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Kids need to do homework (AKA practice) just like any other endeavor.

Eww, talk about dragging out that old mule of an argument. No offense, but you sound like a grumpy curmudgeon.

In other news, research upon research shows that homework is useless until very late in school. Research also suggests that less is more when it comes to learning -- at the very least in dogs, but I wouldn't be surprised the slightest bit, considering how homeschooled children tend to fare, that it also applies to humans.

Oh, and countries where people work less tend to fare higher on a variety of happiness and life quality scales unless I'm mistaking. (I'll let you google citations for that one, as homework, since I worked too much for you already; plus, you'll need to some try to find contrarian results to solve all that cognitive dissonance that's rearing it's ugly head, especially to dislocate the dissonance due to that you might learn something by doing homework after all.)

I estimate that maybe 80% of my adult patients born after 1975 are on some form of antidepressant drug.

Based on what? Your anecdotal evidence? You must be living in a very screwed up area. Plus, what kind of stat is that? 80% of your patients take anti-depressant drugs? Who knew?

The culprit, btw, may just as well have more to do with things such as a fucked up HR and management processes (which started in the 1960s and went full-on mental in the 1980s, what a coincidence), employee 360 evaluations, putting people in dead-end positions to pressure them out of their jobs, wage stagnation, and whatever increases stress levels of individuals and groups in the workplace.

I honestly have no fucking clue of the precise figure or reason. The only thing I do know, based on my own anecdotal evidence, and having been self-employed my whole work life, is that the least I can say is that I do not miss any of what little I experienced it while an intern in my early adulthood. It was all shite..

The next step is to get prescribed an antidepressant to help their bruised self-esteem cope with the fact that they never learned anything in school and are likely to remain unemployable for the rest of their lives.

Personally, I'm a lot less worried than you seem to be. Might you need a shrink to look into your anxiety issues, so he can prescribe you some anti-depressants?

Whether you do or not, and in case you need a yardstick for human adaptability, it literally took a year during WW2 for Europeans (the great majority of which were working in non-farm sectors at the war's onset) to relearn how to -- and actually -- grow potatoe in the face of food rationing. Almost everyone with anything resembling a garden grew some by 1941.

Not to mention, if they're all on anti-depressants and unemployed, someone has to pay for it. At some point the guy who pays will say "Stop!" and said anti-depressants -- the proverbial "be happy with your shit life" drugs if there are any -- will no longer be available to them. What happens then?

As in before, I can only offer you my best guess: when people have nothing to lose, they lose it. A quote from Jean Meslier in a similar context in case you need a colorful perspective: "May all the leading elite and noblemen get hanged and strangled with the bowels of clergymen."

Oh wow Alex being a FOSSie and throwing insults, surprise surprise. Hey here is a video of RMS you'll find enlightening and as a public service allow me to post some facts (with links, which of course you can NEVER provide) to give those that aren't sucking GNUoolaid some information about the product you keep championing blindly like a Moonie following his master.

How about a nice kernel exploit? Or how about the guy that wrote EEEBuntu saying Ubuntu sucks? which considering they are the current savior of Linux kinda tells you something.

How sad was it that even when a bug was spreading through OSX there were writers pointing out that's no reason to torture yourself with Linux , after all even a virus ridden OSX actually runs which is more than most distros LOL! But hey, you can always tell them they can fix it otherwise they don't need that right? LOL! And I noticed you just couldn't fricking resist screaming "Nigger!" which in FOSSie is done by screaming PaidMicrosoftShill, hey you think you could throw in one more FOSSie cliche please? Then I'll have a FOSSie Flush ROFL!

But if you didn't have cliches and your pathetic attempts at insults why then you might have to have an independent thought and realize what everybody knows that even when MSFT put out a universally reviled OS you STILL got curb stomped, does that give you ANY clues? or all they all brainwashed by those black choppers that have been following you? Hell when the Chinese were given the choice of your "free OS" or pirating Windows they chose the latter even if it meant staying on XP and using IE fricking 6, LOL! Does that ring ANY bells? A smart person would say "what are we doing wrong the other guy is doing right?" but a FOSSie who is just like a Moonie in that they blindly follow, instead says "Its all a conspiracy! They are all shills keeping the masses from true salvation!" and then you wonder why we all laugh at you because you DON'T Listen, you DON'T learn, and Torvalds could take a big steaming dump and hand it to you and you'd thank him for his generous gift. So enjoy that fresh bitchslapping loony, enjoy the fact that the world really doesn't care...but I do, I enjoy slapping you, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Key question: when is fast trading too fast?

