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The value to rial dropped with news of the US sanctions.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/iran-currency-dollar-idUSL6E8C30JN20120103

The exchange rate hovered at 17,200 rials to the dollar, marking a record low. The currency was trading at about 10,500 rials to the U.S. dollar last month.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/iran-to-take-action-if-us-carrier-return-idINDEE80205820120103
"Iran will take action if a U.S. aircraft carrier which left the area because of Iranian naval exercises returns to the Gulf, the state news agency quoted army chief Ataollah Salehi as saying on Tuesday."

and the US is known for backing down and allowing Iran to dictate where and when it can the "high seas" even though it won't sign the the Law Of The Sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea

They've been getting low on coal every now and then - as in burning coal faster than they can get it (from their own mines and other places). They're using so much energy that they even run out of dirty energy, so they need to reduce consumption and also add clean energy.

http://news.theage.com.au/business/china-coal-shortage-to-continue-20080116-1m7u.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/coal-shortage-causes-power-cuts-in-china-20101221-193d5.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/18/china-power-shortage-idUSL3E7FI1ED20110418
Consuming less energy = consuming less coal = fewer power cuts = fewer pissed off people = easier and more peaceful reign for those at the top.

IIRC Japan is many times more efficient in terms of productivity (goods, GDP etc) vs energy used. So there's actually quite a lot of room for improvement in terms of energy efficiency.

They've also been working on building lots of nuclear reactors. Hope they get those right though, or there'll be major disasters (China does get big quakes).

If you want to save as much lives as you can while preventing overpopulation, we westerners should be first ones to go

Why do you ask others to do something you do not? Nothing is stopping you from killing yourself for the greater good. BTW Is Japan, China, or India in the West now? Population in the West isn't growing at alarming rates. We have enough food in the world for everyone, it's a distribution issue. Africa has lots of natural resources... what is the problem there? Oh it's the fucking people who live there like it's a giant crab bucket!

Then you probably also understand that it is the US and Europe that uses most of the resources on our planet.

How many people does Europe and the US feed? Why aren't these countries supporting themselves if they're such great places to live? Do you know what the US has done for wheat production? Norman Borlaug. Please don't mistake this for patriotism.

People from other places on Earth use far fewer resources per one person than we do.

Yeah because they're stuck in the dark ages? Let's rewind western civilization to the point where these other countries are at and see what the usage is like! So far every country which advances seems to do the same thing (minus the R&D expenditures) .

You can already get around the restrictions if you want an old fashioned light bulb, they're just called Heatballs instead. Two guys in Germany started marketing them as "heaters that fit into a light socket" last year after a similar law went through in the EU.

Have you seen the box office numbers for this holiday season?
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/25/let-there-be-sequels.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/25/idUS261492126020111225

Mission Impossible 4, Sherlock Holmes 2 and Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 did well at the Christmas box office in the U.S., while Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and Tintin both bombed.

We are negatively reinforcing this behavior

Actually, SonyEricsson is Sony.

I agree that you should subsidize research, not production. But the fact is that coal is also subsidized, and therefore it is only fair to subsidize the competition too - to level the playing field. They compete on the electricity market.

Coal subsidy references:
Europe: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/10/us-eu-coal-idUSTRE6B93D420101210
USA: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Federal_coal_subsidies
Australia: http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/11/01/nsws-great-big-coal-subsidy-scandal/
China (no source, as you don't need to subsidize something that is already state owned)

I have several objections.

First, the US does invest in african infrastructure. http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6210FP20100302

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Malawi and Zambia are set to win hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. infrastructure grants in the next two years due to steady improvements in the way they are run, U.S. aid officials said on Tuesday. ...
The MCC [the U.S. government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) ], which has committed $5.1 billion to Africa over five years -- most of it in infrastructure investment -- has a $10 million project to reduce corruption and help civil society in Uganda, which it regards as a 'threshold' country.

The problem is the rampant anarchy and thievery destroying those investments. Raw materials being stolen in the middle of the night, improper or no maintenance being done. If African dictatorships have trouble dividing up crates of free food among the populace, what makes you think they can handle taking care of a first-world electrical grid and highway system?

