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Last year in high school, first year in jail.

I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure being "surprised that so many famous people got infected" is not a good legal defense.

"(Twitter) has indicated that it will not press charges against Delphin and has also declined to suspend his Twitter account"

Wow sounds like he really lucked out considering the embarassment he caused a lot of big wigs, maybe "i'm surprised" is a good defense? I'll have to use that next time I'm pulled over for speeding: "Officer I'm as surprised as you are I was going that fast, guess I'll just leave now"

"and there are legitimate, legal ways to prevent/limit valuable employees from doing so... another is to require those employees to sign non-compete agreements (which must be properly limited in scope, duration, and geographic area in order to be held valid)..."

Actually a non-compete is far worse than what they're being accused of. Saying "you can not be hired by any of my competitors" lays a broad blanket across everything compared to "You can not be hired by Google".

I think it's completely reasonable what they did. Rather than run around suing employees after breaking a non-compete they instead went to their main competitor and said "we won't steal your employees if you don't steal ours". Seems reasonable, they didn't stop their employees from ever getting another job, just don't work for XYZ.

"another is to pay your employees a fair market wage for their talents and abilities, so that they'll actually want to remain your employee..."

I call BS on that. If you're not getting paid what you're worth and not happy you're going to quit and find another job irregardless of the fact that company XYZ can't hire you. Even if you're just a animator or search engine programmer there's many more companies than just Disney and Pixar using animators or Google and Yahoo that need search experts, in fact I'm sure putting Pixar, Disney, Google or Yahoo on a resume gets you a job almost anywhere.

This isn't Foxconn where employees are literally killing themselves, these are some of the best companies in the world to work for, with amazing perks like Google's onsite medical staff and swimming pools. Everyone already wants to work for them, and now someone's claiming they're not being treated fairly? Give me a break!

In the old days we used to call this "brinksmanship." The Russians haven't been playing that particular game for some time now

Threatening to target a neighboring country with nuclear weapons because you don't like what they are doing isn't brinksmanship?

the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle

This looks about as comfortable as the Saddle Seat RyanAir wants to use. It might fit Paris Hilton and her three best friends (does she have that many?), but for the non-anorexic crowd, it looks like a tight fit.

Disclaimer: I am an American, weigh in at 200lbs, and measure 6'4" (that's 1.93 meters for all you metric nazis out there - i.e. the rest of the world), so I'm not overweight, and there's no way I could fit in this thing

In fact, the airline in question had to remove all chairs from the plane, making it standing room only. Suffice to say, all of the passengers felt safer.

That was probably a £170K Ferrari 458 - they seem to be bursting into flames quite regularly, general recall of the model is currently going on ;-)

I'm not against mass vaccines.

I'm against vaccines where:
  Mortality rate of vaccine * number of vaccinated > mortality rate of disease * number of infected.
or:
  Adverse effect rate * number of a vaccinated > adverse effect rate of disease * number of infected.

Vaccines do cause fatalities: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3336455/Secret-report-reveals-18-child-deaths-following-vaccinations.html
(probably not all those deaths were from the vaccine)

And it is possible to have a scenario where mass vaccination could do more harm than the disease even if the disease has a high mortality rate.

For example, say you had an Ebola vaccine that killed 1/5000 of those vaccinated. And that Ebola killed 90% of those infected.

You should still not mass vaccinate _everyone_ with that Ebola vaccine, because Ebola doesn't spread that well.

(FWIW, I don't think the real Ebola vaccine currently in trials is that dangerous)

Basically mass vaccinations are self-inflicted "pandemics". If these resulting vaccine "pandemics" are worse than the disease (assuming the usual nonvaccine countermeasures like quarantine, restrictions on travel, and limited vaccination to just groups at risk), then mass vaccinations are not justified.

I'm not saying all of these mass vaccinations are unjustified.

It just annoys me when people say stuff like "the number of people who get sick from a vaccine even closely to the degree they would have with the disease it is so unbelievably small it's not even worth considering."

"thorium reactors"
this may be true, but today, in 2010, there are NO actual operating thorium cycle reactors, and therefore, as a matter of fact, we don't really know how well they would perform,

WRONG: There exists plenty of R&D thorium reactors; so the physics have been proven. One excellent example is we've proven that the energy from one (1) tonne of thorium is roughly equal to 200 tonnes of uraniumm, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. The point is, we have a measured energy output from real-world reactors - not just fluffy academic theories.

assuming they actually could be built economically.

