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The real problem is that people have lost their heads in the United States. The return of evangelicals has led to an atmosphere that is literally opposed to science. So, you get exactly what you expect. Opinions that are based on anecdote and wish thinking instead of data. The reason science works is because you start with the assumption that you don't know something until you can prove that you probably know it, with repeatable, verifiable results. When you start trusting the word of pill junkies and homophobic college dropouts versus the entire scientific community and their reams of data, get ready for some wide-reaching and catastrophic fuckups.

Canada kept the rules. The Canadian banking system is still the most sound. Every time we take cops off the financial beat, we end up with a banking crisis. These realities can be arrived at by simply reading about the last 30 years of panics, and the hundred years of bank panics that existed before the FDIC and sensible Great Depression legislation.

But leave it to the same fuckers from Harvard, who apparently can't even manage a college trust without running it into the ground.

The pro-market propaganda will continue, and probably destroy our economy beyond repair. And then some wise ass will say that it shows that the market does work, by wiping itself out.

I was kinda surprised too. Women love jerks. One who once was a fair-weather friend told me that I was too nice and that I'd need to work on that to get dates.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/04/wolcott200804 is long-winded but has some notable views.

I progressively came to the realization that lots of women, at least those in the class of singles in their mid-late 30's, don't want a guy who's like them. As I switched my profiles from trying to come off as an evolved, sensitive, gentleman to one with more intrepid/bold/brash notes, the response/interest rate rose significantly. I'm not making a blanket claim here, but how many times have you seen an attractive woman/girl dressed nicely in the company of some knuckle-dragging guy who couldn't be bothered to even tuck in his dirty t-shirt or put on real shoes instead of grungy flip-flops?

Probably a pilot couldn't do it on his own either.

The Hudson river plane was an Airbus. The computers probably helped the pilot with the landing.

Interesting read: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906

One unintended concern that has been raised relates to pilots spending too much time trying to solve computer problems, resulting in not enough time spent flying the aircraft in response to changing events. Another interesting factor was observed in the 2006 Brazilian midair collision. In past times, two planes accidentally given instructions to fly towards each other by air traffic controllers would be very unlikely to crash. Now, with GPS autopilot systems, planes can very accurately adhere to flight plans that were once full of variance, which actually increased the likelihood that the two aircraft would collide: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901

Regarding point 2, the facts seem to be at variance with your statement;

A recent article shows you can, and in fact have changed migratory habits, in this case to none!

  http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906

"The agencies captured breeding pairs of an endangered but supersize subspecies known as the giant Canada goose, and by clipping their wings forced them to settle permanently into authorized nesting grounds along the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere in the United States. The offspring of these clipped-wing geese imprinted to the new locations, and, having lost the collective memory of migration, became full-time resident populations.'

It seems they were not illegal immigrants!

Too bad the trolling/ignorant summary runined this discussion. However it's based partly on fact. It's common knowledge among pilots that Boeing planes generally cater to pilot's wishes for control more than Airbus, but that has more to do with company attitudes rather than country. From this article on the crash of US Airways 1549 (an Airbus 320) and the history behind Airbus: a charismatic French test and fighter pilot named Bernard Ziegler, now retired, who must stand as one of the great engineers of our time. He was (and is) despised within the French airline-pilots' union, because he openly discussed designing an airplane so easy to fly and crash-resistant that it would be nearly pilot-proof. He did not say "idiot-proof," but his attitude was undiplomatic in a country where pilots still wear their uniforms proudly, and it was also unwise, because, as the record has repeatedly shown, if you emphasize to pilots that they are flying a safe design, they will go to great lengths to prove you wrong. In any case, Ziegler had to live under police protection because emotions grew so strong. So clearly, the French take the idea of pilot control just as seriously as Americans do, but Airbus opted to go a different route. I have no idea what the other American and French companies (some now defunct) like Lockheed, Aerospatiale, etc are like.

And it would have been a lot harder to pull off if it hadn't been... http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906

Boeing's use of hydraulics instead of fly-by-wire technology has nothing to do with American individualism. And Airbus's use of electronics isn't due to Europeans' greater trust in computers. It's because Airbus's only popular designs are newer than most of Boeing's. Newer technology really is better here, sorry. Remember that American jet that landed safely in the Hudson river recently? It was a lot easier to pull that one off due to its flight controls.

Here's an entertaining and actually informative take on that incident: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906

Feel free to get off any Airbus jet you don't trust, but as someone learning to fly pretty old planes, I'll ride the new ones, thanks.

Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma. You know, places your type loves to proclaim your love of but never get around to relocating to. Say Cuba for one example, they have thousands locked up but I'm sure they could make room for you.

What's the difference between Cuba locking people up and Guantanamo? In both cases it seems that people have been incarcerated because two governments have declared unilaterally that people are threats to their nations. In the civilized world there is an independent judicial process to decide if the threat is justified. The Bush regime had an awful lot more in common with Castro's regime than you are able to see.

