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"Rapidly losing the will to live here."

If not a joke, your contributions would be missed, whether agreed with or not. See also my comment to someone else related to depression: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

And on the value of public disagreements:
https://sites.google.com/site/...
" The theory Dan Sperber suggested--the argumentative theory of reasoning--proposes that instead of having a purely individual function, reasoning has a social and, more specifically, argumentative function. The function of reasoning would be to find and evaluate reasons in dialogic contexts--more plainly, to argue with others. Here's a very quick summary of the evolutionary rationale behind this theory. Communication is hugely important for humans, and there is good reason to believe that this has been the case throughout our evolution, as different types of collaborative--and therefore communicative--activities already played a big role in our ancestors' lives (hunting, collecting, raising children, etc.). However, for communication to be possible, listeners have to have ways to discriminate reliable, trustworthy information from potentially dangerous information--otherwise speakers would be wont to abuse them through lies and deception. Listeners must have mechanisms of epistemic vigilance. One way listeners and speakers can improve the reliability of communication is through arguments. The speaker gives a reason to accept a given conclusion. The listener can then evaluate this reason to decide whether she should accept the conclusion. In both cases, they have used reasoning--to find and evaluate a reason respectively. If reasoning does its job properly, communication has been improved: a true conclusion is more likely to be supported by good arguments, and therefore accepted, thereby making both the speaker--who managed to convince the listener--and the listener--who acquired a potentially valuable piece of information--better off.
Our evolutionary account is much more in touch with the prevailing view of the evolution of human cognition. According to this view--alternatively named the social brain hypothesis, or the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, among others--most of human cognition evolved to answer the demands of our social world. ..."

And:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes....
"We do not claim that reasoning has nothing to do with the truth. We claim that reasoning did not evolve to allow the lone reasoner to find the truth. We think it evolved to argue. But arguing is not only about trying to convince other people; it's also about listening to their arguments. So reasoning is two-sided. On the one hand, it is used to produce arguments. Here its goal is to convince people. Accordingly, it displays a strong confirmation bias -- what people see as the "rhetoric" side of reasoning. On the other hand, reasoning is also used to evaluate arguments. Here its goal is to tease out good arguments from bad ones so as to accept warranted conclusions and, if things go well, get better beliefs and make better decisions in the end."

So, thanks for being part of that process. In any case, hang in there, there is a chance it might get better.

Also, tangentially, on things "getting better" and depression and being in a minority:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"Its goal is to prevent suicide among LGBT youth by having gay adults convey the message that these teens' lives will improve."

Example:
"It Gets Better - Princeton University"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

But that sentiment can apply to lots of things given a life so full of

Are you new here? "Netcraft confirms X" is an old, old, late 90s slashdot comment "joke." Granted, it's as funny as those forwarded email I get from my aunt; but it's the thought that counts, right?

LOL I got caught with NetCraft then just a few weeks ago, had a post, looking for a place to reply it to, It was a If NetCraft says it's dead....
Posted it there.

The troll mentioned OpenSSL so for safe hex it's been advised to download immediately the newest version of the OpenSSL protocol, which includes a fix, and quickly swap out your encryption keys.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...

This was mentioned yesterday on /.

Unfortunately, I believe that OkCupid found a loophole, much like Tony Russo from DecorMyEyes.com.

Exactly, it's near impossible. And these companies are lobbying hard to remove options that allow consumers to vote with their wallets. We need more than just individual economic pressure to have any realistic impact on companies this big.

Another problem is that people really underestimate individual economic pressure. I know too many people my age (mid 20s) who automatically give up and say that there is no way they can make a difference so why even try. They expect someone else to make the sacrifice and work to address the problem. Look at Target's profits in the wake of their little credit card fiasco:

The widespread theft of Target customer data had a significant impact on the company’s profit, which fell more than 40 percent in the fourth quarter, the retailer reported on Wednesday. The company said net earnings were $520 million in the quarter, down 46 percent from the same period a year earlier, when earnings were $961 million.

Source: New York Times

These companies don't magically make money regardless of what consumers do, they make money because consumers willingly spend money with them. It seems as if lots of people just stopped going to Target after the breach was discovered. Explain why the same thing couldn't happen with Wal-Mart or EA?

You obviously missed the part where I said

where it is on rerun

There's nothing to predict. It happened.

And New York City.

