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The US enjoys one of the lowest tax burdens in the western world already. What you see as hugely wasteful (yes, the wars and the bailouts certainly were that) is a drop in the bucket compared to the taxes that actually go to things you use.

with a handle like gothzilla, you've obviously attended the public school system. That was also paid for by taxes. As is much of the medical research that has kept Americans from dying from McDonald's induced coronaries.

The lazy who feed off the welfare system are also just a miniscule percentage

A much much larger chunk goes to the retirees and their medicare.Example: "In 2004 Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were 8 percent of national income." Taking an average 25% tax rate, that means 32% of your taxes went to these benefits.

Removing the two groups you just mentioned would not drop your tax burden in reality. It would just balance the budget and maintain what you have now... instead of what will happen in the near future: tax hikes.

It's going to be impossible to put into practice.

Reminds of Bill Clinton's 2000 quote on China censoring the web "Good luck. That's sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall." Well, Bill Clinton was wrong, and as the article note the Jell-o is now quite firmly on the wall, with hardly a single drip. Your comment is of a similar kind: "Ha, ha! I can't imagine any government/corporation/entity being able to censor the internet( that I became familiar with in the 1990s), therefore they won't be able to censor it(as it exists today)."

Well you are probably very, very, very wrong.

Remember this is the UK where 90%+ of all internet connections are censored by the Internet Watch Foundation. It's a minor step to retrofit this system to monitor urls for "infringement activity" and take steps accordingly. This was in fact the whole point of the child porn filter all along. Here's the relevant quote(the speaker is a copyright industry representative):

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".

The IWF works. It is a perfect censor: completely inscrutable and opaque, accountable to no-one, no appeal against decisions, no overseeing body, no audits, no way of reviewing lists. It's like something right out of China or the old Soviet Union (Actually that's not really fair. Their censorship organisations were/are actually accountable). The brits embraced all this with open arms, so if you think they're going to raise a fuss about a similar system for music, I say you're living in a fantasy land.

We no longer live in a age of governments accountable to the people. We live in a age of corporations accountable to their shareholders. As such, it's no real surprise that the primary drive to control and censor people in the modern age is coming from the corporate world. The big difference between censorship systems like the IWF and this proposed copyright system is that they are, ostensibly, completely private enterprises. In other words, they are subject to no laws but those made by the corporations they serve. Ultimately, such a system will prove far more effective than anything a government could devise. The philosophy of the market and the laws of free enterprise will shield these new tools of oppression from all attempts to stop them, ironically as (the spirit of) these same laws will be what people will actually be fighting to win back.

This system is going ahead. It's going to work. Once it works in the UK, it will shortly thereafter be applied everywhere else. Once the system is in place, its remit will be extended and the internet as you know it and beleive it to be invincible will be shut down and turned into little more than a glorified cable network with a few Geocities-type sites and the odd decaying blog. Commerical copyright will ultimately prove to be the most effective force for censorship the world has ever seen. It's already more important than national security concerns. Money talks a lot louder than most people, or even states, can be bothered to.

The Japanese catch whales for research.

The conclusion appears to be that they taste very nice.

Exactly. They even end up in Los Angeles restaurants.

BP's original estimate was 1000 barrels per day. After doing their own estimates from satallite images and viewing the first available footage shown from the leaks publicly, various scientists/engineers disagreed with BP and claimed it looked more like 5000 barrels per day. After a day or so, BP and the various government agencies relented and agreed the 5000 barrel estimate was probably more accurate. The most recent, and supposedly more accurate estimate, is 12,000-19,000 barrels per day.

Its all togeather possible the people demanding the Goverment take over the situation are not the same people who want the goverment out of private industry.

Well, not in some cases:

"Today is Day 36" since the well's drilling rig exploded, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday during a hearing on offshore drilling liability. "The cloud of confusion over how much oil is spilling into the gulf is very concerning. And it's also very unclear who was in charge."