Second, the US does invest in African education. http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/initiatives/aei.html

Primary school enrolment in African countries is among the lowest in the world. Limited funds and a lack of adequate teachers, classrooms, and learning materials adversely affect the educational environment throughout most of Africa. The President's Africa Education Initiative (AEI) is a $600-million multi-year initiative that focuses on increasing access to quality basic education in 39 sub-Saharan countries through scholarships, textbooks, and teacher training programs. Eighty million African children will have benefited from AEI by 2010.

[Parent post:] Since rich nations obviously have an interest in keeping the status quo, there is little actual help.

Finally, and this should be easy because it's so "obvious", but [Citation Needed]. What is it that you think rich nations gain by doing this? Cheap blood diamonds?

Meanwhile today the administration announces that they will be seeking an additional 1.2T dollars increase in the debt ceiling. That's what.. like 5000 additional dollars per citizen not that it matters at this point. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/27/us-usa-treasury-debt-idUSTRE7BQ0KU20111227 It amazes me that the republican leadership thinks anyone cares about social issues. Speaking as a republican (for now) give me a bigamist-lesbian-muslim canidate with a firm position on personal liberty and limited federal government and I'll vote for them...

Of course Russia is selling billions of dollar's worth of weapons to Iran (and Iraq before that)

[citation needed]
#1 Iraq did not have weapons, ergo Russia did not sell weapons to them

Wrong. Here is your citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/world/europe/12moscow.html

#2 If Russia already sold weapons to Iran, they already have them, therefore their "proliferation" is a done deal.

Wrong again. Iran is continually trying to get its hands on more offensive and defensive gear from Russia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11388680

Please stop making shit up.

No sir. You stop making shit up. Stop making assumptions about whether other people's points are sourced until they reply.

The real issue is that there is significant international pressure for Iran to stop its nuclear program for civilian (power) purposes.

What "civilian" purposes? I'll repeat my question in case you missed them the first time around:

Why does Iran need nuclear energy program when it has enough oil to meet domestic use for over 100 years?

First off, Iran is quite correct in that this is unfair as they are have signed the NPT, and have cooperated with the IAEA. Secondly, now that such crippling sanctions are in place against them, why should they stop? They are rightly convinced that the world will view them as a nuclear threat whether or not they stop their civilian program, and they now need that civilian program more than ever due to the sanctions.

The NPT entitles Iran to start a civilian energy program *if* and only if they declare their intent to do so ahead of time and provide full transparency throughout the process. Why then did Iran conceal their nuclear program for years? Why then did Iran boot out IAEA inspectors? Why did the UN catch Iran in possession of schematics for outfitting a nuclear warhead on their missiles? Why then did Iran use computer modeling to study the a core of a nuclear warhead? This and more curtsey of http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15643460

Economic sanctions are a precursor to war. The American propaganda machine wants war with Iran. When have you ever known the American's to let the truth stand between them and one of their holy wars.

Right, because Obama some crazy yahoo with a track-record of declaring wars. Give me a break. You have one of the most left-wing Presidents in power and even he cannot deny that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

The facts are stacked against your twisted reality. On the one hand, there is no reason for Iran to develop a nuclear energy program. On the other hand, it has a long record of training, funding and outfitting terrorist groups to attack its enemies. They don't even deny doing so. To add insult to injury, they slaughter their own civilians in the streets. Why are so many bleeding-heart liberals exerting more energy defending dictators than working to remove them? Who do you think is helping Syria slaughter its people? http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/uk-iran-syria-kidnap-idUKTRE7BK0S620111221

Seems to me that China is well out their way to out innovate the US.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-china-patents-idUSTRE7BK0LQ20111221

Ok, I've returned from a long trip through the Wikipedia and it turns out that you're right. I think I was talking about the AVR, which started operation in 1961. The story of the THTR is a sad one, especially the costs of decomissioning it. (Although to be fair, the THTR is basically also a 60's design; construction started in 1971, which means that final plans must have been made long before that). I don't know enough about reactor engineering to judge whether the problems of graphite dust buildup are fundamental to the design or whether we have since discovered better solutions. The inherent safety of the pebble/helium design is still a very attractive feature, and many people seem to think we can do it better. So yes, this was an important lesson. It's sad that it turned out to cost so much, but like I said in my last post: When the goal is something important, we can't let ourselves be deterred by early mistakes. I think the analogy with stopping the space program when our first rocket exploded is still a good one. Maybe that's exactly what we would have done if the space program were getting started today. But we're all glad that we kept at it. Nuclear power is an answer to an even more important problem, and I think we should give ourselves a few generations to work out the bugs.

