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*Citation needed* I was raised SDA in Australia, and lived in SDA communities in Cali, strangely enough one centered around Loma Linda University Medical Centre, a very highly regarded hospital. You can bet that everyone in that community got their shots, it was a prerequisite for going to Loma Linda Academy, run by the SDA church.

He might be mixing up SDA and Jehovah's Witnesses, who will refuse blood transfusions.

There are occasionally stories in the news about doctors going to court to overrule the decisions of parents who won't let their children receive a transfusion. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen, such as in the case of a teenager dying in the UK a couple of years ago. However, despite the negative consequences that dogma can have on them and their children, they are rarely referred to a "cult"; this is a recognised religion, with all the protections that the law therefore provides to it.

There's an interesting video on YouTube about faith healing, and specifically the harm that "Christian Scientists" can cause their children by believing that medical science is a myth, and the only true way to heal disease is through prayer. Again this leads to unnecessary suffering and death, both of adults and children. However again this is a recognised religion, protected by law.

Before modding me as “troll”, note that I'm not trying to argue that all religion is evil etc. etc. However, the rights of the individual to practise their own religious beliefs should never be more important than the rights of their children to receive the correct medical care.

Would you rather they played Barry Manilow?

In a meeting from face to face, Hamza Kashgari is http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02136/_The-Saudi-writer-_2136051b.jpg, a good young person.

Matthew 18:4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

(in spanish: Mateo 18:4 Así que, cualquiera que se humille como este niño, ése es el mayor en el reino de los cielos.)

Undear radical islamists, why do you want to kill him as if he is your brother, or your son, or your daddy? Allah forbides you to commit a blooody act! What disgrace! He has the same blood as from yours and from the grand father Abraham!.

- - - - -

And each person can question itself: can i be a PROPHET?.

Is there any "How to be a prophet manual for dummies"?.

Then, there are comprensions of the distinction between the real world and the world of imaginations.

JCPM: i'm not afraid of to be a follower of him, i'm not commiting any sin if i do it.

Feedbacks are a consequence of the forcing. Both should be counted. Also, keep in mind that 2C is the difference between a glacial and interglacial period - not insignificant. Human influence is both positive (greenhouse gasses) and negative (aerosols). Damn I hope you read through this post - it took way too long to compile :)

Granted, they are not a coherent movement so I can't say that all skeptics have predicted global cooling. The leaders of the movement who are willing to predict anything at all have predicted or promoted global cooling. They are right of course. If CO2 is not a major driver then global cooling has indeed been imminent for the last couple decades. Here is the solar output since 1985: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/from:1985

Here are examples from leaders of the skeptic movement predicting or promoting global cooling:

Joseph D'Aleo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D'Aleo

John McLean: http://www.skepticalscience.com/mclean-exaggerating-natural-cycles.html

Christopher Monckton: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/monckton-global_warming_has_stopped.pdf

Anthony Watts: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22global+cooling%22+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com

Piers Corbyn: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/global-warming-skeptic-predicts-brutal-winter-warns-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/

James Dellingpole: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/

Don Easterbrook: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/

Henrik Svensmark http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/

David Rose: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Alan Caruba, "An Icy End for Mankind?" Science and Environmental Policy Project, November 26, 2005; and Robert W. Felix, "Not by Fire, But by Ice: The Next Ice Age Now," Bellevue, WA: Sugarhouse Publishing.

Lawrence Solomon: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/05/03/lawrence-solomon-arctic-ice-sets-records-in-april-could-auger-global-cooling.aspx

The only notable people missing are McIntyre, McKitrick, Spencer, and Lindzen. None of these people are willing or able to make predictions.

My prediction? We've just had the hottest La Nina on record - hotter even than all but one of the El Nino's of the previous century. La Nina's are cooler part of the ENSO. ENSO neutral 2010 was tied for hottest year on record. Even a small El Nino (warm part of ENSO) will push us into the hottest year on record. So the hottest year on record will come with the next El Nino. Probably within 2 years?

