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Elop already sold all MS stock and bought 150K Nokia stock on 17th of February.

Nuclear sounds good in theory but in practice there are problems, long-term residual ones. NIMBY is a term that can be an excuse to not take responsibility, it can also be used to dismiss real concerns. Just ask those who have actually, not theoretically, mined it. For example: the damage to humans and groundwater from nuclear mining in New Mexico

As opposed to damage to humans and groundwater from drilling for "clean" natural gas.
Or from mountaintop removal for "safer" coal mining.
Or the risks associated with more traditional coal mining.
And finally there's the somewhat controversial issue of carbon dioxide emissions from coal and oil.

Ultimately, any form of energy production will have its inherent risks and we as a society have to choose if the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks are of oil are varied and diverse and coal is not much better and in some ways worse. The risks of solar, wind, and even nuclear energy pale by comparison. We won't solve our problems by picking winners and losers but by investing in a wide variety of alternatives rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket.

I personally like the promise of Thorium nuclear power but I'm skeptical of its lofty promises. I doubt if we'll know for sure how practical it is until billions of dollars have been poured into it and dozens of plants are in operation. That's just the nature of our energy hungry culture.

I'm sure they're doing a great job for those who can afford it. But what about the estimated 45,000 people who die every year for lack of health insurance? Somewhere around 45 million Americans are uninsured, or almost 15% of the population! Do you not see anything wrong with this picture?

Yeah, those subsidies clearly don't exist. That's why at one point Obama claimed he was going to cut $36.5 billion in them.

Actually, the constitutionality of warrantless GPS tracking is unclear, and courts have ruled both ways on the topic, generally depending on the facts of the case. Currently, one such case is being appealed by a defendant to the Supreme Court, which hasn't decided whether to grant cert yet.

Well, they can't very well let Ogden, Utah and Miami, Florida get too far ahead of them, can they?

Get a load of this:

http://af.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=AFJOE56900Z20090710&channelName=#a=1

Another Obama friend thrown under the bus. With friends like Obama, who needs enemies?

The "victim" was at fault in that he could have chosen to hand over the keys and call the police

In some places, it is not enough. Sao Paolo - Nov 2010

"They had to stop at the red light and then all of a sudden five people were around the car, one with a machine gun, and they opened the door and took two rucksacks and disappeared. So nobody was injured."

McLaren's Button was the victim of an attempted armed robbery about an hour earlier but his police driver smashed his way through traffic to escape when the gunmen were seen approaching.

Et tu, Brutus?

http://af.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=AFJOE56900Z20090710&channelName=#a=1

I would be worrying about my precious bodily fluids, not the internet.

He's been doing that quite enough. The whole time he's been in power, or at least the last 30 years or so, he has been obsessed with people being doped up, given alcohol, or otherwise polluted. A few days ago, he told the public to avoid any milk or Nescafe from the areas in rebellion because they had been spiked with hallucinogens.

None of this jamming stops satellite phones from working

Because satellite phones don't use radio frequencies, right? I know many commenters don't read the articles, but to completely ignore the second line of the summary really demonstrates ignorance.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH22Ak03.html

http://rescommunis.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/complaints-about-iranian-satellite-jamming/

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/06/23/letter-eutelsat-corporation

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/26/us-iran-jamming-itu-idUSTRE62P21G20100326

The Cuban government was home to an Iranian jamming program in the old Soviet facilities for years.

And the Libyans have done this before

http://www.space.com/3666-libya-pinpointed-source-months-long-satellite-jamming-2006.html

Oh don't worry I expected it. if you look at my past comments they are always evenly split between insightful and troll/flamebait, with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand and refuse to accept the truth. instead of actual debate all you get is accusations of "shill" astroturfer, etc.

And I agree wholeheartedly that Apple fanboys ain't got shit on the RDF that surrounds FOSSies as I call them. I've found there is a BIG difference between a FOSS users and a FOSSie, but sadly it seems the FOSSies are winning control and the fact that any that dare to say anything other than "Gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? It sure is Bill, and RMS's beard smells like roses!" gets modded down is just proof of that.