I would certainly prefer this to what Germany is doing today, which is building new, gigantic coal burning plants while refusing to close their old ones. Some info on the scale of the coal boom is here, but I remember reading a much more detailed article about it in the Spiegel. It coincides nicely with the exit from atomic power, and yet everyone knows that it will kill more people (thousands instead of zero) and do much more to damage the global climate. It puzzles me immensely that a country which is afraid to plant GM crops and use nuclear power is not afraid of new, record size powerplants that burn brown coal! I thought Germans would act more responsibly. One thing I appreciate about the Germans I know is that shame makes them act more responsibly (this works less well in here in the US), and this new coal boom to replace their nuclear powerplants really is something that Germans should be ashamed of. There is no uglier way to make power today. OK, sorry for the rant, but it's not completely off topic here.

The summary reads like an angry teenager implying that they could do better.

The Russians had a reputation for rocket reliability. They previously marketed based on that reputation, releasing press releases after successful launches trumpeting how much more reliable they were. They are now rapidly losing that reputation. This will impact their competitiveness in the launch market.

And it isn't just US media saying it. After the Phobos-Grunt launch failure, Medvedev threatened to punish those responsible.

but at least they are trying in the face of failure, instead of giving up and whining about for a decade like the US did after the shuttle disasters.

This is robotic spacecraft, not manned space. The US has not even paused in launching robotic spacecraft -- we did plenty of launches this year, and we have plenty more scheduled. And I would disagree on manned as well. The US didn't give up manned launches: we kept flying the shuttle until earlier this year, and we're on track to resume manned launches in a few years. US manned launches are paused, not stopped.

As others have pointed out, the issue for many isn't the claims about food safety, but rather Monsanto's lawsuits. Google "Monsanto lawsuit" or check out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-monsanto-lawsuit-idUSTRE78K79O20110921
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser

among others. Could Monsanto be viewed as a monopoly? How much control over your food supply are you comfortable with?

An excellent point. It's also worth noting that Firefox is the most popular browser in Europe. Probably due to those EU regulations about Windows offering a default choice. Y'know the ones that people said would have no effect anyway.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/04/us-internet-europe-idUKTRE70324F20110104

1,100 high-tech employees on the processor side of the fab, and more than that on the flash memory side. A $3.6 billion construction project. Yes, I'd say they will appreciate it.

not just that if you actually look it's more

The 1.6 million square foot factory cost $3.6bn, but the total investment is closer to $9bn, according to Austin Chamber of Commerce, making it the largest-ever foreign investment in Texas. According to Reuters, the fab ramped up to full production at the beginning of December.

that's a fair wad of cash injected into the local economy and not an investment to be sniffed at at all.
Reuters has an article on it HERE

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/12/romania-management-idUSL6E7NC1ZR20111212

CEE MONEY-Help wanted: emerging EU state needs good CEOs

Dec 12 (Reuters) - For two decades, Romania's inefficient state companies have undermined the country's economy through graft, mismanagement, disadvantageous business deals and budget-sapping losses. ...

---

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/pressroom/content/20111213IPR33945/html/Parliament-endorses-EU-wide-protection-for-crime-victims

Qualified by "EU". (I didn't exclude it specifically, I took it as read that all qualifiers were out.)

Parliament endorses European Protection Order for crime victims
Crime victims who are granted protection from their aggressors in one EU Member State will be able to get similar protection if they move to another, under new rules adopted by Parliament on Tuesday. The European Protection Order aims to protect victims of, for instance, gender violence, harassment, abduction, stalking or attempted murder. Member States will have three years to transpose this directive into national law.

Measures to protect crime victims from aggressors already exist in all EU Member States but at present they cease to apply if the victim moves to another country. The European Protection Order (EPO) directive, already agreed with national governments, will enable anyone protected under criminal law in one EU state to apply for similar protection if they move to another.