LMGTFY: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/what-are-carbon-credits

Unless you live in the UK, in which case if you use BT as your Internet provider they intercept all your communications. They then break down your data by protocol, using "deep packet inspection", and profile each subscriber for advertising purposes. All totally illegal yet done to tens of thousands of subscribers without their knowledge, not that BT cared. You can read more here.

Phillip.

Ummm, the USSR hasn't been in business for like, um, 20 years? You need to get out more.

Not if Putin has his way. He's gunning for a Soviet reUnion. 'This week he has unveiled a grand vision to create a “Eurasian Union” linking old Soviet neighbours, foreseeing a “powerful, supranational union, capable of becoming one of the poles of the modern world”.'

Completely agree. Apple is actually probably the best of the tech companies in terms of monitoring working conditions in China, but a bit of heat will make them try much harder. One piece of evidence that news media don't really care about the issues is the recent coverage of the workers who threatened mass suicide at a Chinese factory making Xbox's. This was almost universally reported as, "workers at Apple manufacturer Foxconn..." without even mentioning Microsoft.

I'm also dismayed at the way that this story is linked to bringing jobs home. Poor Chinese desperately need these shitty jobs to stay alive and to find a path out of poverty, and keeping the devices they make affordable has stimulated a lot of really good jobs here. For example, Apple has paid more than $2 billion in the past year to hundreds of thousands of software developers in their App store.

Not to mention everybody seems to forget the "hey its cold as hell!" weather many of us grew up with was called by a thing now known as the "little ice age" which was naturally COLDER than the average. i would also point out this little blue ball has been, and always will be, one violent chaotic mutha when it comes to weather shifts, see the medieval warming period for a nice long period of freaky warm weather which i think I can state without fear of contradiction was NOT caused by SUVs.

Finally allow me to say if you believe a damned word from that hypocrite rev Al gore you need your head examined. not only has he set himself up to be a carbon billionaire but the man lives in a house sucking more energy than a dozen family dwellings, with an indoor basketball court and enough AC blasting to equal the carbon footprint of a couple of dozen families, the man has a fleet of SUVs while he tells your peasant ass to ride the bus and has the brass balls to say farting around in his own personal Lear jet as well as all of the above makes him carbon NEUTRAL...because he pays himself carbon credits from his own company. that would be like me moving money from my left to right pocket, calling it wealth redistribution, and then demanding you change your lifestyle to reimburse me for my "loss". Oh and just FYI but the same one that created credit default swaps, aka instant bailouts or economy killers. Guess what her new job is? why its writing the rules for carbon derivities which i'm sure when she's done while you'll pay more for...well everything, her good friends at Goldman Sachs and Mr Gore could switch to coal burning and end up getting paid for being "green" just as she sold junk housing mortgages as AAA investments.

So if you want to cut down because its better for the air fine and dandy, maybe you should look to Ed Begly Jr who lives a shining example of how the individual can significantly lower their footprint. But please watch this video and don't fall for the hucksters like Rev Al and his religion of Crap & Trade. the ONLY thing Al Gore gives a shit about is Al Gore or he wouldn't be blowing through energy like shit through a goose and living in a house that would make Hugh Hefner blush while driving a fleet worthy of a third world dictator. The only inconvenient truth is Al Gore has set up a scam that will make him tankers full of money and wants YOU to pay for it, its a reverse Robin Hood, take from the poor to give to the rich. And you notice Rev Al has NEVER, not even once, said a single word about possibly maybe stopping China's MFN status and limiting imports while they are polluting so bad we can detect it on the west coast? why is that? maybe because his portfolio is making mad MONIES from china, just like his friends? this isn't about left or right folks, this is about scammers and the scams they pull. Again no problem with simply setting goals and limits, look at how much cleaner our air is now compared to the 70s, it CAN be done without cutting Al Gore a check.

It doesn't matter this time. They can still field someone who is batshit crazy and still probably win. This time like last time you still have electronic 'voting' machines, Clear Channel and Cumulus regional monopolies, and eligible voters being turned away at the polls. This time around you also have unlimited corporate spending and Microsoft-based voting fraud for absentee ballots. The hill is getting steeper.

Because the documents were illegally obtained, still classified, and not authorized for disclosure.

