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The pirates are the products of a shit-hole failed State.

Actually the pirates are the products of the destruction of the Somali fishing industry from illegal over-fishing by foreign vessels.

Reference.

Reference.

Although I grant you that the lack of a functional government in Somalia was a contributing factor.

Hackaday is a tech-oriented site which includes videos in many of it's posts. In general, their videos are informative and on-point. They make the browsing experience better.

Let's compare and contrast those videos with the ones here, and see if slashdot can keep the good parts and ditch the bad parts.

Hackaday videos are generated by the people making the articles. IOW, when they make some cool gadget, they have a website describing the build and a video of the device in action. Here's the first example that I could find in a quick search. Lots and lots of other examples.

The subject matter of the cited example is rather uninteresting and techy, and it's amateurish, but the video does an excellent job of counterpointing and illustrating the text of the build.

I've seen other examples where the ideas expressed in the text are badly described or difficult to grasp, but the video makes it clear. There are also many examples of things which are just plain cool when shown as video. Lots and lots of examples.

Images are used to illuminate and express the interest and wonder of a concept, and videos should be used in the same way. Not as a medium in and of itself, but as a way to express those aspects which don't come out well in text or images.

Using them for fake advertizements is the wrong approach - there is simply no general interest in seeing advertizements, and making them into videos doesn't make them more palatable. Having a video of a person talking, expressing an opinion, or describing something is completely backwards - the description should be text, the diagrams in images, and the action in video.

If you had videos in the same vein and for the same reasons as Hackaday, it would be roundly appreciated by just about everyone.

It's like what everyone says is the problem with the RIAA and MPAA - change your business model, give the customers what they want.

We're still your customers, right?

Look, first generations of new technology are never about "saving money". Do you really think people bought the first iPhone because they could "save money"?

People buy the latest iGadget because they believe in the company as well as the technology. The technology of the Volt may be fine, but I think GM still has a stigma of being bad at product development.

A wise engineer once told me, "one blunder in the car industry takes decades of perfect execution to recover." The Volt may be a perfect car, but few will buy it based on GM's past mistakes.

Look, first generations of new technology are never about "saving money". Do you really think people bought the first iPhone because they could "save money"?

People buy the latest iGadget because they believe in the company as well as the technology. The technology of the Volt may be fine, but I think GM still has a stigma of being bad at product development.

A wise engineer once told me, "one blunder in the car industry takes decades of perfect execution to recover." The Volt may be a perfect car, but few will buy it based on GM's past mistakes.

If said poor person lived in Comcast's footprint they can get 1.5Mbps for $10/month:

http://moneyland.time.com/2011/08/10/comcasts-internet-essentials-10-a-month-service-for-low-income-families/

There are some restrictions, like not having an active account for the past 90 days, so shut off the cable and wait a few months.

And if this was the USA, there would be a class-action lawsuit

If this was the USA, the ToS likely prohibits the customer from bringing a class-action lawsuit in the first place.

I don't know for sure, though, as I don't have the time to read 56 pages worth of legalese.

You do know that Zimmerman was treated at the scene for injuries from havnig his head slammed into concrete...

But apparently Zimmerman was not injured as he claims. Surely you must be aware of that, which makes me think bad things about you.

Hmmm... I apparently pasted the wrong link at "arrests" also. Here is the corrected link. Geeze, I fail at editing this morning. MOAR COFFEE!

HP Touchpads for $99!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968042,00.html Study after study points to the fact that people with more conservative beliefs just don't know what's going on, fear change, fear differences and generally distrust anything. Watch any Youtube conspiracy video about global warming, beast 666, the Illumnati, masonry...the list goes on and on. These people are trying desperately to understand what's going on around them, but they just don't have the CPU upstairs to put the peices together. The scary part is they elect each other into leadership positions, then they're something we all have to reckon with. I'm not dissing democracy (not like we have a real one or anything), but there should probably be some other litmus test than a popularity contest allowing these people to govern our society (government *and* corporate). It all comes down to...the big brains know we're all in this together and want to fashion a society that handles that reality in an orderly manner. Dumb people are absoutely convinced that we're all separate and only responsible for ourselves...yeah, until they show up at the emergency room and we ALL have to pay for them. I get tired of it. I get tired of them.