I won't concede that waterboarding is torture

Oddly enough, I've never heard of anyone who has undergone the process to have declared this. Have you seen Iraq war apologist Christopher Hitchen's experience of it?

but even if it is we did it to three, yes three, very high value targets.

Torture is OK if the targets are high-value enough as decided by the ruling regime? Castro, is that you?

Furthermore they aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions so we would have been perfectly within the laws of war to have simply executed them.

Sounds like tinpot dictator logic to me. It's always possible to construct a convenient legal fiction to justify your actions.

I'm too young to have experienced Cold War controversy, but a new book came out last month about Reagan and Gorbachev. Apparently Reagan tried to convert Gorbachev to Christianity and kept cracking jokes.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/reagan-excerpt200902

Who gives a shit if the Icelanders are getting fucked by Microsoft? They deserve to be fucked. Those stupid greedy cocksuckers went out and completely fucked their economy by going into international banking, a field that they had no understanding of, in a huge way. Go read the Vanity Fair article Wall Street on the Tundra to see just how badly Iceland fucked itself with its greed and arrogance. These assholes make the fucks at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns look smart, chaste and pure in comparison.

Redmond will figure out this mistake either next week, when their MCPâ(TM)s start disappearing off the radar, or now, when this blog post starts permeating through the world. Either way, theyâ(TM)re done for. Unless, and this is important: Microsoft can redeem themselves towards the Icelandic economy if and only if they immediately reduce the price of all of their products to zero, permanently. Anything less will be an act of non-compliance towards the needs of the Icelandic economy, and can be considered an attack on the nation's overeignty. Such an attack will inevitably be responded to by the market by way of an across-the-board adoption of free software.

Yeah, I'm sure that Microsoft is quaking in its boots about the fact that a country that's smaller than Cleveland might adopt open source software. And why Microsoft should do jack shit for the Icelandic economy, which was fucked up by greedy, stupid and arrogant Icelanders on their own without any help from other countries, is beyond me. Smari McCarthy is even more of an arrogant fucking shit if he thinks that the collapse of Iceland's economy or his blog post are going to cost Microsoft any sleep, and the OP is a complete fucking tool if he believes in this shit either. McCarthy is like Steve Ballmer, except without any money nor with a track record of helping to build a huge software company. Smari McCarthy is just another Icelandic welfare shit who refuses to accept any responsibility for the state his country is in and wants someone else to pony up for Iceland's mistakes. Fuck him and fuck his useless country full of pogues.

What would Bjork do?

Probably something crazy.

Wall Street on the Tundra Article about Iceland's economy. Bjork is mentioned.

The only thing a court needs to convict you of possession of child pornography is 'reasonable suspicion' that the subject of the photo is underage and the pose is considered 'sexual.'

Ummm, no. Otherwise Miley Cyrus, Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair's staff would all be in jail:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/video/2008/miley_video200806

Well it has been 30 years since the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Great article about it here: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/star_wars_special200812

And a disturbing site about it here: http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/

I'll leave on my karma bonus.

waterboarding is for wussies

Well, at least I know with whom not to talk about foreign policy. I suggest you read our favorite pro-Iraq-War secular humanist on waterboarding. Hitchens: It's Torture. Just to point out, Hitchens had himself waterboarded to prove it wasn't torture.

The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits.

Bullshit.

This article gives a very good description of McCain's ailments. In summary, he cannot raise his arms over his head which means he cannot do common things such as combing his own hair. Also, other activities that require him to stretch his arms at the shoulder, such as putting on a jacket by himself, become quite difficult for him.

Guess what: typing on a computer is not such an activity. From the point of view of his ailments, it's as hard as handwriting, something he actually does. Furthermore, you don't need to type a lot in order to just browse the web. And even if he really could not type at all, there are other ways to control a computer.

Face it, McCain doesn't use a computer simply because, like other elderly persons, he's afraid of learning something new and alien to him. Using his war injuries as an excuse is just pathetic.

The point is that McCain is not a doddering old fool waiting to die just because he can't use a computer by himself. He is a disabled veteran who's war injuries prevent him from typing [...]"

Bullshit.

This article gives a very good description of McCain's ailments. In summary, he cannot raise his arms over his head which means he cannot do common things such as combing his own hair. Also, other activities that require him to stretch his arms at the shoulder, such as putting on a jacket by himself, become quite difficult for him.

Guess what: typing on a computer is not such an activity. From the point of view of his ailments, it's as hard as handwriting, something he actually does. Furthermore, you don't need to type a lot in order to just browse the web. And even if he really could not type at all, there are other ways to control a computer.

Face it, McCain doesn't use a computer simply because, like other elderly persons, he's afraid of learning something new and alien to him. Using his war injuries as an excuse is just pathetic.

