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Mann referred to himself as a Nobel prize recipient - which the IPCC has stated he's not allowed to do. Why are you posting obvious falsehoods in his defence throughout this thread?

Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

https://www.facebook.com/Micha...

It is one thing to engage in discussion about debatable topics. It is quite another to attempt to discredit consistently validated scientific research through the professional and personal defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/...

PS: I'm also a "Nobel laureate" if Mann is:

A peace prize made possible by the people has now been passed on to the people. The EU won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, but the European Parliament believes this honour belongs to everyone. During a special ceremony in Strasbourg, the prize was symbolically handed over to 20 citizens of different ages and nationalities to represent the people of Europe.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/...

Baseball cap
Google Glass

I'm not sure why asking a perfectly simple - and in the light of the above example which shows there is a difference in how Glass and a hat might be positioned, still perfectly reasonable - question (to which I do not have a preconceived notion of what the answer might be) deserved to be met with such a sanctimonious response.

Have you tried Glass? Did you think it blocked your vision less severely than a baseball cap? If so, say so, and I'll be more informed than I was.

With the cap on, looking straight ahead, the bill blocks the top half of the display. The cap itself blocks much more than the GG display which is transparent. At least on me.

Baseball cap
Google Glass

I'm not sure why asking a perfectly simple - and in the light of the above example which shows there is a difference in how Glass and a hat might be positioned, still perfectly reasonable - question (to which I do not have a preconceived notion of what the answer might be) deserved to be met with such a sanctimonious response.

Have you tried Glass? Did you think it blocked your vision less severely than a baseball cap? If so, say so, and I'll be more informed than I was.

Perhaps they became paranoid because "the man" was really out to get them.

Lets get our terms defined here. A paranoid psychotic episode is only one possible aspect of a psychosis. Perhaps the individual might experience fits of uncontrolled laughter and even the munchies, these episodes can been seen in many people who show signs of psychosis. Or individuals who smoke pot for that matter. Reality distortion during a psychotic episode is a difficult thing to quantify and can vary in degree to such an extent that qualifying every episode that requires intervention to be a psychotic one is a fools gambit.

However would you like to have someone who smokes high potency pot on a regular basis for an airline pilot? From my experience most who are heavy pot users are better suited for janitorial work or a space academy. Or a even a regular spot on reality tv shows. I personally even temporarily considered surrendering our planet to these guys while waiting for your order at KFC like I once did when considering whether or not to ask the clerk if they were having trouble plucking the chickens because the order was taking too long and I HAD THE MUNCHIES! Either way to conclude that psychosis is always manifested in paranoid delusions on the contrary, delusions are an integral part of our psychological make up as a species and can even be productive if seen in a more gentle context.

Usually interest on debt is higher than inflation, so that doesn't work.

Usually.

But that's not true right now and hasn't been since about mid-to late 2010. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/11/negative-real-interest-rates.html

The US government can essentially borrow for free right now because the stability of the US dollar makes the US a safe place to store your money. Hence the reason why the government has so many foreign lenders.

Bitcoin is the most amazing thing happening in the world today.

This is only true if you believe that central banking is inherently harmful/evil, and things like a gold standard are a great idea. Despite the article's claim that economists constantly argue over everything and thus know nothing (which is incredible ignorance on its own), the case for fiat currency is pretty good. But the discussion here is being driven by Libertarians, who A) love abstract reasoning and hypothetical examples, and B) are obsessed with the fantasy that people everywhere are conspiring to steal all their money using institutions like the Federal Reserve. Thus, Bitcoin stories and discussions are both inherently political and utterly divorced from actual domain knowledge. Slashdot, like any discussion site, is at its worst when faced with such a combination. It gets old after a while, especially when there's not much new to be said.

(Not to say that everyone supporting Bitcoin is a Libertarian, but most people seem to adopt their framing as a starting point. Anonymous financial transactions *must* be a good thing, because now you can hide from the government! Never mind that corrupt rich people benefit far more from that than we do...)

They were explicitly told about the brothers, and they decided to not follow up on the investigation.

They dropped the ball, period.

They're not interested in terrorism. They're interested in political machinations.

Please provide evidence that the NSA and FBI are involved in that.

The Feds including the IRS are focusing all attention on guiding elections now.

The IRS needs to be roasted by Congress and reformed. There is no evidence that the FBI and NSA joined in that I know of. I'd love to see it if you know of any.

The IRS Scandal, Day 232

What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?

The real mission of the NSA is signal intelligence. I think it is safe to assume that the primary target for that intelligence collection effort is going to be the nuclear armed nations that directly threaten the US or its allies - often by explicit statements or military actions*, along with various rogue nations (Iran, North Korea) that threaten the US, US allies, free trade routes, or strategic resources. Lower tier threats and concerns are going to be things like diplomatic issues, terrorism, international crime networks, and so on.