There's a theory that overuse of profanity makes it less effective at reducing pain: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1913773,00.html

To get around that maybe you could invent your own profanity to use in the hopefully rare cases where pain mitigation is desired.

What did this guy say that was an incitement to do anything at all? I've seen the tweets, all they were were insulting. Not inciting.

As for Rwanda, their anti-genocide law is already being abused to quash political speech. Even Amnesty International thinks they go too far.

A very common practice. Here's a link to the last accusation of steel dumping:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1893784,00.html

http://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/0743286391

And more who would support belief more than atheism.

"The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres." --Albert Einstein

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298,00.html#ixzz1owehfaA6

http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Life-Universe-Walter-Isaacson/dp/0743264746/

"The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.".......... The two go hand in hand.

The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

I guess you don't keep up with the news: Military Chaplains Mull End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

I'm pretty sure that "Bible thumpers" weren't involved in the normalization of open homosexuality in the Armed Forces. I think the phrase you are looking for is "political correctness".

Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".

Try reading Bin Laden's Letter to America. His demands before his followers would stop trying to slaughter Americans are that Americans convert to Islam, and that the Constitution be replaced by Sharia law. Most Americans would consider forced religious conversion on pain of death, loss of the Bill of Rights, including the 1st Amendment, the treatment of women, the fact that a woman's testimony in court could only be treated as at most half that of a man's, the execution of homosexuals, the prohibition of alcohol in addition to all drugs, and many other consequences of Sharia to be a significant loss of freedom. The Islamists literally do hate American's freedoms as an offence to their values. There is no corresponding movement of any significance to impose that type of law in America by Americans, all fantasies and polemics aside.

Maybe letting homosexuals serve openly will chase off some of the religionists. It should improve Sub Sailor recruiting! (I kid! I kid!)

I'm sure, I'm sure.

Homosexuals constitute approximately 1.7% of the general population. Something like 80-90% of Americans are religious. You would have to work that gay 1.7% pretty hard to make up for any significant loss of religious Americans due to institutional hostility to their faith. But cheer up! I'm sure that the Omama administration finally putting women on nuclear submarines, the navy's diversity policy, and open homosexuality can only combine to make the independant launch capable nuclear submarine force ever more capable and reliable in the hands of its diverse, navy chosen future leadership.
  .

The editing done by Topher Grace is typically referred to as "Polishing A Turd".

Hold on! Good editing can mean the difference between a masterpiece and a turd.

Ironically, the original cut of Star Wars (EP4) was the penultimate example of this... There are several people who will attest that the first edit was horrible.

"The first cut of Star Wars," Burns' narrator says, "was an unmitigated disaster."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040913-692895,00.html

Not much more info at that source, but it's out there should anyone wish to take the time to look for it.

Now, I admit I have a hard time believing EP1-3 can be recut to be decent, particularly using the theatrical release, and not all the raw footage available. But never-the-less, the point remains... editing isn't "polishing a turd", it's so fundamental that it can make or break even the best of films.

One could make an argument that modern China is something akin to a technocracy. I'm relatively certain that most of the high-ranking officials and politicians (if you want to call them that) have science or engineering background. This is one of the first articles that came up when I googled "China technocracy", I'm sure you can find something with less provocative headline, if you want to. Made in China: The Revenge of the Nerds

These techno-intellectuals' were once themselves targeted by the Gang of Four and zealous Red Guards because of their suspect class backgrounds, allegedly elitist attitudes, and affiliations with the "capitalist roaders," Liu Shaoqi and Deng himself. But now they hold sway in the Politburo, the Central Committee, the National People's Congress, and even provincial, municipal, and county governments.

If someone is passing a number of doctors during that 75-mile trip then you make a very good point. There are rural areas of the US, however, in which there may be no medical services in that distance. Fewer than 600,000 people live in the US state of Wyoming, an area roughly the same size as the UK.

US Population Density Map

Is is true of the entire US? No. It isn't true for the majority of the population (since the majority live in the dense areas- that's why they are densely populated).

