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Rather than simply make a quip, would you care to show a general trend of neglect in the pharmaceutical industry? While there are instances of abuse, the over all standards for pharmaceuticals in the US for safety is far better than what one would expect from your comment.

I beg to differ. Are you unaware of the 6+ year history of enforcement actions against the pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy for gross violations of health and safety standards? http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/us-ranbaxy-ban-idUSBREA0N06Z20140124. And the FDA enforcements were only started after the pharma giant had been documented by private auditing firms as intentionally neglecting health and safety standards in their drug production processes. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-28/news/39580238_1_ranbaxy-case-us-drug-regulator-paonta-sahib

That's 3 extra years that American health was at-risk because the pharmaceutical industry was allowed to rely on non-government, private safety inspectors.

You can 'beg to differ" all you want to, but you made my point for me with "FDA enforcements were only started after the pharma giant had been documented by private auditing firms".

In fact, I am well aware of that case and it was the specific case I had in mind when I mentioned the exception that proves the rule.

Rather than simply make a quip, would you care to show a general trend of neglect in the pharmaceutical industry? While there are instances of abuse, the over all standards for pharmaceuticals in the US for safety is far better than what one would expect from your comment.

I beg to differ. Are you unaware of the 6+ year history of enforcement actions against the pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy for gross violations of health and safety standards? http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/us-ranbaxy-ban-idUSBREA0N06Z20140124. And the FDA enforcements were only started after the pharma giant had been documented by private auditing firms as intentionally neglecting health and safety standards in their drug production processes. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-28/news/39580238_1_ranbaxy-case-us-drug-regulator-paonta-sahib

That's 3 extra years that American health was at-risk because the pharmaceutical industry was allowed to rely on non-government, private safety inspectors.

You know what's really weird? That so many people without a PhD in climatology think they need to look at the research to know whether the scientists are right or wrong.

http://in.reuters.com/article/...

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday that efforts to address climate change should focus on engineering methods to adapt to shifting weather patterns and rising sea levels rather than trying to eliminate use of fossil fuels.

Tillerson said humans have long adapted to change, and governments should create policies to cope with the Earth's rising temperatures.

"Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around -- we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions," Tillerson said in a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's so much easier to just follow the money.

Hiring a non-computer executive? What's next, will they hire one from a soft drink company?

More importantly: Apple hiring anybody? Must be about iWatch. Apple on medical tech hiring spree, a possible hint of iWatch plans.

Apple hires somebody who worked for high-end fashion house Yves Saint Laurent? Let's ignore that YSL hired somebody formerly working at Apple and didn't go into making computers or smartphones - coincidently the same guy.

Apple hires anybody: pundits say its a replacement for Tim Cook.

"To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System."

Apparently not

Already blocked

Yea no, the idea that blocking the email relieved the privacy concern is a joke. They sent that "massive privacy leak" or whatever, over the open internet. In fact, it sounds like they are routinely doing this, and their only concern is that they sent it to the wrong address. The real story here is that Goldman Sachs is sending this kind of info via email!!! In my job, if I were to send even your name and address via email outside our corporate network I'd be fired on the spot. The email traversed dozens of potentially compromised pieces of hardware on its way to google. There's no way to tell which route it took on the way to google. Goldman may think they have a peering agreement with google, but if they had an interface down on a core router when that email was sent it very well may have hit the open internet to get there. Blocking the email did absolutely nothing, the security issue is still real and the victim should still be notified. The fact that Goldman Sachs thinks this fixed the problem just means Goldman Sachs security controls are a joke.

Already blocked

compare and contrast, the US's war in Iraq, 1 ea. at $2.29 trillion, up to $6T if you act now.

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

pick your technological investment, rinse and repeat and hope to have something to show for it at the end of the day.

Something to think about on the 4th.

Germany doesn't sell daytime power "at a loss". Power at night on the European grid doesn't sell for high prices. Show some citations, ye of eyebrow raising claims.

Well let's see;

Over the weekend, prices on the power exchange in Germany/Austria (Phelix) fell to roughly -2 cents per kilowatt-hour for peak prices and were also slightly negative at around -0.3 cents for baseload power. The effect of solar and wind in France was even more dramatic, though the roles of baseload and peak power were reversed, with the former costing -4 cents and the latter -2 cents. Negative power prices on the weekend

Selling at a negative price is pretty much the ultimate definition of "at a loss". This is reinforced by

Lower prices “leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet,” Bernhard Guenther, chief financial officer at RWE, Germany’s biggest power producer, Germany’s New Coal Plants Push Power Glut to 4-Year High

While the baseload coal plants are losing money;

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.
Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over." Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

That's a lot of power to have to replace when the sun goes down or the weather turns to shit.

