Slashdot Mirror

There's a series of decent (but marketing-focused) articles explaining low-latency messaging around exchanges, and high-frequency trading at Solace Systems, makers of low-latency messaging appliances:
http://www.solacesystems.com/tag/low-latency
From that feed, here's a Reuters story about HFT that's more than just fear and frothing at the mouth:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN173583920091202?pageNumber=1

- Richard

Actually what is most disgusting is:

When those algo/HFT systems have bugs or lose big
a) the stock market rolls back the trades[1]
b) the small timers beating those algorithms get sued.[2]

But they don't do that when the small timers make mistakes or the algo/HFT systems beat the small timers.

Even though many of the HFT bunch are doing dubious stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6456QB20100507
[2] http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6991ZE20101010

http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2010/10/12/google-car-artificial-intelligence/

and elsewhere previously on /.

More likely they are just waiting to be sure 10k will drop to 500 and not rise to 20k....in the Google test the car was fine 99% of time, but "driver" had to take control is some situations to avoid accidents......the only accident they reported was getting rear-ended at a light

The "It takes $1 billion and 5 years to launch a new vehicle" is simply bullshit. It make take that long if you do it the way Detroit does it, but history has shown that Detroit is doing it wrong! Modern businesses are no longer the huge vertically integrated monopolies of the early industrial age; it is now possible to buy everything from out of house. "Wrong kind of engineers" is also bullshit -- create a demand for automotive engineers and Stanford and Berkly will train them! Granted, there is a 4-year lag, but the reason there is a Silicon Valley in the first place is because the world-class universities in the area created a pool of world-class engineers. Again, having engineers that are trained to do things "the GM way" is a disadvantage, not an advantage.

Spoken like a true armchair CEO. Just so you know, the auto industry is already one of the most horizontally stratified industries out there. If you think they're vertically integrated, you're entirely wrong. Why do you think every auto maker nearly had a heart attack when GM/Chrysler were in dire straights. They all used the same suppliers. If one major supplier collapsed, the entire industry would take a hit. Don't believe me? Do some research.

Tesla is trying to change that. They're trying a more vertically integrated strategy. But everyone in the auto industry that actually understands how things work is laughing at them. Remember when they took hundreds of millions in government loans? Don't expect to ever see that back.

Oh, and you say that engineers will come... well Tesla tried that too. HQ based in California and tried to do R&D there. Only they realized the talent wasn't around... so they moved everything to Detroit.

Everyone thinks they know how to run an industry. Until you're actually put in charge or look into the details does one actually realize the difficulty of the task.

Buffett also supports the death tax in his belief that the government deserves your money to redistribute as they see fit... The key word being YOUR money, since Buffett has already signed over his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, obviously, because he believes the BMGF will redistribute his money in better ways than the government.

So what is it, the government should forcefully redistribute the wealth of people or that the foundation created by one of the few people richer than Buffett himself should be able to redistribute HIS money since they know better than the government... Again, Buffett believes in one set of rules for himself but a different set of rules for everyone else. If Buffett gave up half of his fortune to the government to distribute (he's conveniently getting rid of it now, which not only prevents it being taken by the death tax, but gives him nice fat tax writeoffs every year too, which, surprise, also would help him pay less tax than his secretary), he might have room to talk... instead, he's a complete hypocrite and I laugh every time someone brings up his tax arguments since he's deliberately flouting the rules he's supposedly supports... you know, for everyone EXCEPT him .

I wasn't aware that the US had a binary choice, in which it could either:

• Discuss human rights issues with China, or
• Discuss a framework for copyright, trademark, and patent law with China

Remember last November, and the discussions in May?

To most people, "peak oil" is the point at which production is at a peak. After this point, a country (or the world) is _producing_ less then they used to.

I was always under the impression that peak oil was when demand outstripped supply regardless of the amount actually being pulled out of the ground. If they keep shutting down refineries in the US you might get to see it first.

" higher bills"
ummm no they would be one of the first (if not the) to do this and thats enough to get a ton of new customers

  "subjecting everyone to brain tumor causing radiation"
do u have proof? no? how about this as a better reason http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6055PJ20100106

Google currently has some good margins and takes in a lot of cash. if they were to develop their own visual studio clone for android development it would cost a lot of money that they would have to eat in lower margins and lower stock price.

If Google has $5 Billion to invest in an off-shore wind farm project they have the money to put into Android development as well.

