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As an American, I would love it if we had a gun policy like Japan or UK etc, (ever hear of a drive by stabbing?) but the U.S. has been so gun crazy for so long and there are so many guns out there, getting rid of all them would likely be impossible. Not to mention the gun nuts that would rather go down shooting than hand over their guns. I just can not buy into, "more guns will make us safer"...

Similar with a phone. If it were made somewhat modular where RAM, flash storage, and other parts were upgradable, with the antenna being easily swapped out, then paying twice as much for the device wouldn't be a bad thing.

What, like this, you mean?

And a very strong reason why we won't be sending our child to public schools.

Do you really think that just because a school is private bullying automagically will cease to happen? Allow me to burst that bubble for you.

A private school for children of Sweden's wealthy elite has been shut down following accusations that boys were burned with hot irons by older pupils.
The latest allegations about severe bullying at Lundsberg boarding school emerged at the weekend after one of the boys was taken to hospital and the police were informed. Nine boys were involved in the assault, police said.
Following a visit to the school in rural Värmland, in south-west Sweden, inspectors announced its immediate closure until measures are taken to prevent abuse.

I thought that guy in the Guardian recently had his computer, with the rest of the files he had, apprehended by British security forces who promptly destroyed all the remaining evidence. Oh right there it is. They 'voluntarily' destroyed the hard drives in front of the security forces.

There are companies that sell vulnerabilities to anybody with deep enough pockets. They're looking at software constantly to find exploits and I wouldn't be surprised if open source wasn't on the menu for them as well. I think open source does lead to quicker fixes once they're discovered by white hats out there unlike closed source models where a company has a vested interest in not disclosing exposures while either muddling through a fix. Case in point, the fact that Oracle knew about the zero day vulnerabilities in Java for months before addressing them. The problem is that businesses and developers seem to shrug that off rather than saying it's not acceptable and other companies just follow the same pattern. In the case of Oracle it didn't hurt them much at all and validates their lousy business practice on addressing vulnerabilities. Just looking now, in early summer 2012 when the news hit, their stock sank to $25.61/share and it just hit $42 on 4/2. So in under two years that's an almost 64% increase in their stock price.

Maybe you're thinking of Apple's "goto fail" SSL exploit where we really don't know who or what or when and probably never will because it's not likely Apple is going to release their RCS logs.

Well we know the when and we know the what .

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

It was discovered and fixed so quickly *because* it's open source

For crikessakes, the heartbleed vulnerability existed for over 2 years before being discovered and fixed!

Sorry my bad, that sentence was confusing -- I meant the fix was fast, not finding the bug.

An exact timeline for Hearthbleed is hard to find, but it looks like there was some responsible disclosure of the bug to some large parties about a week before public disclosure and release of the fixed SSL library.

In contract, Apple learned of its SSL vulnerability over a month before they released an IOS patch and even after public disclosure of the bug, it was about a week before they released the OSX patch. And just like the OpenSSL bug, Apple's vulnerability was believed to have been in the wild for about 2 years before detection. (of course, since the library code was opensourced by Apple, several unofficial patches were released before Apple's official patch).

Are you denying the fact that the Bolivarians have won the last 18 out of 19 elections. Or are you just assuming that because it's politics you don't agree with it MUST have been corrupt elections - despite Jimmy Carter saying: "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."

Here's why you have the wrong beliefs you do:
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Maybe it's you that's naive and stupid?

That study covers meteorologists, not climate scientists. Weather and climate are not the same thing, and only 13% of the survey respondents identified climate as their area of expertise.

A fine? And if the business is willing to pay it as the cost of doing business?

.

Hey, looks like you didn't read the article and don't know what you're on about.

First off, it's not a law. It's a legally binding agreement between an employers federation and a workers organisation. So it only covers the signatories, not all of France.

Secondly, its a private agreement. I know I mentioned it twice, but it's such a big point it's worth mentioning twice.

Thirdly, the onus to ignore work emails is placed on the employee. the boss may still send them, but if an employee reads them the employee is in violation of the agreement. The only restriction on the employer is that they cannot pressure an employee to do anything outside of work hours.

