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It is because it is all about one thing. MONEY.

HLS has no oversight in it's spending and taking away some of it's powers is seen as a attack on the unchecked funding it receives.

Frontline had a interesting story titled Are We Safer? where it seems pretty clear the things in the Patriot Act do not make us safer and that HLS is just as dysfunctional as what we had before 9/11.

In short, now that I'm older, the anger has turned into quiet desperation.

That and ulcers and/or depression (citation). No job is worth either of those.

Giving funds to telecom companies always turns out productively, right?

Be a single woman in western business attire who is alone. Walk past the White House. Now do the same in Tehran's Grand Bazaar and let us know how that works out for you.

Or, organize a women's rights march in Washington DC, then try the same in Tehran.

The summary for this story says it all.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iran/

"FRONTLINE/World reporter Jane Kokan talks about clandestinely filming the story that got her colleague beaten to death." Beaten to death for filming a story about opposition movements in Iran.

How many people in the United States were beaten to death or shot for protesting the election of George Bush in 2004 or the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? None.

How many people in Iran were beaten to death or shot for protesting the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009? 30 officially, 80 claimed.

I hate to be blunt, but the authorities have long since seized the right to abscond with *actual* property - cars, homes, et al based on the mere accusation of a drug related crime. Unfortunately everyone save the Libertarians (and some Liberals, including the ACLU.) went "Well, that's drug stuff - I'm sure they did *something* to deserve it".

From Findlaw

"As detailed in a Frontline report from 2000, federal and local practices regarding property seizure in drug cases shifted in 1984, when federal law created forfeiture funds for property seized by the DEA and FBI, and allowed local law enforcement to share proceeds from the sale of property seized."

You've waited about 25 years too long to suddenly realise "Oh . . . this could apply to *me*?!?" (Good old Saint Reagan - Who'da thunk it? I mean - not counting people actually familiar with his record.). If people don't like this, they're going to have to go back to stopping the actual real property seizures and start pushing back from there.

Pug

And your last sentece is wanting --- what occurred was that the second and third tier banks realized the extent of the ultra-leveraging which had occurred --- when the banksters peddled their securitized debt, i.e., issuing securities multiple times based upon one loan, which the next bank or financial institution purchased on the asset side, then further issued securities of some type on the liability side, when the next bank purchased on the asset side, then issued further securities on the liability side, ad infinitum......which is what we call ultra-leveraging, and what was used by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BofA, and others, for all that ultra-leveraged speculation to manipulate the commodities: oil, energy, gas, foodstuffs, precious metals, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with your supposition is that everyone knew it was coming but just wanted to make money before the end. And every company knew about every other companies' detailed financials? I'll have to call BS on that. No one outside each company realized how bad the problem was and even within each institution only certain people knew the problem. Cases in point: Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. When both reached a crisis, the Fed and the Sec of Treasury Henry Paulson felt he needed to step in and help. To do so Bear Sterns had to reveal their financials to JP Morgan and the like. Only then did everyone understand the extent of the problem. JP Morgan saved Bear Sterns but only with the backing of the Fed. When it came time for Lehman Brothers, everyone balked because of the huge amount of debt that Lehman Brothers disclosed before any sale. When Lehman Brothers failed, the panic that ensued signaled that these companies were more intertwined than thought. AIG was next. That's when the government felt it had to step in.

So in my count, at least 2 very large investment firms who had been doing it for nearly a century were somehow caught with their pants down. Two very large firms whose entire business is investing and risk somehow did not get out of it way early. Or two companies who were in trouble but didn't realize the other one was.

With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they got into a business they didn't fully understand. They saw Wall Street encroaching on their business and wanted a piece. Mortgages were supposed to be their business not derivatives.

Frontline has covered this in far greater detail with Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank, and The Warning. If you watched all of these, the sense you'd get is that everyone thought that the market could regulate itself and this boom would last forever.

And your last sentece is wanting --- what occurred was that the second and third tier banks realized the extent of the ultra-leveraging which had occurred --- when the banksters peddled their securitized debt, i.e., issuing securities multiple times based upon one loan, which the next bank or financial institution purchased on the asset side, then further issued securities of some type on the liability side, when the next bank purchased on the asset side, then issued further securities on the liability side, ad infinitum......which is what we call ultra-leveraging, and what was used by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BofA, and others, for all that ultra-leveraged speculation to manipulate the commodities: oil, energy, gas, foodstuffs, precious metals, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with your supposition is that everyone knew it was coming but just wanted to make money before the end. And every company knew about every other companies' detailed financials? I'll have to call BS on that. No one outside each company realized how bad the problem was and even within each institution only certain people knew the problem. Cases in point: Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. When both reached a crisis, the Fed and the Sec of Treasury Henry Paulson felt he needed to step in and help. To do so Bear Sterns had to reveal their financials to JP Morgan and the like. Only then did everyone understand the extent of the problem. JP Morgan saved Bear Sterns but only with the backing of the Fed. When it came time for Lehman Brothers, everyone balked because of the huge amount of debt that Lehman Brothers disclosed before any sale. When Lehman Brothers failed, the panic that ensued signaled that these companies were more intertwined than thought. AIG was next. That's when the government felt it had to step in.

