Slashdot Mirror

You're going around saying the sky is green, despite more proof to the contrary than has ever been amassed for any other principle. Evolution is better understood than gravity and more certain.

To begin to remedy your deep ignorance, examine how algae and fungi (especially slime molds) can exist as both unicellular and multicellular entities, and switch between these states. See also this.

The first step here is admitting that you have been wrong in thought for a very long time, and doing penance by rectifying your ignorance, and setting aside fairy tales in exchange for facts.

Challenge accepted.

http://www.researchoninnovation.org/WordPress/?p=9
http://archive.mises.org/7880/patents-and-innovation/
http://archive.mises.org/10217/yet-another-study-finds-patents-do-not-encourage-innovation/
http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/do-patents-increase-innovation/
I didn't really even cherry pick; I just did a Google search for "innovation in countries without patent laws" and a whole slew of studies came up.

It appears that many of the studies have shown that heavy patents don't necessarily increase innovation, but rather direct the types of innovations that are made within an industry (perhaps: innovate for a long term lock-in, not for shorter term or wide-spread improvements).

/shrug I think patents have their place, but I can't fathom a reason why a company would need more than a decade of locked-in profits after a product is released to market. I can maybe see the case for the very, very expensive and time consuming process of drug manufacturing, but in those types of special cases, shouldn't the patent be proportionate to the time invested, and not a broad "You just won the cancer game for the next 63 years!" certificate?

done:
http://uppitywoman08.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/bathroom-e1343297841383.jpg

http://escape.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/safety-card-fight-club.jpg and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes?qt0479098

Here's a reconstruction of the last 1400+ years. On that graph we are now below 4 million. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/1400-years-of-arctic-ice/

You know what is the far most biggest problem to the environment? It is not AGW, it is the exponential population growth. There are already several billion too many of us.

There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.

The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]

The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]

Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].

And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.

Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]

African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.

Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.

Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments, to restrict fertility in Africa.

1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/
10 : https://www.google.co

Wow. The alarmists must have saved up a bunch of mod points :)

As for the cites of the ozone layer (which surprise, continues to fluctuate cyclicly no matter what the CFC emission rate is - http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Crista.html), acid rain (which, surprise, was another overhyped alarm - http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/the-acid-rain-scam/), and the Y2K bug (which frankly, given the ability of average cobol coders to do anything right on time, was certainly overhyped), well, let's just say those hardly prove persuasive :)

The source of the problem here, though, is that when people have beliefs that have no falsifications, you simply cannot have rational discourse. Once you've accepted Jesus into your heart, and can interpret *any* event in terms of divine providence, you're beyond logic and reason. Once you've accepted CO2 and humanity is evil, and can interpret *any* event in terms of the damage humanity is doing to the world around us, you're beyond logic and reason.

What we need is a return to the basics of the scientific method - the good ol' Popperian falsifiable hypothesis statement. The Feynman-like skepticism of our own deeply held beliefs.

You may find this interesting http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/perpetual-motion-of-the-21st-century/

Alarmists have been predicting an ice free arctic for at least half a century already. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, eh?

And before the iPhone, cell phones had lots of buttons, and everybody believed they were essential--until Apple released a one-button phone.

Yeah just look at all the buttons on the LG Prada phone
http://macdailynews.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/070116_lg_iphone.jpg

The first comment on that article is freaking hilarious in hindsight:

HmmI have to imagine it’s going to be tough for LG to win this one, simply because the entire industry is probably going to move to handsets that look more or less like this–an iPod sized brick with a touchscreen. From that perspective, they’re all going to look more or less the same.
Read more at http://macdailynews.com/2007/01/16/lg_undecided_about_lawsuit_against_iphone_over_similarities/#4wgueCTToLIIggzI.99

Is that kinda like trusting a distro like Arch to begin with, which has never considered security anything remotely near a high priority? Golly, I sure want to trust a distro that considered ignoring something as insignificant as package signing with my data.

Not Sure gets my vote. http://yellowbananasuit.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/idiocracy21.jpg

Remember the Mozilla Prism project that let you put a website in its own application?
Today Mozilla is testing the new integrated webapps on android, hop in and play with them :)
You can also test them on Nightly builds of desktop Firefox by going to a test marketplace

Never forget the Church's greatest achievement.

