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Try to use some critical thinking skills.

Oh, sure. After all, you are setting such a great example for me.

Carbon dioxide emissions caps will also have the effect of decreasing particulates, which most assuredly can cause lung cancer.

Particulates are already regulated. You can tighten those regulations a bit and I won't complain, if particulates are what you are really worried about.

But you are just being dishonest here. You are grasping at straws to explain why the carbon cap is a good idea.

So we should believe you, an anomnymous internet nutjob, over the vast majority of climatologists and atmospheric physicists. Because why?

Heh, I'm a "nutjob"? Oh, you have shamed me. I hang my head.

Now, dropping the mocking for a moment, I'll answer you seriously. This "cap-and-tax" plan is specifically designed to cause huge disruptions to our economy; and "disruptions" is a nice way of saying "disastrous damage". I'm a reasonably well-off middle class guy, so it won't hurt me too much; I'll just have to pay much more for heat during winter, much more for anything delivered on a truck (including food), and much more for gas. I'll be poorer but I'll be okay. This will really suck, however, for huge amounts of people in the US: truckers, farmers, poor people, working-class people in the energy business (especially coal miners and such). If we are going to jack the economy this hard, there had better be a damn fucking good reason that we are damn fucking 100% certain of. To jack the economy this hard when it's already in the toilet and we have trillions in debt, we need to be even more certain.

We are far from 100% certain about global warming and its consequences. Never mind me, I'm just a nutjob, but there are scientists out there who don't toe the consensus line. Such as Freeman Dyson. My specific comment was that the climate models cannot predict current conditions from past data; see this paper.

I'm glad you are so confident that it is worth wrecking the economy of the USA and hurting so many people. (And don't you fucking dare try to claim it won't hurt anyone. Right in the bill there are provisions for financial aid to poor people being hurt by the effect of the bill.) I'm not at all confident it will be worth it; I'm not even confident it will work as the Obama administration planned it.

No, I don't hate business. I also don't love it. I don't think it's the ultimate expression of human achievement.

You argued that it's okay to make a baker more poor, keeping him from growing his business, because growing business isn't that great of a thing. I think that baker making money to feed his family and send his kids to college may not be the ultimate expression of human achievement, but it's nothing to sneer at either.

I have officially given you far too much of my time. Have a nice life, and don't trust the politicians so much.

So, what you're saying is that you'd be happy to support cap and trade, if only some of the money collected were refunded to the working poor?

I'd say, "Right there with you, buddy," except I've learned from time-worn experience that any time a conservative talks about the effects of a policy on the working poor, they're invariably working to protect the interests of the rich.

Energy prices were only a small contributor to this recession. In Feb. 2008, when oil was near its peak, energy accounted for about 6% of the family budget (up from 4% in the 1990s) [src]. The real causes of the bust are the ones that have been widely reported, and your attempt to scare us with the specter of rising energy costs is more than a little bastardesque.

"The domain registrar for FreeLegoPorn.com, GoDaddy.com, eventually shut down the site and transferred the domain name to Lego under ICANN rules." So if a domain name uses a trademarked name in an 'offensive' manner, it's perfectly fine to strip ownership of the domain from the person who registered it and then give it to the company whose name was used? - Similar situation from 2003: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/04/nyregion/04AMBE.html There are a few domain names I wanted that the damn domain name resellers beat me to, all I need to do is trademark a name that is a slight misspelling of the name and it's all mine! - Don't ruin my plan with your silly logic.

My opposition to cap and trade would be instantly solved if this bill included tariffs on imports from countries that don't institute cap and trade.

Well, the WTO is fine with that: they're treating this like they treat VAT, so border taxes would be fine.

Newspapers run similar ads (with a tiny "Paid Advertisment" banner on the top) and I've heard of TV stations doing the same thing with "Fake Newscasts" but that's usually more common during election years.

On the flipside, there is a compelling argument for figuring out alternative energy sources. The argument is based on strategy security interests and not flower power tree hugging cheerleading, or even well intentioned but somewhat speculative computer models. Read as an example the recent NYT article by Thomas Friedman. For those of you with the courage to read a message that has not been preapproved and prepackaged by the mass media, a much clearer exposition is here.