You will note that I didn't include domestic political oppression. I'm going to go out on a limb and state that I think that is what you were insinuating as the "real mission" of the NSA. Do you care to confirm or deny that? If you want to confirm it, what is your evidence? I'm unaware of any showing that anybody in the US has been arrested and imprisoned for the act of voting for the wrong party, not even for dog catcher. The closest you could get as far as I know is the admitted abuse by the IRS in the treatment of tax exempt status applications and standing of groups opposing the Obama administration's demonstrated governing philosophy.

Do you want to know the real kicker? Based on the demonstrated level of concern it seems that few people posting here would care if the US government were to actually engage in political oppression, as long as it is by the IRS. We have had story after story after story about the NSA, and so far it amounts to the NSA collects phone bills, and it knows how to crack codes. People are hysterical about that, but not about the IRS engaging in political oppression that may have even tipped the last presidential election by some reckoning. Well, who cares if the US ends up as a one party state in practice, and the door to other abuses opens because of it, just so long as it takes the NSA an extra 2 hours to get some phone bills. There is a lot of distorted thinking going on here. A lot.

For anyone that cares: The IRS Scandal, Day 232

* China has recently published multiple articles in state controlled media showing nuclear strike maps against the United States by submarines and now bombers. Russia has decided to assume the mantle of the Soviet Union as an adversary of the West and restart probing Western defenses with bombers, submarines, and surface naval vessels. It has been threatening NATO allies for hosting a limited missile defense system for protection against Iran.

fiannaFailMan: Funny how quickly the defenders of racism come out of the woodwork. A bit more subtle than the pointy white hoods it it's still with us, as your post demonstrates.

What complete and utter bollocks. The hysteria mill for nonsense like this is almost exclusively driven by pudgy, pink, extremely entitled, privileged, middle-class NORTH AMERICANS. Those that have poisoned liberalism and made it look *exactly* like the parody liberalism as pushed on Fox News by the likes of Glen Beck and Ann Coulter. These are people who no longer have genuine grievances to fight the righteous fight for, so they clutch at trivia - any life destroyed is a proudly claimed as a shrunken head trophy, no trivia is to small to shriek about. Welcome to the jungle of the Social Justice Warrior. Welcome to the Colosseum. http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2013/12/because-lying-and-resenting-is-what-angels-do.html

> will continue to unless you can provide a proof.
Assuming you're not lying:

http://polymathematics.typepad.com/polymath/2006/06/no_im_sorry_it_.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999
http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/0.999....html

And if you *really* want to become a food geek, read Harold McGee, especially hist book "On Food and Cooking."

A little bit of understanding of the basic physics/chemistry of cooking plus a lot of practice/experimentation can turn you into a fantastic cook.

There's a lot, but here's something

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/03/income-and-happ.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics#Criticisms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States#Effects

Horrible things have been done, in the name of science, and specifically eugenics. Does that necessarily mean that any studies into eugenics is evil? I say, "Not only NO, but HELL NO!"

No, but the road to a virtuous outcome is a tightrope over an abyss. Eugenics faces a number of ethical challenges:

1) Who determines what is and isn't a fit trait? Government, parents, etc.?
2) What happens if a mistake is made -- either in who or what trait should be targeted?
3) Should people be allowed to abstain, or is participation compulsory?
4) How is the process done? Killing, sterilization, or non-sexual reproduction?
5) If the process is voluntary and non-destructive, how do we ensure equal access to "better" children?

Each of these points is an entire essay of ethical nightmares in and of itself.

If scientists announced tomorrow that they could screen for cystic fibrosis, with greater than 99% confidence, and abort the fetus early in the first trimester, would you object to that?

Putting aside the method proposed, the problem is where do you draw the line? We know that cystic fibrosis is a recessive mutation in a single gene, and you can't get it if you don't have two damaged copies. Eliminating it seems relatively easy to do under nearly any scheme within two generations once testing becomes universally available.

Okay, so that's one disease down! Now how about diseases where your genes only propose a risk of a disease? Should we block any genes that cause risks of disease? How big of a risk? What about deformities? What if a disease or deformity has a protective effect? (e.g. Sickle-cell v. malaria, or the cancer-preventing effects of a rare form of dwarfism.) Who gets to choose which is more important, looks or health?

What about mental illness? Take the infamous MAOA gene. "Defective" versions that produce less MAOA result in people who, if exposed to excessive violence as a child (e.g. child abuse, war zones, gangland killings, etc.), have a tendency to grow up to violent criminals and sociopaths -- or in another day and age, effective warriors. Do we weed that out despite the fact that most people with the gene grow up to be healthy and effective members of society?

That brings up two more issues. The first is epigenetics -- the methylization and expression of genes as influenced by the environment, some of which can be passed down in childhood. What do we do about genes that are good in the right place and time and bad in others? If we can't "clean" the genes, should we just cut them out as a risk factor?