Hardly! The fact they use "EU Member State" twice in the quote before "EU state" makes this particularly weak...

----

http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_criteria_en.htm

The "Dublin" Regulation â" Which EU State is responsible for examining an asylum application?

Knowing which State is responsible for an asylum claim avoids asylum seekers being transferred from one EU State to another, with none accepting responsibility, as well as multiple or simultaneous applications by the same person in different EU States (a phenomenon known as âasylum shoppingâ(TM)). ...

Again, there is a qualifier. EU. And it is capitalised.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/12/romania-management-idUSL6E7NC1ZR20111212

CEE MONEY-Help wanted: emerging EU state needs good CEOs

Dec 12 (Reuters) - For two decades, Romania's inefficient state companies have undermined the country's economy through graft, mismanagement, disadvantageous business deals and budget-sapping losses. ...

---

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/pressroom/content/20111213IPR33945/html/Parliament-endorses-EU-wide-protection-for-crime-victims

Parliament endorses European Protection Order for crime victims
Crime victims who are granted protection from their aggressors in one EU Member State will be able to get similar protection if they move to another, under new rules adopted by Parliament on Tuesday. The European Protection Order aims to protect victims of, for instance, gender violence, harassment, abduction, stalking or attempted murder. Member States will have three years to transpose this directive into national law.

Measures to protect crime victims from aggressors already exist in all EU Member States but at present they cease to apply if the victim moves to another country. The European Protection Order (EPO) directive, already agreed with national governments, will enable anyone protected under criminal law in one EU state to apply for similar protection if they move to another.

----

http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_criteria_en.htm

The "Dublin" Regulation â" Which EU State is responsible for examining an asylum application?

Knowing which State is responsible for an asylum claim avoids asylum seekers being transferred from one EU State to another, with none accepting responsibility, as well as multiple or simultaneous applications by the same person in different EU States (a phenomenon known as âasylum shoppingâ(TM)). ...

... if I'd trust Virginia to dispose of my remains according to my instructions.

Typically employees can't sell their shares until at least six months post-IPO.

The SEC required a 2-year wait until the early 1990s. Which is partly why IPOs that ran way up after the IPO and then crashed were so popular during the original dot-com boom.

How much is Facebook really worth, anyway? Let's look at the numbers. Facebook revenue for 2010 was $1.86 billion. Goldman Sachs, which makes a private market in Facebook stock, sent a report to their investors indicating Facebook earned $355 million in the first 9 months of 2010. That would be $473 million for the year, for a 25% profit margin. Of course, those are unaudited numbers. When the SEC filings take place for an IPO, they may decrease as accounting gimmicks are disclosed and discounted.

The next question is, do we value Facebook as a growth company or an ongoing company? Let's look at Facebook's traffic stats. Traffic went up steadily until mid-2011, when it peaked. (Before Google+ started, incidentally.) It's been down a bit since then. So Facebook may have maxed out and started on its decline, like every other social network from AOL to Myspace did. There probably isn't a lot of growth left. Is there anyone not on Facebook who wants in?

OK, what's a company with $473 million in annual revenue worth? Google's price/earnings ratio is 21.39. Microsoft, 9.34. IBM, 12.69. Netflix 16.11. AOL 26.43. Yahoo 19.51. IAC (Ask's parent) 18.27. So we can say that the market is at best valuing mature Internet companies around 20x earnings.

That gives Facebook a valuation around $9 billion.

Even that may be optimistic. That assumes Facebook's user base doesn't shrink. Remember when Myspace was on top? This is Myspace on the way down. To earn that $9 billion valuation, Facebook has to maintain its current size and profitability for 20 years. Does anybody think that will happen?

(How many people here remember when one of the founders of Slashdot was asking on here what to do with his money when VA Linux, the parent of Slashdot, went public in 1999? They had the biggest first-day runup after an IPO ever. The stock hit $239 on the first day, and then went into a screaming dive. Six months later it was around $40. Not as rich as he thought. By 2002, it had dropped to $0.54. The stock is still trading as GKNT, formerly LNUX. Here's the chart.)

all i needed to see was "An anonymous reader writes:" and the-diplomat.com, this is blatant propaganda -100 score It has no newsworthy merit is inaccurate in many ways as has already been pointed out by others (centrifuge's causing meltdown???) i know america is pissed about getting caught red handed with this, and also about the missile shield debacle http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/24/us-russia-medvedev-missiledefence-idUSTRE7AN1NE20111124 that's currently ongoing but how is aggravating Russia going to help in either matter?

