Slashdot Mirror

Here's some data on the hardware, from http://ca.reuters.com/article/...

* 65 km/h peak speed, and will cover the distance in about 15-30 minutes;
* It weighs 5kg, and can carry a payload of up to 1.2kg

With 1.2kg it can certainly carry a complement of medicines or even small, urgently needed hardware and parts (batteries or spare bits for medical equipment for instance). Not general use of cours, but it does look like more than just a stunt.

Unless it's the SEC to whom you are whistleblowing.

How soon people forget. RIM was very quick to roll over and give access to their servers in 2010, to the Saudis of all people: as reported by Reuters and LOTS of other news sources.

RIM would share with Saudi Arabia the unique pin number and code for each BlackBerry registered there. That will allow authorities to read encrypted text sent via Messenger, an instant messaging service that's distinct from email sent on the BlackBerry.

The arrangement would effectively give Saudi Arabia access to RIM's main server for Messenger, but only for communications to and from Saudi users, the source said..

The Canadian company declined to comment, referring media to its earlier statement in which it said it "cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard."

Just google for "rim gives government access to servers" India quickly got the same. The US and China? Yep!

Significantly, DoT was pulled up by a parliamentary committee a week ago over liberal extensions given to RIM on providing messages to security agencies in a readable format. Unlike the intransigent stance it took in India, RIM had provided access to its services to the U.S. and China.

The real question is, who doesn't have access to encrypted BBM messages?

I don't see games becoming free like TV through an ad model anytime soon.

Sure, you probably mean "mainstream big title games", but what you describe has been happening all along on phones.

King, maker of Candy Crush Saga, reported $611 million in revenue last quarter (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-kingdigital-results-idUSKBN0GC1VN20140812).

While obviously most of that is for people who are paying, you can play Candy Crush Saga (and I presume the rest of their games) without paying one cent. I have never paid anything for Words with Friends, either. (Though admittedly, their ads are sometimes just long enough to make me consider it -- but that's a one time payment of $.99 when it goes down in price to that occasionally.)

Preferably for people who want to turn America's farmland into some sprawling metropolis...

You blithering idiot! A blubbering fool! A nincompoop! Nobody is talking about your precious farmland (which produces far too much stuff anyway, but that's a separate story).

I said Midwest. The Midwest, that is so bloody empty of anything (crops included), towns are offering free land to anybody willing to build a home. And still they can't attract enough people...

but WHY did it collapse?

Because home delivery is expensive.

Citing the errors of celebrities, powerful politicians, authors, lobbyists, or influential policy advocates as evidence of the failings of science is... also jibberish.

Ignoring science is being ignorant. Pretty much by definition.

As for Gore being wrong, I'm not so sure about that:

Former Vice President Al Gore references computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose virtually all of its ice within the next seven years. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” says Gore.

I'm sure you can find one instance where he spoke off the cuff and oversimplified, but whatever.

Do you deny the opening of the arctic passage?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/27/us-shipping-coal-arctic-idUSBRE98Q0K720130927

Are you supporting this conspiracy theory of a "global warming hoax?" If you know something, speak up, it could be one of the greatest upsets in the history of science.

http://www.businessweek.com/ne...

RWE AG said Aug. 12 it will halt an extra 1,005 megawatts of coal and lignite capacity by the first quarter of 2017, taking the total planned capacity cuts to 8,940 megawatts. Old lignite plants are candidates for closing, according to New York-based Pira, whose clients include oil companies, utilities and governments. A thousand megawatts is enough to power 2 million European homes.

They are shutting down the old coal plants, replacing them with new, more efficient and cleaner ones... and now they have to shut down and reduce production of those too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Wind and solarâ(TM)s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42 percent by next year from 30 percent in 2010, according to European Union data compiled by Citigroup Inc. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28 percent from 32 percent, the data show.

German utilities plan to start new hard-coal plants with 5,606 megawatts of capacity this year and next, data from Bonn-based national grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur show. That compares with a target of at least 10,000 megawatts from new solar and wind installations in 2014 and 2015 under Germanyâ(TM)s renewable energy act, which takes effect Aug. 1. Solar output reached a record 24,244 megawatts on June 6, according to EEX.

Because... They are getting more out of all the solar and wind than expected. They are getting negative electricity prices in January and May.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.businessinsider.com...