The second is far more pernicious: what about traits that influence personality? What about traits that influence political leanings? We know that there are some biological correlations to party affiliation and that certain specific genes tie to political partisanship. Should we allow traits that encourage dissident thought or liberalism or conservatism to be bred out of the populace? Even if an oppressive government isn't invovled, should parents be allowed to customize their children to be more receptive to their own belief structure?

Forced sterilization? If we got so far along that we could screen for all the many conditions that make people's lives so miserable, sterilization wouldn't be a necessity. Instead, Mother can pick and choose traits, simply rejecting any and all number of undesirable traits.

As another poster has pointed out, that quickly becomes a "haves and have-nots" issue. Unless poor people get equal access to what will initially be a very expensive technology, you risk breeding a genetic overclas

The first ones logically will be experimental but my bet is Google has already done all the logistics and it will just work. Que the anti Google lobbying in Washington and why the hell else would Microsoft be so hot to sponsor Rockstar right now to take out the Android platform with patent lawsuits unless they knew that Google was about to change the game? My bet is also that these barges will double as data centers using HP tech Moonshot servers so that the power consumption will make them viable as well. Notice also that HP, Oracle and IBM are conspicuously absent from the blood hungry zombie list of of contributors to the Rockstar patent troll consortium. Though I doubt very much that there is any love between Oracle and Google considering Oracle's failed attempts to torpedo Android. I just wonder how much Microsoft and Apple were involved in the original move to push Oracle into a law suit against Google.

This guy might say that the Annunaki are behind the Google barges but floating showrooms are about as sensible an explanation as using these barges for that purpose. It has to be something revolutionary otherwise Google would have leaked it already.

Well, considering that those thousands of union members only have money to speak because billionaires like the Koch brothers give it to them, in wages grossly inflated relative to the work provided, then I'd say that the Koch brothers effectively pay for all political speech.

Or facts, those work too.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/09/gdp-per-capita.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked

Median wage is about $15.11 per hour. Median GDP per hour worked is about $63.37. That means the capital investment of folks like the Koch Brothers keeps about 75% of a workers productivity. So, if you think about it this way, the Billionaires tax you 75% for the right to work. The billionaires then use that money to convince people to vote against thier self intrest. Of course this number is going up and has been migrating up since the 70's.

Looks like 200 Wh/kg is industry leading for widely used technology.
http://bioage.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4fbe53ef019b0033dc98970d-800wi

Mental illnesses will be routinely diagnosed with the aid of medical scanning eventually.

Doubtful. And probably dangerous too, as the many science fiction stories on this subject agree.

It's Such a Beautiful Day - Isaac Asimov

The Pedestrian - Ray Bradbury

I mean sure, you have citations from actual research, and I have Science Fiction short stories, but I'm standing by this and let's revisit this in ten years' time.

I find this funny, since polygraph test results aren't even admissible in court in many states In fact, the U.S. supreme court itself has discouraged the admission of polygraph "evidence" in court cases. I would think that fact by itself would put a big hole in the feds ability to prosecute this guy.

The Snowden leaks at this point are well past issues of Constitutional rights in the US. His leaks are directly damaging to the intelligence agencies of the US and its allies. The cover story of "whistle blower" is pure genius, it divides and confuses the public which gives him cover. It might even encourage copycats for additional damage. That is before you get to the question of friction between the US and its allies and trading partners, or the domestic political turmoil. It is truly a brilliant instance of political warfare. Soon we'll no doubt get to see Greenwald add to the damage.

So, where is Snowden at these days?

Here is one link:
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2012/08/jackson-said-to-run-up-college-debt-so-students-wlll-vote-democratic.html

The tragedy of commons will need more explanations.

A lot of social welfare is the creation of cheap public goods (for example, farm subsidies or overly cheap flood insurance). These typically get abused unless there is a strong barrier to consumption, which usually includes monitoring of potential recipients and regulation of their behavior and activities.

And if the game is indeed zero-sum GDP-wise

My view is that social welfare collectively is a net loss GDP-wise. As I mentioned in my previous post, most social welfare boils down to taking something from one party and giving to another. That creates the zero sum game since one can then lobby government to change the balance of such wealth transfers to be more to their advantage.

Building cooperating societies runs against natural laws of competition, and this is what humanity has been doing successfully for millions of years.

Humanity has been doing both. I'll just note here that the societies that stopped competing, no longer exist.

Competition is naturally robust, and cooperation is artificially robust as well.

"Artificially robust"? That's the hot house flower right there. Sure. we can make just about any system nominally stable as long as we throw enough resources into it. That's "artificially robust". But not every system is stable even if no additional resources are sacrificed. That's "naturally robust".

And do you have studies to back that? On the last 30 years, we have been seeing GDP increasing and GDP wage share decreasing. I am interested if you find a GDP per capita wage share plot for the last 50 years.