My point is that government surveillance organisations aren't as dumb as the article seem to suggest.

This suggests otherwise! A couple of dumbass kids tweeting about their vacation using generic slang gets them denied access to the US. Score one for paranoia.

Money doesn't spoil character, money reveals character.

While refreshingly not the usual malcontent group-think we indulge around here, you're still wrong.

In the context of wealth disparity, character and morals are orthogonal, and money is the consequence of character. The bulk of the 'rich' are those of us that seek and obtain great rewards from our fellow primates. People with the nerve, charm, guile, and/or wit to lead, own, govern, defy, entertain, intimidate, etc. in ways that appeal to their peers accrue greater wealth. Among them are people for whom static speed limits are completely intolerable; traffic cops and fines do not scare them. This trait is, unsurprisingly, not limited to commuting.

There are people that can't not be in charge, take responsibility and face the powers that be. They will be recognized. They. Will. Be. Recognized. Many people can achieve the conditioning to run and throw well, but only those that can stand toe to toe with the rest of the locker room have any future in the sport. You can prove the Poincaré conjecture, but if you can't face the world -- as it is -- you will stay in your hovel. There are women with super model bodies that subsist on cash payouts for porn work, because it takes more than good equipment.

Go read the SEC Madoff investigation transcripts. He survived multiple audits over decades by intimidating junior auditors, bureaucrats and co-conspirators with nothing more threatening than some dropped names. He lived in terror someone would have the wit to kick over the obvious rocks, but he never once let that be seen. When you encountered Madoff you knew you were dealing with a force of nature, and most people would rather get home on time and have supper than cope with that phenomena. Throw him in the can and the first thing he does is cow the other inmates.

This life is a popularity contest, and morals are a factor in popularity only in as much as the morals of others are not offended ... too much.

BTW, I don't advocate any of this; it's just the world observed without shit/rose colored glasses. I don't expect a lot of affirmation here because too many would rather reality be politely ignored.

http://moneyland.time.com/2011/06/23/why-verizon-dropped-its-unlimited-data-plan/ - it seems AT&T spent 19 billion dollars upgrading their network over the last couple of years. Verizon spent 17 billion. I sincerely doubt either company could sustain higher levels of investment in their networks without significantly raising prices. Is that what you'd prefer?

You're right that the GP overstates the anti-prohibition case. Yes of course, heroine is a dangerous and destructive substance, but it (or at least morphine) can also be a very useful substance. OTOH, you are also wrong if you think that drugs are the sole cause of all our drug-related problems, or that prohibition is in any way useful or harmless.

The fact is, any behavior that is both stimulating and pleasurable has the potential for addiction. Certain substances are highly addictive, such as tobacco, alcohol, heroine, meth, and crack. And most of these have little or no "useful" medical application. Yet in every case, all attempts to interdict these substances have been massive failures by any measure. At least in the case of alcohol we had the good sense to end prohibition and establish a more practical legal framework for dealing with demand.

No doubt your son/daughter also told you about the many addicts who went on to lead "normal" productive lives, despite their addiction, simply because they had easy access to their drug of choice. And perhaps you were also told how Portugal decriminalized all drugs across the board in 2001 and actually saw a decrease in drug-use rates over the next several years.

Let me put it to you this way: Do you think of your child as a criminal, or as someone with a "public health" problem? Do you think it would be more helpful for your child to be put in prison, or sent to a rehab program?

[posting as AC because I've already modded in this thread]

In that context, cloud storage makes eminent sense because for the cloud service provider, providing reliable storage, or apps, or whatever, is their core competency.

And yet we still see failures from the biggest players like the EC2 crash, the Danger fiasco, iCloud failing or gmail outages. Go 'The Cloud'.

It is not your company's core competency. They will do it better than you. Period.

Yeah because we all know McDonalds' IT systems are managed by the guy flipping the burgers, they don't actually have qualified IT guys there. Seriously you haven't realized that it's just outsourcing the IT department? You think these 'cloud' providers are some other sort of entity that aren't just IT guys running an IT contracting business as opposed to internal division?