With a really large economy, without losing much GDP.

I was curious about this, so I did a quick bit of research. Germany solar power subsidies vary with the size of the installation, but are typically around 20 c/kWh (source). Their solar power output in 2011 was 18 billion kWh, or 3.2% of total production (source). That implies a subsidy of 3.6 billion Euros per year.

The GDP of Germany - in 2013, which should be close enough - is 3.2 trillion USD (source), equivalent to 2.3 trillion Euros. So this subsidy cost them 0.16% of GDP, which is pretty trivial - about a month's growth. Scaling up to 100% of total production (ignoring the storage issue), to convert completely to solar power would cost them 5% of GDP, which is a bit more significant - for comparison, the US lost 4.3% of GDP during the 2008 crash (lazy source). So, converting to solar power would (optimistically) be equivalent to a medium recession - but, as you say, not bad enough to make a country drop out of the first world.

How is Volvo not a car manufactured by a Chinese company?

The idea is that there was some thing behind the unknowable is what he is talking about.

That isn't what he wrote, and that doesn't really describe anamists and other nature worshiping peoples. Pagan superstitions are often very far from comforting, and can be highly oppressive, even dangerous. Perhaps you have some more learning to do yourself?

You will also have to pardon me for reading what he actually wrote instead of overlaying it with what you think it should mean.

This list is also from a nation that's famous for its industrial espionage, which is a big part of communism.

Are you fucking retarded? I'm serious. How can you make such an asinine claim? People do industrial espionage to know WTF the competition is doing without reinventing the wheel. It has NOTHING to do with communism - a system which dictates who controls of means of production.

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

So NSA is communists too by your understanding?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805/

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial.

Why single out apple in the heading?

More importantly, why pretend that the investigation is against the companies instead of the countries? http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/11/apple-tax-idUSL5N0OS2IU20140611

The European Commission raised pressure on Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg over their corporatetax practices, saying it was investigating deals the countries have cut with Apple, Starbucks and Fiat.

The EU is looking at whether the countries' tax treatment of multinationals, which help to attract investment and jobs that might otherwise go to where the companies' customers are based, represent unfair state aid.

Taxi licenses/medallions aren't really about any of that - they're about limiting the number of taxis. After that, it's just supply and demand as medallions are resold.

For an example of how crazy this gets: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix...

So the reasonable complaint here would be something like "there'll be too many taxis if their numbers aren't capped somehow" or "the competition here is completely unfair". Insurance (and associated regulation) would mostly be a separate matter, and have very little to do with that $200,000.

Krugan certainly knows more about global economics than I do, but he's not shy about the fact that his writings are as much about promoting a liberal agenda as they are about understanding how global markets actually work.

Not understanding global markets indeed.
Neither Krugman nor mdsolar seem to mention that China has the world's 2nd largest (by trading volume) carbon market.
And that's just their pilot program.

You'd think that since these two care so much about the issue, they'd follow the news:
China's Chongqing to launch carbon market trading on June 13
Thursday Jun 5, 2014

The southwestern city of Chongqing will be the seventh region in China to launch carbon trading when its market opens on June 13, the local carbon exchange said Thursday, in a move designed to curb the city's greenhouse gas emissions.

The market is the last of China's planned pilot CO2 markets ahead of the launch of a nationwide scheme later this decade as the world's biggest-emitting nation steps up efforts to slow down rapid emissions growth.

China is already moving in the right direction and a hard cap is definitely in their future....
If for no other reason than China is planning to increase its nuclear power production by more than an order of magnitude over the next 10~15 years.
If everything goes to plan, China will be producing more nuclear power than #1 and #2 (USA & France) combined.

Proposing a carbon tariff seems like a big middle finger to a government that is pouring tens of billions into solar, wind, and nuclear power.
(Did I mention that China is #1 in wind power?)

However, it seems Deutsche Telekom AG only has 67% of T-Mobile shares (see this article for more details).