Is Linux ready for the masses? Sadly not by a long shot, as while Canonical has made great strides once you get past the top layer it is just a mess, and one of the reason why he is trying to ditch X-Server and GNOME for Unity/Wayland. With Windows a good 90% of problems can be solved by GUI alone, and most fixed with a simple reboot or system restore.

With Linux even trivial problems will often give you as the ONLY answer "open up bash and type" this big huge CLI mess that 1.-Assumes the users even understands half of it, 2.-The user has intimate knowledge of the hardware since it is nearly always tailored to a VERY specific chipset/hardware combo, 3.- the skill to "tweak" said "fix" because they have hardware f rev d and the fix was designed for hardware c rev b and simply won't work without tweaking, and 4.-That the user has the skill to type a huge list of arcane commands into a 70s era term with NO autocorrect or spellcheck and get everything perfectly right, with a serious risk of breaking the machine if they get anything wrong (which they will get NO visual cues before getting boned).

But if they want to look up server numbers by absolute share which is what seems to have so many butthurt by my earlier links here is the latest I could find by Gartner which shows Windows-66.8% and climbing, Linux-23.2 and falling while Unix-6.8% and falling. The other link I found with overall shows 89% Windows, 5.9% Mac, 2.05% iOS, and Linux just barely above Java ME in overall share at 0.95%.

So I'm sorry if the numbers make FOSSies all butthurt but just remember you have the power to change it by giving the customers what they want. Lose the CLI, demand a hardware abi so drivers that work in foo won't be broken in foo+1, push for better UIs and simpler layouts, etc. And for the one that says "Linux thanks to Ubuntu is ALREADY dumbed down?" if you think Ubuntu is dumbed down enough for the masses it just shows why Linux hasn't got a chance. Try Windows 7 sometime, it is simple enough my 67 year old clueless dad installed it by himself with NO assistance required and EVERYTHING "just worked". All the drivers were downloaded and installed FOR him the worst question it asked him was whether he was at home or at work (which set up the firewall policy without him having to touch it) and frankly the ONLY thing I had to do when I got there a week later was show him how to get Firefox. Hell it even pointed out he had no AV on first boot and pointed him to a free one. So I'm sorry but while Shuttleworth is making strides Ubuntu is in NO way up to that level of simple yet, it just isn't.

Facebook '09 revenue neared $800 million...The company also earned a solid net profit, in the tens of millions of dollars last year, one of the sources said.

Yes, losing money hand-over-fist, if by that you mean, making money hand-over-fist. In other words, they (as far as we can tell) are extremely fucking profitable.

The Finnish government and/or pension funds probably own oodles of shares as well; they might prefer these young whippersnappers' point 6:

End of distributed R&D. Transition to an R&D setup where 90% of all Nokia R&D takes place in only two geographical locations. One of them will be in Finland and the other will be defined later. There will be no more R&D projects with resources in multiple cities and different time zones. Only small tactical software projects will be allowed to take place outside two main R&D locations.

(emphasis mine) over Stephen Elop's plan:

Abandoning the development of its own software -- known as Symbian -- means thousands of job cuts around the world, with a dramatic reduction in research spending. In protest, hundreds of Nokia employees walked out on Friday from Nokia's offices in Tampere, central Finland.

(from Reuters).

I mean, from the perspective of the Finnish government and pension funds, it's better that Nokia keeps paying those people for their (effective or not) R&D, rather that they all go on the dole at the same time.

Pretty much every Western culture requires women to cover their breasts while men can leave theirs bare. I'm not sure of the anthropological history of this particular example, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had Judeo-Christian roots. All cultures have screwy social norms. Most members of that culture can't recognize them.

Yeah seriously, check out what the Chinese used to do to girls.

If you want REALLY weird, check out the Mormons and their Magic Underwear. These freaks also practice "baptism by proxy", wherein they "baptize" dead people using a "stand-in" so that every "family member of a Mormon" gets a "Mormon Baptism"... turns out every few years, some German Mormon nutter gets it into their head to baptize Hitler, then they excommunicate him, then the cycle repeats.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that "consumption, storage, and transfusion" of blood is 100% verboten. They won't even pre-donate their own blood if they have to go in for a surgery where there may be extra blood needed.

As for the whole deal about cultures and what they will sexualize... I hereby direct you to Rule 34. Or Rule 34. Or Rule 34. Rule 34. In other words, Rule 34.