Falcon

Well, a fiver said I could get you to respond until this evening, and another fiver's coming my way if you respond tomorrow.

Trouble is, I'm hard pressed to decide whether to put the fiver toward my Institute membership, or to just put it in the pot to buy a few shares just before Obama's next announcement on defense spending (worked great last year, my colleagues informed me). To put money toward scientists and engineers who want to advance human knowledge, or to put money toward scientist-mercenaries who - like you - consider science in terms of $ RoI... perhaps I should cancel my membership to the former in case their educational efforts help people evidently at the start of their career such as you.

BTW, the arguments you are looking for are in this post and all children with the same poster name. Don't forget to mod them down whenever you have mod points to express your frustration - it'll make you feel better.

You can't resist me, can you? If I'm the last one to post, you won't be able to sleep at night... you've already admitted to seeing this, like some schoolchild, in terms of who has "won". So, go on, make the last post and win.

China is, in fact, doing a fantastic job. That is not to say that they have arrived at a fair and free society yet - not by far. They still have much farther to go, but they have already come a long way.

The Chinese people, much like the American people, have been fed nationalistic propaganda and are inclined to believe it. The educated classes usually know better than to take that propaganda at face value but still love their country.

That said, there is still widespread dissatisfaction with the Chinese government for many reasons, including its policy of censorship. Even many within the government understand the problems with the system as it is, but having seen such examples as the breakup of the Soviet Union they have chosen stability over freedom. In fact, I partially approve, though I think they could be working their way towards freedom much more quickly. Freedom doesn't mean much if a deeply ignorant public turns it into a free-for-all which turns into violence and millions dead.

And, after all, it's not as if the West is in a great position to criticize: Women have had the vote for less than a century in the United States, effective civil rights for blacks is less than half a century old, and gay rights are still in contention, and other struggles have doubtless not begun. Children's rights in the United States have actually regressed a great deal in the past century - witness the prisons we call public schools.

It is also notable that in this article a Chinese spokesman says "This is an obscenity against the peace prize," because obscenity remains unprotected speech in the United States. The Chinese government simply has a different definition of obscenity than Americans do.

For all that, I see this as a great thing for China and Chinese freedom. External pressure can be very useful in struggles for civil rights. The Soviet Union rightfully criticized the United States for its unequal treatment of blacks, and enough Americans saw the truth and embarrassment of it that they changed. Perhaps most important was that the American people understood the validity of the criticism and demanded change. Among themselves it wasn't such a big deal, but when they saw that the whole world - even the Soviets - could see through their hypocrisy it was just too much. Hopefully now the Chinese people will see the truth of the situation and demand change for the sake of national pride, and maybe Americans and others can learn something from all this too. We still don't have a single free nation in the world - just different shades of freedom.

Maybe not that easy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49T8X020081030

In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one.

Recent news reports have Japan accusing China of this being over a territorial dispute. The traders are saying that things have resumed but that this is just an excuse for China to harass traders and outbound exports with "preshipment" checks. China denies this has anything to do with the dispute but the timing is more than a bit suspect and why is this only directed at Japan?

China is in territorial dispute with every SE-Asian country that has a shoreline. They claim sovereignty over every island down to the Philippines. For example, they have claims over Paracel islands which in theory, belong to Vietnam. Recently they started to harass fishing boats, hold them at ransom, very similar to what Somalian pirates do. Vietnam has historical documents to prove their claim - irony is, that actually some of the documents the Chinese produced to prove their point turned out to be validate the Vietnamese claims (they mention these islands as "foreign lands" in their records). Also, they threatened foreign companies (oil exploration) that had contracts with Vietnamese oil companies to back out. Finally - this started this year - they began to organize "tours" to these islands, showing the beauty of these "most remote Chinese lands." In reality, there's nothing to see there actually. Except Vietnamese fishermen who lived there for generations. Well, not anymore, actually, but you get the point ... just trying to illustrate how territorial the Chinese are... and how arrogant.

In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one.

Recent news reports have Japan accusing China of this being over a territorial dispute. The traders are saying that things have resumed but that this is just an excuse for China to harass traders and outbound exports with "preshipment" checks. China denies this has anything to do with the dispute but the timing is more than a bit suspect and why is this only directed at Japan?