Trading is too fast when it ceases to mean anything. The rate at which these decisions are being made indicates that it is not going through a human mind. The stock market is about people being able to buy and sell securities that allows businesses to raise additional capital. It was originally a very social thing so much so that it could reflect the mood of the populace's strength and development.

Many ordinary Americans have grown wary of the stock market ...

Right you are! It's no longer about humans making decisions. It no longer reflects social aspects of a sector or country or world market. It's more and more about what algorithms your "opponents" are using and what your algorithms are set at. And that's where it ceases to make sense. I'm okay with some guy waking up at 3am and reading every newspaper in the world and beating me at stock trading. I'm not okay when the name of the game today is who can pay tons of money to have their own servers set up across the street from a major exchange with a special dedicated fiber going straight to them as they pay off said exchange. That's starting to become so abstracted from the initial concept of a stock exchange that these big firms have walled everyone else out.

... which they see as the playground of Google-esque algorithms, powerful banks and secretive, fast-money trading firms.

If only they were Google-esque algorithms, they'd at least be innovative. SNAFUs have shown they're far from complex and often so stupid they loose hundreds of millions. But, yeah, who in their right mind would play a game like that?

What the algorithms are buying and selling no longer make any sense, the turn around is so insanely quick on these trades that there is no point at which a normal human can say "Oh, that algorithm thinks that Microsoft stock is going up and will hold it for some amount of time." No, instead what's going on is someone put out a big pre-order for Microsoft stock and so the HFT guys are buying stocks at a lower price than that only to turn over and dump them almost instantly as the order actually comes through netting fractions of a penny.

I just read this Wired article a few days ago:
Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City's Digital Divide
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/google-fiber-digital-divide/

Basically, the signup for Google Fiber was split along the line dividing historically white and black neighborhoods.

But Liimatta [who runs a Kansas City nonprofit that works to bring broadband access to low-income residents] says the pre-registration process itself set a high bar for those already on the wrong side of the digital divide. To pre-register, residents needed to be willing to pony up $10. They also needed a credit or debit card, a Google Wallet account, and a Gmail account, which are harder to come by if you never had internet access in the first place. "Many don't even have bank accounts," Liimatta says. "That's why there are so many check-cashing places out there."

The fact that they managed to get these neighborhoods qualified in 3 days says a lot about the lengths Google went to.
The Wired article talks about Google sending out teams to knock on doors and expedite signups for families that don't have internet already.

First, it's Trapwire. But that's a good question. I don't suppose they will offer a formal answer any time soon, so I will assume it's all connected -- and then some. You might also note that the DHS is quite involved with this NGI thing too. It''s an epic party for the voyeuristic elite and the citizenry aint invited -- a Closed Circuit (Sneak Preview) Authoritarian Freak Feature Presentation.

PS: Although you likely did not intend to refer to Tripwire -- a company involved in IT security -- in regard to the Strafor leaks, it is indeed Trapwire .

All you have to answer is does it work (better than placebos in a double-blind trial)?

This seems terribly unfair, given the increasing effectiveness of placebos over time.

Seriously. http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all Given that particular standard, current drugs be more effective than they would have in the past in order to successfully pass clinical trials.

Why does that matter?
Do you think they are monitoring the access point?

MAC addresses don't get sent beyond the broadcast domain.

Why wouldn't they?
I doubt that open access points at random residences are being monitored but I'd bet every Starbucks, McDonalds, and airport that offers free wifi are being monitored and MAC addresses being stored. Most of these are run by monolithic organizations, one of the largest being one that allowed three letter government agencies to snoop on their customers.
Firewall logs typically show DHCP negotiation along with requesting MAC addresses.

This is nonsense. iTunes stores all of your music directly in the filesystem in a hierarchical directory of files. On Mac OS X it goes ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/[Artist]/[Album]/[Tracks]

Windows is the same except the root of the hierarchy is your "My Music" (or whatever it's called now) folder in you User folder.

Moving YOUR OWN PURCHASED MUSIC that is DRM free is as simple as copying it from that location in the file system hierarchy to whatever "non-Apple device" you'd like. Provided that device can play AAC files (which it should be able to do), you're done. Not sure why that would be "time consuming and unfriendly." If it doesn't support AAC, you can directly convert to MP3 with a umber of freely available programs, including iTunes itself. Complaints against the use of AAC aside, iTunes does nothing to hinder your use of purchased music any longer. As a bonus, any track that you purchased from iTunes in the past that contained DRM and is still available on the iTunes Store can be redownloaded free of charge. Just delete the track from you computer and you'll be eligible to redownload it from "iTunes in the Cloud" in 256 kbps non-DRM'ed AAC. (Note that I didn't say iTunes Match which does cost money but has the added advantage of letting you download any song in your music library that also exists in the iTunes store in 256 kbps non-DRM'ed AAC no matter where you originally got it from.)