San Francisco isn't the first city to do this, Paris for example has had a similar law for years but only until 2010 started enforcing it. It's meant to drive tourism to Hotels for all the tax base benefits and to address the problem of affordable housing. AirBNB is a great idea but like Uber is allowing some cities to start abusing their citizens by preventing them from doing legal commerce that they can't control or tax.

This is essentially what IEX does (described in this article); putting in the delay does have an effect because it increases the minimum turnaround time which reduces the "fast" players' ability to see what the "slow" players are doing and react. Or, put another way, a 1ms round trip can do 100 times as many transactions as a 100ms round trip, but a 501ms round trip is not that much better than a 600ms round trip.

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

this article explains in depth what the problem is. the SEC has now been alerted to the problem, and is investigating. the people who found the issue believed originally that this was deliberate, but it actually just turned out to be a systemic problem of the speed differentials between different routes that high-frequency trades come in at.

what they originally discovered was that they could see a price on a screen, but the moment that they put in the bid to a number of brokers, the price would DISAPPEAR. they thought that this was deliberate, that someone was scamming them: it turned out that this wasn't true, but it took a couple of years of investigation to find out. what they did was they put in *individual* bids *directly*, and found that they were accepted. they then investigated various combinations, introducing delays into the bids, and found, amazingly, that it was down to the *time of arrival at the exchange* of their bids as they were sent via numerous brokers.

so it was only when they invented a tool (which they called "Troy") that *deliberately* introduced networking delays, such that the bids would (as best they could manage) arrive within milliseconds of each other at the exchange, that they managed to trade successfully.

if however any one of those bids happened to go via a different ISP, or a different router, or any other random combination, then the bids would *FAIL*.

the problem it turns out is that these delay effects are well-known. most of the money in high-frequency trading is therefore made by seeing a slightly slower broker's prices, then putting in an undercutting bid *knowing full well* that the other broker has a slower network. and this aspect of high-frequency trading is what is currently under investigation by the SEC.

*this is why the introduction of networking delays is so absolutely important*.

the people who discovered this phenomenon basically had to set up their own independent exchange in order to solve the problem. they needed to introduce a delay of 350ms as a way to make things fair for everyone. they did this by basically putting in 38 miles of fibre-optic cable in a shoe-box in the basement of the server farm that they leased.

it turns out that once investors discovered this, they began *specifically demanding* that their trades *exclusively* be brokered through this new exchange that had this 350ms shoe-box delay. it actually caused a lot of embarrassment for a number of brokers and trading houses because the brokers were explicitly disobeying their client's instructions, because the brokers didn't understand how important this really is.

anyway: you really have to read that article (or the book) fully because it's quite complex, and it's basically an inherent flaw down to the fact that the internet (TCP/IP) is routed randomly, thus introducing gross unfairness that has become the subject of intense investigation, very recently.

so yes, *all* trading should be done with at least a 350ms delay.

There's a gripping article over at the NY Times (adapted from a just released book) that explains very well the pitfalls of HFT, where the problems are mostly due to the haves and have-nots, just like in most things. The article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04...

Not having a level playing deck in an exchange is a major problem for the correct functioning of said exchange.

How do we know this phone hasn't already been NSA 'approved'?

We don't, at least not with 100% certainty. I would think this applies to products from companies based outside the U.S. as well. Foreign intelligence is the NSA's primary mission, after all.

However, given that Blackphone was founded by a team from Silent Circle and Geeksphone chances are pretty good that the product works as advertised.

The NY times has an article about how aircraft have lots of communication technologies on board but no airlines have opted to put trackers on their planes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

It would be relatively easy to install systems that send basic location, speed direction and basic airplane health data at reasonable intervals with a reasonable cost.

Its too bad that likely legislation will be needed to get airlines to do something. I have an issue with the fact that they don't have to pay fines or help pay for the search when a disaster occurs. It means that a crash could be a profitable event for them (for example if the plane was more than adequately insured, and they had over capacity in the industry, aka liquidation).

If as a person I can buy a Personal Locator Beacon for $200 to broadcast my location to satellite in an emergency for rescue, the technology is clearly there and affordable.

Your comment is anti science considering that the facts say otherwise.

Believing that only republican are anti science is anti science is anti science itself.

But you'll gladly vote for someone equally anti science just because they have a D in front of their name.

At best, a clear majority currently supports gay marriage rights, 55-59% are currently supporting it all recent polls.

