Slashdot Mirror

It is interesting to consider the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Index over time.

Some have stayed around forever (General Electric, since DJIA started in 1896). Some you may have never heard of (International Nickel, 1927-1959).

The majority of current DJIA components have only been in the index since 1991.

No, this is in the US. It is fueled by one thing and one thing only: GREED.

It seems to be that it may very well be about the results of politically correct behavior on the part of social media that tends to ignore violence and threats as long as it comes from the "right" people or is directed at the "right" victims. There are other cases like it that help demonstrate the problem.

Facebook and Israel: What’s Not to ‘Like’? Lots, It Seems

An experiment: Make one anti-Israel page and one anti-Palestinian page. Wait to see what happens.

After all, youtube didn't pick up the nickname of "jihad tube" for nothing.

I believe the items below is what he was referring to. (Surely this sort of blatant ant-Israeli bias isn't new to you?)

Thousands of Israelis join lawsuit against Facebook over pages inciting violence
Facebook’s anti-Israel double standard on hate speech

Facebook and Israel: What’s Not to ‘Like’? Lots, It Seems

An experiment: Make one anti-Israel page and one anti-Palestinian page. Wait to see what happens. . . .

Shurat HaDin also posted graphic photos on both pages. For example, a photograph on the anti-Israel page featured a young girl preparing to punch an Israeli soldier, with text reading, “these children will liberate Palestine with blood.” That photograph was mirrored on the anti-Palestine page by a picture of a bare-chested Israeli soldier wielding a gun and vowing war with all Arabs.

On Dec. 30, Shurat HaDin reported both pages as violating Facebook standards, using Facebook’s report mechanism of a simple button-click available to all users. Within 24 hours, Facebook sent the NGO a message that the anti-Palestine page it reported had been closed down for “containing credible threat of violence” and that it had “violated our [Facebook’s] community standards.” The page immediately became inaccessible to all Facebook users.

The complaint about the anti-Israel page (which had spiraled into an explicitly anti-Jewish page) also received a reply from Facebook. This reply stated that the content was “not in violation of Facebook’s rules.”

Facebook changed its tune after Jan. 4, when Shurat HaDin published a video detailing the experiment, which made waves in the Israeli press and on social media.

Facebook Caves on Israel Hate Page

Exclusive: Social network rescinds earlier decision to allow page that incites violence . . . .

“Unfortunately we do not believe it was a simple ‘mistake’ as Israelis and Jews worldwide have been relentlessly protesting that Facebook is completely unresponsive to this type of Palestinian incitement to violence,” said Shurat HaDin founder and Israeli attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. “Two months ago we filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of over 20,000 Israeli citizens, seeking an injunction against Facebook for “intentionally disregarding the widespread incitement and calls for murder of Jews being posted on its web pages by Palestinians. This simple experiment and its results speak for themselves.”

Israeli NGO says Facebook test proves anti-Israel bias

An experiment by the Israel Law Center sees the social network banning anti-Palestinian incitement, while anti-Israel hate remains online

That said, the US may forced into this whether they want to or not, given that Russia's been developing - and has started deploying - tactical nuclear delivery systems. They've really been waving around their "nuclear card" a lot lately - my favorite was when they "accidentally" let a news camera capture a picture of design plans for a submarine-based cobalt bomb doomsday device among papers an officer was carrying.

Indeed. Russia has been aggressively threatening to use tactical nukes in retaliation for any attacks its (very weak) conventional forces cannot repel, and have been for some time: http://www.wsj.com/articles/as... The development of a new generation of precision tactical nuclear weapons is a direct response to these threats.

Russia wanted a new Cold War - it shall have it.

When I say that, I'm speaking in terms of building your own net worth. Renting a house doesn't do that, instead it adds to somebody else's net worth. Borrowing money and paying interest does the same thing.

