Slashdot Mirror

LOL what a fucking noob, everyone's ditching India left right and center.

Frustrated With Indian Policies, Wal-Mart, Berkshire Hathaway, Others Pull Back on Investment.
Why Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway pulled out of India
Walmart Inc, Bharti Group may end India partnership

China still has substantial currency controls on the renminbi. It's difficult to move renminbi to other currencies. There's a "State Administration of Foreign Exchange" which issues permits to do that. Businesses and individuals in China can buy goods with renminbi from other countries, but exchanging renminbi for dollars or euros or doing other cross-currency financial transactions is heavily controlled.

(Lately, there's been a surge in Bitcoin transactions in China. This provides a way to get around exchange controls. This activity will probably provoke some government action if it gets big.)

Because of those exchange controls, the renminbi has not been a major international currency. That was the deliberate policy of the People's Bank of China for years, because they didn't want their internal economy yanked around by external events. That policy changed in July 2013. China now has a big enough economy internally to outweigh external holders.

Retail controls are loosening. HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank will now let you open a bank account outside China denominated in yuan. But it's not freely exchangeable yet.

Here's a summary of "Circular Concerning the Simplification of Cross-Border RMB Procedures and Improvement of Relevant Policies" from the People's Bank of China. The changes are slow and cautious, but are happening.

Unvaccinated persons WERE rare. The Wakefield paper and the bullshit it has produced has changed that significantly. We are actually seeing the results of that in the outbreaks of measles and mumps in the US and the UK, because of the breakdown in herd immunity in certain areas, due entirely to the anti-vaccine movement. We are talking about serious diseases, that have serious, life long consequences, that were all but eradicated until the anti-vac movement sprang up. Here's a story from the WSJ, not exactly known as a publication that indorses government intervention. They don't here, either... but it's pretty clear that they don't hold the hard line on this issue that they generally do. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323300004578555453881252798.html

Let me know when governments in the US and UK stop changing by election.

Let us know when US elections aren't influenced by billions of dollars in bribe-funded propaganda, hanging chads, voter registration fraud, gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, evoting bugs and fraud or the social media data mining that handed Obama the presidency over his pdf, inkjet-printer, email, web 1.0-focused Republican opponents.

Then ask yourself this: Imagine a low-level contractor such as Snowden who has access to much of your online activity, your list of friends, what you "like", what music and movies you download, what news you pay attention to, even these words we type and read on Slashdot... could that person influence an election? Clinton, Obama and the TLAs must answer that question for the American people. The obvious answer is yes which means the TLAs should be subject to the same campaign finance transparency and scrutiny as Grandma Jones is for her 10$ donation to the Iowa Tea Party.

This paragraph was not paid for by the RNC, DNC or Hillary Clinton election campaign committee. Your mileage may vary.

Heritage repudiated that plan long ago after rethinking it. They determined it was a bad idea. You should give them credit for being able to do so.

ObamaCare's Heritage

In that 11th Circuit appeal, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department cited Heritage as an authority in support of its position. Heritage responded with an amicus brief explaining that its view had changed:

If citations to policy papers were subject to the same rules as legal citations, then the Heritage position quoted by the Department of Justice would have a red flag indicating it had been reversed. . . . Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate.

Heritage policy experts never supported an unqualified mandate like that in the PPACA [ObamaCare]. Their prior support for a qualified mandate was limited to catastrophic coverage (true insurance that is precisely what the PPACA forbids), coupled with tax relief for all families and other reforms that are conspicuously absent from the PPACA. Since then, a growing body of research has provided a strong basis to conclude that any government insurance mandate is not only unnecessary, but is a bad policy option. Moreover, Heritage's legal scholars have been consistent in explaining that the type of mandate in the PPACA is unconstitutional.

I think the pertinent question is whether Microsoft or Google or Yahoo should responsible for the ads they show.

That's a very good question. Because the major search engines do not vet their advertisers very well. Google had to pay $500,000,000 to the USDOJ when they were caught willfully running ads for an obvious drug dealer. (No, it wasn't about "Canadian pharmacies". Some Google apologists tried to spin it that way, but the details came out.) Google has since clamped down. They had to; they were on DOJ probation for two years, with felony charges hanging over them. "Oxycontin no prescription" no longer returns ad results. Same for "viagra". Bing now pops up an "Is it legit?" box for searches like that.

