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It's interesting to watch the different arguments from pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear forces. The pro-nuclear forces point out that building all new power plants as 100% renewable in the near future is not practical but a mixture of renewables and nuclear is. They go on to point out the relatively high rate of deaths from coal power (such as direct deaths in coal mines, and indirect deaths from air pollution) per unit of power generated, compared to the few deaths from nuclear. They may even then point out that petroleum power in general has a poor safety record compared to nuclear worldwide.

The anti-nuclear crowd, meanwhile, either focuses on a tiny number of accidents like Chernobyl and a couple of problematic, but non-lethal, old reactor designs (like the 1970 pebble-bed reactor mentioned by the parent), as if costly problems are unique to the nuclear industry. After all, why pay any attention to accidents, deaths or cost overruns in fossil-fuel power when we can simply make every single new power plant a renewable power plant? Never mind that not every place in the world has plentiful sunlight or wind. They then move on to the only argument about nuclear that is actually fair--that it often costs more than renewables.

Nuclear faces political and popular opposition, often due to outdated opinions based on a few unsafe reactors from the 60s and 70s (did you know that Fukushima reactor 1 was built before Chernobyl? Or that there is another nearby reactor run by a more safety-conscious company that survived the tsunami?). This opposition and regulatory uncertainty increases costs, plus reactors are traditionally built with the "craftsman" approach where every reactor is large, somewhat unique, and built on-site. It seems to me that costs could be reduced greatly if nuclear reactors were mass-produced like trucks (small reactors seem to work great for nuclear subs!) and distributed around the country from factories, and if they used passive failsafes to make uncontrolled meltdowns "impossible" so that outer containment chambers could be less costly.

But the public opposition is no small barrier to overcome. Remember how a Tesla car makes nationwide news whenever a single battery pack is damaged and catches fire, even though there are 150,000 vehicle fires reported every year in the U.S.? You can expect the same thing with small modular reactors--barring some terrible disaster, all sorts of problems with petroleum power plants will be scarcely noticed, while a single minor nuclear incident will make nationwide headlines. Surely this makes potential nuclear investors nervous.

Well, not blindly trusting the medicine men seems like a pretty reasonable stance.

At least to anyone not subscribing to the church of sciencetology. (No, I didn't misspell that. It's called being sarcastic.)

The sum total of damage from Fukushima is not merely about deaths or cancer cases, of which you are correct that none have been demonstrated yet. It's also about making large, formerly-populated areas unsafe to inhabit and unsafe for agriculture for many decades due to deposition of radioactive isotopes on the surface that bioaccumulate (e.g., cesium isotopes), not to mention the effect on the adjacent fishery. Even if you ignore the immediate health risks, an accident that makes it unsafe to occupy whole cities and towns over large areas and ruins agriculture and fishery businesses is a pretty big impact economically. The effect won't last forever, but it will be a generation before things get somewhat back to normal. Thousands of people are displaced and their lives turned upside-down, and that's a "small" accident compared to Chernobyl, which was a lot worse due to the release of large amounts of strontium 90 in the mix. When coal-fired plants or wind turbines go bad, the side-effects aren't much. Hydropower can be pretty bad if something serious goes wrong, but in all of these cases when the dust settles people can move back pretty promptly, unless of course you're including global warming itself as one of the side-effects. Then the costs for fossil fuels get higher, but it's hard for people to see (or accept) that connection.

The thing that is particularly frustrating in the case of Fukushima is not that an accident happened, but that it was entirely avoidable, even with such a serious earthquake and tsunami occurring. There are other nuclear plants along the same coastline of Japan that survived just fine. Why? Because some of the engineers stood up to the bean counters and put in tsunami walls or built at elevations much higher than the accountants wanted. Walls that actually dealth with the known risks, rather than the ones at Fukushima that didn't even deal with the long-term historical tsunami known from the area.