You've clearly been successful, but don't ignore opportunity costs and luck. Your house may well have been a good investment, but on average, homes are poor financial investments (although they can be great lifestyle investments). It looks like the Dow Jones went up about 40% between 2011 and 2014, which is a lot more than average home prices increased over the same period. So paying rent on a cheap apartment and investing in stocks could have been a better investment. You may have been able to do better than stocks by borrowing money (getting a mortgage) and then investing the borrowed money (in a house), but realize that leveraged investments are riskier than regular investments. If you bought stocks in 2007, your money would have gone poof. If you bought a house in 2007, your house's value would have gone poof and you would still have owed money on it.

Your language makes it sound like the economy is a zero sum game: building someone else's net worth means destroying your own. That's simply not true. You know from your mortgage that borrowing can be a good investment. The problem is that many people don't know when an investment is bad.

Wall Street Journal seems to know. Sub-Sub-Sub-Contractor mix-up it seems.

The people familiar with the case said the missile was sent to Spain and used in the military exercise. But for reasons that are still unclear, after it was packed up, it began a roundabout trip through Europe, was loaded onto a truck and eventually sent to Germany.

The missile was packaged in Rota, Spain, a U.S. official said, where it was put into the truck belonging to another freight-shipping firm, known by officials who track such cargo as a “freight forwarder.” That trucking company released the missile to yet another shipping firm that was supposed to put the missile on a flight originating in Madrid. That flight was headed to Frankfurt, Germany, before it was to be placed on another flight bound for Florida.

At some point, officials loading the first flight realized the missile it expected to be loading onto the aircraft wasn’t among the cargo, the government official said. After tracing the cargo, officials realized that the missile had been loaded onto a truck operated by Air France, which took the missile to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. There, it was loaded onto a “mixed pallet” of cargo and placed on an Air France flight. By the time the freight-forwarding firm in Madrid tracked down the missile, it was on the Air France flight, headed to Havana.

Attempts to reach Air France were unsuccessful.

I just read this story which suggests that consumers are starting to avoid IoT stuff because of security concerns. So that might cheer you up (a bit) on a rainy, dreary morning.

I am so gonzo confused how your post got down-modded. You state a clear fact, you provide a link to double check, and somebody mods you down? The best guess I have is the person judging you badly thinks you couldn't possible make $100k/year?

In the San Francisco Bay Area, programmers and IT make around $100k/year. If you work at Google or Facebook or Netflix and are compensated for being one of the harder working programmers, it's probably closer to $150k/year. If you type $150k into the calculator you reference, your state and federal tax burden is $3,884.88 / month and that's being really really generous and not including Social Security, Medicare, or things like property tax (if you own a house) and sales tax and gas tax, alcohol and sin taxes, etc. If you really do add in all these extra tax, I really believe MANY people are spending more on taxes than on their housing.

I'm not saying this is morally wrong or that it needs to change. I think most sane people see that the rich (and upper middle class) MUST pay more than the poor to keep all the infrastructure running. In this Wall Street Journal article, it says the top 20 percent of income earners pay an astounding 84% of all federal taxes while the bottom 20 percent essentially paid nothing. http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income-tax-1428674384

The problem with America isn't that we don't tax the poor enough.

Who said anything about taxing the poor more? We are talking about federal income taxes here, both corporate and personal, and none of that is directly paid by the poor. The top 20% of earners pay 84% of federal income taxes. Corporate income taxes comprise about 19% of all federal income taxes, and if that went to 0% the burden would not fall to the poor. It would overwhelmingly fall to households making over $110k per year (the top 20%). If the ratios of taxes spent per quintile of income stayed the same, the average family in the middle quintile would pay about $20 per month more in federal income taxes if the corporate tax rate went to 0%.

Arguments that the upper middle class are already taxed to much hold a little weight, but complaining about poor people paying more taxes is incredibly dishonest. They don't pay federal income taxes. Even the middle class pays next to nothing in federal income taxes.

Notice that state regulators , how many rate increases to upgrade infrastructure has the state regulators turned down in the last decade?

Why don't you tell us? How many?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/se...

You are wrong.

Courts are siding with shooters who were on their private property in cases of privacy violation. Case dismissed

We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.

