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"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.

"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

If you use your own BES, perhaps.
But most consumers don't.

See:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/12/blackberry-idUSN1213222020100812

This is where governments are demanding access. They are not worried that Ford or Boeing or
Tata Motors employees are plotting terror events. They are worried about consumer devices
running on Rim's own network and servers.

If you are unaware of this, you haven't been paying attention.

Yeah? Even now Chrome has overtaken FF in the UK with the writing clearly on the wall for the rest of the world?

Gates is more than making up for any real & perceived evils with his philanthropy work:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/08/us-wealth-gates-philanthropy-idUSTRE72668V20110308

Destroy Android or fund research for vaccines that don't require refrigeration?

Say what you will about Gates, but his targeted spending of most of his vast wealth should be mentioned more than what he did at the company he hasn't been at the helm of since 2000, (2008 if you need to nitpick).

Most assuredly you have to have asshole qualities to reach Gates' or Jobs' stature, but what each intend(ed) to do with BILLIONS says a lot about each character.

Nokia was considering Android and dumped it, because it was too painful.

I think you're missing something about Microsoft and their bank balance - this article says it best:

Wall Street had favored the popular Android system as the quick and more crowd-pleasing option. Instead, Nokia's alignment with Microsoft ties it to a partner that has deep pockets but very limited success with its Windows phones.

yes, that was their view; wall street analysts can't have deep insight in every company they write about, and here they are also missing some obvious points. As replied to the other post:

Nokia owns Navteq (they sell map data). With focus on Android this asset would be wasted. They provide an offline navigation software. Incidentally I'm working on the location where this software is implemented. This would have been wasted as well. Nokia has a business unit around location based services. This is direct competition to Google and would have been wasted. OTOH, Bing maps is already using Navteq data for some time, MS and Nokia are both cooperating with Yahoo for quite some time, etc. All this is public available information, and I think it is enough reason to turn down Android.

And also over here:

[Nokia CEO Stephen] Elop said one of the key topics in the talks on doing a deal with Microsoft was convincing Nokia that it could reach "a very low price point."

Surely this is an important factor. Only it's not about the 1 billion, but about the hardware requirements / the costs to produce a device. The average prices for smartphones are declining, and when MS sticks to strong hardware requirements it is not possible to compete in these price segment. With WP "Tango" it will be possible to serve this market as well, and I guess that Nokia got a got deal for the license per device.

Nokia was considering Android and dumped it, because it was too painful.

I think you're missing something about Microsoft and their bank balance - this article says it best:

Wall Street had favored the popular Android system as the quick and more crowd-pleasing option. Instead, Nokia's alignment with Microsoft ties it to a partner that has deep pockets but very limited success with its Windows phones.

And also over here:

[Nokia CEO Stephen] Elop said one of the key topics in the talks on doing a deal with Microsoft was convincing Nokia that it could reach "a very low price point."

Are you stating that the Government can operate outside of its specific grants when it deems such actions necessary? When this becomes accepted policy then there is nothing to restrain the government from locking up and executing its own citizens (I tried to find an article which described the method for which the Nazis first initiated such policies and compared them to this panel). Under the Constitution when there is something that needs to be changed there is a clear ratification process. Every dictator throughout history has made these same arguments; that needs arise that are greater than granted powers, thus we must ignore the grants.

That said, there are many aspects of Interstate commerce that can be regulated, including nuclear materials, and states can perform duties as well. Nevada certainly has rejected Yucca Mountain, local California residents hated Rancho Seco, and Oregon residents would have eventually shut down Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, so it's not like they aren't paying attention .

The Time headline says "Muammar Gaddafi Is Dead, Says Libya PM; Tripoli Celebrates". If you read Pravda headlines from the 1980s, 1970s etc., the commissars publishing it would have been ashamed to put a headline like this. I guess not in the US though. It's kind of like that strange 1990 New York Times headline when the FSLN lost in Nicaragua, "Americans United in Joy, But Divided Over Policy." The Reuters headline about this is "Libya's Gaddafi caught hiding like a 'rat'". Headlines like that make me long for the subtlety of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer.

If Tripoli was to be so celebratory over this, why did it take so long for the rebels to take Tripoli? Why was the bombing of the US, UK, France and so forth needed?

