Slashdot Mirror

No one...

http://reneweconomy.com.au/201...
http://www.scmp.com/business/c...
http://news.vattenfall.com/en/...

If they really wanted to help, they'd spend the money commissioning the writing of textbooks that anyone can print, copy, or download in ePub format for free. As it is, schools have two options - keep using outdated text books, or spend money on textbooks by taking it out of the budget somewhere else.

And unlike this project, free textbooks can be scaled out across the nation instead of just a few areas. And save kids the hassle and danger of spinal damage of carrying a ton of books.

Kim Jong Il keeps thumbing his nose at these flaccid weak limp dicks who keep looking the other way. China is protecting Kim Jong Il. Why?

Pro-tips for China:
1. Do you realize if Kim Jong Il attacks anyone with these nukes all bets are off?
2. Do you realize if he does the USPACFLT will steam into a big and humiliating battle on your doorstep?
3. You think you're a big tough new superpower now but America would kick your ass. You have no idea how the US is at war. Yeah the Taliban give them a hard time but China is the conventional enemy the US could beat to a bloody shitty mess without breaking a conversation?
4. If he does use nukes then China's name will forever be mud.
5. China if you don't want a remilitarized Japan then China's support for Kim Jong Il gives them no choice.
6. And stop trolling South East Asia. You're meant to be making friends but there is no one in South East Asia you haven't pissed off: http://www.scmp.com/comment/in...

We should retaliate by deploying a large force of niggers to China. Niggers will steal from whoever is around, so we can be certain they will steal from China. Furthermore, nigger crime tends to destabilize society, meaning that China will be weakened from within.

Then you are in luck :-

http://www.scmp.com/magazines/...

Snowden is a traitor. If all he had done was to be a whistleblower for the overreaching programs that illegally monitored US Citizens (on US soil no less!), then you could argue that he was a whistleblower and that he deserves to be pardoned.

However, he instead released an enormous amount of legitimate, sensitive information that did harm to our intelligence gathering capabilities.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” Snowden told the South China Morning Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

Snowden himself has stated that he took the job with the intent to do his gathering effort, then release it. The fact that it wasn't after he was hired that he realized what was wrong with the system is yet another point that he is a traitor.

Where are the publicity shots of your rover prototypes if not the real rovers themselves?

Here

Counsel: Mr Aldridge are you considering the question or are you just dead?
[silence]
Counsel: I think I'd better take a look m'lord.
[looks inside coffin]
Counsel: No further questions m'lord.
Judge: What do you mean, no further questions? You can't just dump a dead body in my court and say 'no further questions'. I demand an explanation.
Counsel: There are no easy answers in this case m'lord.

However it seems, reality can be as weird as Monty Python: http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/...

It is not hard to do, if you have the equipment, but doing it without wrecking it is another matter. So why did they only do it once, and does their machine still work or did they burn out the liner and need to fix it?

There is a hint in this article that the previous time limit was safety related, http://www.scmp.com/tech/scien...

I guess if you are in a race you sometimes have to take risks to get ahead of the pack, even at the risk of a wipe-out.

Totally worth it if they learned anything useful.

“People die twice. Once, physically, and the second time, when they die from people’s memories,” Fan said. “My museums will be here even after I die. When people talk about the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, they will mention me. In that sense, I gain immortality; I will never die.”

You act like the US is the only one that complains about this.

http://www.techeye.net/busines...
http://www.theguardian.com/bus...
http://www.theguardian.com/bus...
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...
http://www.scmp.com/news/world...

Heck, it has been all over the news that Europe is flipping their shit about their companies moving to tax havens and offshoring profits.

There are no international norms, all countries (except the tax havens) are bitching about this happening.

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed?page=all

From the first week of Snowden revealing himself in Hong Kong, during a time when he still didn't know if he was going to be fucked by the Chinese and extradited back to the U.S.

"With their exclusive rights protected by the Public Carriage Office, and their rivals held back, London black cabs behave like any cartel — they squeeze their advantages for all their worth." http://www.spectator.co.uk/fea...