I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safe coastal power plants are, and there's no worry about rivers ever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.

from the ./ summary:

the Obama administration canceled amid strong local and state opposition to it.

from the Wall Street Journal:

The Reid-Obama Bargain: Harry shut down the Senate because Barack shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada... Mr. Reid’s admirers seem to think Mr. Reid is their champion, but the reason he has carried so much water for Mr. Obama isn’t liberal ideals. It’s the result of a crude political bargain in which Mr. Reid agreed to do the President’s dirty work on Capitol Hill if Mr. Obama blocked the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

PP admitted to doing what the video shows them doing. You lied saying they didn't do it. PP changed policy so they no longer do some of the things they are shown doing. It looks like the videos won out over your lies, at least in a small aspect.

I think you have managed to end debate on this topic/proposal. You have to leave the videos in place because people have no hesitation to lie about the content of the videos while attempting to prevent you from watching them to view for yourself. Sure the videos might be bad, but then again they may show the results of US drone strikes, and its obvious you can't rely on people like jedidiah to tell you the truth on its content while feeding you lies about it.

Jedidiah won't agree with me, but to everyone else it should be obvious that you can't trust him (or others) to be honest. He is the kind of person deciding what you should or shouldn't be allowed to see based on his skewed political viewpoints, not on honest debate.

I resorted to PP to get an example I knew someone would lie about content of the videos as justification for censoring them.

Why doesn't he just point out all the great things that socialism has done for the people? It should be easy to find an audience. These people waiting in line for food would have to listen.

(Full disclosure: I own a diesel Passat. Great car so far. 50 MPG on the freeway now, I'm anticipating 45 once they adjust the software.)

This really smacks of a conspiracy theory. I strongly suspect CARB really is trying to carry out its charter to reduce California air pollution. If I had to guess, they'd prefer to outlaw trucks and trains, not diesel cars, but they can't because it would cause too much economic damage

You are forgiven your youth. This article from the 24 Oct 2002 Wall Street Journal explains the California issue:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

As to the relative amount: diesel fuel tends to be produced as a byproduct of gasoline production, in that anything not convertible to other things is either diesel or waste. The California refineries are controlled by 3 companies, but it's ~90% Chevron -- the same company who lobbies for the reformulation legislation in California (i.e. "The Great Guys Who Brought You MTBE!(tm)"), and therefore there is not gasoline importation into California; by that same token, there is not diesel importation into California, since there is diesel there.

The way the money gets jerked out of your wallet is by controlling the refined supply -- which is why gas prices in California have not dropped, as they have everywhere else in the U.S., proportionally to the drop in the price of crude oil. To do that with diesel -- and keep the diesel prices high -- they just need to control how much is refined, so that they can make the same amount of money per passenger car mile from diesel as they make from gasoline.

Note that Tesoro and others have been fined over this several times, but since the fines never reach the level of the windfall profits (let's go back to the 1974 "energy crisis" which caused the national 55 MPH speed limit to be put in place on 2 Jan 1974: "Up like a rocket, down like a feather").

California instituting a tax on windfall profits would be a good thing... just saying...

It's not entirely unreasonable. Paul Volcker himself thinks the banks that took government money should be broken up. And he is not the only one. If something is too big to fail, then it is also too big to exist.

"A Brazilian state judge ordered the suspension of Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp throughout Brazil for 48 hours early Thursday, disrupting the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians who use the messaging service."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/br...

I would guess that tens of millions of Brazilians are going to have something to say about this the next time they vote.

Eric Jackson has been peeing on Yahoo for 7 years.

He advises people on How to be an activist investor, and it mostly comes down to making a lot of noise, even when you only own about 0.2% of the stock -- which is what his fund owns of Yahoo.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ho...
http://recode.net/2014/08/12/a...
http://greenbackd.com/tag/dr-e...

His dream (now all but kaput, thanks to the financial crisis in China) was to have Alibaba flush with cash, spending it on acquiring Yahoo.

Actually cow belching plays a bigger role than the farts do:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/...

This is an interesting article that discusses the history behind the two degree increase.

From what I can see, it's just a convenient way for politicians to talk about it, because let's be honest, 99% of politicians don't really understand radiative forcing anyway. link to get around paywall.

No, he already has his liberal bona fides. Whatever the reasons for his popularity, it's not because of any deeply rooted commitment to the Republicans or conservative ideals, generally.