Republicans are seeking to erode voter confidence in Obama's leadership by portraying him as lackadaisical in his response -- similar to the crippling effect of Hurricane Katrina for President George W. Bush. GOP lawmakers also are making a case that Obama is too cozy with the oil industry to apply maximum pressure on BP, a theory advanced by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) on "Fox News Sunday."

"I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration," Palin said.

I dunno, maybe Wyoming went red-state and Palin switched sides while I wasn't looking because I didn't notice "Drill Baby Drill" in any of their remarks this time.

Running for an office in the US, at least when you want to run for one that surpasses the office of mayor, requires a metric ton of money to get off the ground. It's pretty hard to afford that, especially given the risk and the minuscle chance of succeeding.

Generally true, but there's more the situation that just a metric ton of money. From a randomly selected article:

Since 2002, the average cost of gaining a House seat has risen 49 percent and now exceeds $1.36 million. The average cost of attaining a Senate seat has risen 68 percent and now exceeds $3.03 million, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.

There's at least three points to recognise here.

First, for a small group of medium or large corporations, those numbers are a pittance. For a subsection of voting public as a whole, it's similarly a pittance. Corporate donors, however, can generally be relied on and are easier to organise, among other things.

Second, voters demand that metric tons of money to be spent. Why? Because they like it like that. Increasingly, voters don't read newspapers or inform themselves of issues, but instead prefer to get their "facts" from their TVs. That means for an elected official, television commercials (the most expensive form of advertising) are the only means to reach voters. Also note that the public seems to have no problem with the length of most campaigns.

Third, public airwaves aren't. The networks demand to be paid for airtime, and the general public seems fine with that, despite apparent societal and legal obligations to the contrary. By contrast, I believe Canada mandates that the networks provide free airtime to political candidates.

The astute reader will note that a large corporation or two could easily fund the election campaigns of any number of key officials across the country and in doing so, buy control of their agenda. The degree to which that already happens is anyone's guess.

In Washington, Stupak said the committee investigators had uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by Transocean, the drilling rig operator, that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer. "How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak asked.

.. just ask The Hammer how it's done.

Comcast's customer service is so bad they drove a 75 year old lady to taking a hammer to the local office.

Except they don't come up, until now. In November Californians will vote on a referendum to legalize marijuana. According to the Wastington Post, who suggests Washington DC watch CA, the referendum is close to winning with about half in support and half opposed to it.

I don't think any one of 51 states or district have made anything legal to make/grow and sell.

Again you're wrong. In Alaska small amounts are legal. "The sale and distribution of marijuana, however, is still illegal".

On J Edgar Hoover:

Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, didn't like him. The only reason he kept his position as director of the FBI is because of his extensive collection of private files.

If that's the case, then we get what we deserve.

Well J Edgar Hoover is long dead, good riddance. But as I said before most people didn't know what he was doing. Information found it hard to get around, and that's how politicians want it. After-all they even included a muzzle clause, where librarians and others who had information requests issued by law enforcement couldn't say anything about it, in the Patriot Act. How many people even have an idea what's happening? Obama ran saying his admin would be open, well his admin has refused to release the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, a favorite topic here. Just as with a number of other things it's "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." What does copyrights have to do with national security? While businesses can see it the people can't.

Which brings up relevant questions. One is, why aren't the people demanding it be released? Another though, is how many people even know or have heard about the ACTA? I just searched CNN, "acta" returned 40 results but none I looked at said anything about it and "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" returned 3 results, but none of them say anything about it either. Two were about counterfeit money, one about counterfeit drugs, and so on.

Falcon

Wow. Just, wow. I had no idea how off the deep end (offer the deeper end?) PETA had gotten.

I started to use their contact form for the fish and wildlife service, having replaced their pre-filled text with the phrase "PETA has gone off the deep end". Then I noticed who it is being sent to on my behalf: Sam D. Hamilton. Hmm, wonder who that is, I pondered. Have a look:

"Sam D. Hamilton dead at 54; U.S. fish and wildlife director"

Oh, well. I guess I'll have to figure out another way to entertain myself on a Friday night.

So maybe the way to fix this is to set up some sort of rule, maybe like we have with regards to dumping? Maybe something like nobody shall sell below price plus 3%?