And what about the 30 years before that?

You merely have a very provincial viewpoint on this. I already explained why the developed world is seeing a relative decline in wages (note the first figure shows the US wages tracking closely with GDP per capital for 30 years until the turmoil of the mid 70s, which incidentally is also about when the US labor force was exposed to competition from developed world labor) ever since I first posted in this thread.

I should also note that a drop in average or median wages is not in itself an indication that things are getting worse. The previous link describes how immigration can lower various aggregate measures of income while simultaneously increasing the income of everyone involved.

Already been done:
http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86dd2e5970b-pi

Given the constant on-program ads I'd actually prefer such a layout. Then I could cover the advert parts with black paper and enjoy the show...

my suspicion is that while Reader wouldn't have been making a lot of money, it probably wasn't losing a massive amount either.

Actually, it probably was losing a lot of money. There is a reason Feed Demon has died; in Nick's own words:

FeedDemon stopped "paying the bills" a while ago, so I took a full-time job elsewhere and haven't been able to give FeedDemon the attention it deserves.

They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.

Right after another browser had been released, two years prior, incorporating the very same elements Eolas patented. What the inventor of this prior browser freely gave to the world (he declined to patent it), Eolas tried to keep for themselves by patenting it.

Lets talk about specific facts instead of hand-wavy personal feelings.There was prior art.

One piece of prior art in particular, the Viola browser, invented by Perry Pei-Yuan Wei, an artist, software engineer and then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. That browser dates back to 1991 and its plug-in capabilities to 1992, nearly two years before Eolas filed for its patent.

Since you are referring to the state of the internet at that time, lets hear from Tim Berners-Lee himself how it was like :-

Berners-Lee described Viola as “an important part of the development of the web.”

The jury was shown an e-mail from Pei Wei to Berners-Lee dated December 1991 — almost two years before Doyle’s invention — which read in part: “One thing I’d like to do soon, if I have time, is to teach the parser about Viola object descriptions and basically embed Viola objects (GUIs and programmability) into HTML files.”

Later Tuesday, Wei would testify that he had demonstrated interactive elements working in the Viola browser to Sun Microsystems in May 1993 — several months before Doyle claims to have come up with his invention.

Berners-Lee described how the web community at that time wasn’t focused on patents or even money — Wei simply put his invention online for free.

If you read the decision of the US Federal Court of Appeal, it is clear that Eolas was aware of the invention of Viola because Pei Wei himself told them on 31 August 1994. Eolas went to Pei Wei's website and downloaded and read his paper. They went ahead anyway and filed their patent on 17 October 1994.

As for whether or not the Eolas patent was obvious, it was so obvious it was even mentioned in the 1991 letter to Berners-Lee.

So. If you rush to patent something obvious that was already shown by someone else, so that you can use the patent to sue large numbers of companies for money, what are you called?

More importantly, the Congressional Research Office was just asked to list out all federal crimes.

Their response? "That would be too much work"

"The task force staff asked the Congressional Research Service to update the calculation of criminal offenses in the federal code, which was last undertaken in 2008, said task force chairman Representative John Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) "CRS's initial response to our request was that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish this task," Sensenbrenner said Friday. "I think this confirms the point that all of us have been making on this issue and demonstrates the breadth of overcriminalization.""

That is wrong. It has been confirmed that the IRS was heavily weighting their actions against the Tea Party and other conservative groups.

The IRS Scandal, Day 64

If you view this post of his you will see that he apparently thinks Slashdot staff are NSA plants.

If you view this post of his you will see that he thinks various posters on Slashdot are NSA plants, including me. (You may want to read my reply to that post as well.) You may note that my account isn't from last month - his is actually newer than mine. I doubt that he has revealed everyone that he thinks is a plant.

For whatever it is worth to you, I certainly believe that the government can engage in illegal behavior, and various other forms of overreach and abuse. The IRS scandal in which the IRS admits to having engaged in conduct that is in essence the oppression of the ordinary political opposition to the current administration. That is unacceptable. On the other hand, I also think that preventing terrorist attacks against US citizens and those of America's allies, attacks that could kill thousands, is a good thing, as is the NSA surveillance of people in direct communication with terrorist groups. The law isn't necessarily what people think it is, or should be. I understand that leaves room for dispute. In any event, anachragnome can't abide my views, so obviously I must work for the government, not that you could prove that from my bank account.

Oh well, goes along with the theme:

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2011/01/nosql.html

Before you jump to defend the internet cafe owner, read his complaint. The "internet cafe" was a disguised gambling den.

TLDR:-
1. Their computers all carry a "Game Display" programme.
2. Buying internet time entitles the user to participate in sweepstakes where they can win prizes. The more time you buy, the more chances you get to join the sweepstakes.
3. The "Game Display" was expressly created to, in their own words, "instill in the patron a sense of excitement and entertainment".

