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Bundling IE with Windows, to destroy Netscape.

Which every operating system does. iOS, Android, OSX, webOS, Maemo, BlackberryOS, Ubuntu, etc, etc... Even Netscape was bundled "on 24 percent of the personal computers being sold by the 20 largest manufacturers." Netscape was in the business of trying to sell a browser to end users rather than compromise its margins by volume licensing to OEMs, they wanted to keep the browser money train rolling and ultimately their failure has resulted in you not needing to buy a browser for each of your devices and those devices instead being shipped with that functionality as standard.

No. You have to be retarded NOT to. Given full information.

Not the shiny-happy-speak that the entire renewables industry is pushing, along with the "Nuclear = BOMBZ!!!!" movement.

And what's going to threaten the structural integrity of a powerplant in the middle of the fucking french countryside? It's not like they're a high frequency earthquake zone. And nobody's stupid enough to NOT do geological surveys on land where they're going to build a reactor. So the possibilities of it disappearing down a sinkhole are slim. Same thing goes for building it on a flood plain.

And deliberate bombing? You DO understand that these sites have security to prevent that right?

So what are you expecting? A meteor to fall out of the sky and god-rod the site?

meanwhile, back on the farm, lassie senses danger:
In the last year alone, Indian Point has suffered seven major malfunctions — pump and power failures, a transformer explosion, radiation leaks, a fire and an oil spill. ...The licenses for Indian Point’s two reactors expired in 2013 and 2015; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still weighing whether to renew them.... The commission even permits Indian Point to evade its own safety standards requiring that the electrical cables that control emergency reactor shutdowns have insulation that would last 60 minutes in a fire — giving the plant an exemption after finding that this insulation lasted just 27 minutes. Poor maintenance at Indian Point has caused groundwater radiation levels to soar to 740 times federal limits, yet the commission just handed Entergy a five-year delay of the deadline for testing for possible leaks from the No. 2 reactor — the suspected source of this latest leak of radioactive contamination. The commission admits that tritium in the groundwater will reach the Hudson River and that the radioactive isotope, for which there is no safe dose, can cause cancer. Indian Point also has about 1,500 tons of radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel rods packed into pools. These, too, are leaking radiological contamination that violates the Clean Water Act. In addition, the plant’s cooling system has devastating effects on the Hudson’s ecology, killing more than a billion fish, eggs and larvae each year as it draws millions of gallons of water per day from the river. The commission has reported that one of Indian Point’s reactors has the highest risk of all the country’s reactors of being damaged by an earthquake, and federal studies show that Indian Point is incredibly vulnerable to acts of terrorism. Tens of millions of people live within the reach of an Indian Point nuclear disaster. An evacuation would be practically impossible and emergency responses would be largely futile. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...

Apple makes so much money yet has such an ugly history of mistreating the people with whom they do business in a variety of ways large and small: Mistreatment of workers who build their products (continuing in 2015 only changing due to activist and journalists compelling them to), copyright infringement, ebooks that won't work on jailbroken iThings, turning a blind eye to environmental degradation, making it needlessly hard for owners to take apart their products, teaching store staff twisted psychological manipulation, avoiding US corporate tax (which is already quite low), and more. Now we can add conspiring to fix prices. Hardly surprising given how unethical, illegal, and pernicious Apple has been.

Apple makes so much money yet has such an ugly history of mistreating the people with whom they do business in a variety of ways large and small: Mistreatment of workers who build their products (continuing in 2015 only changing due to activist and journalists compelling them to), copyright infringement, ebooks that won't work on jailbroken iThings, turning a blind eye to environmental degradation, making it needlessly hard for owners to take apart their products, teaching store staff twisted psychological manipulation, avoiding US corporate tax (which is already quite low), and more. Now we can add conspiring to fix prices. Hardly surprising given how unethical, illegal, and pernicious Apple has been.

Yes, and before computers, accountants had clever systems in place (since 14th century Italy) to catch mistakes. That's why they use double entry.

Here's an example of how a doctor (and hospital pharmacist, and nurse) made a mistake on a computer that almost killed somebody, which they almost certainly wouldn't have made before computers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03...