There are costs and safety risks from every type of power generation. I agree with you that reactors can be built reasonably safely, especially with more modern designs, but more careful study of natural hazards and some basic common sense regarding them would help as much as better engineering of the plant itself. I agree that the problem was "disregard to common nuclear safety knowledge", but it's hard for people to have confidence when there's a been a list of serious mistakes and impacts due to that type of failure. These aren't subtle and tricky mistakes. They are really STUPID ones, like the guys turning off most of the safety equipment to experiment with Chernobyl's reactor, or not building tsunami walls high enough to handle historical tsunami in a tsunami-prone areas, or building backup generators in the basement where they can flood.

When we don't even have a permanent waste disposal solution for the spent fuel, we aren't exactly handling the challenges we've got now, and people want to triple production? That's pretty bad planning. This generation is not facing up to the obligations of what nuclear power we've already been using. What evidence is there that we can handle triple, even if there are now even safer designs?

We're getting close to what could be the start of World War III. It looks like a land war between Russia and Ukraine is about to start. Reuters: Ukraine prepares armed response as city seized by pro-Russia forces. This is not about Crimea. Russia has now taken over cities 150Km inside the eastern part of Ukraine.

WWII started very much like this. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland.

think about the effect of a widespread Armed protest movement;

We almost got to find out.Well, not exactly in the sense you were thinking. I know of about 200 people who went to this guy's ranch just to target practice over the few weeks. Well, I don't know all of them, I know people who know them and they told me about them.

As usual the Slashdot summary is incomplete on the verge of being incorrect.
Reuters has a longer story that explains the background. Digrigio testified in the Senate that he did not know of the issue. Later senate dug up documents implying the opposite.Altman did something similar (but not nearly as bad) in front of a Jury.

RSA has denied having knowledge of the backdoor, says NSA tricked them, and has never denied the $10M payout. Some of Snowden's leaks mention it.
Reuters has a summary

proof-of-concept backdoor with a link to the github repo.

None of that is a smoking gun, but there is enough smoke to tell me there is a fire.

Ha ha ha ; Royal Bank of Scotland let's cut costs by outsourcing.

CAPTCHA: didactic; who says the NSA isn't interfering with our Slashdot experience ;-)

Its funny that you cite 2012, cause this is one of the first google hits I get.

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

With such wonderful quotes as:

"Officials with IBM said the company has "thousands" of mainframe customers around the globe but declined to be more specific.

Gartner estimates that annual global sales of mainframes will fall this year and each year through 2016, declining a total of 14 percent over the five years to nearly $4.7 billion."

I wonder how many of those "thousands" are like us. We have a single business class mainframe at minimum capacity (26 MIPS z114).

On a somewhat-related note (well, "oil + pipelines" so close enough): Imagine what sort of damage will be done by a leak of the proposed oil sands pipeline if that corrosive gunk finds its way into the aquifer used by the majority of the Midwest and the huge amount of farming that occurs there

So you'd rather people continue to die every year in oil train crashes? You don't have to "imagine" the train crash that killed 47 people in Quebec last summer.

Don't worry the "invisible hand" is working:

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

The more DRM they add, the worse their sales are.

Lessons from Fukushima may keep two thirds of Japan's nuclear plants closed. http://www.reuters.com/article... It could most nuclear power is a bad risk and should be written off.

Uh, hate to break this to you but the US has been selling arms to Japan for decades as part of the 1951 Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty between the US and Japan.

I think you're referring to the recent change in Japanese policy change that will allow Japanese weapons manufacturers to export weapons. While I'm not a fan of weapons sales it is a business that can't be outlawed unilaterally because even if nations would agree to ban weapons exports and sales to other nations, there will be still nations like North Korea or Cuba who have a vested interest in selling their own weapons in violation of sanctions imposed by the UN. If your neighbor next door is ramping up their military in what you believe is going to negatively impact your nation, then you'll look to buy weapons yourself. If you can't buy them through normal channels, you'll buy them from illegal channels and that's where the North Koreans and Cubans come into play. Even the Ukraine has been caught pushing weapons into Africa for example.

Time for a reality check, dude.

Actually, OP is right and the onus for the reality check is on you.