So why don't you buy Samsung HDD?

Seagate buys Samsung hard disk unit

This has been going on for quite a while. Here is another example with Microsoft and Nokia.

Article detailing the lawsuit here. Apple did, in fact, sue the local business asserting a stronger claim to the trademark.

Apple are so gay

Article detailing the lawsuit here. Apple did, in fact, sue the local business asserting a stronger claim to the trademark.

That's speculation. What evidence can you provide to show that the communication protocols used are anything more secure than off-the-shelf consumer grade? This kind of crap makes me highly suspicious.

It's interesting how fast some of us forget the facts.

First, in the release of Department of State memos a year ago, we read of several countries and the US government admitting to a belief in the existence of an Iranian nuclear program. While the Arab Spring protests have probably trumped it for a time, it's worth noting that several countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, viewed Iran's nuclear program as their most pressing foreign policy issue (over such things as Israel). They have since threatened to develop their own nuclear weapons.

' Second, Iran does indeed have sites that were built at great expense to resist known conventional weapons of the time. No civilian nuclear program justifies this expense.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has assembled evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Finally, we have acts of sabotage and murder against Iranian infrastructure and personnel associated with this program. Nobody does that for a hobby. An easy counter for Iran would be to throw open its entire nuclear infrastructure to show it wasn't developing nuclear weapons. Didn't happen.

I can't help but notice that the story you link to has a mind-numbing fallacy in it. Because the US had overflown Iranian space for four years and the author chooses to ignore the copious evidence in support of the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, then Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. That makes no sense.

It's interesting how fast some of us forget the facts.

First, in the release of Department of State memos a year ago, we read of several countries and the US government admitting to a belief in the existence of an Iranian nuclear program. While the Arab Spring protests have probably trumped it for a time, it's worth noting that several countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, viewed Iran's nuclear program as their most pressing foreign policy issue (over such things as Israel). They have since threatened to develop their own nuclear weapons.

' Second, Iran does indeed have sites that were built at great expense to resist known conventional weapons of the time. No civilian nuclear program justifies this expense.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has assembled evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Finally, we have acts of sabotage and murder against Iranian infrastructure and personnel associated with this program. Nobody does that for a hobby. An easy counter for Iran would be to throw open its entire nuclear infrastructure to show it wasn't developing nuclear weapons. Didn't happen.

I can't help but notice that the story you link to has a mind-numbing fallacy in it. Because the US had overflown Iranian space for four years and the author chooses to ignore the copious evidence in support of the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, then Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. That makes no sense.

"The clamp down on the OWS is not a free speech issue."

Actually... it very well may be. There is considerable debate regarding this very notion... Please don't rant and pretend that the speech aspect of this is settled.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-usa-protests-law-idUSTRE7AH2OE20111118
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/11_-_November/ANALYSIS__Is_sleeping_speech_/
http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-sleeping-zuccotti-park-free-speech-232305668.html

That the protestors are breaking existing law is NOT the same argument as whether or not those laws interfere with freedom of speech rights.
Those laws are being tested, as is the definition of what is considered to be freedom of speech.

Speaking as an authority on the hypothetical just makes you sound silly... Until this topic hits the Supreme Court, both arguments (laws restricting freedom of speech -leading to a valid protest being re-interpreted or discarded... AS WELL AS... freedom of speech trumping existing laws - leading to those laws being re-interpreted or discarded) have merit.

Sorry that your strong opinion isn't yet based in solid fact... time may prove you to be correct. For now, you're just ranting. =)

Even the biggest outsourcing companies are expanding local development. GE is one example.

Worth mentioning all those companies also have suits against Apple, or in Amazon's case licensed patents like 1-click to them which are hardly different from Apple's patents. This graphic should be well known by now and shows nobody is exactly blameless in this patent war. (People will argue about defensive vs offensive which is about as useful here as it would be in a nuclear holocaust.)