Yea, because shedding blood over oil is so economical.

as they say, in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they ain't beyond this, there are two other significant issues with any nuclear power proposal: a, the associated technology (eg, how to handle high level waste safely) can serve as a cloak for related activities in bomb making; you just can't get away from this (eg, if you have a thorium reactor, you need emergency technology for dealing with very hot waste; this same technology, or related technology, is critical to bomb making, but is very rare, and hard to obtain and hide if you don't have a large civilian program)

Thorium scavenges plutonium, thereby acting as an eco-cleaner that eradicates this terrible scary waste you hint at.

Here's a recent article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html

b) ther are better alternatives; nuclear power is an intelligence test: if you say yest to nuclear, instead of solar/wind, you fail (and don't give me that crap about fundamental physical contraints on solar/wind - people who say stuff like that are just ignorant)

I have no idea what this "test" is you speak of, but the idea of solar is a joke. We can always hope to break, but simply cannot ignore established laws of physics - no matter how much we might want to. You want us to ignore physics? Let me know what happens when you leap off a cliff...damn silly laws of physics...

I believe that a day will come, which enables us to effectively break established laws of physics, but until that day, I do not want my children's blood shed over a purposeless war intended to control corporate-sponsored energy options. Especially when strong alternatives exists, even though puppets like you continue to ignorantly spout otherwise. Speaking to ignorance - maybe try lifting that veil of your own, and do some in-depth independent research - instead of just fumbling around with a half-assed read of a wikipedia article.

When it comes to solar, we cannot hope to harness a fraction of this planet's needed transportation related energy needs, let-alone the other energy needs. We're better off using the same square-acreage and growing food, or even growing biofuel.

Now, wind, there's interesting potential there; I live in Portland Oregon, USA - there's a huge number of expanding wind farms just east of me, and our biggest issue is the fact that our current electrical grid is struggling to carry all of this new power.

But our wind farms will not keep New York running overnight...nor help the east-coast survive a cold winter.

You are arguing against purchasing American goods manufactured in China. Foxconn is responsible for much more than iPods and iPhones but let's use the iPod as an example (because we can extrapolate fairly easily that what holds true in this case will remain true in similar cases). It is well known that the iPod is produced in China, but how much of the value of an iPod do you think remains in China? You might be surprised.
Do you honestly think that the companies would all of a sudden up and close shop in China and start manufacturing in America with labor? They would automate as much of the process as possible. Finally, a recent paper shows that because of wage imbalances, the actual amount earned by American workers far outstrips that of non-US workers. PDF Link
And as a final prod - how much do you enjoy the low prices available from newegg or wherever in order to build your own machine? That doesn't happen without globalization. Your option would not only displace Chinese workers, it would also not help a substantial amount of American workers in the long-run.

There are extremes, and a happy medium... I prefer being happy.

Yep, very cowboyish them folks at Wikileaks.

After all they are te ones who went in guns blazing using cowboy rhetoric.

They are the ones torturing...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
Using "National Security" as a guise to protect the guilty and deny justice to the victims...
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/08/obama/index.html
Using political and economic presure to protect American war criminals from prosecution and force foreign governments into compliance with "extra judicial" measures...
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/CIA_Red_Cell_Memorandum_on_United_States_%22exporting_terrorism%22,_2_Feb_2010
And killing civilians...
http://cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm
For sport...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers

No they don't have them.
Oh wait...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers
And even then the government wouldn't protect them...
Oh wait...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/08/obama/index.html

You googled for "rape", you will get search results with "rape". You can't draw any conclusions out of that.

And here's something I got from the wikileaks twitter: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html

See, I should be able to find horrible things like those with that google search :(

Given we know the rate of ocean rise with a high level of certainty.

Absolute bollocks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Um ... Huh?

Since when is it a civil right to burn religious literature from other faiths?

Secondly .. Freedom of Religion means just that. Anyone who interprets it differently is an idiot -- See http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2010/09/burn-a-koran-day1.jpg

Amen. Not to mention that the EU has a history of bending over backwards for lobbyists, evil Orwellian shit and selling out its citizens' privacy to foreign nations.
So this declaration feels less like "Oi! Stop drafting that treaty!" and more like "Oi! Stop drafting that treaty without giving us a chance to add some juicy bits!".