Uber is cheaper and quicker than black cabs: http://www.independent.co.uk/v...

In the age of GPS "The Knowledge" is a needlessly hard test which keeps most people out. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

London drivers say "The Knowledge" is better than a GPS http://www.theguardian.com/wor... but even before the age of GPS, most cities on the planet regulated taxi without such a test. Doctors do something similar with entrance boards which decide how many new doctors can enter a field. http://wallstreetpit.com/5769-... Rudimentary economics: any profession which restricts their numbers can charge more. Imagine if nurses, paramedics, firemen and cops set up their own mandatory boards what it could do for them.

Most cities restrict taxi numbers usually by restricting the number of licenses issued.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6... FRANCE $270,000
http://globalnews.ca/news/1780... CANADA Was $360,000
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/cost... AUSTRALIA Was $425,000
http://www.scmp.com/business/m... HONG KONG $1M
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... USA $1.2M

yup

furthermore:

there isn't a technology made by man that cannot also be broken by another man. meaning the technology is never, can never be, a "fix" for human nature. the only real fix to a bad intentioned human is a well-intentioned one. there is no technology that can safeguard against bad intent for you

but wild-eyed technophilia imagines that all the bad and failures of human nature can be overcome with a technological fix. so Mt Gox happens

there is nothing about bitcoin that magically fixes all of the problems with traditional money, even though those problems drive the gullible and naive to bitcoin. every evil you hate about traditional money, is true about bitcoin too. Mt. Gox teaches the most basic failure: simple theft. all of the other, more twisted schemes that have befallen traditional money in the past are still possible too with bitcoin. give it time and see!

the most hilarious part were all those demanding from the japanese government some accountability and protection from the events of Mt. Gox's demise

"If there were instances of mismanagement or fraud like this carried out by Mark Karpeles, then he should be held accountable," bitcoin investor Kim Nilsson said. "[But] if these charges against [him] don't adequately explain where all the bitcoin ... money went, then there are still unresolved questions, quite possibly additional crimes and criminals, that must be investigated further."

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/...

"i hate government and regulation, let's use bitcoin!"

(the inevitable happens)

"waaaaaah, please government, help us invesitgate and enforce laws on bitcoin!"

fucking pathetic

they want to escape regulation, government. and then they want regulation, government after they find out what no accountability really means

morons: if people can do bad things to you, they will. only a system of regulation backed by a government can protect you from that. there is no technological fix for that. now: welcome to reality

ok, so starving people today is not a compelling example that food sharing doesn't happen, how about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06...
Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Food hoarding by governments keen to keep prices low is pushing prices higher

http://www.scmp.com/business/c...
Memories of 2008 food crisis push Asian countries to hoard grain

Yes, heaven forbid we actually do research into sustainable nuclear options that aren't 50 years old and managed like tinker toys.

China and India in race to harness the full nuclear power of thorium

Chinese scientists urged to develop new thorium nuclear reactors by 2024

By its strictest definition, black does not reflect any light either, and so does not qualify as a color either. We can usually see so-called black objects either because they are perhaps just a very dark grey, and are thus still reflecting some amount of light that we can detect, or else in the case of something like Vantablack, because of objects nearby.

Nanotube/graphene based products like this Vantablack is going to be the new hotness for the next twenty years, then for the fifty years after that it's going to make generations of lawyers very wealthy due to the occupational/environmental exposure cancer claims.

Call it the 21st century asbestos.

By its strictest definition, black does not reflect any light either, and so does not qualify as a color either. We can usually see so-called black objects either because they are perhaps just a very dark grey, and are thus still reflecting some amount of light that we can detect, or else in the case of something like Vantablack, because of objects nearby.

Really?

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-...

Do you have any reference source for this claim?

Directly, no. It has been way too long since I first learned this for me to remember where.

But googling gets you this news article from today. Can you imagine any police or newspaper in North America, the EU or UK using the phrase "forced family suicide"???