It's certainly not unheard of. Gas stations are disallowed by law to sell gas for less than they bought it for. At least in Maryland that is.

You mean like this guy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/nyregion/10cnd-spitzer.html

What I like about it is he ran on the platform to clean up New York and prostitution.

LOL.

I think he has his own TV show now...or maybe he will be at CNN.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051905338.html

All in all...I see the end coming for a lot of countries. In debt, power hungry and greedy gigantic revolts will be happening and the world is gonna BURN.

-Hack

You must be kidding me. Robert Mullins article is not worthy of publication, just because it is has a catchy byline regarding smelly duck eggs. The content is vague and overstated in many places. The content nothing more than bits of fluff without any kind of supporting detail. It has nothing it in that is new or inspiring and is so dry and boring, I simply began to fall asleep halfway through it. Robert Mullins should be slapped with a wet noodle for writing such drivel.

The only saving grace to the whole thing, was in the comments submitted by readers. Inside this is a gem of links supplied by one such anonymous reader. If you want the tip of the iceberg on hundreds of Chinese Government espionage cases, then follow these links.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203952.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/25/60minutes/main6242498.shtml
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/3319656
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KG31Ad01.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/europe/01spy.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all
http://www.intelligencesearch.com/ia068.html

However to dig deeper. The Chinese are not the only ones targeting Government and other high tech companies in the US. There are many others, but China is going much further than just the US. It would seem that the Chinese officials, are casting a huge net to capture just about anything they can get and only later throwing away what they don't need. No wonder China is advancing so fast in all the major technologies, including space, military and civilian.

"From Rice Paddies to Rocket Ships". In only a few short years has China advanced or simply stolen it's future? Followed by actual case studies and methods, would have made an article worth reading and a far better byline. I can't believe I wasted 10 minutes of my time reading that piece of crap. Thank the gods for an enlightened and intelligent reader that offered a few links and with just that small effort did far more than Robert Mullins did in a whole page.

Heck, while I'm at it, I found some studies for you. Here's a reference to a study that found exercise even keeps your telomeres in your cells longer. This one at Stanford that lasted 20 years found that running specifically helps keep you healthy, they said, "Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging nonrunners to die early deaths."

And then there's this one, a study of over 100,000 people that basically found the more you run each week, the less likely you are to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol, although the study author thinks (for whatever it's worth) that a similar effect would be found for swimming or cycling or any other aerobic exercise.

So yeah, there's tons to back up what I said. You may disagree with those studies, and no science is perfect, but there's a good bunch of evidence.

The Google haters on /. really amaze me with how they single out one company for all this hatred. In my opinion, Google is easily the most trustworthy company in a position to receive so much information.

Take for example the story that everyone should already know: Yahoo helps communist China imprison democracy seekers.

Meanwhile we all know Google's stance against Chinese oppression, but don't forget they even resist US government.

So I am more inclined to think positively of Google, in light of how much more evil everyone else is.
And some of you are angry for Google not wanting to hand over information to the German government?
How anyone could prefer that is just strange to me.

U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study

FTA: "The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely. The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf."

So, how come the multiple regulations and government agencies that are supposed to be watching the oil companies and their regulations didn't stop this from happening?

I don't hear many people making a case that BP should be unregulated, so your straw man is already leaning over a bit before you even try and knock him down. But if you're trying to make the case that government regulation would have stopped this disaster, you really should take into consideration the fact that these agencies are regulated, their well-trained government agents determined three times that this oil spell was not likely to occur, and even exempted them from some of the regulations. What good is an oversight board that can be bought?

Libertarianism does not mean corporatism, as much as you would like to believe. In general, it's the belief that even if you could construct the perfect government program, greed and incompetence will eventually sabotage its operations.

they can't.

80% isn't party voting. Has there ever been a congress in which *every* Democrat voted one way, and *every* Republican voted the other way on every vote?