Once it has him in its power Sweden can "temporarily" surrender him to US when the time is right, with or without UK authorization especially if he is a convicted criminal there. It will be much easier to sway public opinion when he is a convicted sexual offender.

I don't know how to get this through your thick skull any more clearly: NO THEY FUCKING CANNOT.

Temporary Surrender can ONLY happen in the context of an *extradition request*. The US MUST submit an extradition request for this to even be an option. Read the text of the treaty, specifically, Article VI. Go ahead, I'll wait. In case you're too dimwitted to know how to click a link, I'll even reproduce the *entirety* of Article VI from the US-Sweden extradition treaty for you here:

If the extradition request is granted in the case of a person who is being prosecuted or is serving a sentence in the territory of the requested State for a different offense, the requested State may:
1) defer the surrender of the person sought until the conclusion of the proceedings against that person, or the full execution of any punishment that may be or may have been imposed; or
2) temporarily surrender the person sought to the requesting State for the purpose of prosecution. The person so surrendered shall be kept in custody while in the requesting State and shall be returned to the requested State after the conclusion of the proceedings against that person in accordance with conditions to be determined by mutual agreement [*7] of the Contracting States.

"Temporary surrender" may ONLY happen "if the extradition request is granted." THERE MUST BE an extradition request from the US for any 'temporary surrender' to happen. Now, what would the US request extradition for from Sweden? Riiiiiiight - the same thing they'd request extradition for from the UK, that is, "espionage." As you've correctly noted, the UK would almost certainly refuse that extradition request from the US, and Sweden would do the same thing because they specifically exempt "military and political crimes" as extraditable offenses in the original 1963 treaty (which the 1984 treaty, implementing 'temporary surrender', amends) - see Article V of the 1963 treaty between the US and Sweden.

And frankly, since you're so keen to suggest that all three parties are happy to disregard international law and do whatever they damn well please, then all the worry about "legal challenges" is moot, because if there really is such callous disregard for that law, then the US will simply fly in and kidnap him whenever and wherever they damn well please, regardless of any laws to the contrary. So why would they go through this incredibly convoluted conspiracy to get their hands on him in a manner that is completely illegal, when it's a lot easier to simply make him disappear? Remember - Sweden and the UK would have to be *willing conspirators in violating their own laws* to perform any sort of "sham extradition" - and they don't benefit from colluding in that way, at all. They would, in fact, be working to their own detriment.

Do you see why your little conspiracy theory holds no water yet? Either these countries are bound by the rule of law - in which case, their laws specifically PROHIBIT them from extraditing him to the US via "temporary surrender," or they refuse to be bound by any law that's inconvenient for him, in which case he will be kidnapped at gunpoint whenever it's convenient for the US to collect him, from wherever he happens to be sitting, and all these legal justifications are simple posturing to give him an excuse to dodge facing the charges that await him in Sweden.

What it boils down to is this, "fredprado" - my country may be corrupt to the bone as you sa

Interesting points. But it doesn't explain Pepsi's $150M logo redesign, which I think looks a lot like a vag.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

Hmmm... Unfortunately, looking at the list of blocked URLs does provide examples of censorship of political dissent. Mostly I see facebook, twitter, most google services blocked, netflix, porn sites, piratebay, more porn sites, wikimedia, and Chinese Wikipedia. My amateur opinion would be that these blocks are due to porn being illegal there and the government eliminating access to websites that compete with their own services and social networks that the government cannot oversee.

There's also a bunch of blogger and wordpress.com blogs. While many of these have titles making them sound related to China, I'm not understanding many of the censors, like this poetry site which is simply artsy, this blog about a teacher who loves Chinese culture and is visiting the country, and this pro-China pro-Communism site and others that have no content posted to them at all like sinologica.

There are a few that do appear to possibly be blocked for challenging the government, like X in China (link is to a post listing blocked Weibo words), SmurfWillBeFree (a free Tibet blog), a blog focused on bad economic news about China, and wikipedia articles on Chinese political issues (ie "Dalai Lama", "Tank Man", etc).

This is just my quick random sampling of a few dozen sites out of 2163, so take it with a grain of salt. At some point a plurality of anecdotes becomes data, and this post doesn't come anywhere near that threshhold, but it does provide some nuance to the NPR article I cited above.