Mods need a dose of the clue-by-four... this is not flamebait, people in the UAE get jailed for just kissing in public. You can also be thrown in prison for years for being gay and forced to take hormone injections. (Granted the Brits did that to Turing as recently as the 50s, so I guess that means the UAE is only a few decades behind the moral development of the West...)

It's not a big deal if the pilot trances out. If they can fall asleep without people noticing they aren't exactly that important. As for the poor pilot having to sit on his own for hours... what on earth do you think train/truck/etc drivers have to do?

Phillip.

Ryanair has been coming up with more revolutionary ways to save money:

Let stewardesses land planes:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7981643/Ryanair-boss-says-air-stewardesses-should-be-allowed-to-land-planes-in-an-emergency.html

Let passengers stand:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/5753477/Ryanair-to-make-passengers-stand.html

Ryanair has been coming up with more revolutionary ways to save money:

Let stewardesses land planes:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7981643/Ryanair-boss-says-air-stewardesses-should-be-allowed-to-land-planes-in-an-emergency.html

Let passengers stand:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/5753477/Ryanair-to-make-passengers-stand.html

Apparently so. Allow me to refresh your memory:

Your post confirmed my assertion.

Swastikas and perfectly legal in all but one nation,

Read. Read again. Read harder. You are wrong. While every single European country allows the swastika (or any Nazi propaganda) to be displayed for "educational" purposes by some definition or another, there are several countries which ban the swastika (or any Nazi propaganda) when there's the remotest possibility that it is being used to indicate the artist's/author's/speaker's support of Nazism.

Porn is completely legal in all first-world nations,

You have no idea what you're talking about. Ignoring child porn, there are many forms of consensual porn banned throughout the Western world. In the UK, the Criminal Justice Act 2008 bans all sorts of S&M. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 makes it illegal to make a sexually explicit drawing (as opposed to a pseudo-photograph, which was already illegal) suggesting involvement of a human under 18.

the Terrorism Act of 2006 has nothing to do with the US,

I'm sorry, are we only allowed to talk about the US? There's so much coverage here of unreasonable laws passed by the US over the last decade I thought I'd pick somewhere else.

and assange - despite being an asshat whom I'd personally love to see in a pine box

Death as a punishment for speech? Are there any dictators you particularly admire, or do you go more on the uniform?

is alive and well and not facing any sort of sanctions

A country governed by rule of law rather than rule of men would have either shut up or issued a warrant detailing precisely what crimes it accuses Assange of. Instead it's issued warnings, threats, sabre-rattling and open "we're cowards, please share some of the burden of our unjustifiable action" letters to its allies to request cooperation on imposing criminal sanctions against Assange.

To round off, I hereby accuse Obama of raping me. What's that, all important news about Obama isn't being drowned out by my accusation?

There is a lot of belief in politics that if we make something illegal, people will stop doing it.

They are fully aware that this is not true; but stopping people doing it isn't the objective. That's not even close to being foremost on their minds. Politicians are driven by personal power and political motives. They want to be seen to be "doing something", "being tough" and "sending a strong message".

Due to recent well covered events it's easier to demonstrate my point when discussing drugs. Whilst it obviously isn't the same issue, it's an area I think most people would agree that has many similar issues, is highly related and is subject to similar attitudes from politicians, the public and the media.

Politicians have numerous advisers with a very solid understanding of the situation. However (at least here in the UK) when the experts give actual opinions based on expertise, they get sacked. Or they get frustrated by the sole political motivation and quit.

Claudia Rubin from Release – a national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law – said the expert should not have been penalised. "It's a real shame and a real indictment of the Government's refusal to take any proper advice on this subject," she said.

Meanwhile we rely on unelected Lords for a bit of reason. The then (unelected) Science Minister reacted furiously:

As science champion in Government' I can't just stand aside on this one.

Prof Nutt (the guy who got sacked see above) himself wrote more recently:

the niceties of legal process and proper procedure on drug classification are as nothing beside the media-driven political demand that something must be done, and done now.

(I'll point out the sources above are across the political spectrum, as far as the broadsheets go the "Torygraph" is perhaps the furthest to the right and the Guardian furthest to the left; the Independent supposedly dead-centre but generally considered to be a lefty. The government they're all criticising was the centre-left Labour Party.)