I don't know how much of an net positive environmental impact recycling rare earths from circuitry provides (is your acid economically and environmentally friendly? what are the byproducts? are they less damaging than the circuitry to the environment?) but I don't think it's wise to thank countries for exacerbating a territorial dispute. The world has enough of those now, we don't need another escalation or spat between countries.

And point 4 is exactly what Schmidt is doing.

I'm not familiar with the numbering system you're using; clearly by "point 4" you are referring to the third point.

Might be something like "everybody working there must be a union member".

It seems like you might not be wrong. The alert on the SAG website says nothing and all I can find on this gives no actual conditions being violated, but simply that the companies making The Hobbit refuse to sign on to get SAG's approval (contractually speaking). Bear in mind that SAG is a US organization and film production will be primarily based in New Zealand. Peter Jackson states that because actors are actually "independent contractors", then under New Zealand law it would actually be illegal for them to join this union, too.

Incidentally, the exact text from the linked article appears in a Reuter's article here. I don't know who ripped off who, but I suspect Reuters got there first.

As of now, the Chinese government is denying that there is an embargo over Rare Earth exports.

http://english.cri.cn/6826/2010/09/24/1821s596078.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTKB00705420100924

There might still be some element of truth to it, but all the reports are getting confusing.

Sure. For the first point:
1. Reuters: $246k per job
2. International Business Times: $118k-179k per job, but they include the nebulous figure of "saved" jobs, which is nearly impossible to truly quantify.
3. ABC News: $160k-248k per job- the latter number is using the official number of jobs created, the former also adds the White House's estimate of "jobs saved."

For the second:
1. Seasonal workers rejecting landscaping jobs, prefer to stay on unemployment.
The story links back to the Detroit News, which has since placed the article behind a paywall.
2. Workers not applying for new jobs until unemployment runs out
3. I have also personally run across several construction workers who stated they were staying on unemployment rather than working as "they'd lose their benefits" if they started to work again. It's an anecdote, but it tells me that behavior is going on in my area as well.

(other than we know if we killed off most of us and went back to a nomadic life it would immediately stop).

Nope. Nomadic mammoth-hunters created climate change too. Primitivism is no answer. Sustainability requires a high technology, but a very different sort than the ones we emphasize now.

In fact many mobile network operators (not just MVNOs like Boost Mobile) do not own/operate their own towers. Even for those who do, they most likely lease coverage in rural areas where they don't have a presence. Furthermore, many MNOs have roaming agreements in place with their competitors.

In Sprint's case, they don't own any towers any longer. They sold their towers back in 2008, and they contracted Ericsson to take over network operations in 2009.

Sprint to sell wireless towers for $670 million
Ericsson to manage Sprint network in $4.5-$5bln deal

In fact many mobile network operators (not just MVNOs like Boost Mobile) do not own/operate their own towers. Even for those who do, they most likely lease coverage in rural areas where they don't have a presence. Furthermore, many MNOs have roaming agreements in place with their competitors.

In Sprint's case, they don't own any towers any longer. They sold their towers back in 2008, and they contracted Ericsson to take over network operations in 2009.

Sprint to sell wireless towers for $670 million
Ericsson to manage Sprint network in $4.5-$5bln deal

nor, I might add, did the article I linked. Guess you didn't bother to read it.

That's a good guess, considering you didn't actually link to an article. Did you forget to include it?

I presume you are talking about this study, which does seem to indicate that cancer cells proliferate more when fed a diet of fructose. 'More' is the key, since cancer cells seem to grow quite healthy (according to the article) with any kind of sugar.

I just think it's dumb that people get so outraged about HFCS, and ignore normal sugar. It's all bad, and I want to cry whenever I see someone drinking a sugar-soda and thinking they are being healthy.

Also, I'd bet that at normal levels, neither fructose nor sucrose is particularly bad. Fructose is a major component of the sugar in apples, for example. It's only when you binge on the stuff that it's bad for you; and at that point, arguing about which is worse is kind of silly, you're hurting yourself either way.

Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."

That's not necessarily true.

This is so ridiculous I am undoing moderation to reply.

Congratulation. You wasted your mod points so you could expose your own ignorance.

You are also forgetting the burden illegal immigrants put on our welfare system. Since they often work for low wages and live below the poverty line they qualify for all sorts of benefits. In Wisconsin they get excellent health care (better than my current employment benefits and they pay nothing for it), housing assistance, heating assistance, food stamps, etc... all on the American taxpayer's dime.