Here's the article

Hey, but the actual problem sounds like employers and employees getting along... That doesn't make for good news for angry conservatives.

Yes, they are. Unrestrained legalism isn't the virtue that you think it is. It is the means of tyranny uses to creep into our world. But you're okay with tyranny, as long as it is your kind of tyranny, and that is a pity.

No, they aren't. Lack of labour laws have always lead to abuses in all historical examples. The abuses of employees lead to unions becoming so powerful.

Besides this, France didn't enact a law. The headline was inaccurate to make it look worse than it actually is. Libertarians and angry conservatives who hate their employees love to do this. In reality it was a private agreement but that actually sounds capitalistic and nothing to get angry about. You might want to try reading the article before launching on a badly thought out tirade.

What happened was that an employer's federation and workers organisation signed a legally binding agreement that employee's must ignore work emails after 6PM. So your boss can still send emails, the employee is in violation of the agreement by answering or even reading it.

Above this the agreement only applies to the signatories, not all French employees.

Women are 99% of the prostitutes.

That's not actually true. There are a lot more males working as prostitutes in the developed world than people realize.

"Most astonishing to the researchers was the demographic profile teased out by the study. Published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2008, Curtis and Dank's findings thoroughly obliterated long-held assumptions about underage prostitution: Nearly half of the kids — about 45 percent — were boys." http://www.westword.com/2011-1...

On the related topic of sex trafficing, here's an article:

"In my visit to Care Corner Orphanage in Thailand I was shocked that most of the HIV-infected sex slave survivors were boys under the age of ten. I saw and learned of something similar in the Philippines and in Bangladesh. Upon reflection, I think part of the reason for my shock was because I was conditioned through the media, literature, photo and film to believe that this was a crime perpetrated against only girls and women. The photo above actually came from a video released a few days ago by Reuters titled The Trafficking Business in which the entire focus is females as victims and how millions of them are forced into the sex trade or sweat shops. While not untrue, it’s not painting a full picture either.

Speaking broadly on the topic of human trafficking – boys and men are trafficked far more than girls and women because, in part, strong bodies are needed for labor. And as it relates to sex trafficking, girls and women are victims to a larger extent. Many other crimes have such disparities but few place the disparity so high in their definition. All this is to say let’s define human trafficking and sex trafficking for what they are: horrific crimes against the most vulnerable populations. There are loads of ways to be vulnerable. Yes, one of many vulnerabilities is being a woman.
...
As I mentioned in The Other 20%, men raping boys is still a taboo topic. Even filmmakers who document the horrors of sex trafficking have told me they feel their work wouldn’t be accepted if it instead highlighted the abuse of boys. “The public isn’t ready for it,” I’ve been told. Truth is, we only speak about the victimization of boys when it’s forced on us by breaking-news scandals like those of Jerry Sandusky or The Boys Scouts of America. As the news story fades so too does the conversation. This makes it tough, then, to even entertain the idea of discussing, as I’ve heard from several high-ranking women in anti-trafficking organizations, that the sex traffickers, the actual criminals in the crime, are about 65% men. Such a statistic has a hard time taking root because there’s already the perceived and ingrained idea that men and men-only are the criminals." http://goodmenproject.com/feat...

Women are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic abuse.

When asked, "Has your significant other hit you within the last month?", men and women are about equally likely to reply to that question with "yes". The difference is that women are more likely to be severely injured (because men are stronger) and women are more likely to be taken seriously as victims of domestic abuse. There's a prevailing belief that men should be capable of defending themselves - which leads to dismissal of female-on-male domestic violence, shame, and an unwillingness to admit that they are victims of domestic abuse.

"The Guardian: More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals"
Campaign group Parity claims assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media
http://www.theguardian.com/soc...

Here is an interesting read about if you know you are taking a placebo http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect?

"Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug
Study suggests patients benefit from the placebo effect even when told explicitly that they're taking an 'inert substance'"
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

The Guardian is clear that Brendan had no intention of stepping down:

Mozilla CEO insists he won't resign over 'private' support for gay marriage ban

By the same token the chair woman's statement says:

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.