The absolutely immense cost of the US military (defense spending is the largest category after entitlement programs) is only part of the picture. How do you price in the wars that you loose? How do you put a price on the concessions you end up having to make having to backward medieval rulers - surely they are not satisfied with a bow or romantic stroll? We're arming with one hand, via petrodollars, the same groups and regimes that we end up fighting only a few years later. The Cold War ended when oil prices crashed driving Russia's economy into a tail spin. This was the defining moment of our generation! A

H.M. seemed to do ok:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=861#more-861

Why go to sci-fi when there's real people who have been in that sittuation.

No, his copy has the Bill of Obligations and Bill of Responsibilities, and he's tired of everyone focusing on civil liberties!

You're welcome to like Jacko, but don't assume everyone else does and assume that if they don't they're from the wrong generation. I distinctly remember even at the time friends were pretty split about him - sure some loved him, but there were still plenty that hated him even when he was in his prime.

I hated what the idiot did in the public eye (just like plenty of the rockers and their friends that you mention) but I must admit that I loved his older stuff (especially from the Jackson 5) and it would appear that plenty of others did too.

you call the police and let THEM deal with it. That's why we HAVE police to begin with.

That's not what the police are for. The are here to:
Sodomize you during a search
Tase you if you are a minor
Screw the same women while on duty
Steal computer information
Lie and perjure themselves under oath
Threaten you
Rape your children
Murder your children and abuse you

Strange. That's only a 12-hours news window. I'd hate to see the abuses heaped upon us by government employees who are here to keep us safe if it were a counted over a year...

You're a real sticko. Besides with that middle name, the poor dweeb is doomed http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/the-middle-name-wayne-strikes-again/

another movie they protested: alexander

also: the wrestler

why?

one of mickey rourke's opponents in the ring is called "the ayatollah". nevermind the fact that in the movie "the ayatollah" is actually the wrestler's good friend when they are out of the ring. the irony of nationalism being a superficial game for the sake of ridiculous shallow spectacle apparently escapes a real ultranationalist iranian

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/wrestling-with-the-ayatollah/

This is way too much like that dumb Bond movie. First, they get their own NASA airfield for their own private jet. Then they base a Zeppelin there, cruising over the Golden Gate Bridge, no less. Now, a geothermal drilling project? They're definitely on script.

Who plays Grace Jones?

making google unreliable is a subtle argument for chinese citizens to depend upon chinese competitors to google, such as baidu

http://www.baidu.com/

does the outlay of that page look familiar to you?

for example, if my gmail account in china is unreliable- due to no fault of google, but unreliable nonetheless, that means i would tend to use some other email provider for that vital service. for baidu, all you have to do is have a fellow nationalist stooge in the government hit the flicker switch on google's traffic every now and then. since china is filtering everything anyway via centralized national authority, that's not hard to arrange

its a subtle and effective form of protectionism, something which the usa and other trading partners of china have noticed a severe uptick of recently, due to the global economic climate. which is especially hypocritical, since china, as a major exporter, is always complaining about protectionism

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/economy/24yuan.html

HONG KONG -- China has begun a concerted effort to keep its export economy humming, even as demand for its goods has plummeted with the global downturn.

Risking the ire of the United States and other trading partners, the Chinese government has quietly started adopting policies aimed at encouraging exports while curbing imports, even though China, as one of the world's largest exporters, has aggressively criticized protectionism in other countries.

The government has sharply expanded three programs to help exporters, giving them larger tax rebates, more generous loans from state-owned banks to finance trade, and more government-paid travel to promote themselves at trade shows around the world.

At the same time, Beijing has banned all local, provincial and national government agencies from buying imported goods except in cases where no local substitute exists.