Bullshit. With the exception of maybe the children of immigrants, illegal immigrants genreally do not qualify for any type of welfare, food stamps, or housing assistance. Regarding health care, studies have shown that illegal immigrants place a lower burden on our health care system than citizens of the same socioeconomic class. Here is a second study which came to the same conclusion. Here is a third. A fourth.

Interestingly it seems that these programs were tailored for illegal immigrants as you do not need a social security number to qualify--meaning you don't have to be paying taxes to get the benefits.

I've never heard of a state giving illegals welfare-type benefits. I'd love a link to these programs in Wisconsin you speak of. Got one?

What you describe is rather surprising. The FDA has regulations that require reporting of unexpected adverse effects.

Here's a news story related to the topic.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6586PE20100610

[citation needed]

Here you go: "U.S. authorities able to tap BlackBerry messaging."

Creating armies would take too long and would be rather hard to conceal.

Much easier to mess with our computer systems and just sit back and watch as we tear each other apart.

Do you have a source for your assertion that Western intelligence agencies already have full access to Blackberries?

Sure, here's a recent article from Reuters:

"U.S. authorities able to tap BlackBerry messaging."

That idea that they learned is a joke. here is a quote from a news site comparing the BP blow out to an earlier one.

79 Mexico oil spill
Attempted Fixes

# They attempted to put a cone over the top, calling it operation Sombrero (as oppose to Top-Hat)

# They attempted to plug up the leak by pumping rocks, mud and seawater into it

Pemex pumped cement and salt water into Ixtoc for months before finally bringing the runaway well under control and sealing it with cement plugs.

Pemex's scramble to come up with other solutions while the relief wells were being drilled will sound familiar to those who have followed BP's efforts to stop the oil gushing out of its ruptured well.

Divers tried to manually operate the blowout preventer but this effort was unsuccessful and over the next several months Pemex tried a variety of solutions, including a plan to force metal spheres into the well to cut the flow of oil and lowering a steel structure over the spill to capture the crude.

BP is trying similar schemes but the huge water depth it is operating at is vastly complicating its efforts.

Does any of that sound like BP learned anything from an almost exact issue as theirs?

In both cases natural gas flowed unnoticed into the well being drilled, causing an explosion. In both cases a critical piece of fail-safe equipment -- the blowout preventer -- failed. And in both cases the operators struggled to quickly staunch the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here are some links.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N57U20100524
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/an-identical-oil-spill/399603

What kind of live shows can Adobe do to recoup the millions it pays developers if the software itself becomes free? Right, because if GNU/Linux has proven anything, it is that nobody will write software unless you pay them millions of dollars! Viable business models change; the solution is not to rewrite the laws to prop up the old industries that refuse to change their business model. Copyright has only been around for about the last 200 years... are you insisting that nobody wrote any good books or music before copyright was put into place? Granted, before copyright most artists were supported by monarchies and churches in a patronage system, but there is no reason why patronage wouldn't still work.

And you could really argue they "had a say" if they weren't educated (oftentimes thanks to conservative abstinence-only no-contraceptive education policies, like the federal policies Bush Jr. and co. backed) and thought simply pulling out was a proper contraceptive?

Yeah. Actually, you could. As long as you give kids accurate information about what causes pregnancy, you gave them the tools to not get pregnant...So yeah, if you were told, "Keep it in your pants, and you won't get pregnant", and you decided not to keep it in your pants, that's the choice you made, and you have to live with the consequences. So yeah, if you were told, "Keep it in your pants, and you won't get pregnant", and you decided not to keep it in your pants,

And that "keep it in your pants" philosophy of sex education is why abstinence-only education is a statistical failure; many states outright rejected it during Bush Jr.'s time despicte having to turn down federal funding in the process. "Accurate information" about what rcauses pregnancy entails exactly what one has to do to not get pregnant, and these education policies do not provide that information. HAll those kids who were told to "just keep it in their pants" are going to fuck anyway, especially in urban centers full of poor people, because the urges of puberty effortlessly surmounts abstinence education. Tell people not to fuck and they'll do it anyway. Pretending they'll keep to themselves when told is an absolute denial of human nature, and the statistics are there to prove it.