In her post she does not even mention one good thing Brendan has done while at Mozilla. To me that is disgusting. There are very few people who have done more for freedom on the Internet. He was one of the founders of Mozilla, who managed to start a movement that ended up taking down IE and exalting web standards. Not just by ranting but by using his gifts, he made a statement by simply showing a better way. He invented JavaScript which is now driving the web applications movement (Java failed at this). As CTO he backed Opus which is an outstanding open audio codec and also Daala which aims to do the same for video. Mozilla was also the first to implement SVG in the browser.

I don't think it is too relevant that what Mozilla did could be illegal. Brendan helped start Mozilla I don't think he wants to destroy it. He stands for freedom on the web and Mozilla is in an incredibly vulnerable position. On his blog he says:

I’m proud to have done with Firefox at Mozilla. I encourage all Mozillians to keep going. Firefox OS is even more daunting, and more important. Thanks indeed to all who have supported me, and to all my colleagues over the years, at Mozilla, in standards bodies, and at conferences around the world. I will be less visible online, but still around.

They have let go of visionary with a proven track record, they do not know who will fill his shoes. That puts the jobs of everyone in Mozilla on the line.

We were doing this kind of thing back during Reagan.

Actually, long before Reagan.

We're serfs, not citizens.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Russian investment firms may be looking to steal high-tech intelligence from Boston-area companies to give to their country's military.

Oh, my. That does sound serious. Whatever can we do? Oh, I know, perhaps we should work to harden information security so that companies can maintain the integrity of their research. Futhermore, though I'm sure this goes without saying, we should fire -- and ban from any future participation in any aspect of government, government contracts, lobbying, or information security -- any person who has been involved in the intentional weakening of information security standards.

Re " both models have advantages and disadvantages depending on what the product is, the size of its market, the type of market, etc. and sometimes those advantages can't even be realised"
The problem with a closed source effort is what we saw with Prism http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
The legal system and dev staff stay with the closed source product.
With open source code - when an issue is found days, months, years later it can be corrected, fully understood and fed back into further world wide crypto education.
The other option is to trust known weakened corporate encryption over many new versions and have faith in their legal teams ... just like you did the first few times...
The other emerging aspect is that of US National Security Letters (NSL) for ongoing bulk collection 'efforts' vs a more global open source code.
After Snowden many more people will be looking at crypto, with open source code someone might be able to offer reviewed, tested fixes to junk standards.

As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".

So you want to argue this at the level of personal attacks? No problem.

Imagine that there was no reactor at Fukushima and there was a "freak tsunami". Would there be a radioactive water storage nightmare?

Currently about 400 tonnes of groundwater is streaming into the reactor basements from the hills behind the plant each day. The plant has accumulated about 300,000 tonnes of contaminated water, which is being stored in 1,200 tanks occupying a large swath of the Fukushima Daiichi site.

Eventually Tepco hopes to have enough space to store 800,000 tonnes, but fears are rising that it will run out of space sometime next year because it can't keep up with the flow of toxic water.

Your statement is meaningless because it is complete nonsense. In the real world the tsunami happened and there have been dramatic consequences. Putting the blame on the "anti-nuke community" verges on delusional thinking.

Are your suggesting that the water be dumped into the ocean? That would destroy an even larger area of the Japanese seafood industry. It would also violate numerous international treaties.

Since you seem to have all the answers, what's your solution? I'm sure that you response will be better then anyone in Japan or the international community has come up with so far, and it will be immediately adopted. I can't wait!

to be fair we dont know, he has never made a statement about it as far as I am aware.

He had ~10 days to repudiate his former position and didn't.
In that time, he's made statements, but all his statements were non-apologies and evasions.

https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

I can only ask for your support to have the time to "show, not tell"; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-refuses-to-quit

"So I don't want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we've been going," he told the Guardian. "I don't believe they're relevant."

Eich refused to be drawn on whether he would donate to a Proposition 8 style campaign again in the future. "I don't want to do hypotheticals," he said. "I haven't thought about that issue and I really don't want to speculate because it's not relevant."

"Tolerate my intolerance" was never really a good place to be starting from, but nowadays it's a completely unviable position to take.

There are still culture warriors out there bemoaning this trend as the end of free speech, but all that really means is they don't understand how free speech works.