The US has been exporting a particularly virulent form of institutionalised corruption for some time now, and it's damaging a large proportion of the world's population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://in.reuters.com/article/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
https://newmatilda.com/2005/03...
etc etc

I think you are misinformed. The workers voted down the UAW union at VW and not the works council. For some strange reason you need a union in the USA to form a works council (see National Labor Relations Act. My guess is the Act was enacted to strengthen unions in America, but is backfiring now because for some reason the VW workers does not want to join a union.

Also I don't understand why you think a works council is a result of "Germany's fascist and totalitarian history". Forms of a works council were introduced in 1900, by liberal owners of companies. Then the Weimar Constitution (1919) codified the works council. Under Nazi Germany works council were forbidden, and were introduced as law again in 1952.

And it's also not unique to Germany. In 1994 the EU passed the Directive (94/45/EC) on the establishment of a European Works Council (EWC). See European Works Councils. "The EWC Directive applies to companies with at least 1,000 employees within the EU and at least 150 employees in each of at least two Member States." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

http://www.reuters.com/article...
"Frank Fischer, chief executive of VW Chattanooga and manager of the plant, emphasized on Friday night that while the workers voted against the UAW they did not vote down the idea of a works council. "Throughout this process, we found great enthusiasm for the idea of an American-style works council both inside and outside our plant, " Fischer said. "Our goal continues to be to determine the best method for establishing a works council in accordance with the requirements of U. S. labor law. "

http://www.autonews.com/articl...
"Now that Volkswagen workers here have turned away the UAW, labor leaders within VW are going back to the drawing board to achieve their broader goal: setting up a works council to give workers a say in corporate decisions. "

What are the facts to support these claims?

For brevity I will narrow the examples down to what many American's are unaware of, a few examples off the top of my head where intelligence agencies work on behave of private interests within the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stockwell

writings go into detail with corporate involvement and the military industrial complex.

"The CIA and the big corporations were, in my experience, in step with each other. Later I realized that they may argue about details of strategy - a small war here or there. However, both are vigorously committed to supporting the system."

Recent Snowden leaks shows this is still prevalent:

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

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

First, whatever source you are getting 41% from, were they there? Did they actually count the votes? Or are you getting this information from western media, who logically did not even have access to Crimea at the time of vote? To recap you don't know who is lying (Russians or the West), but the source that you choose to believe literally has no way of knowing the truth in either case.

Gallup did opinion polls in 2011 and 2013

http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-...

Incidentally doesn't it seem a little suspicious to you that western media ' did not even have access to Crimea at the time of vote'? The reason for that being that the Russian army and pro Russian militias wouldn't let anyone into Crimea from Ukraine or the West - the whole country was under lockdown with anyone who wasn't repeating the mantra that "you're either with Russia or you're a Nazi" was either kept out or beaten up.

Second, I have seen pictures of ballots (I also happen to read Russian since I was born in Ukraine, thought it was USSR at the time). The choices are "Would you like to join Russian Federation" or "Would you like Crimea to stay an autonomous republic as part of Ukraine".

If you look at the ballot here you can see one option is to join Russia and one is to restore the 1992 constitution.

What does that mean?

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

According to a format of the ballot paper, published on the parliament's website, the first question will ask: "Are you in favor of the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a part of the Russian Federation?"

The second asks: "Are you in favor of restoring the 1992 Constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?"

At first glance, the second option seems to offer the prospects of the peninsula remaining within Ukraine.

But the 1992 national blueprint - which was adopted soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and then quickly abolished by the young post-Soviet Ukrainian state - is far from doing that.

This foresees giving Crimea all the qualities of an independent entity within Ukraine - but with the broad right to determine its own path and choose relations with whom it wants - including Russia.

With the pro-Russian assembly already saying it wants to return Crimea to Russia, this second option only offers a slightly longer route to shifting the peninsula back under Russian control, analysts say.

The option of asking people if they wish to stick with the status quo - in which Crimea enjoys autonomy but remains part of Ukraine - is not on offer.

Like I say you can vote to join Russia or restore the 1992 Crimea Constitution. Under which, incidentally the Crimean Parliament could decide to join Russia without another referendum.

Third, I have friends living in Crimea. They would rather be part of Russia, because they would rather have stability than being a part of a failed and corrupt state where revolutions occur every 3-4 years. Also, since you believe that all Ukrainians are held at gunpoint here's a Ukrainian (me) telling you that Russia did the right thing. I assure you nobody is holding me at gunpoint.