It's not a matter of statistics. It's a matter of a) biology, b) mechanics, and c) chemistry. Materials sometimes fail, and contraceptives are not 100% effective. If you engage in penis to vagina sex, and you both have health sex organs, you run the risk of getting pregnant. If you don't do that, you don't.

that's the choice you made, and you have to live with the consequences.

"live with the consequences"? According to who, God? Whose god? And what gives society the right to mandate this for any woman (especially when women are underrepresented in the political world)? Moralizing about punishment and proper consequences puts the cart before the horse.

This is why I brought up the Civil War. One of the lessons of that conflict is that you don't get to say, (in my best Cartman voice) "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home!" every time a vote doesn't go your way. If the votes are there (for a new piece of legislation, or for a constitutional amendment, if necessary), then the votes are there. End of story. That's how it works. One way or the other, the majority gets their way -- either by enacting a law within the confines of the Constitution, or by changing the Constitution, if necessary.

And then, if the thing's not aborted, the kid's going to be born to parents that didn't want it. And that's fair to the kid? You could argue never having been born is more fair if the resultant person's completely unwanted.

You could argue that, but you probably shouldn't. Lots of people are raised (or not raised) by incompetent, unloving parents, and they do fine. If someone acts like a sociopathic asshole later in life, it's because of how they responded to the hand they were dealt.

"Doing fine" how so? Where abortion's arguably the most needed (poor inner-city people, oftentimes teenagers, who couldn't support a kid if they had one, and don't know much about what it takes to avoid conception because of bad education), those unwanted kids don't do just fine, at leasto insofar as they go on to make the same mistakes their par

And you could really argue they "had a say" if they weren't educated (oftentimes thanks to conservative abstinence-only no-contraceptive education policies, like the federal policies Bush Jr. and co. backed) and thought simply pulling out was a proper contraceptive?

Yeah. Actually, you could. As long as you give kids accurate information about what causes pregnancy, you gave them the tools to not get pregnant...So yeah, if you were told, "Keep it in your pants, and you won't get pregnant", and you decided not to keep it in your pants, that's the choice you made, and you have to live with the consequences. So yeah, if you were told, "Keep it in your pants, and you won't get pregnant", and you decided not to keep it in your pants,

And that "keep it in your pants" philosophy of sex education is why abstinence-only education is a statistical failure; many states outright rejected it during Bush Jr.'s time despicte having to turn down federal funding in the process. "Accurate information" about what rcauses pregnancy entails exactly what one has to do to not get pregnant, and these education policies do not provide that information. HAll those kids who were told to "just keep it in their pants" are going to fuck anyway, especially in urban centers full of poor people, because the urges of puberty effortlessly surmounts abstinence education. Tell people not to fuck and they'll do it anyway. Pretending they'll keep to themselves when told is an absolute denial of human nature, and the statistics are there to prove it.

that's the choice you made, and you have to live with the consequences.

"live with the consequences"? According to who, God? Whose god? And what gives society the right to mandate this for any woman (especially when women are underrepresented in the political world)? Moralizing about punishment and proper consequences puts the cart before the horse.

And then, if the thing's not aborted, the kid's going to be born to parents that didn't want it. And that's fair to the kid? You could argue never having been born is more fair if the resultant person's completely unwanted.

You could argue that, but you probably shouldn't. Lots of people are raised (or not raised) by incompetent, unloving parents, and they do fine. If someone acts like a sociopathic asshole later in life, it's because of how they responded to the hand they were dealt.

"Doing fine" how so? Where abortion's arguably the most needed (poor inner-city people, oftentimes teenagers, who couldn't support a kid if they had one, and don't know much about what it takes to avoid conception because of bad education), those unwanted kids don't do just fine, at leasto insofar as they go on to make the same mistakes their parents did (having kids early and forgoing any chance at a career). The outlook is far from rosy for those unwated who enter into foster homes--"nearly half of foster children hae have a clinical level of [behavioral or emotional] problems: 47% of children ages 6 to 11, and 40% of children ages 12 to 14." If this is the case, how can you say their mental health later in life is entirely up to them, any more than you could say that of an abused child? On top of that, "almost one-third in foster homes live below the poverty line". http://www.childtrends.org/files/FosterHomesRB.pdf

Don't tell me about how huge the adoption backlogs are--if abortion was made illegal, that backlog (if there even is one) would be obliterated within a year or two.

And that's a bad thing, is it? I'm not doubting there would be more

There are studies.

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.
(...)
"Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days' work, and as a result, increased productivity," he said.