So in my count, at least 2 very large investment firms who had been doing it for nearly a century were somehow caught with their pants down. Two very large firms whose entire business is investing and risk somehow did not get out of it way early. Or two companies who were in trouble but didn't realize the other one was.

With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they got into a business they didn't fully understand. They saw Wall Street encroaching on their business and wanted a piece. Mortgages were supposed to be their business not derivatives.

Frontline has covered this in far greater detail with Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank, and The Warning. If you watched all of these, the sense you'd get is that everyone thought that the market could regulate itself and this boom would last forever.

And your last sentece is wanting --- what occurred was that the second and third tier banks realized the extent of the ultra-leveraging which had occurred --- when the banksters peddled their securitized debt, i.e., issuing securities multiple times based upon one loan, which the next bank or financial institution purchased on the asset side, then further issued securities of some type on the liability side, when the next bank purchased on the asset side, then issued further securities on the liability side, ad infinitum......which is what we call ultra-leveraging, and what was used by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BofA, and others, for all that ultra-leveraged speculation to manipulate the commodities: oil, energy, gas, foodstuffs, precious metals, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with your supposition is that everyone knew it was coming but just wanted to make money before the end. And every company knew about every other companies' detailed financials? I'll have to call BS on that. No one outside each company realized how bad the problem was and even within each institution only certain people knew the problem. Cases in point: Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. When both reached a crisis, the Fed and the Sec of Treasury Henry Paulson felt he needed to step in and help. To do so Bear Sterns had to reveal their financials to JP Morgan and the like. Only then did everyone understand the extent of the problem. JP Morgan saved Bear Sterns but only with the backing of the Fed. When it came time for Lehman Brothers, everyone balked because of the huge amount of debt that Lehman Brothers disclosed before any sale. When Lehman Brothers failed, the panic that ensued signaled that these companies were more intertwined than thought. AIG was next. That's when the government felt it had to step in.

So in my count, at least 2 very large investment firms who had been doing it for nearly a century were somehow caught with their pants down. Two very large firms whose entire business is investing and risk somehow did not get out of it way early. Or two companies who were in trouble but didn't realize the other one was.

With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they got into a business they didn't fully understand. They saw Wall Street encroaching on their business and wanted a piece. Mortgages were supposed to be their business not derivatives.

Frontline has covered this in far greater detail with Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank, and The Warning. If you watched all of these, the sense you'd get is that everyone thought that the market could regulate itself and this boom would last forever.

One word: Rollover. Sadly, many places in the US still have decreasing radius turns (cloverleaf off-ramp), and this, combined with the dangerously high center-of-gravity of the average SUV results in statistically abnormal rollover rates. In fact, driving an SUV is not only more dangerous for the SUV driver, but everyone else around.

1995 called. They want their single-word-explains-all talking point back.

Nope.

Film at 11: Crash.

One word: Rollover. Sadly, many places in the US still have decreasing radius turns (cloverleaf off-ramp), and this, combined with the dangerously high center-of-gravity of the average SUV results in statistically abnormal rollover rates. In fact, driving an SUV is not only more dangerous for the SUV driver, but everyone else around.

Well, English is a close cousin of all the Scandinavian languages, but more to the point Old Norse.

The original Old English language was influenced by two waves of invasion: the first by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic language family, who conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman.

However it was the Danish and Norwegian Vikings that attacked and settled in Britain. Have you heard of the Danelaw? So it would be more precise to say English has a closer relationship with Danish/Norwegian than Swedish.

In fact some dialects still exist in the northwest of England that sounds like modern Norwegian (BBC, 2008). Indeed, modern genetic sampling and research reveals a lot of Viking blood heritage in England, Ireland and Scotland.

The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen, and is particularly evident in place-names: name endings such as -howe, -by ("village") or "thorp" ("hamlet").

Furthermore many British island groups, including the Isle of Man(n) and Shetland, belonged to Norwegian Kings for hundreds of years. Indeed York was once known by its original name Jorvik. Dublin (Dubh Linn) and other Irish cities were Viking settlements.

Then later the descendants of Norwegian/Danish settlers in Normandy, France, decided to invade and conquer England. Of course by that time William the Conqueror and his men spoke French. His father again was the well known [Norwegain/Danish] Rollo, or Hrólfr, who forced the French king to sign a treaty ceding part of the province to him, from which it took the name of Normandy, the country of the Northmen.

Ironically it was the attack of the invading Norwegian Viking army under King Harald Hardråda and Tostig Godwinson, brother of the English King, that led to the fall of England to the Normans. King Harold managed to beat the Norwegian invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York, but was not strong enough to withstand a second attack by the Norman army. In 1066 at the time of the Battle of Hastings the languages were mutually intelligible.

Swedish Vikings moved east and played a major role in the development of Russia. These Vikings are know as the Rus and it is from this name that the name of Russia has been derived. Actually the Rus were Swedish Vikings meaning the northern Germanic tribes which setteled in Sweden. The Term Rus was not what they called themselves, but the name given them by the Finns. Today Sweden is Ruotsia in Finnish.