I've got friends in Russia and they would rather Putin - who they call 'the Russian Mugabe' loses this gamble because it means he's likelier to lose power.

But hey anecdotes have a small sample size. If you want a decent sample size look at the Gallup polls. And note that the most popular option with 53% support in 2013 - autonomy inside the Ukraine - wasn't even on offer. Also note that 97% in favour is a very unlikely number to get in any referendum.

Re submarine command around the world?
'Vacuum causes $400M damage to nuclear submarine" from USA
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/...
"Fire breaks out on Russian nuclear submarine" from Russia
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"Navy warship accidentally fires torpedo at nuclear dockyard" from UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...
They seem to be having they own dock related issues?

You're just making shit up. ATT has not demanded that Netflix pay them for traffic that has transited in their network, nor has anyone provided any conclusive evidence that Netflix traffic going into ATT via transit is discriminated against.

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

"(Reuters) - AT&T on Friday dismissed Netflix's recent call for free interconnection as an arrogant and unfair attempt to force others to pay for the content provider to gain access to faster broadband speeds and better services."

FTFA (you read that, right? ;) :
"Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience. When we do so, we don’t pay for priority access against competitors, just for interconnection"

As a tech-savvy netizen, i expect better from you. Be informed before you speak. This is what I do for a living.

I'm the senior network engineer at an ISP. Your assertion of no-cost is utterly incorrect.
Here in the Seattle area, cross-connects typically happen at the Westin building. I assure you it's plenty expensive for cross-connects before you even factor in equipment (multiple 10Gbit optics and line-card ports).

The issue is actually that ATT wants Netflix to go chew cud in response to Netflix saying "You should peer with us for free."
http://www.reuters.com/article...

"“Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience. When we do so, we don’t pay for priority access against competitors, just for interconnection,” he wrote, in relation to the ongoing debate over the future of net neutrality and paid agreements between Netflix and Comcast."

You're being caught up as sheep in a war between capitalist organizations. This isn't even an issue of net neutrality.
ATT isn't asking Netflix to pay for traffic transited into their network.

"In his original post, Hastings said internet service providers should give content companies adequate network connections for free, and singled out Comcast for supporting "weak" internet traffic rules."

Regardless of your *opinion* on costs, forcing an ISP to interconnect with someone else is *not* net neutrality. Net neutrality is simply the buzz-word being used by the combatants to rally their supporters.

I like how the article linked from "Armed Russian soldiers watched over the polling places" fails to show those jack-booted thugs watching over the voting booths, ready to shoot all dissenters (just a guess, but may be they meant, you know, guards?), but it does show people actually celebrating as the first photo.

This article has the picture released by China, coordinates are stamped on the picture: 90deg 13' 43" E / 44deg 57' 29" S. Those positions are now dated due to expected drift of any debris in the local currents and wind.

Here's earlier satellite photos with coordinates from DigitalGlobe, as released by the Australian search team (Australian Maritime Safety Authority - AMSA).

The AMSA is coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean and all their AMSA news updates are here, and images/maps are here, including the cumulative area searched as of March 23 [PDF].

The information is out there if you go looking.

If you are organizing your labor, you have agreed that the market pressures do not support your payscale. Downward pressure on wages does not happen unless the market is flooded, or your skills are not in demand elsewhere. Don't like it? Get a better skillset and go somewhere else.

If it was really true that wages in the west coast IT sector were purely market-driven, then why would there be a collusion lawsuit against the big tech firms? After all, if it is vain to think that organized labor can affect pay and conditions for workers, why would these large companies think that a 'union of employers' could affect pay and conditions?

Employment is a classic example of when the glibertarian caricature of the free market breaks down. The only significant type of labor that is actually a fully-flexible free market is unskilled hourly labor, where you don't need to know anything about the person other than that they can put boxes in the back of a truck or push a wheelbarrow of bricks. For reasons such as search costs, transaction costs and incomplete contracts almost everyone else is in employment that involves at least a degree of mutual trust in an extended relationship.