Google's clampdown was narrow. Searches with "foreclosure" and "credit repair" have a high population of scammers. Financial search keywords carry a high price, because the marks can be taken for big amounts.

It's possible to measure basic advertiser legitimacy. We do that with SiteTruth, which tries to find the real-world business behind the ad. For over 30% of Google advertisers (by domain name), there's no identifiable real-world business behind the ad. (Running an anonymous business is illegal in some states and in the EU.) That's embarrassing, and highly profitable for Google.

One: Schedule Fail. Compounded by late award of the contracts to develop/influence:

Contracts Awarded Dec 2011

Two: massive requirements base to develop specification for development and implementation: The PPACA was 1800+ pages, and the associated regulations are 10,000+ pages, and are STILL changing. Can't develop without a spec and design, with big parts of requirements still changing.

Three: inadequate testing. The above-referenced link states that security testing BEGAN in August 2013, less than two months before rollout. There's no mention of load testing

Four: Integration issues. The Obamacare Exchange system combines data from numerous agencies and systems, and integrating between them is always a difficult task

Five: Identity-management. This is in parallel to Integration, somehow all identities need to be federated into a single overarching system.

Twenty-three months, even with a top-flight team, would simply not be enough to do this: this is a 5-7 year job. . .

Where does this myth come from

Since the late 90s there have been mumblings ("Someone I know who works at MS said they knew someone who said...") that code from BSD TCP/IP stack was in Windows but there was never any proof. Some speculated that because they were susceptible to some of the same vulnerabilities they must share common code but there were some vulnerabilities that affected the Windows TCP/IP stack not the BSD one (and vice versa) so this seems unlikely.

In 2001 the FreeBSD folks decided to search for proof but other than utilities nothing much was found. You can even see them correcting the "Windows uses the BSD TCP/IP stack" misconception years later.

Around the same time an article saying Microsoft uses open source code was published in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a quote:

Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft's Windows software, such as in the "TCP/IP" section

This assertion is somewhat broard but it was enough to kick off a new round of speculation and rebuttals with regard to the Windows TCP/IP stack but everyone loves a good tale so the counterclaims are less well known. Perhaps this would qualify as a Snopes urban myth.

[H]ow did it end up being passed of as fact on wikipedia?

Who says Wikipedia only consists of facts? :-) Nothing saves you from having to use critical analysis on sources, especially since anyone can edit Wikipedia but I will note there is a citation needed link further down on that page.

All the above sources were found via a Google Windows/BSD stack query so with these starter links and a quick search you're now well armed to correct Wikipedia and anyone else who repeats this rumour. Welcome to the club!

Turns out I was optimistic. Apparently the contracts did not even go out for bid until late 2011, and testing began in August, 2013. . .

Gottlieb and Astrue: ObamaCare's Technology Mess

So, time for implementation was SEVERELY compressed, much less testing. .

The submission had one article, the editors linked to two more.
ALL THREE ARTICLES REFERENCE & LINK TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Is it so hard to include a link to the source of this story?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404579119490744478398.html
(Google Cache just in case /. does this far too often and I hope to see better in the future

20% of the market and probably 50% of the profits

Samsung Dethrones Apple in Smartphone Profits

Apple has fallen off the profit throne.

Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-apple-in-smartphone-profits/

Try again. This has been debunked: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-dethroned-apple-in-mobile-profits

20% of the market and probably 50% of the profits

Samsung Dethrones Apple in Smartphone Profits

Apple has fallen off the profit throne.

Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-apple-in-smartphone-profits/

With some thorough research, I have discovered that yes, the news DIDN'T report that, only fundamentalist blogs whose next story was shape shifting reptilians creating the Obamacare Death Panels were reporting anything of the sort.

I'm sure you think you are doing thourough research. And in your fantasy land, it might be as good as it gets. In the real world, we have this thing called the internet and search engines. Now I will admit that my wording was slightly off as I was posting from my phone about stories piped to me by the news app on the phone and trying to do it from memory and the confusion could be your inability to intelligently discern the differences between what was reported, the phrasing I used, and what you want to think. Of course posting anonymously like that, I can only assume you were trying to deliberately mislead like Baghdad Bob was doing during the beginning of the Iraq war.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579113781436540284.html

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/senior-admin-official-we-are-winningit-doesnt-really-matter-us-when-shutdown-ends_759185.html?nopager=1

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/3/pruden-the-cheap-tricks-of-the-game/

BTW, whether you want to believe it or not, those are news sites. Just because they don't spout the narrative doesn't make them any less.