The US extradition treaty with Sweden has some very curious provisions. See this commentary by a lawyer. Section VI b of the supplement to extradition treaty, in force since 1984, states that:

If the extradition request is granted in the case of a person who is being prosecuted or is serving a sentence in the territory of the requested State for a different offense, the requested State may: (a) [...] or (b) temporarily surrender the person sought to the requesting State for the purpose of prosecution. The person so surrendered shall be kept in custody while in the requesting State and shall be returned to the requested State after the conclusion of the proceedings against that person in accordance with conditions to be determined by mutual agreement [*7] of the Contracting States.

So, in force of this particular clause, once in Sweden Assange may well be quickly aquitted of the trumped-up rape charges, then sent to the Guantanamo concentration camp, and the US government may keep him there indefinitely "pending prosecution" along with hundreds of illegally detained political and war prisoners. Note that section VI b makes no mention whatsoever of the conditions in which Assange would be detained, nor does it specify any time limit for the prosecution. Even if Sweden requested the US to return Assange, the US would likely just ignore the request once they have Assange in their hands, citing national security concerns.

http://thequotesproject.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/brandalism.jpg

People are taking the piss out of you everyday.
They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear.
They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.
They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.
They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that.

Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours.
Itâ(TM)s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you.
They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

In fact the ancient Jews were once a Matriarchal society, and that is up until the founding of the Judaism we all now know and love, that fixed than whole "Women are people" problem" right up. Here's a laugh. The work by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford Anthropologist, on stress and societies dominated by alpha males is absolutely fascinating. In fact what he discovered using baboons (who by the way made superb surrogates for human male dominated societies) was that patriarchal societies are marked by naked aggression, bullying, posturing, violence, coercion, politics and high levels of stress for all but the alpha males. Whereas matriarchal societies tend to be happy, collaborative, consensus based, and in general lovely places for all the members of the troop. Go figure. Matriarchal societies don't fare well, because they don't tend to war. They prefer to negotiate and come to mutually beneficial agreements, and what fun is that, you need to justify that military industrial complex... stupid women. Anyway, just an really interesting look into the monkey in man.

Look around. What do you see? Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Buddhism, and a wild mix of African religions that are strongly influenced by the other middle east religions. The vast majority of people on the planet live in violent patriarchal societies, because those are the ones fighting to rule the world. You can't poke a stick in a bunch of pissed off brown people without seeing the religion at the core. If you think the history of Europe or America is any better, think again. So. Patriarchy like Fascism is great for getting things done, but the quality of life it leaves behind is sort of sucky. Maybe we can learn something from the Baboons.

If this were about uplifting kids or bringing news to the english-language disadvantaged OR SATIRE, I believe this concept may have merit. Unfortunately, I'm convinced this is nothing but a contributor to the dumbing down of culture/society. This is an appeal to the lowest common denominator and it should be soundly rejected as mainstream messaging.

Diluting and distilling the message creates more opportunity for message corruption and/or misinterpretation. But the problem extends beyond miscommunicating the facts. Skew and color (a.k.a. bias) is a natural byproduct of dilution and distillation. This is where journalism ends and marketing begins. When the vehicle of a message becomes as important as the message itself... this is not journalism. It is entertainment and/or advertising.

Cartoons are not new in the journalistic space. The political cartoon first appeared in 16th-century Germany during the Reformation, the first time such art became an active propaganda weapon with social implications. By the mid-19th cent. editorial cartoons had become regular features in American newspapers, and were soon followed by sports cartoons and humorous cartoons. England (1843); a series of drawings appeared in a publication called Punch that parodied the fresco cartoons submitted in a competition for the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. Nonpolitical cartoons, typically humorous, became popular with the development of the color press, and in 1893 the first color cartoon appeared in the New York World. The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post were among the most notable American magazines to use outstanding single cartoon drawings. In this way cartoon, in journalistic parlance, came to mean any single humorous or satirical drawing employing distortion for emphasis, often accompanied by a caption or a legend.

As a society, we must be clear on what quality journalism is... and what defines news. When Fox News Channel and Christian Broadcasting Network can present tabloid, yellow journalism or fantastic, mythical distortions of reality and characterizing their products as "Fair and Balanced" or "Good News", something has gone horribly wrong with the general understanding of journalism.