Here is a very detailed account of the trajectory data now available from Reuters. Maybe someone on this board knows air routes in South East Asia and can provide analysis or pointers to useful maps?

Wow... next time I end up in court, I sure hope the judge sits down with me and lets me re-word my plea over and over until I win. That'd be great.

I'm not sure that you understand what is going on there. The warrant modifications are generally additional restrictions on the warrant, or splitting them to make them more specific, not greater freedom. Is that "winning"? Maybe if you're Charlie Sheen and have tiger blood.

The judges who preside over America's secret court

... There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize." ...

In rare public remarks 10 years ago, a former presiding FISA judge, Royce Lamberth, described the process: "I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what is going to be done and why. And my questions are answered, in every case, before I approve an application."

Syracuse University College of Law professor William C. Banks, who follows the FISA court closely, said he suspects that warrants are "modified" when judges request more information about a warrant or decide to split a warrant with multiple suspects, phone numbers and locations into several, more specific ones.

Think Ukraine would like to redo that decision, given how useless US "guarantees" of territorial integrity have proven to be?

And to think there were those that said there'd be no consequences from US blithering after Syria ignored the US's "red line" and used chemical weapons?

Along the same lines as Russia dismembering Ukraine, how's the Syrian government doing in giving up those chemical weapons? Oh, yeah, they're presenting a new plan, after failing to meet the deadlines in the first three or four plans....

Try more science, less Braveheart:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/1...

The difference between a castle and a hut is much less than the difference between a 1%er's mansion(s and yachts) and a regular house, or especially an apartment which the tenant pays to use at negligible expense to the owner who has already sunk most of the costs involved.

Of course you could argue that inequality under feudalism was infinite since the lords and kings were technically the rightful owners of everything, but that would be falling for capitalism's illusion of choice, a powerful framework for shifting blame to victims in almost any circumstance.

I don't recall saying that (and they're certainly around; I hear complaints all the time from a friend of mine who is himself an immigrant and always sees patients who are birthright citizens, which he commonly complains about because he had to go through hell to get here the normal way.)

That is also ignoring acts of terror:

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

Anyways I don't really view it as my problem. I intend on expatriating myself, so I'm not going to bother fighting it. It's actually a problem that those who are intending to stay here are going to have to deal with after so many years of turning a blind eye to it (people like you telling themselves that it's racism when race has nothing to do with it -- never mind that Mexico isn't a race, nor are Mexicans, many of which are whiter than I am.)

LOL...good one. Wish I had a mod point.

In actuality, the Alibaba Group has 28 partners, and they are at the heart of the reason why the HKEx is refusing the IPO.

The listing terms that the HKEx finds objectionable are centered around the proposed structure of the company, which would allow their 28 partners to control a majority of the board - even though they only own around 13 percent of the company.

Apparently, the HKEx regulators still cling to the quaint notion that small investors are important. I guess those HK guys have a thing or two left to learn about how real capitalism works.

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

Well at least we have Time Warner Cable and not Comcast! Dodged that bullet. Oh.. wait... http://www.reuters.com/article...

Uh... They do have gas. In Crimea. See http://www.reuters.com/article...

The US government itself has little to do with nuclear energy. Congress gave that job to the NRC, and the NRC is both a salesman and regulator, so it has a serious conflict of interest. Basically, they are Westinghouse's (aka Toshiba Energy) bitch.

And you probably would not have CFS if you got over your addition to caffeine http://www.reuters.com/article...

there shouldn't be a lot of Sr90, considering the ratios measured from ground contamination

I think you are assuming the primary "vector" of contamination is the air and are discounting cumulative effects. Do all foods pull in Cs and Sr in equal proportions to ground contamination? Does Cs and Sr have the same biological half life in humans?

You don't have to trust them to want to know what they are doing, and where they are dedicating the funds allocated to decontamination.

I want to know, but how much control do have when they decide not to tell.

At the same time, I wonder if nuclear is enough cheaper than solar and wind to bother with? It is really hard to accurately value a huge investment that expected to last 80 years. What technological advances and political changes might happen in that time? 80 years ago it was 1934.