Eich has a long history of donating to candidates and causes which are intolerant of the beliefs of others. From The Guardian:
"Mozilla's controversial new CEO Brendan Eich made a string of donations to politicians on the fringe of the Republican party a decade before he donated $1,000 to the campaign against equal marriage in California.
Public records show that between 1991 and 1992, Eich donated a total of $1,000 to Pat Buchanan, then a rightwing Republican presidential candidate. In 1996 and 1998, Eich donated a total of $2,500 to Ron Paul, a maverick Republican congressman for Texas's 14th district."
"In 1990, a year before Eich’s first donation to his campaign, Buchanan said in relation to the Aids outbreak that “our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide”. A a few years earlie he said “homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution”.
“I agree with people who say it wasn't private, but it was personal,” he said of the donation in an interview on Wednesday.
"Eich's political donations also include money given to more mainstream candidates, such as California's Tom McClintock, to whom Eich donated $750 over the course of 2008, and Linda Smith, who ran for senate in Washington state. McClintock opposes same-sex marriage; as does Smith, who has said that "homosexuality is a morally unfit inclination".
On a personal note: Tom McClintock is my Representative in Congress and is without any redeeming qualities. A real zealot who personifies intolerance and loves to support government interference in the personal lives of individuals.
More from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Re Would Mr. Snowden receive the same respect and adoration
Yes as US gov protections in place for just such legal events eg safe from US gov surveillance without a warrant.
If you see the US Constitution protections been removed via color of law efforts you have the duty, right and responsibility to bring such facts to the US publics attention.
The US political and legal system can then correct the legal issues.
The US legal issues raised by Snowden are easy to understand in an open court by most legal professionals and the wider public.
http://www.freedomwatchusa.org...
Months after Snowden US warrantless reality is uncovered:
"NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails – Clapper" (2 April 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
The main issue for "understanding" is that the entire US copper and optical telco hardware is surveillance friendly.
Another issue for "understanding" is that the entire US copper and optical telco software layer is surveillance friendly.
Another issue for "understanding" is that encryption standards are junk - the US gov gets back to plain text, ex staff get back too, other countries get back to plain text, so can their ex staff and people who can pay them...
People are finally understanding the entire structure of their telecommunications network is really like "ENIGMA" version 10? 50? in the 1960,1970, 1980, 1900's --2000 and beyond. Lots of new fancy digital "rotors" to sell but its all back to plain text in real time over decades.
So today people are finally looking at the origins of TCP/IP and wondering how it was shaped, set as a standard and promoted.
Expect skilled academics to start going over ever historic telco layer and many common encryption standard too.

Only some of the time? That is not much consolation.

But you are right to point out these situations as models.

And there is abundant data that these extreme situations have terrible psychological tolls on the survivors, even if they don't go stark raving mad.

See, for example, the Chilean miners trapped in 2010.

Then there are those who grew up as scientists then wondered why the scientific method wasn't used for all policy and law, then looked into the systems of governance and found them defective by design largely due to gerrymandering. That's a process whereby your votes do not matter anymore because whomever draws district outlines selects the winners (Protip: don't register as a party [they ask at the DMV] nor answer political surveys unless your population is nomadic). Some places are trying to fix this particular blatant exploit of our democratic-republic, but found the powers that be one step ahead so our vote tallies themselves have been hacked. And now that we don't have paper ballots to verify the insecure digital tally with, we might as well just ask the NSA or CIA or FBI to appoint people they like.

Speaking of which, if you apply a bit of observational power you'll discover those secret agencies answer to no one and have a long history of silencing any form of activism -- you know, because protest was the only avenue left to affect the government. It's hard for a scientist to survive mentally in a country that's hell bent on leveraging disaster capitalism regardless of public benefit: Humans will do whatever it takes to survive the disasters our government plans for us -- including compete for lower wages offered by immortal corporations.