Yes, the law is overly broad and should be reworded, but in this case it did not get the wrong victim.

Having said that, the politicians appear to be equally dirty. There is some suspicion that this legislation was about politicians covering their butts and keeping legalized gambling interests happy.

If someone on a bike runs a red light or stop sign and they get hit, that's their bad and that's on them; they'll get no sympathy from me.

Go hang out at a stop sign one day and count the percentage of cars you see actually stop. Pot, kettle, black.

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2008/07/the-myth-of-the.html

The difficulty is that a group of persons must interpret the limits expounded in their constitution, and are not doing so well at it.

Spot on, but not in the way you mean. A big part of the problem is in fact problematic interpretation of the constitution, but it tends to be from a portion of the public and commentators. They are very enthusiastic and fixated on the fourth amendment, but tend to be oblivious to Article II of the constitution and its application and jurisprudence. People overlook the fact that the US is legally at war with the perpetrators of 9/11 - not just the original people that performed the attack, but al Qaida itself. The legal basis for that war is contained in the AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES passed by Congress - legally equivalent to a declaration of war in well settled law. Objections about the length of the conflict, or that it is against al Qaida are nonsense.

Many people get this pretty much entirely wrong. The NSA is performing necessary work to protect the United States and its allies and remains only a potential threat to American liberty. It is the IRS that has actually admitted to have engaged in political oppression against the political opposition to the current administration, and which is still being uncovered to be rooted out. The simple fact is that few people on Slashdot seem to be concerned about demonstrated political oppression in the United States by the IRS, but obsess about the NSA. The reality of the IRS is too boring for many to care about while the lurid fantasies about NSA can't be resisted. Squirrel!

Here's the new screen layout:
http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86dd2e5970b-pi

To some degree we are getting there (it's worse on the XBox 360):
http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/002993/original/w8rtm-windows-8-start-620x.jpg?hash=MwZ2ZmL2AQ

And Mike Judge is a god in my mind: Idiocracy, Office Space (I wore a suit for a few years early on) and Beavis and Butthead.

Anyway, I have to get back to Aww my Balls. Stop interrupting me. You broke my apartment.

But let's step back a bit. I'm no Valley Visionary, so if I were setting up a business based on offering unlicensed hospitality or cab rides, I might ask myself a few questions first. And I may ask myself: why is it that every town and city I've ever been to has licensing requirements for people offering taxi services or overnight accommodations? Is there a global taxi cartel or a multinational bed-and-breakfast conglomerate enforcing its will on municipalities from Aberystwyth to Yellowknife? And if there isn't -- and of course there isn't, because taxi and B&B operations are usually local and small-scale operations -- I may ask myself: what's behind all these rules?

http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2012/12/peer-to-peer-hucksterism-an-open-letter-to-tim-wu.html

I largely agree with you. Government is potentially very dangerous. Although nations with a long history of democratic government have been better off, the potential is still there.

The national security apparatus of the US government still appears to be bound by the rule of law, even if one may disagree about the boundaries.

What concerns me most at the moment isn't NSA, but IRS. That is admitted and demonstrated political oppression of ordinary political opposition by an arm of government, but few on Slashdot seem to mind. It might be easy to conclude that few people on Slashdot care about political oppression, as long as the "right people" are being oppressed. That makes the opposition to NSA defending Americans so much more interesting.

but reading real books and writing on real paper makes you suspicious

Mainly if you are conservative. But you must remember the current power dynamic.

The national security apparatus acts to protect the country to prevent terrorist attacks which could result in the current administration being voted out of office and the Congress flipping.

The bureaucracy acts to suppress voting the current administration out of office.

Simple to understand.

He's lying, or he's the worst traitor in the history of the United States. It can't be both.

So you think that traitors can't be liars too? Or that liars can't be traitors?

You must be new here. Welcome to earth.

Even if everything he has said has been a lie, and the document fabricated, he has caused enormous damage to the reputation of the United States and stirred up a political crisis that is an enormous distraction from addressing actual demonstrated political oppression in the United State - the IRS Scandal. It will take years for the controversy that Snowden kicked up to die down, if ever. If he hasn't lied, the damage is even worse because he disclosed actual secrets instead of going to Congress, who will have to address it in either case, or the Inspector General. It's hard to imagine how he could cause more extensive damage unless he was to go the route of the Walker spy ring.

Look at the lies told by the Soviet Union accusing the US of creating the AIDs virus. That is still believed around the world to varying degrees.

Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation

In October 1985, the influential Soviet weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Gazette) published an article alleging that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS virus during biological warfare research. The story further claimed that the virus was being spread throughout the world by U.S. servicemen who had been used as guinea pigs for the experiments.

None of that is true but it is the crux of a vicious disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union. It now has appeared in major newspapers of over 50 countries, promoting anti-Americanism. Most unfortunately, it has also distracted attention from the all-important task of educating people on the origin and prevention of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS.