I welcome you to Earth, strange traveller. You obviously must be new here and may have not noticed yet that Apple dominates all other brands , and for a time was the world's largest company, only loosing its place to become 2nd earlier this year to Exxon.

Which is why we as a society need to come up with a way of offering training and education to those displaced workers, at no cost to the displaced workers.

We do. It's called job retraining and is touted, mainly, by the Republicans who offer it up every time the other side talks about shipping jobs overseas and what about the workers who won't have jobs. Guess what, it doesn't work. And still doesn't.

there will not be enough Bitcoins to cover the increased commerce

Sure there will, unless somebody tries to impose price controls that prevent Bitcoins from gaining value (i.e., that prevent deflation from happening). Deflation is the natural and proper response when the supply of a particular currency doesn't grow enough to meet the demand for that particular currency.

And if some entrepreneur introduces yet another currency, whose supply is more responsive to demand, that too is a natural and proper response.

Is the difficulty of minting new Bitcoins set in stone? Maybe it could be relaxed a bit, to try to prevent deflation.

Slightly off-topic: the goal of the Federal Reserve -- the target of its policies -- is for the U.S. dollar to experience inflation of 2% per year. Not 4%, not 0%, but 2%. Can anyone explain why? I've always thought a target of 0% would make more sense. The 2% target means that sellers have to expend effort to reprice their goods and services more often -- for no other reason than the existence of that 2% target. And that's not a productive activity. (And then there's old-timers who kvetch about the dollar not buying as much as it used to, and see inflation as a symptom of decay. They would have less to complain about, and have improved confidence in the economy, and feel like they were passing a more stable world on to their grandkids, if the Fed had a 0% target.)

Exactly. However the new SEC rules make it even more difficult.
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-340039/

You might want to read today's Wall Street Journal report on startup investing. The SEC regulations for VC funding have become much more onerous that many angel investors are getting out of the game. You have to be an "accredited" investor and you have to be able to prove that fact. Startups have to do a lot more work to ensure that they are only getting funding from accredited investors.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323309404578611543232094874.html

Wall Street Journal 2 months ago, some debate around it:

"Most but not all studies from several European nations with large databases and the ability to track health records have found that over the past 15 years or so, the counts of healthy men ages 18 to 25 have significantly decreased. This comes after a prominent study from the 1990s suggested that sperm count has decreased by half over the last half-century."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323394504578607641775723354.html

It is appalling to see so many people blaming users for the results of a policy Americans keep voting for. This is a public health outcome of the "War on Drugs", which, like any other war on a thing, is really just a war on people.

Blaming addicts is a craven political tactic used by powerful incumbents to protect their incomes: Local and federal law enforcement agencies who's funding depends on drug prohibition, privatized prisons and their lobbies, grandstanding politicians who campaign on "getting tough" on things, and gangsters and smugglers all have a vested interest in the status quo. The outcome cannot improve until we refuse to be duped, demand reform.

Desperate users who are already opioid addicts are exploited by sellers of krokodil, they are not normal healthy people who "choose to try it". It is unreasonable to assume that users of this substance have given informed consent to be poisoned; they do not enjoy the same autonomy that you and I do, they are desperate, and they are not easily able to evaluate the quality or authenticity of black market drugs.

Drug prohibition is economically nonsensical. It is an explicitly stated aim of law enforcement to increase the street price of narcotics. Therefore, prohibition incentivizes the black market and makes users less safe and more desperate. Black market opioids are expensive and contaminated _because_ they are criminalized, and the desperation of addicts is exacerbated by our policy. We have deliberately created a situation where heroine costs $250 per gram and addicts must choose between getting DT's and robbing houses.

Drug prohibition is predicated on the ideas that narcotics diminish our autonomy, and that we are all susceptible to addiction to some degree. It is incoherent to support prohibition and blame addicts at the same time. It's also hypocritical. How many of you have consumed a pharmaceutical opioid or other narcotic, and thereby chosen to risk addiction?

We are not morally or intellectually superior to addicts. Moreover, blame is no solace to the millions of people who are imprisoned, killed by gangsters, or poisoned, and it is cruel, pedantic, and beneath us... oh wait, this is slashdot.... but seriously:

Even if we don't care an iota for the welfare of drug users, we ought to resent the fact that we are footing the bill for a colossal boondogle which is perverting our legal system, and destabilizing neighboring states.