"Given our current technology and potential near-future technology, what would a future space battlefield look like?"
Not very interesting. It'd be a few sat's with nukes or other orbital based weaponry.. some taking on each other, and some ground-based anti-sat weapons... alot of disruption of space-based communications systems.

The problem with a 'space battlefield' is you need to be sufficiently spread out to have a middle to meet in with a 'fleet'. Mars.. perhaps.. but not the moon.. to easy to just direct fire weapons to/from the moon.. and it'll be probably 100+ years, sadly, before we have a large enough perm. settlement on Mars that they would have to worry about independence, and thus, the need for a space war.

I think realistically the only war that will happen in space in the near Human Future would be if some people get into a scuffle on the ISS.. :[

As for general 'future' sci-fi wars, I really like the Honor Harrington version of things.

This happens all the time. I wouldn't wonder if US TLA's were involved.

2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html?_r=1&dbk

2001:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,100595,00.html

Chicken pox tends to be more severe the younger you get it.

Screw Chicken Pox, I'm worried about whooping cough, which is on the rise in the US since 2004, no doubt due to people refusing vaccines. Ten California infants died in 2010 from whooping cough even though we've had a vaccine for whooping cough since the 1920s.

The man that started the whole "vaccines kill", Dr. Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license when it was discovered Wakefield was paid by lawyers who wanted to sue vaccine manufactures to publish a fake report claiming vaccines kill children.

Parents refusing vaccines are misinformed. Doctors are asking parents to do something to save their children's lives and protect their other patients and the parents refuse. I'd tell them not to come back too.

Sure, this is a liberal problem isn't it?

http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2011/05/10/and-the-winner-is-fox-news/
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1206813,00.html

Or perhaps you missed many conservatives like Michele Bachmann rail on and on against HPV and other vaccines.

No, this a religious problem. Every motivation for the vac-fraks stems from it, and it's desire to abolish science.

I'm sad to see the parent poster marked down - this comment was dead-on accurate. Far too many Texans are far too filled with hubris regarding their own state, and very little regard for their fellow states in the USA or the nations of the rest of the world.

Hell, their own brain-damaged governor actually started up secession talk when he was pandering to the Tea Party fringe.

The number of wack-job falsehoods that get tossed around by Texans - including that "they're the only state allowed to fly their flag at equal height to the US flag", that they somehow reserved the right to secede, or that Texas somehow had an economic miracle based on "conservatism" that sheltered it from the recent recession (that third one being more full of manure than your average rancher's livestock pens) - are absolutely insane. And yet they keep on believing them and not realizing that maybe Texas isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread... sigh.

Loving the "Troll" mods to this comment, have people not read that the US is trolling Twitter and denying entry based on obvious jokes?

But you have to admit, parents LET their kids dress and act like this, and the market caters to it, whether it is right or not, I will not enter into that debate right now.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/05/09/nearly-onethird-of-childrens-clothes-sexy-study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/16/children-clothing-survey-bikini-heels
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/19/french-line-offers-lingerie-for-girls-as-young-as-four/
http://www.playpink.com/games-for-girls/sexy-dress-up.html

This was just 5 minutes with google.

I don't recall Israel supplying half of Russia's neighbors with weapons to attack Israel

Did you mean to write "weapons to attack Russia"?

If so, then you might find it interesting that Israel has supplied Georgian army with UAVs, NVDs, AA systems, and many other things - all the stuff used during the war in South Ossetia, which, may I remind, was started by a Georgian attack on the area of responsibility of Russian UN peacekeeping force, and specifically on said peacekeeping force (10 people KIA from hostile fire - artillery and tanks shelled peacekeepers' barracks).

...and very expensive, very long turnaround time (TAT) airframes. The problem with betting all of your money on one technology is your prospective enemy only has one technology to defeat - and in this case once stealth technology is defeated those very expensive, very high TAT airframes are instantly vulnerable to relatively cheap missiles with far lower TATs. Perhaps the finest example - and apropos, given that it was also a form of "stealth" technology that was eventually rendered useless - of assuming your technology is and will remain superior is Enigma .