Bullshit.

China is in complete violation of international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which China itself signed and had agreed to and ">ratified in 1996.

China has been building structures, hunting and mass poaching endangered species and destroying coral reefs within the maritime exclusive economic zones of The Philippines and Vietnam (200 nautical miles or 370km from the coastline of those countries) while at the same time, forming naval blockades and harassing fishermen from Vietnam and the Philippines in their own waters. Recently a Chinese fishing vessel was caught with the poaching and mass slaughter of over 500 endangered and protected sea turtles within Philippine waters. Pics of the slaughter.

This article is a must-read on the behavior of the 800lb gorilla China and its bullying tactics: China's Pre-Imperial Overstretch and follow-up article: China and the Mosquitoes.

Another must read is the NY Times article A Game of Shark And Minnow about the ragtag crew of Philippine marines stationed on a grounded derelict ship in the area as an outpost. That NY Times article has a very good diagram on the 200NM exclusive economic zones and China's ridiculous "nine-dash line" tongue-shaped delineation which claims the entirety of the area hundreds of miles away from their nearest legal territory, Hainan Island. The basis of China's 9-dash line claims? Fabricated bullshit. Pre-19th century maps show this. Even China's own historical maps contradict their absurd claims. Bullying, intimidation, violation, invasion and annexation of territories of smaller, weaker states. It's that simple. See also: Tibet.

According to HK accident statistics, the real probability of a fatal fall from a bamboo scaffold is close to double that of metal scaffolds.

A Google search brings up nothing that backs up this assertion. This article says that only 3 of 24 annual fatal construction accidents in Hong Kong involved a fall from bamboo scaffolding. Can you provide a link to these "HK accident statistics"?

China has some doubts about the possibility that its radar could be evaded. http://www.scmp.com/news/china...

"The health problems the Chinese are going to have from this stuff is unimaginable"

That ship may have sailed.

A report from 2007 estimated 600,000 deaths annually - http://news.nationalgeographic....
A recent one, that looks at 100 cities puts the tally at 350,000 - 500,000 annually but another that claims to take the entire population into account is claiming over 1 million.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china...

That may not mean much in a country over well over a billion people but it's unimaginable to me that so many die from just breathing bad air.

1) that was 2012, which was 2 years ago. 2013 just ended, but early estimates show China over 33%.
2) re-read what it says. They are looking to cut their smog and will cut coal consumption in the worst smog regions. It does NOT say that the nation will cut coal consumption. In addition, the chinese gov. stole GPE's tech, BUT, one company is working with them so as they can manufacture pre-made plants and sell them elsewhere.
3) and yet, it absorbs less than 1% of 1% of what they generate.
4) China makes MANY MANY promises. For example, they have a treaty with Japan that says that they will put pollution control on all of their plants. Sadly, Japan forget to require China to turn them on. FEW of the coal plants actually run pollution control. Then look at the deal that Clinton and WTF made with China. In 2005, they were suppose to allow their money to be free market. In addition, their 90 tariffs were to go to less than 20. They are now close to 500 tariffs. China makes MANY MANY promises, and regularly break them. As it is, their plans leave no doubt that they have ZERO chance of dropping their emissions at all by 2020. In fact, by 2022, it is expected that China will account for 1/2 of all emissions that man has EVER DONE.
5) Other than hydro, China's AE plans are not about increasing their own. It is first about taking it from the west and then doing it local. They do not want to buy anything from the west.

I think you need some citations. And if you're going to declare a post "total BS", perhaps your rebuttals should be on point? Kinda like this:

1) China "will be"? UN says 28.6%, not quite "over 1/3" as you originally said.
2) China is indeed focusing on reducing pollution, but they're also cutting coal consumption, not just consuming it differently. They're using GreatPoint's catalytic hydromethanation process of coal gasification, and the CO2 produced is captured, not released.
3) Primarily stopping desertification as I said, but 500,000,000 hectares of fast-growing trees are a not-insignificant CO2 absorber, as the Chinese are quick to point out.
4) China's top climate negotiator said that China has pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 from 2005 levels. Coal plants are no longer being approved in polluted provinces like Beijing, and their nuclear power program is one of the most ambitious programs in the world.
5) Huh?