We always hear in the news about how Muslim fanatics are who we should be scared of, but it seems that it's always those Arabs who came to power on secular, pan-Arab nationalist, sort of leftish rhetoric (Mossadegh, Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi) who industrialized western countries intervene in to overthrow their governments. We can see the results - Mossadegh was replaced eventually by Islamicized Iran, Iraq went from a secular government to a much more Islamicized one (in its constitution, ruling political parties etc.) under US domination, and now another secular Arab government has fallen at the hands of western intervention and some local myrmidons. Meanwhile the most Islamicized Arab countries like Saudi Arabia are completely protected and supported by the west - including the US military and intelligence helping to brutally put down Arab Spring protests against the dictatorship there, events which were little reported in the corporate press. Even parties like Hamas were originally encouraged and secretly funded by Israel. And of course, Osama bin Laden was financed and armed by the US in the 1970s. Anyone in the Arab world can see how the western countries see their main enemy as Arab secular nationalists. Yet the corporate media in these western countries tries to create fear of the Islamic fundamentalists that these same western countries have worked to develop. The same mass of people who swallow that would easily swallow that "Muammar Gaddafi Is Dead, Says Libya PM; Tripoli Celebrates" and "Libya's Gaddafi caught hiding like a 'rat'" are headlines coming from objective, equanimous news organizations.

First, Felix Salmon says USA Today's numbers are wrong, and student loans are around $600 billion: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/19/fact-and-fiction-about-student-loans/. But it still is a big number.

Here's the current system: if someone with a pulse wants to go to a for-profit school, he will get in. He will pay high tuition, almost all covered by student loans. He gets a worthless degree and cannot get a job. But federal student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so his life is now ruined.

There's some blame to go to the student, he should have known better. But chances are this is a young kid, and his first exposure to the adult world is a recruiter telling him he's smart, he's going places, he just needs to graduate college, preferably this really expensive for-profit school. He's been preyed upon as well. And this used to be considered fraud, preying on vulnerable people. If a guy went around to old ladies selling them useless junk, we used to toss him in jail. I'm not sure why our attitudes have changed.

I think federal student loans need a major overhaul--right now, it's a huge giveaway to the banks and for-profit schools with students as victims. Limit federal loans to for-profit institutions to 50% of non-profit tuition (it can go higher based on merit), and force for-profit schools to be accredited every year. Just somehow change the incentive system to reduce the number of non-qualified kids funneled into expensive and useless programs. Change the law so that student loan defaults impact the school they went to: say, reduce loans in the future, with no more student loans to that school if the default rate tops 15% (or whatever number makes sense).

This is another bubble, and the popping of it will be another huge blow to the economy.

Also, kids need to told loudly: getting a degree from a school not competitive in the field is not worth anything more than going to your closest state school. Expensive schools that aren't competitive to get in are just a place for rich kids to go get drunk. Don't take out loans to go to those schools!

The company has previously said it would charge only the cost of manufacturing it plus a 5 percent mark-up, which would be reinvested into tropical disease research. "We are not going to make any money from this project," Witty said.

That's a big post full of ad hominem, so I'll respond to the meaningful parts:

i actually thought ... that was a real ipad in that movie and they just took decades to release it.

The point of a trademark or design patent is to establish a distinctive appearance, so that it is clear at a quick glance what product you're seeing. It could be the logo, or the shape of a bottle, or something more general, like a color or a particular plaid. In essence, a trademark protects a distinctive aspect of a product, and a design patent protects a distinctive product in particular.

The entire point of this thread is to point out that the design patent for the iPad really only applies to the iPad, and the Galaxy Tab is clearly a copy. The "prior art" in 2001 is so different, even from a large distance, that it is not enough to invalidate the design patent.

So we see a difference between the ipad and the 2001 device, which we accept differentiates them. We also have the beveled edge which differs significantly between the ipad and the galaxy, yet only you fail to accept that as a difference.

It's certainly a difference, just not one that matters. The Galaxy Tab is also missing a large apple on the back, but nobody's going to notice that when walking past a user on the street. Similarly, the only way to notice the different bevel is a close comparison. The appearance of an iPad is iconic. The different bevel does not significantly differentiate the two. Yes, a blind person could tell the difference, but the iPad isn't being heavily marketed for blind people, is it?

i was saying there is a very obvious difference in profile between the 2001 device and the ipad just as there is a very obvious difference between the aspect ratio of the ipad and galaxy.