This is the key. Please see here. Sure, it's WaPo, but it's clear that Trump is doing nothing but trolling. Also see here.

That being said, I like a good troll. Trump is doing classic trolling at its finest. <trump>I know a lot of trolls! I'm very good friends with a lot of trolls!</trump>

Trump's playing by the rules Obama set, plus a few of his own.
Trump's rules include a fairly standard negotiating tactic- demand 3x what you want, so when the dust settles, you've got about what you wanted. He's also 'assuming the sale.' I don't wish to see him as president, but he's giving a (admittedly bombastic) voice to legitimate concerns many Americans have. The American left is used to being able to shout down politically inconvenient discussions by shouting "RACIST!", Trump simply says 'F you' and moves on. People love that.
As for following Obama's rules, I'll just quote a recent article: (Paywalled; my apologies)

Mr. Obama doesn’t need anyone to justify his actions, because he’s realized no one can stop him. He gets criticized, but at the same time his approach has seeped into the national conscience. It has set new norms. You see this in the ever-more-outrageous proposals from the presidential field, in particular front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Mrs. Clinton routinely vows to govern by diktat. On Wednesday she unveiled a raft of proposals to punish companies that flee the punitive U.S. tax system. Mrs. Clinton will ask Congress to implement her plan, but no matter if it doesn’t. “If Congress won’t act,” she promises, “then I will ask the Treasury Department, when I’m there, to use its regulatory authority.”

Mrs. Clinton and fellow liberals don’t like guns and are frustrated that the duly elected members of Congress (including those from their own party) won’t strengthen background checks. So she has promised to write regulations that will unilaterally impose such a system.

On immigration, Mr. Obama ignored statute with executive actions to shield illegals from deportation. Mrs. Clinton brags that she will go much, much further with sweeping exemptions to immigration law.

For his part, Mr. Trump sent the nation into an uproar this week with his call to outright ban Muslims from entering the country. Is this legally or morally sound? Who cares! Mr. Trump specializes in disdain for the law, the Constitution, and any code of civilized conduct. Guardrails are for losers. He’d set up a database to track Muslims or force them to carry special IDs. He’d close mosques. He’d deport kids born on American soil. He’d seize Iraq’s oil fields. He’d seize remittance payments sent back to Mexico. He’d grab personal property for government use.

Mr. Obama’s dismantling of boundaries isn’t restrained to questions of law; he blew up certain political ethics, too.

Took two seconds to google these. I'm not alone on this.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ha...
http://www.economist.com/news/...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21s...

Medical records are sheer gold for identity fraud http://www.wsj.com/articles/ho...

Stolen medical records can be used for medical insurance fraud and taking out loans in your name. If you don't pay up, they send debt collectors after you. They are paid by commission so don't care if they debt is legit. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... http://www.philly.com/philly/b... http://www.startribune.com/cri... http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...

What to do if they send a debt collector after you http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Shit IT security by health providers is a big problem http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/1... http://www.wsj.com/articles/an... http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/17...

So is doctors collecting information about you they don't need like your SSN which staff can sell to identity thieves http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Medical records are sheer gold for identity fraud http://www.wsj.com/articles/ho...

Stolen medical records can be used for medical insurance fraud and taking out loans in your name. If you don't pay up, they send debt collectors after you. They are paid by commission so don't care if they debt is legit. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... http://www.philly.com/philly/b... http://www.startribune.com/cri... http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...

What to do if they send a debt collector after you http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Shit IT security by health providers is a big problem http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/1... http://www.wsj.com/articles/an... http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/17...

So is doctors collecting information about you they don't need like your SSN which staff can sell to identity thieves http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Actually, the part about not allowing foreign citizens who are Muslims into the country is perfectly constitutional.

That's really debatable. Here's a right-wing conservative telling you why (and I can't believe I'm actually linking to National Review):

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

And here are a bunch of top legal and constitutional scholars arguing both ways:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/...

So it's not nearly as cut and dried as you would think.