Clear?

The actual numbers are less than half of that: Additional income, sales, and property taxes are assessed at the state and local levels. In the most recent year, overall tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was 26.9 percent. That's from the liberal Heritage foundation ranking page for the US ( http://www.heritage.org/index/Country/UnitedStates )

There is something wrong with your link. But let's say that number is right for the federal government. Add in state spending, which obviously differs by state, but let's say New York. In 2010 New York state spending was $283 B with a state GDP of $1114 B, which means state taxes had to be about 25% to cover the spending. (New York seems to be pretty typical, e.g. Alaska 36%, Mississippi 28%, New Jersey 21%, Oklahoma 21%, Oregon 26%, etc.) For New York, 26.9% and 25% is 51.9%. Alaska would be 62.9%. Admittedly it looks like the typical state is in the neighborhood of 50% and I claimed 60%, but it's hardly "less than half of that" and there do exist states with total taxation in excess of 60% of state GDP between state and federal taxes.

Nope, the 26.9% is inclusive of state and local taxes. Federal taxes last year were about 15% of GDP (they're usually closer to 18% or so:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/12/06/chart-of-the-day-u-s-taxes/

Even the Scandinavian countries, which have the highest tax rates in the industrialized world aren't as high as what you're asserting for the US. Our effective tax rate is lower than it's been in decades, and is quite low for a modern industrialized country.

Taking a 10% deficit as the baseline also massively overstates the structural problem. Yes, the past 2 years have had those ~10% deficits, but unless you're predicting that the economic slump that we're just now starting to recover from will go on in perpetuity, or get worse, it's not a reasonable baseline.

The 10% deficits are the current reality. Unless your point is to just continue to run those kind of deficits today and for the next few years and then try to pay for them with tax increases five or ten years from now?

Um, yes. First, as the economy recovers, tax receipts increase and social spending for the impacted citizens will drop significantly, both which will significantly improve the deficit. Increasing taxes or decreasing spending when the economy is sucking wind is a recipe for making things worse (which actually serves to make deficits worse and costs more in the long term due to the extra damage to the economy and workforce).

Moreover, there are differences between today and recent history. Right now debt as a percent of GDP is higher than it has been since the end of WWII, and unless we make significant cuts today it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's already about twice what it was when Regan took office. The only reason the interest isn't a present catastrophe is that interest rates are so low, and if the economy starts to recover then interest rates go back up and servicing the debt is going to seriously cut into the tax windfall that economic growth might otherwise produce.

Add to that the baby boomers retiring and removing their productive capacity (and income tax payments) while at the same time putting severe stress on social security and medicare as they start collecting rather than paying in.

Well, again, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, so in terms of a discussion about deficits, it's irrelevant. In terms of interest rates, sure, if rates increase it makes interest payments go up. That being said, that only becomes a problem if we either can't pay for it, or we're so politically dysfunctional that we won't. Japan has a much higher debt to GDP ratio (more than twi

Nokia Oyj announced that in connection with the need to reduce the operating costs as well as costs for research and development, it plans to reduce personnel as soon as possible.

2011-02-11

go read the government's statement that this stuff doesn't harm shit and then try to tell me that keller's being factual.. They're focusing on "OMG assange is putting names on the documents" which is both a: a lie, and b: prevents the focus on the fact that it's been corporate pressure that has moved government's hand to attack wikileaks, who doesnt' damage shit and merely brings out true transparency.

Go read what Assange said himself instead of propaganda and what do you see? from the article:

Kroft: The Pentagon said that they’ve gone through all of these documents and they found the names of 300 people.
Assange: Well, that’s new public information to us. It’s possible that there are 300 names in the publically released Afghan material. We don’t pretend that that process is absolutely perfect. We did hold back one in five documents for extra harm minimization review and we also improved our process. So, when Iraq came around there was not even a single name in it.

According to an article at Reuters the dispute is "uncollected sales taxes for purchases that its residents made" from December 2005 to December 2009. The $269 million figure also includes interests and penalties.