At my own hospital, in 2013 we gave a teenager a 39-fold overdose of a common antibiotic. The initial glitch was innocent enough: A doctor failed to recognize that a screen was set on "milligrams per kilogram" rather than just "milligrams." But the jaw-dropping part of the error involved alerts that were ignored by both physician and pharmacist. The error caused a grand mal seizure that sent the boy to the I.C.U. and nearly killed him.

How could they do such a thing? It's because providers receive tens of thousands of such alerts each month, a vast majority of them false alarms. In one month, the electronic monitors in our five intensive care units, which track things like heart rate and oxygen level, produced more than 2.5 million alerts. It's little wonder that health care providers have grown numb to them.

I think you have a valid point. They may be ignoring some truthful statements that he has made.

There is an article here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12...

They've only fact checked 75 trump statements but close to 140 hillary clinton statement.

OTH, they've fact checked 71 jeb bush statements and he has a much more favorable rating than Trump which would argue against bias.

I don't perceive Politifact as being particularly against Trump so the fact his ratings are terrible and Bush's are good would support the fact that Trump statements which can be fact checked are not true more often. Trump also has a very high "pants on fire" rating which they reserve for statements which are not only untrue but also ridiculous.

But your point is valid- they could be ignoring (thru intentional or unintentional bias) some of trumps truthful verifiable statements.

.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...

seriously, have you no decency slashdot editors?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...

https://myaccount.nytimes.com/...

Seems to link to someones personal NYT sub.

I am not aware of any precedent in US law that allows people to be legally compelled to produce things they don't have or can't reasonably be expected to produce.

We're in a brave new world - a few years ago people were arguing that there was no way the government can compel a citizen to buy a product

I typed up a nice long reply that just vanished because my browser crashed, and Pale Moon doesn't deign to backup form data. So you know what? You're gonna get the reply you deserve. For starters, you're wrong. The SM-3 missile is an ABM missile launchable from US Navy warships, which means we can - and have - posted ABM capability offshore anywhere we can park a destroyer, including, most recently the Med. Secondly, we can put this weaponry in shore installations, like the one we are building right now in Romania, which is pretty much at Russia's doorstep when it comes to them threatening the area with nukes: http://news.usni.org/2015/12/1... Furthermore, it's no longer the 80s. Terminal intercept is a licked problem, as the Army's Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system's track record demonstrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Just in case the continued excellent track record of Iron Dome didn't clue you in. Furthermore, hitting a missile does not make its nuclear payload detonate, as evidenced by multiple Broken Arrow incidents where the conventional plastique in the bomb detonated without causing a nuclear blast.

Anyhow, thanks for revealing your fearful nature.

Maybe I'm just a poor lonely neocon nutcase clinging to my guns and religion, but in a world where China - which has developed extensive CONVENTIONAL ballistic missile weapons - is drawing closer to a seemingly inevitable confrontation with the US: http://www.theatlantic.com/int... and a newly aggressive Russia (currently invading the Ukraine) currently threatening to use their nukes to counter any tactical, conventional defeats: http://news.usni.org/2016/01/2... and sending nuclear-cruise missile armed subs to patrol right off the US East coast, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08... I think I'm entitled to some moderate level of concern. In fact, you'd have to be a god damned idiot to not feel some concern.

It's also useful to detect how someone's data is misrepresented. Can anyone lie with statistics to a statistician?

serendipitously, yesterday's news on the debunking of the research debunking psych research. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03... as bad statistics.

Also, I'm not sure what "misguided reasons" the NYT and others have to exaggerate the consequences of the conflict.

The parroting of NK's exaggerated 'Sea of Fire' propaganda — which is ongoing by the way — supports the argument that nothing provocative or aggressive should be done, and instead we must negotiate. Diplomacy first, last and always. The fact that this policy is misguided should be self evident; decades of negotiation and 'agreed frameworks' where we unfailingly accept NK lies as truth in the name of diplomacy has produced a nuclear armed NK working diligently to perfect delivery.

Perhaps they are misinformed, or ignorant

No, the "misinformed, or ignorant" cop-out doesn't work; the effectiveness of artillery and the order of battle is understood well enough to debunk the 'flattened Seoul' line you've been successfully fed. All one must do is ask a military analyst to analyze. This doesn't happen because the result would not fit the preferred narrative.