Generations allowed the NSA and GCHQ with their helper countries to do this and more. Cheap US cryptography was gifted to NATO that kept the Soviets out but gave plain text back to the NSA.
European cryptography was subverted from inception and exported to the world.
Now this is happening to the next generation of hand held devices and people sit up?
Another country is getting what a select few had for decades.
The strange question is - why is anyone with anything interesting to say still silly enough to use any of this tech?
Numbers, IM's, friends lists, voice prints - all collected and searched for 24/7.
Make a call in some parts of the world and your voice is on file eg :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3949099/Royal-Marine-killed-on-Christmas-Eve-in-Afghanistan.html
I guess everybody now wants their own internal SIGmod
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/uk/isc2005-06.pdf
The real bite is the effort to get this into a public legal framework.

Hundreds you say! We'll get right on that once we deal with the issue that every single iPhone 4 is defective by design (and no, putting it in a case is no more a fix than telling me the way to prevent the paint flaking on my brand new Ferrari is to keep it locked up in a garage).

Are you honestly telling me that if some group decided that the wiretapping laws Bush made were "going too far" and the decided to start an armed uprising against the president the military would have trouble finding people willing to go and shoot every last one of them dead?

Obviously not. Nobody did that when Bush did order wiretapping. However there was the Waco seige, the Oklahoma City bombing supposedly in response to Waco, and Ruby Ridge. Those were just in the '90s. In the '80s a number of militias sprang up. The Weather Underground began in 1969. Or look at the Senate race in Nevada. The republican candidate is appealing to militia types. Or look at the Tea Party movement. The Jewish ADL or Anti-Defamation League has this on the militia movement in the US. Let's see what the "Telegraph" in the UK says: " The truth behind America's 'civilian militias' Armed and extremely... patriotic. Why a growing number of Americans are preparing for a war against their government." Along a similar vein Foxnews, the conservative news outlet, has the article Militia Accused of Plotting War on U.S. Gov't.

Just look how quickly rumors are spread, then are corrected on the net, even if they don't die. Look at wikileaks, and all those reports from Afghanistan being released. Today it's foolish to believe the US government can get away with military action against it's own citizens. Hell people still denounce McCarthyism. And while you may not know or recall it yourself there still are people who recall J Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO. Of course Bush did pretty good at rolling back the checks that were put in place to stop stuff like that again. But just as then people will rise up again to denounce and protest it.

Falcon

I am not sure whether /. users appreciate the whole situation in India. Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push terrorism to India.

Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.

Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.

I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither. But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.

In my view of viewing things terrorism is merely a symptom of far deeper underlying problems with government and society and with international affairs. In the face of that, secure e-mail is barely a footnote. If a government can completely and totally monitor all communications by all people within its borders, it has succeeded only in addressing a means to an end. It has not and likely will not address why so many people want to become terrorists in the first place, what motivates them, why they do what they do, and how to actually prevent this phenomenon by addressing its root causes.

Nobody ever wants to really look at root causes. They're too busy making sure a good crisis "doesn't go to waste" as an Obama staffer put it (don't think for a moment that this idea is limited to USA politics). They just want to exert as much control as possible over the means to an end. They want to make terrorism as difficult as possible by those who wish to carry it out because that means more police power for them. No one seems to want to make fewer people consider becoming terrorists in the first place. Addressing the type of political and social unrest that makes once-harmless people consider such drastic measures might mean taking a hard look at foreign and domestic policy with a willingness to drastically alter the status quo towards a pro-freedom position, and no one in power really wants to do that. It would reduce their power.

I'm not saying that terrorists are something other than scum. They are. I'm saying that you are dealing with nations that, based on their actions, have the attitude of "well if we're going to have terrorism anyway, things like the USA's Patriot Act that we could have never passed without active attacks sure do sweeten the deal". That's part of the problem. Anyone who gets what they want due to terrorism, directly or indirectly, is part of the problem of terrorism. Unfortunately that includes many state actors.

I am not sure whether /. users appreciate the whole situation in India.
Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push terrorism to India.

Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.

Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.

I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither.
But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.

for what reason would these people restrict their wars to those regions ? Especially with the "progressive" view on immigration prevalent these days. (funny how progressives evolved from 'kill all foreignors' to the exact opposite in about 40 years, yet claim that there has never been a change in their position and that their past consists of people totally alien to them that deserve to get shot on sight)

For example

Other than outlawing freedom of religion, and directly attack and destroy any ideology causing "too serious" problems, I have no clue how you could get a solution to this.

For those who haven't seen it yet...