A series of servers produced by Dell, air-gapped Windows XP PCs and switches and routers produced by Cisco, Huawei and Juniper count among the huge list of computing devices compromised by the NSA

Somebody please help me here !

I can't believe that now Huawei works for the NSA.

I just can't fucking believe it !!

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1286054/it-goes-without-saying-huawei-spies-china-says-ex-cia-chief?page=all

On the above link, ex CIA chief Michael Hayden claimed that Huawei spies for China !

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-08/huawei-labeled-cyberspying-threat-faces-u-s-phone-gear-lockout.html

On this link Huawei was lockout from the US market because, "ahem !", Huawei is a SPY DEVICE of the People Liberation Army of China !!

I am totally confused now !

Who the fuck Huawei is working for ?

The Chinese PLA or the American NSA ??

http://m.scmp.com/news/world/article/1334213/scientists-blame-surging-asian-myopia-rates-too-much-time-spent-indoors The relationship is believed to be causal in the direction I implied.

and heres related article

Put up or shut up. Show me something he blew the whistle on that wasn't wrong.

He told China about how we were spying on them. According to the interviews, he revealed targets and methods. That's harmful to the US government, US citizens, the US economy, and US interests in general.
If you don't think the US and China are hostile powers, you are an idiot.

Ma Ying-jeou, the president of ROC government, just gave a talk on several days ago, claiming mainland China was part of ROC under the R.O.C. Constitution. link 1 link 2 link 3 link 4.

Chinese never denied spying on everyone

Are you fucking serious?

better reference than the one you provided here...

Hmm. Maybe this will be next...

You seem to be confusing things that sometimes happen in the US with things that always happen in the US.

1. I've seen a dui roadblock once in the US (another one in Canada). The officer asked a couple questions ("had I been drinking?" "no") then let me on my way. It's not like the Iraqi style checkpoints where the whole vehicle gets searched over.
2. That's a generalization. Some airports just have metal detectors. If you're flying on a private plane you won't see any of that. Pretty much the same in other countries.
3. That may be true for some police officers (the ones you see on youtube), but you're not going to read about the millions of friendly interactions that happen. I bet you could find similar bad apple officers in other countries.
4. There are very few cases of this. The Swartz case was terrible, there are others like it that shouldn't have happened either, but lots of countries prosecute computer crimes.

We do have problems with our drug laws and sentencing, but that doesn't make us a Police state like Syria.

As for an American freedom most countries don't have - out first amendment rights are a great example. Now I know you're going to say "OMG but Bush's freedom of speech zones and that time a police officer silenced someone!" but the reality is we have much more protection to say what we want than other countries in the world. Just look at the KKK and Nazi parades that are allowed.

You seem to think that there are all these perfect countries outside of the US, but failed to list a single one of them (aside from the ones with friendly police - Cuba, Laos, Columbia, and Malaysia). Is that because they're all imaginary or because you wouldn't want people to find similar counter examples for those countries?

The people are just individuals as well. There is no singular public will. And neither is there a singular governmental will unless its a dictatorship or a monarchy. Governments like the US are a composite will made up of the tens of thousands of people in the US government that have opinions that effect day to day policy.

If that group of people likes you then the government likes you. If they don't then it does not.

The US government has gone out of its way to help europe.

But the snarky attitude makes us think we're not appreciated. And even if you like someone, it does hurt your feelings when they don't share the friendship. Sadly, for our own self respect if nothing else... we should probably find allies that can return the friendship.

Its okay. You don't have to like us. But we should probably stop deluding ourselves that we're friends if you really just don't like us.