Furthermore, while the consequences may not be as severe or immediate as some believe, they are still pretty severe

No one claimed otherwise. Not sure what you think you're correcting here. The difference between reality and NK/NYT propaganda is two orders of magnitude and the term 'exaggerate' is entirely appropriate. The thing that should concern you isn't whether the NK/NYT falsehoods can be salvaged but how and why you and so many others allow yourselves to be misled so badly.

Wow. Re-write history much? I'm not going to argue that going in to Iraq wasn't a mistake -- it was. But that's based on hindsight. We went back in to Iraq in 2003. After nearly 20 years of trying to get Iraq to fulfill it's obligations which it AGREED to after the first Iraq war.

BTW, WMDs were found in Iraq (see NYT).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...

Old, yes -- Iraq, violating the UN and the agreements they signed to end the 1991 war, held on to what he had and maintained the ability to ramp up production the moment the world gave up playing inspection games.

The ONLY thing 911 did was make the US (and not JUST the US) say 'enough is enough'.

With regards to the 'visitors', that is almost ALL due to the mis handling of the middle east in the last 15 years -- and in particular the last 6. Seriously? Destabilize Iraq? Ok. But Egypt, Lebanon AND Syria all at the same time? That's just stupid.

Well the primary problem with this is how are they going to put a company in prison for two years?

You arrest the executives.

Actually, yeah, I have a lot of trust in Director Comey's integrity. He was the guy who threatened to resign rather than renew the warrantless wiretapping program while AG Ashcroft was in the hospital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03... Audio & Video from several camera on the Albany bus are being analyzed by State Police for use in court.

Howdy folks,

The problem with the math curriculum is how much ground high school kids are expected to cover in one or two classes per year. Just look through older posts: algebra; polynomials; logarithms; stats; calculus; trig. That is a massive amount of material to cover. Further, since math builds upon prior concepts, if you had a teacher who skipped over part of the curriculum or you simply had trouble with earlier material, you're boned once you reach the more advanced concepts -- and things can get exponentially worse unless you either get tutoring or have a sudden epiphany.

I actually don't know what the solution is. I know a couple old school Ph.Ds in biology who have had to take crash courses in stats the last few years as they work through DNA analyses. Their joke is that they went into biology because it was considered math-light 25 years ago. But then, I also know people with solid math backgrounds who stumble on figuring out tips (it's not just the % -- there are social norms involved that influence the calculation). Most math curricula are light on doing everyday math mentally.

If you breezed through math in high school? That's freakin' awesome. I honestly wish I was better at higher math -- my job options would've been wider post-graduation.

But ... we're taking an accelerated math curriculum and throwing it at everyone, regardless of ability or, importantly, regardless of prior education. The one size fits all approach is kinda' crazy in a subject that, essentially, builds a scaffold from scratch.

Anywho ... with regard to "useless" classes like gym and the arts ... gym and music have pretty solid evidence showing they help raise academic scores (especially with regards to boys and doing something physical). Ditto for having green spaces for kids to spend time in during the day. Humanities classes, done well (trust, just like math and science, they often aren't), also teach critical thinking, but of a type that places value on being able to read emotions and placing events in context. The emotional IQ thing, as current thinking holds, is essential in making effective teams -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

Basically, we should be teaching kids 50 hours a week, giving them time to burn off energy, in environments with green spaces, with fully involved teachers, including individualized learning regimens (with private tutors, as needed), with music instruction (especially in groups) all in a cost-effective manner. IME, we're kinda' asking the impossible.

If there is one thing that seems pretty clear it's that Sanders and Trump are both hated by the elite of their party and the sleeping giant of "None of the above" voters are starting to notice and believe they might be viable ways to strike back at them.

Only half true. The sleeping giant of "white people without a college degree" (and a bunch who do) are indeed waking up and voting for Trump in the primaries. It looks very much like Trump will win the GOP nomination.

However, on the Democratic side, it appears this isn't the case. While the Bernie supporters are putting up a good fight, it just isn't enough: outside of states that already aspire to be like Denmark and don't have any black people, the Democratic voters are voting for Hillary in droves, and apparently minorities are really leading the way here. It's great that roughly 1/3 of them are voting for Bernie, but that doesn't help when the other 2/3 are voting for Mrs. Goldman-Sachs. For some strange reason, the minorities (particularly blacks) are turning their backs on the guy who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (in the "March on Washington" where King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech) and instead voting for the woman who called young African-American men "super-predators" and helped push legislation that has destroyed black families. It's mind-boggling.