There are no limits on the number of devices that DRM free tracks (read: all tracks since Apple moved away from DRM years ago) can be synced to as there's no DRM to track it any longer. You can even find iTunes AAC tracks on file sharing websites and place them on your iPod/iPhone/whatever other device you want without any extra effort.

Apple's by no means perfect. Their refusal to allow the drone strike tracking app into the App Store in particular is a recent example of a decision that they have made that I'm incredibly unhappy with and that makes me question their ability to deny apps based on nothing more than their own opinion, but they're not nearly as bad (or "draconian") as so many on Slashdot make them out to be. Perhaps if people would do a bit of research or *gasp* actually try things out (especially free things like iTunes) before making blanket incorrect statements, a lot of the unnecessary (and none of the necessary) Apple bashing could stop.

(and nevermind that they are not just refusing to allow malware, but also any political cartoons,

Presumably you mean "have refused in the past to allow political cartoons" (the app in question was the one the controversy about political cartoon apps was about).

That doesn't mean other apps that might be considered politically controversial aren't banned from the App Store, but they clearly are allowing the political cartoon app in question, along with other political cartoon apps, such as the msnbc.com Conservative Cartoons and msnbc.com Liberal Cartoons apps.

and that developers are at Apple's mercy).

Yes, if you're developing for iOS, you either have to have Apple find your app acceptable according to their standards or limit yourself to jailbroken machines.

I've tried buying "DRM free" ebooks from Amazon and could not figure out how to do it easily without a Kindle (you don't seem to ever got prompted to download a file; I assume it is all back-end device specific magic tied to your account...?)

There are desktop applications for Windows and Mac, e.g.:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc/download

Once this is installed and registered to your Amazon account, any purchased ebook files are automatically downloaded to a directory on your computer when the application is started, or you request a sync. From there (if DRM free) you can convert the files to some other format like epub, using a tool like Calibre:

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Even if the files do have DRM, there are unofficial Calibre plugins to disinfect them seamlessly, as this l33t h4x0r site describes:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-e-books-and-others/

Indeed, they might not care at all, but they act like they may give an iota of a crap.

The debacle with Google collecting Publicly Open Unencrypted WiFi Communications was controversial, and even intentional *gasp*, yet:

But, the commission said, Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data was flowing, unencrypted, over open radio waves.

I concede this means little regarding moral privacy, I mean they did it anyway, right?!

It was a wake-up call to people who are too ignorant or lazy to secure their networks. People need to learn, good for Them!

It falls in line with a campaign to raise awareness about what information you put out there.

Apple hired the guy who developed the Jailbrake version of Notification Center to write the offical Apple version.

That's a reasonable way to turn one of your enemies into a friend, depriving the rest of your enemies from his talent if nothing else.

And you think Apple *dislikes* Jailbreakers?

There's no "think" in it, we know because they told us. Back in the day, Apple had openly claimed that jailbreaking is a DMCA violation and, as such, a crime. It heavily resisted the government regulation that made an exception for jailbreaking phones.

Besides, one simple piece of evidence is to note what Apple doesn't do. And that's any official route to jailbreak one's device to sideload software on it, like stock Android has. No, it's all locked down tight, so that you need to look for vulnerabilities in iOS to jailbreak - and Apple, naturally, patches them out, so it's harder for every new version of iOS. It took what, two months for someone to come up with untethered jailbreak for iOS 5?

Apple hired the guy who developed the Jailbrake version of Notification Center to write the offical Apple version.

That's a reasonable way to turn one of your enemies into a friend, depriving the rest of your enemies from his talent if nothing else.

And you think Apple *dislikes* Jailbreakers?

There's no "think" in it, we know because they told us. Back in the day, Apple had openly claimed that jailbreaking is a DMCA violation and, as such, a crime. It heavily resisted the government regulation that made an exception for jailbreaking phones.

Besides, one simple piece of evidence is to note what Apple doesn't do. And that's any official route to jailbreak one's device to sideload software on it, like stock Android has. No, it's all locked down tight, so that you need to look for vulnerabilities in iOS to jailbreak - and Apple, naturally, patches them out, so it's harder for every new version of iOS. It took what, two months for someone to come up with untethered jailbreak for iOS 5?

Why increase the wall size when you can simply produce a can with less pressure? Essentially that would lead to comparable results considering that the pressure difference between inside and outside the can would stay equal.

My guess... it's not about the pressure, it's about the volume of propellant that is able to displace/move/spray the entire content of the can.

Of course, one should probably first find out how the rest of the stuff reacts when subjected to zero bar air pressure instead of one.