Well, let's establish that there is no AI at the moment. There is software developed by humans that can take in data, analyze that data, and react to that data in a predetermined way. But they cannot act beyond the bounds of their original programming. If there was some relevant data that the developers did not take into account, then the software cannot react to that. Yes, there is progress in this area. But most of the time it is usually just very clever programming. I'm thinking of research like this: http://www.wsj.com/articles/ha...

I'm not saying that autonomous cars don't provide advantages. But these advantages can easily be mitigated in complex systems such as driving on a road full of human drivers or weather. In a closed system? Sure, they can work perfectly. But a closed system will take time and money to establish. My whole point in arguing against autonomous vehicles is to provide a different view point against the wide-eyed enthusiasm I see out there for them. Because humans have a pattern of trusting too much in technology to the detriment of others.

And I would like to see some data on your assertion that "Most people drive by watching the taillights of the car in front of them only".

Prove that it's a mismatch of the body and not a mental problem. Considering that they have either XY or XX it sounds to me like the body isn't wrong.

Already been proven:

• Caught Between Male and Female
• Transsexual differences caught on brain scan
• Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus

Also, obviously I've discussed it with specialists, and it's no longer classified as a mental problem per se - but the stresses imposed by the mismatch are capable of causing untoward stress, not just with living with it, but the reaction from people such as yourself. So, you're part of the problem :-)

... the purposes of the company are clearly philanthropic, to advance “human potential” and promote “equality,” rather than earn money for its owners. However, it will not just make grants to nonprofits, as foundations typically do. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will also own stakes in for-profit businesses in fields like education and health care, which its owners believe will help achieve their philanthropic goals.

Some have criticized traditional foundations and other charities for not having “a bottom line,” a readily available measure of success that would enable donors to determine whether their gifts were doing any good. A variety of surrogate approaches have been proposed to judge the effectiveness of philanthropy, such as elaborate cost-benefit analyses. But these tend to be costly and controversial, and they have attracted limited interest.

What Mr. Zuckerberg and others are proposing instead is to harness the profit motive on behalf of their philanthropic goals. This is often referred to as a “double bottom-line” approach: The companies in which the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invests will have to show both a financial return in order to be sustainable and a social one—for example, increased numbers of lives saved or children finishing school—in order to obtain additional funding. And at least in theory, those companies that are unsuccessful would in time go out of business, unlike traditional charities, which can keep going, even if they are not very effective at their work, as long as they are good at raising money from donors.

The approach Mr. Zuckerberg is taking has several advantages. One is that if he had created a foundation, American tax laws would have required him to sell most of the Facebook stock he gave it. But by using the stock to fund a limited-liability company, he can keep control over as much of it as he wants (though he may sell some to make grants or investments).

....

... the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative represents the most significant effort so far to take a new approach to the kinds of problems with which philanthropy has long struggled. ....

I see this and his age, and I can only think, "does he realize that, while Obama can make some action, the majority of such a thing has to come from Congress?"

I can only see him as being a brat trying to make a name for himself targeting a well targeted person.

The biggest thing on his table politically about climate change recently, might have been Keystone, which he didn't let go through

WTF does the Keystone pipeline have to do with climate change? The Canadians are selling the oil to China, anyway, it'll just take a different route.

Not if those different routes are blocked too. The next choice is across tribal land in BC, and the tribes are opposing it.

In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.

Huh? That number seems low. As of October 1, according to the Washington Post, there were 294 mass shootings so far in 2015, and that was still with three months left in the year. That accounted for 380 deaths so far, with well over 1,000 injured. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal claims "the US leads the world in mass shootings." http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

How many of those shootings were with long guns versus a hand gun? For instance, in the US, the definition of a long gun is anything with a rifled barrel over 16" and any smooth bore weapon greater than 18". At least for Civilian purposes. The military may have bull-pup rifled long guns that are typically around 14" in barrel length. See Wikipedia for more info on long guns.

In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.

Huh? That number seems low. As of October 1, according to the Washington Post, there were 294 mass shootings so far in 2015, and that was still with three months left in the year. That accounted for 380 deaths so far, with well over 1,000 injured. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal claims "the US leads the world in mass shootings." http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

As best I can tell he's near the mark. The statistics I can find show 300-400 rifle murders per year, with many times that caused by handguns. Source: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

http://news.investors.com/ibd-...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sc...