As best as I can tell, what we're seeing here is the dumb older generations of Democratic voters screwing over the younger generations because they're gullible enough to believe Hillary's lies and desperately want to see a female--any female--in the White House before they're dead, even if she's a blatantly corrupt, ultra-wealthy war hawk who'll sign disastrous trade deals like the TPP and further push policies to spy on Americans with the NSA, and most likely start yet another war in the middle east, destabilizing the area even more, increasing the power of ISIS/Boko Haram, and resulting in the deaths of millions.

Based on all this, Trump actually looks like the rational choice in November. At least he called Bush's Iraq war "stupid", unlike Hillary who voted for it.

Except of course, not. It started back when Adams ran against Jefferson and they were friends; friends with different opinions, but friends. http://campaignstops.blogs.nyt...

Which is why, given the opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to the American worker, Trump employed only American citizens in his hotels and casinos, right?

Yeah, I'm sure the Workers leav[ing] the site of the future Trump International Hotel here are the two white persons in the background, not the brown people posing in safety gear. And he already didn't know 25 years ago He Employed Illegal Aliens

Or maybe Expecting Pay? Continuing Opportunities There?

Only until further notice.

I think what you may be talking about is the Milton Friedman principle: a company’s primary purpose, and the purpose to which the CEO should solely focus, is to maximize shareholder value. A couple of generations have now grown up never knowing anything else. But the idea only dates back to the 1970's, but yet would have profound effects on the country, including the binding of executive pay to stock performance, and would ultimately contribute to the slash and burn antics of the buy 'em, split 'em, and sell 'em off for a quick-buck mayhem of the 1980's.

Have no idea whether this goo can ever be stuffed back into the tube. But the cult of feverishly favoring shareholders over employees and customers, where shareholders care only about quarterly portfolio values (if they're paying attention at all), tends to reward short-term cost-cutting, and does not inspire employee or customer loyalty. The best CEO's shield shareholder matters from employees, so that employees can concentrate on a future with the company rather than the next wave of layoffs.

Anyone who has ever been frustrated with an automated telephone call support helpline, an alarm clock mistakenly set to 'p.m.' instead of 'a.m.,' or any of the countless frustrations that come with interacting with computers, has experienced the problem of 'brittleness' that plagues automated systems,

While true, I can also recount numerous frustrations originating from human interventions that lead to disaster such as initiating an emergency procedure ultimately leading to a nuclear reactor explosion, failed controlled burns or environmental disasters. Even in everyday life, trying to reason with a customer rep from bank A or government department B, can be as frustrating an unhelpful as trying to figure out which number I should push. As such, the existence of issues in automated system is hardly a justification disregard issues that keeping humans in the loop introduces, with the inconvenience that humans cannot be patched easily: they will keep making the same mistakes. I'd be interested in having statistics about the number of errors over a certain number of years between a fully automated system and human-included system to fully appreciate the benefits of one or the other.

While I'm all for overview and proper design, automation will become inevitable because of the advantages it can provide in certain type of conflicts - namely with technologically advanced adversaries. While some militaries may afford to have large amount of man-power and resources to maintain all these systems, countries with lower GDPs, large territories to defend, growing ambitions and lower ethical concern about consequences of potential errors will likely have automated defense systems to offset the support costs of human operators. In turn these systems will have a faster decision-making loop, providing an advantage over non-fully automated systems.

Of course the introduction of automated systems introduces the risk of hacking and thus the cost-saving of implementing automated systems will somehow go into stronger network defenses. However keep in mind that while totally possible to hack these system to actually leverage them against the users, this is not a trivial task either and requires skilled hackers, not your typical certification-hunting pen tester. However, network defenses are being automated as well, for the better or worst. A large chunk of network defense can be done by civilians (and probably will have to be given the competitive salary of the industry).

In any case, yes, we do need to careful with these systems and yes they have a lethal power, but so does many other systems, including systems with humans "in the loop". This should not prevent the development of automated systems, much like I don't believe it will stop the development of automated cars, planes and trains, much like it didn't stop the automation of the stock market despite glitches, which can also have tragic consequences. It needs constant testing, updating and training to new, unexpected issues.