If you want to see some really great informative graphics look at the what is presented along with the article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/23/us/Geothermal.html
I'm amazed to see such well presented, interesting and informative 3D and 2D graphics in a "mainstream" (non-technical) periodical. Take a look!
Anyway, back to the topic. The article also said that advanced geothermal power could produce "as much as 60,000 TIMES the nationâ(TM)s annual energy usage!" (Emphasis mine).
Doesn't anyone else find this utterly remarkable? Again, (looking at the spiffy graphics) the power looks widely dispersed GEOgraphically (ha ha) and other than these minor (and yes 3-4 magnitude is minor) quake issues shouldn't be a problem. This could EASILY and COMPLETELY solve our energy problems? Repeat: 60,000 TIMES! (not 60,000 percent which also wouldn't be bad). Even if only 1% of that amount was economically recoverable that's still 600 TIMES! So what am I missing here? (Sorry about the hyperventilating, lots of coffee).

I am a tenured professional orchestra musician.

The example shows clearly an accurate major pentatonic scale. The pitches are Eb, F, G, Bb, and C. The proximity to modern pitch is incidental, as pitch has been standardized for only a couple hundred years. The important thing is the distance between the pitches, or the ratio of one pitch to the rest. The pentatonic scale has ratios of 1:9/8:5/4:3/2:5/3, meaning if Eb is given the value of 1, F is 9/8 of Eb, G is 5/4 of Eb, Bb is 3/2 of Eb, and C is 5/3 of Eb. To construct an instrument that can play exactly (apparently exclusively) this scale shows, even if only through sound, an understanding of the mathematics underlying the scale.

The chance of constructing an instrument that happens to produce these exact ratios is impossibly small. Considering this and that it has a functionally placed embouchure hole opens up more possibilities. The person who made this instrument had made them before, or was taught by someone who had, or made it in imitation of something already seen. Now we know the pentatonic scale, which has been found all over the world is at least 35,000 years old. That's staggering.

I'm a tenured professional orchestra musician. I'll try to explain.

NotBornYesterday's conclusion was dead on! The AC is also correct.

In the example, the ancient flute played the pitches Eb, F, G, Bb, and C, which is a simple pentatonic scale. When in this particular order, it's called a major pentatonic scale. It's incidental that the pitches are close to these modern pitches (AC's point). The important thing is the distance from one pitch to the next, or in other words, the ratio of one pitch to another (NBY's point).

The ratios in the pentatonic scale are 1:9/8:5/4:3/2:5/3. So if you set Eb as 1, F is 9/8 of Eb, G is 5/4 of Eb, Bb is 3/2 of Eb, and C is 5/3 of Eb. The ratios are what is important. The absolute value of the pitch in Hertz is incidental. The maker of this flute understood these ratios, and constructed the flute accordingly.

The fact that people were using the pentatonic scale 35,000 years ago or more is stunning.

Disclaimer - IAPOM. I am a professional orchestral musician.

"Harmonics" doesn't really mean anything in this sense. Flutes don't play two notes simultaneously, so there is no harmony. This flute is capable of playing at least 5 distinct pitches, or at least 10 if you count overblowing to get a higher octave. The notes in the example are Eb, F, G, Bb, and C, which is a pentatonic scale.

This is the most amazing thing to me. The pentatonic scale's pitches have the simple frequency ratios of 1:9/8:5/4:3/2:5/3. Instruments designed to play this scale have been found almost everywhere humans play music. The person that made this instrument perceived, through sound, these simple mathematical ratios. 35,000 years ago, humans had already discovered the beauty in mathematics.

Also, I can draw the conclusion that the person that made this flute had made flutes previously, or learned from someone who did. The chances of gouging holes in a bone at random and having a very accurate pentatonic scale along with a serviceable embouchure hole in the end product is vanishingly small. This skill is learned by trial and error or instruction. This opens up more questions. If the maker of this flute didn't invent the pentatonic scale, who did? How old is the scale?

The area does have quakes, BUT if you look at where they STARTED to cluster once drilling started it becomes really obvious that the drilling and water insertion causes additional (like a lot more) quakes. The geologists know this is the case. The issue at stake is what happens when you drill way deeper into the rocks below -- here's thge video from the times showing what happens.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/23/us/Geothermal.html

But what's really interesting about this flute is that the harmonics are very close to a modern-day flute - 35,000 years later! There is a sample of the recreated sound right now on the New York Times website (permalink)...

