Slashdot Mirror

First of all, not all coals are contaminated with radioactive materials. It simply depends which kind of rock or sediments are around the coal.

Yes agreed, ore quality.

Radioactivity comes mainly from Radon, Uranium, Thorium and some Lead isotopes.

Seems like what you would expect.

As ash is collected and the typical "fly ash" no longer exists in industrialized countries, not much is escaping.

It's commonly used as a concrete additive where I live.

The numbers one can find are that worst case the ash is as concentrated as yellow cake uranium ore from pit mines.

Yes, a big energy input of Nuclear Energy, usually fuel oil where they mine it. We have that in my country and they allow something that is illegal in America and Russia - in situ-acid leach mine to get yellow cake which leaves concentrated naturally radioactive sulfuric acid. There was an accident where a 2 Mega litre dam burst. Pollutes ground water quite effectively.

Yes, I fully agree that isotopes where every they come from should not be spread around.

Nuclear idealists do not treat this stuff with respect and I think it was my day to be pissed off with their pig headed willful ignorance of published indications that radio isotopes bio-accumulating in produce on the western United States sold on the benefit of dating wines in a immature wine making market. Not what they're dong there in the first place.

They just bury their head in the sand and say it's fine, no problem no need to do anything to try to stop the damn thing thing leaking - just leave it to Tepco, it's their problem not ours as the years drag on and still no international effort to take it out of those incompetent idiots hands and sort it out with some urgency.

Future generations will loathe us for not doing something sooner.

http://washingtonsblog.com/201...

Oil was not the sole reason, but a largest contributer. To say otherwise is to turn a blind eye on motivations behind military-industrial complex.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

By your logic since Iraq was next door to Iran for invading Iraq, we should invade Kazakhstan(or any neighboring state) and China to engage future warfare with Russia and North Korea, respectively? Why not invade Iran directly instead of surrounding it? Also, since Pakistan is also a border state, what's your excuse for leaving that one behind? You know, the one that provided harbor for Bin Laden?

And guess who's the biggest sponsor of terrorism now - Saudi Arabia - but we are allies with them?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
https://www.newsbud.com/2017/0...
https://www.salon.com/2016/01/...
http://www.newsweek.com/why-sa...

You see, we see it as what it is. A complete bullshit by neocons running the White House.

Furthermore you demand evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine but provide none for the Western over throw of the Ukraine government.

That's like asking for evidence that the Bush Administration was full of crap about Iraq's WMD's and role in 911. Remedial current events here.

Before the coup, the assistant Secretary of State was on video bragging about spending $5 billion to 'give Ukraine the future it deserves' - and then Americans whine about imaginary interference in our elections. The same assistant secretary of state was also recorded picking post-coup leaders.

The United States immediately recognized the junta as illegitimate after the blatantly unconstitutional vote to remove Yanukovych from power, which itself was based on a known false flag operation:

• "So the chief of the government's security forces, the head of the opposition's security forces, and the snipers themselves all admit the snipers were killing both protesters and police."

And if that wasn't enough, the Vice President's son woke up one morning and just happened to find himself a top executive at a Ukraine energy company.

• "Isn't that a bit fishy? Why do you say that?

  Because he's the vice-president's son! That's a coincidence. "This is totally based on merit," said Burisma's chairman, Alan Apter.

  He doesn't sound very Ukrainian. He's American, as is the other new board member, Devon Archer.

  Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz.

  Who? Christopher Heinz...John Kerry's stepson."

The IMF also picked up their entire book of rules and threw it in a paper shredder to give the illegitimate government a legitimate loan:

• The IMF broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine:
  (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan (the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan to that country).
  (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions).
  (3) Not to lend to a country at war - and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally
  (4), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF's austerity "conditionalities." Ukraine did agree to override democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted.

So the United States only spent billions to subvert Ukraine's democracy, recognized a blatant coup as a legitimate impeachment, immediately gave billions in aid to the junta, and then sends the highest number of troops to Eastern Europe under the premise that Russia is a threat.

And American Exceptionalists like yourself just eat that shit up. With a spoon. You didn't learn a damned thing from the lies about Iraq and Afghanistan, did you?