What I was getting at is that AFAIK, only Samsung has been taken to task over the much ridiculed "rectangle LOL"-patents. All the others were over obscure technical patents which were the proverbial "stick to beat a dog."

Here are three random articles from the front page of Slashdot, Reuters, and TheStreet.com:

Once upon a time, the important part of the URL - the identifier of 2225202 at Slashdot, idUSTRE7B019B20111205 at Reuters, and 11332765 at TheStreet - was all that a potential URL-logger got to see. URLs were not only shorter, they had meaning relevant only to that one particular site's CMS, and it required Yahoo/Google/Bing/government-sized resources to follow every such link and map URLs to content on scales as big as "everyone who uses the WWW".

Except that nowadays, most URLs are rewritten with-redundant-text-for-SEO-purposes. Slashdot's URLs say researchers-say-carrier-iq-isnt-logging-data-texts Reuters' URLs say us-russia-election and TheStreet's URL says its-official-facebook-buys-gowalla-team.html.

All of a sudden, if I have access to the URL stream, I can now figure out that you're interested in Carrier IQ's spyware, the Russian elections, and whatever Facebook is up to this week -- with nothing more complicated than "grep".

I'm not advocating tinfoil haberdashery: there's no grand conspiracy of webmasters to make clickstreams greppable. It's merely a regrettable (for end user privacy) side effect of the relentless push towards SEO that organizations like Carrier IQ can get a lot more "interesting" information out of a user's clickstream than they would have been able to do as recently as two years ago.

Here are three random articles from the front page of Slashdot, Reuters, and TheStreet.com:

Once upon a time, the important part of the URL - the identifier of 2225202 at Slashdot, idUSTRE7B019B20111205 at Reuters, and 11332765 at TheStreet - was all that a potential URL-logger got to see. URLs were not only shorter, they had meaning relevant only to that one particular site's CMS, and it required Yahoo/Google/Bing/government-sized resources to follow every such link and map URLs to content on scales as big as "everyone who uses the WWW".

Except that nowadays, most URLs are rewritten with-redundant-text-for-SEO-purposes. Slashdot's URLs say researchers-say-carrier-iq-isnt-logging-data-texts Reuters' URLs say us-russia-election and TheStreet's URL says its-official-facebook-buys-gowalla-team.html.

All of a sudden, if I have access to the URL stream, I can now figure out that you're interested in Carrier IQ's spyware, the Russian elections, and whatever Facebook is up to this week -- with nothing more complicated than "grep".

I'm not advocating tinfoil haberdashery: there's no grand conspiracy of webmasters to make clickstreams greppable. It's merely a regrettable (for end user privacy) side effect of the relentless push towards SEO that organizations like Carrier IQ can get a lot more "interesting" information out of a user's clickstream than they would have been able to do as recently as two years ago.

Winning all the way to the poorhouse :

Motorola Mobility revenue misses, net loss narrows
Samsung phone sales drop 14%, profit drops 30%
HTC Is In Big Trouble: It Just Slashed Revenue Guidance Again

Just like PC vendors did under Windows' dominance.

Recently I did a contract with NYSE Euronext and all we got to work with was Windows XP, Office 2000, Outlook and file shares of some sort. I'm not saying they are insecure, because as far as I know they are, (and I couldn't go anywhere near the transaction side of the business). But if anyone was to try spear-phishing, the infrastructure couldn't be more 'classic'.

To me, in the age of the user-friendly linux desktop, the workstation setup I just described should be replaced to increase security and to avoid spearfishing. Open-Source support has value, blind-love for Microsoft does not.

Spear-phishing is what did Nasdaq in, and via that in-road other (client) corporations were also hacked.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/us-nasdaq-hacking-idUSTRE79J84T20111020

I couldn't figure out a way to fit it into the summary, but I was bothered by the way Reuters recently handled their story claiming George Soros was funding Occupy Wall Street (OWS), first running a headline claiming a connection but with a story that offered very spurious evidence of monetary support for the movement, and then taking that story down under heavy criticism from other news sources and reposting the exact same story with a headline absolving Soros of any connection to OWS with a new link, while simultaneously killing the link to the old story without any explanation.