Some info - mineral oil, probably won't evaporate. The rest (alkans fraction, CO2 propellant)... a low vapor pressure (the alkans fraction) and a somehow directional spray (assumed to hit an obstacle) would saturate a volume quite quick (even if not enclosed).
But... the temperature of the surface is the biggest problem - the most volatile is the CO2 propellant and -57C/-109F will surely cease to be a gas. The rest of the components will most probable make a jelly at the contact with the ISS surface.

The first thing we learn in security training is that if you don't want your data found,
make sure there's no such data to begin with. If you read nothing else, read the paragraph
following this one, and the last one.

People's personal devices are being used to spy on them on a regular basis. In the US it
was recently rules your smartphone CAN and WILL be used against you without a warrant.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/federal-court-rules-cops-can-warantlessly-track-suspects-via-cellphone/

In Russia it was recently rules you don't need a smartphone to go to jail for "free expression"
only in a church.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-17/world/world_europe_russia-pussy-riot-trial_1_band-members-nadezhda-tolokonnikova-russian-court

Now that we've covered the facts, more facts are that your smartphone DOES send information
about you SOMEWHERE. Be it google (standard US Android device, data sending enabled) or
Mother Russia (Russian version of Android device) if you have GPS enabled and outbound data
sending enabled... someone out there has access to the data, whether or not they keep it,
catalog it, database[ify] it, store it, or analyze it [later].

If you want your information to be kept private... KEEP IT PRIVATE. That means don't use a device that
sends that information ANYWHERE ELSE. Even if you think it "shouldn't" send it somewhere it MAY.
MAY is a percentage between 0 and 100% that if you can't afford it should be ALWAYS zero.

GPS -there are plenty of devices that will plot your location, show you a route to a destination, and have
no capability for transmission.

PHONE -there are plenty of phones that WILL GIVE YOUR LOCATION TO CELL COMPANIES WHICH
IN THE USE WILL GIVE THEM to law enforcement without a warrant.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/warrantless-gps-phone-tracking/
Feel free to have your phone either OFF or covered in a Faraday cage (aluminum foil works) until you must use it.

DATA -there is no way you can use data [which requires bidirectional packet flow] without giving away your
location unless you are using a local WiFi hotspot.

In short... in summary... put your smartphone into airplane-mode. Turn on wifi-only (android phones will allow
you to enable WiFi in airplane-mode but will leave other radios disabled). Use local hotspots. Don't install
applications that require "access to the physical device such as speaker or microphone or location-based information"... ...and welcome to the 21st Century.

E

The guy selling the only accepted fart apps is the App Store Director:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/apple-fart-apps/all/1

You are missing the point. The point isn't to work, the point is to provide goods and services. Make those goods and services cheap enough, it becomes cheaper to provide them for free than to charge for them. This is the system of economics described in Star Trek, when the Replicator made goods totally free. At that point, you don't NEED a job, unless you aspire to some greater purpose. You can get a job to make money to buy land, if you would be a landowner, or for rent, if you would live in a highly populous place like the Earth (one could replicate a space habitat/starship for practically nothing, and locate to an unclaimed planet if desired), but you don't HAVE to, just like you don't have to subscribe to any form of pay content on the internet, and can lead a rich online life for free.

And your ideas about competing with immortals for jobs are just ludicrous, even in todays world. It's like saying that teenagers compete with middle aged men for burger flipping positions. They don't.

Also, pedophilia is illegal based on the presupposition that a child is unable to give consent for a sexual act. That is a legal definition, and is only tenuously connected to reality. The truth is that it is illegal because children are all seen as vulnerable, and it is assumed that sex will harm them physically and developmentally. This is clearly not the case with immortals, as the brain is no longer very plastic by the age of majority, and their bodies are certainly as developed as they are going to get. It won't be any different than Hugh Hefner's relationships (minus the adult diapers), which are perfectly legal, even though they involve people who are only incrementally not children, and a guy old enough to be their great grandfather.

The hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, and Y2K were all real problems that were solved because we did something about them.

I did NOT deny they were real problems. I denied that they were catastrophic (as the media played at the time). Besides, have you even read the link I cited?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot

I just read it, and I don't see a serious argument there - except that we should not panic and we should try to find reasonable ways to fight problems.

The main argument seems to be that because there have been many predictions of huge catastrophe that did not come true then no such predictions will ever come true.

I know that at least the very worst predictions of AGW related catastrophes are quite exaggerated - and I know that even smart people tend to slip into exaggerating these kind of things (as well as downplay too), it's in human nature.
However, do I see any proof that AGW will have only moderate economical (slash ecological) impact? No - no matter how many exaggerated cases for some other environmental issues there have been in the past.