English, the three Scandinavian languages, Icelandic, Dutch and German all belong to the Germanic language family.

There are alternative sources if one looks. Some material may be objectionable, viewer discretion is advised.

Besides the U.S. commercial and cable broadcasters, there is news service on PBS stations with some streaming and podcasts available from http://www.pbs.org./ Many PBS and other public stations also carry the BBC which has much available on the web too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

A great many international newscasts are carried by the non-profit public satellite broadcaster MHz on their WorldView channel. (They have a number of other international channels also)

This guide is easier to browse than the one on their website:
http://proweb.myersinfosys.com/day.php?timezone=0&station=world&channel=MHz+Worldview&airdate=

They have free news and paid programs on-demand streamed through ROKU
mhznetworks.org/roku

Many of the news sources they carry have websites with some content available, here are some:

http://www.dw-world.de/ (Deutsche Welle from Germany)
http://www.euronews.net/
http://www.france24.com/en/
http://www.rt.com/ (Russia Today)
http://www.aljazeera.net/english
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AlJazeeraEnglish#g/u
http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ (NHK Newsline)
http://www.youtube.com/taiwanmactv

Not sure where a country is? Here's a good but simple map.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/CIA_WorldFactBook-Political_world.svg

More info and a list of stations carrying WorldView:
http://www.mhznetworks.org/mhzworldview/

Sometimes a station has them on a secondary digital channel (Like KCET 28.4 Los Angeles) that isn't on cable. Ask your cable operator to add it if they're not carrying the feed.

I hate to be a consequentialist, but I think their uses outweigh the potential harm in some people's liberties.

On what evidence to you make such a conclusion? Given that London's pervasive use of CCTV cameras has failed to make people there safer and that other cities have also found them ineffective in preventing violent crime, why do you think that putting a CCTV camera in a drone has positive benefits that outweigh the chilling effects of their certain use to spy on political dissidents? If you want to know how something like this will really be used, check out the recent Frontline report on domestic surveillance.

Do you think they'll have nut obsessed rodents?

As much as squirrels and others love nuts, I think some crows in Japan deserve credit for doing something different with nuts. NHK (via Mhz WorldView) reports that birds have learned not only to drop nuts in the roadway where cars break them open, but to do it at intersections where the traffic gets stopped so they can pick up the pieces.

PBS also reported it:

http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/index.html

Clark (of Louis and Clark fame) would probably disagree with you there...

Did I get whooshed? It's "Lewis". http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/

If viewing child porn doesn't have the power to convert ordinary people to paedophiles, I don't see why it needs to be filtered.

There are a LOT of men and some women out there who but for social rules and the morality their parents ingrained in them growing up would think nothing of molesting their own 14 year old girl or maybe their own 8 year old boy.

The availability of child porn and pedophile-apologist material online can have a corrosive effect on such people, removing their inhibitions.

This can turn someone who "by nature" is a mix of pedophile and non-pedophile but who "by nurture" is an upstanding citizen who would cringe at the idea of molesting children into someone who might consider or even do such an act, ruining many lives including their own in the process.

By far most people do not have a "latent pedophile" side to them so they are not harmed by exposure to such material other than needing a new keyboard after they vomit, but a significant number of people are. Even if it's only 0.5-2% of men and say 0.1-0.4% of women who are vulnerable in this way but who aren't "100% pedophiles" already, that's a still a big number in a country the size of the United States or for that matter worldwide.

This is the same reason that in some countries alcohol, tobacco, and adult-entertainment products are not allowed to be advertised even to adults or their advertising is limited to groups that that have already made the decision to buy those types of products. It's also the reason in some countries such products are not allowed to be marketed to children or adolescents.

Here are some examples of what can happen if you have a society where such behavior is tolerated:

*Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004

*Official response to Aboriginal child sexual abuse in Australia: more law and order

*The whole Roman Catholic and other clergy abuses of the last half-century or more that were made worse by official tolerance or official downplaying of the seriousness of the crimes.

*The "peer culture" among teenagers and preteens in Rockdale County, Georgia in the 1990s that led to promiscuity and a syphilis epidemic. See Frontline: The Lost Children of Rockdale County

Granted, none of these directly touch on the question of "does child porn create pedophiles" but they all show the influence a person's contacts have on his willingness to engage in behavior that the larger society condemns.

For some specific cases of child porn creating or awakening a pedophile in a previously-law-abiding person, go through the many court cases of people charged with child porn or child molestation crimes. Many will claim "I was curious and got addicted." Some of these criminals are lying and just looking for sympathy from a jury but some really are who they say they are: People who but for that initial exposure would have remained happy law-abiding responsible adults and who are now paying the price for satisfying their curiosity and the resulting addiction.