Android is facing a new (or is in a continuation of a) lawsuit over Java patent violations.
Manufacturers have to pay Microsoft fees for violating their patents" and earns more from Android than Windows phones.
For most users on most handsets there isn't a supported upgrade path to newer versions of Android. They have to deal with bugs and security issues with their old version.
Depending on the study, between 85 and 99% of all mobile malware is targeted to Android. (Although most of that is outside of Google's own store)

I tell my friends, "buy one if you want to...but everything else is safer". iOS, Windows, Blackberry, Symbian (the least safe and least supported of these), Tizen, etc.

*** I do not have an iPhone or an Android phone. I have a "semi smart" feature phone. ***

You underestimate the malleability of technology in that it can be applied to any and every human problem imaginable. Automation is unstoppable unless its existence is forcibly restricted (a good or bad idea is for you to decide).

Either a company pays someone to flip burgers what they think flipping burgers is worth, or they make robots. Either a company pays someone at the register what they think cashiers are worth, or they automate. Do not assume that just because you and I would rather people do the jobs, that they can not be automated.

I would rather see a (hopefully smiling...) face when checking out of a grocery store or buying a burger at McDonalds than the terminal of a machine, but I somberly accept that there may come a time when that lifestyle disappears because, contrary to what you say, they will not go out of business if they stop paying someone to flip burgers or bag groceries.

RSA is a purposefully weak cipher? Citation needed!

I wasn't talking about RSA the cipher, I was talking about RSA the company, which used a weak SSL cipher in their product after being paid $10 million by the NSA. link

"Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs."

The NSA rarely admits to doing anything. The other agencies are directed to cover up their involvement and how they got their information. For example: Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans.

Maybe Japan just isn't the best place to build these things.

1. No oil
2. No gas
3. No coal
4. No choice

Japan will either get to grips with its dependence on *local* energy sources, like nuclear (and solar/wind to augment it), or it will just stagnate further while blowing its entire foreign reserve competing for ever dwindling fossil fuels.

And then what?

So yes, idiots with an agenda that equates nuclear weapons with nuclear power.

TEPCO lied and lied about the safety of their plants and what they were doing during the disaster.

TEPCO didn't "lie" to you. TEPCO is just a victim of Japanese culture where the elders are not to be questioned before the disaster. Tsunamis? Those don't exist in Japan! Right? And during the disaster, it was just reporting what it knew - which frankly is not much it could know anyway. If you think TEPCO were trying to hide things, then there is an alien corpse I can sell you.

As to Japanese culture, it's the similar culture that crashed a plane onto San Francisco runway

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

Might as well start raving that pilots lied to passengers too.

So in summary, either fix the Japanese culture of yes-man or its fucked. And if Japan does not start building new nuclear plants to decrease reliance on external energy sources, well, then it's fucked anyway.

100% of their operations will run on electric power from renewable sources, mainly wind, bought from a total of 5 north west European countries ( DE, DK, BE, NO, NL ).

The hardest part was developing the filters at the border to block all the German lignite generated electrons.

You don't need a lot of "hard drives" - you just keep the records of call made, time, a voice print and all connections to known and new people.
If the person uses a webcam you keep a few select frames showing - useful for facial recognition.
Every call is sorted in realtime, the small portions of unique data kept and the 'hops' sorted.
Classically you had the above based on spoken words by known people or known people to new people or the use of spoken words or digital data.
Now you just keep every call as a small amount of code and look back over all calls as needed.
In the past it was sort, translate, drop most, store and index.
Now with todays cheap storage you translate, sort, store and index everything and then look back..
The only issue now is the US domestic legal setting and US legal teams in open court. The hard drives needed issue was understood and solved over decades.
Recall what a telco could offer for parallel construction - many years of call data. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
http://www.reuters.com/article...

US?

What a bunch of arrogant, hypocritical pricks. The whole NSA SHITHOUSE comes down around their ears, with backdoored network devices and eavesdropping on world leaders - then these paragons of fucking virtue blame "cyber war" on individuals in a foreign government?

Why the fuck don't they haul meglomaniac Keith Alexander off of his fucking starship and drag his sorry arse, along with Elmer Fudd^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Michael Hayden, into the dock?

China has a developed diplomatic culture. This type of International behavior from the US is pure "play at home" propaganda, with the diplomatic effect of a bull in a china-shop, so to speak. Offensive, ignorant, unnecessary, and duplicitous.