Large-scale thermal plants can store energy to moderate the supply, and we would need a more integrated national grid give more flexibility. But it seems doable. I'll grant there would still be some cost premium, so it won't happen if left to the market alone, but then again markets don't care about global warming or the problems of long-term waste storage (even if that's really just a political problem). I really like the fact that wind and solar can simply be torn down and hauled away, or upgraded as need be.

It's always amazing how blind people are to the US being anything but perfect.

1) The US dollar is, by far, not the most secure currency in the world.
http://content.time.com/time/b... (a bit dated but the reasoning is sound and is backed up by the next two links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

2) The US is bankrupt with debt as a ridiculous amount and the situation is only getting worse as our politicians continue to spend what we just plain don't have to spend. There has been discussion of a US dollar default which, were it to happen, would completely devastate the value of the US dollar. That discussion will restart today which will most likely result in bitcoin (and other currencies) going up in relative value against the US dollar which will also drive it up in value against other currencies.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.reuters.com/article...

I'm not saying bitcoin is safe. It's not - it's very risk compared to government backed currencies. But don't make the mistake of thinking the US dollar is as safe as you seem to think it is either. Default seems inevitable at some point in time as the US just keeps spending and spending and spending with no end in sight.

Yes, the climate is changing, and evidence suggests it is following a warming trend. However, I *personally* do not fully attribute that change to anthropocentric causes. In light of these three statements, I am firmly opposed to knee-jerk high cost outcome-vague reactionary measures that serve to drastically affect the economic stability of the nation, or even the world. I am however, in favor of further study, while implementing 'gentle' changes, ie, more efficient power generation, reduction of emissions as quickly as is cost feasible, development of more efficient homes, tools, and machines to reduce our energy needs, etc. The bizarre and potentially harmful ideas people are floating as serious solutions to global warming are absolutely terrifying. I have seen serious proposals ranging from genetically re-engineering cows and kangaroos(?) to produce less methane, to blanketing the seas with iron oxide to cause algae blooms to absorb carbon, to anchoring giant mylar bags of C02 to the ocean floor, to scattering reflective particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space. These, along with a host of other ideas, are beyond insane. I don't claim that global warming is a complete farce, but ideas like this, in the off chance that we are actually *wrong* could do immense and possibly irreparable damage to the environment in their own ways. Effectively, in terms of climate change 'repair' we need a planetary version of the Hippocratic oath. "First, Do No Harm." any corrective action we take simply must not put the planet at further risk down the road. However, that is not an excuse to do nothing, greater energy efficiency across the board, and cleaner energy production are a must, and a long term benefit to humanity, no mater the final result of 'climate change science'. All that said, Planting more trees is about the most sound and reasonable activity we can take to help balance our planets climate. Macedonia probably should be the figurehead for this. http://www.reuters.com/article...

Like practically all conservative "think tanks", the Heritage Foundation has a serious case of confirmation bias. Love it how they scathe spending under Obama all over their site, but naturally, the fact that they were strong supporters of the Iraq war, a useless, unnecessary war which was based on now obvious lies and disinformation and cost 1.7 trillion, with long term costs of 6 trillion isn't mentioned anywhere on the site. Nope. Money gone! Obama bad! And we don't have nuttin' to do with'at! Yuppedi-diddledy-doo!

Due to the nature of population distribution, the issue you described is relevant only to a small minority of users. Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas (as of 2010), despite urban land accounting for only 2.65% of the total US land area. In other words, your issue is your issue, and most people don't share your priorities.

While you have my sympathy, you can't expect wireless carriers to ignore the majority of their customer base and start chasing after the long tail.

You may want to read that word again.

It's a trust issue more than a legal issue. As it turns out American companies were for years under gag orders for certain kinds of government (FISA) data requests. They couldn't even discuss their existence. Under pressure from leaks, now the US government is relaxing and allowing them to reveal some aggregate data about these previously-secret requests.

The fact that all this "openness" has only come under duress makes one strongly suspect that the spying will only shift into some new program. The legality of FISA is almost beside the point when it comes to the question of who do you trust with your data.