Doesn't matter much - Kodak's days in the film business seem numbered.

Is is true that Kodak has stopped making transparency film altogether?

They announced the discontinuation of Ektachrome in particular formats in early 2012, but never actually said "we're stopping making slide film". Yet some people seem to believe that this is effectively what's happened.

Go to their website, visit the "professional films" section (the "consumer" films bit only seems to contain a couple of print films) and click on "color reversal films". There's nothing there but the discontinuation notice.

Many people interpreted a press release from Kodak around a year ago as (effectively) signifiying they were discontinuing slide film (e.g. here). If this is the case, then Kodak managed to slip a *very* significant announcement through as just yet another downsizing of their film line.

So... has Kodak discontinued slide film, and if so, why didn't more people pick up on it?!

None of those groups were actually denied non-profit status

Having your tax exempt status held up for years while they hassle you any way they can think of, asking for donor lists, copies of everything you publish, everyone who's ever worked for or with you, any other groups you associate with, etc... so that you can be discouraged from doing anything and your efforts can be delayed beyond election dates is a total abuse of power. Especially while similar, but left-wing groups are sailing through and other Obama-related groups are getting special treatment with approval times measured in a few days to get fast tracked to the head of the agency and approved for retroactive tax exempt status back years instead of fined for never applying, but claiming it.

The bias and abuses of power are practically endless. Here's comprehensive coverage from the TaxProf.

Look, when even Jon Stewart is making fun of the IRS and their "being audited", you know it's bad.

While you are actually fairly correct on that, the really funny part is how many people think that it's the USA waiting for a chance to kill him

A bit of a "poetical licence" (aka "gross exaggeration") in asserting that many people think "USA waiting a chance to kill Assange", don't you think?

Other than that, I feel Assange has legitimate reasons to be worried given that, as of Jan 2013, the US Dept of "Justice" is still "criminally investigating" Wikileaks. A reluctant admission - EPIC tried to get it by a FOIA and subsequent lawsuit since June 2011, seeking:

* All records regarding any individuals targeted for surveillance for support for or interest in WikiLeaks;
* All records regarding lists of names of individuals who have demonstrated support for or interest in WikiLeaks;
* All records of any agency communications with Internet and social media companies including, but not limited to Facebook and Google, regarding lists of individuals who have demonstrated, through advocacy or other means, support for or interest in WikiLeaks; and
* All records of any agency communications with financial services companies including, but not limited to Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, regarding lists of individuals who have demonstrated, through monetary donations or other means, support or interest in WikiLeaks

Quoting from DoJ "admission" - in effect, a motion for a summary judgement in EPIC's lawsuit:

On November 28, 2010, the organization WikiLeaks published numerous documents that it contended were Department of State embassy cables. The following day, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. stated that the Department of Justice had initiated a criminal investigation into the potential unauthorized release of classified information. Compl. 15-16. That investigation continues to this day.

Bullshit. Is that what we tell ourselves, or are the actions of the Left simply put down the garbage disposal of the Memory Hole? Cambodia was a revolutionary Marxist paradise. Private property, religion and money were abolished. Here's a contemporary account of the Leftist view of Cambodia. You'll recognize the tropes, eh?

"For years western imperialism raped an Asiatic land, killing nearly a million people, transforming a beautiful cultured Cambodian city into a ghetto, a brothel. But the people rose, freed themselves, threw out the intruders, found that their fine towns needed restoration. So they emptied the houses and began to clear up the mess. They began to scrub floors and walls, because people were never meant to live in degradation here, but in peace and with dignity. Then crocodile tears poured forth in the West. The brothel has been emptied and the clean-up is in progress. Only pimps can regret what is happening."

Link

"When Gunnar Bergstrom was a guest in Khmer Rouge Cambodia of Pol Pot in August 1978, the Swede enjoyed a rare meeting and dinner of oysters hosted by Pol Pot.

The meal followed a rare interview he and three politcal comrades from Sweden were given by the innaccesible and secretive Pol Pot who was then presiding over the death of more than a million and a half people that was actually escalating and under full rage at the time of that August 1978 feast. he returned to Europe and labeled talk about genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge rule as a Western lie.

The young Swedish leftists shared Pol Pot's view, seeing the Khmer Rouge takeover as a revolution to transform Cambodia into a fairer society benefiting the poor."

Link

Edgar Snow lied like a dog about Mao Zedong, and Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for covering up Stalin's genocide in the Ukraine. The Pulitzer Prize committee flat-out refused to revoke his award.

Go visit our universities and do some research - people were not cast out for these views. Most of them (or their proteges) are still teaching students.

You know, until that happened, you'd just be a tin-foil hat wearer, without a shred of credibility to you. Actually, you still are. But thanks to the colossal mistake of a couple of people in the IRS and Obama's total and complete inability to deal with a scandal, that singular act has managed to make the tinfoil hat crowd look more credible than the government.