Friedrich Seeberger, a German specialist in ancient music, reproduced the ivory flute in wood. Experimenting with the replica, he found that the ancient flute produced a range of notes comparable in many ways to modern flutes. "The tones are quite harmonic," he said.

Pri. Mary.

As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.

Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.

McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis six times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.

And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".

Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.

I related to Mr. Lacoume the conversation which I had overheard between the old Frenchman and the waiter, and asked him if he had many discontented customers. "Oh yes," he replied laughing, "there are at least a dozen old fellows who come here every day, take one fifteen cent drink, eat a dinner which would cost them $1 in a restaurant, and then complain that the beef is tough or the potatoes water." Mr. Lacoume confirmed the statement that thousands of people in New-Orleans live on free lunches.

You may be interested in this piece by an American expat in Amsterdam about paying Dutch taxes
(if you can be bothered to login to nytimes)

I'd tend to agree that this is useless voyeurism, except that there are some ethical issues that come up in transplants when the patient is very rich. The NY Times had an article about this today, and they specifically mentioned this hospital as one that had a very short average wait time of 3.8 months, compared to the national average of 12.3 months. "If you had access to a jet and had six hours to get anywhere in the country, you'd have a wide choice of programs," they quote one doctor as saying.

New York Times link generator

For instance Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger

In this case, "?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all" was appended, though at times, other magic keys have been required.

THE UPRISING IN IRAN IS NOT A FEW HIPPIES

REPEAT

THE UPRISING IN IRAN IS WIDE THROUGHOUT ALL IRANIAN SOCIETY

understand?

but why take my word for it. let an iranian tell you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/opinion/19shane.html

For instance, some American analysts assert that the demonstrations are taking place only in the sections of Tehran -- in the north, around the university and Azadi Square -- where the educated and well-off reside. Of course, those neighborhoods were home to the well-to-do ... 30 years ago. The notion that these areas represent "the nice part of town" will come as a surprise to their residents, who endure the noise, congestion and pollution of living in the center of a megalopolis.

People who haven't visited a city in decades are bound to give out bad directions. But their descriptions of where the protests are taking place, and why, also draw on pernicious myths of an iron correlation between religion and class, between location and voting tendency, in Iran.

This false geography imagines South Tehran and the countryside as home only to the poor, those natural allies of political Islam, while North Tehran embodies unbridled gharbzadegi (translated as "Weststruckness" or "Westernitis") and is populated by people addicted to the Internet and vacations in Paris. It is as if political Islam withers north of Vanak Square and the only residents to be found are "liberals" who voted for the opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

We must not assume that the engagement of members of society with their religion is uniform or that religious devotion equals automatic loyalty to a particular brand of politics. To do so is certainly to deny Iran's poor the capacity to think for themselves, to deny that the politics of the past four years may have made their lives worse -- and plays right into Mr. Ahmadinejad's dubious claim to be the most authentic representative of the 1979 revolution. Mr. Moussavi was, let's not forget, a favored son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a member of Iran's original cohort of revolutionaries, and he remains a firm believer in the revolution and the framework of the Islamic Republic.
But the United States seems able to view our country only through anxieties left over from the 1979 revolution. In the "how did we lose Iran?" assessments after the overthrow of the shah, many American intelligence agents and policy makers decided that their great mistake was to spend too much time canoodling with the royal family and intellectual elites of the capital. Commentators now are worried that, by siding with the opposition today, the United States will once again fall into the trap of backing the losing side.

But the fact is, Tehran is not the Iranian anomaly it was 30 years ago. It has become more like the rest of the country. Internal migration, not just to Tehran but to other major cities, has accelerated, driven in part by the growth of universities in places like Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashad and Shiraz, and now nearly 70 percent of Iranians live in cities. The much vaunted rural vote represents not a decisive bloc for Mr. Ahmadinejad but a minimum, one that was easily swamped by the increased turnout of city dwellers, who normally sit elections out.