Wikileaks - CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States "exporting terrorism"

Telegraph article - CIA memo on United States as 'exporter of terrorism' published by Wikileaks

an aluminum foil hat was enough. This guy is way ahead of the curve: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01407/foil-car_1407008i.jpg

I guess when you close your eyes to everything that doesn't fit your own reality, your reality is only what you make it instead of anything real. I'm not going to go through the trouble of actually linking to these articles, but if you are interested in anything more then conformation bias, I suggest you copy and past these links out and read them.

before you start clamoring those are biased sites, I suggest you stop looking only at sites that you agree

Actually, I read the WSJ editorial page every day (a habit from the days when they were rational and got their facts right), so I already read several of those articles. Mostly, I get my information from the New England Journal of Medicine, which is what you have to read if you want to understand these issues. (They print lots of articles by Republican policy-makers.)

The provision for end-of-life counseling was opposed by Republicans and they said it would lead to "death panels" (although it is true that there was more to the "death panels" than that). I agree with the NYT story that they're responsible. You don't have to agree. But you'll be wrong.

I understand that Telegraph article, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7948878/US-breast-cancer-drug-decision-marks-start-of-death-panels.html which is about Avastin (bevacizumab). The WSJ editorial page just published a deceptive editorial about Avastin again, so I checked the facts again to make sure I remembered it right.

I don't know why conservatives can't understand a simple news story. Avastin does *not* cure breast cancer, and it does *not* even extend the life of anyone with breast cancer. It extends life in *colorectal* cancer. In breast cancer, all it does is improve the appearance of spots in an x-ray, which is technically called "progression" but in this case is not correlated with survival. In fact, because of the side effects, breast cancer patients with Avastin do worse than people without it. The Telegraph actually explains most of this if you read it carefully.

David Vitter, the Republican Senator from Louisiana, is lying by saying this demonstrates a death panel. The FDA withdrew its approval from a drug for breast cancer because it didn't work and caused side effects which can require surgery, and frequently kill them, like bowel perforation and kidney failure.

So here's another example of Republicans shouting "death panels" for political advantage where it's clearly not true, and where they're causing people actual harm as a result.

I agree with you that one should read publications they disagree with and I recommend that you follow your own advice. I recommend Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times.

The NYT is correct. I read the conservative attacks on Obama's health care plan in the WSJ, including Betsy McCaughey. I also read about the health plan in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For McCaughey, or anyone else, to claim that these were or would be anything like "death panels" to decide when to let someone die for cost-control purpose, is a lie. The conservatives lied. You can go to places like Factcheck.org to confirm that.

I guess when you close your eyes to everything that doesn't fit your own reality, your reality is only what you make it instead of anything real. I'm not going to go through the trouble of actually linking to these articles, but if you are interested in anything more then conformation bias, I suggest you copy and past these links out and read them. You should also note the dates of the articles and maybe send a copy to fact check dot org too. as you have already mentioned that you have read some of these, I have to ask why you are arguing that the death panels definition must be limited to a narrowly defined concept delivered by the democrats who are also in opposition to the republicans? I mean it's the conservatives making the charge, their attack, it's them who define what death panels are, not your biased opposition sites.

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052970203863204574344900152168372.html
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=107403
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7948878/US-breast-cancer-drug-decision-marks-start-of-death-panels.html
http://www.lifenews.com/bio3084.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2224790

and before you start clamoring those are biased sites, I suggest you stop looking only at sites that you agree with and pay attention to the links as the one is from another country altogether with absolutely no vested interest in the US health care system. A few others are what most would consider a left leaning site which admits that the death panels were more then end of life counseling stating that they would ration health care which Obama already has said it's done already, why not do it in the open.

You don't think Al Franken's libel lawyers would have let him print a book like "Lies: and the Lying Liars who Tell them" if he couldn't actually prove that Republicans lied, do you? Actually, all Franken did was assign a bunch of summer interns to fact-check statements by right-wing crackpots like Limbaugh.

This is hilarious. Are you actually arguing that Al Franken's lawyers are so smart that they wouldn't let him publish a book with falsehoods in it but so stupid that they can't go after the people he claims is spouting falsehoods? I mean seriously, do you think it's anything like that at all? Did you even think that out before making your statement or is that something you saw on one of your conformational bias sites and liked it enough to repost?

Here is a hint, Franken's lawyers said to him- if anything, it's political speech, the most protected speech by the first amendment. And no, the so called fact checkers didn't check the facts or he ignored them completely just as you are in order to impress your views right now.