Well, you know what, okay. Out of the thousands of times Obama and the "rabid liberals" have gotten it right, after six years of constant, sustained, unending attempts by the Republicans to find something, anything, to sink Obama even if it means repeatedly punching themselves in the face (Comeon guys, with all the major issues out there, your party platform for the previous four years has been trying to ensure Obama didn't get re-elected. Petty much?)... I suppose yes, with that much scrutiny eventually something had to pan out.

So take this one, singular victory. Have it, it's yours. You can feel righteous for a bit now -- you have a right to be upset

Well, that's mighty white of you. You are indeed a generous spirit.

True Scandal - A tea-party group ... gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.
The IRS Fiasco Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg
A Frequent Visitor to the White House

...Douglas Shulman, Commissioner from 2008 to 2012, during the Obama administration, visited the White House 118 times just in 2010 and 2011. His successor, Steven Miller, also visited “numerous” times.

Lawmakers say IRS targeted dozens more conservative groups than initially believed

The IRS targeting of conservative groups is far broader than first reported, with nearly 500 organizations singled out for additional scrutiny, according to two lawmakers briefed by the agency

IRS Admits Targeting “Tea Party” Groups
The New Nixon This time, the press cheered as the IRS investigated the president's opponents.
Tea party groups call IRS process 'nightmare'
IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo
Curious IRS Timing - Did the tax agency also target groups that support Israel?
Obamacare + IRS = gangster government
7 Questions That The IRS Inappropriately Asked Of Tea Party Groups
The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting - An apology, but no explanation
Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert

Not yielding an inch, are they? Imagine the impact it would have on Subway.

Over here in Metric land they still refer to it as a Footlong(TM) despite multiple photos measuring a subway sub and the total length amounting to less than 11 inches.

Reference here

BTW, distances are measured in centimetres, metres and kilometres, exaggerations can be measured in inches and miles.

Here's the math that explains why you are wrong. When it comes to compatibility issues, like standards, it is easy for a laissez-faire system to get stuck on a local maxima. It is one of the primary reasons that a well regulated market can be a closer approximation of the theoretical ideal free market than can laissez-faire. This sort of problem is exactly why people institute governments.

I meant Mike Duncun's excellent podcast. Better than HCH in my opinion =0.

Good luck with that. Even if Congress goes to the trouble of answering it, much of the media, including social media, will likely down play it if it might reflect badly on the current administration.

Heard anything about this one?

IRS sued for improperly seizing the medical records of 10 million Americans

It is just an adder to the growing pile.

The IRS Scandal, Day 8
Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims
Congressman Paul Ryan on Benghazi, IRS, and DOJ Snooping the House: “Of course I’m troubled. Are you kidding?”

One of the interesting controversies regarding the MX missile was the plans for basing. One of the proposals was called "dense pack." The idea was that if you put a bunch of missile silos close to each other, attacking one silo with a nuclear warhead would result in so much turbulence, blast, and local radiation that if more warheads were arriving at the same time, they would be battered by the effects of the previously exploding nuclear warhead and be ineffective in attacking the silo they were targeted at. (No, I'm not kidding.) You might be seeing the political equivalent of that right now. There are so many scandals coming out of so many agencies, they compete for attention, confuse the public, allow the media to more or less squeeze them out, and attenuate the political damage. This could be one of those, "They are incompetent, insane, or brilliant" moments. I don't like much of any of what has been revealed, but I wouldn't place a bet on it having any lasting impact on the administration. Most of the media, minus AP, seems indifferent to being spied on, and you would expect that to rouse them if nothing else would. Apparently not.

Did I say I was condemning white people for Tuskegee? Maybe I'm talking about doctors. Or maybe about government employees. Or maybe about carbon based life forms. If having one thing in common with someone who commits atrocities makes you a party to those atrocities, then sharing skin color or profession or employer seems like fair grounds for equally nasty bigotry and hate-mongering. Shall we burn all doctors at the stake for Tuskegee?

And many people don't get to choose their belief systems, anyway - do you think an impoverished Saudi woman in Jazan or an abused Haredi child in Jerusalem will ever be allowed to leave the faith? They are kept in total ignorance of any other options; essentially they are sequestered and groomed psychologically by their own families, conditioned like Soviet children were during the glory days of the Stalinism and the New Soviet Man.

And speaking of Uncle Joe, the only two atheist regimes with any staying power (China and the USSR) did a pretty good job of showing that evil and atrocity occur with tedious frequency both within and outside of religions. There have clearly been plenty of anti-religious bigots who were just as brutal and antihuman as any religious bigot - who was the better man, Laurenti Beria or Teilhard de Chardin? Felix Dzerzinsky or Theodore Parker?