This is actually the first time I realized they had different aspect ratios. Thanks for the information. Given that it's taken over a year for a potential customer (who was looking into buying a tablet this past spring, then decided against it) to notice, I'm going to go ahead and lump this in the "subtle difference" category as well.

it's a square on the button, not a fucking house you blind idiot

Oh hey, it is. Sorry about that. The extent of my Apple product ownership is an iPod Touch that I keep out in my car. I've used an iPad, and as mentioned earlier I was looking at buying one. I must not have been paying close attention to the exact picture used, and my references from this thread have been found through Google.

Again, that's the whole idea behind a patented design: A potential customer should be able to recognize the product by its appearance from a casual glance.

The point is...

The point is there are a number of similarities and differences between the two real devices, but on the whole the differences are far smaller than the similarities. The similarities outweigh the differences so much that the two are indistinguishable at a distance of only 10 feet. Conversely, the differences between the modern devices and the tablets from 2001 are much more pronounced, to the point where even from 10 feet away they are clearly not the same product.

It's not a question of whether there are differences or not. It's a question of whether the differences are significant enough to distinguish the pro

False sense of security.

There have been studies, and more well known, mythbusters did an episode on something very similar (is talking on a cellphone while driving just as bad as drinking and driving), and while mythbusters is a bit hollywood science at times, they confirmed the myth. Texting isn't that far off. And in other studies, is just as bad.

But don't take my word for it, take a look at all the studies and materials.

There's a reason why texting/talking on the phone is rapidly becoming illegal while driving. But hey! Maybe in Nebraska, facts and truths aren't the norm!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/13/us-usa-tax-repatriation-idUSTRE79C71820111013

Yep... this would be such a GREAT stimulus for jobs..

For me personally, I reject "God did it" because we have better answers now, and our only evidence for "God did it" is your ancient book of choice

We have NO answers now as to "where did matter come from, or how". Stephen Hawking recently (last year) stated,
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist"

The problem is he has no proof for his idea, and noone else has any better ideas, and everyone is basically just saying "nevertheless, we somehow know it CANT have been an initial creator called God. It HAS to be something else, even if we dont know what". That attitude is quite ridiculous.

I have found it to be true that in order to deny the existence of God, one must generally deny causality, or deny it in certain circumstances-- I understand "Bell's theorem" is used to argue this, and not being a physicist I cannot comment on that. I would note that most people would probably balk if presented with the idea that "In order to reject God, you must deny causal relationships".

If youre looking for reasons why I find that book to be self-validating, I would note that, for one, unlike intuition and other sources of information which try to tell us that man is correctable, perfectible, and intrinsically good (which fails to account for basically all of human history), the Bible seems to offer insights as to the nature of man, and his will, that are dead on. It correctly understands that while government is a Good Thing, it is also corruptible and inevitably falls prey to corruption. It understands that there are a great many Good Things (wealth, sex, authority), but that man's instinct is to turn them towards evil-- greed, adultery, oppression, etc. There is noone in the Bible-- apart from Jesus-- who is set up to be without fault. Even those it labels "men of God" and "righteous" are, in their own narrative, shown to be terribly sinful folks (David, for example, being a murdering adulterer). Even Peter and Paul are shown to be just men, with their own many failings.

I am of the opinion that if two theories offer up predictions, and one of them is consistently wrong, and the other right, then the second theory is the most sound and the most likely correct. I find that when it gets to the question "what are we, fundamentally", the Bible is dead on.

What next though? Jacob Appelbaum gets to disappear w a black bag?

Geez, dude, getting a little hyperbolic there? It's not like the federal government is writing up secret hit lists on American citizens or anything.

Oh, wait...

That would not have helped in this case, the police looked at text messages he had sent/received. The case was initially from 2007 before smartphones were big. Also, I suspect that if your phone is password protected, there may be greater legal burden on the police. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/03/us-usa-police-textmessages-idUSTRE7923T120111003

Rival smartphone makers could exploit a rare letdown by Apple in the launch of its new iPhone 4S model, which failed to wow fans, and grab a bigger share of the most lucrative part of the phone market.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/apple-iphone-4s-opens-door-competitors-analyst-210516885.html

"It's certainly a disappointment given the fact that people were looking for a new iteration to be number 5 in this case," says David Garrity, principal at GVA Research.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576610991978907616.html

"Underwhelming is the word that hit me," said Endpoint Technologies Associates analyst Roger Kay.

The letdown was echoed in the early performance of Apple's shares, which fell as much as 5% Tuesday and finished down 0.6% at $372.50 at 4 p.m. trading even as the broader market rose.

The above comment should be moderated to +100000000000 trillion.

Terrible information coming out on what really happens when the US government wants to kill a person, a US citizen in this case.