The British banks are terrified that we will join the Euro and miss no chance at anti-EU propaganda because we import three quarters of our food from the EU - and to pay for it, have to put up with the banks creaming us 4% on spread for currency exchange. Then we have to export stuff to pay for the food, and they cream us another 4% on the spread for changing the money back.

By this foul strategy, the banks steal 6% of our GDP. No wonder they pay people to spread anti-EU dirt throughout the media!

Of couse, the banks are not short of other ways of stealing our money too. Bankers are rich because they are stealing our money not because they are incredibly clever. Are the Mafia incredibly clever?

Chuckle. If British banks were actually making a 4% spread each way on GBP/EUR currency transactions (I'm talking scale transactions, not "I want to convert these €40 into pounds please"), they'd all be so insanely profitable that they'd never engage in any other activity. Daily GBP/EUR forex volume is about US$100B (link below). If the banks were making a 4% spread on that, it would be $4 BILLION in profit PER DAY, or about $900B in profit per year.

Actual forex spreads GBP/EUR are typically around 1-2 basis points (one basis point equals 1/100 of a percent). Right now, for example, if you're trying to buy Euros using GBP, you'd be paying about GBP0.81518 per Euro. If you're trying to sell EUR for GBP, you'll be getting about GBP0.81505 for every Euro you sell.

You're saying that, if I start with 1 million GBP, convert them into EUR, and then back into GBP, I'll end up with about GBP920k (4% loss each way, so a total of GBP80k of losses). Actually, I'll end up with GBP999.8k, or about GBP160 in losses. Your losses are off by a factor of about 500x.

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

http://soylentnews.org/comment...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.damninteresting.com...
"Furthermore, both radiotherapy and chemotherapy have an immune-suppressing side-effect. Since both treatments kill the rapidly dividing cells of the immune system along with the rapidly dividing cancer cells, both can be used together if care is taken. But immune-stimulating Coley's Toxins work entirely differently, and their effect would be cancelled out if used at the same time as high-dose immunosuppressant chemo- or radiotherapy. It became an either/or situation-- and in the end, the fashionable new treatments won out over Coleyâ(TM)s fiddly reworking of an ancient 'natural' remedy. "

Some other suggestions by me here (primarily nutritional, but also on fasting helping with chemotherapy):
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

More on mushrooms and preventing cancer as also mentioned:
http://articles.mercola.com/si...

It is hard to know who to trust in the cancer industry to find, as you suggest, the best individualized treatment. It's certainly true that people selling alternative products and books (including Furhman, mentioned in my other post) have a conflict of interest. In general, the entire field of oncology is also sadly full of conflict of interest because oncologists make so much money by doing treatments.
https://www.burtongoldberg.com...
"Here is a shocking fact you most likely did not know: Unlike other kinds of doctors, cancer doctors (oncologists) are allowed to profit from the sale of chemotherapy drugs. In fact, most of the annual income oncologists earn comes from the profit that they make from selling these highly toxic drugs to their patients."

And:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/20...
"And that is where oncologic decision making gets really messy. Because in the United States, at least, many oncologists make a good deal of their income selling drugs to their patients. ... Many oncologists vehemently deny being influenced by this financial conflict of interest. But such denials defy both logic and data. Oncologists would have to be superhuman not to be influenced, at least unconsciously, by such strong incentives. After all, there is often no single "best" way to treat any given tumor, and there's often good reason to believe that expensive new therapies might be better than older, cheaper treatments. In the face of such uncertainty, how could oncologists avoid being influenced by the knowledge that those promising expensive new treatments also help generate so much income?"

Integrative alternatives:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/PA...

Regardless of the future, I wish you the best in making the most of each day like this celebrity with cancer:
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.people.com/people/a...
"Resolved to face her last days with courage and humor, "I don't think of dying," says the actress, 73, who previously battled lung cancer in 2009. "I think of being here now.""

Good luck!

While I hate the security theater industry, that's not quite a fair criticism. They get a lot of noise, and his name was misspelled.

Buttle or Tuttle? The movie "Brazil" seems like a foretelling documentary of the NSA and the US Federal Government and what happens when you turn the fight against terror into an issue of "Information Retrieval". Government "Big Data" is the new Big Brother.

While I hate the security theater industry, that's not quite a fair criticism. They get a lot of noise, and his name was misspelled.