Krokodil is a market outcome of drug prohibition. We should stop voting for it.

Tesla Motors does sell directly from their website and is getting a lot of flak from car dealerships because of it. WSJ article.

The problem is when people who DON'T need kickstarter clog the pipe up. Spoiled brat kids of overpaid, undertalented music acts "kickstarting" their 2nd or 3rd album for instance. James Franco wanting people to "kickstart" his vanity-movie project.

Shit like this clutters up the site and makes it impossible to find the people who have interesting projects that actually need the help.

Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumias in Q2 2013, Samsung sold about 10 times as many Android phones, but most other Android manufacturers (and there are dozens of them) sold way less than either of the above.

And no Lumia phone was discontinued after 2 months -- perhaps you're thinking about the Facebook phone?

The original burning platform memo is worth a read. It was an acute analysis of Nokia's problems. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/09/full-text-nokia-ceo-stephen-elops-burning-platform-memo/ All Elop did was state the obvious, that Nokia was in serious trouble.

As for moving away from Symbian... Nokia is a business. Business exist to make money. Anyone who takes about share and not profits is in lala land.

"We" is a lot of people, some that could be respectful, some that not. Also forced the maker of your locks to be able to be opened with a clip to make things easier for us, knowing that no "proper" thief would never figure that. And planted a few hidden bombs just in case we think that you are misbehaving.

Did we mention that we have to pay private prisons if we don't keep them nearly full? Is not that you would have to worry about that

Yes, sometimes worthwhile things are difficult and you just have to slog through, but why do it unnecessarily?

No need to do it unnecessarily. And yet, the modern emphasis on making things fun disturbs me — because when "fun" comes into conflict with results, "fun" tends to win nowadays... Witness the prevalence of Asian children, whose "dragon mothers" are not (yet?) quite as enamored with the "fun", being so successful entering the best colleges, for example, that the admission boards adjusted the rules to favor Whites over Asians (although Blacks are still the most favored) to comply with the racist "affirmative action" laws and personal beliefs...

What's next? Slashdot reviews of "Metallurgy for Dummies" or "Making Radiology Fun"?.. Oh, wait...

How long before we see "Lunch! Sponsored by McDonald's", etc...

Where have you been? We already have cafeterias selling food from Taco Bell, Subway and Domino's: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB901574891620347000.html

Probably should toss the whole government into prison then: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/07/19/in-rare-delinquency-irans-world-bank-loans-overdue-as-sanctions-bite/

Checking last years balance sheet 4.7 billion is about how much RIM has in owned property.

Does that $4.7 billion balance sheet include the $1 billion worth of unsold phones that Blackberry is stuck with?

(As reported in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323308504579087471781835480.html)

That's already happening.

Brazil is pulling away from doing business with US tech firms.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-19/nsa-spying-gives-advantage-to-brazil-s-local-tech-firms.html

Germany is pissed:
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/08/14/german-backlash-to-nsa-spying-gets-stronger/

EU in general is looking elsewhere for technology:
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/07/nsa-spying-scandal-fallout-expect-big-impact-in-europe-and-elsewhere/

Business world wide is starting to look elsewhere:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/10/how-the-nsa-revelations-are-hurting-businesses/

Cloud Computing was just sentenced to death by NSA
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/04/spying-bad-for-business/

The NSA revelations will prove to be one of the biggest detriments to US computer technology business in decades.
 

A curious thought! Here is the WSJ's bit on it. I'm somewhat skeptical that the process accused could produce ketone bodies to the same magnitude; keep in mind that ketosis occurs when the body starts burning fat because it's starving and/or exercising. Even with the minuscule amounts of water being consumed by lipolysis and the citric acid cycle, there's still a lot more water in a live human body than in a hunk of pork.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he didn't exclude running for a fourth term, in a move that would pave the way for him to remain in power until 2024.

Wall Street Journal

The article states that he's 61 years old, so this is more or less "president for life". If he lasts another 10 years he'll just do it again, or not even bother to hold an election.

Russia's slide will continue if this happens. Of course the US has a similar problem with entrenched elites wrecking the economy for their own personal gain.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/17/ridleys-riposte-to-john-abraham/

Guest essay by Dr. Matt Ridley

On a blog called Desmog Blog, John Abraham has criticized my recent article in the Wall Street Journal on climate sensitivity. Here’s my piece http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html
And here’s his piece: http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/16/john-abraham-slams-matt-ridley-climate-denial-op-ed-wall-street-journal.