From Wikipedia:
Ericsson is currently the world's largest mobile telecommunications equipment vendor with a market share of 35%.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/17/us-mobile-fair-network-equipment-idUSTRE61G0DS20100217

Maybe it's easier in Europe?

Keep in mind that Apple is trying to block Samsung from selling the Galaxy 2 S here in the US.

Riess, who was still in his 20s when the groundbreaking research was published, said he told his daughter, 7, that winning the Nobel prize was "like getting a great big gold sticker on your homework."

Even if the reservoirs had been empty there would have still been flooding. It may not have been quite as bad but it would have happened.

Regarding crop yields:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-farming-floods-arkansas-idUSTRE77T02P20110830
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0511/Mississippi-flooding-drowns-crops-and-casinos-What-s-the-economic-toll
http://www.estormwater.com/Flooding-on-the-Farm-article9528

It may not have been as bad as first feared but lots of farmers took it in the shorts this year because of the flooding.

In 2008, Zuckerberg hosted Obama.

According to open secrets, Facebook employees support Democrats 97% of the time. But Zuckerberg personally hadn't donated enough to show up on the Fed's radar in 2008 or 2010.

What, no post for the old, white guy in Michigan with over 4K lbs. of explosives? Whose plan was "when the government gets taken over, we will be mercenaries".

When you hear the word "play", don't think World of Warcraft; think golf. Or consider the full word "playbook" in the context of football, but when you think of football think executive suite at an NFL stadium.

Wow, that argument is almost as convincing as the one about 'keeping RIM in the corporate conversation'. Why would a playbook be more suited to a golf course, than the phone the executive already have - is there some masterful golf app tailored to the golfing style of company executives available? Does it come with a free executive caddy? The name sums it up really - a supposedly corporate device named as if it were a toy.

The Playbook is a completely directionless product which arrived without an email app (from RIM and no email!!), has done nothing to attract developers, is overpriced compared to the competition, and will not properly integrate with the Android ecosystem despite throwing away any possibility of its own app ecosystem long-term by saying they will support android. It is dead on arrival, and RIM would have done better not to produce it, as it shows just how incompetent and out of touch they are. Relying on a phone just to do email is a good example of how out of touch they are. They've recently massively dropped the price to clear inventory, but it will end in ignominious defeat soon enough when they cancel it and retreat to the phone market.

The key to tablets is their use-case: web, email, content consumption and apps. On none of those except perhaps web browser is the RIM tablet even remotely convincing out of the box.

There are rumours they have already cancelled production, which they should have done before it launched:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/rim-playbook-idUSS1E78S0TA20110929

James Cameron believes that 3D aids in memory creation. He stated that “ 3D is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2D viewing doesn’t.” An Advertising study showed approx. the same increased retention in relation to 3D advertising.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/idUS209878+19-May-2011+MW20110519

I don't doubt that it can help education.

You are a little bit behind on the news. The Yuan hasn't been pegged to the dollar for a while. The US doesn't like this, but they can no longer stop it. Of course this never makes the mainstream "AMERICA FUCK YEAH" news channels.

"ou could have dropped it to $199 and sold all your inventory, made twice as much money and not piss off customers. " based on what? WTF do you base 199 would sell out? hmm? fucking nothing, that's what. Idiot.

When I look at their sales, their sales channel, I can see exactly why they chose 99 dollars. No other 99 dollar table sells that fast, and 199 tables are even worse. But no, you don't look at the industry, and your hubris doesn't let you think "hmmm, I wonder why they chose 99 dollars?" no, you just go to 'stupid'.

Are you kidding? There is no other tablet even close to the Touchpad's specs for under $200. Dual core 1.2ghz, 9.7" multi-touch capacitive screen, 16gb, webcam, 802.11a/b/g/n, bluetooth. Closest thing with those specs is a $500 iPad 2.

They're still selling for over $200 on Ebay now even though everyone knows people bought them for $99

$99 was so low that HP is being sued by stockholders for misleading them.

ah you're AC! dammit i shouldn't even respond to you trolls

>>Gay marriage is a more complicated issue, that doesn't fall cleanly along philosophical lines.

Gay marriage is a fairly simple issue. A minority of Americans are still being denied the legal and financial benefits of marriage because, until very recently, the majority of Americans preferred to treat them like second class citizens. The fact that we haven't yet corrected this injustice is a national embarrassment.

Because they partnered with Microsoft in this endeavor.