And, of course, Iran in 2009 -- better yet, Iran on June 12, 2009 -- is not the same as Iran in 1979. Just as Tehran's neighborhoods cannot be fixed in time, the cultural lives of Iranians have greatly changed in the past 30 years. The postrevolutionary period has seen the expansion of education, the entry of women into the work force in large numbers, and changing patterns of marriage and even of divorce. These have all shaped Iranian society. The pseudo-sociology peddled by so many in the West would easily dissolve with a week's visit.

recant your ignorance. or claim you know more about iranian demographics and the uprising than actual iranians

douchebag

Hehe..

Get used to disappointment. From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14marsh.html

In a Department of Justice tally covering the last decade, Florida wins by its sheer number of guilty. The report, released last week, itemizes convictions in federal public corruption cases at local, state and federal levels in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and three United States territories.

I live in South Florida and am very used to politicians from city council member to congress folks making excuses for their convictions.

I've been scanning my family's color photographs preferentially over the older black and whites because many of them which are not even 30 years old have begun to fade into nothing.

Good plan. While the studies showing well stored Kodochrome longevity of over 200 years and silver B&W longevity approaching 1000 years haven't been proven. I've personally printed from glass negatives more than 70 years old and discovered that the camera optics were better back then (or rather, given F22 and a huge negative, the prints of a typical beach scene showed far more detail than any consumer level digital camera!

Kodochrome has also proven itself as these photos taken during the Great Depression demonstrate. Honestly, we didn't need to remake the Great Depression in color, it has already been filmed in glorious Kodachrome color.

I've been scanning my family's color photographs preferentially over the older black and whites because many of them which are not even 30 years old have begun to fade into nothing.

Good plan. While the studies showing well stored Kodochrome longevity of over 200 years and silver B&W longevity approaching 1000 years haven't been proven. I've personally printed from glass negatives more than 70 years old and discovered that the camera optics were better back then (or rather, given F22 and a huge negative, the prints of a typical beach scene showed far more detail than any consumer level digital camera!

Kodochrome has also proven itself as these photos taken during the Great Depression demonstrate. Honestly, we didn't need to remake the Great Depression in color, it has already been filmed in glorious Kodachrome color.

...when you can just go smash 168 expensive security cameras. Maybe even send some volts down the wires to fry the gear on the other end. Maybe just destroy and vandalize the hell out of the private businesses who support this and allow the cameras on their property.

Or, you could just get a bunch of crows to do that for you.

Wasn't Jon Katz fired after that story he made up, about an afghan boy e-mailing him with him commodore 64 which was buried in his backyard for years?

aha here it is: http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/17/204207
even the NY times wrote about the fraud: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/technology/afghan-e-mail-seen-as-too-geek-to-be-true.html

So no, slashdot was as bad then as it is today. Maybe the trolls were better..? (anyone remember netcraft?)

What do you mean the situation is not tenable (i.e. maintainable). If you don't do anything, or if you do the wrong things, the situation will stay as it is---maintaining the status quo is easy as pie.

As to why you should give up, the answer is roughly that you probably don't have anything to offer to women. Firstly, note that only about 40% of men reproduced compared to twice that percentage for women (as inferred from mitochondrial DNA), so you're in a man's normal condition.

For some contemporary evidence that women don't need most men, just look around to notice that in general women don't hit on men sexually. Often women will only have sex with men for the first time after large amounts of alchohol. There's no culture where women pursue men instead of vice versa, so this is not merely a fact about western culture. There's also plenty of chemical evidence (e.g. women get testosterone treatment to increase their sex drive).

In fact, scientific studies (tracking eye movements) show that both straight women and straight men are more turned on by a naked women than naked men (see Matt Ridley's The Red Queen for a discussion).

Finally, studies usually find that married men are much happier than unmarried men, but married women are usually no happier once the financial contribution of the man is deducted (here for example). Furthermore, married men but not women live longer and are healthier.

So anyway, I can see why you want a woman, but in general that's usually a selfish decision for a guy. Why not come to terms with your condition and lead a meaningful life in another way?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/health/03nice.html

The New York Times
December 3, 2008
The Evidence Gap
British Balance Gain Against the Cost of the Latest Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS

RUISLIP, England â" When Bruce Hardy's kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught.