All I asked for when I made that post was that there was some honesty in this discussion. You have proved to me that it is impossible to expect that from you or perhaps your side. The death panels charge was more then end of life counseling and you seem to know it. You can find more about it simply by searching for obamacare death panels. And of course, there is no shortage of people connected to Obama who reinforce this concept by public policy positions publicly held in the present or somewhat recent past.

By comparison, let's look at how China has manages strategic resources:

A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium... “This isn’t about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies”...

And, from a previous Slashdot article (I think):

Airships: a second age
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7918762/Airships-a-second-age.html which includes the following:

There’s a niggling worry I have about the LEMV squatting over Afghanistan: surely a giant white balloon will be vulnerable to attack, despite its lofty position? Fortunately, that’s something they’ve thought about a great deal at Cardington. Indeed, they’ve been thinking about it for many years now, because they also designed ships that were to be deployed over Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

At that time they tested a full-sized airship against a range of artillery including a Russian mounted machine gun filled with .22 calibre armour-piercing incendiaries and a SAM-7 surface to air missile. What they learnt was this: the airship is almost invincible to attack. Helium is an inert gas, so it doesn’t explode.

The pressure inside the envelope is so low that when a hole is made, say by a bullet, air seeps out slowly rather than rushing out catastrophically. Missiles need something hard to connect with if they’re going to explode, but an airship is accommodating, not hard-shelled. The material has the flexibility of a plastic bag; make a hole in it and it almost immediately shrinks inwards.

There were also other sources confirming this such as: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7715209/Steam-for-Mac-goes-live.html

I wonder who their sources were?

In addition it's odd that it was possible to get a partially working client from the code available and not finish that off.

Also, doing the ridiculous thing of answering myself, I'd like to add this forum thread (yes, Phoronix and noted by Phoronix as well):

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23328&page=5 (page 5 is interesting, be the thread is lengthy)

So...what was that thread all about? A user on page 6 says: They could be developing the client on Linux for Mac OS X. The fact that the files have support for Linux does not mean that they actually intend to support it. The best that you can conclude that Linux users will get is unofficial support without an official announcement.

Maybe he was right. Still, I stand by my words: Something doesn't add-up here.

Going to the *real* source of the rumours: Phoronix. It all started in this page. And they say, quote:
"Valve Corporation has [...] confirmed something we have been reporting for two years: the Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine are coming to Linux"

But where is this announcement? Later on that article we have something interesting: "An announcement from Valve itself is imminent."

Yet, Valve didn't make an announcement. We've been waiting for it.

As much as it may seem that Phoronix lied with their teeth here, they do point to other more respectful sources such as Telegraph.co.uk, who also seem to confirm said announcement: "Valve has also confirmed that it will make Steam available to Linux users in the coming months. "

That's it: It's a mess.

Yeah in reality the whole world just wants to live in peace under gaia and save everyone ...

oh wait ... what's this ?. A text, written by the most powerful islamic scholar on the planet, that islam orders muslims to use nuclear weapons on infidels, even when there is no provocation. (there are many sunni equivalents too)

Whoops ... we're fucked. Of course if darwin and dawkins are right, global war between races (darwin) and ideologies (dawkins) is bound to happen, and we should probably just accept it, suit up, and start killing. Because, all races and ideologies except one will not survive the conflict (and while there may be doubt as to how the conflict will happen, with weapons, disease or starvation, there can be no reasonable doubt about the outcome : only a single race and ideology can survive). The only question is which one.

(it is a well-known and accepted fact in evolutionary theory that speciation cannot occur where there is significant interaction between the different races within one species. When it comes near to occurring, and then the interaction re-starts for some reason (such as it has in humans) the races disappear. When looking at genetic algorithms, it is beyond obvious that this cannot be avoided (at least where races are concerned). Who wants to make the argument that humans do not follow this rule ? The American president himself is a clear example of this : he is "african american". So is his wife. They both have at least 80% European genes (I believe even more), and their children are whiter than they are (with probability 100 - 20%^2 = 98%), and it will not stop with those children (Obama's children most likely have > 95% European genes (most likely meaning that if you calculate all the possibilities, chances are extremely good that they have this division in their genes)). America will be lucky if there is 0.01% of the original African-American gene pool remaining in a mere 100 years. )

"A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with an Israeli woman who believed he was Jewish because he introduced himself as 'Daniel'. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7901025/Palestinian-jailed-for-rape-after-claiming-to-be-Jewish.html
(sorry about the link source but i wasn't going to dig for a better one.)