I would hardly call even 59% a clear majority. Depending on how many they surveyed it's probably still within the margin of error

You would call 59% a clear majority is you bothered to look up the margin of error (3.5%). Since this is now being found consistently by poll after poll, meta-analysis can drive the uncertainty down below 1%. And the difference between the "pro" and "anti" side is a whopping 25 points now. The "antis" are in a clear, shrinking, miniority.

...

Oh, and just for the fun of it I looked up the stats: http://takingnote.blogs.nytime...

According to Pew, this poll shows for the first time that there is as much strong support for same-sex marriage as there is strong opposition to it – 22 percent for each category.

So my 20% guess was slightly off. Sorry, It's 22%. I would say that my guess was still pretty accurate if you ask me.

Just for fun, why don't look up current data, not data several years old. The poll I linked to above has "strong" currently at 39%, so no, you are way off.

At best, a clear majority currently supports gay marriage rights, 55-59% are currently supporting it all recent polls.

I would hardly call even 59% a clear majority. Depending on how many they surveyed it's probably still within the margin
of error and based on voting records where measures barely pass or barely fail then I would say it's still very much a debatable
issue which shouldn't get you fired.

Oh, and just for the fun of it I looked up the stats: http://takingnote.blogs.nytime...

According to Pew, this poll shows for the first time that there is as much strong support for same-sex marriage as there is strong opposition to it – 22 percent for each category.

So my 20% guess was slightly off. Sorry, It's 22%. I would say that my guess was still pretty accurate if you ask me.

It's been shown that curved side view mirrors can almost completely eliminate the blind spots, but the NHTSA dictates what size and shape your mirrors are.

Personally, I'd rather keep the side view mirrors and use the camera to eliminate the big rear view mirror placed right in the center of my windscreen. These are almost always placed for midgets, at my height it completely obstructs the right half of my field of view (If I pull up to a four way stop, any vehicle stopped at the sign to my right is completely obscured if it's smaller than a F150 or so) unless I drive hunched over or adjust it as far down as possible and look out over it.

Maybe off topic a little, but today (4/2/2014) the New York Times has an obituary for the last living Bletchley Park codebreaker. Jerry Roberts worked to break the code used for Hitler to communicate with the highest field military officers, Field Marshals. Apparently the Germans used an ultra type machine with as many as 12 rotors for that purpose rather than the simpler device with three or four rotors. The code he and his coworkers broke they called Tunny, not Ultra, as in tuna fish since one of the German operators was called fish.

It's an interesting read: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04...

Neither to the extent, nor in the manner of nuclear. Other industries get tax breaks, free use of government research, etc.

It's worth pointing out that nuclear power actually gets a negative subsidy. They have been charged a fee for nuclear waste disposal... but the nuclear waste disposal program was cancelled, and there is no replacement plan.

The fee was suspended by court order last November... but the money collected has not been refunded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11...

Really? This is news to you? It isn't hard to track down.

Gays Debate Radical Steps to Curb Unsafe Sex

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, gay men protested attempts to close down bathhouses and strenuously opposed efforts by health officials to trace those infected with the virus. Until now, those advocates, driven by concerns about privacy and the stigma associated with the disease, have successfully fought off efforts to impose a traditional public-health model for tackling the spread of the virus.

http://blogs.discovermagazine....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05...

http://www.sciencefriday.com/s...

Here's a link from your site: https://www.opensecrets.org/ne... It's obviously not possible to say with 100% assurance about the voting patterns of rich, but their Republican leaning is not a secret. Here are some data points: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n...

Yes.

We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-prohibition level. The level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade.

That record stands even when people aren't asked at all about their alcohol use. Rather, cirrhosis rates can be measured, and show a similar trend.

All that tells me is that the initial smash-up of bars and liquor distributors was temporarily successful at eliminating the immediate supply, but completely ineffective at lowering the actual consumption rate after supply chains were re-established.

Also, it tells me nothing about geekoid's claim that Prohibition "substantially reduce[d] domestic violence."

Yes.

We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-prohibition level. The level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade.

That record stands even when people aren't asked at all about their alcohol use. Rather, cirrhosis rates can be measured, and show a similar trend.

Ooooooo humble pie is served! I hate that icanhasdiy fucker... you got him good!

Yes.

We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-prohibition level. The level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade.