And it's higher than 80% too, it's 90% in the house http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/party-voters/ which outweighs the senate at 80% by sheer numbers http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/party-voters/

I'm guessing the UK is like Australia (I may be wrong on that of course) in which case it's 100%. *Nobody* votes against the party line, if they do they can kiss party membership good-bye. Aside from the occasional "conscience vote", which really just means its an issue that the party doesn't want to take a side on since either way would alienate a large portion of their voters.

Well you do get the occasional floor crosser in the Senate Barnaby Joyce has made a habit of it - though no one had in the 20 years before he first did. Of course "habit" means 19 times in 5 years.

80% isn't party voting. Has there ever been a congress in which *every* Democrat voted one way, and *every* Republican voted the other way on every vote?

And it's higher than 80% too, it's 90% in the house http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/party-voters/ which outweighs the senate at 80% by sheer numbers http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/party-voters/

I'm guessing the UK is like Australia (I may be wrong on that of course) in which case it's 100%. *Nobody* votes against the party line, if they do they can kiss party membership good-bye. Aside from the occasional "conscience vote", which really just means its an issue that the party doesn't want to take a side on since either way would alienate a large portion of their voters.

Well you do get the occasional floor crosser in the Senate Barnaby Joyce has made a habit of it - though no one had in the 20 years before he first did. Of course "habit" means 19 times in 5 years.

You mean the same France who forwarded the fake nuclear report to the US? Or the France who was making secrete oil deals with Iraq that Violated UN Sanctions and stood to lose out on billions if we went to war with Iraq?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101384.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme#Criminal_investigation_in_France

By the way, the conditions for victory for the "Iraq war" were to have the oil fields pumping for the profit of someone other than the corrupt iragis at the top of the stack - which has been recently accomplished with the assignment of contracts for a large majority of the larger Iraqi oilfields, Basra in particular.

That is something completely made up in your mind with absolutely no evidence to support it. Where do you think we are, in your preschool class with no access to the internet or anything?

What do you mean?

I'm surprised you are not familiar with the practice

If you want to deal with starvation, get a gun and a Hummer, and hunt dictators...

??

Not only are GM foods unnecessary, we still have no idea of the problems they cause, or in many cases choose to ignore them for the sake of profit. It's another form of pollution. Just like an oil spill. Only this might not clean up so easily.

Jones/Mann has serious credibility issues and anything they published is unlikely to sway most skeptics. Jones would might have been persecuted for violation of the British Freedom of Information laws had the statute of limitations (6 months!) not run out, and Mann is under criminal investigation by Virginia for defrauding the taxpayers mostly for receiving public grants to produce the work you cited!

Y'know /. is pretty damn cool. Our flame wars are a joy to behold compared to the Wash Post flaming attached to the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002000_Comments.html

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against former UVA faculty Michael Mann. In criticising Cuccinelli's lawsuit, I'm not even saying he has to admit or agree with everything or anything that Mann wrote. But political persecution of scientists is bad... like 15th century Vatican bad.

The space program is funded. The reason for the gap isn't a lack of funding, its a matter of extremely poor management.

Not true. Both the NRC report

The report urged Congress and the White House to seriously examine the mismatch between the tasks assigned to NASA and the resources that the agency has been provided to accomplish them.

and the Augustine report:

"...Augustine acknowledged that they had not found any mismanagement nor any insurmountable technical obstacles to the completion of the current program."

contradict your statement. NASA has been perennially underfunded.

This has clearly been done.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092103723.html

A waste of precious NASA bucks better spent on robots (and I mean robots to help the manned program).

And the "isolation" aspect is just bunk -- resource more for deep space transmission of e-mail and skype and the astronauts will be begging to be left alone.

Never been tried > 350 feet of water. And the wellhead is a mile down. Fingers are crossed, tho'.

Problem is, it's wrong. Democrats weren't a minority party in the 90s until 95 (104th congress). Additionally, that Senate (since that's really where the bloc voting creates dysfunction and prevents governance) had a party line voting percentage of 80% for Dem, 88% for Rep. citation, And let's not forget what we took up most of that congress with: impeachment.

In conclusion, fuck you.

It doesn't look like porn to me. It looks like art. I know it's hard to believe, but pictures with nudity are not necessary pornographic!

