nation in the world.

Does this low African IQ explain why all societies dominated by Africans are gross failures?

The New York Times published an article in August about a technology that decoded a human genome for less than $50,000. The inventor speculates that the technology will be able to decode a genome for just $1,000 in 2-3 years.

That being said it will be amazing to see the IBM project succeed. Either way the cost of decoding a genome is dropping so quickly it puts Moore's Law to shame.

> if only they were redeemable in gold and silver as once US constitution stated...

1) Gold will not solve the problems. It does not address any of the real problems.

Can all you idiots stop thinking gold is going to somehow magically avoid those problems, there's no magic in gold. The financial problem was caused by poor/bad regulation. Heck the US federal reserve still refuses to answer good questions about where some trillions of money went. Go google for "federal reserve trillions". There's also cheating and bad regulation in the stock markets - a privileged bunch get to see stuff 30 milliseconds before the others - see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html

Basing your currency on gold will not save you when there's poor regulation and corrupt people in high places. Just because the currency was backed by gold would not have stopped people from bundling risky loans into a High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund and selling it to old ladies who have a different understanding of what "High Grade" and "Enhanced" mean.

I know a guy who does some finance stuff, and he says he's not providing liquidity or any of the bullshit finance people spout to justify their existence. He says he's just transferring money from the stupid to the smart (him). He says at least he is honest about it - to a few of us at least ;).

They used gold back then and the serfs still got screwed by the barons, and economies still went bust. Looks like the current batch of serfs are still too stupid to understand what is going on. And "barons" like my friend will just have you all as snacks.

2) Gold is too useful to use as currency.

Yes it is rare, and that is the big problem. If all the countries in the world started using gold as a currency, it would be too expensive to use for some stuff where it is really useful (or it would make things more expensive without good reason).

Think about it. How much gold is there to go around for the 6 billion people in the world?

Estimates of the total amount of gold available (that is already produced in reasonable purity) in the world range from to 161,000 tons to 311,000 tons. That roughly works out to about 25g to 50g of gold for each person in the world. Or 5 to 9 trillion US dollars (assuming USD1035 per troy ounce). Yearly production is only about 260 milligrams per person.

At current prices that's like saying everyone in the world has USD830 to USD1700 on average. And worse every year they only gain USD9 in net worth. But there's a lot more money, _goods_ and services out there so if you base your currency on gold, it means that 50g of gold will end up costing a lot more, more so if the world population continues to increase, or people are productive in other ways ;).

Then gold will end up more expensive to use for a lot of useful things we are currently using it for, and maybe even too expensive in some cases. And for what benefit?

So it's a stupid idea ok? Except for those who have bought a lot of gold when it was cheaper and are trying to push the prices up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27Credit-t.html
We're not even talking money laundering-style "willful blindness"-class fraud, either.

Is that related to RickRolling?

P.S. a present-day time traveler going back to 1988 might be surprised to read this New York Times article that extols:

The hottest young English pop star of the moment is Rick Astley, a 21-year-old singer from a suburb of Manchester, whose debut single, ''Never Gonna Give You Up'' (RCA), has sold a million copies in Britain and reached No. 1 ranking in almost every other European country. The song is now rapidly climbing the United States pop charts and is the country's best-selling 12-inch single.

The record's most striking quality is Mr. Astley's voice - a rich, throbbing baritone that suggests Tom Jones crossed with Luther Vandross. It is definitely not the kind of voice one expects to hear on a contemporary dance record. Since ''Never Gonna Give You Up,'' Mr. Astley has gone on to score two more major English hits, ''Whenever You Need Somebody'' (the title song of his debut album) and a revival of ''When I Fall in Love,'' which re-creates note for note the classic Gordon Jenkins arrangement for Nat (King) Cole's 1957 recording.

Mr. Astley is the latest discovery of the successful producing and songwriting team of Stock-Aitken-Waterman, which also produces the group Bananarama. The team has popularized a streamlined homogenized pop-disco sound with an unruffled high-gloss surface that stands in marked contrast to the more angular, rhythmically inventive dance-funk of Prince and his disciples.

''I'm influenced by a lot of black American artists,'' Mr. Astley said in a recent telephone interview. ''Luther Vandross is one of my favorites, and I like James Ingram and Jeffrey Osborne.''

At least for now, Mr. Astley is content to have his voice packaged by Stock-Aiken-Waterman.

''I like dance music,'' he said. ''I'm happy doing what I'm doing and want to get more deeply into it.'' Glass and Ginsberg

Astley's videos were a big thing at the time, coming just two years into MTV's decline that was precipitated by Viacom's purchase of it and MTV still had some of its original appeal of showing a) videos that were b) popular.