That record stands even when people aren't asked at all about their alcohol use. Rather, cirrhosis rates can be measured, and show a similar trend.

It's even worse than that. Cities are so vicious about this because they make so much money off of selling the rights to drive people around.

They won't call it a tax, despite the fact that the city gets money and it comes from the citizens in the form of higher costs. Worse, it specifically targets people too poor to buy their own car or chauffeur.

On the other side, Apple was found guilty of conspiring with publishers to make it absolutely impossible for other resellers to sell their books cheaper than Apple. If Apple had just demanded that they got the same or lower price on ebooks as other resellers, then they would have likely escaped litigation.

The situation is quite a bit more nuanced than that, and you've got your basic facts surrounding the case slightly wrong, since what you've stated Apple should have done is exactly what Apple did do. But, strangely, they also did what you said in your first sentence too. The illegal collusion and price fixing that's happened here revolves primarily around the interplay of two otherwise-perfectly-legal ideas: the agency model and most favored nation (MFN) clauses.

Agency Model: The agency model allows the publishers to set their own prices at the cost of giving the seller's a higher cut, whereas the wholesale model that is more common provides the publishers with a bigger cut at the cost of letting the sellers set the price. Given a perfect world, the wholesale model is more appealing to publishers, since they generally get a larger overall cut.

MFN Clause: An MFN clause is exactly the concept you described at the end of the quote I pulled above. They simply stipulate that they'll give you the same or better prices than they give anyone else. As you said, there's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself.

Background: Prior to Apple's arrival, Amazon had wholesale agreements with all of the publishers. The problem for the publishers, however, was that Amazon controlled over 90% of the eBooks market at the time. As you correctly pointed out, the fact that they had a monopoly wasn't actually an issue, since Amazon's interests (i.e. driving Kindle adoption and buy-in to their ecosystem) were better-served by keeping prices low, meaning that they were not using their monopoly in an anti-competitive manner. That said, they were using their monopsony in an anti-competitive manner, by forcing the publishers to sell their books at unreasonable prices while preserving their own margins, simply because the publishers had no one else they could sell to. In fact, there were several dramatic examples of Amazon using its monopsonistic bargaining position to strong-arm the publishers for better wholesale prices. Amazon was unwilling to discuss switching to an agency model, so the publishers were rather concerned that they may be forced to price themselves out of business.

With Apple—a big player— entering the market, Amazon was forced to negotiate terms that were more favorable to the publishers, namely, switching to an agency model. Such a change would naturally result in prices going up, even without any sort of illegal price fixing or collusion taking place, since the sellers are getting a larger cut with the agency model, which means that the publishers need to raise the prices to preserve their cut. Again, there's nothing illegal about that (in fact, it's what they're all doing now after what they were doing before was ruled illegal); it's simply a costlier way of doing business.

The Illegality: According to the judge, what was illegal in all of this was combining the agency model with the MFN clause. By combining the two, the MFN clause that says "you must give me the lowest price" in effect means "you'll raise the prices customers are paying at competing stores to match mine" (hence why both of your sentences that I quoted were what happened). Had they stuck with the wholesale model, the publishers could only have abided by the MFN clause by changing wholesale prices, so it would have still been up to Amazon and Ap

That is because under law, the corporation made the decision and did the crime.

No, it's because the US Department of Justice decided not to enforce the law. That sort of corruption doesn't have anything to do with the business being a corporation.

I'm afraid that you are right.
An interesting article in the NY Times today talks about that very subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
Basically, if you try to prevent people from building where it might be unsafe, you run up against all of the "freedom" people and greed and "guvmt meddling" people.

You think it is actually tidy underneath there?

http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Jeffersonian ideals

But Jefferson wasn't a Christian! My tea party mouthpiece tells me that gays and atheists are the cause of all our countries deficits so we've officially removed him from our founding fathers! Our great country has nothing to do with him anymore!

There was a pilot for this program 4 years ago in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02...

Also there was strike that mandated it 7 years ago for a few days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09...

In short, no one liked it. If people wanted to have a delayed trip and people with them, they'd just take the Subway.

There was a pilot for this program 4 years ago in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02...

Also there was strike that mandated it 7 years ago for a few days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09...

In short, no one liked it. If people wanted to have a delayed trip and people with them, they'd just take the Subway.

Aren't the prices set by law too?

The point is that they are set higher than a free market would provide.