I agree, but tell that to John Ashcroft, Jesse Helms, most of the GOP, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who now wants to modify the State Seal, because the Roman goddess Virtus has a bare breast.

But usually when a chart contains a combination of past data and future predictions, it is customary to color the two sections differently or otherwise make a clear distinction between the two. I read that plot and thought (for a second) "Holy shit there are only 2 /8s left!" before realizing that it wasn't December 2010.

Here is a good example: http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.gif

Citation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060101884.html

If I recall, it was assumed that merely having a personal email account was a means to skirt public disclosure requirements, but after multiple ethics investigations, they didn't find anything.

So was there proof she was doing "sekrit" business in her personal email account or not?

There were two different Yahoo accounts. One was personal (gov.palin@yahoo.com) and the other was used for government business (gov.sarah@yahoo.com). There is plenty of evidence of that, including emails reminding her aides to send to the gov.sarah account instead of the official state address. She even claimed to be unaware of any state laws regarding document retention. Alaska has since passed new legislation that specifically addresses what she was doing so that there can be no way to claim that such practices do not violate document retention policies. We absolutely should be able to see what our government does in our name and why, even if we don't get to see it while it's happening. To do otherwise undermines our system of representation.

As a gay man, I find the very concept of barring such anti-discrimination policies offensive. However, before we really get the bandwagon rolling, what say we ask a couple of questions:

1) What have past Virginia AG's advised cities, towns, and political subdivisions regarding non-discrimination policy generally and LGBT affecting law specifically? What was their reasoning? What is Cucinelli's?

2) Do, in fact, any provisions exist in Virginia statute or state constitutional provision that a competent attorney would be compelled to advise his client (the Universities and colleges) that such a policy (and thus they) are in violation of, or potentially might reasonably to be argued to be in violation of?

3) Given the increasing evidence that at least some portions of the "Global Warming" theory are based on spurious or manufactured evidence (without addressing in any way whether or not anthropogenic global warming valid as a theory or in any way a verifiable phenomenon), is it not the duty of a sitting AG when the question is raised about whether the science and research paid for on the public dime might be fraudulent, to then investigate such questions - and if a preponderance of evidence shows that fraud was committed on the public dime, is it then not the duty of said Attorney General to prosecute the perpetrator of the fraud and misuse of state funds to the full extent of the law?

(For the newbs, in most instances this would mean an affirmative answer to : Did Mann knowingly publish false or misleading results? If so, were state funds used in producing/creating/obtaining such false data?)

4) Aside from Cucinelli as a common factor does the University policy issue have anything to do with the rightness or wrongness of the investigation of Mann and his global warming work?

To address our first question, we have but to look at Cucinelli's advisory letter itself . He cites a number of relevant prior Virginia Attorney Generals opinions, yet notably fails to cite either constitutional or statutory provision - instead basing his reasoning on the theory that unless it is specifically permitted, that a University or other subordinate political division (from governor to rural village) may not extend or expand civil rights beyond those enumerated by the Virginia General Assembly, a body that as recently as a few weeks ago (and on 26 other occasions) has declined with varying degrees of vehemence to add sexual orientation or expression to the list of protected classes (i.e., list of things forbidden to discriminate based upon).

The actions or lack thereof of the Virginia General Assembly, notwithstanding the opinions of the current and several prior Attorney Generals of the State of Virginia, are simply irrelevant. Our fundamental legal tradition is not "whatever is not specifically permitted, is forbidden" - rather, it is "whatever is not specifically forbidden, is permitted" which undermines a basic argument of Cucinelli and his predecessors.

Further, as demonstrated in a long line of prior cases, subordinate political divisions may extend MORE civil rights protections, but never less than those extended by their respective superior bodies, subject to the provisions of the prior paragraph.

Since the Virginia General Assembly has, to the best of my knowledge, never barred subordinate bodies from extending such protections to allege such a bar is mistaken at best, and in my opinion, malicious bigotry at worst.

