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Nuclear is the safest we have available.

Oh, then I'm sure you'll find an insurance company that will cover the risk of Fukushima-style accidents. Oh wait, no you don't, because such an insurance would make nuclear energy totally uneconomic.

Christopher Booker is shit, never trust his articles.... http://www.theguardian.com/med...

Christopher Booker is a shit journalist of the Rob Enderle mold, i.e. take what someone says and don't do ANY investigation to see if its true.. here's an example of booker's shit http://www.theguardian.com/med...

the journo who wrote that article has history of being a shit journalist http://www.theguardian.com/med..., a bit like Dan Enderle of SCO fame where he does no investigation and takes someone's word for it.

so don't be surprised if no-one takes the telegragh rant seriously

AC you seem to be missing the news that results from "chances regarding employer surveillance policies" are now shared at a nation level.
The results of been watched do not stop when you exit a workplace or seek new work.
"Thousands of workers 'blacklisted' over political views" (07 August 2012)
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"construction workers punished by employers for raising health and safety issues" (10 September 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Construction workers' blacklist (Nov 18, 2013)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...

Dec. 22, 2010: The great Skype blackout
Feb. 6, 2011: Skype goes online with NSA PRISM spying (6 weeks after blackout)
October 2011: Microsoft completes Skype acquisition
July 2012: NSA boasts that "a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism"

With the number of tame brands hardware and software layers helping between your keyboard and your secure crypto software?
You almost want your own file system and OS :)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... (7 June 2013)
Experts have had a while to think about what is under and around their secure crypto projects on the big consumer, prosumer and 'free' OS.

recall the '"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues""
"TrueCrypt probably didn't leave a Latin message alerting users to NSA spying"
http://www.theguardian.com/tec... (17 June 2014)
"Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues"

Some closed source US based encryption seems to have 'collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption"
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... (12 July 2013)

The Tea Party is an organization that thinks rich people shouldn't pay taxes.

The IRS collects taxes.

So looking for tax dodgers masquerading as charities -- no brainer.

I disagree that they are "independent" of the Republican party. It's an organization that pretends to be for a lot of things, in order to achieve Tea Party / and or Libertarian goals. The Tea Party is merely stripped bare of the pretense. The Koch brothers fund the Tea Party and it's closely aligned with ALEC.

The Republican party works for the Tea Party, and so do Blue Dog Democrats -- they all have the same benefactors. Follow the money. ALWAYS follow the money; http://www.theguardian.com/com...

It isn't so much as reducing the EXPENSE of government -- it's always, always about SHIFTING the costs so that it lands on everyone but the .1%.

Maybe it came already installed... sounds awfully like one that does (just buy the phone from the ad in the web page...):

http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

The Guardian reported on a hidden Latin message: TrueCrypt probably didn't leave a Latin message alerting users to NSA spying. I'm not so sure about their in-headline conclusion, though.

They quote this comment on Wikipedia by 'Bardon':

There is a hidden message on the new sourceforge TrueCrypt site. The first line of the site is this: WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues

If you take just the first letter of each word, except the word "WARNING":

Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues

you get this:
uti nsa im cu si

It's Latin that roughly means:
Unless I want to use the NSA

So, the full message seems to be this:
WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues, unless I want to use the NSA

Which is English that roughly means:
Don't use TrueCrypt because it is under the control of the NSA

The Guardian article rebuffs this with: "In fact, "uti nsa im cu si" is meaningless in Latin - except to Google translate, (mis)translates it to the message Badon discovered."

But isn't that enough? It's a hidden message; it doesn't need to be correct Latin as long as the point gets across. If you put into Google Translate right now, you get "If I wish to use the NSA". Unusual that it's been changed slightly, but still expresses the same message: The NSA has compromised TrueCrypt.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but this entire TrueCrypt saga has been bizarre. Obviously something happened beyond "the task of maintaining a widely used cryptography program just became too much work" or else why not just say that?

They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court.

--Edward Snowden
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Virtually everyone from that generation is dead or beyond any political influence

Except for the politicians that take trips to a shrine which contains war criminals, and various anti-korean sentiment and some pretty skewed views of the sexual enslavement (a.k.a comfort women) of foreign nationals during the Japanese invasion.

Yes the public court news is getting fun too:
"Microsoft challenges US gov’t warrant to access overseas customer data"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Here is one informative piece on what working for Amazon is like: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... and one on Apple http://www.aljazeera.com/progr... Essentially, these companies make massive profit and can easily afford to pay a decent wage without hindering their bottom line. What is appalling is that these companies do not do so. A lot of these jobs are dead-end without the opportunity for advancement. Getting decent pay for labour is a constant struggle as are decent working conditions. Historically, companies try to exploit labour and need to be called out. Also, we have cases like Intel where manufacturing is built on stolen land and in violation of UN treaties such as their factories on occupied Palestine. Only when consumers put pressure on these companies and workers organize will companies concede proper working conditions. You or your children could wind up working in these places, perhaps even a summer. They need a safe work place with decent pay, especially when the company is flush. I am an entrepreneur myself and have clients all over the world who buy my products. I know that an adequately paid work force will be able to afford what I sell. I also manufacture locally (Canada) which costs more than off shore, but is worth it for the higher end products I put out. And since we are talking about Amazon, I detest the fact that their (Amazon Canada) shipping rates are subsidized and the rest of us entrepreneurs in Canada have to pay full price. Why should they get special treatment? Us small business owners pay way more taxes than Amazon. You bet my elected representative is put on notice for this.

For a disturbing read, take a look at the new alliance's co-operation frameworks with countries. Mozambique, for example, is committed to "systematically ceasing to distribute free and unimproved [non-commercial] seeds to farmers except in emergencies". The new alliance will lock poor farmers into buying increasingly expensive seeds – including genetically modified seeds – allow corporate monopolies in seed selling, and escalate the loss of precious genetic diversity in seeds – absolutely key in the fight against hunger. It will also open the door to genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa by stopping farmers' access to traditional local varieties and forcing them to buy private seeds.

http://www.theguardian.com/glo...

Don't forget people are starving in the USA, UK etc too! According to the way it's currently measured, I mean. Best get some GM bananas out there too. Don't worry about the consequences.

While you're at it, let's toy with Spanish Flu:

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

I mean, why not? Let the market decide, eh?

http://www.newyorker.com/onlin...

Please reference the following resources:

• Antibiotic misuse
• Antibiotic prescribing rates by country
• Study shows overuse of antibiotics
• Antibiotic use in livestock - Use by country
• Scientists: overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture endangers humans

• Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance 2014

While these resources alone do not paint an absolute picture of the global problem of large scale antibiotic misuse, there is no question that the United States is indeed among the highest ranked nations and regions for these problems. As for the GP's second sentence regarding particularly nasty germs in hospitals versus hotels, his statement is overzealous at present, but the problem is rapidly worsening in the United States.

In light of this information, please explain why you believe the GP's statement to be speculative, wrong, stupid, "not nice at all" and wildly ignorant. Judging by your recent posting history, you appear to place higher value on your opinion of whether things sound "nice" and much less value on facts.

the government has to prove that the 100m in bitcoin were used in illegal activities, that's for a court to decide not the police or the prosecutors. It's not like bitcoins can be impregnated cocaine residue to prove their connection to illegal activities. Nor does the possession of those indicate that something was done illegally. If that were the case we'd all be guilty of drug trafficking.

> this is at worst a covert communications channel that could be used to bypass network security controls in order to exfiltrate information from an otherwise secure network

Dude, you answered your own damn question. Covert communications channels for otherwise secure networks are a big fucking deal.

Complaining that this is not full-blown "bad bios" is to totally miss the point that something like this is absolutely necessary for a real life "bad bios." We've already seen a ton of other ways to get the software on the secure network in the first place.

Along with corporate "astroturfing" in the blogs and message boards of various sorts, I'm afraid. We've never been completely free from concealed or fraudulent advertising, but the fake "grassroots" campaigns have gotten out of hand. Even the "Tea Party" was apparently founded as an astroturf campain, with the concealed funding by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers. The Guardian did an excellent article about it at http://www.theguardian.com/com...: it might have been very, very difficult to print that in any of the Rupert Murdoch owned American newspapers.

Clearly, you did not read this entry carefully. Many Slashdotters have issues with reading. I do not know why. Too much 'quick-scanning' and not enough comprehension. As if you are looking for a bug in a piece of text instead of trying to figure out the meaning of things. Here is a link Stallman prioritizes: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... Do me a favor and please try to cogitate.

As explained in the link in my previous post (did you even read it?), if you take a set of data that fluctuates noisily but has an long-term upwards trend, you truncate it carefully so that the beginning of your truncated subset falls near a high point in the random fluctuations, and you use that to deny the upwards trend, then you are using a trick called "cherry-picking". You can argue you're presenting "simply facts", but it's dishonest. Watt's also dishonest is failing to declare a rather blatant conflict of interest.

Also, your own post contains contradictions. You're saying "...OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED..." (implying there is still a warming trend), and then you're saying "it has leveled off". Only one of them can be true, and it's the first one. There is still a warming trend, and yes, it's lower than the low-end 1990 predictions. Scientists have been debating over why that is for a while now. Heat getting trapped in the depths of the pacific ocean seems to be gaining traction as the most prevalent hypothesis, which is worrisome because once this finite heat reservoir is saturated, the heating will pick up with a vengeance. More info here, here, here and here (the 3 first links are all discussing the study in the 4th; I'll let you pick which source you like best).

Second, appeal to "scientific purity" is overshooting. Science is constantly advancing, improving models, replacing wrong assumptions with less wrong assumptions. There is nothing "pure" about it, and in no way does it need to be to advance the cause and be useful to our lives. Words such as "purity" are much too loaded to be used, exactly because of the scientific approach. There's no need to deny - the scientific world does not have all the T's crossed and the I's dotted on AGW, just as it doesn't on gravity, physics and quantum theory, but we still happily cross bridges every day. The degree of certainty has long reached sufficient levels to warrant seriously looking at how to realistically (not politically, stupid carbon credits) mitigate instead of discussing a black and white position on AGW's existence.

And thirdly the AGW debate is much bigger than the USA. I understand that you have bipartisan issues across the board (not just AGW, and to be clear: I think both parties are in the wrong) but that doesn't extend to the rest of the world and this is a global issue.

So I think that while I don't entirely agree with your argumentation, I agree with your position. AGW is a science thing - and science has agreed that it exists though not to which degree. The challenge is to find solutions, and that's also with science.

Finally, I find the actual article very intriguing and somewhat challenging to my own views on AGW, as evidenced by my first thoughts on this: could it be that the geology of the antarctic is becoming destabilized because of the lessening of the weight of the ice sheet, in turn causing more geological activity? But that's a conjecture from an explanation that wouldn't challenge AGW, and real science must of course also look for other hypotheses.

Ukraine had a government sympathetic to Russia until Obama fomented a rebellion that ousted it. Remember the "Fuck the EU" comment? That was about the EU not wanting to destabilize Ukraine because they weren't willing to go to war over it. Obama fomented the rebellion anyway.

Imagine Russia blatantly intervening in Canadian politics - for example in Quebec, getting English-speakers kicked out into the US and the rest of Canada - and what that would do to US attitudes towards Russia.

Of course, in another perfect example of "smart power", after fomenting rebellion and damn near starting a war with a nuclear power - a crisis that's still simmering to this day - we got hashtags from the Obama admin. #RedLine.

I guess Obama must have promised the Russians that if they liked the original Ukrainian government they could keep it.

A 13 year old boy was also able to pass the Turing test, convincing a panel of middle-aged judges that he was an actual person.

So these people are nobodies now (this one just happened by the way, complete with a Gadsden flag)?

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06...

Whataboot this (spread of American values north)?

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

And this?

http://www.crimelibrary.com/te...

Of course, this -

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/p...

Further, the most dangerous cities to live in today, are precisely those cities with the strictest gun control.

Those cities enacted gun control laws because they were already the most dangerous cities. The effectiveness of those gun control laws is up for debate, but you got the cause and effect completely backwards. And you're modded up +5 Insightful. God, what's happening to Slashdot these days?

empirical evidence weighs in on my side

Sure, some of it does. But there is at least an equal amount of evidence supporting the opposing side of view, unless you ignore Japan, Hawaii, and articles like this and (yes, you read that right, The American Conservative) this and this.

My hunch is that there is probably little to no correlation between gun control and crime rates. So gun control is probably not a good way of curbing crime. But claiming that the evidence is irrefutable that more guns equals more safety is patently absurd. It's just as bad as the NRA claiming that armed teachers in every school would have prevented Sandytown. (Maybe it would've, but we'd have four or five instances each year of clueless teachers injuring a coworker with an accidental discharge or killing a student they "swore had a knife.")

And what, exactly, were his options...
... joining Bradley Manning (aka Chelsea Manning) in Extreme Solitary Confinement that has been described as cruel, inhuman and degrading by the United Nations and many others such as this very detailed report on The Torture Of Bradley Manning by Andrew Blake, or this article by Jesselyn Radack that catalogues exactly How the US Military Tortured Bradley Manning

Russia is the last place that I would have thought of seeking refuge... but I think that we must all trust that Snowden probably knew better than all of us which countries would have succumbed to US pressure to hand him back and which would have taken great pleasure in not doing so.

Now, if Snowden is a true patriot, he will fight for the right to come back home and have a fair hearing before a jury of his peers... and seek to be recognised and judged as a whistleblower.

• Boris Karpichkov was a KGB spy in the 80s, he moved to Britain and applied for asylum there in 1998
• Boris has a history of making the news with unfounded claims like this

Based on the limited google search I did, and this article sums nicely, it seems more like Russia was monitoring Snowden as early as 2007 and then this Boris guy made some pretty outlandish claims about the monitoring.

Boris Karpichkov worked as a KGB agent in the 1980s before fleeing to Britain as a place of safety. He talks about his career, why Russian spies are again targeting Britain – and why he'll never stop looking over his shoulder ... Karpichkov, it turns out, knows a huge amount: about Russia's murky arms sales abroad, for example. He is intelligent, and a first-class analyst – but, of course, he has no one to report to. Karpichkov says he is "no way scared". But he confesses he is now "dead tired" of the exhausting world of espionage, and concerned for the safety of his wife and grownup children.

Oleg Kalugin:

With the return to power of elements of the KGB, most notably Vladimir Putin, Kalugin was again accused of treason. In 2002 he was put on trial in absentia in Moscow and found guilty of spying for the West.[3] He was sentenced to fifteen years in jail,[6] in a verdict he described as "Soviet justice, which is really triumphant today".[7] The US and Russia have no extradition treaty.[7] Kalugin currently works for the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI CENTRE) is a member of the advisory board for the International Spy Museum.[8] He remains a critic of Vladimir Putin, a former subordinate, whom he called a "war criminal" over his conduct of the Second Chechen War.[3][9]

Struth! You Americans worry too much.
Just contact our Australian Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, he will be able to explain how mega dredging projects are actually good for the environment.

We have the biggest coral reef in the world, one of the 7 Wonders of the Natural World, right on our doorstep... it's been there for about 18 million years. Too bad the bugger is in the way now, blocking access to more profit - ahem, job creation - for Gina & co.
What's another piece of coral anyway... they'll all be gone soon enough.

You've got that wrong. Climate effects are definitely causing extra flood and crop damage for the US. http://www.theguardian.com/env...

UK Cause of Death 2010

We are more likely to die of heart disease from eating Beef than CJD, the whole thing is a classic ersatz scandal.

Now in areas where the regulation is minimum, lax, largely ignored or even non existent as in some countries, like for example cloth selling there are no monopolies and not even oligopolies and none can form

Holy crap, you are citing 3rd world sweat-shops like this and this as an example of good business practices. You are one messed up dude.

To the AC supporting the DOJ :-

While your explanation sounds plausible at first blush, other commenter smarter than I here have pointed out various flaws in your explanation you would do well to address.

The fundamental problem with your explanation is that no one really knows how the system works except for the NSA. And given that the Director of National Intelligence himself was caught telling untruths to Congress while under oath, and deliberately refused to correct the error when he had a chance to do so, you should understand why it is difficult to grant any benefit of doubt to the NSA when they give out their explanations.

To put it bluntly, the gut instinct of anyone who catches a liar is to disbelieve everything he says unless backed by solid evidence.

The internet is full of disinformation and lies, just as well! Quite a bit of internet information is free...a ton of it is free for a reason, it is untrue.

I agree. However, by the same token the internet is also full of information that is true, that is being suppressed and/or information that is not available through official channels. There is a reason why most if not all governments maintain control of mass media and countries such as China actively try to filter the internet. Looking for information online is like panning for gold- its a lot of work picking through the mud, most of the time you get useless dirt, but the occasional gold nuggets make it worthwhile.

Searching the internet on Google is not a replacement for historians doing extensive research, having that research reviewed, then publishing.

You assume that the historians and the whole review mechanism are incorruptible, free from coercion (*cough*research grants*cough*), free from bias, subject to rigid scientific scrutiny and do not have their own personal agenda to push.

As in all things, even historians get it wrong . I feel that there is no substitute for doing your own critical thinking rather than relying on the work of others simply because of the label they bear.

Islamic Extremism is not surging in the UK and don't bandy about your 'We' as if you represent me you ignorant arsehole.

Would you be so kind to back your claims with some numbers instead of insults.

I give you food for thought:

Nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds believed that those converting to another religion should be executed, while less than a fifth of those over 55 believed the same.

says
The Guardian.

I violent minority of just 10% is highly dangerous for the society. Ask people in ukraine or syria.

From the Guardian article it looks as though CD is only charged with possessing documents: http://www.theguardian.com/law...

We seem to know already that the defendant CD is only charged with possessing documents, from how I read the Guardian's report: http://www.theguardian.com/law...

Here are some news which mentioned that the reason why UK wanted to have secret trials seems to be mainly because it wants to avoid revealing scandals like involvement in crimes against human rights:

http://www.theguardian.com/law...

http://iengage.org.uk/news/207...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

If it's held in secret how can anyone be sure it's anything that remotely resembles a fair trail? Maybe the defendants don't even know what that are being charged with. Maybe they are not allowed lawyers.

Secret trails are not the worst of this though. Since about 2005 the home secretary has the power to put anyone under house arrest indefinitely without any burden of proof. The UK government don't even need trails anymore.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

Can the social costs outweigh the right or privilege? Do other countries where there is broad acceptance of restrictions on gun ownership, such as the UK, have any right 'not to hear' this free information?

Has any analysis been done as to the feasibility of the oppressed in obtaining suitable 3d printers and the 'correct' material for printing, then using these weapons to defeat their oppressor versus the ability of criminals to do likewise and use the weapons in the pursuit of their crimes?

Well there has been analysis done that shows there is a direct relationship - worldwide - between the level of gun ownership in a country and the level of gun related fatalities; High gun ownership makes countries less safe, US study finds. And the US is top of the list.

Most countries in the western world have decided that any putative "right" to own a gun is far outweighed by the social cost.

(And before somebody says it, yes I know you can stab somebody with a chisel or beat them to death with a hammer. What you cannot do with either of those things is stand in a crowded space and kill people as fast as you can flex your finger; that requires a gun.)

Snowden DID use those channels, and the NSA ignored him:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Not only that, but there were people speaking publicly about this for YEARS prior to Snowden and they were also ignored:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... (warning, auto-start video)

The NSA tried to portray those people as crackpots until Snowden came along with proof. Remember, he didn't reveal anything new... he just provided details and corroborative evidence so the NSA could no longer ignore/deny it.

To this day, the NSA claims what they are doing is Legal. How on earth could Snowden have gotten anywhere without bringing this to the public's attention? It's going to take congressional action to even begin to limit what they are doing. There was no other way for that to happen than for him to go public. I'm not even sure if he went far enough.

From what I understood from an article in The Guardian, the low wage people already are being supported by government at the moment.

Um no, that's the exact opposite of reality. British crime and violence rates have been falling for years, and they're now at their lowest point in recorded history. So you'd have had a good argument if your underlying premise wasn't completely wrong:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-...

"Which country was it that a soldier was beheaded in broad daylight in the middle of the street?"

Not the one whose marathon runners were blown to bits at least and who had thousands of civilians killed by airliners being flown into a building. Nor the one where school children and university students are often gunned down. No that's the country where people just get their face eaten in broad daylight instead:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

"Which country is doing it's best to achieve the total surveillance regime of 1984."

America, why? Did you miss the Snowden revelations or something? Oh you're talking about that long out of date report on the number of CCTV cameras in the UK? Don't you know that places in America with high population density actually have more cameras per head of population than equivalent places in the UK? The only reason America as a whole has less is because vast swathes of America are redneck towns where there's nothing worth stealing anyway. That doesn't stop the NSA harvesting every bit of information available there anyway though.

"Which country did we wisely give the boot to more than 200 years ago."

Who knows, it can't have been Britain given that we have a better education system, a better healthcare system, less crime, less violent crime, less murders, and higher levels of personal happiness.

Well, I suppose it could've been Britain if you're a criminal who likes being sick with a high chance of being beaten or murdered and is poorly educated and consistently unhappy. I suppose that would explain the high level of ignorance and falsehoods you've just managed to post in only a handful of sentences.

But I guess when you live in a country with as many problems as America you've got to try and justify your inaction somehow. It's okay I guess if it makes you feel better, keep telling yourself everything is okay as if that'll somehow fix the problem. Of course, in doing this you've missed the most important questions I asked. How exactly is widespread gun ownership in the US protecting your freedoms given their clear erosion? How did countries like Libya where citizens were banned from having guns rise up and overthrow their dictator if they didn't have guns? Both these things conflict directly with your argument and show how completely wrong it is, but you've avoided answering them instead going off on a rant about the UK because you know that these questions highlight the more simple fact that you are wrong to equate guns with freedom.

Sure:

In addition, before bottles of hydrogen peroxide became available, blonde hair in females could be interpreted as an honest signal of youth and therefore reproductive fitness. This is because postmenopausal women rarely retain the flaxen locks of their youth, of course eventually becoming grey grannies. Interestingly, Aboriginal tribes have evolved blonde hair in females independently of the Nordic blonde.3 As this has occurred in an environment not lacking UVB this suggests that sexual selection has been more important than the forces of natural selection.....and retention of blonde hair into adulthood is a sexually selected indicator of fitness in females. Caucasian blondes are usually slightly higher in oestrogen than brunettes

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

Also, blue and green and brown eyes are found to be more attractive because of a subconscious checking of the other person's pupils. If they are also attracted to you, they will be slightly dilated and our brains pick up on that. With practically jet black irises, that doesn't work so your brain automatically tells you not to bother because the person isn't interested in you.

Here's a good article about how prisons that treat prisoners well (except for the lack of freedom part) give much lower reoffense rates by building character rather than destroying it.

Cardiff city in Wales were planning to have driverless taxis. The project was cancelled though because committees. http://www.theguardian.com/bus...