The FCC is going to redirect $8 billion already in hand from POTS to broadband. In addition to a dictionary, try cracking open a newspaper.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/08/idUSN0828392120110208

While many may say "this is just a stunt" or whatever, regardless if it is or not it was interesting none-the-less. There have been many instances of technology being implanted into people lately, especially in and around the head. While perhaps not as invasive and technical as a chip implant that gives the blind the ability to see, I think the day of artificial technological implants of this type are just around the corner. This sort of trial and error with the implanting of hardware on the human body is necessary for us to get an idea of what the human body will accept and reject, and what procedures of implantation can help reduce the chances of rejection.

Ahh yes, the Libertardian utopia of no taxes and yet somehow maintaining a working society. Texas beat you to it, and its working out wonderfully.

I don't think you're aware of the latest plan for alternative energy.

So, what you're saying is that if we can eliminate a virus to within five nines of total dead, the 0.001% won't be around to cause havoc... The polio vaccine didn't eradicate polio; in fact, new outbreaks in 3rd world countries have occurred, how long until a mutation renders the current vaccines against polio ineffective?

100 years? More? Meh, you won't be alive then, what do you care.

Oh, and Smallpox is totally not a problem anymore.

Those 2010 outbreaks are surely just flukes. No cause for alarm folks, we've got that whole biology thing understood, constrained and conquered.
</sarcasm>

Hint: even your highly esteemed Wikipedia has a list of epidemics. Cholera in 2009? Bubonic Plague in 2008?! WTF!

You're deluding yourself If you think any thing short of tens of generations of world wide quality health care improvements are going to eradicate some of these diseases.

Vaccinating only a percentage of the populous? Don't make me laugh. Chances are, the viruses will evolve faster due to our forcing the hand of natural selection... But who cares, at least you're vaccinated, right?

That's an awful nice schedule you got there, Senator, be a shame if someone were to put you on the No Fly list!

Particularly worrying is the fact that recent developments suggest that they could very easily do exactly that - oversight seems to be pretty much non-existent. Unfortunately, the news media seem less than concerned about this one - I'm not suggesting any government conspiracy, it's just surprising given their common cries of "the sky is falling" to boost sales.

And why is that cheating? Sounds like simple observance in an effort to get improve results.

It's cheating in my book. I suggest you look into your own heart and make your own decision. Regardless of what you think, cheating is in Microsoft's DNA and this is because Microsoft is moulded in the image of its founder.

Don't get me wrong, Google is not pristine. I witnessed cheating of various kinds while I worked there, mostly connected with personal advancement. However, cheating in the search engine is explicitly banned. It is not in Google's DNA to cheat at its core business. This is just based on my own observations of course, I certainly did not delve into every little crack of the organization. But this aspect of Google's corporate culture is very much front and center. Naturally in an organization of that size things are bound to slip through the cracks. I do not believe that such behaviour is pervasive at Google, whereas it is at Microsoft, and there it seems even to be glorified, or perhaps a precondition of maintaining a high career velocity.

First modern tool that comes to mind that won't be getting much use anymore is Paul Allen's yacht's helocopter

How is 72% still teaching superstition any better? I went to a catholic school and they taught evolution as fact, of course there was a religion class but biology was science.

That's because Roman Catholic Church officially supports science, and supports proper scientific education regarding evolution.

Considering that Android users use more data, it's a safe bet that Verizon's network can handle the load.

Really? A safe bet? Considering that iPhones have outpaced all Verizon smartphones combined in sales, I'm not going to hold my breath.

My guess is that Android power users bring up the average for Android because there are "basic" users on Android. In my experience, I know a lot of iPhone users that hardly use data because they use their iPhone mostly for phone calls and email. I imagine the equivalent of those people on Verizon are mostly using Blackberry's.

WTF? Did I just enter an alternative universe where google doesn't collect ridiculous amounts of information on everybody and have already given police forces bundles of information on people and only recently it was discovered hackers got in to their email system by using the back-door they put in. They've only just started too, see last link.

Sources: U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google

Google's private data grab means big legal trouble

Schmidt offers Google's most chilling Big Brother scenario yet

We smashed the NAZIs

One would think that's the case then you run across this: Hitler's last bodyguard gives up on fan mail

Considering that Android users use more data, it's a safe bet that Verizon's network can handle the load.