To address our second question, I return to the reasoning addressed in the first. Any competent attorney would, given the opportunity, to cite clear statutory law would do so - as it would substantially strengthen their legal argument. I find the absence of such citation telling, to put it mildly and the "public policy" argument weak on the face of it. If public policy barred any action not specifically authorized by

Washington Post article about it.

"U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement that Cuccinelli's advice would "damage the Commonwealth's reputation for academic excellence and diversity."
""What he's saying is reprehensible," said Vincent F. Callahan Jr., a former Republican member of the House of Delegates who serves on George Mason's board of visitors. "I don't know what he's doing, opening up this can of worms."


Total prick. He might as well of put out a press release that simply said "I hate fags." As a Virginia resident, and a friend to some of the few homosexual persons whom have managed to, and are somehow willing to stick it out in the state: We hate Ken Cuccinelli.

..to this story was that it was originally reported that the FBI was investigating Palin's use of yahoo mail for conducting governmental business. But hey, she got "hacked" and there was nothing there right? Why should we care about government officials using third-party email and with easy to recover password options rather than secure government-run communications?

see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903044.html

This entire letter is crap and just to make Apple try to look good for its actions.

From the open letter:

Jobs says thats Adobe isn't open, then states MANY times in the letter that every video should be done in h.264 that they support. They fail to mention the fact the h.264 isn't open, it's a standard, not an open standard. Not to mention, the whole system for iPhone and iPad isn't open since to use after market software for the devices you need to either buy it from their App Store or pay another $100 for that option. This isn't open, in fact it's more closed then Flash is.

The second 'fact' he tries is claiming that 75% of video is in Flash and should be using something more modern like h.264. He refuses to mention at the point that hey, Flash does do this modern codec of h.264 which invalidates his claim here. Flash is a container, not a codec.

Third thing he tries to claim is Flash is bad for reliability, security and performance. Jobs as always forgets that OSX isn't noted for its high level of security 1 2 and averages around 6 months to pass on a patch, not even to patch it but just to bother to pass it on even though someone else did the work for them. Jobs then goes on claiming that "We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems' yet again 'forgets' that they hurt Adobe before when they switched from the PowerPC chip to x86 chips causing Adobe to lose money and waste time fixing up Adobe products and not having been kept in the loop (which would have prevented the issues). Same thing happened with 10.6 causing more issues for Adobe products that could have been prevented if Apple had just warned Adobe before hand instead of catching Adobe with their pants down. As a company of Adobe's size it would be harder and harder to want to support Apple, which have screwed them over before (not just once), and all to please 6% of the computer market? Thats not much.

Forth is battery life. And here he pulls a switch around, claims that Flash is bad for the battery life by claiming that most Flash videos aren't encoded in the modern codec of h.264. Here he forgets that other videos online are also not encoded in h.264 but formats like Windows Media Video, XviD, DivX and even Apple's own Quicktime format. He also forgets that Flash videos can be encoded in h.264 because at the time of the iPhone being released, Google just decided, with Apples help, to support h.264. Just in time for the iPhone, but was the only one to support it, the other sites came later. This change took time and help from the inside (remember Apple and Google worked together a lot back then before they started to drift apart).

Fifth 'point' is he claims that sites with Flash will have to be re-written to support touch interfaces. And yes they will, and most places will do that if they feel that the public at large wants that. Same happened with web pages. Web sites had to be re-written to 'support' smartphones since they were horrible on the smaller screen sizes and so those sites that deemed it a good move did just that, they re-wrote their pages to support the newer style of accessing the site. Not every site bothered though and same would happen with Flash sites. Jobs seems to feel that sites should have already been made to support touch devices before there was a need as his 'proof'.

Last 'point' is a mishmash of garbage, first re-claiming about how Flash isn't supported with touch in mind (yet it's on touch screen tablet pc's) then goes on to claiming that 'developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third part

For all that Hong Kong people may have the right to demonstrate, have a separate judiciary, there are still companies operating in Hong Kong that are being pressured to conform to mainland laws...

A Hong Kong Internet company, called TOM Online, announced it had stopped using Google's search mechanism. "TOM reiterated that as a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses," the company's parent, Hong Kong-based TOM Group, said in a statement Tuesday.