When did Apple partner with Microsoft? What did I miss?

Here is the Web of Mobile Patent Lawsuits. How on earth is Microsoft and Apple partners?

A consortium including both Apple and Microsoft bid against Google for patents from Nortel and Novell, I believe this is what he is referring to, it was very highly publicized.

Because they partnered with Microsoft in this endeavor.

When did Apple partner with Microsoft? What did I miss?

Here is the Web of Mobile Patent Lawsuits. How on earth is Microsoft and Apple partners?

... and this news comes right after HP published this article titled "Is HP Competing for 'Worst Board Ever' Honors?"

"Buy from us, we're more expensive" doesn't work

Indeed, what works is making stuff with disposable workers, dumping the effulgent into the nearest body of water and shipping the product to wealthy idiots that give each other huge tax breaks to install it all.

Yes, this is correct. Wait a month and you'll see that we turned the corner about a week ago.

You made that statement on the 31st March 2011, which means you claim all these things were done by 24th March 2011. It's not my fault that you made a lazy and vague point to make your grandiose statement. Your bullshit is on the record as is you inability to define what you mean by your statement and your subsequent attempts to backpedal and massage some meaning into your statement as new information becomes available and then claim that you were right all along to satisfy your sense of self importance and attempt to recover some dignity. You took a gamble that I didn't have any facts to present and that I would back down like everyone else you have bludgeoned with your arrogance, that is so sickening to watch, and you turned out looking like a fool.

Why don't you shut up and do step one. Show that my statement was false? I can wait.

First, I've already done that here.

Second, looking back to June a sharp rise in radiation meant they couldn't even get near the plant. So almost three months after your claim it still hadn't "turned a corner"

Third, Spontaneous criticality is still occurring at the sites, disturbingly, it is suspected that this is also happening in the spent fuel cooling pools. That's not even under control. The evidence; the site is still outputting radiocesium. Source Tepco report (June 20 – June 28: approx. 1 billion Bq/hr (1.0 x 109)) Jul/Aug/Sep data not available

Fourth, Tepco's Official Plan for dealing with the accident has, ironically, has not achieved Step One "Maintain Stable Cooling" (So *you* can shut up now) Source; Japan Prime Ministers Office.

Fifth, Overall, the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious. Source IAEA

Sixth; Plant has not yet acheived a cold shut down - Source Japan Prime Minister report on Fukushima.

Bloomberg, Reuters, Summary of Reactor Status (2 June 2011) - Presentation Transcript etc etc

There is so much more that tells us the corner hasn't been turned yet, not even a cold shutdown has been achieved yet. The workers can't even get into the plant to assess the damage yet but you will likely come up with some word twist to justify your position. The worst thing about your position is you show no respect for the workers there who continue to risk their lives to bring the situation under control.

You are lost.

Of course it's not. Not only is it not free in the RMS sense of the world, withholding source is not the openness Google always claimed it was promoting.

However it is still the most open out there, or like Stallman said the less bad. In fact the last time I checked gnu.org had an article about Android Development on its first page. Perhaps Android is not free as the GNU project would like, perhaps Google is not good as someone likes to think, but the remaining is far worse: MS and Apple are a nightmare, Novell, Oracle and all the other big players are pretty bad.

The only reason it got so much support from techies is because it runs on Linux, and Google's PR department convinced them that it represented the usual unrealistic OSS fantasies about free ecosystems.

No, it got so much support because everyone can write and release an application for it. Not only that, everyone can write and release an application for Android using free software and free software libraries.

Apple is still the #1 smartphone vendor

No. There's a "still" too much. Apple became the number 1 just in the last quarter when it took over Nokia, thanks Microsoft for this. However it's a head to head with Samsung, which is growing much faster (thanks to Android by the way), so it could be a very short lived lead.

and iOS the #1 mobile operating system counting iPads, iPhones, and iPods.

[citation needed], in the smartphone market Android is selling 2.5 times iOS. I smell bullshit here:
Q3 2011 (millions)
iPad 9.25
iPhone 20.34
iPod 7.54
---------iOs total 37.13
Android smartphones ~50
But probably you have got some secret figures that show heavy negative sales for android tablets...

What started out as a well-supported observation that the earth was starting to slowly warm

This isn't even true; global temperatures haven't risen since 1998. This contradicts computer simulation--the primary source of current global warming consensus--to such a degree that climate scientists are searching for hypotheses to explain the missing heat. So now people are coming up with explanations for the observations that don't match their predictions. Truly the scientific method at work.