The US gets very little for its friendship with europe. European powers have very poor military resources. Little political will or resolve. And economically most of the core EU powers have been treading water to flatlining for a generation.

Even if we were to be crass and materialistic about it. Why would the US sacrifice for such worthless allies?

So by either evaluation... the US should distance itself from Europe.

As to diplomatic immunity:
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1120886/diplomatic-immunity-granted-11-times-hong-kong

It doesn't work the way you think it works.

This snooping is worldwide, including foreing countries. And they have no regards on invading foreing countries over stupid excuses, managing their population thru social networks to promote riots and revolutions to push their own rulers, sabotaging in general, even use that information to blackmail your government into pushing laws that puts your entire country under their boot. Being in US is pretty bad (heck, you can be shoot for betting), but your risks outside are not isolated events, but massive ones.

But you may not deserve what your country could get from US. In the other hand, americans think that they voted they government, and by that poll, even approves what they are doing, I suppose that if any population deserves what is about to come, is US people. The rest of the world are just collateral damage.

I think that Bolivia's presidential plane falls into the definition of diplomatic immunity. And even with that, they had no problem in stopping it and even trying to have a search on it. They are just past of the point of caring about it, in fact threating both Russia and China about his delivery, immediately after he said that US was very aggresively spying on all of them (as in i.e. hacking their own phone networks) shows that the little they care about treaties and the consequences of their acts, just order and wait till they are done.

Forget Snowden, is a symtom of a pretty big and urgent problem. Next 5 years (no matter what happens with him) will be bad for a good portion of the world.

They do only with what comes in and out of France. In the other hand, US hacks foreign companies to get information on everyone, no matter where. And probably in France https worth something, but for US services the information must be given to the government in a silver plate by the companies (that is what PRISM is all about, after all) . And, of course, is US who defines hacking as act of war.

So this is a mostly unilateral war, and you could see the monitoring that could do some other countries mostly as self-defense.

The point is that people from all the world should care about what the US is doing (because affects everyone) while French (and a small fraction of other countries) people should care also about what they government do. Also, I don't see France putting in jail or doing a massive international manhunt for the people working for Le Monde, violating every international treaty and convention doing so, as US is doing (and forcing their allies to do) with Assange and Snowden, we are just past the point of absolute corruption, and seeing the first hints of what is coming in the next years.

How laughably, pathetically naïve. As if France and everyone else wouldn't be doing the same as the Yanks if they had the same budget and influence instead. Read up about what France was doing at the height of its power and just project it forward 200 years.

So this is a mostly unilateral war, and you could see the monitoring that could do some other countries mostly as self-defense.

The point is that people from all the world should care about what the US is doing (because affects everyone) while French (and a small fraction of other countries) people should care also about what they government do. Also, I don't see France putting in jail or doing a massive international manhunt for the people working for Le Monde, violating every international treaty and convention doing so, as US is doing (and forcing their allies to do) with Assange and Snowden, we are just past the point of absolute corruption, and seeing the first hints of what is coming in the next years.

I suppose that they could had intercepted all the communication i sent to france based search engines, social networks and mail servers, if ever happened that. But as im not in france, not even in europe, odds that it happened are pretty low. In the other hand, in US most if not all central internet services are located there, my communication with other regions of the world usually goes thru there, and even if not, they went actively going against networks and services located other countries. Could be debatable if the government of a country could watch or not on their own people (specially if we talk about real democracies, not self proclaimed ones that just pick between Kang and Kodos every election), but there is no debate about the right of snooping on every people on the planet.

The current situation is simply amazing. You just can't make this shit up:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1267204/us-cyber-snooping-makes-it-worlds-biggest-villain-our-age-says-xinhua

Xinhua, China's official news agency, says the US is the world's 'biggest villain' for IT espionage.

If the body is male (has penis/gonads/musculature), you're male. If the body is female (uterus/ovaries etc), you're female. End of story. What you 'feel' is irrelevant.