Name those accomplishments that have helped others. I'm betting that you actually do believe there are some but will find out it is a lie when you try to find them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04...

As for her lies being a slur, it is well documented. Here is a list compiled in 2008 by a Clinton confidant (long time friend and advisory to Bill Clinton) Dick Morris.

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

Now I did find some lists of accomplishments but I don't find them remarkable or extremely helpful to anyone in particular. In fact, some of them seem to require little more than not voting "no" while in the senate. Others are just speeches given that no noticeable follow through seems to have surfaced. Most of the so called accomplishments are subjective to opinion and ideological points of view.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

Donald Trump to Foreign Workers for Florida Club: You're Hired
By CHARLES V. BAGLI and MEGAN TWOHEY
New York Times
FEB. 25, 2016

Donald J. Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., describes itself as "one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world," and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs....

http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
Marco Rubio brings up Donald Trump's Polish history, noting undocumented Polish immigrants helped build signature Trump Tower
BY Ginger Adams Otis, Denis Slattery
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
February 26, 2016

Now he wants a wall -- but 30 years ago, Donald Trump didnâ(TM)t worry about having illegal immigrants build his signature tower on Fifth Ave.

Confronted about his checkered past by GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio, Trump dismissed it as ancient history.

"He brings up something from 30 years ago," Trump whined. "It worked out very well. Everybody was happy." ...

Totally agree. All I can do is add some supporting citations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08...
Germany Backtracks on Tuition
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE
Published: August 25, 2013
(German colleges are now free again, like the Scandinavian countries. Under the German constitution, the 16 state governments control finance and education. A 2005 federal court decision allowed them to charge tuition. 8 states, in former West Germany, did, but it was unpopular and they reversed their policy. Lower Saxony charged €1,000 ($1,300)/year. An economist estimated that tuition caused 20,000 potential students (6.8% of all students) to forgo enrollment in 2007. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have free tuition, although Germany, with 2.5 million students, is the largest. Britain raised its tuition caps to £9,000 ($14,000). In France, most public universities charge a few hundred euros per year, though the grandes écoles are more expensive.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
7 countries where Americans can study at universities, in English, for free (or almost free)
By Rick Noack
October 29 2014
Since 1985, U.S. college costs have surged by about 500 percent, and tuition fees keep rising. In Germany, they've done the opposite.
The country's universities have been tuition-free since the beginning of October, when Lower Saxony became the last state to scrap the fees. Tuition rates were always low in Germany, but now the German government fully funds the education of its citizens -- and even of foreigners.
Explaining the change, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, a senator in the northern city of Hamburg, said tuition fees "discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany."
What might interest potential university students in the United States is that Germany offers some programs in English -- and it's not the only country. Let's take a look at the surprising -- and very cheap -- alternatives to pricey American college degrees.
Germany's higher education landscape primarily consists of internationally well-ranked public universities, some of which receive special funding because the government deems them "excellent institutions." What's more, Americans can earn a German undergraduate or graduate degree without speaking a word of German and without having to pay a single dollar of tuition fees: About 900 undergraduate or graduate degrees are offered exclusively in English, with courses ranging from engineering to social sciences. For some German degrees, you don't even have to formally apply.
In fact, the German government would be happy if you decided to make use of its higher education system. The vast degree offerings in English are intended to prepare German students to communicate in a foreign language, but also to attract foreign students, because the country needs more skilled workers.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
How US students get a university degree for free in Germany
By Franz Strasser BBC News, Germany
3 June 2015
While the cost of college education in the US has reached record highs, Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike. An increasing number of Americans are taking advantage and saving tens of thousands of dollars to get their degrees.
More than 4,600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. At the same time, the total student debt in the US has reached $1.3 trillion (£850 billion).
(Hunter Bliss, South Carolina.)
Each semester, Hunter pays a

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Not sure which source you are going to come back and say "that source is too biased", so I included 4 you can find more even the NYT if you want to bother looking. Its not even debatable at this point, its pretty much known fact that Clinton took bribes while Secretary of State, between $150M and $300M depending on the source. The one that is getting her in trouble is foreign donations (which she lied about multiple times before telling the truth), specifically Abu Dhabi that got a BIG favour for giving her half a million, and I think that is the one the FBI is investigating. You would think Clinton supporters would already know this about her. She even got in trouble with the IRS for not reporting the bribes as income and had to redo her taxes after she got caught.

Their objectives are more geopolitical than economic anyway, aimed at Iran and Russia

And it worked like a charm. This is what makes the Saudis such good "allies". Anyone who says American foreign policy is weak, is talking out their ass. Besides, I still like to think that other energy sources coming on line in a big way is going to keep prices from ever rising above 60 dollars again anyway, so why not have a *going out of business* sale?

What becomes of an abandoned frack well? Are the frackers going to come out and clean up their mess? I don't think you want to hit that rusty old pipe with your new combine.

Depends on the wave and the ship, but just turning the ship so it faces directly into the wave can be sufficient to greatly mitigate damage in a lot of cases. Being hit by an unexpected large wave broadside is typically worse than hitting it head-on, especially by reducing the risk of capsizing.

That's actually been successfully done at least once even with current technology: the captain of a cruise ship in 1998 spotted a 90-foot (27-meter) rogue wave on radar, and turned the ship to face it head-on, avoiding serious damage.

New York Times from February 6th (~3 weeks ago):

New York State will investigate high levels of radioactive contamination found in the groundwater at the Indian Point nuclear plant, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.

The governor said water contaminated with tritium had leaked into the groundwater at the plant, causing “alarming levels” of radioactivity to be found at three out of the 40 monitoring wells on the site.

One of the wells reported a 65,000 percent increase in the water’s level of radioactivity, Mr. Cuomo said, citing a report by Entergy Corporation, which owns the plant.

At the same time, it's reported as being 0.1% of acceptable levels ... but it's not clear from the article if they're talking about that well, all the detection wells combined, or the property.

Dumb... stupid... neo-nazi fucking fascists. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

The press correctly points out that less than half facist-boy's supporters are college educated. That FACT is independent of the overall education level of a larger group. I don't give a fuck if you like my preference of candidate, i just find Trump and his fascist followers to be a blight on the US coming only ~70 years after the last fucking fascist son of a bitch dictator was killed off at the expense of massive loss of life. Stupid fucking idiots don;t learn from history, they just fuck up again and again.

The summary suggests that these elections democratic, when in reality they were the most blatantly rigged elections in the country's history.

Opposition leaders were repeatedly arrested, often denied the ability to hold rallies, and had their offices raided by the government on multiple occasions. There were even mysterious disappearances of opposition campaign staff: http://www.observer.ug/news-he...

On election day, voting materials in Kampala -- the opposition stronghold -- did not show up at polling stations until an hour before polling was scheduled to close. Social media was deliberately blocked, and even Mobile Money was shut down in order to undermine the oppositions ability to pay fuel and food costs for its polling station workers: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

Al Jazeera covered an incident where opposition claimed to have found a vote rigging center in Nuguru, a Kampala suburb. When the opposition showed up with cameras, and knocked on the gate, two men jumped over the fence and ran. After being apprehended, they turned out to be carrying police issue guns and other equipment. Police then swiftly arrived and arrested everyone for attempted to trespass on a government intelligence facility: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...

Also: I don't know where this number of VPN downloads comes from. I see it everywhere, and have for days, yet nobody can cite a source for it, and every journalist I know has failed to independently verify it. While it is true (and great news) that a very significant number of people in Uganda quickly managed to work around the blockade, I would view the download figures with extreme skepticism.

You just described how the statute of fraud works, even in the US: Burroughs got sued for shipping machines so unspeakably bad they were "not suitable for the purpose sold", and lost. See http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10...

I think the UK version is actually stronger; it doesn't have to just be fit for the purpose that it was made for. If the customer specifies a novel use case in the shop and the shop says it can fulfil that specific use case and it can't thats a refund.

You just described how the statute of fraud works, even in the US: Burroughs got sued for shipping machines so unspeakably bad they were "not suitable for the purpose sold", and lost. See http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10...