What's Dumbing Down Journalism
Dumbing Down - Implications
Is online media dumbing down journalism?
Dumbing Down Journalism - The Rise of American Propoganda

Society must demand quality journalism and if they do not understand what quality journalism, philosopher kings must be ever vigilent against the intrusion of pretenders. Society must be uplifted by journalism. Journalism should not cater to the lowest common denominator. Cartoons that do not confine their scope to children, special language needs audiences, or satire present a slippery slope and usher the decent of journalism into a hell of misinformation.

Furthermore, it is my reasoned opinion that it's fine, regardless of what the law may be: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2006/04/14/294/

There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.

The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]

The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]

Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].

And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.

Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]

African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, violent Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.

Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.

Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments to restrict fertility in Africa.

1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/
10 : https://www.google.com.br/search?q=africa+area
11 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa

After reading this I went to the Swedish government website on extraditions And I went off and read the relevant treaties with the US (article VI is the relevant one) Now there is something called a temporary extradition but it is only for the case where someone is being prosecuted or has been sentenced in Sweden so that the person can be returned to Sweden at the completion of there sentence. I see no evidence that this is for questioning or anything like that and all normal safeguards are in place. The only people who seem to be claiming otherwise are Assange supporters.

a) Nothing about this 'investigation' passes any known smell test. No matter how you sniff it, it smells of rat.

Some 5 courts and at least 10 judges have looked into this "investigation" and found nothing rat-like about it. But maybe you have a better nose than them (or more facts).

b) Yes, it's much, much easier for the USA to grab him from Sweden than the UK. Once he's there they can 'borrow' him with hardly any legal process.

Ok, after about half an hour of research, I think I've managed to find where the "temporary surrender" thing comes from (sorry, but I don't trust justice4assange.com to be entirely independent and unbiased). It seems to originate with Article VI of the Supplementary convention on extradition between Sweden and the US, signed in 1983, TIAS 10812. Apparently it's too old to be published anywhere official, but there's a copy here.

Article VI states:

If the extradition request is granted in the case of a person who is being prosecuted or is serving a sentence in the territory of the requested State for a different offense, the requested State may:

(a) defer the surrender of the person sought until the conclusion of the proceedings against that person, or the full execution of any punishment that may be or may have been imposed; or

(b) temporarily surrender the person sought to the requesting State for the purpose of prosecution. The person so surrendered shall be kept in custody while in the requesting State and shall be returned to the requested State after the conclusion of the proceedings against that person in accordance with conditions to be determined by mutual agreement of the Contracting States.

Right, so what does this mean? Yes, Sweden can temporarily surrender him to the US for the purpose of prosecution. However, note the first 6 words; "If the extradition request is granted...". I'm not an international lawyer, but to me that means that the US must first apply for extradition, thus jumping through all the various hoops (both in Sweden and the UK, including challenges in courts) before they can even start looking into temporary surrender.

Secondly, there is absolutely no reason why this process (being part of extradition, and an action carried out by the State, i.e. Sweden) wouldn't be subject to the ECHR, in particular, Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 and any others Assange might want to throw at the case. So using "temporary surrender" would actually be *harder* than normal extradition, as there is that extra step on top of everything else.

Thirdly, and the main reason to dismiss nearly all of his claims: if this is a problem, why isn't Assange arguing it in court? If he has, it must have been dismissed by the Court. On this point, we go to the initial extradition ruling, final major paragraph beginning "There was at one stage ..." Actually, I might as well just post the whole paragraph here as I seem to be pasting lots anyway... (emphasis mine):

There was at one stage a suggestion that Mr Assange could be extradited to the USA (possibly to Guantanamo Bay or to execution as a traitor). The only live evidence on the point came from the defence witness Mr Alhem who said it couldn’t happen. In the absence of any evidence that Mr Assange risks torture or execution Mr Robertson was right not to pursue this point in closing. It may be worth adding that I do not know if Sweden has an extradition treaty with the United States of America. There has been no evidence regarding this. I would expect that there is such a treaty. If Mr Assange is surrendered to Sweden and a request is made to Sweden for his extradition

Have you upgraded to 4.8 or 4.9, which I heard is a lot better? Or do they still have similar problems w/ Nepomuk and Strigi?