Antifa? What the fuck are you talking about? I've never even met or seen anyone who is a part of Antifa. Google is a serious threat to freedom in the US (and the world) and has been for a long time. I'm glad that there is finally some mainstream realization of that fact (I've boycotted google services for about 5 years now). But, you are equating people who are critical of Google's incredibly questionable censorship with a violent group of "anarchists"? Are you reporting from Eglin AFB? Just doing your job, comrade?

Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter: FBI Report Shows It Was Seth Rich – Not Russians – Who Gave DNC Emails to Wikileaks

They [the FBI] found what he [Rich] had done was he had submitted a series of documents – of emails, of juicy emails – from the DNC.

By the way, all this shit about the DNC, where the hack, it wasn’t hacked

...

I have a narrative of how that whole fucking thing began. It’s a [former CIA director John] Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation [campaign].

Yeah, Seymour Hersh. Must be a right-wing crazy. You keep telling yourself that.

In particular Iran was the big winner of Dubya's war against Saddam, and they seem to be playing a similar game in Syria now. Basically just laying low and moving into the power vacuums that appear.

So essentially your complaint against Iran is that they haven't started any wars? Unlike the USA, which has been at war for 222 out of its 239 years of existence (that's about 93% of its existence). http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

OK then, we'll just stick with the left-wing college newspapers who cheered it on and called for more.

The mysteriously unnamed ones. For all we know, you've been looking at copies of the Harvard Lampoon.

Or the people in the crowd holding typical liberal protest signs cheering on the beating and silencing of the people they don't like.

Mysteriously unidentified ones, you can't even point us out a sign that actually requires you to believe what it says.

Regardless of which of their factions shows up to beat and destroy, isn't the fact that the liberals who watch it or write about it LIKE it enough for you?

Which ones? You keep ranting and railing at these alleged people, but...you never identify them. Why is that?

Why??

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army .” And see this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and falsely blame it on the Nazis.

(6) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis

The Republicans have spent millions of tax dollars on investigating the Clintons for the last 30 years that have consistently failed to prove a damn thing.

Meanwhile, nobody seems to care about Cheney and the millions (billions?) he and Halliburton made of the Iraq war...at the cost of soldiers' lives.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Just trying to balance the claims here. Repubs are nowhere near innocent.

I'd put superdelegates before the Electoral College. At least states, as sovereign entities, have some legitimacy to give input to the process. Political parties, being evil perversions of democracy that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place, do not.

Chernobyl wasn't 'as bad as it's possible to get it'. If the workers there would have said "Fuck you! Risking my life? I'm going home, now." then it would have been much worse.

Fukushima could have been a lot worse in terms of radioactive pollution landing everywhere around the globe. How much Becquerel could Fukushima have released if all stored fuel rods would have exploded?
This story makes me a bit worried, not you?
Oh, and this one also.
And also this one about the fuel pools is worrying me.
But no, it surely must all be FUD...

Since I have so many asking for some evidence of this sort of thing:

http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/des...

https://theconservativetreehou...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

http://redstatewatcher.com/art...

Generally the first thing I hear is an attack on source - all of them if possible. That's just someone who's established a position and has made up their mind no matter what. Usually I try to get both left and right wing sources when I'm trying to give evidence to a point. It's a little harder to do it this time since, with the exception of possibly some websites that support Bernie and want to defend him against the framing he's gotten of astroturfers marching against Trump in his name there's not going to be many left-wing outlets exposing their bread and butter.

I'm not a Trump supporter BTW, I've been voting Libertarian for quite a while and I intend to again. I was even a delegate to the state convention, and the only reason I'm not going to the national convention is economic - I need to work and not spend money on trips to Florida. Perhaps next time.

Considering the Germans were the US and UK's sworn enemy in WWII the Russians would have to be fucking idiots to believe that by the time each nation entered the war.

Like many people who are very sure they are right, you don't seem to have all the facts. Are you aware that, at the time when the German invasion of the USSR was launched, the USA was neutral? (It stayed neutral for the first 27 months of the war, and only became a combatant as a result of the Pearl Harbor attack, which even it could hardly ignore). Or that very high-ranking American leaders had strong sympathies with the Nazi movement? In 1940 Joseph Kennedy, the future President's father, was already warning FDR (from his official post as US Ambassador to Britain) that the Germans were sure to win, and that the US government should drop the British as a lost cause and make overtures to Berlin. Prescott Bush, the father of future President George H.W. Bush, was hand in glove with the Nazi leadership, as were John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen. And IBM, as is well known, went on selling equipment and technical services to Nazi Germany long after the invasion of the USSR. See (among many other sources) http://www.washingtonsblog.com... for a recent summary.