Cabs are regulated similar to the post-office, there are more and less profitable routes, and some subsidize others.

Which is, of course, idiotic. There is no reason for routes to "cost the same". Should the government also regulate grocery stores so that oatmeal is the same price as filet mignon? That way all meals will cost the same.

They don't want non-licensed services that can charge whatever they want to snipe profitable routes at a lower rate.

You cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand. If you fix the price of bread, you get empty shelves. If you fix the price of taxi fares, you will have plenty of cabs lining up for the profitable routes, and no one willing to drive a black guy to Harlem at 11pm. Which is exactly what happens.

I'm not saying it's good, but it's really not a case of artificial scarcity.

It is not good, and it is absolutely a case of artificial scarcity. You are just arguing that it is motivated by cross subsidies, rather than rent-seeking cronyism. But if it was really just leveling the prices, then a taxi medallion wouldn't cost over a million dollars.

ahem

Here's the blurb in the New York Times on this topic. Party affiliation is in the second sentence.

Stop lying.

Snowden was flagged by the CIA but then got a contractor job with the NSA... just another database issue?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...

Discovery of Planetoid Hints at Bigger Cousin in Shadows

By KENNETH CHANGMARCH 26, 2014

Astronomers have discovered a second icy world orbiting in a slice of the solar system where, according to their best understanding, there should have been none.

“They’re in no man’s land,” Scott S. Sheppard, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, said of the objects, which orbit far beyond the planets and even the ring of icy debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt.

Intriguingly, the astronomers said that details of the orbits hint at perhaps an unseen planet several times the size of Earth at the solar system’s distant outskirts.

The new planetoid, an estimated 250 miles wide, is now 7.7 billion miles from the sun, about as close as it gets. At the other end of its orbit, the planetoid, which for now carries the unwieldy designation of 2012 VP113, loops out to a distance of 42 billion miles. Neptune, by contrast, is a mere 2.8 billion miles from the sun.

Much farther out, a trillion miles, the solar system is believed to be surrounded by a sphere of icy bodies known as the Oort cloud, where many comets are thought to originate. But between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, astronomers had expected empty space.

In 2003, astronomers unexpectedly discovered the planetoid Sedna, orbiting the sun beyond the Kuiper Belt, an area of frozen objects just outside Neptune’s orbit. Astronomers have now discovered a second object in this region, which has the current designation 2012 VP113.

Source: Scott S. Sheppard/ Carnegie Institution for Science The discovery, by Dr. Sheppard and Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, is reported in the journal Nature.

For convenience, the scientists shortened the 2012 VP113 designation to VP, which in turn inspired their nickname for the planetoid: Biden, after Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Dr. Trujillo said they had not decided what to propose for the official name.

The existence of 2012 VP113 could help explain why there is anything out there at all.

In the 2000s, when Michael E. Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, scanned the outer solar system, his biggest discovery was Eris, a ball of ice in the Kuiper belt that was Pluto-size or slightly bigger, the impetus for the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet.

Dr. Brown’s oddest discovery, however, came a couple of years earlier: Sedna, a 600-mile-wide planetoid also beyond the Kuiper belt, three times as far from the sun as Neptune. Its 11,400-year orbit stretches farther than that of 2012 VP113.

In the youth of the solar system, there would not have been enough matter out there to coalesce into something as large as Sedna. It was too far out to have been flung by the gravitational slings of big planets, but too close to have been nudged by the gravitational tides of the Milky Way.

Having found one such body, astronomers expected to quickly find more, and they came up with a name for them: Sednoids. But for years, no one found any.

For the latest search, Dr. Trujillo and Dr. Sheppard used a 13-foot telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. In November 2012, they spotted a moving point of light beyond the Kuiper belt — 2012 VP113. Follow-up observations last year confirmed it was a Sednoid. Scientists have come up with various ideas to explain such bodies. Dr. Brown, for one, thinks the Sednoids were pushed there when the sun was part of a dense cluster of stars — “a fossil record of the birth of the solar system,” he said.

Others suggest that a rogue planet, ejected from the inner solar system, dragged the Sednoids along as it flew through the Kuiper belt. Dr

No one died as a result of this traffic jam. The media tried to claim that one person died to sensationalize the story and the family of that person came out and said that was untrue. Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion is a 1998 book by American author Ken Wilber. It reasons that by adopting contemplative (e.g. meditative) disciplines related to Spirit and commissioning them within a context of broad science, that "the spiritual, subjective world of ancient wisdom" could be joined "with the objective, empirical world of modern knowledge". The text further contends that integrating science and religion in this way would in turn, "have political dimensions sewn into its very fabric"."