Your post seems to imply that it was the Russians who misspelled the name. According to your link though:

"In September 2011, the FSB sent a cable to the CIA, restating the warnings of the first memo. NBC News quoted sources close to the congressional investigation as saying a second note about Tsarnaev was entered into the TECS system the next month, but spelled his name "Tsarnayev.""

So, maybe "our Homeland Security statsi did exactly nothing" is not quite a fair criticism. It's more like "our Homeland Security statsi can't even copy and paste a name properly, though they did at least try so let's give them credit for that". The rest of your post I agree with, except "Homeland security did the best job they possibly could" - they did a shitty job, on top of all the other reasons we should get rid of them.

While I hate the security theater industry, that's not quite a fair criticism. They get a lot of noise, and his name was misspelled.

Infinitely more important though, lets not fall into the trap of using their logic. No government agency can protect against any possible psycho wanting to kill people. We should reject the premise that homeland security CAN protect us against such people if we just allow them to keep secret watchlists and give up our rights.

Instead I'd frame it as "Homeland security did the best job they possibly could, which was pathetically short of the job we give them billions of dollars and our rights to do, thus we should scrap the whole department and the approach. Instead just close security holes where they don't interfere with rights. For instance: locking cockpit doors and having bomb-sniffing dogs good, secret no fly lists bad."

Ah, here it is: http://www.reuters.com/article...

On a recent poll about 1/3 in the USA believe in a young earth (10,000 years or less) and do not believe in natural evolution[1]. About half of the Christian believe that Jesus will come back in the next 40 years[2]. This is pure asinine to any reasonable long term policy and if not tamed could very well doom us all, especially because those believes comes from a first world country, that is military and economically superior. In addition, you have millions of delusional Christians that think WWIII will speed up the second coming of Jesus[3][4].

Moreover, if being religious is deeply ignorant, you should be able to provide strong evidence against the existence of a God. Not just point to a lack of evidence you like, but evidence against it.

First, that proves for me your ignorance of logic. You demand to prove a negative, which is a logical fallacy. Second, absence of evidence is evidence for absence. For example, if I make the claim that I have a cat in my house and you come over and look everywhere for my cat and you don't find anything, that is strong evidence that I lied and that I have no cats. The same is for God or for gods.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article...
[2] http://www.alternet.org/survey...
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ame...
[4] http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

The Volt starts at $35k and the next generation (2016 MY) will have a low end offering starting at $30k

Or, for $30K (less if you know how to negotiate - we paid about $27,000 for ours) you could buy a brand new Jetta TDI, with all the trimmings - satnav, premium audio, sunroof, leather interior, WeatherTek floormats, trunk organization system, custom rims, gold-level maintenance package, etc - and get 45-50 MPG, and have a range of over 450 miles.

The day an EV can match that level of luxury at the same price point is the day I might start seriously considering the purchase of one.

The Volt starts at $35k and the next generation (2016 MY) will have a low end offering starting at $30k which compares favorably with the average new car price of almost $31k last year

Googling on your drone suggestion: http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/fe...
"Zondlo recently developed a methane sensor mounted on a remote-controlled aircraft built at the University of Texas at Dallas. In October, the aircraft was used to quantify emission rates from well pads and a compressor station in the Barnett Shale region. Zondlo has been partnering with other groups that fly drones over fracking areas to detect leaks.
Robert B. Jackson, an ecologist and energy expert at Duke University, also has been testing drones to detect fugitive methane emissions. The main drawback, he says, is the payload. "Carrying a big camera or methane sensor, a drone might be able to stay in the air for 30 minutes," says Jackson. "It's difficult to screen a shale play with that kind of time."
Engineers are trying to develop lighter sensors that will allow drones to stay in the air longer. "I'm very bullish long-term on using drones to measure leaks," Jackson said. "Are we there yet right now? No."
In the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field in Wyoming, Shane Murphy and Robert Field of the University of Wyoming recently outfitted a Mercedes Sprinter van with a mass spectrometer and other high-powered scientific instruments to measure volatile organic compounds and methane. When combined with meteorological instrumentation and sophisticated software, these technologies can detect methane plumes and quantify emission rates from specific sources -- all from inside the van. The equipment records readings every half-second, which allows it to be used on the move. "This approach can cover a lot of ground," Field said."