By the way, this argument has been used by anti-gay forces to suppress homosexuals. While the argument has merit for "true 50/50 bisexuals" and even the "90/10" "bi-curious" group in that they may be tempted to "try it out" if they live in a gay-tolerant or gay-affirming culture, there is one key difference: It's not child abuse. The "queers recruit" anti-gay argument is about as valid and about as silly as "McDonalds recruits kids to eat unhealthy high-fat foods" - yes, but so what? The "if child porn is widely available you will have more [active, or at least child-porn-viewing] pedophiles" argument, on the other hand, must be taken seriously if it is real, and the evidence I've seen and my general knowledge of human behavior leads me to conclude that it is very real.

Here's a few articles and interviews for you on the subject:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/perfect/radio.html

http://www.civilrights.org/publications/low-power/consolidation.html

http://futureofmusic.org/tags/radio-consolidation

http://futureofmusic.org/article/research/employment-and-wage-effects-radio-consolidation

http://www.daveyd.com/lettertofcc.html

http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2010/05/27/fcc-ponders-the-future-of-radio-consolidation/

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4653720-1.html

http://iplj.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Note-NO-COMPETITION-HOW-RADIO-CONSOLIDATION-HAS-DIMINISHED-DIVERSITY-AND-SACRIFICED-LOCALISM.pdf

Look, don't mind me. Follow the leader. No skin off my back.

Here's a deal: you don't bogusly assume I'm a blind fanboy adherent of the Cult Of Apple and I won't bogusly assume you're one of those people who thinks buying an Android phone is somehow Striking A Blow Against The Empire.

Actually, I don't give a damn who or what you are. I merely posted my opinion on /. (as sometimes people have been know to do) and, as is always the case, if anything is said that can be construed as not pro-Apple, it's like watching the roaches scramble when the light comes on. I'd get less reaction if I posted "Jesus was gay" or "Rush Limbaugh is the new Saviour". It's ridiculous.

I've followed Jobs & Co for nearly 35 years and I've seen how he operates. Apple only lets others play in their game when they have no other choice. Jobs compulsion to control everything is legendary. If they have to, they'll let others play, as long as they play by Apple's rules. The minute they feel they can survive without third party developers, believe me, they'll cut them out. However, never before has the opportunity presented itself where Apple could do without third party developers. This began to change with the iPhone and the App store.

And what exactly is it about a store to sell third-party applications that's an indication that Apple can do without third-party developers? If they didn't want third-party developers, they, err, umm, wouldn't have published an SDK and created an app store. Or do you mean that so many third-party apps have been developed that Apple has figured out that they don't need them?

If you actually read my previous posts, you'd understand (even if you didn't agree with) my reasoning. I'm not interested in covering the same ground again.

Apple has already reached critical mass and they don't really need any more fart apps in the store. Apple's reasoning (and I believe they are correct)

...and you also believe that is, in fact, their reasoning...

Correct. It's called an opinion.

is that most people (outside the tech world) will buy the iPhone because of the brand and whether there are 300,000 apps in the app store or just a few thousand "good" apps won't matter. They will still maintain their market share. Once the "app envy" fad passes and Apple decides which apps are worth keeping in the store (for marketing, financial or other reasons) they can simply buy out, set up royalty agreements with, or make any number of other arrangements with the "good" apps and they can then easily shut the doors to outside vendors.

...because, of course, once you have those "good" apps, there will never ever ever ever ever ever ever be any need for a new application ever again, other than the ones you think of.

No, there will always be new apps, but there will only be new apps that Apple deems are what people want/need and make available through their store, created either by them, by contractors or through licensing deals.

If Apple starts thinking that all the smart people work for them, they're fucked.

Maybe so. It won't be the first nor the last time.

They've already made it abundantly clear that the iOS devices are intended to be seen as "appliances" that they really don't want outsiders tampering with.

"Tampering" in what sense? No, you can't write a kext or a program that requires, say, root privileges, but you can add new applications, and develop hardware that attaches to the dock connector.

You can add new application if you've purchased it through their app store and (i.e. it h

Look, don't mind me. Follow the leader. No skin off my back.

Here's a deal: you don't bogusly assume I'm a blind fanboy adherent of the Cult Of Apple and I won't bogusly assume you're one of those people who thinks buying an Android phone is somehow Striking A Blow Against The Empire.

I've followed Jobs & Co for nearly 35 years and I've seen how he operates. Apple only lets others play in their game when they have no other choice. Jobs compulsion to control everything is legendary. If they have to, they'll let others play, as long as they play by Apple's rules. The minute they feel they can survive without third party developers, believe me, they'll cut them out. However, never before has the opportunity presented itself where Apple could do without third party developers. This began to change with the iPhone and the App store.

And what exactly is it about a store to sell third-party applications that's an indication that Apple can do without third-party developers? If they didn't want third-party developers, they, err, umm, wouldn't have published an SDK and created an app store. Or do you mean that so many third-party apps have been developed that Apple has figured out that they don't need them?

Apple has already reached critical mass and they don't really need any more fart apps in the store. Apple's reasoning (and I believe they are correct)

...and you also believe that is, in fact, their reasoning...

is that most people (outside the tech world) will buy the iPhone because of the brand and whether there are 300,000 apps in the app store or just a few thousand "good" apps won't matter. They will still maintain their market share. Once the "app envy" fad passes and Apple decides which apps are worth keeping in the store (for marketing, financial or other reasons) they can simply buy out, set up royalty agreements with, or make any number of other arrangements with the "good" apps and they can then easily shut the doors to outside vendors.