Some of us have taken a step back, done some calculations and realized that some fights are entirely unwinnable: We've got to the point where the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment allows a senator to read a passage from the bible and declare it as proof man can't change the climate -- only god can. Listen up, newbie, that's corporate oil interest speaking, leveraging religious fundamentalism against science from the very panels addressing climate change -- What can you do? Replace them and get a new panel bought off? It's not just congress, your executive and legislative branches are sock-puppet parades too. The government fights wars at the behest of corporations and Habeas Corpus has been revoked, FFS. It's not that everyone is stupid and we're "getting what we voted for"; The 'republic' part of our democratic-republic is designed to fix that: The dumb elect folks who are smarter, but our forefathers didn't count on the majority of congress being corrupt so the whole system became utterly broken. They did leave us the option to call an emergency session of congress and wield a vote of no-confidence, so next time you see the "fire congress" carousel go round, hop on board (not that it'll fix anything, but it'll scare some straight).

So, what? Organize some activism and try to fix the illegitimate rulership system that has benefited the powerful all too well for well over a hundred years? Then you're an "anti-government extremist" / terrorist, and the plan to silence that disastrous shit is already so firmly in place they can keep the worst of it even if PRISM is leaked to the public. To me the innefectual occupy movement was a test to see how quickly the elites and FBI will work their magic on the police to silence dissent, and to see how effectively the news is controlled by corporate statist interests. There were protesters shoulder to shoulder filling a large swath of Wall Street one day of the protest and the local news in my southern town mentioned nothing. Days later I had to pull up video and images of the event to convince my clueless friends and neighbors it even happened. They scratched their heads, "Why wasn't this on the news then?" -- indeed. Can you

There are limits to how large a bill you can run up with data roaming. Right now, the cap is at 50 euros per billing period. http://www.theguardian.com/mon...

Did you see the episode? It was, another, excuse to bash on all things American*. The presented t as if it ran out of charge. They really tried to hide the fact that they were not driving the car under normal road conditions.
Clarkson also has a long history of attacking electric cars, and when he is presented with argument, he responds with non sequitors.
I like how the article you linked only links to itself and not to any actual reference to the court case.

*sometime justifiable, but all too often I've seen them do things to American car they don't do to non American cars.

Here ya go... http://www.theguardian.com/med...

Top Gear is Cartainment... In my opinion, it isn't a serious car show. Though, it is popular... Those who watch it understand that the hosts have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks and that they drive cars hard, not like normal people in day-to-day traffic. Saying that a show is disingenuous because it doesn't represent daily driving habits is a specious argument simply because it isn't that type of show.

The point is that Top Gear isn't a show for people to find information on daily driving. That's what Motor Week and Consumer Reports are for....

I've heard this before, there was nothing wrong with what Top Gear said in the program.

Tesla complained about a passage of Clarkson's commentary in which he said: "Although Tesla say it will do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles and if it does run out, it is not a quick job to charge it up again." Clarkson and others are then shown pushing the Roadster into the Top Gear hangar and recharging it.

The British courts have agreed with Top Gear and to be fair to other cars but on the track where they're going full tilt, mileage on gas powered cars isn't the same either so pushing the Tesla resulted in Top Gear making the statement and we know range would be reduced.

For comparison look at their one gallon supercar race.

YMMV... Sorry Tesla Nutswingers!

The US is been careful with words in other ways too
"....says that the DoD termed those involved in interrogation "safety officers" rather than doctors. "
"CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11, taskforce finds" (4 November 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Also see the Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS)

The CEO of a company, and anyone in general, has a right to influence the society he lives in and how his government makes laws. He can do what he wishes with his money.

He should not be punished for taking part in the democratic process, he shouldn't be silenced, he should be outvoted. So, if you care enough, you need to become politically active. Boycotting things amounts to mob rule, it works the same way repression works.

The CEO of Mozilla doesn't own Mozilla, nor was he using it to influence his worldview. He's essentially an employee

OKCupid is leveraging it's own brand and Mozilla's to benefit itself and real losers are gays who let themselves be taken cynically taken advantage of.

Corporations don't have opinions, they only reflect those of it's customers. Where was the Rainbow Oreo in the 80's and 90's when gay rights was a divisive issue? Why didn't Oreo have an opinion then? These kinds of corporations only support the winning side of the culture wars. As we saw with Duck Dynasy and Cracker Barrel, if enough people complain, the company will unashamedly backflip. It's purely business, not ideological.