There is another facet to this decision: Were I a strategic planner, I would be far more concerned by the fact that India did not choose to purchase highly "stealthy" airframes of whatever manufacture. It is a fact that India has benefited as much as the PRC has from the Republican and neoliberal Democratic effort to weaken America strategically and tactically through exporting dual-use technology (to include the computational power to model everything and anything and, far worse, by offshoring the heart and soul of any nation's true arsenal: The technology of mass manufacture.).

Consequently India's aircraft selection causes me to wonder if India can themselves defeat stealth technology...or if they have reason to believe that someone else will...or has. Knowing a technology is or will soon be obsolete junk has affected many a buying decision, and they do have a neighbor that was quick to use their gifted technology to accomplish the non-trivial task of shooting a satellite down.

(Note: It is rather a shame that the greed of America's right was so obviously America's one and only weakness...to think that it has been used to transform us into Mao's "paper tiger" is both tragically sad and infuriating.)

No, I did my own research.

As to the retarded question of whether or not I'm retarded: you've never met me, so you have no idea and don't for one fucking minute try and convince anybody that you do - it makes you look stupid and brands you the liar that you are. My last WAIS-III composite, assessed four years ago, was 223. Make what you will of that.

No it wouldn't. Considering what China now has in industrial production, they really aren't looking to "make any waves" for themselves. In fact the their support has been waning. http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/20/chinas-stake-in-a-stable-north-korea/

It seems the Chinese would like to back them, but stay under the rest of the worlds radar while doing so. Should North Korea launch a missile into Seoul like they promised this year over the "Christmas Tree Dispute". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16129633

Should they actually follow through with their threats how fast do you think China would be to say "you guys are on your own".

This case or that case? How about a purported link to hindering development of empathy? Has anyone got the time?

I certainly believe that video games could have some form of impact on empathy, though I'm not sure it has to be negative. Afterall, video games managed to cause me to feel empathy for a fucking cube.

We have a lot of video games that have themes that encourage lack of apathy. Many games offer choices that reward you for being good or evil, where quite often "evil" is really being a malevolent psychopath).

And while I think that video games could have an effect on behavior (and possibly development), I have doubts that it is particularly unique to the medium. I would hazard to guess that music, movies, magazines and comic books do as well.

And we already know that letters, books, and religious texts have had substantial changes to the thinking of entire cultures or subcultures, started wars and toppled empires.

Speech is dangerous, in all forms, in all media. And people should fight to keep it that way.

Ethanol (like many other legal drugs that have a high tax associated with them) has proven negative effects on the human body. [...] Try to prove the same with violent games and you have a case.

This case or that case? How about a purported link to hindering development of empathy? Has anyone got the time?

now that manufacturing is all but dead

It is?

According to United Nations data, the U.S. is still the largest manufacturing country in the world. In 2009, American manufacturing output (in real terms) was nearly $2.2 trillion. That's about 45% larger than China's, at just under $1.5 trillion.

Can China compete with American manufacturing

Sure for human life, but how about after the singularity? We could make the transferred intelligence avatars much hardier than their flesh and blood counterparts.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601111205,00.html

This was doing the rounds a few weeks back.

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/11/15/the-cia-has-a-climate-change-program%E2%80%94and-it-shouldnt-be-secret/

The national security implications of climate change are very real. As temperatures rise, water and food supplies will likely be affected, destabilizing poor countries in the tropics—and potentially seeding the ground for civil wars and other conflicts. Melting polar ice caps will change global transport and open up new energy resources, setting off a far northern race for influence. On the whole, a warmer world is likely to be a more dangerous one—for the U.S. and other nations. That’s why in the battle over warming, it’s time for our spies to come in from the cold.

As climate change in the Americas intensifies, those most effected will migrate north, into the US. Given the choice between staying where they are and dieing, they will move. The numbers will be so large, and the desperation so high, no border will stop them. If your life was at risk you would do exactly the same thing. So if you think that your geographical position makes you immune, you are mentally deficient. And an asshat.

It's just one component of civil liberties, but the number of whistle-blower prosecutions by the Obama administration seriously disturbs me. Remember, this is the guy that promised a new level of transparency in government.