The documents were illegally leaked (because Bradley Manning was in the military, and therefore bound by US secrecy laws). The documents were not illegally obtained, since Wikileaks' staff is neither in the military, nor are they American citizens.

Assange continued anyway, with predictable results. Assange doesn't care who gets hurt by his activities.

And the US military doesn't care who gets hurt by keeping their own mistakes secret. For example, when they lied about how ineffective their drones were and how many civilians they killed.

You have to weigh the potential damage of exposing secrets, against the potential damage of keeping them secret.

Taliban prepare to punish WikiLeaks Afghan informers

Taliban courts are preparing to try and punish any Afghan informers identified in thousands of sensitive documents due for imminent release by the WikiLeaks whistleblower website.

But so far, it's only amounted to loose threats. There's no evidence they've actually been able to get at someone with the leaked information.

Besides, if the US government is so concerned about the safety of their Afghan informants, why don't they offer them asylum in the United States? Wouldn't that be a fair reward for assisting the US in their war efforts?

It's important to remember that Wikileaks claims that TLA [wikipedia.org] agencies were contacted in order to assist with redacting sensitive information.

They refused.

Because the documents were illegally obtained, still classified, and not authorized for disclosure. Assange continued anyway, with predictable results. Assange doesn't care who gets hurt by his activities.

Taliban prepare to punish WikiLeaks Afghan informers

Taliban courts are preparing to try and punish any Afghan informers identified in thousands of sensitive documents due for imminent release by the WikiLeaks whistleblower website.

1. "Not everybody has a computer" - while still somewhat true, it's becoming pretty much a non-issue, when countries like India are putting linux-based tablets into every students hands by subsidizing them so that they only cost $30. (No, not XO-based devices - the XO is overpriced in comparison).

1.a - if you don't have access to a computer outside of school hours, you won't be able to do the rapid code/test/modify loop that is most conductive to learning anyway. The days of painstakingly figuring out what you want to do with flow-charts, writing it all down on 3x5 index cards, going through your card deck to make sure you had no bugs, then committing it to punch tape so you can run it and take the ensuing green-bar print-out to the cafeteria and pore over it to find your errors are long gone.

2. People learn by example, so cut-n-paste solutions definitely have their place. You can take a page to describe the difference between a function declaration and a function definition, and still leave someone scratching their head, or just SHOW them by example.

int foo(int a); // declaration - does nothing except declare that somewhere, we will sit down and define a function called foo();

int foo(int a) { // definition - it defines what foo actually does.
return a*42;
}

3. As for future "real-world" practicality, whatever you teach them today is probably going to be obsolete in 20 years anyway, unless you're teaching them c/c++ (which you don't want to do as a first language if they're kids).

Let them get the basics of reading, writing, math, biology, chemistry, and physics first. The schools are already failing at this, as evidenced by how half of all universities having to give remedial english and math courses. Lest you thing the US is better, 2/3 of students entering college are not ready for it, and only 1/3 actually take remedial classes to help fix the problem and only 3.4% of those tested were suited for taking college-level courses without a remedial course first, of which a large percentage rejected help (which helps explain the drop-out rate)..

Computer courses don't fix these basic problems in reading, writing, and arithmetic. No wonder that in one study 26% of all accountants who graduated failed the simple task of writing a 2-page memo ... and why it's become an increasingly ingrained problem over the years.

Let the TSA and police do their jobs without having to equally check everyone so we can pretend like terrorists don't all come from the same background. Racial profiling might not be politically correct but it works.

Except, you know, when it doesn't. Like the shoe bomber, Richard Reid whose father was Jamaican and mother was white British. Or the underwear bomber who was Nigerian. And there is Colleen LaRosa, aka Jihad Jane and her friend Jamie Paulin-Ramirez.

Yeah, that racial profiling really works great. Great for the terrorists that it would let sail right on through.

In support of the comments that this industry can be brought out; I refer you to this interesting comparison on what entertainment is worth, even if it is both UK specific and music specific. From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3343543/Country-roses-A-cut-above.html. The value of retail cut flowers (e.g. roses for your mother when she is in hospital) in the UK is about the same as that for music. It puts it all in perspective, especially when you consider that flower growers do not lobby governments to prevent us from giving our home grown roses to our friends.