It was extremely problematic for people debating online, as my conservative friends suddenly had their link go dead, while my liberal friends suddenly had the same story but with a headline supporting their position. It was the same exact story, but since nobody RTFAs, the headline was the most important piece of evidence in the debate.

I post this example, not to dredge up some off-topic flamewar about OWS, but because it seems like a pretty clear cut case of how we don't want news agencies operating. I read a comment on Slashdot recently that the reason we aren't allowed to modify our comments is to prevent users from editing out things in order to accuse others of strawman attacks. If you screw up a fact, you post a correction. It seems News Organizations owe us the same courtesy.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/12/health/main572833.shtml

http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-statistics/

Smoking killed 4.83 million people in 2000, And the diabetes rate is rising, so I think that shit food and smoking will take care of all of the stupid and fat for you nicely. With 2.5 million Americans dying from smoking every year, we do not need wars to kill off the people.

What about a congresswoman? Nancy Pelosi has talked against SOPA: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/idUS402801936220111117

I appreciate your reasonable response. It's a breath of fresh air. I hear you on some of your points and I disagree on others:
* tax loopholes - i get the whole global argument, but this is ridiculous. I think we could tap a tiny bit of that $2.5 trillion in sales without scaring off too many jobs.
* sure, investigate them all. put them on the hot seat. do it already. is it done yet?
* no-bid contracts are bullshit -- especially when they are that big. "not many companies do what they do blah blah." i call shenanigans. what on earth was halliburton doing that no one else could do? space? nope. nuclear? nope.
* education spending - pissing it away? i went to public school and then a prestigious college. I value my education and am grateful for it. I'd hardly call that pissing it away. And, personally, i like it when the guy working at Mcdonald's or the DMV is not a total idiot. Having an educated populace is an incredible privilege. Uneducated people are *such* a drag.
* money != speech. they are two different things and we should all keep that in mind. cynical attitudes equating them lead to moral decay and corruption.
* taxing the rich - suppose we take a mere 1% from all the US millionaires next year. With approximately 3 million US millionaires, that's 3,000,000 * $1,000,000 * .01 = $30 Billion. And, if those millionaires were shrewd enough to get a 3% return on their investments (which is not a lot) then they'd still keep their million in assets plus twice what we took from them in interest. 1% too much? OK take a bit less and include more people. Let's adopt the Reagan-era tax structure! The notion is simple, not simplistic. Your attempted refutation (which seems simplistic to me) doesn't provide any facts at all. Less rhetoric, more reason please.

You don't need Lenin, really. Three years ago, Stalin was voted the third most popular political leader - and that poll showed up all signs of vote fudging (Stalin was actually on top until the last few days of the vote, where there was a sudden surge for the other two guys - many think that it was done to avoid the embarrassment). In 2006, 47% had an "overall positive" evaluation of his rule, and only 26% had it "negative" - and these figures have not been changing for better since then.

Short story, if current regime topples, it would be quite likely for commies to take over.

So let me get this straight... If a workstation is compromised, it's cleaned, but there's no need to bother reimaging. If a server is compromised, and data is lost/damaged, it doesn't matter because it was already the admin's job to fix it, so it doesn't cost anything? And the lost productivity due to countless meetings to review doesn't cost anything? And the projects that get delayed don't cost anything, regardless of being under contracts? And the resulting investigation, likely involving travel to foreign countries, doesn't cost anything?

That is what I call nonsense.

But hey... I guess you know your stuff. After all, banks are very secure.

The insurance business is HIGHLY regulated. The CEO (and BoD) know EXACTLY what is in their investments because they can only write policies for X times the amount of money they have.

The derivatives market is HIGHLY unregulated. Do you actually work in the industry because it seems you are lacking knowledge about the insurance business and generally how businesses work. A corporation like AIG has different divisions and they do not fall under the same regulations. The insurance division is regulated in the amount of policies they write; however that only applies to the insurance division. The securities, plastics, electronics, or whatever division does not have to follow insurance regulations because they don't issue policies. According to you then, AIG went afoul of insurance regulation in doing what it did. Or is it more likely that insurance regulations don't apply to all of AIG but only the insurance parts?

In this case AIG's policies are limited to the amount of cash on hand. However, CDSs and CDOs are volatile investment assets. They were sold as "insurance" but they don't fit the criteria of what insurance is. They were at best, side bets.