And see also stuff by Charles Tart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

The mystery of consciousness (where it come from, what it means if anything, where is goes, how it changes, and so on) remains a fundamental unknown and maybe unknowable of our lives on this plane of existence. The uncertainty ranges across all sorts of religious ideas to also include things like whether we are living in a computer simulation or computer game of some sort. That mystery is intertwined with the great mystery of everything.

Both links above are Wikipedia links to show Wikipedia can be useful as a starting point, if you go to it aware of its limits including expecting bias. Here is another example of an article on economics which it seems to me is being aggressively policed for years by a "deletionist" who won't let anything but pro-mainstream-Capitalist economics be on the page regardless of whether the other material includes a citation from a notable published source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

To avoid being misled by Wikipedia, especially on health issues or economic issues, one must be aware that Wikipedia does suffer from some sort of mainstream bias most areas. Looking at past versions of the pages or related discussion can sometimes help overcome those biases. Example including a recent edit war of reversions in the last month or two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...

One alternative to Wikipedia was Google Knol. Aside from being owned by a for-profit with a history of abandoning projects, there was something good to the now-defunct Google Knol with the notion of articles from a point-of-view authored by either one person, a small group, or everyone. Peer review is a form of censorship (several essays on on it on the web), PhD training produces "Disciplined Minds" (the name of an enlightening book), and peer review is getting more problematical with increased competition for funding (see Dr. David Goodstein on "The Big Crunch"),

Related things I've written:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...

And also, on trying to think more deeply together about health and other issues:
https://www.newschallenge.org/...
http://opengov.newschallenge.o...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

More on the important of discussion by Hugo Mercier:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes....
"We do not claim that reasoning has nothing to do with the truth. We claim that reasoning did not

AFAIK, SEC regulation do not strictly prevent companies from selling unregistered shares to unaccredited investors.
Rules 505 and 506 allows a company to sell unregistered shares to up to 35 unaccredited investors (and an unlimited number of accredited investors). This limit of 35 unaccredited investors is the thing that kickstarter bumps up against.

However, there is another way to do this. It is actually possible to start a "closed-end" registered investment company (like a mutual fund company) that can invest in startup companies as an accredited investor. This investment company could accept money from unaccredited investors and this money can be invested in some startup companies.

Sadly, the track record of such companies is pretty poor.

For a recent example, consider GSV which was able to use this strategy to allow unaccredited investors to put money into Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga before they went public. The problem is that the liquid value of closed-end fund, is not the value of the underlying securities, but the resale value of your share in the investment company. This is because in a closed end fund, you have to sell your share in the investment company to someone else (the fund won't buy it back from you). In the GSV case, the share value of GSV was driven up by the promise of getting in on a pre-ipo Facebook investment, but it then crashed when the Facebook ipo didn't perform as well as expected.

You sure quoted a top authority on matters mathematical there.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com...

Yeah, the Post Office has been collecting metadata from mail far longer than the NSA has been monitoring e-mails NY Times

Link or it didn't happen

I wish AGW cultists would stop throwing this kind of thing out there. All it does is damage their credibility even more.

It's a proven falsehood that the water shortages in California are caused by global warming. Yes, California is in a drought, but the water shortages are being caused more by bad policy than by anything else:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...

Facts are stubborn things.

Ferretman

friends scatter to various states and countries over their lifetimes. Thanks to online gaming, I can get together to game with friends that I haven't seen IRL in years

Even friend matches are reportedly hard to arrange when the friends move to different time zones. This is why a lot of people rely on pickup matches with strangers. (See CronoCloud's comment and Meg Wolitzer's article.)

Should government build roads? How about run prisons? Deliver mail? Provide police/fire services?

There are private alternatives to all these. If I could take my tax dollars and pay for these myself, would I be better off? My income, between investments and salary, amounts to a little over $350K/year. Of that, I pay close to $75K in taxes. I understand that that's about average for my bracket. I hear this push for progressive taxation that will push me into the 30%-35% bracket because it's more "fair". I dunno. I live in an old house. It's the same house I've lived in for 20 years, and it's not worth much more than when I bought it. I certainly don't live the lifestyle of my peers with similar income.