Of course it was all the Army Corps of Engineers, it had nothing to do with New Orleans, all the New Orleans government was the victim, it was the nasty federal government that was at fault.

In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.

Huh? That number seems low. As of October 1, according to the Washington Post, there were 294 mass shootings so far in 2015, and that was still with three months left in the year. That accounted for 380 deaths so far, with well over 1,000 injured.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal claims "the US leads the world in mass shootings." http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

In the 1990s, scientists began to compare these sexually dimorphic regions in the brains of transsexuals and the rest of humanity. Early work in this area required the examination of brains postmortem; recent studies use images of the living brain.

The results show that when individuals of Sex A—despite having the chromosomes, gonads and sex hormones of that sex—insist that they're really Sex B, the gender-affected parts of the brain typically more closely resemble what's usually seen with Sex B.

Consider an obscure brain region called the forceps minor (part of the corpus callosum, a mass of fibers that connect the brain's two hemispheres). On average, among nontranssexuals, the forceps minor of males contains parallel nerve fibers of higher density than in females. But the density in female-to-male transsexuals is equivalent to that in typical males.

As another example, the hypothalamus, a hormone-producing part of the brain, is activated in nontranssexual men by the scent of estrogen, but in women—and male-to-female transsexuals—by the scent of androgens, male-associated hormones.

Totally vaporized and then some by the overhead of the union.

Not really, but I'm sure there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.

Amazon has been in bed with the devil for a couple of years now. Nearly everything I order comes by USPS - the slowest, least reliable delivery service on Earth.

This is in direct opposition to my experience.

The Post Office doesn't seem to understand that this is their last best chance to stay relevant and possibly get out of the red. Nope, they're sticking to their old ways - yesterday's technology delivering your packages tomorrow (or next week).

Huh? Oh I see - your experience of their service is essentially filtered by your dogma (that the post office as part of the "government" is not hip enough). Keep in mind, that the USPS as a private entity that's highly controlled by Congressional edicts and orders (like this one mandating that they essentially have to run in debt to pay retirements for employees not even hired yet [1]. If you have an issue with USPS maybe you should take it up with your representative.

Another thing you have to keep in mind, is that the USPS actually fulfills a lot of orders for UPS/FedEx - UPS/Fedex simply can't compete with the USPS for hard-to-reach areas, whereas the USPS has mandates to do so, and so has found a way to do it. [2]

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/econo...
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Rahm Emanuel

I see that quote a lot. But I never see a source for it. It sounds too on the nose to be believable. So this time I decided to check it out myself. Turns out that is not what he said. And to misquote him like that is to mislead. Here's the actual source:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's new chief of staff, told a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives this week.

He elaborated: "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
-- http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

As you can see, what he was talking about was work that had been postponed because it wasn't considered urgent enough. That's a completely different meaning than your version which boils down to tricking people while they aren't thinking clearly.

> Aren't politics grand?

Indeed it is. I hope you can recognize the role you just played. At best you were lied to and used to further someone else's agenda, at worst you deliberately set out to deceive in order to further your agenda.

Cellulose powder/sawdust in food isn't really a new idea.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Probably not hurting anything though.

Me, not so much.

A member of an advisory group to President Barack Obama said about surveillance, "There can be serious negative effects on other U.S. interests". -- From the Reuters article, Russian researchers expose breakthrough in U.S. spying program.

Another quote from that article: "The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives."

"China is seeking to make its own secure smartphones, in an attempt to insulate its handsets from U.S. surveillance." -- Wall Street Journal
Links: Direct, possibly paywalled, also through Google Search.

How will China react to Windows 10, which gives Microsoft complete control over any computer connected to the internet?

Articles about Microsoft spying:

Microsoft's Software is Malware. "Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user." -- Gnu.org

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again? -- Computerworld UK

Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages -- The Guardian

In a democracy, citizens are allowed to participate in government. Secret government projects in the U.S. make the U.S. less of a democracy and move toward hidden control.