You can't condemn all Muslims for the actions of some Muslims without abandoning reason and decency for bigotry and hatred. It's a logical impossibility that was codified as far back as Aristotle. The characteristics of some parts of a whole are not always the characteristics of all parts of that whole, and to over-categorize is the fallacy of bigotry.

'Jew' is a race, 'Judaism' is a faith. You used one word and meant another - but the word you used invalidated your argument when read by someone else who knows how to distinguish the words, eg. me.

Perhaps English is not your first language, so I won't go any further with your mistake, I wouldn't want to be a 'grammar Nazi' after all, lol. What it means is your attempted little baiting has failed - you simply can't call me a Nazi because you fsckd up your little trap through a misunderstanding of the meaning of the words 'Jew' vs 'Judaism'. Your whole thinking of me as some kind of Nazi is based on a false premise - me responding to some fscked up writing of yours where you didn't even understand what you were saying.

Since your little trap has failed, what does that leave us with? Well, I have made a bunch of statements and backed them up with numerous website links, documents, and video clips. You have made a bunch of statements and have backed them up with nothing. All you are giving is opinions and insults (I'm not complaining about the latter, I too trade barbs). Would be nice if you would actually watch the references I provided and could provide some kinds of facts for rebuttal - you know, like something even an undergraduate would do without needing to be told.

Look, I know you believe that by demonstrating tolerance of the intolerant (Islam, as in Totalitarian Religious Socialism) that somehow you feel you are the good guy. Did you grandfather demonstrate tolerance of the intolerant (Totalitarian National Socialism)? No, he did not. Tolerating evil *is* evil - perhaps not as great an evil but an evil nevertheless. I tolerate a great deal of things (which we have not covered in these discussions) but I'm with your grandfather on this: I refuse to tolerate the intolerance of Naziism nor the religious equivalent, which is Islam. If your grandfather was alive today do you think he would be proud of you demonstrating your tolerance of the modern even more genocidal equivalent of Nazis, which are the Islamicists? He would be sickened with your position - because of your clear ignorance of Islamic doctrine you are defending evil. I'll give you some references (not that you ever check them out anyway, you are so determined to not learn about the true nature of the evil ideology you defend):

The Muslim rape gangs operating in the UK. They believe they are justified in grooming, trading, and gang raping underage girls because of the Qur'anic passage "men may enjoy 'what your right hands own,' 4:3":
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/04/muslim-gang-rapes-brutalizes-kidnapped-13-year-old-over-4-days-you-treated-her-like-a-piece-of-meat-.html

Then we have three Islamic attacks today (22 killed and 61 wounded in India, Pakistan and Iraq). This follows two the day before (17 dead, 13 wounded in Pakistan and Nigeria), one the day before that (8 dead, 23 wounded in Baghdad), and four attacks the day before that (25 killed, 119 wounded in Pakistan and Iraq). There have been more than 20762 deadly Islam-motivated attacks since 9/11, and this carnage has been going on for *1400* years (well before Israel and the US were created):
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks
Let's have a look at what is going on with these these casualties, so we can see who are the victims of the people you are defending:

• 2013.04.25 - The Taliban bomb the offices of a secular-leaning political party, killing at six.
• 2013.04.25 - Eleven people are killed in two Boko Haram attacks.
• 2013.04.24 - Eight Shiites at a bus stop are obliterated by Sunni bombers.
• 2013.04.23 - Muslims bomb a rival mosque, killing seven worshippers.
• 2013.04.23 - Nine people bleed to death as Shiites

That's actually old news from early in his presidency:

From 2010:
War on whistle-blowers intensifies: http://www.salon.com/2010/05/25/whistleblowers_2/

Here are the six whistleblowers prosecuted under the espionage act:
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/01/six-americans-obama-and-holder-charged-under-the-espionage-act-and-one-bonus-whistleblower.htm

EC12 using IFLs. Also, the SAN is the same drives for servers and the mainframe, EMC. Just the mainframe is way superior for IO. http://mainframe.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/its_the_io_stup.html Also, you can't just install vanilla SUSE Linux on a mainframe. When it was first attempted, performance was dreadfully slow. That's when IBM went, oh, you need to do some tweaks to improve performance.

Thanks a lot for writing up this suggestion. I had no idea Amazon Glacier was only a penny per gigabyte, and thus a realistic way for me to backup virtual machines offsite, finally, (using only my available slow home upload bandwidth). Which got me to Searching on the net...

CloudGates.net does indeed look like a useful service.

A Search engine lead me to a free Windows client called FastGlacier http://fastglacier.com/faq.aspx

This technote from 'AWS Blog' explains how to use the more standard and better documented Amazon S3 Data buckets to automatically offload data after a specified time to Amazon Glacier storage. The trick is to create a lifecycle rule. I'm inclined to try this, once I get myself better organized, although CloudGates also looks very worthy. Kudos! http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/11/archive-s3-to-glacier.html

Happy World Backup Day!