Wow. Just wow. You have to be fucking kidding me. Now I know you're either a troll or just fucking clueless. You're honestly arguing that both Communist Russia was a better system than the Capitalist US during the 20th century and the US is the only place where billionaires feast and the poor starve? That is just blatant ignorance. I heard it's great being a migrant worker in Qatar. Communist North Korea sounds great too. Maybe you should move there. It's a great system and no one starves.

You obviously didn't read what I wrote - you have reacted violently to something that you seem to imagine I implied. But I didn't. I was summing up the fears that led to the US government being pushed into disastrous and counter-productive wars that killed millions of people to no purpose. If you look back at what I wrote, you will see that I did not assert that "Communist Russia was a better system than the Capitalist US during the 20th century" or that "the US is the only place where billionaires feast and the poor starve". (Although I note that you don't deny that billionaires do feast, and the poor do starve, in the USA - the home of the brave and the land of the free (to starve)). If you take the time and trouble to study the historical documents that reveal the beliefs and fears of senior US government officials, bankers, businessmen, and intelligence officials, you will see the clear evidence that the very rich were scared rigid of "communism", which they thought would lead to them being deprived of some of their wealth. Whereas they weren't scared of Nazism and fascism, as they thought they could control them.

The USSR, and then Russia, agreed with no argument at all to give up control of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and even Belarus and Ukraine

Places they took by FORCE. Places that had different cultures and languages. I had ancestors that left Poland because they didn't want to be a part of Communist Russia. Many left those countries for the same reason. You are whitewashing Russian history.

Places they took by force - from the Nazi occupying forces in 1944-45. Places where many very unpleasant people were very eager, during the German occupation, to help the Nazis get rid of Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and other people the Nazis - and their helpers - despised and hated. I can well understand that your ancestors left Poland because they didn't want to be ruled by the Soviets - but would they have preferred the Nazis, which was the main alternative? Didn't they feel any gratitude to the Soviets

Under Obama the rules of engagement changed dramatically, the rules now require that there be no known civilian casualties.

You do know that this is achieved by decreeing that all males of military age are automatically considered militants? So the rules achieved "no known civilian casualties" by assuming that if you are killed then you were a militant. (Citation)

The number of civilians killed in strikes has dramatically decreased.

Citation needed -- including who counts as "civilian" in this decrease.

Obama deserves credit for halting the indiscriminate killings with bombs and missiles

Obama has appointed himself as a Judge/Jury/Executioner, and redefined words (such as "imminent threat" or "indiscriminate killings") rather than halted anything. Citation

look how ugly and crooked human teeth (without orthodontics) are compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

Actually pre-agricultural peoples had very good teeth, our recent change in diet has just happened to quickly for evolution to compensate.

Non spy agreement with the EU? I don't remember that one. The only "privacy" agreement I know about is about the agreement where the US gets EU passenger flight data.

I do however remember one promised no spy agreement between the USA and Germany which turned out to be a total lie by the party in the german government made shortly before the votes in order to stay in office, it worked super well.

What else is the regime in Kiev to be called? Even the current (illegal) "President" Petro Poroshenko has publicly admitted that the overthrow of his predecessor, President Yanukovych, was illegal.

'In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):
'“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.”
'The official Ukrainian news-agency, Interfax-Ukraine, headlined this on June 20th, “Poroshenko asking Constitutional Court to recognize law stripping Yanukovych of presidential title as unconstitutional”'.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

As for "Russia Insider" being owned by the Russian government, can you please post details of how you know that to be true? If you don't, I'll assume your statement is unsupported.

It's irrelevant anyway. The reason I read sources such as RI and RT (among many others) is that the Western mainstream media are completely useless as impartial sources for international news. For a variety of reasons they have all been substantially subverted by Western governments - ironically, it is the Western MSM that is effectively government-owned, whereas RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.

And, whereas you and others persist in calling me a troll, I am beginning to be fairly sure that it is you who are (mostly, at any rate) trolls. You do not seem to be in the least interested in facts, figures, logic, sources, or truth. If anyone dares to disagree with you, you simply insult them in the hope that they will give up in disgust. Well, I shan't. I am sure that many Slashdotters have open minds and want to know the truth, and it is worth putting up with a little childish mudslinging to help them.