They are suing Tivo in Seattle as well.
From the article:

SEATTLE, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) sued digital video recorder company TiVo Inc (TIVO.O) on Monday...

The claims of patent infringement, made in federal court in Seattle...

emphasis mine...

and if you don't think Putin still runs the show, there's a bridge I'd like to speak to you about...

Putin *clearly* runs the show and has been working on amending the Russian Constitution to do away with the pesky term limit rule. Just recently hinted he might run in 2012.

Googling for Putin and constitutional changes brings up the Reuters link as well as numerous articles on the subject back when the PM job was 'created' for him in 2007/2008. Not a lot since, which is a wee bit telling since Putin/Medvedev have a habit of closing newspapers they don't like.

Butchered? Civilians, children and reporters butchered with hollow point bullets, you're fine with that. Showing the world it's happening, you call that butchery.

Let me guess.... "collateral murder"?

The "civilians" were armed insurgents, apparently associated with running firefights and rocket attacks through the night. They were also probably in violation of curfew, which would once again make them targets. (You noticed how empty the streets were, right?)

The children should have been left behind by the insurgents attempting to rescue their comrades.

By accompanying the insurgents, and without marking themselves, the reporters made themselves targets. They weren't attacked because they were reporters. That was a risk they took upon themselves when they decided to accompany violent extremists fighting against the Iraqi government.

The lot of them were apparently engaged with the apache's 30mm automatic cannon. The military doesn't use hollow point bullets (Geneva & Hague Conventions, and all that).

2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as U.S. Forces Clash With Militias

Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry....

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

''There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

Butchery? No. If you want to know true butchery, look at Al Qaeda's attack on the Yezidi.

A U.S. air strike killed a senior al Qaeda militant who masterminded truck bombings on Iraq's minority Yazidi community last month that killed more than 400 people, the military said on Sunday.

"On September 3, a coalition air strike killed the terrorist responsible for the planning and conducting of the horrific attack against the Yazidis in northern Iraq on August 14," military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a news conference.

Iraq's government has put the death toll at 411 from the suicide bombings, although the Iraqi Red Crescent has said it could be more than 500. The bombings in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera were the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A U.S. military statement named the mastermind as Abu Mohammad al-Afri, adding he was the al Qaeda "emir", or prince, in the area where the bombings took place.

Or Al Qaeda's attacks on markets: Al Qaeda use two Down's syndrome women to blow up 99 people in Baghdad markets

Do you have any words for Al Qaeda's actions? Genocidal might fit, as they want to rub out the Yezidi as a people & belief system. What about the attack on the market?

Israel has a huge defense industry, they even make their own tanks (the Merkava, it's huge and carries infantry). The Palestinians are generally doing what they can as well (making their own rockets to fire into Israel, called the Qassam).

Cutting off military imports to these guys won't work, I suspect even if you removed all the weapons they'd still throw rocks at each other... oh wait.. they're already doing that.

Fish and Game Officials Hopeful Wolf Attacks Will Soon Stop

Wolves attack joggers' dogs on Fort Rich

Bold Anchorage wolves attack dogs, circle joggers

Woman, dogs attacked by Alaskan wolves

Teacher killed by wolves in Alaska, police say

Awww man, you only asked for one.

This is actually a TORX bit, and yes has been around since the 70s and in Europe is used in all sorts of electronics as a deterrent to casual fiddling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx

Actually, if you scrolled down to the "Pentalobular" picture on the page you referenced and clicked on it, you would get to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentalobular_screw

Which states, in it's entirety:

A pentalobular screw is a five-pointed security screw being implemented by Apple in its products.[1] It resembles Torx but is not a Torx-Plus security screw and has no commercially available screwdriver equivalent[2].

Pentalobular screws first appeared in mid-2009, holding the battery in the MacBook Pro; smaller versions are now used on the iPhone 4 and the MacBook Air.

[edit] References

1. ^ Frauenfelder, Mark (2011-01-20). "Apple's diabolical plan to screw your iPhone". Boing Boing. http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-pl.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+(Boing+Boing). 2. ^ Madway, Gabriel (2011-01-21). "Apple tightens the screw on iPhone 4". San Francisco, California: Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLNE70K02T20110121?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r2:c0.137380:b41167378:z0. Retrieved 2011-01-21.