At The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, print and delivery amount to 65 percent of the paper's fixed expenses, Bronfin said.
Electronic newspaper reader has look of the real thing (New York Times)

In a NYT article in the Sunday Magazine, Buzz Aldin thinks the Russians have a better idea in going to Phobos as a stepping stone to Mars. The moon..."is not promising for commercial activities."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21fob-q4-t.html?ref=magazine

Sure, it's entirely possible to retain digital data over long periods of time. It's not impossible. It's just substantially more difficult than retaining printed media, for many reasons. Let me count the ways:

1) Hardware changes. This past spring I was involved in a project to archive source code and executable files for a late '90s "smart toy" game called Redbeard's Pirate Quest, in which the player controlled the game by moving figurines equipped with RFID tags around the deck of a plastic pirate ship. Hooking it up required a computer with a serial port, which are still easily found but increasingly eliminated in order to free up space on the motherboard for more modern, more useful hookups like extra USB ports, DVI output, etc. The game cannot be played without the pirate ship controller. In another few years -- 10? 15? 25? -- it will probably be unusable.

Another group working in parallel to mine had to recover files from 1983 saved on 5.25" floppies using a Kaypro IV machine. It took them months just to get access to the data -- they had to find a working Kaypro IV, hook it up to a linux machine via a null modem cable, and copy the files over via kermit, then find emulators for the versions of early word processors that had been used to write the files. They were only partially successful; five of the eighteen disks they were given proved to be completely unrecoverable.

2) Data formats change, even very basic ones like text encodings. Just look at NASA data -- some of the early stuff (like, say, the Viking mission data) has been stored in cryptic formats interpretable by computer programs for which we no longer have the source code, running on computers that don't exist any more. Recovering data can take months or years, as discussed in this article from the New York Times.

3) A huge amount of data is stored in proprietary formats. In high school, I wrote a whole bunch of papers in a word processor called Sprint running on MS-DOS 5. I've still got a few of the files hanging around, but Sprint died the death years ago. Getting access to the data now would be a non-trivial undertaking, particularly if I wanted to preserve the original formatting.

4) Computerized storage media tend to be particularly sensitive to environmental conditions. It's entirely possible to preserve them over the long term, but doing so requires a good bit of planning. Often, the easiest way to preserve the data is to regularly migrate it from one storage medium to a new one -- which means that you have to have someone doing that. You cannot just throw a disk/CD/thumb drive into a closet and expect it to work reliably 25 years later.

Compared to all that, books are a piece of cake to preserve. Use pH neutral paper and ink, and keep them in a cool environment with low humidity. They can easily survive for centuries.

I have personally handled and used books penned in Latin on parchment 700 years ago. But I don't think I've ever seen functioning computer files which are older than I am. I know that such things exist -- I'm only thirty -- but I've never seen one, and probably never will. All you old-timers out there, who worked on exciting hot new tech in the '60s and '70s? Your early work is, basically, gone. I'll never see it in action. At best, I'll read about it -- in a history book.

P.S. Slashdot is being annoying and not putting paragraph breaks in properly when I preview. Apologies if there's no whitespace in the above.

Fact Check: It was the US and the UK: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

Single-payer isn't even being considered, despite heaps of data (here's a recent graphic)suggesting that it is preferred.

under the current us system, if you are poor, there are plenty of robust failsafes like medicare, medicaid, state programs, etc, that guarantee your health at no or very little cost

if you are rich, well, you're rich: you can pay for your healthcarte

but, and here's the big one: if you are middle class, and you get a major health problem, you have to declare bankruptcy. and even if you are well, you have nothing but grief: cobra has a time limit, preexisting conditions deny your healthcare, horrible deductibles, bureaucrats denying your claims (i love the argument that govt run healthcare will mean your healthcare will be decided by bureaucrats: HEY MORONS, WHO DECIDES YOUR HEALTHCARE DECISIONS RIGHT NOW? CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS!)

from a completely cynical point of view, healthcare reform makes simple political sense because the american middle class are being shafted in the current system, and they hate the current system. it makes simple obvious political common sense to address how much the american middle class hates their current healthcare system. that's really the bottom line here. the current system is politically indefensible... unless some lobbyist lines your pockets of course

represent the people, washington dc assholes, not the lobbyists. and the people's desires are loud and clear: govt run healthcare, a vast improvement over our current system

no matter how many problems you can find with govt run healthcare, our current system SUCKS FAR WORSE