No, they don't need to peek inside.

Think about how much cheaper for everybody it would have been to have one small government testing lab verifying medical implants that it is going to be having to replace all of the breast implants in France / UK etc. etc. Think how much compulsory insurance is going to cost.

This is typical of the corporate welfare attitude that small people have to pay for the mistakes of big companies but no big company has to pay for anything.

Exactly. If someone wants to, say, marry the Berlin Wall then do you really want your tax money used to try and stop her? Why do you care? As long as the relationship isn't abusive and nobody is being harmed, then why would you ever care that someone may choose to marry their pillow? Or a dog? Or even the man who married himself? Or a videogame character? Why do people care? Haven't governments got more important things to spend their tax payers money on, instead of wasting time and money regulating what is basically a social contract?

... landed in bed with a beautiful naked girl and my two best friends.

"He said he got stuck in the lifeboat for an hour before it was lowered into the water off the coast of Giglio island. Also with him was Dimitri Christidis, the Greek second in command of the Concordia and Silvia Coronica, the third officer, according to La Repubblica newspaper. " [Telegraph]

He says he tripped and fell into a lifeboat

Somewhere out there, Silvio Berlusconi is slapping himself for not coming up with that excuse. "I tripped and fell, lost my trousers in the process and landed in bed with a beautiful naked girl."

He had a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. He says he tripped and fell into a lifeboat, and then was "stuck" there for an hour before it was lowered into the water. Now, before you say that's an unlikely explanation, imagine if the captain was Mr Bean.

Even some of these you seemed to have singled out as incorrect, are more correct than incorrect.

For example, on the gymnastics one, you cut out: "Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium." That part definitely has come to pass. Also, the general thrust of the whole thing was correct. Physical education in the current era has more emphasis than it did in 1900. You are sort of thumbing your nose at the idea that an emphasis on gymnastics will begin in the nursery as we live in an era where the government is promoting a Let's Move initiative for children.

For the fruit one, while most did not happen in a widespread, practical way one did. Practically all grapes bought these days are seedless. In addition, some of these, if not broadly adopted are also not unheard of. We can grow huge fruits if there was any practical reason to, for example, strawberries the size of apples. I'd also be willing to bet fruits are bigger than they used to be in 1900, but there isn't much of a point to grow them monstrously big.

To England in Two days sounds silly at first, but if you read the description of the craft it describes, "supported upon runners, somewhat like those of the sleigh. These runners will be very buoyant. Upon their under sides will be apertures expelling jets of air. In this way a film of air will be kept between them and the water’s surface. This film, together with the small surface of the runners, will reduce friction against the waves to the smallest possible degree" sounds a lot like a hovercraft. The passenger-grade hovercraft linked to can do 83 knots or about 95 miles per hour. New York to London is about 3500 miles. So, it would take 37 hours roughly to travel on this ship from New York to London, or in other words, two days. So, really, the prediction came true, it just didn't end up being a popular mode of transport since we have faster and easier ways to traverse the distance.

He may also only be about 50 years off on the no-cars-in-cities prediction.

All in all these predictions were remarkably accurate and even a few of these "wrong" ones came pretty close.

As a Brazilian, I'm disgusted at how some (maybe most) Americans value and money property over life.

You may be misunderstanding the situation to a degree, so I will expand on it a bit.

Let's use a real-life example. A friend of mine was robbed while walking home from a party at about 2:00AM in my city. Four men jumped out of a car and held him at gunpoint. (Heading this argument off at the pass, but it just as easily could have been knives or improvised weapons such as pipes or baseball bats.) They took his wallet and his cell phone.

Usually you'll be told to "just cooperate". You'll lose some money, maybe, but you'll be alive so long as you don't resist.

Except my very good friend followed this advice exactly. He gave the thieves his money and phone, and they shot him in the leg for fun.

What if they had killed him? What's to stop them? You have to understand that someone who is willing to break many laws (robbery, armed robbery, assault, etc.) would just as likely have no problem killing you if you felt like it. This is why all humans have a fundamental right to defend themselves. (Whether or not your government supports it is another thing.)