We have a much better chance of handling an 'Extinction Level Event' if we a) don't completely trash the planet so there are some habitable areas left by the time the big ball hits

If an ELE occurs it won't matter how nice to the planet we've been, the entire ecosystem will be thrashed and the survivors are going to wish they had died. The life they will have to live will be so incredibly hard; war for the scant resources remaining will be common, many will die of starvation, and simple diseases easily curable before the impact will claim many.

b) try to figure out how to run civilizations so that even trivial little things like earthquakes, floods and rush hour don't cause major issues

If you think an earthquake or flood is a trivial event, you're not paying attention to recent events. Five years later they are *still* putting New Orleans back together. Haiti is still a mess, I remember reading estimates its going to take years and at least 14 Billion just to put Haiti back the way it was.

When an event like this happens even the concerted effort of a group of nations, and Billions in donations from a concerned public, can only alleviate some of the suffering and it will take years rebuild their lost infrastructure.

An ELE event, if it doesn't outright kill you first, is going to catastrophically cripple everyone.

We'd lose our global manufacturing base, the one thing that could help clean up the mess, and effectively put us back to the early stone age. In a North American society, and a good chunk of Europe, few of us know anything about basic survival. Do you honestly expect the majority of survivors from a "modern" society to know how to eke out a basic living when we're so used to the conveniences of take out, fast food, gourmet restaurants, and grocery stores?

c) learn how to maybe, perhaps, get along with ourselves and our current lifeboat.

It won't matter if everyone is all fluffy bunnies and roses when an ELE event occurs.

When it does happen our fluffy bunnies and roses mentality will get pushed aside and our base instincts will take over. The only reason "modern" societies are even able to function is because our manufacturing and infrastructure base allows even the weakest amongst us to survive without too much struggle. Take that away and it quickly will devolve into a "survival of the fittest" situation.

Our best hope for survival as a species is to spread out to as many places as we can, as far away from Earth as we can, so if something bad happens to any one of those colonies the rest of the species has a fighting chance for survival and can use their infrastructure and manufacturing bases to help the others pick up the pieces.

I don't believe Blagojevich was innocent. I think he was found not guilty. But he's not alone.

This article from 2009 illustrates what I mean:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B74AI20091208

The USA is facing a silent wave of corruption, eroding our institutions from within. Normally, I'd disparage alarmist panic, but in this case, I think it's legitimate because it's rising along with the other symptoms of a nation decaying to third-world levels of disorganization:

* Oligarchy
* Corruption
* Debt
* Crime
* Urban decay

My man Plato/Socrates noted this cycle of decaying civilizations in Greece long ago: when they start going downhill, it's a path through third-world levels of disorganization and dysfunction that allows tyrants to take power.

Would that be before or after the US blows up said country to hell and shoots everyone? Seriously dude, when the fuck has the US ever parked a "hospital ship" or did you get that mixed up with "hostile ship"?

No, he meant "hospital ship". And it has been used without US blowing up a country, but you probably think US caused the earthquake to occupy Haiti.

Judging from the restrictions being imposed the rest of the world that should be making more of us angry. Why there are not more people up in arms about the restrictions in the middle east is beyond me.

Is it?

I thought Apple was already censoring the App store.

Though judging by their choice of censor, their level of hypocrisy will match that of our Australian politicians quite nicely.

Please explain to me how the additional context changed anything about that interview. Bush equated negotiation with appeasement. The interviewer was asking whether he was referring to Obama. Not only did bush NOT answer the question, he started some weasly lie about how he actually said it was important to talk to people, when it was an ESTABLISHED FACT that he had clearly equated negotiation with appeasement. Here is what he actually said in the speech:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said.

Without mentioning Obama by name, Bush compared "this foolish delusion" to the prelude to World War Two.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0839956720080515

Again, the part they cut out was literally irrelevant BULLSHIT. They were being kind to cut it out, because anyone who was up on current events would have howled in laughter at his weasling. This was your great example of left wing propaganda? REALLY?

Portugal has been working on this for some years now. They will be getting some of the first shipments of the Nissan/Renault electric Leafs I presume.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0934720820080709

Until just a couple years ago they still had unregulated cigarette vending machines in Japan. Now the cigarette vending machines require something called a "taspo." These cards are free of charge by mail order with proof of ID, and "The smoker's picture will be on the card, although the vending machines will not be able to read the images, so they won't be able to tell if the customer is legitimate." Perhaps somebody from Japan can comment on the difficulty of obtaining a false taspo, but it doesn't sound terribly secure to me.