If you dare to oppose, your news will be boring

Except when you get to report on your own buildings and journalists being targeted by the US Army. I'm surprised it has taken this long for the US to drop in the World Press Freedom index to be honest, given their attitude to free press outside their borders.

"I think what we've learned ... is that just having the tools and technology isn't enough in this day and age," Neiman Marcus Chief Information Officer Michael Kingston told the panel. "These attackers again are very, very sophisticated and they've figured out ways around that."

Translation: "We did everything we possibly could, those hackers are just too damn smart. You should probably pass some laws to make knowing how to hack illegal."

Target CTO on if they knew about the attack before they were notified:

"Despite significant investment in multiple layers of detection that we had in our systems, we did not," Mulligan replied.

Translation: "It isn't that we got caught with our pants down, we were doing our best, honest!"

There is just no accountability! Why were there even congressional hearings if congress didn't even do an investigation and call in experts to find out why Target fucked up so badly? Senator Tech. Illiterate (D) and Representative STICKYKEYS (R) don't know enough to call bullshit.

There is no penalty for ignoring your engineers when they bring up problems. Investing in security is a well known joke amongst CTOs. Target's bottom line isn't going to be affected by this in a year. The business world learned a lesson recently: you can lose 100 million people's credit card data and nothing bad will happen.

If you can avoid paying income tax in Australia then you can avoid paying back the HECS fees.

This is not an issue in the US as the US is the only country in the world that demands it's citizens who live overseas pay US taxes on income derived in another country. This makes working abroad for regular US citizens very difficult. The majority of Americans who work abroad tend to be on very good incomes ( because they will have double taxation), or have ways to hide their foreign income from the US government. In such cases the US government responds with political pressure on the non-obliging countries.

I find the US double taxation on expats quite unfair.
(BTW I am not a US citizen but I am an expat.)

"They continue to under-promise and over-deliver. And that continues to be their sort of mantra."
FireEye expects a loss of 51-56 cents per share for the quarter.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye sees weak revenue, warns on costs Feb 11

95% of all networks are compromised. Is yours secure?

The deal would be a coup for Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Rob Marcus, who just ascended to the top job on Jan 1. Filings show that the former mergers and acquisitions attorney is set to pocket $50 million if Time Warner Cable is sold and he is replaced while he is CEO.

Software development is probably more like engineering and building a bridge. You need to compare with something where not everything is known at the outset.

Actually, there is a real life building analogy of the type you seek- large scale projects such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, which currently appears to have ground to a halt amidst massive cost overruns.

So, it is not always true the builder fixes any problems on his own time and costs. In some cases, the client pays (hence the cost overruns) or if there is a dispute, a mess ensues as in the example above.

Software development is probably more like engineering and building a bridge. You need to compare with something where not everything is known at the outset.

Actually, there is a real life building analogy of the type you seek- large scale projects such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, which currently appears to have ground to a halt amidst massive cost overruns.

So, it is not always true the builder fixes any problems on his own time and costs. In some cases, the client pays (hence the cost overruns) or if there is a dispute, a mess ensues as in the example above.

Most Christians believe in evolution. Even the fundamentalist ones.

Those statements are questionable without some significant disclaimers. Are you taking about worldwide or just the US? What qualifies as 'Christian' 'fundmentalist' or 'believing in evolution'?

Consider the latest highly publicized Pew Research poll on the subject. One-third of Americans believe "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time". Note that's not disagreeing with the theory of natural selection or postulating 'God's hand', this is utter denial that species evolved over extremely long periods of time. For those that identify as white evangelical Protestants (a good surrogate for 'fundamentalist', I'd say) , that number is 64 percent. Also, FWIW, only 43 percent of Republicans agree that "humans and other living things have evolved over time".

So at least in the US, it would appear that most 'fundamentalists' (and Republicans) *do* reject the evolution of species outright. And while I can't say that third of *all* Americans that would represent a majority of Christians, it is safe to assume that those people would overwhelmingly skew Christian, and therefore if most Christians *do* believe in evolution, it's a slim (and apparantly shrinking) majority, at least in the US.

Clearly, deniers of evolution are not just a fringe minority with a loud voice, these beliefs are frighteningly mainstream.