I'm running KDE 4.8.4, which is what is in Debian Unstable. Before a presentation I did on KDE4 for my local lug I tried Strigi/Nepomuk features again in KDE4.8 and performance was again terrible -- many hours of 100% CPU time during the indexing process. [IIRC on the same P4 system this process took somewhere between 14 to 18 hours to index a home directory with 30 GB of stuff in it, and I think the resulting Virtuoso database was about 1 GB.] The reason is that Nepomuk/Strigi uses several "ontologies" run as separate background processes to do the indexing -- one "ontology" for each type of indexing being done -- file names, pictures, audio files, etc -- so you'd think this would be a single background process searching the disk, but no it's like 5 or 6. And the thing is, I have no reason to use either of these services. To even find out what these services can do isn't easy, because the documentation for them in the KDE manual is terrible. However if you search around the 'net you'll eventually find this:

https://kdenepomukmanual.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/detailed-kde-nepomuk-manual/

As you read the above document here's some details to keep in mind: I use Krusader as my chosen file manager, not Dolphin. I don't use DigiKam or Gwenview (I use Geeqie as my chosen picture viewer). I never use the Alt-F2 Krunner menu, and I never give files tags or comments to them. Therefore Nepomuk as it stands today is totally doesn't serve a purpose for me.

But above all else, I don't want KDE4 choosing on its own when to run a super I/O intensive indexing process just to create a *cache* of things it finds and hold all of that in a huge database. To me that harks back to the 'mlocate' package -- if you've ever been working on a server that suddenly ran like shit and you found an 'updatedb' process running when you viewed the output of 'top', that's the package that did that. But unlike the mlocate package that called the updatedb process via cron, there's no way to tell KDE4 when to allow it to do the indexing or to limit CPU or I/O -- the only thing you can limit is how much RAM is used, which doesn't address this problem. The indexing starts by default, immediately after your very first login, causing the computer to run like utter shit, and your only choice to stop it is to immediately go to System Settings -> Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Desktop Search and turn these features off . And that's only if you know where to go and what to do. This is why many users that try KDE4 for the first time say "I can't use this, it makes my computer run like shit." And unfortunately, by the default settings KDE4 gives you, they're right.

There are many other levels of FAIL here, too -- the listing of Control Center modules in the KDE Help are not even in alphabetical order, so even if you somehow know that settings for Nepomuk are in the "Desktop Search" section, it's still an effort to find in the list. Then once you look through the help for the Desktop Search, the documentation that is there is simplistic and doesn't even tell you how you can use it, and doesn't give you any warning whatsoever of the performance impact these services have. [I discussed the lack of performance warning with the KDE4 developers at the time, and they were again unsympathetic. After about a week of arguing and "talk to the hand", they told me to create a KDE account and to propose wording myself, which they'd then review and consider. The problem with this suggestion is that they had already made it quite clear that they were not going to take it seriously.] And the way you get into trying to fix the performance disaster is finding several 'nepomuk' processes, so you try to fi

http://stuffilikenet.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/surfing-samurai-robots/

It doesn't help when the industry involved refuses to collect real data and has massive social media presence dismissive of real evidence.

Children in Fukushima are just getting lymph abnormalities and diabetes. That's why nuclear Pollyannas are talking about "natural background in Denver".

We do have hotspots in Tokyo Metropolitan Area that have led to these physiological disorders — some of the disorders that have been observed are as shown here. Things like diarrhea, nasal bleeding, headache, eczema and so forth. We are expecting thyroid disorders in children, but also cancers (bladder, leukemia, lung), diabetes.”

http://midnightwatcher.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/japan-physician-radiation-levels-are-4000-higher-than-reported-by-the-japanese-government-radiation-already-causing-health-problems-around-tokyo/

http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-children-have-abnormal-thyroid-growths-2012-7

http://dddusmma.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/iea-supports-ultra-supercritical-coal/

Would these supercritical thingies bring the US up to par?
Seems that the power efficiency would be comparable, based on what you mentioned above.
"Ultra-supercritical plants have a thermal efficiency of 44% HHV, which is a 35% improvement over traditional plants."