The threat of violence acts as a deterrent when it comes to persons wishing to steal, cause harm, and/or invade your home. I think it would be overkill to just kill someone because they broke into your home (unless you are so in fear for your life that you cannot think straight), but I have absolutely zero problem harming somebody or killing them in order to defend my home and my property.

You also forget that sometimes home invasion has nothing to do with robbery. What if someone is invading your home but they don't want to rob you?

Britain, for example, is rife with examples of people being jailed for defending themselves. There's Munir Hussain who was jailed for beating home invaders with a Cricket Bat. They were not there to rob them but rather to injure or kill Mr. Hussain and his family because they are Muslim. Granted, he chased a man down and beat him, but I would honestly do the same if someone had threatened my family or friends with harm or death.

So it's not about going Rambo on somebody and shooting them as soon as they step into your doorway - it's about using reasonable force. The problem is that if someone is in your house to rape your daughter/wife/etc., or they're crazy, or they're out to kill you, etc. the only reasonable response is lethal force. Kill or be killed. The other problem is that you can't really know what an intruder's intent is. The reasonable thing to do in my opinion is announce that you're armed and try to hold them for the police. If they run, let them go (depending on the situation). If they come at you, then kill them.

In addition, I really don't get how a mostly Christian country likes death penalty and wars so much.

Despite my strong stance on self defense, I am very serious about preservation of life. I think the death penalty can never work right - there is always a chance an innocent person can be convicted. It troubles me greatly that we as a country have yet to entirely abolish it. Thankfully, it seems to be disappearing by and large - one of the (few) points of pride about my state is that we haven't executed anyone since 1963.

"Mostly Christian" doesn't count for shit when it comes to violence as I'll explain below.

"Thou shalt not kill." doesn't have exceptions I know of.

Sure it does.

Romans 1:32 - Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but hav

"SOPA is about sites like......"

In the UK, counter-terrorism legislation introduced after the London tube bombings has been used by local councils to spy on householders recycling behaviour or usage of school catchment areas ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427/Councils-warned-over-unlawful-spying-using-anti-terror-legislation.html ).

Just cos it is introduced for one purpose does not mean it wont be used for another.

"That's Slashdot's moderated democracy."

Then adjust your viewing threshold. Its your choice to view them all if you want, no-one's stopping you.

You can only get public funding if you presume the conculsion that humans cause climate change in your grant proposal.

Bullshit. For a start, you don't presume the answer in a research proposal. That's not "research". The Bush White House would have showered you with money if you could come up with such a proposal though.

the really interesting mechanism - and why it hasn't already kicked in to return us to the norm of glaciers covering most the Earth this time around - no one has a clue.

No one, except the scientists who have studied it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9002131/Carbon-emissions-to-block-next-ice-age.html

Researchers from Cambridge University who examined variations in the Earth's orbit and global climate patterns calculated that the next ice age should begin within the next 1,500 years.

But despite the impact of the Earth's natural cycle, an ice age would only be able to begin if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were to fall from 390 parts per million (ppm) to 240ppm or lower, according to the study published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

Separate research has shown that even if we cut our carbon emissions instantly, concentrations in our atmosphere would remain artificially high for the next 1,000 years.

.

Can't be Wong.

Yes they can:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554330/Too-many-Wangs-as-China-runs-out-of-names.html

Please direct all positive karma to PolygamousRanchKid, he found the link above.

Never mind the IP addresses, I wondered if they were running out of Chinese names, and found this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554330/Too-many-Wangs-as-China-runs-out-of-names.html

There are about 50,000 unique Chinese characters, and the Chinese names are made out of the combinations of those 50,000 unique Chinese characters

On the other hand, the "West" as it is, has too many of its own "John Brown" / "Mary Smith"

Never mind the IP addresses, I wondered if they were running out of Chinese names, and found this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554330/Too-many-Wangs-as-China-runs-out-of-names.html

Is mistaken identity a problem on the Internet there . . . ?