Companies owned by people/companies subject to Chinese laws, or wishing to do business in China proper, will certainly have to make decisions based on the relations they want to keep with the Chinese government. I can well imagine employees of a HK company being denied visas based on the ire of some Chinese bureaucrat. Or Chinese citizens who own an obstreperous HK company getting harassed because of the behavior of that company.

There are a couple key points here that are missed without context that essentially everyone is missing it.
Maricopa Counties Sheriff has been on a 'arrest all the mexicans!' bender for some time; he's currently under investigation by DOJ for a variety of things, including civil rights violations, racial profiling, using department resources to wage war on political rivals/basically anyone who disagrees with him and this in turn caused ICE to strip him of his authority to arrest illegal immigrants (By federal law, only ICE has this authority).

So the response? Okay we'll make a state law and make it sufficiently vague that we are essentially legitimizing his practices (a prior quote of his was telling AZ citizens to arrest any mexican they saw driving with a cracked windshield [horrible advice, citizens arrests are just asking for lawsuits/charges]).
Some interesting reading:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/08/politics/main6071928.shtml - Sherrif Joe Arpaio Facing Investigation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/16/AR2008071602636.html - Ariz. Sheriff Accused Of Racial Profiling

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/03/15/20090315arpaio-politics0315.html - Feds' new tone puts Arpaio in hot seat

http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/sheriff-arpaio-sued-over-racial-profiling-latinos-maricopa-county - Sheriff Arpaio Sued Over Racial Profiling Of Latinos In Maricopa County

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arpaio - series of articles concerning the sheriff's activities .. like 15 years worth.

http://crooksandliars.com/logan-murphy/ice-strips-sheriff-joe-arpaio-immigra - ICE Strips Sheriff Joe Arpaio Of Immigration Enforcement Powers

et cetera, just hit google.

Also, while you're correct that the feds have the ability to throw up checkpoints, its *supposed* to only be legal within 100 miles of an international border; although in practice they just do what they want anyways. (i.e. on a bus trip from Seattle to Phoenix the bus was stopped by ICE in far northern Utah, everyone white was allowed off without much of a question, everyone who appeared mexican was in turn given the 'royal treatment')

The EFF fights for the right cause but is not automatically right. Just being a journalist does not mean you're allowed to deal with stolen goods.

By the way, the Gawker/Gizmodo guys obviously don't think they're journalists themselves:

"We don’t seek to do good,” says Denton, wearing a purplish shirt, jeans and a beard that resembles a three-day growth. “We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention."

China is still punishing Google huh?

If by China you're referring to the ruling Communist Party dictatorship, then sure they are.

Incidentally "GoDaddy also withdrew from China" around the same time, mainly due to the new (now more and better) draconian registration rules for individuals wishing to operate their own domains.

My hat's off for both of them for not collaborating with that regime's repressive policies.

Nuclear arms have formed the backbone of US deterrence strategy for six decades and although the strategy worked during the Cold War, military leaders say they need weapons in their arsenal to deter adversaries who assume that the United States would refrain from taking the extreme step of ordering a nuclear strike. Now the Washington Post reports that as the White House pushes for cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon is developing a powerful nonnuclear weapon to help fill the gap as a new form of deterrence against terrorist networks and other adversaries. Military officials say their current nonnuclear options are too limited or too slow because unlike ICBM's, which travel at several times the speed of sound, it can take up to 12 hours for cruise missiles to hit faraway targets and long-range bombers likewise can take many hours to fly into position for a strike. "Today, unless you want to go nuclear, it's measured in days, maybe weeks" until the military can launch an attack with regular forces, says Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "That's just too long in the world that we live in." The new missile system, known as Prompt Global Strike weapons, could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. However military officials are struggling to solve one major obstacle: the risk that Russia or China could mistake the launch of a conventional Prompt Global Strike missile for a nuclear one. To alleviate the risk of an accidental nuclear retaliation, defense officials have described how a land-based missile could be configured so it is incapable of carrying a nuclear payload and use a trajectory to its target that would not threaten other nuclear weapons nations.