"Itâ(TM)s anticipated that temperatures and pressures can be increased further, and that a thermal efficiency of 46% (HHV) can be achieved in the next several years. These would be referred to as Advanced Ultra-supercritical plants."

46% would probably mean 41% improvement over traditional plants? (46/44*1.35)

It's okay to teach evolution even though we have absolutely no samples of evolution of a species, only variations in species,

You mean samples like these?

Argentina is effectively implementing a blockade against British ships these days, not allowing even cruise ships to dock in Argentine ports to protest the British control over the Falklands where all the residents are British and want to remain so and which are hundreds of miles away from Argentina anyway.

Argentina's dumb behaviour is being supported by other countries in the region including Ecuador..

http://falklandsnews.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/ecuador-calls-britains-attitude-to-the-falklands-shameful/

Only a matter of time before Britain starts hitting back one way or another and an excuse to storm the Ecuador embassy would be a nice way to remind those nations that there will be consequences for their current anti-british actions.

Challenge accepted.

Here's Ardin's thesis, titled "The Cuban Multi-Party System: Is The Democratic alternative really democratic and an alternative after the Castro regime?" The word rape does not appear in it.

Oh, really, it's time to look at *everything a person has ever written on the internet*, really? Like you've never written anything that others could use to discredit you online, ever? Really? First off, the "seven steps to revenge" 1) was a repost, 2) begins with, basically, "don't", and is 3) in general about how, if you do, how to cause an ex boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him.

Secondly, if you want to take the "anything you've ever written", let's see what Assange thinks about women.

I was exactly what she secretly longed for; a man willing to openly disagree with her father. All along she had needed a man to devote herself to. All along she had failed to find a man worthy of being called a man, failed to find a man who would not bow to gods, so she had chosen a god unworthy of being called a god, but who would not bow to a man.

Wow, really Julian? You're a freaking God to women? And do we even need to get into his dating profile, Mr. I AM DANGER, ACHTUNG?

See how this "dig up anything a person has ever written" game works?

Wow, what the frick is up with your "one bullet point on a website" link? It's not a reference to anything - nothing is backed up in any way, shape or form - but man, what a stalker site that is.

You need to work on your reading comprehension on the Mundo article you linked. It says she worked as the head of the Swedish group connected to the party, a party based on peaceful civil disobedience. "Somehow" funding it? It says right there - she funded it "minimally" with the magazine Consenso. Nowhere does it say she was deported. That's only said in the counterpunch article, which the article you linked to describes as riddled with errors. And furthermore, in what f-ed up world does supporting democracy in Cuba mean "CIA agent"? I mean, for crying out loud!

The interrogation does not at all say what you nor the person who posted it claim it says. The part about Wilen hearing the news reads as follows:

Sofia and I were notified during the interrogation that Julian Assange had been arrested in absentia. Sofia had difficulty concentrating after that news, whereby I made the judgement it was best to terminate the interrogation. But Sofia had time anyway to explain that Assange was angry with her. I didn't have time to get any further details about why he was angry with her or how this manifested itself. And we didn't have time to get into what else happened afterwards. The interrogation was neither read back to Sofia nor reviewed for approval by her but Sofia was told she had the opportunity to do this later.

Amazing how "difficulty concentrating" and concerned that "Assange was angry with her" transforms into "horrified" that they brought charges. I also noted (to put it another way, it made me sick to read) how the person who posted the article tried to spin the following passage as "consent":

They fell asleep and she woke by feeling him penetrate her. She immediately asked 'are you wearing anything' and he answered 'you'. She told him 'you better not have HIV' and he replied 'of course not'. She felt it was too late. He was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn't be bothered telling him again. She'd been nagging about condoms all night lo

Challenge accepted.

Here's Ardin's thesis, titled "The Cuban Multi-Party System: Is The Democratic alternative really democratic and an alternative after the Castro regime?" The word rape does not appear in it.

Oh, really, it's time to look at *everything a person has ever written on the internet*, really? Like you've never written anything that others could use to discredit you online, ever? Really? First off, the "seven steps to revenge" 1) was a repost, 2) begins with, basically, "don't", and is 3) in general about how, if you do, how to cause an ex boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him.

Secondly, if you want to take the "anything you've ever written", let's see what Assange thinks about women.