Actually, it *is* pretty much drowning. The main advantage of it is that you can handwave and pretend that you aren't slowly drowning someone.

Have you seen
Christopher Hitchen's experience of waterboarding?

working for Monsanto instead.

Did anyone else here feel the alarms going off at the mention of SAIC in the linked article? I read the March 2007 Vanity Fair piece about SAIC, and saw the accompanying PBS program about the investigation by the writers of the article, which names many former government officials and military officers who sit on the SAIC board of directors. Among them was David Kay, the former weapons inspector who was instrumental in making the case that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMD's. SAIC is one of the lead beneficiaries of military and governmental contracts in Iraq, and while the Vanity Fair and PBS pieces don't explicitly say so, the question is raised as to whether SAIC helped manufacture a case for war in order to reap substantial rewards for their part in the aftermath.

For such a large and influential company (44,000 employees, more than half with security clearances), SAIC manages to operate well below the radar of public awareness, and in light of the many Washington insiders with links to the company, their ability to attract large numbers of enormously lucrative governmental contracts (9,000 at the time the article was published) appears to be a clear conflict of interests. For many years their largest customer was the NSA, and SAIC is notable for their failure to deliver on a number of huge contracts, only to be awarded follow-up contracts to fix the problems with the original deliveries.

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower popularized the term "military-industrial complex" when he presciently warned against its influence: "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted." The existence of a company like SAIC probably has him spinning in his grave. People here like to call Microsoft evil, but SAIC makes them look like a bunch of dewy-eyed innocents. I urge everyone here to find out more about this shadowy corporation; I can guarantee that your skin will crawl.

"I made an accident. Careless me!"

"It's not like I lost BILLIONS in cash (small bills) or anything like that!"

"I have to stop having these little 'accidents'."

I've been reading about this over on the OP's site. He's a one man campaign on this one. Here's the post I just made on that site:

Jeff writes:

I've just been writing about the fact that they don't seem to be enforcing their own policies and the impact this has on their brand and business partners.

That's pretty disingenuous. You're pursuing Facebook, via the advertisers, yourself and drumming up publicity for your pursuit as a campaign tactic, as the admins who deleted your post to Metafilter recognised (and the admins of Slashdot haven't recognised, but they never were the sharpest tools in the box). Neither are you interested in the details of Facebook's TOS. I'd be more impressed if you'd been up-front about what this is about, namely that you don't like the way Variablast has expressed his dislike of Islam.

So, what of Variablast? I agree that what he's done is crude, but here's the thing: the propensity of some Muslims to be offended is their problem, not his. He may be a troll who knows exactly the effect his words are going to have, but sane people, even religious ones, know when they're being trolled and don't start riots or issue death threats as a result.

Islam is not a race and non-Islamic Arabs and Pakistanis in the UK are a bit fed up of the authorities' bumbling attempts to be multi-cultural by asking the imams what "the community" thinks. So the group cannot be racist, any more than the "Fuck Christianity" group is. Do you also object to that group? What is it about "Fuck Islam" that has you so riled?

In the mad rush to privatize government, the broader issue of a serious lack of oversight will become quite common.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 6/murphy200706

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 3/spyagency200703

Question is, does it include the recent trend of outsourcing intelligence work ?
I'm thinking of Vanity Fair's interesting article about SAIC.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 3/spyagency200703?printable=true&currentPage=all

To criminalize so-called hackers.

Most policy wonks that deal with this sector have already spread the word that computers are dangerous tools in the wrong hands. So, step 1 is to make the tools illegal. For example, "Your honor we found hacking applications wireshark installed on the defendants computer." No questions about approved uses are allowed because that makes things too complicated.

Don't bother with legal challenges, the objective is to make computers a content delivery device. Anything else is too threatening to governments, regardless of their borders.

Best case scenario as other posts have pointed out, the government gives out licenses that allow you to use/own "hacking" software. In the U.S., probably a process similar to getting a clearance would be required. This is happening internationally.

Since this is the /. echo chamber, no one will do anything but whine and go back to their work/entertainment.

Required reading for Americans unhappy with their political process: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 6/murphy200706?printable=true&currentPage=all

I mean, it's not like we can expect him to know his birthday and the date when the event which he was there to talk about took place, and be able to perform basic mathematical operations on the two.

Yeah. Because being five when something happens gives you a really good memory of it, doesn't it? The 1960s were full of incidents of racial tension. So he mixed up when one happened, when giving a speech designed for one location only. Whoop-de-doo. At least he's not a candidate who thought that Roe V. Wade was in the 80s and didn't know how his favorite Supreme Court justice stood on it, a lifelong hunter, outright insane, etc.