And also:
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"No pilot was required when the Aeryon Scout took off into the leaden skies of Alaska to inspect a stretch of oil pipeline. The miniature aircraft was guided by an engineer on the ground, armed only with a tablet computer. The 20-minute test flight, conducted by BP Plc last fall, was a glimpse of a future where oil and gas companies in the Arctic can rely on unmanned aircraft to detect pipeline faults, at a fraction of the cost of piloted helicopter flights."

Also (see page 3):
http://www.seattlepi.com/local...
"Though the project has a modest half-million-dollar budget, the goal is to develop and field test a portable low-cost instrument that can measure gas odor in parts-per-billion quantities and "replace the human nose for leak detection," according to the study prospectus.
When the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration launched the project with industry financial support in 2010, it said it would be completed in September of this year. Recent changes in the federal agency's research program could delay projects currently underway, according to a transcript of an Aug. 2 meeting between federal research officials and technical advisors.
The federal government is also working on pipeline surveillance devices, which would search for leaks, including another cooperative research project launched by the federal government to mount a gas detection device on a pilot-less flying drone.
Until these devices are proven, however, experts say the industry will heavily rely on the gas customer's nose, which is not all that reassuring."

At CMU 25 years ago, I was part of a small group led by Red Whitaker where we discussed making robots that rove through gas pipelines to inspect them from the inside. So, that's another option, too, although putting anything inside a pipeline has its own risks.

Of course, if electricity gets cheaper (like from hot or cold fusion or cheaper solar panels), natural gas demand may fall quickly. But whether that leads to less leaks in the s

But why the hate for RSA? It's a well understood algorithm.

Maybe because RSA has proven time and again that they can't be trusted?

I don't think I'll ever understand why anybody ever distrusts an article when the news outlet specifically calls out who said what, which is exactly what Fox did.

Honestly, people who do that shit are no better than the news organizations that they lambaste on a daily basis. I mean fuck, Fox News even paints republicans in more of a negative light in that article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb...
http://www.reuters.com/article...

There, you happy?

No, they just pass the information to the police that handles that job.

None of those arrested because of the NSA tip-off were arrested for their speech. It may or may not be in violation of the 4th Amendment, but not of the 1st.

Look at what happened to all the Occupy members.

What happened? Where do I look? For such a highly-moderated comment, you are offering surprisingly few links. Was anyone prosecuted for mere speech? Assaulting a police officer — yeah, that's more likely...

Funny how all the important people in the movement were found very accurately by police forces across the country.

Police may not be able to find every criminal, but finding any criminal they really set their minds on — that they could do for decades now. And, certainly, "the important people" of an infamous movement qualify. Hardly a surprise.

There is major oil in Florida, or at least under the continental shelf within the EEZ. However, Cuba would probably prefer that they didn't have to compete with Russia for the oil they are slant drilling (using Chinese drilling platforms, instead of US or EU-owned platforms due to sanctions).

Good for them, btw, as there doesn't appear to be any illegality (other than who has the will and biggest guns having the final say as to what is illegal) and obviously it is immoral for the USA to access that oil, anyway.

Man, so many grenades, so little time.

From 2006 "FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool"
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029...
~"functioned whether the phone was powered on or off."
Today is more about gov malware in your modern mobile OS.
So yes the telco software/hardware layers are fair game to any gov and have been for years with court docs mentioned in the US press.
The journalism going back years was the result of US court documents.
Now just get it all http://www.wired.com/2014/03/s...
Also see the http://www.reuters.com/article... ideas around domestic phone records.

They are like foolish children compared to educated Westerners who didn't grow up immersed in violent fundamentalist nutjobbery. Or perhaps they're closer to mentally ill.

Lets see how sensible the Christianists are after their lives, land and countries have been fucked with for a century by Muslim Imperialism. After the state-run oil companies in Venezuela and Iran get together and overthrow the governments of the U.K. and the United States. After the Revolutionary Guard spends 15 years threatening the United States with total obliteration if it made use of a nuclear weapons program that it says does not exist. And says crippling sanctions that killed 5,000,000 kids in the U.S. (adjusted for population) was worth it.

But I don't expect that partial list to make a dent in the cognitive dissonance in all the Bill Maher's running around in the comments.

You're continuing to change the subject further and further away from the original post I was responding to. I'm not arguing everything in the world. I'm arguing against absolutist, purity-based solutions and in favor of rational cost vs. benefit analysis instead.

Kyoto wasn't a cost/benefit analysis.