Also, the reason why I dismiss all religious end-of-the-world scenarios - like my birthday this year - is not because there have been so many in the past and they too failed to come true. I dismiss them because they make no sense.

In short: AGW is one more environmental problem that we face, and in the end it will be overcome with a low to moderate impact to the economy, just like all the others. There will be no end of civilization, no mass famines, no apocalypse.

And how do you actually prove this claim? Or will we just wait and see which one of us gets to say "I told you so" (mind you, I don't claim to know how huge or "moderate" the effect will actually be, but I'm more concerned - and yes, afraid - than I've been of other things before)?

You must be joking....

Patent 915 is the pinch-to-zoom patent that Samsung was found to have violated.

It most certainly is not:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2012/07/915patent.pdf

Patent 7,812,826 looks far more like pinch to zoom:

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/apple-ptz-patent.pdf

See also:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/hold-maybe-apple-doesnt-own-pinch-zoom-after-all

and

http://techpinions.com/pinch-to-zoom-and-rounded-rectangles-what-the-jury-didnt-say/9465

It's frustrating to see so many commenters and articles getting this wrong.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/aclu-assails-10/

one word Brahmos brahmos 2 can do mach 7 http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/hypersonic/

Check this out: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/five-disk-floppy-raid-4mb-of-blistering-fast-storage/

For better or worse, this is a new battlespace, and DOD is talking about it

As a counter example I offer up the Republican members of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/house-committee-science/

I think the time has finally arrived for the power of the pyramid. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2011/09/TheOffice_ThePyramid_ss.jpg

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/04/coming-soon-to/

"Coming Soon To All 50 States: The 60 mpg VW Jetta Diesel"

That was in 2008.

A motorcycle and other small cars can't always take advantage of the advances that are available in larger engines.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/lulzsec-snitch/
If you can find a group to 'join' the Feds have joined long long ago.
"has been working undercover for the feds since the FBI arrested him without fanfare last June"
Like a protester in East Germany you will be surrounded by informants, deep undercover LEO and the added fun of vigilantes (alone/private/gov funded)
The problem is your looking at 28 years and usually have an hour with your lawyer to take the ~90% conviction court option or make a long list of your friends and become an informant....
From a developer perspective its like your boss was in talks with a big brand and sold out months ago.
Your ideas where sold long ago.

The hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, and Y2K were all real problems that were solved because we did something about them.

I did NOT deny they were real problems. I denied that they were catastrophic (as the media played at the time). Besides, have you even read the link I cited?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot

The people saying the Apocalypse is coming on specific dates are loons who have NOTHING to do with the scientists predicting a man-made, dramatic shift in the climate.

So what? Who said I was criticizing scientists? I am criticizing the media, politicians, and environmentalists. But yes, sometimes scientists are alarmists too. They are flawed humans.
Scientist overplays the impact of his research and asks for more grant money. Film at 11.

But you know all that. You're just using a cynical, insulting debating tactic to shift the blame to the people trying to prevent the problem, and away from those who are making it worse.

Cheap ad hominem.

In short: AGW is one more environmental problem that we face, and in the end it will be overcome with a low to moderate impact to the economy, just like all the others. There will be no end of civilization, no mass famines, no apocalypse.

Yes, AGW is a serious problem, and denying it makes it costlier. However, the world is not ending. Green(tm) energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. It is predicted that solar will reach residential grid parity as early as 2015*. Not to mention next-generation nuclear. And, in a few decades, nuclear fusion. And if reducing emissions is not enough, we can cool Earth by increasing solar reflection** or by sequestering carbon*** or through some other action.

Also, how can people have such ridiculous short memories? The world was supposed to end in the 1970s though mass famines caused by overpopulation. Then the doomsayers changed their minds and predicted water wars. Then peak oil. Then the ozone layer hole (remember that?). Then acid rain. Then we very closely avoided Armageddon in 2000, due to the Y2K bug. Remember that? The mass societal disruptions, the nuclear wars that would be started because some digital nuclear weapon system misfired due to Y2K? Phew, that was close! But we survived.

Recently, we survived the Apocalypse in 21 May 2011, then 21 October 2011.

Now, of course, all the headlines are about climate change.

Do you know what is the single greatest cause of climate-change denialism? You. Doomsayers. Because you predict the Apocalypse every 5 years, people stopped listening.

Want to help the environment? Start talking straight.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
** http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/putting-the-breaks-on-climate-change-with-diamonds/
*** http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/25/2359234/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic

It seems that quantum computing has consistently been viewed as harder than it really is, judging by the ever-decreasing timescales between breakthroughs. Judging from the history of cryptography, and the military value of being able to break RSA, it's not unreasonable to expect that the NSA may have been trying to build such a chip for some time and could potentially have succeeded.