...because, of course, once you have those "good" apps, there will never ever ever ever ever ever ever be any need for a new application ever again, other than the ones you think of. If Apple starts thinking that all the smart people work for them, they're fucked.

They've already made it abundantly clear that the iOS devices are intended to be seen as "appliances" that they really don't want outsiders tampering with.

"Tampering" in what sense? No, you can't write a kext or a program that requires, say, root privileges, but you can add new applications, and develop hardware that attaches to the dock connector. (The word "appliance" is overused, BTW; if it accepts third-party applications, it might not be a self-hosting device that can be used to develop applications for the device, but it's more than a sealed-box "appliance".)

The last figures I saw, the desktop/laptop segment only accounted for around 15% of Apple's revenue.

And what figures were those? According to this chart for the calendar Q4 2010 hardware revenue, it's a little over 25% of the hardware revenue; if that's 15% of total revenue, hardware would be about 60% of total revenue. The Q4 2010 iTunes Store revenue was "over $1 billion", but the Q4 2010 total revenue was $20 billion, so either there's another significant non-hardware revenue category, there's a significant hardware revenue category other than Mac, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, Apple made a lot of money from servers, or the iTunes Store revenue was a lot over $1 billion, if the desktop/laptop segment (non-server Macs) were only around 15% of revenue in Q4 2010.

By a wide margin, the iP

There was a Nova episode about the changes in the Earth's magnetic field, and the polarity reversal, among other things.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/

Why is this making the news now? This study has been debunked for a while; I saw a PBS frontline program in May that cast substantial doubt upon the veracity of Wakefield's findings.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/view/

As mentioned in the above program, dozens of studies have already failed to duplicate Wakefield's findings. Essentially, he blamed autism on a mercury-base preservative that was found in vaccines administered to babies. Even though there was no proof that this preservative had anything to do with autism, manufacturers ceased to use it in vaccines, but this only caused the anti-vaccine to go hypothesis hunting once more.

I'd recommend reading up on Walmart and the effect that their music buying preferences have had on popular music. They're a huge retailer of music and refuse to carry music which has a warning label on it. It gets bizarre at times like when they refused to carry Nirvana until they changed the names of some of the songs. Didn't actually change the songs, just the names, dropped the warning and were able to be carried. Most artists aren't that lucky and have to compromise their artistic integrity in order to live up to Walmart's rules or release an alternate version. Check out the second paragraph http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3_2.html

Musicians should should flaunt that "We aren't Walmart's brand of music."

I'd recommend reading up on Walmart and the effect that their music buying preferences have had on popular music. They're a huge retailer of music and refuse to carry music which has a warning label on it. It gets bizarre at times like when they refused to carry Nirvana until they changed the names of some of the songs. Didn't actually change the songs, just the names, dropped the warning and were able to be carried. Most artists aren't that lucky and have to compromise their artistic integrity in order to live up to Walmart's rules or release an alternate version.

Check out the second paragraph http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3_2.html

Does that include bag fees, gate fees, in-flight meals, and taxes? ....not to mention the painkillers and chiropractor required to deal with the ever shrinking legroom in coach.

And those are just some of the ways the airlines have "cut costs"

Trailer
Episode Details

Strange though, usually PBS posts the whole episode online; can't find it.

The "they" that removed credit card interest rate limits was the supreme court.

Not exactly. What they did in 1978 was to make it permissible for the laws of the state where the lender was chartered to apply instead of those of the state the customer resides in.

Where they are:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/map.html

General info:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/eight/

Beware of credit of the last resort
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card_(The_New_Twilight_Zone)

The "they" that removed credit card interest rate limits was the supreme court.

Not exactly. What they did in 1978 was to make it permissible for the laws of the state where the lender was chartered to apply instead of those of the state the customer resides in.

Where they are:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/map.html

General info:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/eight/

Beware of credit of the last resort
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card_(The_New_Twilight_Zone)

Too bad Wikileaks is not an international drug running or firearms smuggling organization, they appear to be more befitting "internal policies".

Of course they are. Lots of money involved in smuggling. Not so much money involved in free press.

Your comment demonstrates an obvious lack of historical knowledge. Read The $200 Billion Rip-Off by Cringely, to get a brief introduction to what you were too young to understand or over looked.

Fifteen years ago my community, after their repeated requests to the cable and telcos to build a Fiber Optic cable system to bring affordable HIGH BANDWIDTH to every citizen were rebuffed, decided to begin building it themselves as a public utility. (Our electricity is owned by city and we pay 6 cents/kwh). I watched as they trenched their way through my yard and buried FO cable. The cable and telcos lobbied Congress whining about "unfair" competition. Congress agreed and passed a low preventing local and state governments from "competing" against the cable and telcos. Cringely explains the rest, but failed to mention that while Congress FUNDED the cable and telcos to complete the FO project, they did NOT put performance clauses in the bill, so the cable and telcos took the money and stuffed it into their greedy pockets. To help the cable and telcos extract even more profits from their ancient Copper wire technology Congress REDEFINED "high" bandwidth to include any connection that was 200Kb/s or faster.