The most recent IPCC suggests the costs of climate change will be small. A cost/benefit analysis will be important to avoid needless harm.

Looks like Apple's disclaimers did not get them out of this one. Looking forward to similar slimeball lawyers sinking their pointy teeth into Microsoft. It's inevitable, and they deserve each other.

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

Laser beams and microwave dishes are the latest weapons in an arms race to shave milliseconds off dealing times in the shadowy world of high-speed, computerized financial trading.

Microwave signals travel through the air about 50% faster than light through optical fiber.

They are guaranteed jobs in HFT firms after they retire from SEC:
  "High-frequency trader Getco hires key SEC staffer"
http://www.reuters.com/article...

Yeah, nothing sketchy to see here http://af.reuters.com/article/...

Then I demand you produce the evidence that she wasn't. This is silly to demand that I produce evidence,

There use to be this ideal of "innocent until proven guilty". What makes you trust this woman so much? The NPR article didn't state why she was anonymous. (I assume she said she didn't want to give her name, as I believe 911 operators normally ask.) You don't find it odd that this woman -- who has supposedly been wronged by the truck driver -- wanted to remain anonymous? Why remain anonymous when she could be helping to put a drunk or dangerous driver behind bars?

Perhaps he didn't run her off, but now you have to produce some sort of sane argumemnt that a stoned guy was randomly selected by a lying woman just to screw with him.

The article didn't state the truck driver was stoned. How do you know that?

Why do you assume this was random? It could have been an ex-girlfriend wanting to screw over the guy. It could have been a woman from another drug gang wanting to mess with this guy's business. It could have been a female Federal agent wanting to create a parallel construction of evidence.

You do know that making a false report on 911 is a crime, don't you?

Why does that matter to crazy ex-girlfriends, female drug gang members and corrupt female Federal agents (or the other examples one could come up with)?

The story isn't about where they went, and isn't even relevant to the thrust of the story, which is if people are allowed to call 911 to report crime. The perp's layer is arguing that since the tip came from an anonymous source, it was invalid.

Of course people are allowed to call 911 to report a crime, but one needs to make sure that reporting is not abused by either the callers or law enforcement. (I.e. the "parallel construction of evidence" mentioned above.) And one needs to make sure constitutional rights (the right to face one's accuser, for one) are protected.

An anonymous call, by itself, warrants just the smallest of investigations -- in this case, the law enforcement official followed the vehicle and did not see any evidence of wrong doing. That should have been the end of it. The woman apparently did not want to press charges or even testify since it is assumed she refused to give her name.

The original poster was pointing out the very relevant fact that there was no other evidence to support the allegation that this man ran this woman off the road: no erratic driving, no witness that can be cross-examined, no highway reports of damage where the car was forced off the road, etc. the police would have been totally justified in stopping this man if they did witness erratic driving, or the woman did give her name to be a witness or if there was some other evidence to support the allegation.

911 calls are recorded and used as evidence all the time. When reporting a crime, the 911 center does not make the person swear on a bible that they are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But they are still used as evidence.

I've only heard of them being used as evidence when the caller is identified, but I could be wrong on that. I suspect in this case, however, you'd need to have the caller identified since if the run-off-the-road case was taken to trial, the defendant has a right to cross-examine witnesses.

As for her continued anonymity, they could certainly retrieve that information, and use voiceprints to confirm that it was indeed her making the phone call. Did they? I dunno, you'd need the transcripts of the trial.

This may be the poor repo

It's shit like this why I don't think corporations should have "free speech". Humans have free speech, corporations are not humans and should not have the same bloody rights.

For instance:

A U.S. appeals court on Monday struck down parts of a regulation that forces public companies to disclose if their products contain "conflict minerals" from a war-torn part of Africa, saying it violates free speech rights.

Because when corporate money is equated with free speech, they can afford to have their speech heard more than anyone else.

And when they can astro-turf and get op-ed pieces written by people who think this is an assault on tax-payers, they just cloud the issue.

It should also be illegal for politicians to accept any personal or financial benefit from lobbyists ... because all it does it cause them to be sold to the highest bidder.

My bet? This would be a net benefit for tax-payers, and this is just buggy whip makers entrenching into law their business model. And all of those politicians who like to talk about free markets are full of shit .. the only free market here is how much the politicians get paid.

Whatever court decision decided that corporations are people too was garbage.