I was exactly what she secretly longed for; a man willing to openly disagree with her father. All along she had needed a man to devote herself to. All along she had failed to find a man worthy of being called a man, failed to find a man who would not bow to gods, so she had chosen a god unworthy of being called a god, but who would not bow to a man.

Wow, really Julian? You're a freaking God to women? And do we even need to get into his dating profile, Mr. I AM DANGER, ACHTUNG?

See how this "dig up anything a person has ever written" game works?

Wow, what the frick is up with your "one bullet point on a website" link? It's not a reference to anything - nothing is backed up in any way, shape or form - but man, what a stalker site that is.

You need to work on your reading comprehension on the Mundo article you linked. It says she worked as the head of the Swedish group connected to the party, a party based on peaceful civil disobedience. "Somehow" funding it? It says right there - she funded it "minimally" with the magazine Consenso. Nowhere does it say she was deported. That's only said in the counterpunch article, which the article you linked to describes as riddled with errors. And furthermore, in what f-ed up world does supporting democracy in Cuba mean "CIA agent"? I mean, for crying out loud!

The interrogation does not at all say what you nor the person who posted it claim it says. The part about Wilen hearing the news reads as follows:

Sofia and I were notified during the interrogation that Julian Assange had been arrested in absentia. Sofia had difficulty concentrating after that news, whereby I made the judgement it was best to terminate the interrogation. But Sofia had time anyway to explain that Assange was angry with her. I didn't have time to get any further details about why he was angry with her or how this manifested itself. And we didn't have time to get into what else happened afterwards. The interrogation was neither read back to Sofia nor reviewed for approval by her but Sofia was told she had the opportunity to do this later.

Amazing how "difficulty concentrating" and concerned that "Assange was angry with her" transforms into "horrified" that they brought charges. I also noted (to put it another way, it made me sick to read) how the person who posted the article tried to spin the following passage as "consent":

They fell asleep and she woke by feeling him penetrate her. She immediately asked 'are you wearing anything' and he answered 'you'. She told him 'you better not have HIV' and he replied 'of course not'. She felt it was too late. He was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn't be bothered telling him again. She'd been nagging about condoms all night lo

Well, that is already part of the previous problem, also since long.

Very few journals have been publishing "contradictory results", unless "seriously warranted", or something along those lines.

I've never run into that. What usually happens is that researchers don't produce contradictory results, they produce inconclusive ones. As it is, lots of inconclusive studies get published with discussions and conclusions that imply they are negative findings.

Do you have any fresh examples of when inconclusive studies trump decisive?

Yes, this is curious. Why would the original authors be credited, again?

They paid for it. Perhaps the confirmers will also get their names on the paper.

But if they don't confirm, will they get published?

Do we have any suggestions for any major research bogus research producers?

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

Thanks I'll look into that.

Well, that is already part of the previous problem, also since long.

Very few journals have been publishing "contradictory results", unless "seriously warranted", or something along those lines.

I've never run into that. What usually happens is that researchers don't produce contradictory results, they produce inconclusive ones. As it is, lots of inconclusive studies get published with discussions and conclusions that imply they are negative findings.

Yes, this is curious. Why would the original authors be credited, again?

They paid for it. Perhaps the confirmers will also get their names on the paper.

Do we have any suggestions for any major research bogus research producers?

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

Sorry, but that example doesn't work because it's a postdoc position, not a permanent job.

The whole "postdoc" thing is mostly a scam. Especially in this case. Someone with a PhD in computer science or aerospace is already more than qualified for a real job. If that "postdoc" position meant entry to the tenure track for a professorship, it might be worthwhile. But it doesn't. It's a staff position for a DARPA competition for which real companies are also competing.

Where's the "No Sources Except Tin Foil Hat Blogs" moderation? Are we so happy to accept this unsubstantiated claim just because it meshes with our prejudices?

Well now, unfortunately, Ardin and Wilen have have managed to purge the web of all but the most ridiculous information relating to them, so efficiently that most fortune-500 companies can't afford such effective PR. Impressive.

For example, the fact that Anna Ardin wrote her Master's thesis on the use of rape as a weapon - Google that. You'll get tons of hits containing it in the cached summary, and yet, every single one of them seems to go to an unrelated (or redacted) page. You can, however, still find copies of her curiously-no-longer-existant blog where she detailed her "seven steps to revenge".