So now, in France, a citizen can pay $30/month and receive a 40Mb/s HIGH bandwidth Internet connection which includes 24/7/365 phone calls to anyone in France (and economical rates to other countries), and 200 channel TV.

I pay $72/mon for a 12Mb/s Internet connection, thankfully uncapped, but no phone nor TV. I do use Skype to talk for free to other VOIP users, and 2 cents/min to any cellphones or land lines in most of the Free World, and I can watch expried TV shows on HULU for $8/mon, but 12Mb/s is no where near 40Mb/s.

Now, the ISPs want to charge extra for Skype and Netflix bytes. IF you think it will end there you have a brick for a brain. Greed knows NO bounds. They'll find ways to justify charging for other types of data streams: VPN connections, encrypted data, cloud database data, etc..., then they'll tier the stream types to ratchet up the profit margins even higher, and all of it on ANCIENT Copper Wire technology. In the background their OWN data pipes are being converted to Fiber Optic, but the stuff streaming out to you will have a Copper segment. They need that bottle-neck to justify their robbery.

You elected your Congressmen to serve you. In the past they formed "watch dog" agencies to keep an eye on the corporations. Now, the corporations bribe the Congressmen to pass laws favorable to their profits, and the FCC, FDA, and DOJ are now instruments of enforcing corporate policy.

Didn't you ever wonder how President Obama, elected by a LARGE majority to fulfill his promise to clean up Health Insurance and the medical industry, was stymied by his OWN Democrat party members, the majority of whom took bribes from the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry to maintain the status quo, to say nothing of insuring their own re-election so their own ride on the Federal gravy train wouldn't come to an end.

Welcome to the Corporate State. And you though you were living in a Republic or a Democracy, where your vote counted and the Constituion meant something. Silly you.

This decision,' says the bank, 'is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.'

Too bad Wikileaks is not an international drug running or firearms smuggling organization, they appear to be more befitting "internal policies".

"I can haz cheezburger?" is not just amusing, it is also a declaration of how flexible we need English to be as it increasingly takes on the role of the universal human language.

Then I guess Mark Twain's critics were right.

Ernest Hemingway declared that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." T. S. Eliot called it a "masterpiece." Now an accepted part of the American literary canon, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is required reading in over 70 percent of American high schools and is among the most taught works of American literature.

Yet Huck Finn has been in trouble almost continuously since the day it was first published in America in 1885. The Concord Public Library in Massachusetts immediately banned it as "the veriest trash, suitable only for the slums." A newspaper account described the library's objections to the novel:

It deals with a series of adventures of a very low grade of morality; it is couched in the language of a rough dialect, and all through its pages there is a systemic use of bad grammar and an employment of rough, coarse, inelegant expressions. It is also very irreverent. . . . The whole book is of a class that is more profitable for the slums than it is for respectable people.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 17, 1885

The Brooklyn Public Library followed suit in 1905, removing it from the children's room because Huck was a liar who "not only itched, but scratched," was dirty, used terrible grammar, and "said 'sweat' when he should have said 'perspiration.'" By 1907 libraries in Denver, Omaha, and Worcester (Massachusetts) had removed the book because Huck and Tom were "bad" role models. During the 1930s many libraries purchased expurgated or "junior" versions of the novel, which omitted sections and simplified the language.

Worth noting that Anonymous lost England the Colonies in North America, and they've probably been after them ever since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
"Thomas Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; signed "Written by an Englishman", the pamphlet became an immediate success."

http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html
"Benevolus — While in England, Franklin penned a number of letters under the name of Benevolus. These letters tried to answer some of the negative assertions made by the British press about the American colonists. These letters were published in London newspapers and journals. "

Perhaps those are the Anonymous guys that England's really still mad at.

So its results are unquestionably incorrect and/or irrelevant?

They may be technically true in some sense or other. However, in past such situations, Microsoft has been seen commissioning several similar reports; possibly even iterating the instructions for running the reports; then throwing away (under NDA) all the ones which don't match with their marketing wishes. You can basically assume that whatever it says is the opposite of the truth in some way or another because if it was true they would be able to just say directly it instead of commissioning someone else to say it to they can avoid claims of false advertising (for example, their old "Get the Facts" campaign was one of the few things of this type the ASA has clearly stated was misleading). And yes; most companies do this to some extent, but few other companies could come near to sustaining the level of deception Microsoft does because eventually some employee would become disenchanted and start leaking results. For example, have a look at the Comes documents, which only came out because of a lawsuit, to get some idea of the kind of things they can keep secret. Nowadays Microsoft's data destruction policies are much stricter and they ensure that all deals are finalised by lawyers and so are legally privilaged. This kind of secrecy and professional deception means that almost any marketing claim from them should be disregarded completely until there is some level of independent confirmation.

Yeah, I agree that comparing these measurements in general is a bit ridiculous. It's much more interesting (and useful) to look at how various societal factors correlate to the change in BMI over time.