What do I get for that $75K? I don't get a lot of useful mail from the postal service. Most of my packages arrive Fedex or UPS. The local police force is under no obligation to ensure my safety.

Let's talk about roads. The six mile drive to my office is not horrible. Probably a few thousand cars drive that road every day. There are over a dozen potholes/level changes/manhole covers that require me to drive on the other side to avoid. When they "fix" it, they put a strip across the lane so that it's impossible to avoid. Doesn't actually fix the problem though. Contrast this with the Turnpike. It's a gorgeous road. Smooth, well lit. It's $1/each way. I did the math and it's cheaper if I paid the tolls versus the percentage of my taxes that go towards these kinds of things. I don't think the road cares how much money I make so I don't feel quite right with paying more for the same service. Now I know that turnpikes exist because government funds the on-ramps and lets them eminent domain their way into purchasing prime land for cheap, but gee, whatever portion of that $75K tax bill goes to that, seems a bit high.

For-profit prisons ensure that the incarcerated stay that way, because that's good for the company's bottom line.

So yah, no one will ever read this rant but I just paid my tax bill and really don't want the government having more excuses to raise my taxes.

The URLs below have been accused of gross bias. They were found by a Google search on "Police Duty to Protect" and "UPS Post Office lawsuit".
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06...
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato...

I started at the NYtimes link and it wore me out; it was supposedly about Weev, going from "a hero", to /b/, to Lulz and that was just the prep, I didn't care to read any more about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08...

Honestly, based on all indicators from the press over the last couple years, Weev has been a fairly miserable human being on most accounts, interested in causing disruption and not much else. The New York Times in particular did a very good expose on a number of individuals (Including Weev), covering their behaviors over the last couple of years, and their admitted trolling behaviors.
  * http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08...

Here is a gem, highlighting some of his conduct.
Weev, the troll who thought hacking the epilepsy site was immoral, is legendary among trolls. He is said to have jammed the cellphones of daughters of C.E.O.’s and demanded ransom from their fathers; he is also said to have trashed his enemies’ credit ratings. Better documented are his repeated assaults on LiveJournal, an online diary site where he himself maintains a personal blog. Working with a group of fellow hackers and trolls, he once obtained access to thousands of user accounts.

I first met Weev in an online chat room that I visited while staying at Fortuny’s house. “I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money,” he boasted. “I make people afraid for their lives.” On the phone that night, Weev displayed a misanthropy far harsher than Fortuny’s. “Trolling is basically Internet eugenics,” he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!”

I don't know why people would do, or admit, things such as what the New York Times describes (usually it involves some kind of mental disorders)...but in the end, it all caught up to him.

Revealed: secret plan to push'happy' pills
http://www.theguardian.com/soc...

Big Pharma Could Win International Price Monopoly, Unlimited Profits in 'Free Trade' Deal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

US patent moves are 'profoundly bad' in leaked TPP treaty
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade agreement under negotiation between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Leaked documents show the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is pressuring TPP countries to expand pharmaceutical monopoly protections and trade away access to medicines.
http://www.citizen.org/TPPA

The medical industry the third-leading cause of death in the United States; after heart disease and cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Big Pharma Shamelessly Shills Dangerous Bone Drugs You Don't Need
http://www.alternet.org/story/...

The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...

"Somewhere in Rayong or Chon Buri on the coast of Thailand, a young woman may at this very moment be baring her arm for a shot of an experimental Aids vaccine that many of the leading scientists in the field say categorically has no hope at all of working.

She will be one of 16,000 volunteers recruited for the second large-scale Aids vaccine trial, a $119m exercise many scientists believe is a farce."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/scie...

Fraud has become so endemic in this country that it's woven its way into America’s DNA. 2). Big Pharma Fraud.
http://www.alternet.org/story/...

Drug Makers New Targets for U.S. Fraud Inquiries, Report Says
http://prescriptions.blogs.nyt...

Merck drew up a "hit list" of doctors that needed to be "neutralized" because they criticized the now banned drug Vioxx.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Merck invents its own journal to publish bogus research findings to promote it's own products.
http://blog.bioethics.net/2009...

Why Aren't These Fraudulent Papers Retracted?
http://truth-out.org/news/item...

Doubts about Johns Hopkins research have gone unanswered, scientist says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

A National Survey of Physician–Industry Relationships
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...