Yep, and he got it -- it's the Snausage that keeps on giving -- he's made more money since leaving office than any other Prime Minister:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/7948653/Tony-Blair-and-the-millions-he-keeps-out-of-the-public-eye.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8787053/Tony-Blairs-Byzantine-world-of-advisers-and-lucrative-deals.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-company-paid-just-315000-tax-on-income-of-more-than-12m-6287001.html

Yep, and he got it -- it's the Snausage that keeps on giving -- he's made more money since leaving office than any other Prime Minister:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/7948653/Tony-Blair-and-the-millions-he-keeps-out-of-the-public-eye.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8787053/Tony-Blairs-Byzantine-world-of-advisers-and-lucrative-deals.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-company-paid-just-315000-tax-on-income-of-more-than-12m-6287001.html

On the contrary; Saw arguably pushes some boundaries (though they're pretty easy boundaries to push, which makes the effort rather pointless). Harry Potter does not. It's just cliché linear plots (much like an old video game - run through level after level, with a boss at the end) with a universe that is mainly a ripped-off (and dumbed-down) Unseen University, from Pratchett's Discworld series. It was cleverly marketed, and it's competently written, but it doesn't really explore any new avenues, either in terms of style or theme. The same can be said about the fad that replaced it (teenage emo vampires, as seen in the "Twilight" series and its derivatives). And the same can preemptively be said about whatever literary fast food the publishers decide to put their marketing weight behind after the teenage model vampires have been milked.

Dan Brown is simply one of the worst writers ever to get published, and certainly the worst ever to receive that amount of advertising. This is just a small sample of his "skills". He does, arguably, come up with "interesting" plots, but those plots only work if the reader is a) able to ignore the atrocious writing and b) as ignorant about history, science and geography as Dan Brown himself, since he can't even place rivers in the correct continents (let alone establish credible connections to real historical facts, as he pretends to).

http://www.jewishnewsdaily.com/jewish-world-news/euro-terror-alert-spotlights-voiceprint-technology/
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/GCHQ-increase-UK-surveillance-spy-drone/story-11857893-detail/story.html names the daily mail, but adds new details.
i.e. RAF Northolt.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8857517/Met-Police-spends-millions-of-pounds-on-secret-aircraft.html
and more details on COMINT at
http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/cia-rendition.htm

For what it's worth, after hearing enough stories of sick people, I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of an unaccountable board of "medical experts" deciding who gets what without even examining the patient. This assumes a level of understanding of the human body that science simply does not posses. If it was simply a matter of Evil Drug Companies vs. Common Sense, then that would be another matter entirely. (I'm sure that the article that you linked to was great, but I'm not going to pay in order to read it.)

Perhaps these panels are great and all, but when they come up with guidelines based on X number of weeks, what happens if you kid is born just a few days too early? This. Note, I realize that a kid born at 22 weeks is probably not going to survive, but it should be the individual medical staff evaluating the individual kid who determines viability. Not some panel in London.

Had my wife shown up to a UK hospital with such a low chance of survival, would they have gone to heroic measures to attempt to save her? Or would they have made her comfortable?

If you don't want an unfavorable ruling from NICE, don't get old.

For what it's worth, after hearing enough stories of sick people, I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of an unaccountable board of "medical experts" deciding who gets what without even examining the patient. This assumes a level of understanding of the human body that science simply does not posses. If it was simply a matter of Evil Drug Companies vs. Common Sense, then that would be another matter entirely. (I'm sure that the article that you linked to was great, but I'm not going to pay in order to read it.)

Perhaps these panels are great and all, but when they come up with guidelines based on X number of weeks, what happens if you kid is born just a few days too early? This. Note, I realize that a kid born at 22 weeks is probably not going to survive, but it should be the individual medical staff evaluating the individual kid who determines viability. Not some panel in London.

Had my wife shown up to a UK hospital with such a low chance of survival, would they have gone to heroic measures to attempt to save her? Or would they have made her comfortable?

If you don't want an unfavorable ruling from NICE, don't get old.

The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary," read a recent editorial from the paper. "The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script...

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Stephen Hawking both British and not dead.

If you think NHS is a pillar example of public healthcare system that works you are hugely mistaken. I am a big believer in socialized medicine,but NHS is not a great one...