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html

Indeed, why go to the expense of government agents when the "human flesh search engines" will do the job for you? I've heard of similar things taking place, mostly in China, where zealous nationalists and other general vigilantes have both the power of numbers and the internet to track down and harrass ne'er-do-wells in real life. It even carries over to the US occasionally; a Chinese student at Duke was targeted after she tried to mediate between Chinese and Tibetan student groups. I wonder how prevalent this will become in the US; Iranians don't have quite the numbers as the Chinese but really, anyone with say, someone's real name and location, and enough patience and determination can make that person's life pretty miserable.

Yes...
Stealing is bad...
That's why there are fines for theft... such as...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E0DB1430F935A1575AC0A9619C8B63

"The City Council unanimously passed a bill yesterday that would sharply increase fines for people who steal recyclable material from curbsides -- to $2,000 from $100 for a first offense, and $5,000 for each subsequent offense within a year."

Note... $2000 and $5000, not $1 million and $2 million.

This case is equivalent in that if you stole 12 soda cans, they fine you $24,000 or $60,000 instead of $2000 or $5000.

Crimes for other thefts are similar but there are different (usually lower) fines for $5 of merchandise, $125 theft and $250 theft (felony starts there-- in a ludicrous inflation non-adjusted harshly increased penalties from when felony theft laws were first passed a century ago).

If you adjust for inflation-- felony theft should probably start at about $2500 ( paperback novel when these things were passed was 50 cents-- now it is $8.50).

So even if infringement was theft (which it is not), you should have to steal 100 albums worth of material before facing felony prosecution.
This is why we have so many people in jail. So many that now we are now unable to incarcerate them all and are jailing them in their homes with remote tracking collars.

It's incredibly fascist and pathetic that our country is turning this way.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/us-climate-report-assailed/

"The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters."

I was about to post the same thing. Every article I've found so far about this has referenced the Telegraph's story. It really sounds like someone across the pond heard something from a guy who heard something and then just ran with it.

From the NY Times' take on it: "Thousands of people have outlined their strategies to the president over the last 48 months, and if a junior staff member at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis asks you for a few ideas about branch banking, then you too can truthfully say that you have been âoeapproachedâ by the American government."
(Full article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/bulldozing-americas-shrinking-cities/ )

because i just finished reading this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/us/18oregon.html

it pretty much negates everything you just asserted

i especially like this graph:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/06/18/us/18oregon_graph.ready.html

let's see: oregon almost as bad as michigan in terms of unemployment, but at the same time experiencing an influx of refugees from california

so oregon, as opposed to michigan where everyone is fleeing, has the worst economic recovery prospects of any state in the union, thanks to the rats scurrying off the sinking ship to your south

because i just finished reading this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/us/18oregon.html

it pretty much negates everything you just asserted

i especially like this graph:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/06/18/us/18oregon_graph.ready.html

let's see: oregon almost as bad as michigan in terms of unemployment, but at the same time experiencing an influx of refugees from california

so oregon, as opposed to michigan where everyone is fleeing, has the worst economic recovery prospects of any state in the union, thanks to the rats scurrying off the sinking ship to your south

IT is a support function, deal with it or find a different career field.

10. This
20. Goto 10

Seriously, having spent 15+ years in IT in one role or another (helpdesk, helpdesk manager, helpdesk product manager, presales support, operations manager, consultant) I've seen my fair share of things. I've been on top of the world and on top of my game. I've been burnt out and taken a year off to work in a coffee shop (best thing I ever did, by the way.) I've hired hundreds of support techs. And as I am sitting in a hotel room 1000 miles from home, have a raging case of insomnia and am feeling a little philosophical tonight, I have a word or wisdom or two that I want to share.

First of all: Why do you "want to remain in IT"? Is it because you enjoy technology? If that's the case, perhaps you should consider a different field? There's no law that says you have to make your hobby your job. In fact, you run the risk of spoiling the joy that drew you to it in the first place. If you are in technology because you love playing with what's new, keep reading Slashdot and buy the toys that interest you. Then go discover what you want to do with your life and do that.