"because the screeners KNOW that they've never pulled a guilty person out of line."

This story and of course this one also, and this one would indicate that at least some people that could legitimately be considered a threat were in fact detained.

Not a stellar record, perhaps, but not failure. And not a record of no actual denials of credible suspects. Imperfect? Yup. Better than nothing? Yup.

False positives are inevitable if we are just using names. I suspect that there will be a change in the system, though in most cases it is the nature of counter-terrorism that all you get is a name. Images might compromise sources, and fingerprints are usually not going to be available.

There is quite a bit of advice on how to get off of a no-fly list. One way NOT to get removed, it would seem, is to be elected to the U.S. Senate... Or get hired as an Air Marshal. feh.

As well as oil power.

I don't think that it's clear that this is vigilantism, at all. What Downs has done is designed a multimedia interface to a series of newspaper articles in the Washington Post. It looks like she's essentially put the existing information into an effective presentation format: across the top, the attacks are organized by time, and you can click on one to get a summary, some detailed info broken out, and a map and a photo. It's a fancy, interactive infographic: The Washington Post page with the flash app on it

I'd agree that tracking a specific person's movements and making a lot of their personal information available is generally a bad thing. But, in this case, we're not even talking about a specific person. This is an abstraction: The East Coast Rapist. There's nobody for a vigilante to attack. There's no name, no address, nothing more than what's appeared in the newspaper about the guy. And I don't think it's undermining our justice system to have a clear layout of factual information like this.

Oh, and here are the profits.

Faster Forward

It's not going too far to say that Facebook ultimately wants to build a layer of identity and authentication on top of the entire Web. That may be helpful in some cases; for instance, I'd like to know which Yelp reviews come from the people I know and trust at Facebook. But I don't need it at every site, and you probably don't either.

On the other hand; had he been in China, there would have been a chance that they would have tried and shot him.

I suspect that getting shot is mostly just because corruption is a competitive activity, and the stakes for losers are high, rather than because society's commitment to fighting corruption is actually that sincere; but it is still gratifying to watch when it happens.

This, for instance, was a rather heartwarming case. You don't often see Americans that high on the food chain sentenced to much more than "being allowed to resign, and maybe paying some sort of civil penalty, probably without admission of wrongdoing" for gross dereliction of duty while in office. Heck, good old "Scooter" Libby got an oh-so-tough 30 months in jail, and then that was commuted; because "My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged". Oooh, That has to hurt, good thing that we'll have the extra prison space for potheads.

ACTA is being negotiated, from the USA perspective, as a "Sole executive agreement". This does not need congressional approval. See the Lessig and Goldsmith article in the Washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502403.html

It will be embedded into the hardware, just like the Intel processor serial number. Remember that? Or the yellow dots that are printed on every color printer to identify the printer by serial number, date and time of printout etc. Try scanning currency with a scanner, just see what happens. Intel Serial Number http://www.geek.com/glossary/P/psn-processor-serial-number/ Yellow Dots http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html Scanning Currency http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/01/61877

New Washington Post story today clarifies that it was NOT a hack of Bb – someone found and used a valid teacher login. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041505517.html Local Digest Friday, April 16, 2010; B02 VIRGINIA Boy had teacher's computer password A 9-year-old Fairfax County boy who changed course content and passwords in the Fairfax school system's online teaching system -- including the superintendent's -- accessed it using a teacher's password, officials said Thursday. The school district detected the problems last month and, with the help of Fairfax police, tracked them to a McLean boy's home computer. Police obtained a search warrant that said Fairfax's version of the widely used Blackboard Learning System "had been hacked" and that the boy's Blackboard account had "administrator privileges." Blackboard and school officials clarified Thursday that the boy had not found and exploited a security vulnerability, but rather that he had obtained a teacher's password. Fairfax schools spokesman Paul Regnier said the boy was able to use that access to enroll other users, including Superintendent Jack D. Dale, into his class and could then change their passwords. -- Tom Jackman