What happened to “look forward, not backward”?:
http://www.salon.com/2010/04/15/prosecutions_10/

What the Whistleblower Prosecution Says About the Obama DOJ:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/16-3

Stop the Criminal Prosecution of Whistleblowers!:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=731&Itemid=81

WikiLeakers and Whistle-Blowers: Obama's Hard Line:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2058340,00.html

Obama Admin: Immunity for Torturers, Prosecution for Torture Whistleblowers:
http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/2012/01/obama-admin-immunity-for-torturers.html

Nothing is funnier than a computer making a fantastically bad guess at an everyday human problem. Like this one time.

Some pretty big holes in your thesis there guy. For example the US is still the biggest manufacturing nation in the world.

It's also second only to China in exports, and is currently enjoying job growth despite popular misconceptions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/business/us-manufacturing-is-a-bright-spot-for-the-economy.html

http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/

Looks like your reading comprehension has failed you, here let me try again in the far easier to read list format:

* Increase average wages to better keep pace with the inflation of housing costs.
* Set a maximum prices for homes to bring them down into the realm of attainability regardless of income level.
* Require builders to set aside 20-40% of the homes / units in a condo for low income earners.
* Encourage renters to base rents on a proportion of the applicants income and provide tax incentives to make up the difference in unit cost.
* Spend the money spent on invading a country for their oil and give everyone a modest 3 bedroom home or condo.

Can we do all those. Damn right we can. Will the people in power do it, no way in hell. It would require them to have less, since they make the rules they will never vote to willingly give themselves less. It really does boil down to "I got mine, sucks to be you, now go fuck off!"

As for your "Can we" list, I agree with a lot of that. Classic Unions are great, 5 day - 40 hour work weeks, 2 day weekends, vacation time, minimum wages, work-place safety standards... None of those things would exist without the Classic Unions taking a stand for them, I like them and I think they're important. The problem is with Modern Unions. When was the last time you heard on TV about unsafe working conditions, or shifts that were too long, or vacations that weren't being granted?

You don't, or at least very seldom do. Its always three things, Wages, Job Security, and Benefits. We want more money, we never want to be fired, and we want all our health care needs covered by the company in perpetuity. What. The. Fuck? I agree with you. Its stuff like that, the ever rising cost of wages, that has priced lifes necessities out of the reach of the common low wage person. When a significant portion of the country can pay a specific amount it makes financial sense to price things to those people's wages. Its why houses cost so much, its why food costs so much, cars, pretty much everything.

Although you are being just a bit dishonest with your list. So let me clean it up:

Can we build a better factory? Unions say: "No we can't, not at the wages you're willing to pay us."
Can we get cheaper energy? Environmentalists say: "No we can't, it costs money to clean up the mess after you've made building and maintaining it. Those costs have to be factored in."
Can we cut the cost of our insurance? Lawyers say: "No we can't, shareholders won't like that 'cause it'll cut into profits."
Can we educate our children? The teachers union says: "No we can't, not for the wages you're willing to pay us.."
Can we cut local taxes? Citizens say: "I want you to, but you better not cut Service X!"
Can we cut crime in the neighborhoods? Community organizers say: "Don't fall for the lie, crime rates are steadily dropping."
Can we improve anything? Slashdot says: "No we can't, not with a system so corrupt and no political will to change it."

I BREAK FOR WATER BOARDING! :: PsyOps ::
+ http://www.pipeline.com/~psywarrior :: The Office of Strategic Services :::
+ http://guardianspies.com/
+ http://osssociety.org/
+ http://ossreborn.com/
+ http://ossog.org/
+ http://ossinitaly.org/
+ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/oss.htm :: CIA ::
+ http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/index.html
+ http://cryptome.org/0005/cia-iqt-spies.htm
+ http://www.youtube.com/user/ciagov
+ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov
+ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004145-1,00.html
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUBARK
+ https://www.cia.gov/ ::: WoW! :::
+ http://publicintelligence.net/
+ http://cryptocomb.org/
+ http://www.cryptome.org/
+ http://www.cryptogon.com/
+ http://afio.com/
+ http://www.afcea.org/signal/signalscape/
+ http://rijmenants.blogspot.com/

The MegaUpload guys, through their actions, have been nailed fair and square. This is their choice. They took the lucrative, but risky, path, of actively courting piracy. Their business model is wholly different than that of DropBox.