"Are they hitting a wall of unmanageable complexity?" No, my view is that Microsoft has hit a wall built of many years of technically incompetent top management.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was called "Monkey Boy". The January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced by Satya Nadella) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer "Monkey Boy" -- on its cover.

Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

Who would want to work for "Monkey Boy"? Microsoft is apparently not able to hire socially competent people. Apparently Satya Nadella was chosen because he was the least annoying person. However, he does not seem to me to be the kind of person who can handle the enormous conflicts inside Microsoft.

This is my guess: Someone at Microsoft said, "Google and Facebook are collecting data about customers and selling it; let's do that also." So Windows 8 was designed to try to sell "Apps", as though Windows was a particularly trashy cell phone operating system. I was shocked when I first saw the Windows 8.1 GUI. Utterly incompetent. Now Windows 10 is apparently trying to imitate Google Android, which has become more and more invasive.

People who have work to do have already learned the GUIs they need. Even if the design is imperfect, that's what they know. They don't want wild changes.

It's scary. In the last few months, Windows 10 has been shown again and again to be sloppily designed and implemented, as well as being spyware.

Judging from comments on Slashdot, people try to find some technical reason for Microsoft's policies. They apparently have difficulty imagining that Microsoft managers are as incompetent as they are.

Some links:

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Windows 10, Microsoft hiding what it is doing: Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Quote: "Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way." (Aug 21, 2015)

Windows 10, Microsoft takes even more control: Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do -- here's how to opt out (July 31, 2015) But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to a

You're conflating two issues. The issue at hand is whether Apple can be compelled to produce speech against their will. This isn't a question of whether Apple's speech is protected; it's a question of whether the government can compel someone to speak against their will.

The issue you're talking about has nothing to do with the current case as it exists today, and is instead asking if Apple in the future should have the right to produce any speech at all. That's an issue for legislators or the courts in the future to decide when Apple actually produces code that matches your description. As of yet, they haven't, though by all indications, they're trying.

My answer to that second issue is that yes, their ability to create products with strong encryption should be protected. Were strong encryption solely of use to criminals, you may have a point, but as it stands, our right to be secure in our papers and persons is protected under the Fourth Amendment. It's a bit silly to suggest that a Constitutional right should be abridged "because it helps terrorists", especially so because by that same logic, we should do away with the firearms that are protected by the Second Amendment and the right to not self-incriminate protected by the Fifth Amendment, since rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and all sorts of other bogeymen use those rights on a daily basis to avoid prosecution and conviction. Strong encryption is one of the few ways that an innocent person can be secure in the modern era, so a suggestion that we should do away with it because it helps terrorists is a non-starter in my book, since it'd mean doing away with the right of the innocent--us--to be secure.

So, yes, strong encryption may help terrorists, but so does free speech, so do guns, so does the right to not incriminate themselves, and the list goes on. This is yet another right we protect so that it's there for when the innocent need it.

Also, stop worrying about bogeymen. To put the numbers in perspective, based on the 2011 statistics for U.S. citizens around the world (including U.S. soldiers in war zones), you're:

- 2x more likely to die to a dog bite...
- 4x more likely to die from a lightning strike...
- 9x more likely to be killed by a police officer...
- 26x more likely to die by falling out of bed...
- 187x more likely to starve to death...
- About 2000x more likely to commit suicide...
- About 6000x more likely to die due to medical error...
- About 33,000x more likely to die from cancer...
- About 35,000x more likely to die from heart disease...

...than be killed by a terrorist.

But hey, if you think that allowing the police to have unfettered access to you and your personal information makes sense, despite the fact that we were just talking the other day about how over 100 identified and 200 unidentified officers had abused that access in a single case of harassment against one of their own , you'll have to pardon me for disagreeing with you.

What's funny is that this is *Slashdot* -- where I actually come here for the comments, usually because Slashdot is inhabited by geeks, techs, programmers, scientists; i.e; People that should know a thing or two. Usually the discourse here is insightful and thought-provoking...

And then comes a global warming post, and all the science deniers come out of the woodwork. You see posts as dumb as "It's snowing right now out my window -- global warming is a myth!"