Or the fact that Ardin's cousin served as deputy head of ops in Afghanistan. Again, cached summaries, but no content actually says that (interestingly, two years ago you could find this information everywhere; today, I can barely find reference to it except one bullet point on a website I wouldn't tend to trust as a source, except insofar that it agrees with a reality that has somehow otherwise vanished).

Or the fact that Ardin spent several years working as an anti-Castro organizer in Cuba, somehow "personally" funding the movement until Cuba deported her - Which I can only find in Spanish (guess her PR whitewashing friends don't speak Spanish) and the occasional snippets here and there.

Or the fact that it horrified Sofia Wilen to learn that the police (and not just any police; not the local police; but rather, a detective Ardin knew personally from an entirely different jurisdiction) had charged Assange with rape, when she (apparently something of a germophobe) only wanted to compel him to get an STD test.


Yep. Completely unsubstantiated - If you require a link from CNN. If you actually dig a bit, a much darker picture appears than that of two girls falling victim to a serial acquaintance-rapist.

Sure, Microsoft is open in the areas of application software and web services.

So long as you are using .Net on Windows.

Well the .Net part is obviously false, you don't need to use .Net (never heard of COM have you). And the web services part is false because you don't need .Net or Windows to consume web services.

Here's an example, the Skydrive API which can be utilized across just about any application and platform, also here is neat article on using gSOAP to call WCF services from Linux in C++, these examples categorically prove that you have no idea what you're talking about, you can post anti-microsoft posts all you want but it won't change the fact that you're just ignorant or trolling.

Not funny. The full extent of the damage can be seen in these photos here.

Every time something nuclear comes up, someone has to come along and undermine it with these petty jokes.

I came here to post the same thing and provide a link for the younger Slashdotters

http://dreager1.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mothrabattleforear1622.jpg

I see that some people agree with your unsupported assertions - why else would your comment be modded up?

First: nobody paid those taxes. People paid less taxes than they are paying today.

You seem to be confused about the concept of marginal tax rates. Nobody is claiming that people paid 90% of their total income in taxes. There were more deductions at that time, however, people certainly didn't pay less taxes then than they do today. In 1960, the top marginal rate was 91%, and the rich did indeed pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes
Income inequality was also much less at that time.

Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.

You appear to have a reading comprehension fail. The claim was that the lower incomes of the rich led to their having less influence over politics because they had less to spend on it.

Thirdly: the real time when USA was actually a real economic power, when people truly had individual liberties was not any time past WWII, it was the time from the 1870 to 1913.

Ah, yes, the Gilded Age. A time of robber barons, union busting, company stores, and political corruption. There was certainly high growth during this period due to industrialization, but a period of personal liberty? What are you smoking? Assuming you weren't black, a woman, or a native American, and assuming you approved of child labor and sweat shops, you basically had the "liberty" to exploit your fellow man during this period - if you had the money, resources, or political power to do so. It was certainly closer to the libertarian paradise in that the government did little to protect the common man from exploitation, but these liberties tend to be quite one sided, and to the benefit of those with power.

There is no tablet market per se. There's an iPad market, an e-reader market, and a grab bag of every other manufacturer.

The Samsung Tab? Apparently it sold 37k units in the US last quarter, which makes it a total non-competitor to the iPad.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/10/apple-sold-5-7-million-tablets-in-the-u-s-last-quarter-court-documents-show-samsung-sold-37000/
http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/screen-shot-2012-08-10-at-7-33-07-am.png

So anyway, what does it matter? There are Nook and Kindle readers on iOS - that revenue stream should be fine. By not selling the hardware both companies save money, but lose on lock-in. The impact will probably be marginal, or possibly a small plus as more people move to nook/kindle and away from books.

Of course, it depends on the price. If the iPad mini comes out at $199 it's game over for everyone else. I doubt that price point because Apple generally doesn't sell its hardware at a loss or close to a loss. They just need to make it close. $300 sounds more realistic - that's $100 less than the Ipad 2 and overlaps well with the iPad touch pricing.

Did they deliberately leave it open for this?

Well, I already have a website/blog - http://michaelcargill.wordpress.com/

...We'll throw in a 2000 year old instruction manual...

TL;DR I got the Cliff Notes