Note that the the research in the article I linked also comes exclusively from a computer simulation; there isn't actually any recorded observation that the "missing heat" is in the oceans. It's just a guess. I suspect many environmentalists are unaware that global warming consensus comes entirely from simulations written by humans and not actual recorded observation.

I think that this choice has a lot to do with politics. It's part of the row that includes the Turkey-Israel harsh diatribe and the last statements about Cyprus. It's a warning: Israel is still our ally.

I think that this choice has a lot to do with politics. It's part of the row that includes the Turkey-Israel harsh diatribe and the last statements about Cyprus. It's a warning: Israel is still our ally.

How is this the first carnivore they did this with? Is this old news? I read about this with a dog several months ago.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/us-korea-dog-idUSTRE76Q1MK20110727

a strong signal transmitted from the north disrupted GPS in the area surrounding the position of the RC-7B aircraft.

Source? It doesn't say anything about what kind of aircraft it was in TFA. And why isn't the US rebuttal in the summary? From an anonymous DOD employee:

"We have no indication that any aircraft at the time of, or in the vicinity of, this alleged incident was forced to land on an emergency basis," the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There was 'no direct evidence' that the computer trading in itself increased volatility, it said, but in specific circumstances it was possible for a series of events with 'undesired interactions and outcomes' to occur and cause massive damage.

Apparently they are unaware of the 1000 point drop in the Dow last year that appears to have been caused by HFT.

Just to clarify: they're not trying to get a law passed that gets rid of internet sales taxes, they're trying to get a federal law passed that regulates internet sales taxes for all companies.

In other words, they don't want to have to charge sales tax in California if their competitors who don't have operations there don't have to. They don't mind so much if it's an even playing field among online retailers.

At least $400M.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/26/technology/tim_cook_stock_bonus/index.htm

In actuality, 8 million shares @ ~$400.

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/officerProfile?symbol=AAPL.O&officerId=88090

Sorry, but I've conservatives do not own the patent on bigotry. I've met more bigoted Democrats in my time than Republicans. Although, it's primarily because Democrats can get away with it.

Really? Citation needed.

See how that works? I suppose the difference is that I am referring to actual cases of obviously right-wing terrorism. Hell, I could pad this sentence out with more words all day, but I think my point is made.

Of course, I am sure these acts are all perpetrated by democrats who happen to share the same phobias and hatred that republicans have adopted as their political platform. I'm sure of it. Right? Because if even a few were conservatives acting out their hate rhetoric, that would be a lot worse than getting coffee spilled on you by some crazy guy, I think you can agree.

So I should be punished for the actions of people over a century ago? Should we jail German children for the Holocaust? Oh, and I should also mention that Lincoln was a Republican. George Wallace was a Democrat. Given that, why are you NOT a Republican. Why is that Democrats believe themselves victimized for the slightest resistance after centuries of victimization of all those around them?

Please notice, I said nothing about Republicans or Democrats. I said, very clearly, the right. The parties changed places in the early half of the century because of the growing conservatism in the Republican party. But then, of course, you know this; you are just willfully ignorant to make a point.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my question.

Well, we'll see about that. If the merger doesn't go through, T-Mo's getting $6 billion.

Global figures:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-smartphones-research-idUSTRE7704MS20110801

US figures:
http://phandroid.com/2011/08/31/android-tops-comscores-us-market-share-chart/

I know the will get Assange one way or another. They just created the circumstance to have him charged in Australia - their one sure bet.

If that does happen, it'll be Assange's own fault. I don't buy for a minute that shadowy TLAs forced him into this; they just gave him an excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/02/us-wikileaks-cables-assange-idUSTRE7816SM20110902

Unless you're talking about farts, you are wrong. For example http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/01/us-obama-budget-oil-idUSTRE6103RM20100201

Compare this sentence from your link :

"Apple reported income of $18.5 billion and paid $2.7 billion in income taxes, or about 15 percent. "

With this article "Some U.S. firms paid more to CEOs than taxes: study." :

* eBay whose CEO John Donahoe made $12.4 million, but which reported a $131 million refund on its 2010 current U.S. taxes.
* Boeing, which paid CEO Jim McNerney $13.8 million, sent in $13 million in federal income taxes, and spent $20.8 million on lobbying and campaign spending
* General Electric where CEO Jeff Immelt earned $15.2 million in 2010, while the company got a $3.3 billion federal refund and invested $41.8 million in its own lobbying and political campaigns