Yes, there is much to be learned looking at the increases in obesity over time. The U.S. corn subsidies, lower-protein corn engineered for the production of high fructose corn syrup, and the widespread use of corn syrup directly and indirectly in foods has been shown to have had a major impact. (An example of a harmful indirect use is for feeding cattle. They're higher fat and harbor more-harmful strains of E-coli due to the higher acidity the diet causes)
A long list of related links is available from the page for the documentary King Corn which was presented within the PBS Independent Lens series.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/more.html

Here is simple graphic for seeing where one is as far as Body Mass Index.
(a separate table adjusted with slightly less massive norms for Asians is also available)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Body_mass_index_chart.svg

The U.N. and W.H.O. have extensive obesity data available which shows variation over time, by region, by gender etc. (sorry I don't have time to refind the links to the excellent sources I've seen there previously)
It's not a contest between countries. Finding obesity in other nations certainly doesn't make it any less serious at home.

I could get up to 50 Mbit, I just don't want to pay for it.

If you're a US taxpayer, you *already* paid $200B to get it--you just got screwed.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
"Americans were deceived and defrauded by many of their telephone companies to the tune of $200 billion -- money that was supposed to have gone to pay for a broadband future we don't -- and never will -- have."
"EITHER 45 mbps bidirectional service OR at least the ability to carry HDTV (nominally 20 mbps)"
"It is an ugly story of greed and poor regulation"

gewg_

(It's been alleged that intelligence agencies routinely obtain these data stores to cross reference against their existing files.) By the time you get around to opting out, your data could easily have been sold and re-sold dozens of times.

It's a fact:

Watergate era reforms restricted government use of these private information empires. But after 9/11 the Bush administration lifted the restraints and pushed agencies aggressively to use private databases... You can't have the big brainiac with the one database on all Americans run by the government. But here's the trick; what you can do if you're the FBI, is you can ping the private sector database... Lexis Nexis [ChoicePoint, Acxiom, etc]... And as long as you access it one at a time, which is the way it works anyways, the Privacy Act doesn't apply. Because it's not a government database. It's the private sector database. The law doesn't apply to the private sector database.

Peter Swire
White House Privacy Counsel, 1999-'01
Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02s471q6d&continuous=1

Though it appears that Slashdot would prefer not to hear the Truth (I guess they'd rather have me logged in for easier tracking, though I stopped doing that when I noticed that Slasdot was doing business with Facebook):

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 2 hours, 53 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html As it turns out, we did pay for it.

Interview with the red-team leader General Van Riper

Sounds like a brilliant guy, somebody we should have more of in our armed services, not less.

Yes, they will die from hunger, poor sanitation, wars (civil or otherwise) all of which are going to be made worse by climate change. The World Health Organization already attributes 150,000 deaths annually to the effects of climate change.

Climate change is widely expected to hit the poorest people hardest.

I think you need to consider the effect of making all those factors worse.

This is a sign that a much more genuine form of Democracy is arriving. I don't understand why people are so willing to overlook the many crimes of Saddam.

Well, U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent in the end, but it was after Tesla had passed away... and it was to nullify a lawsuit against the US for Marconi.

Chimpanzees don't look where you're pointing either. This was pointed out on a recent Nova episode:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html

There's a dog in Europe that started retrieving its toys on its own when the word describing that toy was said, regardless of whether or not it that word was said to the dog. The dog has a "vocabulary" now of over 300 words. They also tested to see if the dog could look at a picture of one of its toys and retrieve the actual toy from another room; it did. Similar tests can be run on small children to test their development progress. (Source: PBS Nova "Dogs Decoded" - unfortunately not available to stream.)

You also have to consider that we teach kids in a very similar way that we train dogs. When a kid does something good, you usually reward them - just like giving a dog a treat when it does something good. The reward for a kid doesn't have to be treat, but it is sometimes.

Dogs can also learn from another dog's behavior. If you have a dog that's trained well but is nearing the end of its life, one of the options of speeding up a new dog's training is getting the new dog prior to the death of the old dog, so it can pick up behavior from the old dog. For my own dog, I've had a dog behaviorist and a trainer tell me that if I want to actually get my dog to play nice with other dogs (he was never exposed to other dogs before I adopted him at age 2), I needed to have him spend time with a very calm dog that wouldn't get irritated by my dog's erratic behavior (and that introducing him to a hyper dog could just make his erratic behavior worse).

Basic freedoms have improved, corruption has been far less than I've seen in the US (their former food and drug regulator was found to be taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies, and subsequently executed), and the choking pollution has only been a recent occurrence because of the rapid growth.

You're insane. Corruption in China is rife. The reason there are pollution problems is because the companies don't adhere to the law and instead bribe their way out. This goes to safety issues too. Yes, there are laws to prevent unsafe conditions like buildings flopping over or towering infernos but they cannot be enforced either. And it goes all the way to the bottom, to worker safety, even work hours. Look at the problems in factories. There are laws to prevent sweatshop conditions, but they aren't enforced because the factory owners can work outside the law if they have the right connections.