Some months ago James Bamford, who is the premier chronicler of the NSA and has a history of being given accurate leaks, claimed the NSA had made a "huge breakthrough" in its ability to break codes - and that the datacenter they're currently building is a part of the solution. The NSA denied everything of course. But if academics are now able to build a working implementation of Shors algorithm for small numbers, that strongly implies that a focussed team with practically infinite budgets could have already succeeded in building one that can handle crypto-sized numbers.

hahahahahaha... $1.9 million is rich now? Wikileaks don't pay their employees or for their datacentres?

Assange gets most of the Wikileaks salary budget paid to him. Wikileaks relies on volunteers. They have been reported to receive much free or reduced cost hosting over the years.

Julian Assange paid two thirds of WikiLeaks salary budget

. . . Mr Assange was paid $86,000 (£56,000) in salary in 2010 – two-thirds of the total WikiLeaks salary budget of $130,000 (£84,000).

WikiLeaks Spending Rises Dramatically to $500,000 - By Kim ZetterEmail Author12.13.10 4:47 PM

WikiLeaks’ expenditures have risen dramatically from a paltry $38,000 between October 2009 and July 2010 to more than $495,000 in the last five months, according to a foundation that manages most of the organization’s donations.

The jump in expenses appears to be due to salaries the organization recently began paying staff members. WikiLeaks said in the past — before it began paying salaries — that its operating costs run only about $200,000 annually.

“Personnel costs are a relatively recent development,” Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Berlin-based Wau Holland Foundation, told the German newspaper Der Spiegel. “WikiLeaks now pays some of its employees salaries. The staff members give the organization an invoice, and WikiLeaks hands them over to us.”

It’s not known how much WikiLeaks staffers earn, or how many staffers receive salaries — the organization is said to have only two or three staff members, but hundreds of volunteers. This information should be detailed in a financial report the Wau Holland Foundation is expected to release before the end of the year.

The report, which was supposed to be released in August, will be the first public disclosure of WikiLeaks’ finances. The organization, and founder Julian Assange, have been criticized by supporters and others for failing to provide a transparent accounting of donations and expenses. According to The Telegraph, the Wau Holland Foundation has recently been issued two official warnings by charity regulators in Germany for failing to file the required financial reports.

Linking WSJ just shows how much you're willing to lap up the Murdoch propaganda.

It has long been known that the most effective "propaganda" is the truth, or at least factual information. You seem to be short of that and seem to be relying on snark which isn't really a substitute, is it?

You think Wikileaks is a big money-making venture?

It's funny how people believe anyone whose name is in the news must be rich. "Hey, did you see that guy who got a million hits on his YouTube video of his dog who skateboards? That guy must be like a millionaire or something!"

WikiLeaks Donations Topped $1.9 Million in 2010

Wikileaks has been criticized for their lack of transparency in handling of donations.

The controversial website WikiLeaks, which argues the cause of openness in leaking classified or confidential documents, has set up an elaborate global financial network to protect a big secret of its own—its funding. . . .

The linchpin of WikiLeaks's financial network is Germany's Wau Holland Foundation. WikiLeaks encourages donors to contribute to its account at the foundation, which under German law can't publicly disclose the names of donors. Because the foundation "is not an operational concern, it can't be sued for doing anything. So the donors' money is protected, in other words, from lawsuits," Mr. Assange said.

The German foundation is only one piece of the WikiLeaks network.

"We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden," Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that "act as a front" for the website, he said. He declined to give their names, saying they could "lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities."

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks gets about half its money from modest donations processed by its website, and the other half from "personal contacts," including "people with some millions who approach us and say 'I'll give you 60,000 or 10,000,' " he said, without specifying a currency. -- How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret

No Apple has patented a particular rectangle of a particular size.

Nope, have a look at the actual patent. I quote: "The claimed surface of the ectronic device is illustrated with the color designation for the color black. [Accompanied by an image of an iPhone with its face coloured.] The electronicdevice is not limited to the scale shown herein. Asindicated in the title, the Article of manufacture to which the ornamental design has been applied is an electronic device, mediaplayer (e.g.,music, video and/or gameplayer), media storage device, a personal digital assistant, a communication device (e.g., cellularphone), a noveltyitem or toy." So that would be any electronic device cannot be a have rounded corners.

Oh, so now you are asserting an imaginary patent on every conceivable pointing device, far more broad than any pointing device patent (and there have been quite a few) claimed by anybody?

I proposed a hypothetical scenario where someone holds a patent to the input solution that outmost majority of the desktop users use, yes. I didn't say anybody does, just what would happen if someone did.