The Guardian ran this story a week back

I don't get it? If the person is is 'reasonably believed' to be a terrorist, then the FISA court would rubber-stamp a warrant so quick it would make heads spin. So why not get the warrant?

(commenting as AC do to moderation)

Probably because as other NSA files have show[1] simply being with several degrees of separation away from a suspected terrorist makes you a target which means every person on the fucking planet. So that's to many warrants to rubber stamp without a machine at which point the even they can see how ridiculous this all is.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Seriously, you have an iPhone and you complain about the 99%? You are the 1% globally.

That may have been true five years ago; but it no longer holds today: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Remote wiping is already possible. What they want is centralized control over the functionality for governing purposes. We're not idiots. Well... not all of us.

Oh, the theft rate is still high! The kill switch does nothing! No worries citizen, now that the capability is in place, instead of a black list we will institute a white list, whereby you must authenticate the phone periodically with approved government services in order for it to function. What's that you say? Carriers already have to authenticate devices? Ah, but that doesn't render the CPU inoperable, eh? You know, just like Intel demonstrated. Oh, we should get PCs on board with this "anti-theft" as they call it. Oh, and cars too! We just got mandatory black boxes in there.

Why this could save us so much money! It's not like the pentagon is actively trying to figure out how to do any such nefarious thing. It's not like selectively killing Internet access wouldn't be a great tool keep others happy while they silence dissent. You know, like they always fucking do?

Even if we were complete idiots, we'd still know that recent history exists: The last year at the least.

Makes it sound like the government cares about your privacy while they continue to spy on everything you do: http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

On the other side, Apple was found guilty of conspiring with publishers to make it absolutely impossible for other resellers to sell their books cheaper than Apple. If Apple had just demanded that they got the same or lower price on ebooks as other resellers, then they would have likely escaped litigation.

The situation is quite a bit more nuanced than that, and you've got your basic facts surrounding the case slightly wrong, since what you've stated Apple should have done is exactly what Apple did do. But, strangely, they also did what you said in your first sentence too. The illegal collusion and price fixing that's happened here revolves primarily around the interplay of two otherwise-perfectly-legal ideas: the agency model and most favored nation (MFN) clauses.

Agency Model: The agency model allows the publishers to set their own prices at the cost of giving the seller's a higher cut, whereas the wholesale model that is more common provides the publishers with a bigger cut at the cost of letting the sellers set the price. Given a perfect world, the wholesale model is more appealing to publishers, since they generally get a larger overall cut.

MFN Clause: An MFN clause is exactly the concept you described at the end of the quote I pulled above. They simply stipulate that they'll give you the same or better prices than they give anyone else. As you said, there's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself.

Background: Prior to Apple's arrival, Amazon had wholesale agreements with all of the publishers. The problem for the publishers, however, was that Amazon controlled over 90% of the eBooks market at the time. As you correctly pointed out, the fact that they had a monopoly wasn't actually an issue, since Amazon's interests (i.e. driving Kindle adoption and buy-in to their ecosystem) were better-served by keeping prices low, meaning that they were not using their monopoly in an anti-competitive manner. That said, they were using their monopsony in an anti-competitive manner, by forcing the publishers to sell their books at unreasonable prices while preserving their own margins, simply because the publishers had no one else they could sell to. In fact, there were several dramatic examples of Amazon using its monopsonistic bargaining position to strong-arm the publishers for better wholesale prices. Amazon was unwilling to discuss switching to an agency model, so the publishers were rather concerned that they may be forced to price themselves out of business.

With Apple—a big player— entering the market, Amazon was forced to negotiate terms that were more favorable to the publishers, namely, switching to an agency model. Such a change would naturally result in prices going up, even without any sort of illegal price fixing or collusion taking place, since the sellers are getting a larger cut with the agency model, which means that the publishers need to raise the prices to preserve their cut. Again, there's nothing illegal about that (in fact, it's what they're all doing now after what they were doing before was ruled illegal); it's simply a costlier way of doing business.