However, there is a significant difference between a traditional insurance policy and a CDS. Anyone can purchase a CDS, even buyers who do not hold the loan instrument and may have no direct insurable interest in the loan. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments (the CDS "fee" or "spread") to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if the loan defaults.

Again, your position seems to require very specific ignorance from the CEO and the BoD.

Yes because every CEO out there knows exactly what every division of their company is doing at all times especially in areas that are not their expertise. That's why a company like UBS who does trading never had an employee lose billions of dollars. It never happens because there is adequate oversight by an employee's supervisor. Also there are all sorts of checks in place and the CEO who is many, many layers up is keeping an eye on all of them.

Yes. In fact, I would have a division (possibly called "Accounting" or something) with people dedicated to monitoring it and checking the cash flow. Maybe I'd even have a "C" level executive reporting to me who monitored things like that . Maybe I'd call that person the Chief Financial Officer.

So what you're saying is that for securities, accounting monitors every single transaction and the CFO steps in when traders make losses and stops them? What kind of securities firm have you worked for? In the all the ones I've seen, traders make losses all the time. And the make profits. Accounting resolves everything at the end of the cycle, not immediately, and does not get involved.

I might even have things I would maybe call "internal audits" just to make sure that the cash / investments were where I thought they should be. To find/prevent something I'd call "embezzlement" (because I like z's).

Securities firms like UBS had internal audits too. That's didn't stop rogue traders. And that doesn't stop when people guess wrong. When people don't perform, they get fired. AIG's traders guessed wrong.

Again, again, again. That's VERY specific ignorance required to support your position.

Your position is that the CEO and Board have omnipotence in everything every employee does.

also, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/idUS211494328220111110

The resolution number was actually S.J.Res.6, and the vote on the motion to proceed to consideration of it failed on a not quite party line vote 54-46 just now. DOA in the Senate.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/10/142213971/senate-halts-gop-bid-to-repeal-net-neutrality-rules [npr.org]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/idUS211494328220111110

Its true with everything. Helmets, Seat Belts, Airbags, Planes that don't break up in the air. Bus drivers that arent drunk. ( I should be free to chose the bus service that does not have drunk bus drivers i don't need the government to make that decision for me.), DOT tires, gas stoves that don't blow up in my face, clean water ways ( if I can simply chose my ISP i can simply chose my water company.) etc etc etc. We need to get rid of government regulation so that the free market can work. If we leave it up to the free market then when companies poison the crap out of the ground water system, we the fully informed consumers will just switch to a competing company and the polluting company would lose in the marketplace. Its really simple. Look how good its working in china We need to be more like them.

Wait, so Michelle Bachmann is a liberal now? Jesus fuck, the Republicans must have really gone far right then.

Already noted:

" Space veteran Sergei Krikalyov, who has spent a record 803 days in orbit, told Reuters: "It's useful but, sitting here on Earth, it won't solve real problems of long human exposure in space." "
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-russia-mars-isolation-idUSTRE7A22YD20111103

I noticed quite a few stories about Chinese plants decimating the local environment producing "green" solar panels and windmills. I don't think anyone is saving the planet using solar panels in the US when sludge and hazardous chemicals are being dumped in rivers around China where the panels are produced.

"Keep the drug flow up, keep the police state up.":

During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999. However, in July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Rise_of_the_Taliban_.281994.E2.80.932001.29

Of course in October 2001 the US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan.

Despite the [2009] decrease, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium. (...) In 2009, Afghanistan cultivated 123,000 hectares of opium compared to 157,000 hectares in 2008 (...) In 2009, 6,900 tons of opium were produced compared to 7,700 tons in 2008.

-- http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/02/us-afghanistan-drugs-factbox-sb-idUSTRE58144M20090902

Except, under the Taliban, if you got caught growing opium during the ban, they would kill you. Now, at worst you get a prison sentence. At best, they burn your opium crop and give you money and help to switch to cultivating something other than opium. The risk/reward ratio is much higher now than when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

lol don't you mean risk/reward ratio is much lower or the reward/risk ratio is much higher now

^^^idiot trying to sound all educated and shit