Well, let's ask Steven Hawkings about the NHS himself then, shall we?

I would not be alive without the NHS

Seems clear enough to me...

"*Ahem* you don't know a thing about ALS, do you ? He was probably perfectly healthy until 21, at which point 1 diagnosis was (and is) pretty much all that could be done. As for disability aids, those were designed, operated and built by his "employer".
And as far as I believe that house he has as part of his position comes complete with a butler (read : he gets to hire someone for that)."

Rather than speculate, let us read Stephen Hawking's own words about his debt to the NHS.

The telling paragraph:
"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

I would say the last sentence qualifies as evidence for the parent's statement about Stephen Hawking owing his life to the NHS.

Bribes within Kenya is a concern. But the Somali border is even more worrying

"Four killed in rocket attack on vehicle in Kenya"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/8852743/Four-killed-in-rocket-attack-on-vehicle-in-Kenya.html

"Somalia's president has criticised Kenya's military invasion of his country, raising fears of a split in support for the mission to hunt down al-Qaeda-linked Islamists"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/8848537/Somalias-president-questions-Kenyas-al-Shabaab-mission.html

Still, didn't one of these East Africa countries even launch a MadMax space rocket a year ago? Which exploded right after launch?

Bribes within Kenya is a concern. But the Somali border is even more worrying

"Four killed in rocket attack on vehicle in Kenya"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/8852743/Four-killed-in-rocket-attack-on-vehicle-in-Kenya.html

"Somalia's president has criticised Kenya's military invasion of his country, raising fears of a split in support for the mission to hunt down al-Qaeda-linked Islamists"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/8848537/Somalias-president-questions-Kenyas-al-Shabaab-mission.html

Still, didn't one of these East Africa countries even launch a MadMax space rocket a year ago? Which exploded right after launch?

Refreshing periodically with a clean image has been best practice on Windows for over a decade and is well known to be standard practice internally at Microsoft. It's such a regular practice at my house that I set up a DRBL server with Clonezilla to automate it (for the wife and kids of course. I don't use Windows myself unless I'm getting paid and never have - but I do use the same setup to back up whatever I'm running that day - it's OS agnostic.) It's the next-best thing to only running Windows in a VM from a daily copy of a golden image.

Users are what they are. Users will rebel against excessive lockdowns and put you out of a job for trying to help them secure the enterprise data. Malware authors are who they are, and will subvert your best efforts and the best users periodically, and once they pwn the box they pwn it until it's refreshed. Windows is a complex environment with many third party apps - each of which could have vulnerabilities of its own that allow a machine to be compromised. Setting an outer limit on the duration of pwnership that's less than the span between major OS refreshes is a Smart Thing. Better still would be to make the base OS read-only while users are active. It's really, really hard to make something that will compromise a Knoppix boot-from-DVD environment for more than one day. Some VDI environments are leveraging this advantage by giving the end-user a clean OS image cloned from a golden source with every logon, which is like a daily refreshed PC. This makes the malware authors fit their noxious nonsense into something that fits into the user's AD profile, because they literally can't compromise the OS image for more than a day. That's a much more difficult target and makes scanning for that junk a lot easier because it can be done from a known-good system.

Refreshing periodically doesn't prevent compromise but it does establish a maximum lifespan of a specific compromised PC incident. Therefore it's a good and useful thing, and best practice. It's part of risk mitigation.

Some users will respond to this by bookmarking a compromise vending Internet website and loading it first thing every day. Those are good targets for termination with extreme prejudice. There are limits to plausible accidental stupidity.

I don't compliment Microsoft very often here on slashdot but this thing TFA says they plan to do is a good thing, and the auto-refresh idea of the grandparent post - while funny - is still a good idea. I feel dirty saying that, so I'll finish by saying that Microsoft suing a PC vendor for providing their properly licensed Windows customers with a disc to do the same thing is a travesty and just plain stupid. I think there's a nefarious plan for a puppet's takeover of a major retail vendor in play there.