In the case of a bad solar storm, recovery may be delayed by the need to manufacture replacement transformers. http://www.reuters.com/article...

The intelligence agency has done this before to help the DEA and domestic law enforcement. Parallel construction has been proven for other investigations. It's unlikely any of them will give it up until they are forced to do so. https://www.muckrock.com/news/... http://www.reuters.com/article...

I don't think apathy needs an advocate. There really is no sense in loudly proclaiming defeatism. Sure, some people don't care, but the defendants would not have worked so hard to keep documents sealed if *nobody* cared. This case is being widely covered by the media:

Reuters: http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
Time: http://time.com/42322/steve-jo...
Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ee7535...

And over 186 more articles just from the past few days

So I don't know about what you said right there. I don't believe that "no one cares".

/there is always some subset of people who claim no one cares about any given news story.

Why do you think one of the fastest ways to become a millionaire in the US is to be elected to Congress or the Senate?

This comment pre-dated an extremely relevant example by a week, one I felt necessary to mention before the comments go into archive: Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been hired by "small independent investment bank" Moelis & Co. "Moelis & Co.’s new vice-chairman and managing director will get a $3.4 million pay package between September and the end of 2015."

Dude lost the primary because he was too focused on federal matters (and that whole immigration thing...) and, as punishment, he gets a job where he will likely do jack all (to my knowledge he has no experience in investment banking)--except, perhaps, talking to the current crop of Congresscritters about how to best pass laws that help banks--for the tidy sum of $3.4 MILLION for just a bit over a year's work. Jon Stewart does a nice rip of him over this.

Russian military.

Exclusive: Over 100 Russian soldiers killed in single Ukraine battle - Russian rights activists

(Reuters) - More than 100 Russian soldiers were killed in eastern Ukraine in a single battle this month while helping pro-Russian separatists fight Ukrainian troops, two members of the Russian presidential human rights council said on Thursday, citing accounts from eyewitnesses and relatives of the dead.

Ella Polyakova and Sergei Krivenko, both members of the council - an advisory body with no legal powers and an uneasy relationship with the Kremlin - said around 300 people were wounded in the same incident on Aug. 13 near the town of Snizhnye, when a column of trucks they were driving, full of ammunition, was hit by a sustained volley of Grad missiles.

Update: SHAPE confirms Russian forces fighting in Ukraine

NATO sees the Russian military fighting in Ukraine.
Ukraine sees the Russian military fighting in Ukraine.
The rebels admit the Russians are helping them.
Russian NGOs state Russian military are being sent to Ukraine and killed.
But you "don't believe." At this point I think if you still "don't believe" it is really not a question of evidence but rather your motivation.

China's state-owned reactor builder said the start-up of the country's first advanced nuclear project based on designs by U.S.-based Westinghouse has been delayed further until at least end of 2015 due to tougher safety checks. In an interview to official news agency Xinhua on Thursday, Guo Hongbo, a spokesman at China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp (SNPTC), blamed the delayed start of the "third-generation" AP1000 reactor on stringent safety inspections after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Originally set to start by end-2013, the project in Sanmen in eastern Zhejiang province was already delayed until December 2014. It has now been pushed back at least another year, after design changes and problems with some components. http://uk.reuters.com/article/...

The Russians could not have known what Obama would or wouldn't eventually do.

You mean, you don't think Obama tipped his hand like this?

http://www.reuters.com/article...

"President Barack Obama was caught on camera on Monday assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

Obama, during talks in Seoul, urged Moscow to give him "space" until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin."

Bush was seen on the international stage as crazy. Obama is seen as weak. As Obama's weakness has unfolded over the past 6 years, it's obvious we would've been better off with Sad Grandpa McCain than "we don't have a strategy yet" Obama :)

...ask yourself this: would you really want 1600 tons of radioactive potential death rolling through your city just waiting for an errant snowflake to land on the line to derail the whole kaboodle?

Say it doesn't happen. Go on. I dare you. Those were just a few I dug out from a cursory google search.

Clearly viral marketing. Cause that video was pretty crappy in what their trying to demo--much like the amazon video (which was more about the concept than the tech). I wouldn't be surprised if it's a marketing stunt related to this.

You are attempting to mince terms to ignore the bribery since it does not come from 1 person/company as opposed to looking at the recipient of the bribe.

40 years ago the rules were different and sure it was called bribery. Today, no such thing. Campaign contributions can be used for clothing if said clothing is used on the campaign trail, it can be used for food, lodging, travel expenses, etc.. etc.. and this is all over the table. People holding offices receive regular "all expenses paid" trips to "seminars" regularly (even though the seminar may actually consist of a couple hour meeting which many don't attend).

So over the table, you can pay for just about all living expenses on "contributions", but we don't call that bribery because it's not directly stuffing wads of cash into someone's pocket. Makes no difference in the long run, because if I don't have to pay for food, clothing, travel, "entertainment", laptops, email, web hosting, and all the other shit I can put on my "contribution" fund I bank a huge sum of money that everyone else would have to pay for living expenses.

Why do you think one of the fastest ways to become a millionaire in the US is to be elected to Congress or the Senate? But of course you will probably claim that facts are fud since it harms your asinine opinion. Make sure you are ignoring the fact that members of the House and Senate can legally use insider trading knowledge to make sacks full of money that you and I would go to jail for (and have repeatedly refused to change the law).

Here more:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/...

Japanese companies export about 500 billion yen (3.16 billion pounds) of auto parts to the EU every year and are charged about 3-4.5 percent in tariffs by the EU, according to the business daily.

The EU offered a 90 percent tariff elimination except the 10 percent duty on automobiles and 14 percent on LCD televisions, according to the newspaper.

Are we good? See below:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

The links provided in the story are the usual, information free sort one expects from mdsolar as he plies his anti-nook trade around Slashdot. There are better news stories written about this and the bottom line is a subcontractor is falling behind making "submodules." This story from yesterday points the finger at Chicago Bridge & Iron in Louisiana, and this story actually provides a little detail about the submodules that CB&I are trying to make. The builders are moving some of this work to other facilities and contractors because of CB&I failures. Another story a year ago also names CB&I as the culprit for delays.

So it's a manufacturing problem and not a regulator hold up. Manufacturing problems are solvable (we've built stuff like this many times) and not as appealing to mdsolar as a nasty regulatory tangle, so he deliberately avoided stories with specifics.

Like people on GPS bracelets to ensure they do not leave the state.

The bracelets are an alternative to being in jail — having your freedoms suspended by the Judiciary, not Executive. Executive can arrest you — limiting your freedoms temporarily — but they can not deprive a citizen of his rights for very long without a successful a successful trial.

Try again when you have been around the world, checked out the laws and rights enshrined within those laws, been arrested under those laws

I've been around the world quite a bit, but I have never been arrested. Nor do I accept that as a requirement to holding (and putting forth) an opinion.

I can still enter the UK despite my last trip causing a ton of problems with the Bobbies.

But Michael Savage can not — without causing the Bobbies any problems whatsoever.

The only countries on the American landmass that are stupid about shit like this are the USA and Canada.

Stupid like what? Keeping understandables out? I would not call it "stupid" — quite the contrary — but, unfortunately, we aren't that. Not any more...

sorry - link http://www.reuters.com/article...

You can't trust USB devices these days either.

How about an offline machine that encrypts and prints the encrypted email either as text or as an easy-to-scan graphic and a scanner on the sending computer to scan it in as a graphic, mail the graphic to the recipient, and let him do the de-rasterizing and decrypting?

For receiving mail, have a 3rd computer that is air-gapped from the other two that has a scanner attached to it.

Yeah, it's hard, and yeah, it paints a target on your back about as much as using TOR would, but it would be immune from the "poisoned USB port" attack.

Nothing's proving Russia right when there's a wall of evil doings proving the counter. Snowden is one of the few things they can genuinely cling on to.

For all of the US' wrongs there's nothing changing the fact that Russia is an evil empire, well, that's a lie, it's not an empire any more thank god, it just wants to be, but it's still evil.

Let's just look at a few of the things they've done this year alone, let's start near the beginning of the year where the scene is that there is a popular uprising against Russian influenced Yanukovych, during these protests a number of key protesters were abducted by men with accents from Russia itself, some were left to die but managed to live to tell the tale:

http://www.rferl.org/content/u...

http://www.rferl.org/content/u...

Others weren't quite so lucky:

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldn...

The uprising was eventually successful, in response, Russia sent in breach of the Geneva convention soldiers into Crimea posing as civilians and annexed the territory, despite the fact that only a few weeks prior it was clear that there was nothing like majority support for joining Russia:

http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...

Coupled with the unverifiable "poll" and the followon fuckup by Russian bureaucrats in posting the actual results that show there was actually no majority support for joining Russia it became fairly obvious it was an illegal annexation of foreign territory. Of course, it didn't stop there. The Crimean Tatar population that did not want to join Russia have since been treated like Jews in Nazi Germany circa 1939 with their houses being marked:

http://www.turkishpress.com/ne...

Other Tatars have simply been disappeared by death squads:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

The rest of them? Well, they just get silenced and beaten:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/...

If this sort of thing doesn't send chills down your spine as to how close it is to the way the Nazis operated then there's something wrong with you.

Since then of course there's been the case of Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, the debate goes on about whether they're genuinely Ukrainians that want to join Russia, or whether they're simply Russian special forces, or a mix of both, but either way, what's not in dispute is the following and that Russia wholeheartedly supports them:

- They admitted having Buk and shooting down MH17 believing it was a Ukrainian military transport:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://www.themalaysianinsider...

- They've been abducting, torturing, and parading civilians:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

- They've admitted to carrying out summary executions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

- And they've been preventing all males from leaving the warzones they've been part of the

http://www.infowars.com/will-o...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/ob...

The media used the term "anti-gov" types, patriots, and extreme right wingers. I didn't see any reference to neo-nazis. The media have gone out of it's way to link those terms with the tea party and you damn well that was the implication.

In any case, it turned out the right-wing "extremest" had nothing to do with the attack.

Also, show me the evidence of all the right wing nutjobs bombings and shootings and I can show you that the progressive nutjobs are just as bad
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...
http://www.theblaze.com/storie...
http://www.reuters.com/article...

Additionally, review the political beliefs of the person behind the Washington Navy Yard shooting and
Ted Kaczynski

Some companies skirt this rule simply by paying "hourly" employees a salary above $23,600 (per FLSA) then work them 80+ hours a week and call it good. More and more employees, regardless of actual job duties are being paid a salary so they are then "exempt" from any overtime pay, even those that would traditionally qualify under the FLSA & I see this more and more often in the IT sector. If you look at the Computer Employee Exemption - you can make pretty much any IT job fit the bill if you phrase it correctly.

Workers are left with little recourse because:

• They've been exempt at every job they've ever had, so they no know different
• Many - even some of the learned ones - do not know how the FLSA applies to them in this situation
• Everyone around them is expected to work overtime w/out compensation, so it's not unusual.
• Regardless of what job duties they will be doing up to and, frankly, especially those including "non-exempt" duties they are told by management that they are doing "exempt" duties
• They have little real recourse, even if they know they are "non-exempt", unless other co-workers join them in a complaint. Co-workers who are unlikely to do so as:
  • There is little perceived gain and significant risk
  • It is expensive to the point of being cost-prohibitive in order to make a successful claim
  • Any employee who were to be successful would likely find repercussions pertaining to employ-ability later down the road. While not legal to do so above the board, it happens nevertheless (just look at all the wage-fixing and collusion in the valley - you actually think they'll hire someone again, or promote them over a co-worker who didn't sue?)

At the end of the day, LinkedIn is far from an anomaly, it is standard business practice - unless there is a top to bottom review by some third party (I don't know if there is even an entity that would be suited for this sort of endeavor), this practice will continue unabated. We will work more and continue to be paid less than what we earn.

Um, there are massive differences between Atlanta and Liberia.

Do you believe the following are regular occurrences in Atlanta?
1) Family of someone who died of a known infectious disease choose to hand-wash the corpse anyway, with full knowledge of the cause of death. (Note: Many Africans apparently don't believe the disease exists.)
2) Local residents protest the hospital because they believe that the "story" about the infections disease is a coverup for ritual cannibalism. http://www.reuters.com/article...
3) Local residents break in to the isolation ward to remove an infected family member from the hospital

1. Israel can prevent civilian deaths.

During the course of the past twelve days, Israeli air strikeshave killedover 1000Palestinians—mostly civilians.

Israelsaysthe deaths are a result of Hamas using ordinary Palestinians as human shields, and the gruesome toll has been met with a shrug.

It’s an issue thathas come upduring past operations in Gaza.

Back in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, the president of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann,condemnedIsrael for violating international law in Gaza by targeting civilians.

Brockmanncalledthe offensive “a war against a helpless defenceless and imprisoned people.”

“Theviolationsof international law inherent in the Gaza assault have been well documented,” he added, listing collective punishment, disproportionate military force [and]attacks on civilian targets, including homes, mosques, universities, schools.”

Israel doesn’t have to fire at the civilian targets, it’s a choice that they make. Hamas rockets are broadlyineffectiveanyway—given Israel’s comprehensive network of bomb shelters. Just three civilians in Israel have been killed so far.

Noting the Israeli military’s “long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties”, Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitsoncommentedthat Israel “would never accept an argument that any Israeli home of an Israel Defense Force member would be a valid military target.”

IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner also couldn’t provide any evidence of houses being used to command in control rocket attacks, when directlyqueriedby reporters.

2. The three Israeli teenswere killed immediately after being kidnapped.

Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal recently revealed that the Israeli governmentknewthatthe three missing Israeli teens, whowere abductedin June from Hebron in the West Bank, were murdered almost as soon as they were kidnapped. However, this was not revealed to the public, and insteadthe search forthe missing teenagers unleashed to a brutal crackdown on the West Bank.

Blumenthal says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used outrage around the kidnapping to whip up enough support to justify the aggressive military campaign that has ensued.

3. Gaza is basically an open-air prison.

The economic blockade of Gaz

Youtube can be such a waste of time, but:

"Hamas Terrorists Fire Rockets from a Gazan School"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-fh-fRs7To

And it was previously two UNRWA schools in which rockets had been found stored, and then returned to their owners by the glorious UNRWA staff. But today it's three:
http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFL6N0Q45TO20140729

Ah, but why dwell on the numbers? If you have a cache of rocket bombs, and the school has an empty space next to the kindergarten, what possible harm could there be in storing those rockets in the empty space? It's not like they could blow up or anything.

There's a set schedule for the vaccine, Days 0, 3, 7, and 14. You can get the vaccine from your primary, in theory, but of course my primary has a months long waiting list because we're driving PCPs out of business. Bottom line, I can't get appointments with them for Days 3 or 7, so that's two more trips to the ER.

That's really bad.

PBS and Reuters have articles on a push to support primary care doctors.

From the second article, "The insurer can afford that because better primary care, which accounts for just 6 percent of all medical spending, can reduce hospitalizations and visits to expensive specialists." I hope the idea catches on.

So your solution is that the Israelis roll over and succumb to Hamas rocket fire and tunnel attacks instead?

No, the solution is to not repeat Bibi's Bullshit Propaganda that is debunked if you bother to check with Israeli officials or media. Not only had Hamas faithfully held to the cease fire since 2012 - despite constant IDF attacks - it was arresting those who had.

because Hamas was also attacking Egyptian soldiers in support of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's violent resistance to it's overthrow

So now Hamas are also bad people for resisting a violent coup to overthrow an elected government and the resulting, brutal junta? Gotcha.

Gazans have made enemies with both their neighbours with persistent violent action and that's led to their isolation

You left out the Short Skirt while explaining how they were Asking For It. Do you have any posts that aren't sagely repeating western propaganda as if it were fact?

The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.

But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. The day before the kidnapping, Israel murdered a member of Hamas they accused of planning rocket attacks. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, the latter did not respond in kind. Finally, not only had Hamas not fired any rockets since the last time Israel violated a cease fire in 2012, it had helped arrest those who had.

But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:

At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. If anyone is defending themselves, it's Hamas defending the people of Gaza from racist Israeli provocation and aggression.

There is evidence that adolescent boys who smoke, have epigenetic effects that change their sperm for the rest of their life, they produce children that are obese. http://www.reuters.com/article...

You are not buying stuff at the same price as 6 years ago, maybe you should actually pay attention to the receipts.

beef, pork, avocado, fruits, veggies, almonds, pinenuts, walnuts, mozarella, cheddar, other cheeses, seafood, grains, soy, soy, palm oil, milk, gasoline, beer and more beer, limes, canadian bacon, barley, restaurants, restaurants, restaurants,electrical energy, car rentals, hotel rooms, cab fairs,

air travel and air travel gets more expensive in many other ways, various extra fees, less room, more seats on planes

aluminium,

You can say a lot of things about the negative side of modern nations becoming so invested in the global economy, but there's a good side to those countries not wanting to disrupt that economy by getting into wars. It's the fact that those countries start less wars. There's pretty good evidence that Russia has been less aggressive in the Ukraine than they were originally planning because after Crimea the sanctions issued by other countries have already had a significant effect on their economy. (Russia's Growth Was Already Slowing - Then Came Crimea, Russian government admits economy in crisis as Ukraine weighs, Sanctions Will Work, All Right. Just Ask the Oligarchs)

If Russia's economy had been better to begin with they probably wouldn't have started this whole mess, and personally i think that would be a good thing, even if it prompted Russian ultra-nationalists to complain about the government selling out to corporate interests.

That "handful of pesky terrorists" happen to be the elected Palestinian government. This is what happens when people elect terror organizations as their representatives...

More like....lies repeated by those who are useful fools at best and racists at worst. The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.

But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, no rockets were fired.

But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:

1. At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. On the Israeli side, almost all of the ~35 deaths have been soldiers, with only three civilians dying, and only one via rocket. Scale and proportion? Get some.

we will have those costs for the Iraqi war

http://www.reuters.com/article...

If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, Israel spends 1.5x as much as the US. 2% of Israel's population is active military. If you include reservists, that goes up to 9%. Compare this to 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, for the US.

Israel is a country that is largely lead by war heros from the 60s and 70s and their acolytes. Let's look at the recent PMs of Israel: Netanyahu (former IDF commando), Ehud Barak (former chief of staff of the IDF), Shimon Peres (former defense minister), Ariel Sharon (former IDF general, former minister of defense), Yitzhak Rabin (former chief of staff of the IDF), Yitzhak Shamir (former Mossad agent). The only PM in the past 40 years who didn't have significant connections to the Israeli defense establishment was Ehud Olmert. (He didn't do anything significant beyond the compulsory military service.) If you look at the financial ties between Israeli government officials and major defense companies, things get even more mixed up.

The fact is that ever since the Camp David Accords and the agreement with Sadat, Israel was never again in danger of being wiped off the map. Sure, there were sporadic threats from groups like Hezbollah, but in these conflicts, Israel was always orders of magnitude more powerful than it's opponent. The Israeli government should have begun massively downsizing it's military, but it did not.

When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. When you have a huge military, every problem begins to look like one that should be solved by force. When you're country is led by dozens of ex-military and next to no one that was, say, ex-foreign ministry, macho man diplomacy becomes the rule. When you have a former commando negotiating prisoner swap with Palestinians rather than a former diplomat, you end up with commandos going in and rearresting the released prisoners. This incident is just once symptom of a larger problem. The Israeli government hasn't just fallen victim to the pressures of the military-industrial complex; it is the military-industrial complex.

You're kidding, right? Even back in 2011, Israel was planning to have most of their water from the ocean, and has been at the forefront of desalinization for decades. Try again.

Carnegie Mellon is suppressing de-anonymising TOR discussion at Black Hat.

Talk on cracking Internet anonymity service Tor withdrawn from conference

By Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO, July 21 Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:05pm EDT

        Technology

(Reuters) - A heavily anticipated talk on how to identify users of the Tor Internet privacy service has been withdrawn from the upcoming Black Hat security conference.

A Black Hat spokeswoman told Reuters that the talk had been canceled at the request of lawyers for Carnegie-Mellon University, where the speakers work as researchers. A CMU spokesman had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Chris Reese)

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My guess is that someone wants the hole (if there is one) kept open a while longer or the suspicion that TOR is somehow ineffective alive. Let your mind run wild with speculation.

--
BMO

http://www.reuters.com/article...

To expand on the sibling's post about Saddam switching oil sales to Euros :

The economy of the US is propped up by a vast debt. We're not talking loans to banks, or China. We're talking petrodollars.

The de-facto currency that oil is traded in was for a long time, the US dollar. Which meant that nations speculated in it, hoarded it, retained reserves of it for the purpose of trading oil.

This meant that the US printed more dollars with impunity, as long as oil markets expanded, meaning the government enjoyed the ability to spend vast amounts of money backed not just by US wealth and productivity, but the wealth and productivity of the whole world.

Then it was proposed that it would be a good idea to start trading for oil in currencies other than the US Dollar. The US financiers were terrified by this.

If the nations of the world no longer needed their dollars to buy oil, they would seek to exchange them for other things of value. And if the nations of the world no longer needed US dollars to buy oil, they would no longer want to accept them in exchange for things of value, so the bulk of the balance would have to come home to the US to be exchanged for things of value there.

This would cause US inflation, devaluation of the US dollar, and vast tracts of US interests suddenly being owned by foreign nationals. The incumbent administration (or rather, their financier friends) could not permit this, so they made an example of one of the countries that dared to make noises about trading their oil for Euros.

It's no coincidence that Iran is having it's feet held to the fire at a time when it is once again proposing to open a non-dollar oil bourse.

Cuadrilla drilling company in UK has admitted publicly the link between fracking and earthquakes. The said this in 2011

"It is highly probable that the hydraulic fracturing of Cuadrilla's Preese Hall-1 well did trigger a number of minor seismic events

This, according to a Reuters report here: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Other articles have reported various studies connecting fracking in Oklahoma with the new earthquakes flurries there and elsewhere in the US. Like Ohio: .http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/ohio-earthquakes-fracking_n_5136110.html

And here http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

I share your hope but not your optimism.

Your optimism is misplaced. Photos of the crash are on Reuters website, and reports of debris and body parts are coming in. The big question now is who shot it down. Most fingers are pointing at the pro-Russian rebels.

Oh, and my source via Reuters is this live feed: http://live.reuters.com/Event/... in case anyone else is interested.

It looks like Ivan just violated the human rights of about 300 people by blowing up their airliner.
http://www.reuters.com/article...

the article (well, blog, by 'a guy', whose main reference is the book that im guessing he's selling) points only to volume of arctic sea ice, which leads to a faulty conclusion. melt is the far more important feature, as surface volume can and does fluctuate as a function of many complex interactions, even in a global warming scenario.
See: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Several recent reports, however, paint a more complex and disturbing picture where the intensifying winds are speeding up below surface currents bringing more above freezing water in contact with deep ice around Antarctica. Twenty of the ice shelves and many of the glaciers that feed them are melting from below.
for some more reputable sources (quickly online), you might want to check out
in any case, i would encourage you to note more creditworthy sources, such as perhaps:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
or even
http://grist.org/news/antarcti...
which makes some more credible references.

I really know nothing about how Amazon works internally, so perhaps you can enlighten me.

how do they manage to do such great things with software?

By ripping off Android for their mobile platform and then screwing developers who sign their awful agreement?

How do they manage to operate such a huge warehousing and logistics operation?

By allegedly exploiting and shorting their employees and having soulless fulfillment centers/neo-sweatshops?

I'd recommend against using those and use ones that don't have such a large carbon footprint. For example:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sco...

or solar:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

so long as you realize that the myth that solar panels generate more CO2 lifetime than say coal (or even natural gas) has long ago been de-bunked. (max 72g vs 1.68lbs or 2lbs for coal) (http://www.edfenergy.com/energyfuture/energy-gap-climate-change/solar-and-the-energy-gap-climate-change and http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...)

Let my preface this by saying that I believe all parallel construction should be illegal, and I hope/believe that it will eventually be ruled accordingly. Partial truths are still deceit, and dishonesty in the legal system opens it up to (further) abuse. It's either illegal to lie under oath, or it is not, and the government should hold itself to the same standard that we expect of citizens.

That said, parallel construction is precisely about concealing the impetus. The classic example is a traffic stop that appears to be random, but is actually targeting a vehicle. The targeted vehicle could well have been stopped solely for whatever reason police used, and so that's the "parallel construction," even though police knew exactly which vehicle they wanted to stop.

"You'd be told only, âBe at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said. http://www.reuters.com/article...

Bringing a canine unit to the storage facility would allow the officer to tell the partial truth that he got a hit on a storage unit during a walk-through, even if the impetus for bringing the dog and doing a walk-through was because of a CI (and even if the hit was prompted). The deceit isn't in saying how the contraband was actually discovered/acquired, but in what the impetus was for using that (perfectly legal) method in the first place. That part is the "parallel construction."

Now you might have been saying that GP's speculation that it was parallel construction is wrong, but we're all just speculating on what the officer might have been doing anyway. Maybe it was just a recreation for the camera and they forgot to edit that part out.