And yet Apple's current laptops completely lack a right-click button. But to the uncreative, the way they are accustomed to can seem like the One True Way.

Totally digging how you spout ad-hominems. Too bad it only speaks of your human qualities. And I didn't say "one true way" either, just that it is the most productive/comfortable. There tend to be multiple solutions to a single issue all the time, but they are never equal so there's also always one that is better than the rest. Being forced to use inferior solutions makes exactly whom happier?

Blatantly false. As the jury clearly recognized, many of Samsung's devices were cosmetically similar to the iPhone [peanutbuttereggdirt.com] in a way the Palm phones never were.

Doesn't look so earth-shatteringly different to me. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2011/01/webOS-22.png http://c2499022.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Samsung-Galaxy-S2-Android-4-ICS.jpg

Nowhere in the trial was it claimed that Android itself is a cheap iOS copy.

Double-tapping, bouncing back at the end of a list and finding phone numbers in text messages are all Android features, not something that Samsung added on it's own. And those features were found offending. Am I missing something?

I take it you haven't used recent Blackberry models, which have evolved quite a bit since 2008. I still know quite a few people who prefer the Blackberry over the iPhone. Do you really think that it will be a good thing for the consumer if Blackberry is driven out of business and replaced by iClones?

Our company just scrapped the entire Blackberry program we had going, because they are pretty much garbage. If Blackberry goes out of business, it will be because other customers also found them lacking. In the end the customers decide, so for them, whatever happens will be good.

Yet prior to the release of the iPhone, it was conventional wisdom that it was impossible to create a virtual keyboard that would be popular with consumers.

Quite the contrary, my GPS systems had virtual keyboards even before. Not on phones, though.

But there actually still are quite a few people who prefer the kind of well-crafted physical keyboard that the Blackberry devices offer.

And if there are enough of those people, then Blackberry doesn't have to worry about going out of business. Good for them. I still think it's a waste of space on the phone.

Do you really think it will be a good thing for the consumer if this sort of device becomes unavailable to consumers because everybody is playing follow-the-leader with Apple?

If there are people willing to pay for that feature, someone will keep making those phones. Judging by how Blackberry is doing though, apparently not a lot of people need that feature. I don't think it's about following Apple; it's catering to what the masses need. If they want full touchscreen with virtual keyboard, everyone will make that - because that's where money is.

This is kind of ridiculous don't you think, considering that any conce

That doesn't matter. The jury found that this phone infringes on this patent. No matter what kind of UI it uses, nobody is allowed to make a phone which resembles the iPhone drawing more than the Samsung does and nobody will want to test the boarders.
Yes, it really is that bad. Apple has successfully patented the rectangle and defended it in court.
This is a truly awful, awful result.

The problem, as I understand it, is that the witnesses had compelling reasons to make their testimonies whether they were true or not. They themselves had been caught through the drug tests and were offered leniency for testifying against Armstrong.

Faced with threats of perjury, former teammates caved. Tyler Hamilton (who had passed many doping tests before failing one at the end of his career), Floyd Landis and others reportedly testified. They admitted they’d been doping all along. The U.S. attorney ultimately declined to press charges, but USADA took the evidence and issued its own charges. Because the standard in these cases is merely “comfortable satisfaction,” not “beyond reasonable doubt,” there was no reasonable doubt that Armstrong was doomed.

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/08/lance-armstrong-doping-allegations/

To me, it doesn't matter if they're telling the truth or not. The fact that the investigative process can compel them to lie makes their testimony worthless. A human witness is hardly a reliable thing. Neither are drug tests, but at least they're objective (whether there's a false positive/negative or not). The method of this investigation is all too similar to McCarthy's witch hunt. I'm not saying Armstrong is innocent, but I think he's owed the assumption until there's concrete evidence. I wouldn't call his accusers liars, but I do recognize their obvious conflict of interests.

As a sports fan, it saddens me to say this, but advancements in medical science may ruin sports. It's getting harder and harder to figure out where to draw the line between what type of physical enhancements are legitimate and which one's aren't. Which ones should be and shouldn't be. This is probably why I like collegiate sports so much better than professional ones. With college teams, one gets the sense that they're watching actual people.