The facts would seem to disagree, just like it does with most progressive nonsense. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922755/England-has-worse-crime-rate-than-the-US-says-Civitas-study.html

About the only worse thing they could have announced was a new ICBM.

Yeah, about that.

In the UK when anyone questioned immigration policy they were publically branded "racist" by the Labour party and prevented it from being debated. It was a legitimate concern

Citation?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-464355/It-extremist-fascist-illiberal-demand-stringent-immigration-controls.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/3642549/Door-opens-for-migration-debate.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1280705/Labour-tried-stifle-debate-immigration.html
http://www.cadaad.org/2010_volume_4_issue_1/63-45
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/04/the_politics_of_race.html
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/gordons-gaffe-sinks-labour-in-heat/

there is no way that my little neighbourhood has hundreds of competition-level cyclists who just happen to be in training year 'round.

Presumably they like to think they are, just like the people buying expensive golf clubs, gym shoes or whatever.

Most of the cyclists I see wear normal clothes, except the ones on £2000+ racing bikes. For an explanation of that, see here ("New figures show that middle aged men are bypassing Porsches and Harley Davidsons in favour of expensive "Tour de France-style" racing bikes in a last ditch bid to hold back the tides of old age.")

Apropos of this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html

I don't know why anyone would put any real data into a service like Facebook.

It's a large, profit-driven, high-margin corporation. You wouldn't tell McDonald's or Coca-Cola what your interests are, where you live, YOUR POLITICAL OPINIONS, who your parents are and who you want to date, would you?

Stay anonymous. Fill in entertaining bullshit when they ask you personal questions. They think I'm a gay Black Christian Libertarian who wants legal pot and likes chinchillas.

The city bike hire schemes, seem to be a cheaper, low tech version of those.

but its true, its not oriented to create things

Don't tell this guy or this woman.

It doesn't really matter - the Taliban will find all sorts of excuses to kill:
e.g. Dancing girls and musicians
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4217690/Taliban-underlines-its-growing-power-with-killing-of-dancing-girl-in-Pakistan.html
http://www.rferl.org/content/British_Ethnomusicologist_Discusses_Talibans_Campaign_Against_Musicians/1753865.html

Medics who the Taliban in one breath claim are missionaries and in another US spies:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10900338
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10903737

So if you're in the war-torn zones in Afghanistan, your odds of being killed are higher anyway - doesn't matter whether you're civilian or soldier, local or foreigner. I doubt Wikileaks is going to increase your risk that much.

Fact is if you are a US citizen living in the USA you have more to fear from your government than the Taliban. Heck, if you are living in some other country (other than Afghanistan) the US Gov is more likely to negatively impact your life than the Taliban.

So even if the Taliban claims that Wikileaks helped them kill more people in Afghanistan, I don't see it as a big deal. They can claim all they like.

If Wikileaks helps reduce the excesses of the most powerful Government in the world, it's doing good overall even if that Assange guy is just on an ego-trip.

p.s. Maybe the US Gov should start swapping in names of Taliban "middle managers" in their documents, leak them and let the Taliban go kill those :).

Don't make it worse than it is. IF the data doesn't fit, it's fairly simple to smooth it. Or just correct for the assumed errors. This is not uncommon in other NASA projects.

Nothing new here.

Shcool fail.

Yeah... too bad it's a spinal fluid test. Those are nasty.

I'm with you -- though I suppose it would only applied as a 'final confirmation' sort of test to rule out much rarer neurological conditions, after all the other, less-invasive tests had been exhausted.

Truth be told, the result described in the paper isn't particularly exciting; it just looks at a larger population of patients than has been used in the past, and teases out some correlations that were already expected. It may also explain some minor contradictions between previous studies that (could have) resulted from different timing of sample collection relative to time of disease onset. I'm not sure why this is making the news, except that there isn't a "We've cured cancer (again)!" story for the Times' science writers today.

I'm far more interested in seeing how some less-invasive diagnostics are going to turn out. There's some very interesting work going on which uses the eye and retina as a convenient window on the brain. There is work using several markers for Alzheimer's disease (either generic markers of cell death in retinal cells, or specific protein tests in the retina or aqueous humor) that employ simple eyedrops for delivery, and read out using straightforward fluorescence. Here's one; there are a number of others in the pipeline as well.

It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe. Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland. By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population. France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 - a 67 per cent increase in the past decade - at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population.