This is directed to all the deniers -- what are you people *doing* here on Slashdot?

The simplest hypothesis is, they are being paid to be here.

Do you actually work in the technology field and yet deny actual science?

Yes, they're in the field-- if you define "professional internet troll" as in the technology field.

http://21stcenturywire.com/201...
http://www.infowars.com/monsan...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://socialnewsdaily.com/590...
http://naturalsociety.com/mons...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It appears to me that Microsoft is selling itself to secret U.S. government agencies. Who tried to kill the excellent TrueCrypt? The old original TrueCrypt web site pushes people toward a Microsoft product.

Can Microsoft be trusted? Here are some articles:

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Windows 10, Microsoft hiding what it is doing: Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Quote: "Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way." (Aug 21, 2015)

Windows 10, Microsoft takes even more control: Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do -- here's how to opt out But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking. (July 31, 2015)

Microsoft can't be trusted: How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again? (June 17, 2013)

Microsoft releases EXTREMELY buggy software: Microsoft Kills Many Critical Flaws, Some 0-Days, Un-Trusts One Wildcard Cert It is likely that there are many bugs Microsoft hasn't yet found. Are Microsoft products intentionally made insecure? (December 9, 2015)

You said, 'You obviously have no idea what the word "spyware" means.'

You obviously haven't been reading the many, many, many stories. Here are links to just 7 of the stories about insecurity and links to 2 stories about bad management:

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Windows 10, Microsoft hiding what it is doing: Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way. (Aug 21, 2015)

Windows 10, Microsoft takes even more control: Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do -- here's how to opt out (July 31, 2015) But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking.

Microsoft can't be trusted: How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again? (June 17, 2013)

Microsoft releases EXTREMELY buggy software: Microsoft Kills Many Critical Flaws, Some 0-Days, Un-Trusts One Wildcard Cert (December 9, 2015) It is likely that there are many bugs Microsoft hasn't yet found.

Badly managed companies don't produce good products:

Microsoft has extremely bad management: The January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.

Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

Stop working for shitty salaries in overpriced cities and the executives running these corporations will stop expecting people to ruin themselves in order to bloat the executive bonuses.

When you're staring at the want ads, on line job sites, the newspaper jobs section and anything else you can think of to find a job because you graduated 5 months ago and you're still looking for something that pays more than minimum wage, you notice something very disturbing. There are literally thousands of job postings for minimum wage jobs, and almost no postings for anything that would be considered middle class or up (maybe 1 listing in 20). Just because we have low unemployment doesn't mean that underemployment isn't rampant as hell. Sure there are plenty of other places to work, but they all pay the same crap starvation wages. Starbucks still pays the same crappy wage so that those fortunate enough to have found a solid job don't have to pay too $4 for a latte (ohhhhh, never mind, they charge that much anyways). So, all of these employees on the bottom decide to collectively have themselves a strike. What would it accomplish? The powers that be just ride it out and wait 3 weeks. Those employees will be back, and willing to do absolutely anything because, as this person so ineloquently stated, no money, no eat.

The basic trouble with the labor market, is that workers do not have the luxury of simply not engaging in the market if the terms are unfair. The employer can file chapter 11 and shut their doors, or can wait out a strike, or can simply fire the employee and get another one. In short, they have options. The employees however are stuck with the tyranny of having a stomach and an undeniable need to put food in it with shocking regularly. In short, they have no options.

What happens at the negotiating table when one party A needs party B, but party B doesn't need party A? Party A gets hosed. The free market theory requires that all parties have the option not to take part if the deal is not in their best interest. With the labor market, that is not the case. Workers must earn money or die. Whether the employers know that when they set wages is irrelevant, as they take advantage of it to offer minimum wage jobs nonetheless.

12.7% of American workers make less than $10 per hour. 51% of American workers make less than $14.50 per hour. That means that the average American employee will not earn more than $14.50 per hour until they are 40 years old.

Since 1980, median individual income has risen from $20,500 per year to $27,000 per year, an annual increase of about 0.8% per year. Over that same period, inflation has averaged 3.37%. after 35 years of that, buying power is only 28% of what it used to be, and wages are only up 31%. This means that the total buying power of the median wage today is only 36% of the median buying power in 1980. In effect, wages have fallen to 1/3 of what they were in 1980. This is partly offset by a massive increase in the number of women who are working (2 income households), as well as a marked increase in the number of hours that individual employees are working.