China wants to clean up the problems but as long as the government cannot enforce the laws because of corruption at lower levels, the problems will still be around.

See China Blue.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/

The working conditions are tragic and even illegal. But since the owner of the factory is an ex-police chief, there is no action taken against him.

I have no idea how you can say there is less corruption in China than in the US. Just ask Lee Kuan Yew (creator of modern Singapore), he says that the American system cannot be used the same in developing Asian countries because the conditions are different and corruption becomes a problem.

I noted it before but no one payed notice. Google has horded fiber "the likes of Gad hasn't even seen!" (jaja---Dune ya'know.) They will not need to pay _anyone_ to carry their "huge" traffic.

Here is a citation from Mark Stephens, aka, the current Robert X. Cringely,

"I spoke recently with an old friend who is a bandwidth broHe buys and sells bandwidth on fiber-optic networks around the world. And he told me something that I found not completely surprising, but I certainly hadn't known: Google controls more network fiber than any other organization.

[snip]

It is becoming very obvious what will happen over the next two to three years. More and more of us will be downloading movies and television shows over the net and with that our usage patterns will change. Instead of using 1-3 gigabytes per month, as most broadband Internet users have in recent years, we'll go to 1-3 gigabytes per DAY -- a 30X increase that will place a huge backbone burden on ISPs. Those ISPs will be faced with the option of increasing their backbone connections by 30X, which would kill all profits, OR they could accept a peering arrangement with the local Google data center."

There may be some folk thrown under the bus, but the bus (backscatter scanners, big brother, new world order) will keep moving in the general same direction.

Once the media was fully corrupted/owned by corporations and intelligence community, we lost the battle and it was only a matter of time before 1984-style big-brother became reality... to quote Mr. Smith:

what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?

The (non-rich) people have lost their voice, and it's a matter of time before this scandal is old-news, sadly.

Part of the cause of that is the lack of proportional representation, though.

No, the biggest problem is the power and size of government. Even with parliamentary systems with proportional representation major parties can be forced to include small and evil parties to form a governing coalition. Witness Israel, whenever the government holds serious talks with Palestinians it has to deal with small ultra conservative Jewish parties who oppose giving Palestinians any land. That is what happened in the talks that came closest to peace, the Taba Summit or talks. In 1999 Israel's PM Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat came the closest to peace in Taba, Egypt. Running against Ariel the Bulldozer Sharon, who had the support of those ultra conservative parties, to become the PM for another term Barak didn't finish negotiations. And of course Sharon opposed them.

Falcon

I'm willing to bet there are no terrorists whatsoever, this is all just mass hysteria, induced by opportunistic politics, grabbing of attention and votes, selling tons of security equipment, services, jobs, contracts, news, etc.

Regarding your bet, don't give up your day job.

Maybe you haven't heard, but an organization called Al Qaeda declared war on the United States, and essentially the rest of the world for not following their blighted form of Islam. You can read some of the goals of their leader, Osama Bin Laden, in Bin Laden's letter to America. As you can see, he has a fundamental hostility to democracy, non-Islamic religious belief, and many of our basic freedoms. He demands that we convert to Islam, give up democracy, drop the separation of church and state, and change many aspects of our culture or he and his minions will keep trying to kill us. He demands that we stop drinking alcohol, charging interest on bank loans, start separating the sexes, punishing homosexuality, oppress Jews, etc.

The sort term goal they have is to overthrow the governments in Arab & Muslim countries to install religious dictatorships to impose their narrow brand of Islam. They also hope to limit the spread of freedom and other "Western" ideas. Ultimately they plan to take over the world in a reborn Islamic super state. It sounds far fetched, but that is their goal. They understand that it might take 1,000 years, and that they are just moving the ball forward.

You can see a limited list of their handiwork below:

The most recent attempted bombing
The Underwear bomber
African Embassy Bombing
9/11 suicide attacks
Bali bombing
Madrid bombing
7/7 bombing in London
Another of the countless bombings in Iraq
Pakistan hotel bombing
Hotel bombing in Jordan
The "shoe bomber", and his current hijinks
Plan to attack Wembley stadium
Plan to bring down seven airliners
Attempted bombing in Germany

PS - In order to cut down on the confusion, a simple rule of them you can use is that "mass hysteria" doesn't tend to leave craters and stip the walls off buildings, collapse buildings, or rips bodies apart by shrapnel.

Breaking news: MinLove reminds us that Al Qaeda still loves us, has always loved us, and many of our best friends, and wants to love us even even more in future! Al Qaeda can only love us. We should meditate on why they do not love us as often as other people. Make your holiday plans now, destinations are filling up!!

I think it would be beneficial for elevators to close doors and move on if the passengers are ready. I suspect most elevators do make use of this input to increase throughput. Perhaps only Otis elevators don't use this input. A good slogan for their competitors would be "Our Close buttons work." Take a look at this week's Nova episode "Trapped in an Elevator". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html They talk about how one hotel had a 30% increase in elevator throughput by getting users to input the floor they wanted rather than just use up/down buttons. They could then pick up all people going to the same floor and optimize which elevator to send.