It’s a poor response, characterized by inaccurate representation of what I said, even down to actual misquoting. In the whole article, he puts just four words in quotation marks as written by me, yet in doing so he misses out a whole word: 20% of the quotation. Remarkable. If I did that, I would be very embarrassed.

He directly contradicts the IPCC’s report on extreme weather, which found no link between current storms and man-made climate change; he is apparently unaware that the rising costs of extreme weather are entirely caused by rising investment and insurance values, not rising quantities of extreme weather, as even a small amount of research would have told him ( http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/follow-up-q-from-senate-epw.html ); he falsely claims that I say rising sea levels will be beneficial, when I wrote no such thing; and he wholly ignores the benefits of mild climate change, even though I was careful to say that the key thing is to compare costs and benefits. It is possible that he does not know the meaning of the word “net”: he certainly shows no understanding of the concept.

“General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media,” said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently. “It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10seconds they realize that’s nonsense.”

Mr Abraham’s main point is that up to 2 degrees C of warming is likely to do net harm. For this surprising claim, he produces noevidence. None. The evidence suggest the opposite – that less than two degrees of warming will cut excess winter deaths, increase average rainfall, extendgrowing seasons and increase rates of photosynthesis in wild and agricultural ecosystems. “A global warming of less than 2.5C could have no significant effect on overall food production,” says the UNFCC website.

http://unfccc.int/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/climate_change_information_kit/items/288.php

See links here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188913000092%00 and here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/06/winter-kills-excess-deaths-in-the-winter-months/.

And yet it is he who accuses me of “non-science nonsense”. It’s truly disgraceful that a tenured academic, as I assume Mr Abraham to be, should make so many mistakes and yet feel free to hurl unsubstantiated abuse at another human being, however desperate he may be. In writing about climate change I am careful not to make unprovoked ad-hominem attacks – until attacked in this way.

I always play the ball, not the man. Mr Abra

Please tell us instead what websites/activities are NOT monitored by NSA, thank you!

NSA internal operations. When the NSA can commit over 3,000 privacy violations in one year, the NSA is obviously not monitoring its own activities.

I don't believe 99% of what is paid to be published, because, well hell look who is paying for the media spin?

In this case, if you read both articles, it's hard to figure out which one isn't getting paid to publish. It's one crappy non-scientific angry opinionator against another.

Why are we getting articles here from politicians and bloggers? If we're going to get opinions, can't we at least get them from real scientists? We used to get stories on Slashdot when new studies were conducted. We don't need one every time some random person publishes their opinion (that's what the comments are for).

You can google debt gdp, and it will usually be in the top results. But put together, here you go: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576272891515344726.html . As you can easily see, we *are* not #1. Up there, yes, but still close to much of the western world. We have a very big economy compared to the average country. Obviously our raw national debt is going to be higher. Basic math. It's like complaining that your friend takes out a bigger loan than you, but you neglect to mention that he also has a bigger salary. Now if said friend takes on a bigger loan relative to his salary than you, then that's another story.

Right, Google's problems with evil are more on the ad side. They had to pay $500,000,000 as a penalty to the Department of Justice to keep Larry Page out of jail when Google was knowingly running ads for drug dealers. (It wasn't about "Canadian pharmacies"; Google was caught in an FBI sting operation involving a fake representative of a Mexican drug lord.)

After that, Google started checking out advertisers in the drug area more closely. But they continued to run ads for fake "foreclosure prevention" services and other rather flaky outfits.

Google's advertiser vetting is very weak. They don't even check whether there's a real business behind the ad. We used to run an automated check on this, and for about 36% of Google advertisers (by domain name), there was no identifiable real-world business behind the ad.

Right, Google's problems with evil are more on the ad side. They had to pay $500,000,000 as a penalty to the Department of Justice to keep Larry Page out of jail when Google was knowingly running ads for drug dealers. (It wasn't about "Canadian pharmacies"; Google was caught in an FBI sting operation involving a fake representative of a Mexican drug lord.)

After that, Google started checking out advertisers in the drug area more closely. But they continued to run ads for fake "foreclosure prevention" services and other rather flaky outfits.