As if that wasn't enough, we are fast approaching a debt crisis, as our debt to GDP is quickly approaching the highest in American history. We have been giving out massive tax break to the wealthy for almost 40 years, and financing it by going into nati

This same argument was debunked right after the attacks. Repeating it again and again doesn't make it true. Here's a link to a post that lays out several of the totally incorrect conclusions that they've been pushing: http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
(It also includes debunking some points unrelated to encryption and mass surveillance that can be ignored in respect to this specific article.)

A few of the many stories about backdoors in U.S. hardware:

D-Link: Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor (Oct. 12, 2013)

Arris: 600,000 Arris cable modems have 'backdoors in backdoors', researcher claims (Nov. 20, 2015)

Juniper Networks: Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations (Jan. 10, 2016)

Cisco: Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products (May 15, 2014)

Netgear: Netgear Patch Said to Leave Backdoor Problem in Router (April 23, 2014)

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Hard drives: Breaking: Kaspersky Exposes NSA's Worldwide, Backdoor Hacking of Virtually All Hard-Drive Firmware (Feb. 17, 2015)

Is every backdoor the work of the NSA? There is no way of knowing.

Well that escalated quickly! Would you please elaborate? What do big banks have do to with this one?

I mean, they've been interested in developing a blockchain of their own, but that seemed like a stretch. Are you saying they're crowd sourcing their effort?

A few of the many stories about backdoors in U.S. hardware (Copied from another comment.):

D-Link: Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor (Oct. 12, 2013)

Arris: 600,000 Arris cable modems have 'backdoors in backdoors', researcher claims (Nov. 20, 2015)

Juniper Networks: Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations (Jan. 10, 2016)

Cisco: Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products (May 15, 2014)

Netgear: Netgear Patch Said to Leave Backdoor Problem in Router (April 23, 2014)

Windows 8: NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered (Aug. 22, 2013)

Windows: NSA "backdoor" mandates lead to a computer-security FREAK show Quote: "Microsoft Windows OS vulnerable to hackers, thanks to National Security Agency requirements." (March 6, 2015)

Windows: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 (June 7, 2013)

Hard drives: Breaking: Kaspersky Exposes NSA's Worldwide, Backdoor Hacking of Virtually All Hard-Drive Firmware (Feb. 17, 2015)

Is every backdoor the work of the NSA? There is no way of knowing.

Meh whatever, get off your ass and learn some hotkeys. Plus there's a perfectly good bash shell with BSD basically sitting underneath. Use it.

More importantly, Apple is in the business to sell hardware, I trust them to resist inserting any backdoors for the gov't much more than Microsoft. Oh that's right, MS has been doing that since 1999 http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

MS doesn't give a shit about their reputation because they've got most of the corporate world locked-in which guarantees a recurring revenue stream forever. Apple has a metric fuckton more to lose if they misstep in the trust department.

Find me anyone who hasn't broken any laws in a given day, week, or month! As many respectable sources point out, you break the law every day without even knowing it: e.g. http://www.washingtonsblog.com... If you don't feel like reading, watch here from 5:18 to 6:18, or even further until to 7:18 for some fun examples. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

IF I were to agree with you that everyone breaks the law everyday, it still wouldn't change the fact that the statement was you would get credit for the days as long as you weren't FOUND to have broke the law.

Find me anyone who hasn't broken any laws in a given day, week, or month! As many respectable sources point out, you break the law every day without even knowing it: e.g. http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Nonsense. And debunked. The cases presented are extremely rare; situations that happen to very, very few people every year. "You" (most people) never break any of these laws without knowing, not once in your life. "You break the law every day without knowing it" is absolute nonsense.

"Many prisoners released early may not wind up being re-incarcerated, according to Brown. The law requires the state to give day-for-day credit in most cases to a prisoner who has been released early and hasnâ(TM)t been found to break any laws since, he said."