When did they take it away? He was using it a couple of weeks ago ...

http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2010/07/29/washington-extra-obamas-blackberry-10/

"Intel Corp (INTC.O) has agreed to stop using threats and bundled prices to hamper competition, settling charges that it illegally abused its market dominance in microprocessors, the Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday."

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6733I420100804

If an electrical connection can control an arm, how much longer until you can control a whole body?

I think we're likely to be able to repair spinal cord damage long before we learn how to patch around it with electronics. We're getting closer every day.

I apologize for not being civil (and I honestly wasn't intentionally trolling), but seriously - the amount of lobbyist in state and federal government are corrupting the process.

Best example of this recently is the disclose act - with its exemptions to at least 3 special interests (NRA, AARP and the Humane Society) and the only reason why is because of successful lobbying. We can't have simplified taxes in this country because its a conflict of interest (according to intuit - who also lobby's our federal government). Many other industrialized countries have streamlined taxes and easy to use forms, but we can't for some reason.

There are tons of examples of politicians being for or opposed to legislation simply because they were lobbied/financed by a particular group (corps/special interests/pac's) that is generally for or opposed to said legislation. Health care is a good example of this - we spent twice as much as any other developed nation and get worse results. The evidence is all around us that its broken, but apparently we have the best system in the world and nothing serious needs to be done about it. Look up how much insurance companies spend on congress :(.

There may not be any government waste, or corrupt judges involved - but the process is off the rails thanks to lobbyists and the politicians who listen to them.

> Except that Microsoft's grip on the PC Desktop market is slowly but surely slipping away.

They said that 10 years ago, but it hasn't made any noticable impact yet.

> Except that Linux is being requested more and more, with no sign of stopping.

Less and less you mean? Dell have actually just stopped shipping machines with Ubuntu as nobody is ordering them anymore. According to my own stats, the percentage of people visiting my websites who are running linux is falling - not rising. Perhaps you live in a country where it's more popular - but it seems to be dying here in the UK.

> Except that, outside the PC Desktop and XBox, Microsoft has at most 20-25% of the market.

Not sure where you get that from! They have a 65% share of the server market for a start. src. Your figures might be correct for *web servers* perhaps, but certainly not for the server market as a whole.

> Except that C# is a ticking time bomb that will either go free

Huh?! Unlike Java, C# is a totally open and free language - it's a public standard just like C and C++.

You are talking about taxes and the original poster is discussing subsidies. They are two sides of the equation. Furthermore, the article you cite is discussing how companies such as Exxon have structured their finances in such a way as to avoid the payment of taxes in the US. This would seem to run counter to the thrust of your argument. Tax shelters allowed by the US tax code are just one form of subsidy...

Getting a trustworthy citation on this issue is almost impossible. Climate groups put the number in the trillions by claiming unpaid environmental damages due to greenhouse gas emissions as a subsidy. I don't believe you should include data you can't quantify.http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm [progress.org]

Conservative groups claim that the amount is only a couple of billion per year. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/26559.html [taxfoundation.org]

The proposed budget by the president attempts to cut subsidies by 36.5 billion. Since it is unlikely that this is an attempt to end all petroleum subsidies (every industry from aircraft manufacture to rice farming receives some subsidies) the number is probably somewhere between 40 and 100 billion per year. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6103RM20100201 [reuters.com]

And where the hell did anyone propose that? Huh?

Uh, Obama you moron. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2710984620100727

"Pushing for legislation" now counts as proposing something "DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE"?

You heard it years ago? Awesome citation.

Actually, France sells power to Italy at $0.05/kWh for 48.9 B kWh (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf101.html)
I managed to find the price one customer knows it can get, 35 Euro/MWH (about that 5 cents/kwh) here:
http://in.reuters.com/article/idINLDE65T1P920100630

On the contrary, nuclear power in France is not subsidized (why subsidize Italy by billions of Euros per year?) it is rather made MORE expensive by union featherbedding and other giveaways to local towns to buy their acceptance of th plant. And it works. Most French towns are overjoyed to have a plant built nearby.

And where the hell did anyone propose that? Huh?

Uh, Obama you moron. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2710984620100727