My phone resides in my pocket. Even if I left it on the dash of my car, the casing is only so large, even on my Galaxy S II. I don't see how even the most efficient of solar panels in the most effective of locations would provide enough power. It's noble of them to try, but at the moment I'm not surprised this was the outcome.

I don't doubt that Nokia's engineers did some quick calculations and told their managers that solar charging wouldn't be practical before this project even got started. And then the managers said: "It doesn't matter. It'll look great in a press release. The environmentalists will love it. Do it anyway."

Actually, it's been done before by Ericsson/Sagem/Puma, so for a press release to be noticed, you'd need to do it so well you that wouldn't need to ship a plug-in charger in the box. And that's a ways off yet.

As a non-American, the US is viewed as repressive, & we all assume the dictatorship bit will come soon (not that it's really needed). More & more the US is looking like 1920's Germany.

If you actually believe that nonsense it would seem that either your education system or media has failed you, unless you are a "progressive", in which case the problem is fringe politics.

I like your use of the royal "we" though.

Freedom of speech is dead in Australia

Hopefully there will be a boycott and more boycotts if it fails to get the message across.

Absolutely!

This is not really true. The ipcc directs funding, coordinates with NGO's, hires NGO's affiliates, evaluates and selects research and chooses review panels.

This is how researchers from WWF were able to insert claims with absolutely no scientific research to back them up. Try Amazon gate for starters. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7113582/Amazongate-new-evidence-of-the-IPCCs-failures.html

While you may view them as your Ministry of Truth - they are nothing more than a propaganda machine to those paying attention.

"Absent the capitalist system of letting the market decide which products are desirable, how do you determine which ebooks deserve to succeed? How do you determine how much to reimburse the author? These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources."

J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter while she was on the dole.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3666215/From-the-dole-to-Hollywood.html

How do you explain the success of "free software" or the success of the Debian project that is coordinated through emails and chat messages instead of dollars? What often determines what succeeds and is maintained is by what people think is useful (not who has money to pay for it).

Why do people need to be "reimbursed"? People can be motivated by the work itself:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

It turns out creativity often suffers if it is remunerated.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Further, why do we have to keep innovating like crazy if we never get to rest after all that innovation is done? Haven't we made life easy enough that we can get back to spending time with family, friends, hobbies, contemplating nature or the infinite, being a good citizen, and so on?

Most work just exists to preserve (through "guarding") the work system itself; see:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.whywork.org/

What are you going to propose to do when robots and AIs can do much of the work? How are you going to earn a living?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

(Posting AC as I have 15 mod points in the discussion, including modding your post up because it does raise an important point. :-)

But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.

Genetic engineering doesn't splice food with animals either. Try and find a reliable source for your idiotic hysteria.

I guess it must be idiotic to proofread also. Did you mean "splice plants with animals"?

Here's the likely first GM animal to be food:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/7857310/Giant-salmon-will-be-first-GM-animal-available-for-eating.html

The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line. From what I understand Thorium (especially LFTRs) are far safer. They are "walk away safe". My suspicion is that it is too late for the US to catch up though. As the article mentions..China already has a bunch these coming online in 2013...while it just got approved in the US. China is also filing more patents...they are progressing much fast than the states at this point. China and thorium: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html The US and their history with thorium and further thorium info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

It seems to me that if this works then there should be a vaccine effective against every flu?

As a matter of fact, there is one. It's called Flu-V, and was apparently developed using the same methodology used to create the AIDS vaccine.

Nor has any app ever been remotely killed on Ubuntu. FUD much?

Not just that no app has been killed by Ubuntu, but if you switch don't opt in to automatic updates then Ubuntu doesn't even have the ability to do remote kills without your agreement, which, despite the fanbois moderation of my above post, has been confirmed to exist by Steve Jobs himself.

Of course, this is never going to work north of some point. Not just Alaska.

You are a troll and a hater and your information is wrong.
Chemical battery backup of a city in Alaska have already proven to be a viable alternative alternative and is cheaper than allowing for things to break because of the cold. There is also a city in Texas with battery backup.
Please google for five seconds before claiming "absolute truths", or preferably; please die.

How is the United States supposed to build "good relations" with this kinda crap?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8022125/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-his-outlandish-quotes.html