Find me anyone who hasn't broken any laws in a given day, week, or month! As many respectable sources point out, you break the law every day without even knowing it: e.g. http://www.washingtonsblog.com... If you don't feel like reading, watch here from 5:18 to 6:18, or even further until to 7:18 for some fun examples. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Have onboard Sync send emails with truck's GPS location to IhateTerrorists@CIA.gov every day

But why? The CIA already knows where many of them are- they literally sponsor them or their allies:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Just google for more: https://www.google.com/search?...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All this because the US Gov wanted to destroy/weaken the Syrian Gov:
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Have onboard Sync send emails with truck's GPS location to IhateTerrorists@CIA.gov every day

But why? The CIA already knows where many of them are- they literally sponsor them or their allies:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Just google for more: https://www.google.com/search?...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All this because the US Gov wanted to destroy/weaken the Syrian Gov:
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Wrong.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

As the USA has been at war for 222 years out of the 239 years since 1776, for the USA war is business as usual (or just business) - http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Slackers.

Most terror incidents in the US aren't committed by Muslims either, not that there are all that many to begin with. The same can be said for Europe, in which about only 5% of a decreasing number of incidents each year are religious in motive.

Yes, indeed it is shorthand, but there's not a lot of point in saying 'the insanely wealthy tend to have capital abstracted away in just as insanely overleveraged financial instruments and are constantly trying to strike a balance between impressive/risky rates of return, and the danger of default: assuming they won't just be made whole by rich-person socialism, also known as quantitative easing' http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

How about we just call it 'cayman islands' for short?

I don't follow. It appears that when you use the word consequences and I use the word consequences we are talking about different things.

You are correct on both points. Snowden is facing the consequences of his actions, he will be for the rest of his life - he made it clear that he knew that from the start. You see only the legal consequences, and I doubt you see them clearly (whether out of optimism or naivety I don't know).

It's possible Snowden could have just leaked the documents and kept his name out of it. He has discussed the reasons why he did not (it would be the act of a coward, it would have less effect, he'd be unable to influence the carefully vetted and staggered release of the documents). The idea that it was an option seems credible - if you trust some of the what the government reaction has been (we don't know what he took). It's almost certain that there are other, anonymous NSA leakers. So he may have even gotten away with an anonymous dump.

Dear coward

He also leaked tons of information about the unquestionably legal foreign intelligence activities of the US. There's no argument about that. It's a slam-dunk case and any lawyer would advise him to plea bargain for all he can, because he has no chance of winning in court.

Any "lawyer"? No hedging or dodging now. You're the one taking the moral high ground we're all looking to you to set the standards

This is the internet. Did it not occur to you that readers might use other parts of the internet to read opinion of lawyers that don't agree with that? Professor Jonanthan Turley (or is a leading expert in Military and Constitutional law good not enough?), Ben Wizner, Anatoly Kucherena, Robert Tibbo, Albert Ho, Jonathan Man, Baltasar Garzon. Which ones are not lawyers? ,No chance of a fair trial, and not a good idea to face one.

tl;dr You are wrong. You are so full of wrong if you're doing this for free you're a wrong-headed fool.

Bush, Cheney and Obama should man up – and turn themselves in – before Snowden.

Dear coward

He also leaked tons of information about the unquestionably legal foreign intelligence activities of the US. There's no argument about that. It's a slam-dunk case and any lawyer would advise him to plea bargain for all he can, because he has no chance of winning in court.

Any "lawyer"? No hedging or dodging now. You're the one taking the moral high ground we're all looking to you to set the standards

This is the internet. Did it not occur to you that readers might use other parts of the internet to read opinion of lawyers that don't agree with that? Professor Jonanthan Turley (or is a leading expert in Military and Constitutional law good not enough?), Ben Wizner, Anatoly Kucherena, Robert Tibbo, Albert Ho, Jonathan Man, Baltasar Garzon. Which ones are not lawyers? ,No chance of a fair trial, and not a good idea to face one.

tl;dr You are wrong. You are so full of wrong if you're doing this for free you're a wrong-headed fool.

Bush, Cheney and Obama should man up – and turn themselves in – before Snowden.

Or you could concentrate on threats that aren't vanishingly improbable.