Citations for the AC:
NYPD switched to them in ~1998. - ''It is the standard around the world in law enforcement to use hollow points,'' he said.
LAPD switched ~1990 -" Nonetheless, the report found that in 1987, when only solid-nosed bullets were used, a slightly higher percentage of people died after being shot by police officers than in 1989, when hollow-point bullets were tested."

Personally, I have been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for over 40 years. The vast majority of people who claim to be oh so very very concerned about CO2, on the other hand, have been among those obstructing nuclear for over 40 years. Warming is their chickens coming home to roost. Unfortunately, those chickens are crapping all over those of us who do not deny arithmetic, too.

"I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic." -- Stuart Brand

Repeating what I have posted previously when the topic has come up, many of the environmentalists worried about the climate do advocate nuclear power.

James Hansen, for example, is probably the most well known person warning about climate change. He is strongly in favor of nuclear power. He stated: ..continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.
We call on your organization to support the development and deployment of safer nuclear power systems as a practical means of addressing the climate change problem.... in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power

http://grist.org/news/more-nuk...
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes....
http://www.takepart.com/articl...
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-...

Here's a link to an article showing that there's hundreds or thousands of state/local cases waiting for this exact precedent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

To that point, the New York City police commissioner, William J. Bratton, and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., criticized Apple after it refused to comply with the court order and said that they currently possessed 175 iPhones that they could not unlock.

Charlie Rose recently interviewed Mr. Vance and asked if he would want access to all phones that were part of a criminal proceeding should the government prevail in the San Bernardino case.

Mr. Vance responded: “Absolutely right.”

Indeed. Here's the New York Times article that's the source for that information about New York already having 175 iPhones lined up to be unlocked if this precedent gets set. The FBI's assertion that this is just about one case is pandering to the public's short attention span by downplaying the ramifications this case would have on others.

It's basically bigger banks or the central government charging smaller banks to keep their money. The idea is to encourage lending and spur the economy. No personal checking/savings account has negative interest that I've heard of (yet?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01... - Japan this year

TFA contains more info links, but by itself the content looks more of assumption/implication. I can't find anything from TFA showing the evidence that there is a backdoor but rather said it (see below)...

Tim Cook protests that Apple is being asked to create “a new version of the iPhone operating system.” This glib talking point distracts attention from the reality that there’s essentially a backdoor on every new iPhone that ships around the world: the ability to load and execute modified firmware without user intervention.

Ostensibly software patches were intended to fix bugs. But they can just as easily install code that compromises sensitive data. I repeat: without user intervention. Apple isn’t alone in this regard. Has anyone noticed that the auto-update feature deployed with certain versions of Windows 10 is impossible to turn off using existing user controls?

Now, to answer your question about FBI, you would get the answer http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02... by following a link on TFA page.

After December’s San Bernardino attack, Apple worked with the F.B.I. to gather data that had been backed up to the cloud from a work iPhone issued to one of the assailants, according to court filings. When investigators also wanted unspecified information on the phone that had not been backed up, the judge this week granted the order requiring Apple to create a special tool to help investigators more easily crack the phone’s passcode and get into the device.

Apple had asked the F.B.I. to issue its application for the tool under seal. But the government made it public, prompting Mr. Cook to go into bunker mode to draft a response, according to people privy to the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The result was the letter that Mr. Cook signed on Tuesday, where he argued that it set a “dangerous precedent” for a company to be forced to build tools for the government that weaken security.

Anyway, this does not mean I trust Apple that they don't have backdoor on their device, but I would rather see an evidence or some research results that point out exactly what it is.

The big problem with just paying the fine is the sheer scale of money at stake. If the US government were to actually fine VW for the full amount then VW would go bankrupt causing the destruction of untold numbers of jobs, as well as putting a serious damper on relations with Germany.

Why do you suppose they would not simply pull out of the US and kindly ask the US to treat their own companies the same way in the future? The U.S. is a small market for VW. They will not hold on to it at any cost.

The third solution is to force VW to pay the full amount of the fine in a manner that doesn't bankrupt them. IE investing in certain infrastructure an manufacturing that repays America for the laws that they broke, while also offering them the possibility of earning back their investment.

Why should America be "repaid" for broken laws? It has not cost America any money. It is only fair that VW should fix the affected cars and maybe pay for measures to offset any environmental damage if it can be established there actually was any, but I don't see why the Americans should profit from it. They have already caused a great deal of unnecessary damage by blowing this issue so much out of proportion (especially compared to how they handled it when GM was caught doing the same thing) and by stalling and rejecting every recall proposal VW throws at them.