No. I'm probably stretching my analogy skills here, but I'll give it a try. There's an open source project which adds a feature or a file format to MS Office. It's called "Feature X for MS Office". The developer spent a lot of his time during the last 2 years to developer and maintain it. Now MS wants to release a new version of Office, and they want this app. The dev doesn't want to give up the pet project. MS asks him to name a price, and he does.

That'd be a great analogy, except for the fact that it's not at all what happened. Making it match the facts of the case...

"There's an open source project which adds a feature or a file format to MS Office. It's called "Official Feature X for MS Office". The developer spends a few months of their time over the course of a couple years making it, and Microsoft helps them do it; it's infringing on their trademark, but they think they're getting a service, so they help with the project. Right as a new version of Office is about to be released, the developer suddenly blocks all Microsoft access to the code. When Microsoft emails them asking what happened, the developer sends back a line-by-line bill and demands a job on top of that."

Should the developer be surprised when Microsoft takes down their site for trademark infringement?
At least Obama's campaign didn't lock out Joe's access. You know, kind of like Joe did to them.

ps - VF has some particularly geeky fare this month. Check out the 8 page feature on SAIC.

Single page version.

Why on earth /. doesn't just link to these where available, I will never know...

Ah, the old "stab-in-the-back" excuses already.

In the first place, not enough troops were sent to occupy Iraq. Then the Pentagon disbanded the Iraqi Army and ripped apart the Ba'athist infrastructure leaving a lot of *trained guys running around with grudges against the US military. Privatisation of occupation duties plus lack of control (for the sake of "efficiency") has led to rampant corruption - http://lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html This has led to an almost complete failure by US corporations to restore Iraqi infrastructure.

Let's face it, the US Main Stream Media has been controlled and castrated for years now - see the NY Times and it's suppression of the wire-tapping. The US military embedded journalists so as to control them. I see you're polling for control of the internet as well. How much does it take for you to say that the US fucked up? You sound almost like these guys: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 1/neocons200701

As for the justness of this war, the sheer number of so-called honest people telling us lies in order to get us to go to war have been astounding. Weapons of mass destruction? Non-existent. Uranium? ditto. Saddam and Al Qaeda? Wrong. In the US, the neo-cons have even gone to the extreme of committing crimes (re: Valerie Plame) in order to justify this war. In the UK, the pressures of this power has forced an honest man to commit suicide. If the need to go to war was that just, why all this pressure?

And I have to say that the current US intransigence towards their supposedly closest ally smacks of, at the least, ingratitude. Brits are currently dieing in Iraq and Afghanistan, paying in blood for a "speicial relationship" which is being revealed as worthless when push comes shove. In contrast, I bet the US would hand the code over to the Israelis in a similar situation.

People like Richard Perle seem to think that Iraq is an unfolding disaster:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/1 2/neocons200612

The neo-cons - the architects of the ideology if not the actual war - are cutting loose like no one's business. They seem to think the war is going badly, and they're blaming the chimp.

And even if you don't believe the figure of 100,000 people fleeing Iraq every month, that it mught be 50,000, or even less, it's still people going gone get. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6158847.stm

Dead bodies found:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6160117.stm

more killed. every day, yet more.

If this is victory

This one's not too hard, actually.

Let me start off by pointing out that Lucas' series is chock full of plotholes, and I solve them only because it's a fun mental exercise.

Now then.

Vader no longer has biological legs or arms in episodes IV-VI. Instead, he has robotic prosthetic limbs, and not very good ones compared to Luke's hand (and what's left of the organic parts is in pretty bad shape). He's also ~40 years old. His abilities with the Force are nowhere near as powerful as before his death, according to Lucas.

So, his lightsaber fighting isn't going to be very good anymore.

Obi-wan, now, he's explainable too. I don't remember the real numbers, but I'd assume he's around 60ish. While he's been training for a long time in the desert, he can't have had a remotely challenging lightsaber fight in the past twenty years, with not even potential sparring partners... Put those two factors together, and you can see where he might have lost the touch.

Luke is the easiest. Sure, he's strong with the Force, but he has no idea how the Jedi used to fight with lightsabers, and since Obi-wan dies so soon after they meet, he has no one to teach him the advanced technique. When he goes to train with Yoda, he doesn't learn it, presumably because Yoda had such a handful just getting this overaged pupil to use the Force at all, and to concentrate properly.

Oh, yes the republican plot...

"Asher has also given more than $500,000 to Democratic candidates since 1998."
Article

people are more likely to commit crimes while on the internet

Absolutely! Here is the proof:
U Want Me 2 Kill Him? - When a 14-year-old British boy was savagely stabbed, no one could have imagined the bizarre chat-room fantasy world that lay behind the attack. A story of a near-fatal Internet attraction.

Stories like this may not have much to do with statistical data, but they scare some people shitless. Oh! The IntarWeb made me do it! The voices on Slashdot told me to kill Aunt Mary! Aaaah! The sky is falling.