"As We Show In This Updated list, You’re Much More Likely to Be Killed By Brain-Eating Parasites, Toddlers, Lightning, Falling Out of Bed, Alcoholism, Food Poisoning, Choking On Your Meal, a Financial Crash, Obesity, Medical Errors or “Autoerotic Asphyxiation” than by Terrorists".
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Yeah, also Putin did this with:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund
And Lynne Stewart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Also, note that, with *all respect to a dead person*, I must said that Nemtsov suddenly became "greatest enemy" of Putin, or "the person Putin fear most", or something like that.
Nemtsov is the typical "Eltsin's era" politicians, now turn-to-oppositions. His allies, like Mikhail Kasyanov, constantly has interviews in Western media, and also, is portrayed as corruption fighter, was known in Russia as: Misha 2 percent

By killing the enemy with only >2% support of population, Putin achieved nothing but:
1) The demonstration with thousands oppositions get more fuels, motives, and *STILL* happened.
2) The report of so-call "Russians soldiers" in Ukraine was still released on Internet. (Putin's mistaken not to kill everyone)
3) Created symbol of "greatest enemy".


Eventually, the allies of Nemtsov do not believe that Putin kill him: http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Joke F Lübbecke of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and 3 scientists from the GEOMAR Research Center for Marine Geosciences poured tracer dye into coastal waters off of Fukushima, and monitored its progress as it traveled to the West Coast of North America, to find out what might really happen.

They have revealed their results in a new paper published by journal Environmental Research Letters.

The paper shows that the West Coast of North American could end up with 10 times more radioactive cesium 137 than the coastal waters off of Japan itself.

That could decimate sea life in the area, in fact one group suggest the sea life die offs seen on the West Coast could be because of Fukushima, if true how much rain water could be contaminated?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

http://enenews.com/scientists-...

yeah, but then they'd have to wait for something bad to happen to "re-justify" it. It sure would look bad for Rand and good for Jeb if that kind of thing happened a week before the NH Primary.

The chances are very good that the last piece of bread, pastry, gravy or soup thickened with flour you have had, would have roundup on it. Thanks to the crops being treated right before harvest.

Many farmers will use roundup a few days before harvest because it dries the wheat out. http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Didn't "go Chernobyl?" Just because the roof didn't blow off the building doesn't mean there hasn't been _severe_ consequences as a result of millions of gallons of sea water being irradiated. It wasn't long before the results of Japan's hubris started washing up on North American shores:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

An estimated 300 metric TONS of contaminated groundwater being spilled straight back into the sea as of 2014:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Consumption restrictions on just about every major foodstock:

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

Sea life being negatively affected, though as Japan still insists on slaughtering whales for "research purposes" (i.e. cutting up a whale, nodding and then selling the meat on the black market):

http://www.naturalnews.com/048...

The bad news goes on, and on, and on...and on. The only part you were right about is Japan's social structure being the problem. Superiors feel themselves kings of their respective industries, subordinates rarely if ever question the orders handed down from up top... As you said, the only reason the fuel rods didn't melt and go straight down the tubes, so to speak, was that the plant manager actually had a sense of morality. Meanwhile the Japanese government continued to play down the severity of the accident, even as the workers that they were sending in to take care of the mess were showing the effects of radiation sickness.

The key to survival in the surveillance world is simple: Never do anything that actually *matters* or is *worthy* of their attention. :D

The problem is that you never know what actually *matters* or is *worthy* of their attention. We've all seen the warnings that the government thinks you are a terrorist if you participate in politics like going to a local political rally, abstain from politics like refusing to register to vote, hell if you do not sell your soil to social media you are considered a potential terrorist now.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Good luck doing absolutely nothing in your life.

Citibank is famous for helping the drug cartels launder money :
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

And Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, Goldman-Sacks, etc. are guilty too :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/paral...
http://www.infowars.com/big-ba...

Getting data on these issues is complicated. If one restricts to the US, then about 10% of all terrorist attacks are Islamic. See http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html. But not only is this restricted to the US, it uses a very broad notion of what counts as terrorism. If one weighs in the US by total deaths, then Islamic terrorism swamps everything else primarily due to 9/11. Worldwide, about 70% of all terrorist attacks are by Sunni Muslims but this varies from year to year. See for example the 2011 report NCTC report http://fas.org/irp/threat/nctc2011.pdf. Again, definitional issues can move this number up or down by a lot.

I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.

Sensors can be, and will be, disabled if the players think it's in their short-term self-interest to do so.

Just see how the workers at Fukushima did that themselves with the tacit endorsement of management.

A far simpler and more effective solution would be to have high school players just play flag football.

Flag football is a version of American football or Canadian football where the basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game (often called "tackle football" for contrast), but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a down.

That would get rid of 90% of serious injuries at least.