[edit] External Links

* iFixIt iPhone 4 Liberation Kit

So it may now be classed as a form of Torx but in fact it's a pure Apple; as someone previously noted, not an iScrew but rather a ScrewU.

Or we could stick tubes up Cow's asses to harvest methane.

I know you're being facetious, but the vast majority of a cow's methane comes from it belching. We thus only need to fit them with masks (which has to be a lot less messy :-) )

That law never went into effect.

no married priests? This week I read on a newspaper (it is in reuters too) that anglican priests becoming catholic stay married.

Of course it's not a 'completely unreasonable idea' but that doesn't mean it will actually work. We've all seen reasonable, even good, ideas falter. Lots of reasons. Bad planning, bad execution, lack of money, too much money.

Hell, throw a couple billion more and you might have something. The trick is to know when to fold. Rather reminds me of how the US planned to spend 13 billion dollars on 1000 amphibious tanks. You've got the money, honey, we've got the time.

However per http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66K6BX20100721 [reuters.com]
(Reuters) - A municipal manager in California who makes nearly $800,000 a year working for a small, poor city could draw pension payments exceeding $30 million in retirement, according to an activist who has been calling for an overhaul of the state's public pension system.

So there's a news article that claims that someone with an overt bias and incentive to distort claims, without any identified basis, that a particular thing is possible without identifying the frequency with which it occurs or even any concrete examples.

I'm less than impressed. There is no reason provided to believe that the claim is accurate, and no basis for assigning any particular significance to it even if one assumes it is exactly accurate as written (that is, it is under some combination of duration of employment, age, and lifespan after retirement factors possible for someone working at that salary to attain such a total retirement benefit.)

[In fact, since CalPERS pensions are usually annuity, if you assume a long enough lifespan, anyone drawing even the most minimal retirement can, in theory, attain any arbitrarily large total of retirement benefits.]

Per here:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/10/california-pension-promises-exceed-550.html [blogspot.com]
In 2009, the pension liability came out to $3,000 per working-age adult in the state. By 2014, it will triple to over $10,000 per working-age Californian.

And...so? Its not an unfunded liability -- most pensions in the systems are funded out of funds already deposited on behalf of the employee (the employee and employer share varies between public employers, and between bargaining units and other groupsing within those employers, that participate in CalPERS.)

The comparison made in that blog of total pension liability to number of current taxpayers (or to current tax receipts) is completely irrelevant. Total pension liabilities to the total assets in the retirement funds would be a more relevant comparison.

(Though, really, to do policy, you need to assess the health of the particular funds within the retirement systems, since even the main systems, CalPERS, has a large number of defined benefit and defined contribution retirement funds which are separate funds with separate policies set in law -- e.g., most of the independent funds are paid out of prior contributions, but, e.g., the Judicial Retirement Fund [the older of two defined-benefit judicial pension plans, and one that is not open to new members] is done on a pay-as-you-go basis out of current contributions and State General Fund augmentation.)

For some reason I can't find a simple 2010 total pension payments.

CalPERS -- like the rest of the State of California -- runs on a July-June fiscal year. The reports for each fiscal year are dated mid-December following the end of the year following. They are actually released online somewhat later than that.

But, with a 500 BILLION dollar deficit, I'm betting the pensions do not add up to 1.4billion your figures suggest.

There is no $500 billion dollar deficit. Even if you assume the entire population of the State is working age, and use the $10,000 per working age Californian figure your source suggests total pension liabilities will grow to in 2014, the total pension liability (not a deficit) of 41 million (California's projected 2014 population) times $10,000 -- or 410 billion. Obviously, that overstates even what that source claims (since the working age population will be significantly smaller than the total population), but its enough to demonstrate that your own sources projection of the total liabil

In Europe, police would be able to get this information without any judicial oversight, without anybody being informed, and without anybody being able to object.

Bollocks.

Europe is not a nation state, European Law is a collection of treaties at best and despite claims in Luxemburg, not all member states recognise its supremacy. National judicial systems vary greatly too. There is no single "police" either (Europol is an intelligence agency), so there would be no need for oversight.