Secondly: What do you want to do with your life? Does it involve serving other people? If it does: congratulations! IT is all about service. Seriously. Whether you are designing an application or supporting 200 lawyers/support staff, you are there to serve. You could get all gross and use old-fashioned phrases such as "cost center" or you could get all fancy and start to see the service you do as part of a larger path. This book changed some of my thinking on that.. Either way, you can't escape the fact: IT is about service. Secret hint: Once you get this, you start to love your job.

Thirdly: Have you ever really thought about what you want to do with your life? I mean really thought about it? If not, perhaps you should take a year off and do something completely random. You talked about "moving back home" as an option which means you probably don't have a spouse/kids which means that you have the freedom to do something bold. Try something completely different. Work with your hands. I took a year off and worked in a coffee shop. It did wonders for my work ethic and sense of what service really is. (It also reminded me of what it is like to really make next to nothing.) Working with your hands is satisfying. You might just enjoy it more than you thought. This article in last month's New York Times makes the case for working with your hands. You should read it. Really.

Fourthly: Is it about the money? Be honest with yourself. Are you in IT because of the money? OK. In this field, we make more than people with equivalent amounts of education might make. At least a little more. For now. That probably won't last forever. But are you wanting to move into "databases" or "web development" because you think there will be more money there? Maybe if this was 1996 that would be true. Yes, there is still money to be made there. If you are talented and willing to work hard and be passionate about what you do. But that's sort of true of anything. A little luck and a lot of passion go a long way. (Or is it a lot of luck and a little passion?)

Finally: Relax. Unless you are extremely fortunate, you have no idea what you are going to do with the rest of your life. Few of us do. You'll bounce around and external situations and circumstances will dictate most of it. New inventions. Sick parents. A spouse or child who changes your perspective. Wars. Epidemics. The unknown. Who knows what will happen next? Stop thinking so much. Enjoy the ride. If you feel stuck, listen to yourself. Learn to listen to yourself. Ask yourself what you really want to

He said that publishers would be allowed to set list prices but that Google would price the e-books for consumers. Amazon also lets publishers set wholesale prices and then establishes its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon effectively takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover typically, around $13 or $14.

Britain is the world's capital of libel tourism. Because of that, the ubiquitous CCTV coverage, and the RIP act, it's on my list of places to never visit, along with, say, the Congo.

PARIS -- You're an investment bank in Iceland with a complaint about a tabloid newspaper in Denmark that published critical articles in Danish. Whom do you call?

A pricey London libel lawyer.

That is called libel tourism by lawyers in the media trade. And Britain remains a comfortable destination for the rich in search of friendly courts, which have already weighed complaints from people who consider themselves unfairly tarred with labels like tax dodger, terrorist financier or murky Qaeda operative.

I happen to be a network tech at a Danish ISP and have been doing so for 10 years.
While we are required to log some stuff for minimum 1 year,
none has ever expressed any interest in DNS logs, ever.
The only authorities who can request any sort of information are Police and military, via a court order.
They can by court order just get the interface of interest mirrored, so why should a understaffed and overworked Police care about what DNS you use?
On that note, very few in the Danish government knows what DNS is.
Your tinfoil hat may to be too tight, me thinks?

O ok.. sure and you're the senior tech at this ISP and have top level clearance then right?
O and you have access to every room in the joint too I'm sure?
Please tell us what do you log for one year? We'd all love to know.
So no one has ever expressed any interest to you in DNS logs but then again who the hell are you?
Police and military... who the hell else where we talking about again?
So I also take it that the Police and/or government come to you with there high profile requests then?

How the hell do you know anything about what the people in the Danish government know? Are you a member of the Danish government or have you given them a pop-quiz?

Tinfoil hat.. o that's funny... sure I'm batshit crazy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

Yup I'm the one out in LA LA land... but hey maybe you think that this all is just a US problem. That's cool, just don't call me names when I just pulled three articles out of my ass in 10 seconds and all you have is your goldleef-hat and a box of Kleenex...