What blows my mind is that this Kim Dotcom guy could be THAT greedy. Obviously he has some minimal amount of required intelligence to get the infrastructure and technology in place to operate at the massive scale that MU was at. However, it seems to me that anyone in their right mind would bail from something so risky after reaping a few tens of millions of dollars. He could have stopped a year or two ago, after putting away millions of dollars, and claimed that although he tried to run a legitimate, legal online business, too many people were taking advantage of his site in ways he didn't intend or condone, but it would require too many resources to try and police all the uploaded files. So his only recourse was to shut down the sites and close up shop. He'd have almost certainly escaped any legal problems once everything was shut down, and he could've just quietly taken his money and lived high off the hog for the rest of his life.

But no, this guy was greedy. REALLY greedy. $4.9 million in cars alone at his main residence. $24 million dollar estate. $12,000 PER DAY rent for their office headquarters in Hong Kong. Money was his downfall, that's for sure.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/21/megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom-by-the-numbers/?iid=biz-main-mostpop2

Baloney. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing nation.

China assembles iPhones, athletic shoes and similar consumer knick-knacks. The US makes airliners, CPUs, pharmaceuticals, heavy mining and earth-movers and food.

http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/

Yes engineering has advantages when located close to manufacturing sites. That is not the same as R&D.

The US R&D spend rate is still very high. Even though it isn't as high as it should be it is still only barely exceeded by all of Asia combined as a percentage of the world, i.e. 31% vs 32%.

From: http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/finance/news/asian-countries-collectively-top-us-r-d-spend.html

The total science spend of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam rose steadily between 1999 and 2009 to reach 32 per cent of the global share of spending on science, compared with 31 per cent in the US. Per capital the US spends 10x Asia.

The US needs to up it's game, certainly. But dig into the stats and the picture is not at all what it is painted to be in sensationalized news articles.

Just one more reason for US based businesses to relocate to Switzerland.

The ipad does not have a very small viewing angle,

I don't mean the viewing angle, I mean the fact that the screen is useless in bright light and reflects all light sources. The iPad is not a reading device. Especially when e-ink is much cheaper and better for reading.

Blocky low res?? have you ever touched an ipad?

Ever read a book or a magazine? Ever tried comparing the density of the output to an iPad screen?

reading about dinosaurs and having animations or being able to have interactive parts is incredibly cool.

And then junior needs a laptop to type his dinosaurs assignment. So you get him a laptop. So now kids need a laptop AND an iPad. Animations and interactive parts were cool over 15 years ago when we first got 'multimedia' computers, and kids received Encarta 94 on their birthday. Tell me again where an iPad comes into this?

Every classroom I see them using the ipad the kids are enthralled and are learning at a far faster rate.

Wonder how fast they would be learning had $500 per kid been spent on good teachers and textbooks. Did you check any classrooms that had kids over the age of 5, not in playschool?

The teacher can broadcast to the proejctor or 55" lcd in the room via a apple TV and airplay so the kids can all see what she is doing or talking about.

So the teacher can do exactly the same thing teachers have been able to do for years with a computer and an LCD projector. But you spent about 5 grand, so your kids study in 1080p.

Finally test taking ON the ipad rocks. and they are durable as hell in the right case.

Test taking on a computer? Why didn't anyone come up with that before? Ah a case. Will that be one of those shiny $50 Apple cases sir? Excellent. And would you like your kid to have the three gees in his iPad, that will be another $100.

It's the grumpy old man syndrome and you have it pretty bad.

Us grumpy old men have been working to understand how to make kids learn for years, and good teachers have been able to make kids learn for thousands of years. They can go home and play with their iPads. Schools need good teachers, good teachers are rare, and they are everything, there is endless research to suggest that: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/13/class-notes-the-power-of-good-teachers-and-other-education-news/