The Illegality: According to the judge, what was illegal in all of this was combining the agency model with the MFN clause. By combining the two, the MFN clause that says "you must give me the lowest price" in effect means "you'll raise the prices customers are paying at competing stores to match mine" (hence why both of your sentences that I quoted were what happened). Had they stuck with the wholesale model, the publishers could only have abided by the MFN clause by changing wholesale prices, so it would have still been up to Amazon and Ap

America is not a litigious as myth would have you believe:

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

When are we going to see a call for idiots to be banned from driving?

Google is working on this. As soon as they outlaw talking while driving and raise the insurance for people who don't have self driving cars.

Politicians are idiots, so its not going to ahppen anytime soon

Alot of politicians already don't drive: http://www.theguardian.com/lif...

with eSATA, USB 3.0, FireWire 800, HDMI, DVI, RJ45, RJ11 and Thunderbolt ports ? With a 40-year upgrade plan for future interface types ?

FireWire? Is this 1996?

Firewire is so dead, here's an article talking about how Steve Jobs said Firewire is dead.

I might have a somewhat luddite view on this subject, but for me the whole concept of canned visual entertainment has failed. Since it has failed, I have given up on it. I can't remember the last movie I saw, I only know it was a long... time ago - many years. I do remember some movies from before that time which somehow managed to get stuck so I can not state unequivocally that movies are not worth the celluloid they used to be printed on but the industry has made the whole experience around it so distasteful that I feel better iff without. On the risk of sounding like a Luddite I can honestly say that I'd rather read the book. Which I do, a lot. Time and time again my own imagination produces better special effects than the UK, Canada and New Zealand manage.

The UK has a problem with Islamic extremist gangs in prisons. Printed material from external well-wishers and visitors is a huge contributory factor. This problem is far, far worse than any right-ring white gangs in US jails.

Bedwetting bullshit. If you go to prison, you're going to try and make friends with people like you to keep the resizing of your asshole to a minimum. And there's no shortage of crazy christian proselytizing in prison, or violent gangs of wasps, but ZOMG MOOOSLIMS!

But if you really want to complain about fundamentalist Islam, start with the nearest mirror. Because it's either directly supported by western imperialism (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria) or in direct backlash to western imperialism (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan.) But hey, anything that allows you to point your finger at somebody else.

What are the facts to support these claims?

For brevity I will narrow the examples down to what many American's are unaware of, a few examples off the top of my head where intelligence agencies work on behave of private interests within the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stockwell

writings go into detail with corporate involvement and the military industrial complex.

"The CIA and the big corporations were, in my experience, in step with each other. Later I realized that they may argue about details of strategy - a small war here or there. However, both are vigorously committed to supporting the system."

Recent Snowden leaks shows this is still prevalent:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

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

Not necessarily.

In a study, patents were given placebo, and told what it was. They got specific instructions that these are just sugar pills, and that it doesn't really matter whether they take it or not. The pills were still as effective as placebo.

I am wondering why that research did not make more waves than it did, as it clearly solves placebo's greatest problem as treatment.

Shachar

I did indeed. I reread it, and I think the wiki is wrong for the SK portion. South Korea has banned specific accounts but not the whole site: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

we dont need activists or guerilla armies to get ourselves out of this mess, the future is now. we need nerds to fight, not guns.

Oh look, the ape woke up and smelled the shit that's flying. It seems angry, and confused. Aren't you aware that people who express sentiments such as yours are exactly the "radical anti-government" extremists that big brother has been preparing for? Shut up with your "fearful masses" bullshit. Perhaps you missed the 70's? Did you happen to miss how quickly the FBI got involved with squelching the Occupy protests?

Take it easy there greenhorn, the other side has got a huge jump on you. Your voting system is compromised, and your governmental process itself is stacked against you. You don't need to be added to the terrorist list, haven't you been paying attention? They already suspect everyone, and are automatically collecting all of our correspondences.

It's not whining and fear that keeps people from doing anything to fix it, it's the cold hard fact that most people are stupid, emotional, and ignorant. So long as emotional appeals work against all these damn dirty apes, then this deceptive bullshit will continue. The answer isn't reactionary bullshit, your opponents have adapted and are now resistant to it. I mean, just look at the purposeful blatantly lies that won backing for the Gulf War, or the McCarthyism before that, the "red scare" and adding of "god" to our money and pledge of allegiance to distance us from "godless commie bastards", etc. Hell, the FBI has been blatantly corrupt for over a hundred years. Omnivore, Carnivore and ECHELON mass surveillance programs have been going on for decades. PRISM's room 641A existed long before 9/11. The USA has been waging socio economic WW-III since the 70's....