As a new agency they are very sensitive to their public image.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/employees/
A lot of people where rushed into deep gov positions. A vast uniformed new group not connected to older US departments was created and needed staff.
The reports of corruption and criminality just wont stop due the the need for rapid growth and "quality" of basic background database searches.
A criminal background check in the US is hard to do due to older files in each State - you have to find family, friends, schools, past work, local LEO.
Real people have to go down the applicants life story, in real life. Unless your wanting to work for the DIA, NSA, CIA dont expect any kind of diligence.
A cleared person with a laptop making sure the applicant was a US citizen and not 'wanted' vs the expected longer, deep criminal history requests.
Its not really fear, its rush and fun of raw power - think in terms of the new "Freeze" command as obedience training.
Now its your t shirt - next is more of an East German experience - what would the public "take" in the 1945-50's?
No unique tshirt for you - you can take the train right? Drive? Bus? The Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response ( VIPR) teams are moving around more
transport hubs in the USA. - well beyond the "suspicionless search and seizures" within 100 miles of the border.
Give it 10-20 years and it will all be normal - you will be living in a version 2.0 of East Germany - done better this time.

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Hereâ(TM)s What Happened, late 2009.

I read a wired magazine article on this same topic a few years ago.

http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

Been done.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070122-ball-lightning_2.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y72nrlNnXAk

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/great-balls-of/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5px6rCqArQ&feature=gv#!

Besides, there is some real doubt that Tesla ever created anything other than large sparks creating molten metal balls, because in that day, there were few very large DC generators or batteries available, (but Tesla had them) and a localized large spark could have easily been described as ball lightning by uneducated people.

Impossible? I don't think you know who you're talking about. Software assist for the win!

Grandma, do you have robot insurance?

Another interesting development is that Judge Koh "unexpectedly reversed a lower magistrate's finding and decided to change the jury instructions with regards to the destruction of evidence from Samsung, changing the wording to imply that both Apple and Samsung should be presumed to have destroyed email evidence that could be relevant to the case." and "Despite the fact that there is no evidence that Apple has withheld any such emails, Koh's decision opts to give similar notices about both companies to the jury rather than instruct them on Samsung's deletions only. Koh could have also opted to not mention the evidence spoilation entirely, but chose instead to infer that Apple must also have deleted emails potentially favorable to Samsung's case. Had the previous instructions stood, it would have painted Samsung as more untrustworthy -- a key point in Apple's barrage of evidence."

With Apple and Samsung CEOs holding last-minute talks, it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

All this just so Bubba Joe can be stopped from getting high after work down at the power plant.

Well, that and the lucrative asset forfeiture laws. And power hungry sociopath politicians. And power hungry sociopath local police chiefs who love stroking their boners while arming up a military grade (well, in hardware if not training and mindset) SWAT teams for their town of 20,000.

Keep voting for BigGummint[tm], though, kids. I'm sure it'll all work perfectly once you finally get the just the right folks into just the right place. Any day now. Maybe after just one more Most Important Election Of All Time. Or two.

I'll just leave this here: http://www.leap.cc/

Additional citations:

http://www.mcsalaw.com/html/SIU_CR.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/carkey.html

In fact I found an entire earlier slashdot disussion about this very issue.
http://slashdot.org/story/06/07/31/1549238/rfid-enabled-vehicles-pinch-my-ride

On your point of car thieves simply using tow trucks, I couldn't agree more. After all why bother picking locks when you can just tow the whole car? I would imagine most car theft is done this way anymore. My point was on the car keys being used as an excuse to deny claims, and that the issue was starting to get forced into the open.

Here is a video of such a car theft in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DshK4ZXPU9o

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

Thank you, that's exactly the only-reading-the-headlines garbage I was expecting you to come up with.

So let's look at the facts, shall we? I already linked you to Apple's quarterly filings.

The CNet article you cited in which Microsoft promised $150,000,000 was published August 6, 1997.
Apple's quarterly report Filed 08/11/97 for the Period Ending 06/27/97 showed that Apple had $1,018,000,000 on hand.

Look at those numbers again:
150,000,000 - Amount Apple got from MS
1,018,000,000 -- Amount Apple had sitting in the bank

The number on top is less than 15% of the number on the bottom. That's not rescuing a company from bankruptcy. That's a bad tip at a restaurant.

You may want to review this important lesson on honestly representing the difference between millions and billions.

Of course, Steve Jobs' ego knew no bounds, and he loved to say that he single-handedly rescued Apple with Bill Gates' money. But that's just not true. The benefit Apple got from BillG's pocket change was that it satisfied Microsoft that Apple was no longer a threat, so that Apple could build itself up to where it was a threat.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

See here.... Even without the photo, interesting article. Yes I did read the article ;)

Wired has this neat article... http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/curiositys-secrets/

It took 5 years for the first malicious app to slip past Apple, and even then, the nature of how it all works meant Apple could remove it from everyone's iPhone with a single update.

Erm, wrong.

They've been able to sneak things passed the GateKeeper for at least 2 years now.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashlight-app-with-hidden-tethering-mode/

This is just the one we know of.