Google's advertiser vetting is very weak. They don't even check whether there's a real business behind the ad. We used to run an automated check on this, and for about 36% of Google advertisers (by domain name), there was no identifiable real-world business behind the ad.

It highlights the need for Apple to tell us exactly how the fingerprint security works, which was a part of the point of the original article.

Apple has revealed enough detail:

According to an unnamed spokesman at Apple, the fingerprint detector won't actually record images of your fingerprints.

and...

This is in line with what Apple said during the actual announcement, specifically that the information was stored "in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip on the iPhone 5s." The information would not be store on Apple's servers or in the iCloud.

From the WSJ.

they want to tell you what to eat and drink, what doctor to go to, and even who your neighbors should be

No they can't. If you had read the exchange specs you would know that Flash Orders were an optional feature to keep from getting routed out to the NBBO exchange. The person submitting the order had to opt in to have their order viewed. And in any case they no longer exist. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703409304576166930877474292.html

There are some details here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/11/apple-new-iphone-not-storing-fingerprints-doesnt-like-sweat/

Basically if something goes wrong with the fingerprint scanner it will always fall back to the passcode and in some cases it will require the passcode instead of a fingerprint.

Also, you need a passcode to unlock the phone after it has been powered off and if it hasn't been unlocked for 48 hours.

There are probably some other special circumstances but that is the gist of it

abandon the poor to die? citation please. and no im not looking for "cutting food stamps" or "want to push grandma over a cliff" bullshit that is normally used.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118781024289705455.html

Apple has fallen off the profit throne. Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time, according to a report by Strategy Analytics.

Samsung's operating profit for handsets was an estimated $5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2013, according to the report. Apple, meanwhile, had an estimated operating profit of $4.6 billion.

cite

How much of that could possibly be from $20 no-contract phones I won't guess, but the point is they cover the extremes and everything in between and are already very profitable at it.

I think you missed something:

Chinese protest at planned chemical plant over pollution fears

A similar protest earlier this month in Chengdu, the capital of adjacent Sichuan province, was suppressed by police.

Sometimes the party is willing, but the police are weak.

On the other hand, the Chinese government has been liberalizing in various aspects. I think this incident was quite remarkable:

Chinese Villagers Under Siege Mourn Man Who Died

Of course, then there are these two items:
China's Leader Embraces Mao as He Tightens Grip on Country
China Takes Aim at Western Ideas

I think I now have enough hands to be an economist.

"I suspect, the governments — the leading stewards of the research dollars — aren't particularly interested in lengthening the lifespans"

I suspect that it hinges more on 'lengthening lifespans' vs. 'slowing aging'. Weak, sick, old people are not something anybody with medical or pension obligations really want living longer. If people became weak, sick, and old more slowly, though, you'd score more person-years of post-childhood, post-education, experienced labor (and, given most people's preparations for retirement, having them just say 'eh, fuck it' and stop working could largely be avoided, with the added "benefit" of keeping young workers in cheap, entry-level positions for much longer periods of time).

If this sort of research were steered purely by economic considerations, 'anti-aging' would probably be be behind dealing with common causes of mortality in children and young adults; but would be ahead of treating things that mostly kill old people. (Also worth remembering: 'the governments', if a useful generalization can be drawn at all, are heavily skewed toward people who are themselves... not exactly getting any younger. Compare the US population generally with Congress. If legislating with one foot in the grave doesn't increase the apparent need for anti-aging research, I'm not sure what would...)

13% of the US population kills almost Twice as many as 70% of population(Black vs White only)

White Kills Black
Black Kills White

But this
Black Kills Black
White Kills White

The totals here are not that different, but if Whites killed at the same rate as Blacks, were close to 200,000

13% of the US population kills almost Twice as many as 70% of population(Black vs White only)

White Kills Black
Black Kills White

But this
Black Kills Black
White Kills White

The totals here are not that different, but if Whites killed at the same rate as Blacks, were close to 200,000

13% of the US population kills almost Twice as many as 70% of population(Black vs White only)

White Kills Black
Black Kills White

But this
Black Kills Black
White Kills White

The totals here are not that different, but if Whites killed at the same rate as Blacks, were close to 200,000

13% of the US population kills almost Twice as many as 70% of population(Black vs White only)

White Kills Black
Black Kills White

But this
Black Kills Black
White Kills White

The totals here are not that different, but if Whites killed at the same rate as Blacks, were close to 200,000