It's not always that easy as that:

"A 66-year-old apparently male patient made a stunning discovery when he sought treatment for swelling in his abdomen. The swelling was a cyst on his ovary and he was in fact a woman. The condition was caused by a very rare combination of two genetic disorders. One, Turner syndrome, causes women to lack some female features, including the ability to get pregnant. Sufferers usually look like women, but in this case the patient also had congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which boosted the male hormones and made the patient look like a man."

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1252857/man-66-goes-doctor-and-finds-hes-woman?page=all

Snowden said that according to unverified documents seen by the Post, the NSA had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland since 2009. None of the documents revealed any information about Chinese military systems, he said.

One of the targets in the SAR, according to Snowden, was Chinese University and public officials, businesses and students in the city. The documents also point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets.

Snowden believed there had been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, with hundreds of targets in Hong Kong and on the mainland.

“We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he said.

That is way more than "doing it to foil terrorist attacks".

Microsoft still has a good business - servicing business desktops. That's not going away, because business needs to get work done. The problem Microsoft has is that Windows 7 is pretty good. It does what it's supposed to do, doesn't crash much, and doesn't take too much attention. There is no reason for businesses to "upgrade" to Windows 8.

Business desktops are now a business like heavy trucks. Companies buy and use lots of heavy trucks. They use them for their useful life, then buy new ones. Building heavy trucks is a profitable, successful, and important industry. But nobody trades in a heavy truck on a new model because the new model is slightly better.

The tablet industry is fighting to keep prices up. They're not going to succeed. You can get a basic Android tablet for under $70 on Amazon or WalMart, and for $30 in Shenzhen. Apple is still charging as much as $800, but market share has declined from 60% a year ago to 40% now and Apple is feeling pricing pressure. Microsoft isn't going to make much money in tablets.

Moving into "social" would be a big mistake for Microsoft. Nobody is making money in "social". Zynga just laid off a quarter of their workforce. Facebook traffic and revenue peaked a year ago. (Facebook is now increasing ad density to increase revenue per user. That worked for Myspace, right?) Everybody else is doing worse.

Microsoft just has to realize that its job is to service business, and do it better. Windows 8 is not helping. What business might go for is a much more secure OS.

It still look a lot better then the iYacht.

Zombie steve's iYacht only makes it to number 5 on google's ugliest yacht list.

It still look a lot better then the iYacht.

Note that NTD is founded by the Falun Gong and biased.

This South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) report makes the attack sound more complicated, with his wife being charged, though also with reports that others were present.

Though obviously that could all be a cover-up, and I don't trust what the cops in China say..

Watching Al Jazeera as TV is somewhat wasteful of time, but it's worth reading their site. Today's important item: trouble is brewing in the Balkans again.

Other viewpoints to watch:

• Russia Today. It's the official line, but it's worth seeing what that line is. (Russia Today, which is more of a tabloid, is less biased than Pravda.) Important item from Pravda: Russia is building a new generation of bigger ICBMs, in case the US builds missile defenses.
• Xinhua the semi-official paper of the China. Important item today: "Yuan to strengthen mildly in 2013: analysts". The US has been lobbying for a weaker yuan. Not going to happen.
• South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's top newspaper. If something important appears in People's Daily, they'll have some good commentary on it. Important item today: multiple stories on trying to figure out what Xi Jinping is going to do now that he's taken over.

It's hard to find any coverage of those subjects in US dailies.

If you're capturing only half of the motion blur that people are used to seeing, it'll look weird. I understand that shutters exist and that vision doesn't have shutters, so I'm not arguing against 48FPS but they need to figure out how to capture 24FPS motion blur at 48FPS.

The RED cameras they used for filming do exactly that - All while recording separate sets of frames for both the 24fps and 48fps versions. He may not have made the most aesthetically pleasing choices, but it was considered and attempted to a degree.

As the article seems to be missing a picture, you can find one here - http://olympics.scmp.com/Images/UploadImages/20080517/20080517143425.jpg Also Wiki has some interesting information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius