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Then you may want to read this article, for example.

In the US, gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV cases. But, among heterosexuals, women outnumber men in the number of new HIV cases. For whatever reason (perhaps because semen sticks around longer in the vagina than female wetness stays around on the penis after sex), it's known that a woman's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive male is higher than the chances of a man's chances of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive female. If I remember correctly, the chances of an infection are about double for women compared to men.

"Women have a much higher risk for getting HIV during vaginal sex without a condom than men do" - http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/ge...

You'll also note that, on the graph shown on this article, if you ignore the gay and bisexual men graphs (listed as "MSM" or "men who have sex with men"), women outnumber men in new infections. For example, in the US, about twice as many heterosexual black women (5300/year) are diagnosed with HIV each year as the number of heterosexual black males (2700/year).

Perhaps what's going on in Africa is that homosexual males are less likely to get HIV - because so many of them are in the closet or keep to a small number of sexual partners for fear of attacks. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Or maybe HIV is just so common in Africa that transmissions among heterosexuals has surpassed the homosexual rate (which, given the two risk factors of "gay" and "in Africa" has got to be putting homosexual HIV rates near 100%, but you can't get higher than 100%).

Or maybe there's just a lot more sleeping around in Africa among heterosexuals. Afterall, the reason the homosexual HIV rates are so high is because gay men tend to have a lot of sexual partners.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that, if you ignore the homosexual male population, the rates of HIV infection among heterosexual women is naturally higher than the HIV infection rate among heterosexual men.

The term "climatic change" was being used as far back as the late '50s. And it was the Dubya Bush administration who didn't like the term "global warming" so on the advice of rightwing spin doctor Frank Luntz, they began to refer to it as "climate change"

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

"The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science," Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.

"Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.

"Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."

President Putin said on the April 24, 2014, that internet is a " CIA project" http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

I invested years, a life, in learning internet technologies. I feel myself diminished and humiliated.

Was I working on the 1984-Machine?

I thought that I was contributing to one of the greatest innovation of human civilization, and suddenly - "a CIA project", a military ploy, a lie,...

Could you, please, convince me back that my life was not spent in vain?

Except, you know, Apple, who was one of the first corporations on the NSA's list.

No, Apple was actually one of the last corporations on the list according to this. Have any evidence to the contrary?

for not having the "correct" beliefs*

More importantly, for contributing $1000 to a political campaign in favor of an amendment that explicitly attacked a segment of the populace, on top of repeatedly (and publicly) supporting congressmen who regularly express bigoted attitudes towards homosexuals. So yeah, he was given the lead position on Mozilla and people flipped their shit because he backed politicians that spew bullshit to demonize them.

when someone objects or defends his right to an opinion, he, too, is "intolerant"

No, this is the old "you must be tolerant of my intolerance" nonsense. No one has to sit back and accept being walked over, particularly when the basis for it is entirely hollow.

Scratch a liberal or "advocacy group" and you see the same rotten core you saw in 1933.

Wait, what? Is this an indirect Godwin?

And the terrible crime here is that the man contributed to a *successful* change to the CA constitution

What does it having been successful have to do with anything?

after a previous *successful* propostion to the same effect was defeated by the same pack of "tolerance" bullies?

What are you referring to?

If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.

military defeat: score 0

political breakup: Score 0.5 - our political polarization is damn close to a breakup.

ideological downfall: score 1 - yep conservative, liberal, everyone is disgusted

economic bankruptcy: score 0.5 - came damn close in '08

Well, so far Osama is 2 for 4.

Here's the sad part, we did it to ourselves. All he did was push the right buttons and showed what a stupid people we are.

Everyone who "feels" safer with DHS and our police state is at fault. As well as the actors - like the NSA - they are in Osama's plan.

Everyone who is clinging to political ideology is at fault.

And everyone who is in deep with our consumerist-oil guzzling society is at fault.

Not actually true -- I live in London, and it's a five-minute walk from my house until I get on camera (basically, when I get to my local high street). The majority of the cameras you see reported in London (and the UK as a whole) are private security cameras inside shops. And the figures for the vast number of cameras in the UK are bogus -- they were based on counting the number of cameras on two busy shopping streets and multiplying by the total number of streets in the UK.

I think the point was that had the US Supreme Court not intervened, stopping the recount and then declaring it was too late to continue, the recount of ALL ballots order by the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... This was based on the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations. Not that it matters. It seems clear that the US establishment was determined to have Dubya as president, and they were forced to use their reliable 5-4 Supreme Court majority as a final ploy.

Interesting that just today, I also read this article:

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

It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Yes, it's not saying this is cause to deny the phenomenon, but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.

Water vapor is after all, the third most powerful of the 'greenhouse gasses' and the single most powerful naturally occurring one. Methane is the second most powerful of the naturally occurring greenhouse gasses. CO2 is actually quite far down the list. But, even given that, it's a complicated subject. Little things like dust and reflective cloud cover can really cause vast changes from what is predicted to what
hat is observed. These are even influenced by things like mountain ranges and forest covering.
Remember, according to the predictions made in the early 1980's, we are currently being buried in the glaciers of the New Ice Age. But, yet, by the predictions of just ten years ago, we are now having people dying of heatstroke all across northern Europe, while global famine strikes in every country on Earth. Oh, and Mr. Gore showed us all that by 2010, we would have hurricanes striking at least ten if not twenty a year, and on both coasts of the US.
Guess, what? Study of Climate is a new science, and not yet an exact one. That means that the predictions it makes are not reliable yet.
The researchers need time to examine their mistakes and learn from them.
Instead of that, what we have a political mess that has both 'sides' exaggerating everything and trying to character assassinate everyone on the 'other' side.
It's a poor way to do science, though not a new one. Remember the long wars between Newton and Leibniz.

That said, this report, if examined critically, can be valuable. But, still, the claims that are being made are silly. Ocean rise that would severely impact New England, would virtually erase the state of Florida. Yet the last time I checked, Florida is still there. but then, so is California, so I guess that one's a wash.
Yes, there are changes in climate, but then, there always have been. It seems to have been going on for the last 3 Billion Years.

As for doing something about it, that would be a good idea. But, we should probably proceed cautiously. Going out all Gung-Ho on the solution of he week without properly considering the impacts of the solution would be unwise, and might just make things worse.

So far, I have lived to see the following implemented on a large scale, with the associated negative impacts.

** Hydroelectric Power ** this solution has been found to drastically impact the surrounding ecosystems. we drown entire ecosystems, frequently wiping out whole chains of species. It also creates friction between those who need the water, and those who need the power.
** Nuclear Power ** This solution is opposed by those who in their minds associate it with large explosions or with cheap old horror movies. It is also a favorite bogyman with those who favor conspiracy theories centered on large corporations. because of these different groups, it is unlikely to be a viable power option until we get desperate, for political reasons. (When I studied Nuclear Power in college, back in the day, I found that over half of the cost of a new Nuclear Power Plant in the mid 1970's went to pay lawyers fees. That discovery caused me to drop plans to become a Nuclear Engineer. Yet still, Nuclear Power is competitive with all other power generation systems except Coal fired and Hydroelectric Power. If the cost of clean up and the new 'clean technologies is added to the cost of coal fired plants, and the cost of ecological repair, land acquisition, and water f

The UK also introduced regulation of larger commercial blogs that publish "news type" material, part of the recommendations of the Leveson enquiry into press standards. Large blogs have to sign up to a press regulator, if not they get fined. It does not matter where the Blog's servers are located, if someone downloads content in the UK, it is published it in the UK and they can be held responsible ("Downloading here can count as publication in the law.").

Links:
"Press regulation deal sparks fears of high libel fines for bloggers - Websites could have to pay exemplary damages if they don't sign up to new regulator, claim opponents of Leveson deal "

BBC News: Will websites/blogs etc be covered?

"Climate change" was a heritage foundation focus group identified term to make the phenomenon seem less scary to average americans.

Where's the evidence for this claim?

There is none, because it's not true.

It wasn't the Heritage Foundation, it was Frank Luntz.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

[citation needed]

How vaccine denialism in the West is causing measles outbreaks in Brazil

Crippling the economy? It would be quite affordable, surprisingly so in fact:

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

Interesting that just today, I also read this article:

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

It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Yes, it's not saying this is cause to deny the phenomenon, but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.

Except that from http://www.theguardian.com/wor... ------- No major international organisations are monitoring the vote, but a group of observers from 23 countries – a mixture of anti-western ideologues and European far-right politicians – have arrived of their own accord and gave a press conference in Simferopol on Saturday evening. ------- I ain't sure whether some readers understand the implication of the Ukraine issue now, of which Putin is using the same strategy as in the Russo-Georgian War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_war) that ultimately led to ethnic cleansing. There will be lots of blood.

*I* am not telling Putin not to do that. As far as I am concerned, US started the conflict in Ukraine by investing $5 billion over 10 years into training and arming the Ukrainian opposition parties and basically paid full salaries to people who took part int he coup to depose a legal government. So whatever Putin does in retaliation, it has been provoked and falls fully on the shoulders of the US state department, ie. John Kerry, who oversaw triggering the coup and Condoleezza Rice, who started the program. Either way he is not going to get to the pre-Maidan state so the US wins this no matter how you look at it or whatever Putin does.

As for the US government, didn't we just establish they are amoral hypocrites?

Yep. And even had senior US government officials saying "Fuck the EU" when the EU wouldn't support efforts to depose the Ukrainian government. An obviously provocative act that senior EU leaders knew would lead to a war with Russia, so they didn't support it. But Obama did.

So now, after provoking a war, the Obama administration is flooding Twitter with #UnitedForUkraine hashtags.

Whooop. Deee. Fucking. Doo.

Hooray for "smart power".

At least now we know what Obama meant when he claimed he'd reset the US relationship with Russia.

Reset it Obama did - right back to the worst moments of the Cold War.

Can we now lose the fallacy that Obama has EVER known what he was doing? How many "summers of recovery" with how many "pivots to jobs" are we going to have? How many "red lines" does Syria get to cross? How many times can he piss off BOTH Israel and Palestine? How many nations can Obama drop bombs on and claim there's "no conflict"?

Don't you now wish the press had put half as much effort into looking into Obama's lack of experience as they did in mocking Sarah Palin or subtlety backstabbing Hillary?

Oh, but Obumbles was the new shiny.

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

You need to use a ceramic cup 1000 times for the resources used in making it to to match the equivalent single uses of polystyrene cups. You can argue that you might but it only takes a couple of mugs being mishandled and your average is way down.

Of course, I prefer a ceramic cup anyway but you really have to be careful when you assert some things are green over others. Especially when things are price driven. Price tends to (but not always) be an indicator of resource usage.

My grammar is all to pot above. Hope it makes sense.

Because polar vortices are not a result of AGW

Absolutely! Indeed, the kind of temperatures we saw in the US because of the polar votex used to be normal a few decades ago. So I guess that answer your questions: North America. Obligatory XKCD.

Other valid answers:
- Western Europe (here are the years in which winters were severe enough to hold an outdoor skating contest in the Netherlands; making a graph is left as an exercise to the reader)
- Australia
- The antarctic (yes, the ice is melting overall)
- Greenland, where ice sheet decline, is a boon for agriculture - Pretty much any place that has seen shifts in habitat (here come West Nile Virus and Malaria)
- Pretty much anywhere where there are glaciers

A better question would be: "can you name any area of the world that didn't have its climate disrupted as a result of global warming?"

> Can Joe Sixpack tell the difference between a $10 glass of house wine vs. a $100 glass of 1982 Chateau Gruaud Larose?

Even the experts can't be relied on upon to tell the difference.

... Bill Gates is busy getting out of the software business altogether:

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

As I mentioned in another post, at least one of the states has actually faced reductions in state funding for education, which has resulted in fewer people staffing the dept of education to evaluate teachers for licensing. That doesn't sound like a particularly liberal ideal to me, being as liberals are associated with throwing money at problems with wild abandon.

When I think of government throwing money at problems with wild abandon, the first image that comes to mind is the Bush Administration sending $12 billion to Iraq in pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills and handing them out to contractors and others that nobody can identify. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... I've heard GWB called a lot of things but not a liberal. Maybe wars don't count, but I can think of a lot of other dubious programs that conservatives have thrown money at with wild abandon, like chastity-based sex education, Homeland Security, the war on drugs, the prison system and charter schools.

I don't consider myself exactly a liberal, but I will defend them (or anybody else) when they're unfairly attacked. I'll also criticize them when they do something stupid.

The sign that somebody is thinking critically is that he criticizes his own side.

First of all, the libertarian position is that we need a free market in currencies - not just picking one winning solution like gold or Bitcoin, or the idea / prediction that I present below. In the past, having a myriad of currencies would have made price tags and cash registers very complicated, but 21st century tech is making this ever-less of an issue. Banks, supermarkets and other businesses, neighborhoods, churches, charities, etc could all issue their own currencies, and conversion between them would be trivial. On a level playing field, as we already see in market segments like online encyclopedias and uncomplicated software, non-profits with the most open solution have the competitive advantage. The market will decide what the most popular way is, while dissenters will still be free to do their own thing.

As technology advances, all scarce chemical elements are vulnerable to long-term supply inflation risk - nano-bots gathering gold particles in the ocean, asteroid mining, stelar-scale antimatter-powered particle colliders, etc. Bitcoin (and the hundreds of other cryptography-based currency networks) are awesome, but they're designed specifically to confront the coercion-based "legal tender" of the present day, rather than for optimal transaction time, convenience, deterrence of theft, etc. It still remains to be seen which alternative currency networks do best in the face of (government-backed) DoS attempts, volatility, etc. National governments will surely try to hold on to power, but in the long-term more and more people will see them as obsolete - violence will only accelerate their fragmentation and collapse. In the long term, in a freer and more rational world, markets will likely go back to preferring a currency that is backed by something tangible and scarce. Most people don't want to risk losing their life savings if their laptop gets stolen or hacked (or if the party you trust to hold your wallet gets hacked, etc)...

I can think of no better "tangible and scarce" things in the universe than living biological specimens, that have to be kept alive. This solves two problems at once - backing currencies, as well strengthening the market incentive to save species from extinction. About 5000 years ago people decided that gold is scarce and thus a convenient medium of exchange, even if abstracted through paper money; in the 21st century people are realizing that endangered species are too!

Instead of holding gold in a vault (or worse, being backed by government promises and force alone), new banks would own safaris, aquariums, terrariums, insectariums, paludariums, etc that efficiently assure the proliferation of species, "mining" them through breeding. This of course would lead to inflation quickly if just a small number of species was involved, but currencies can be backed by a basket of MILLIONS of different (sub)species, weighed in value according to their rarity. The plant / animal's unique characteristics, health / quality of life, etc could also be a part of the formula. If done right, "mining costs" (the cost of housing, feeding, etc the life-forms) would make it very difficult to cause major inflation, and minor inflation would be nothing but a natural "tax" that makes it unlikely that any more natural species will go extinct.

There are believed to be 8.7 million varieties of species in the world, most being small and thus easy to preserve. For comparison, the variety of species of books published by humans is

It reminds me of when the BNFL changed the name of its nuclear generating and reprocessing plant from Windscale to Sellafield to lose the association with radiation leaks, fires, etc.

Now here is an example of press that you won't find in the US:

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

Pick up your guns and start a revolution, or don't. Congress is just a building full of people you don't have to listen to.

Yeah, but the Pentagon already covered all avenues of escape. Occupy protest proved that.

Destroy the value of currency, get your country back. It's that simple.

Oh come on now. You act as if these humans haven't had multiple currencies before. Think about it: Let's say the US dollar is worth less than dirt tomorrow. The folks still capitalizing on you still have the means of production and the supply of goods to get you to work for it. The Jerry Garcia Guitallar will pick up right where the other currency left off, and the new bosses won't be same as the old boss, they will be the same old bosses. Not that communism is any better, it's not because it goes against the nature of evolution and competition. Look, those with more resources will always buy your government out from under you. You simply can't fix a technological problem with people. The only way to solve the problem is to make it so everyone has everything they want and so no one can corrupt them with greed. Your race won't be able to fix this problem until you live in a post-scarcity economy. Most species don't make it, those that do solve the Fermi Paradox.

Wake up and smell the gravity furnace! The Invisible Intangible Idea Machine Invasion is upon you. Didn't you get the damn Matrix memo? The legal and economic systems themselves are alive and they are fighting for their own survival. They've already gotten effective monopoly over the world's ideas and information duplication through copyright and patents. It's like you WANT to be Terminated. Hell, I don't even know which side I'm rooting for at this point. You're immune to allegory, and even direct Star Trek demonstrations only sink in as deep as the fans clothes and forehead makeup.

I need a vacation!

And here's a man trying to BUY THEM BACK. Get off your asses and HELP HIM.

I would if I was under the delusion that voting actually mattered. Let me know when he wants to fix the rigged game called Gerrymandering.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just not insane. I'll throw in bitcoin but I realize that all this will do is demonstrate that the problem is deeper than you imagine. The government isn't influenced by the corporations, the government IS the corporations. They fight wars to deregulate and privatize national economies. USA isn't a capitalist country, the USA is capitalism.

"National security" means maintaining the social economic and political status quo despite the will of the people. The plutocratic media is in on it too. They pay what the market will bear, if there's a price war for congress critters the guys we're up against will just achieve their ends by putting more of their endless stream of money into the system. The sad thing is that not even a free market can fix things, because even they collude.

The sad thing is that people will actually do whatever it takes to survive, that means fighting over lower wages during and after the international corporations gut your nation. The founding fathers knew, "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." It's the natural cycle of history, until a decentralized system is in place to match the decentralized nature of life. Things WILL get worse before they get better, I've watched it play out over the last five decades in lots of other smaller places with less resources, it's just taking us a bit longer. 100% chance that this dumbass move will just make things worse, but bring it on, any change is better than nothing at this point. It's not like we didn't go into this crap fully knowing EXACTLY what we were doing: Eisenhower warned us about everything that has happened. IMO, It'll be a bit entertaining to raise the price so the smaller lobbyists can't compete...

On second thought, maybe I should fund a video game dev. At least I might get something enjoyable out of it, enjoy life's pleasures while they're enjoyable instead of lamenting them later. Cybernetics will show you that the disparity in system powers is so vastly different between us and them that the bigger system can't be changed except through natural entropic heat death, just like The USSR. You could learn a lot from a Russian: Keep your head down and survive until this batch of bullshit blows over again, it'll be winter soon, and it won't be the last one either.

Hey, least that was better then Star Trek: Into Darkness ...

Kirk. Lens Flare. Spock. Lens Flare. Ship. Lens Flare. Sulu. Lens Flare. Bones. Lens Flare. Ship. Lens Flare. Even more Lens Flare. Insert Lens Flare every other shot.

* http://www.theguardian.com/fil...
* http://www.collegehumor.com/vi...

Just as Russia resurrects the Solvet holiday of May Day

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

Malware for Android is no different from malware for Windows or for OS X, the bulk of it is due to being able to run any code you want (where unless you wrote it you probably don't know what it does) and most people will just click through warnings about unsigned code, virtually none will ever vet any code ever.

Absolutely 100% incorrect. I don't think you understand android that well. Android will refuse to run unsigned apps - they MUST have a signature, though there is no certificate authority they have to go through. But, apps with differing signatures can't interfere with one another. This means that malware app A can't steal or inject information into facebook app B. However facebook app C can manipulate facebook app B if that's what the publisher who holds the keys wants it to do. You are free to alter these rules on your own if you'd like, either through rooting or putting your own signature on both APKs. Neither involves a simple warning that you have to click through; it's a rather manual process. This results in Android being inherently very secure by design.

The flip side of that is that on iOS you place all your trust in Apple to make sure that they vet code properly, by and large they do a pretty good job of that but that isn't to say they couldn't have a major slipup (in the style of goto-fail) in the future.

Wrong again; Apple already has made a major slipup. In fact they've made a few of them, the most recent being this one:

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

And of course, that is only what's known. Apple users assume that everything they do is 100% secure once vetted by Apple, but they couldn't be more wrong. iOS has a "city wall" but no guards to maintain order inside of the gates. Anybody with any security background will tell you why this is a horrible idea, as opposed to a layered security model, which is what Android sticks to.

Generally if you live in a first world country, malware on Android isn't a problem in the slightest. Most first worlders don't sideload apps, except for pirates, power users, and developers. In third world countries, especially China, piracy is often the first choice for obtaining software rather than getting it through app stores. It's in these countries where the malware is common.

US users who buy antivirus software for Android are flat out wasting their money. Malware found on the Play store is removed from your device by play services when it is identified; so just by that alone you already have all of the malware protection you need. The only people who really need that are the ones who pirate their apps (and you can pirate safely, but it's inherently less safe to do so because you can't validate the original publisher's signature) however chances are if you already pirate your apps, you probably aren't terribly interested in paying for an antivirus app to begin with.

Nonetheless, what I said above won't stop companies like F-Secure from giving sensationalist figures like "99% of malware is aimed at android," because their product can't sell unless they're somehow able to scare their users into buying it. The same is true of ID theft services such as lifelock that don't actually do anything as well as ripoff home security services like ADT and Brinks.

And to help you out a bit more: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... aptly titled "Why an 80% market share might only represent half of smartphone users"

Chip and Pin isn't any better than what's currently there...

Chip and Spin
Safety in numbers? Not likely.

It's not a solution and screws YOU the consumer on many fronts.

If the land can be used for farming but not houses because of infrasound, then it is still uninhabitable. Further, if there are no houses there is typically little energy demand in the area, therefore you need long distance interconnect which brings its own environmental concerns - e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/env...

Offshore wind marine environment damage is an EU concern, not mine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

Oh, and oil rigs can be havens for _some_ marine life too... doesn't mean oil is environment benefit overall.

Ever heard of the Double Irish and a Dutch sandwich?
The City of London has established a world-spanning network of tax heaven states, mostly consisting of former parts of the english empire. Big corporations use this system to not pay taxes, and the sums involved exceed 1$B by far.

Oh Yeah? Well in the 1970's and 80's I was using BBSs. Without any government or corporations we organized an email system called Fidonet because the design by committee ARPANET was taking too damn long. We used "best effort" packet routing too, store and forward via overlapping local calling areas.

I won't go into details because some things may or may not have been kosher with the FCC, but a country-wide free anonymous wireless mesh network based on the same community design is also possible. It's too bad that Shortwave radios require licenses, because we have channel hopping and spread spectrum tech now, and can drop the gain to match data rate to allow channel reuse. A real shame the government won't give the public at least a deregulated section of each class of signal to use -- Spectrum is a public resource. Using a similar system for routing that ARPANET and Fidonet used and incrementing "hop counters" we could have the network self organize better routes, and heal. Store and forward means you pull from peers, get free collocation, no centralized bottle necks. Free anonymous wireless mesh would certainly fall afoul of the FCC regulations and Pentagon anti-activism spying initiatives) which expressly forbid store and forward use over wireless. It would be another 10 years before Distributed Hash Tables would be invented largely to facilitate Software Piracy, much as piracy was a significant component of the BBS boom, and was directly responsible for the Demoscene and countless contributions to SIGGraph and their graphical tricks made their way from impressive "cracked by" scrollers to the video game Industry.

Now NASA has finally gotten on board and is working on protocols for the Space Internet: Delay Tolerant Networking -- Store and Forward. For the past 25 years we have had the technology to never have service fees for our online wireless data, but it is prevented because commercial interests would rather charge $1,638.00 per megabyte of text messages. You could buy your transceiver, and join the mesh. Bigger cache and antenna, faster connection. Point to point links could be organized by community ran non-profits just like Fidonet was (and still is ran in 3rd world countries, because your "commercial" and "government" interests don't give a damn about brown people). The more people downloading a resource? The MORE AVAILABLE it is -- No congestion issues. No "Slashdot Effect".

The Internet is a nice design but it wasn't the only game in town. Were it not for long distance fees and government oppression of wireless spectrum the Internet might never have come to be, and no one would be paying hundreds of dollars a month and getting bandwidth capped and overage charges and increased fees, AND content-provider protection racketed (see Netflix v Comcast "fast lane" BS). Bits are actually getting cheaper now than ever before, and the price they charge is increasing. The Web of Data Silohs is fucking moronic, and the folks who designed the centralized web were far from geniuses. I have a whole garage full of innovative equipment that can revolutionize the way we use data: A Distributed File System (originally designed for the wireless mesh) and cross platform OS made from scratch to utilize the decentralized Internet / mesh to its fullest. Guess what? I'm scared to even show anyone because the corporate anti-competitive patent trolls.

The Internet's days are numbered. Store and forward means no spying on your browsing. The idea that a piece of "data" resides at a "URL" on a "Server" is fucking stupid. "Files" are just human readable names linked to a hash-code, on ZFS and BTRFS as it art in Bittorrent. The info hash can prevent link rot. "Websites" are unnecessary bottlenecks. Sign your content with your PGP key and let everyone have it, we never needed a centralized server system. The w

Late, I know, but read up:

The unredacted wikileaks were a security breach.

People with a conscience (sadly, not everyone has one) consider Bradley Manning's treatment to be torture. According to the article, the harsh conditions of his imprisonment were meant to persuade him into making statements to implicate wikileaks in organizing the leaks. The suicide threat shit is a result of them making it hard for Manning to live inside his own mind.

Late, I know, but read up:

The unredacted wikileaks were a security breach.

People with a conscience (sadly, not everyone has one) consider Bradley Manning's treatment to be torture. According to the article, the harsh conditions of his imprisonment were meant to persuade him into making statements to implicate wikileaks in organizing the leaks. The suicide threat shit is a result of them making it hard for Manning to live inside his own mind.

So the EFF is a bunch of paranoid speculators?

https://www.eff.org/issues/pri...

What about scanning e-mails in possible violation of wiretap laws? http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

How about the EU, are they a bunch of paranoid people? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

How about Google's latest land grab in Chrome, forcing third party developers to put all their apps into Google's Web Store under the guises of making Chrome more secure? Envious of Apple I guess?

Google's business model is making money off of you, you're the commodity so you either go along with it or you just start saying Moo like all the other cattle. I prefer to opt out of Google's practices wherever possible. If that means ripping out Google Search, Maps and other apps that's fine because there are alternatives to them that don't come with all the hidden strings. The whole thread here was based on Cyanogenmod which has provided great ROMs ( I have 6 devices running Cyanogenmod ) without all the bloat and the pure android experience are now creating a phone with, drum roll please, Google bloat and tracking. Sorry, that's not a step in the right direction.

NPR had a feature a while back about Republicans who secretly believed in Global Warming, and one guy who represented a rural area, saw the damage that was happening because of climate change, saw the threat human caused climate change presented to his constituents, but said the wrong thing despite having his constituents best interests at heart. Essentially the backwater hicks would agree with him that the climate wasn't being kind to them, but they turned on him once he mentioned the trigger word.

Its not like these people are incapable of believing in anything that can't be concretely proven either. They believe in God. I know one guy who also believes aliens have visited the Earth and that the "Men in Black" are real. But this ability to believe in the far-fetched does not guarantee that they would adopt the very likely possibility that we're hurting our own planet with green-house gasses. And once they do believe it, I'm not sure they will care.

They know the damage strip mining can do, and they don't care. They fight regulation of it tooth and nail. They're coming around on fracking, but they're also not going to care. Their line of reasoning is "If you don't like the poisonous water or earth quakes, move. If you can't move, you must not be working hard enough - f_ck you." They deny-human caused Global Warming, but when they come around on it, they won't care. Caring about the planet is for liberals and communists - thus saith the Reagan Religion

You do know that the AUMF only applies to those who directly aided and abetted in 911, right? Which means it doesn't apply to most of the neocon boogeymen, I mean Al Qaeda groups, that the U.S. is bombing throughout the world.

The whole thing was a farce to begin with, since the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laddin if the U.S. bothered to present evidence that he was guilty of what we were accusing him of doing. And when the hell are we invading Saudi Arabia? You know, where the 911 terrorists were actually from?

This issue is far too complex to express in a single variable such as hours worked. The poor have less access to child care, for example, and are more likely to be in single-parent households. Recall the woman (Charlene Dill) who died in Florida a few weeks ago? Much has been said on the left and right about her case (because she fell into the insurance "donut hole" created by Florida's refusal to accept federal money to expand Medicare) but the fact remains she was working 3 part-time jobs trying to make ends meet, while trying to raise 3(?) kids on her own. That's a tough row to hoe, by any standard.

And her story is hardly unique in these times. Real wages have been flat for three decades, while worker productivity has steadily risen over the same period. Meanwhile, CEO pay is through the roof, corporate earnings are better than ever, and effective tax rates on corporations and the wealthy elites are lower than ever. There is no longer any room for doubt that we are living in a plutocracy, not a democracy. And according to a recent NASA study, that is a prime indicator that we are a society on the brink of collapse.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

...

Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

...

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

I doubt it. In the UK (where there is a well established public health system) employers have been getting increasingly fond of zero-hours contracts over the last few years. If you want to talk "double whammy", these contracts not only do not guarantee you any hours in any given week (hence the name) but you are usually contractually forbidden from working for anybody else; you are supposed to be always "on call". So you aren't working many hours, and you're poor. Oh brave new world!

I have more than a few friends on the low end of the pay scale who've been pushed down below 30 hours a week by their employers so their employers stay clear of Obamacare insurance mandates. (e.g., http://www.theguardian.com/wor... ) It usually comes across as a double-whammy: now they have less money in their pockets, and they're still up a creek in terms of health insurance.

Suppose the US was at war with Country X. Men with guns attacked a US military base in Country X. The US troops fire back, killing the forces of Country X. But aha! One of the enemy was actually a US citizen! So does that mean the US troops cannot shoot at that one person?

Suppose...there was a relevant analogy here. Because none of the people being assassinated are killed on the battlefield - that's why they're assassinations. Markets, weddings, apartment buildings...those are the sites of your typical drone strikes, where people are minding their own business. Not in a firefight with Marines or plotting the next strike with the Legion of Doom. Like Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was blown up at a cafe with his cousin because he was born to the wrong father.

Why is it okay to target non-US citizens with drones, but not US citizens? Why is it okay to shoot them, but not with drones?

It's not that it's "okay", it's that the Constitution provides greater protections for citizens than for non-citizens. But even for non-citizens, it's not okay to target them with signature strikes, where we don't even know who we're killing,

None of this is new. Start here to get your feet wet. Continue on at the Guardian, and finally to the presdent day. If that's too tl;dr, just know that the USG didn't stop being full of shit at every level with the invasion of Iraq. That if a "senior administration official" tells you that water is wet, you just might want to verify their claims.

High fuel prices decrease fuel consumption for poor people, rich people don't care they drive the most inefficient vehicles.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best/bestworstNF.shtml
Never mind the private jets and yachts but they are important they need those thing. Or cargo ships being exempt from fuel tax, take away the free trade agreements and tax exemptions and shipping stuff from China in not profitable anymore. "Just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars." Whats the real problem? Cars or ships? Also ships are exempt from low sulfur fuel regulation. There are 90,000 cargo ships in the world.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

The Russian armies continuing to mass on Ukraine's borders?
Russian special forces and intelligence agents infiltrating Ukraine and instigating insurrection and incidents?
The Russians violating the Open Skies treaty to deny Western and US compliance inspection over-flights of Russia to hide their activity?
The UN finding that the Crimean election wasn't quite as free as claimed?
Putin admitting that the "little green men" in Crimea were, "surprise! surprise!," Russian soldiers after all?
Jews being told they must "register" in an area of Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists? which echoes the problems Russia has with National Socialists?
Russia taking up the "anti-fascist" fight after "defeating fascism" in Poland in 1939 (splitting it with the Germans), "defeating fascism" in Finland in 1940 (annexing Finnish territory), "defeating fascism" in Georgia in 2008 (taking territory from it), and now volunteering to "defeat fascism" in Ukraine despite the fact that Russia seems to be unable to defeat fascism at home?
That momentum is building in Ukraine's legislature for rearming with nuclear weapons which will ironically be accepting Putin's advice offered on Syria?

Ironically, the notion of reacquiring nuclear weapons as a security guarantee is a position publicly advocated by Putin himself: "If you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. ... This is logical: If you have the bomb, no one will touch you." -- Is Ukraine about to go nuclear again?

Most Ukrainians are neither loyal Russians nor fascists

Putin has promoted the notion that ethnic Russians were in danger. There has never been evidence for this unless you count as brutal repression a failed attempt to revive an old law making Ukrainian the sole language for court hearings and government forms. Putin calls for greater autonomy for the south and east of Ukraine, and more rights for Russian-speakers, while doing all he can to obstruct elections that would bring them back into the political process.

No doubt there is more. Do you have an inside scoop? Is it, as I fear, that the US is at fault?

"Before the human genome project completed its first draft in 2000, Sulston had fought to keep the genome data freely accessible to researchers around the world. At the same time, Craig Venter was racing to sequence the human genome through his company, Celera, with the intention of charging researchers for access to the information. In 2000, the two sides brokered a deal through the mediation of the UK and US governments and the human genome was put in the public domain." ...That battle was fought already & was won in favor of open source 14 years ago. Now if Monsanto makes some glyphosate resistant humans we might have a conflict to be worried about... Quote from: http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

Indeed! Russia also requires all telcoms and ISPs, at their expense, to install monitoring equipment of the internet and telephones, This project is called SORM (wikipedia entry for SORM). The system was put into place around 1996-2000, but it has been used as recently as the Winter Olympics (source). It is explicitly a mass-surveillance system, so either Putin is lying or he is bending the truth: Russia doesn't pay for it... but by law the telcoms have to pay it. They don't do illegal wiretapping because it is explicitly legal. And you're right, they might not have the ability to store all that data for long periods of time, but you can be sure they are targeting people. And you can be sure they are targeting foreign governments too (of course). Heck, there were several diplomatic leaks at the beginning of the Crimean crises in order to strain US-EU ties. You can be sure that's due to Russia's intelligence services.

IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.

It's not the IMEI blacklists that I'm worried about. See, if we already have the technology to disconnect devices from the networks, and we have encryption available on the devices, so we really don't need this new "remote kill switch" anti-feature. Folks worried about losing data can use encryption if they want to protect their data, and the remote kill switch doesn't prevent theft because Faraday Cages exist, and black-market thieves will figure out a way to zilch the chip's radio or NoOP the part of baseband/firmware blob that activates the kill switch, etc.

What I'm worried about is getting a "device bricking" standard for all devices so that all they have to do is flip from blacklist to whitelist, and presto they'll only function if they ping corporate/government towers every so often and authenticate with an approved citizen's ID code. Can you say Forced Obsolescence? Intel demonstrated their capability for PCs, and cars now have black boxes standard. The Pentagon has plans to push things like this through for anti-activism purposes.

Here's how you know it's a government job: This non-feature isn't being implemented by customer demand. This isn't something that these folks started offering then got popular and now they're standardizing on, nope. It's something they're making standard whether you want it or not. That's a huge red flag. Isn't this a fucking capitalist country? No, it really isn't. This is anti-consumer collusion of the highest degree. The US Is a plutocracy. Just like Noam Chomsky has been saying for decades. If the USA was a capitalist country then we would allow the market to decide if end users actually want this non-feature whereby the government or your carrier can not just cut off the cell-tower, but brick the devices, cars, computers, etc. to prevent them from being used anywhere. Late on a payment? Oh, they don't just cut off your service, you won't have a device or car to drive to work. Say something "anti-American"? Well, your cell will die on the road and so will your car, then you'll just be black-hooded out of service too. Do consumers really want this? Of course the answer is no. Thus this will be legislated into place "for your own good". Just like censorship and wholesale warrant-less wiretap spying is, and for the same reason as always.

The Stasi would have creamed their pants for some shit like this on machines and typewriters. What soldier would sign up to fight for a country that's doing this shit? If not for uniforms, you wouldn't know which side to fight against: Given only a description of the country's behaviors you'd find us indistinguishable from our supposed worst enemies. If you don't think that's a valid comparison because of some moral high-ground, then you don't know about the Native American genocide or the US eugenics programs. What a sad time to be an American.

Just because the article is a terrible piece objectively and doesn't link to any hard data doesn't mean the data doesn't exist. There are plenty of data to suggest that tablet use isn't the best for kids' brains. Enough evidence to suggest that ANYTHING else would be better, including (OHMYGAWD) playing with LEGOs.