Articles about secret agencies often assume they are managed well. But an employee of an NSA sub-contractor, Edward Snowden, was able to copy huge amounts of data. What would stop NSA employees from listening to telephone conversations of CEOs to find inside information for profiting from buying stock, for example?

NSA = No Sales for America.

Question: Other producers of spyware have been put in prison. How does Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella avoid a court case?

You'd think a branch of "don't be evil" would be working to reduce that.

They're actually a branch of "Do the Right Thing."

I'm your Type-A 80ies computer kid turned web-dev in 2000. The line between stable long-term occupation and freelancer has been blurry ever since. This comes with the profession and the times we live in.

I've been in active in the industry for 15 years and now call myself a "Consultant & Software Architect" for FOSS and non-trivial web-applications (flashy name required for being taken seriously as a senior). The software we use at my current employer is matured FOSS, most of the coding is done already. 15-20% of the work consists of slapping together various pieces and building a whole project, adjusting preconfectioned webdesigns with some CSS and jQuery hacks on the side, maintaining the deployment pipeline, doing a little helpdesk, patching IT, etc. The other 80% are office, partner and customer politics, writing important sounding requirements-analysis and covering the companies ass on the technical side when we prepare to take on a deal.

If I would insist on only doing coding, I'd be one of the freelancers we hire to do the work for a few weeks, two or three times a year. One guy is a freelance web-guy, the other is a student who's good at Bootstrap and WordPress and is more into politics and probably has other long term plans than staying in webdev.

Since I'm important for deals and revenue I've got a part-time fixed position. Which is just the right fit for me and the company.

If everything goes right, our jobs, like most others will mostly be done by robots/software when we retire. Software is eating the World.
It's called progress and you should prepare for it.

yes, revise the U.S. tax code - like politicians will ever do that ...

a less knee jerk/punish big corporations perspective in the WSJ:

The companies expect to achieve $2 billion in cost savings as well as significant tax benefits from the deal, under which Pfizer’s tax base would shift to Allergan’s home base in Ireland in a so-called inversion. As a result of the move, Pfizer expects to cut its tax rate to 17% or 18%, from its roughly 25% rate currently, because corporate taxes in Ireland are lower than in the U.S.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ra...

Never thought of him as being so mainstream...

One can find plenty of arguments and lots of scholarly papers written that are both for and against SDI and Reagan's impact on the USSR. I suppose it partly depends on which way one leans, doesn't it? Anyway, here's a nice article summing things up over at the WSJ. I think anyone denying that SDI was at least an accelerating factor is really just sticking his head in the sand. :)

I understand enough about Islam to know that there's no consensus within Islam about what the material aims of Islam are, and that no one individual has the authority to say what those aims are, and "no one individual" includes you and me. I wonder what expertise you claim that trumps these 1000 Muslim leaders and academics?

I suspect you've been misled by the common myth that religion is bound to an unchanging literal interpretation of its founding texts, and so the "true" version of a religion is found by a simplistic reading of those texts, but that's not the way most religion works in the real world (including most of Islam). Religions change over time, much to the inconvenience of those whose argument against religion is the dogma that they don't.

Do you really believe that preventing legitimate Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. will prevent a single existing terrorist from an organization like ISIS from entering the U.S.? Even if no Syrian citizens are permitted to enter the U.S., terrorist organizations will pick another route to enter the U.S. Fake passports are not that difficult to come by. Hell, the Syrian passport found near the body of one of the Paris suicide bombers was a fake. Serbian police arrested a man Saturday with the same passport information except for the photo. But why even bother with coming in with false passport when you can use nationals who are already in place. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, stated, “Let me underline—the profile of the terrorists so far identified tells us this is an internal threat. It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security."

The U.S. is arguably the most capitalistic and market oriented country on the face of the earth yet amazingly we manage to produce vast swaths of the electorate that somehow think economy is some strange kind of magic run by dragons and fairies.

What did anyone think would happen if we produced more degrees without insuring there would be demand for them ?

On the one hand you had simple supply and demand hitting the prices http://www.wsj.com/articles/co...

Simplified tuition aid was mostly a handout to universities not students.

Then you have depressed pricing for the labor of people who earned a degree.