As for "beating up on America", thats going to get an MP here nowhere, given the current climate of massive tax increases and political corruption scandal people are too busy with their own politicians

Modded insightful indeed - your first paragraph seems sensible but given that you opened your mouth and let your belly rumble on the last but one paragraph calls your entire argument into question.

Assuming only 100,000 even, that 2% is 91 million dollars.

Using your numbers, the other 98% consume 1,335,4756,800 (1.3 billion).

So even as a tiny 2% and artificially limited to $100,000 , they take about 7% of the total benefits. they probably get more like 10% of the benefits.

However per http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66K6BX20100721
(Reuters) - A municipal manager in California who makes nearly $800,000 a year working for a small, poor city could draw pension payments exceeding $30 million in retirement, according to an activist who has been calling for an overhaul of the state's public pension system.

Per here:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/10/california-pension-promises-exceed-550.html
In 2009, the pension liability came out to $3,000 per working-age adult in the state. By 2014, it will triple to over $10,000 per working-age Californian.

For some reason I can't find a simple 2010 total pension payments. Anyone???
But, with a 500 BILLION dollar deficit, I'm betting the pensions do not add up to 1.4billion your figures suggest.

I'm all for limiting the top pensions to $50,000. That would probably instantly preserve the pension system.

People are going to move rather than face $10,000 per worker taxes to support the current pension obligations.

And put in practice by the Bush Administration.

By "line of thinking," I was referring to the statement that the United States should execute Julian Assange.

Now they're going to gulag #2: Bagram Prison. Same difference.

Bagram was handed over to the Afghans in Jan 2010: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6081IN20100109

Detainees are now being held in the Parwan facility which is being described as much more humane, where the prisoners are assigned counsel and can challenge their incarceration: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008892,00.html

How is signing off on extra-judicial assassinations of American citizens restoring checks and balances?

I am not a constitutional lawyer, so I can't answer whether the president has that authority. Seems to me though that if the president doesn't have the authority to order the death of anybody who is a U.S. citizen, even in combat situations, then a lot of illegal shit happened during the civil war.

Good going Murdoch. I hope the rest of your investments do as well

According to Reuters he did did pretty well:

Initially, the deal paid for itself after Google Inc inked a three-year $900 million search advertising deal in 2006.

Perhaps if you could give us a list of all that "violence coming from the left" in the US that is somehow being cleverly concealed by all the media of the world (must be some kind of a leftist conspiracy involving all those pinko-commie corporate CEOs!) it would help your points to attain some modicum of credibility. Unless your post was meant to be some very subtle satire, that is.

• It was not the fear of conservative violence that caused Ann Coulter's speech to be cancelled this week.
• It was a liberal who bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on healthcare.
• It was Obama-loving Amy Bishop who took a gun to work and murdered co-workers.
• Joseph Stack flew his plane into the IRS building after writing an anti-conservative manifesto.
• It was liberals who destroyed AM radio towers outside of Seattle.
• It's liberals who burn down Hummer dealerships.
• It was progressive SEIU union thugs who beat a black conservative man who spoke his mind.
• It's doubtful that a conservative fired shots into a GOP campaign headquarters.
• In fact, Democrats have no monopoly on having their offices vandalized.
• Don't forget it was Obama's friend Bill Ayers who used terrorism as a tool for political change. SDS is still radical, with arrests in 2007 and the storming of the CATO Institute in July 2008.
• It was a liberal who was sentenced to two years for bringing bombs and riot shields to the Republican National Convention in 2008.
• It was a liberal who threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated her Austin-based group that planned to bomb the RNC.
• It was liberals who assaulted police in Berkeley.
• It was liberals who intimidated and threw rocks through the windows of researchers.
• The two Black Panthers who stood outside polls intimidating people with nightsticks were probably not right-wingers.
• Every time the G20 gets together, it's not conservatives who destroy property and cause chaos.

I could literally go on and on, but let's try to have some perspective here. Violence is a product of the fringe, on either side, and it's sickening to try to use it for political advantage. Those who commit violence in the name of politics deserve political change no more than they deserve leniency in sentencing. Violence furthers no cause. The only call to action that violence has ever moti

Redhat made over 200 million dollars last quarter alone.

From their package manager? I doubt it.