All of this will directly benefit the American people, who were the people harmed by the flaunting of the law in the first place.

How? Firstly, nobody was harmed. Secondly, less than five percent of the cars affected were sold in the U.S.

While I do agree that it doesn't feel right to see them get off "scott free" the solutions that have everyone win are often times worth the sacrifice. This method, if implemented well, could represent a genuinely positive long term solution.

Moving production to the U.S. does not mean that everybody wins. It means the Americans get rewarded for their disgusting tactics and other possible production locations lose. I don't think that is fair or reasonable in any way.

You're a bit out of line claiming the US has the worst justice system in the world.

When 97% of federal cases end in plea bargains - i.e. don't get to trial, since the "defendant" chooses <cough> to plead guilty to something, there is something deeply and profoundly wrong. That sort of "guilty" record would generally be an indicator of some of the worst dictatorships the world has seen (along with the other tell-tale: 99% majority in elections).

So yes, it is fair to say that the one thing the american justice system does not provide is justice

Other companies doing similar things (e.g. GM) got away with fines in the order of dozens of millions. Now I agree that the U.S. does not normally treat foreign companies the same way they treat domestic comanies, but three orders of magnitude will be very hard to justify.

Apple is being compelled to create speech in violation of the first amendment. It's not an issue of if they can do it. Unlike previous cases such as the Elayne Photography case when a photographer asserted first amendment rights against photographing a wedding where the couple was gay, the photographer hung out her shingle as a business for photographing weddings. Gays are protected in the state where this happened.

In this case, Apple is in the business of selling iphones, not selling custom firmware for iphones. They can't restrict sale from gays, for example, but forcing them to create custom firmware for random customers is not their business. Not to mention, the FBI isn't exactly a protected class, nor is apple refusing based on the fact they're FBI. They're refusing because they won't do it for anyone.

There were other cases where a 1st amendment defense wouldn't work, such as lavabit where they were handed a piece of equipment and ordered to install it.

Attitudes control perceived value. A sex change can either increase or decrease your perceived value and pay depending on the direction.

Male-to-female transsexuals experience an average 30% drop in income. It's not like they are going to get pregnant and take time off raising the children they gave birth to, two confounding factors that the wage-gap-deniers cite, so it's a pretty good control. Female-to-male transsexuals, on the other hand, see a slight rise in income.

The New York Times thinks it did. Do you have a source that says it didn't, or are you just making shit up?

So the only people who lose are the athletes.

Don't forget the people of Brazil. Hosting the Olympics has pretty much become an open scam with only rich politicians, big construction companies, and the IOC profiting from it. Just look at Beijing and Sochi for more examples.

Boston got smart after a lot of pushback against their hosting bid. I can only hope that the rest of the US continues that trend. If the US never hosts the Olympics again it would still be too soon.

So the only people who lose are the athletes.

Don't forget the people of Brazil. Hosting the Olympics has pretty much become an open scam with only rich politicians, big construction companies, and the IOC profiting from it. Just look at Beijing and Sochi for more examples.

Boston got smart after a lot of pushback against their hosting bid. I can only hope that the rest of the US continues that trend. If the US never hosts the Olympics again it would still be too soon.

But when someone intercepted, recorded and released an embarrassing conversation made by Newt Gringrich in Gainesville, FL after this law was passed, no one was prosecuted.

The people who taped the conversation were, in fact, prosecuted, and pled guilty to illegal wiretapping. see: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04...

WASHINGTON, April 23— The Justice Department today filed charges against a Florida couple who said they had intercepted and recorded a conference call last December among Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders.

The Federal authorities in Jacksonville, Fla., announced this afternoon that the couple, John and Alice Martin, had been charged with an infraction, violating the Communications Privacy Act by using a radio scanner to intercept the radio portion of the conversation. It is the mildest criminal charge the couple could face in the case and carries a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine. The Government said the Martins had agreed to plead guilty to the charges, and said the couple would cooperate with a continuing investigation into how a recording of the conversation wound up in the hands of a New York Times reporter.

Or, for more details: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jba...