And you what? You want to disable license-plate scanners? You want to do some "hactivism" against the NSA and wind up locked up as a pedophile, or framed for rape or murder, just plain old disappeared? Get real. I'm glad you've been roused from your slumber, but education and reform is the answer, not fighting a cyber war against your government. Make no mistake, you'll have given your life in vain and only helped to strengthen their tools of oppression. It's dipshits like you that will get our devices, automobiles, phones, PCs, cameras, etc. rendered inoperable unless an approved citizen authenticates them periodically with a government approved WIFI tower and ID code. They've already mandated the black boxes in our vehicles. Go fight the battle in California where they're proposing mandatory phone kill switches -- The next step after the "anti-theft" kill switch is just to turn the black-list into a white-list, and presto, no phones work unless big bro allows them. Intel already demonstrated their ability to add such cellular kill switches to their CPUs.

I can see the headline now: Cyber Terrorist, Resfilter, Arrested - "The terrorist resfilter has been apprehended and charged with treason and crimes against humanity after coordinating an attack against government infrastructure. Intelligence sources indicate he may be working with Iranian hackers. The FBI reports finding child pornography and videos of Islamic female genital mutilation rituals on his home electronics." You'll be deemed a terrorist and detained without trial to protect national security, since Obama and congress have already eli

Have a look. Then Google.

Don't forget 'deferred costs'.

The same people who are happy to demand that the USPS save up for the retirement of employees not even born yet are also perfectly happy to not count any of the future costs we have committed to in the war.

But to the broader point, for the last several decades it's been the Republicans running the huge deficits (even while talking about 'small' government). Clinton actually got us to a budget *SURPLUS* briefly, but GW Bush took care of that!

Obama hasn't done as well, but then he inherited an economic disaster of epic proportions.

Or they could simply discard the code from the NSA on security / espionage grounds.

The code that is obviously the NSA's contribution is not the back door. The back door likely would leverage some edge case created by their contributions, or another part of the system altogether while the NSA part is fully legit. Attributing the secret agencies goodwill is a huge part of disinformation and image management to convince people to accept the FBI & NSA anti-activism campaign.

Perhaps it would be something like this:
// Change the file permission.
if ( option == CHANGE_OWNER && sessionState == VALID && user = ROOT ) {
// ...
}
// Current user is now root priveledged.

A single equal char is missing, it looks like it could be a legitimate mistake. Perfect plausible deniability. Such would be contributed by someone else who seems innocuous. Perhaps even by a change nearby which happens to change the formatting or constant name, and thus the logic change is easier to miss.

Point being, it really doesn't matter either way. They won't admit to all the shit they do, and have a long history of being against the populace, even committing illegal acts. So, the only answer is to demand eradication of secrecy in governance. Otherwise the people can never know whether their government is or is not operating in the best interest of citizens. We shouldn't have to wonder if their concern is just lies to manufacture consent for a more draconian dystopia; We should be able to prove our governments are not acting against us.

Gives you an idea as to the level of trust employed when it comes to manipulating internet internals http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

He said "I'm going to eradicate Twitter". Then he blocked twitter by changing the DNS on all official Turkey ISPs. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I think that our own leadership has about the same knowledge of the internet. Any under 30 person could have seen the usefulness of their action. It actually increased traffic to twitter, they broke new user records: http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

NASA is working on one, called the Space Launch System, but the agency is constrained by its budget

Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...

You seriously think those things even begin to dent the budget of NASA? Your rant is more about criticizing the damn liberals and their GUBMINT than it is about any serious problem with NASA. If you really want to see NASA accomplish things, get congress the hell out of their business and stop letting every new administration pull new mandates out of their asses. Or, push more support for the COTS programs, that produce far better results at far less cost, thanks to free market economics which work so well everywhere else. The only problem is they don't funnel money into the pockets of established defense contractors...

NASA is working on one, called the Space Launch System, but the agency is constrained by its budget

Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...