Slashdot Mirror

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577333631864470566.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

I called it. They spend less then 65 cents of every dollar from the gas tax on road maintenance. The rest is intercepted for other programs.

I live in Los Angeles. I god damn called it.

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to not treat workers like shit?

Even if so, based on what the company is doing, it may not be enough.

TFA is based on (and links) another FA in WSJ. Guess which company is the first to be quoted in regards with the tech? Diebolt, which seemed to be more interested on maintaining its face instead of the quality of their products.

A more important question is why would anyone take anything said at "ITWorld" as factual?

It's not just ITWorld's say-so. They cite this WSJ article, which also says so.

Oh, now you're really bumping up the truthiness.

A more important question is why would anyone take anything said at "ITWorld" as factual?

It's not just ITWorld's say-so. They cite this WSJ article, which also says so.

A vague rumor of "Military vehicles in Beijing" is a bit much. At least one web site is pairing that rumor with a stock shot of Chinese tanks on parade. The crackdown was a dumb move that gave the rumor credibility.

There is something big going on, though. China is about to have a major change in leadership, but China doesn't have an reliable way to pick its national leaders. There's a power struggle within the Party each time this happens. It's only happened three times since Mao, and the first two produced the Great Leap Forward disaster and the Cultural Revolution. The third, in 1992, went smoothly. Governments all over the world are watching this closely. Nobody knows who will be running China a year from now.

This year, seven of the nine Standing Committee members are retiring. One of the anointed successors, Bo Xilai, has been arrested on murder charges. This has thrown the succession process into confusion. The South China Morning Post (out of Hong Kong) says this was a "liberal coup". This followed rumors of a coup last month, a coup which didn't happen. (In general, coups that are predicted don't happen - they require surprise.)

The Chinese government is desperately trying to prevent public involvement in the succession process. China does not have real elections. So "public involvement" means riots or civil wars. Historically, those have changed governments. So the Party is trying to keep the lid on.

agreed. Remember, SpaceX is only going after the re-supply business right now; and they haven't actually done this yet. Even the Russians messed this up -- twice. There's a big difference deliverying supplies and launching an astronaut and bringing him safely to earth. The Russians knew this. That's why they raised their prices when the US announced the end of the Shuttle program.

Your last comment comment about China is interesting:

The villain in the remake of Red Dawn was actually switched from China (realistic) to North Korea (ridiculous) in order to not upset China (and its movie audiences). I guess the producers figured that "vaguely Asian-looking" actors could just as easily be viewed by American audiences as Korean.

There is "sand" involved here, though: heads are nestled deeply in it.

It's interesting that you and the parent AC believe this is somehow a "war on the academic sector". There is indeed a war, but it's not coming from within. First, a backdrop, beginning with the fact that China is on track to exceed US military spending by 2025:

Chinese Insider Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S.-China Frictions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html

"The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst. China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country."

Asia's balance of power: China’s military rise
http://www.economist.com/node/21552212

"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so."

China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth
http://www.economist.com/node/21552193

And now on to what's happening every day in US academic and business environments:

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Att

Your last comment comment about China is interesting:

The villain in the remake of Red Dawn was actually switched from China (realistic) to North Korea (ridiculous) in order to not upset China (and its movie audiences). I guess the producers figured that "vaguely Asian-looking" actors could just as easily be viewed by American audiences as Korean.

There is "sand" involved here, though: heads are nestled deeply in it.

It's interesting that you and the parent AC believe this is somehow a "war on the academic sector". There is indeed a war, but it's not coming from within. First, a backdrop, beginning with the fact that China is on track to exceed US military spending by 2025:

Chinese Insider Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S.-China Frictions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html

"The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst. China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country."

Asia's balance of power: China’s military rise
http://www.economist.com/node/21552212

"NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so."

China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth
http://www.economist.com/node/21552193

And now on to what's happening every day in US academic and business environments:

How China Steals Our Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/how-china-steals-our-secrets.html

China's Cyber Thievery Is National Policy—And Must Be Challenged
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203718504577178832338032176-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203961204577266892884130620-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

NSA: China is Destroying U.S. Economy Via Security Hacks
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+China+is+Destroying+US+Economy+Via+Security+Hacks/article24328.htm

Former cybersecurity czar: Every major U.S. company has been hacked by China
http://www.itworld.com/security/262616/former-cybersecurity-czar-every-major-us-company-has-been-hacked-china

China Att

Here's one citation, although the real figure is 70%, not 75%. That article estimates that only 40% of the bill is able to be eliminated through behavioral rewards, however.

Also, the developer, i-Free, has their full statement here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/31/girls-around-me-developer-defends-app-after-foursquare-dismissal/

The last months of a persons life are overwhelmingly the most expensive, but the outcomes are predicable. There was a great article in the WSJ on this called Why Doctors Die Differently - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577243321242833962.html . The basic point is that doctors understand death, and when their condition makes death inevitable. They almost always opt for more life in their years than more years in their life. From a healthcare point of view, doctors have much less expensive end-of-life care.

Comrade Lysenko - http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228752/comrade-lysenko-copenhagen/alex-alexiev . I've seen it in action. I used to work at the World Weather Building in the 1980s. After Clinton became President, Al Gore visited and the very tallented weather men were chased out. They didn't agree with Al and his Man Made Global Warming. As with Lysenko, it's worse now. Even though Man is almost certainly *NOT* causing Global Warming. Nothing to do with God, Nothing to do with conservatism, cold hard scientific facts that the left can't stand. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274.html . Makes it harder for them to sham us out of money. Something I'm sure you are in denial about. You're probably a true believer in MMGW.
The Koch brothers don't oppose science, they use it all the time. They make a lot of money with it. The difference is, they know when they are being lied to. Most people don't. Especially on the Nobel Comittee. The runner up when Al Gore got his prize for a SLIDE SHOW - http://monirae.blogspot.com/2008/07/runner-up-for-nobel-prize.html . Then you wonder why people don't believe in science? Not when it's not science anymore. I've also seen a huge decrease in quality in Science Fair projects over the past 30 years. I used to judge them. Lately it might as well be home economics, that's because science even at science and tech schools are mostly tought by liberal arts majors. It's scary, depressing. So many bright minds, right into the crapper!

Yup, WSJ confirms it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html

The WSJ has an updated story here. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
From the link, Global Pay seems to be the processor, and it appears that only 26,094 VISA cards were affected. It did not mention how many MasterCard cards were affected. While that is a lot, it is nowhere near the 10 million speculated.

The WSJ has an updated story here. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
From the link, Global Pay seems to be the processor, and it appears that only 26,094 VISA cards were affected. It did not mention how many MasterCard cards were affected. While that is a lot, it is nowhere near the 10 million speculated.

That said, a window of 21 Jan to 25 Feb...that's quite a big window...

And slashdot gets increasingly pathetic. Well, if anyone cares to RTFA:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html

Not a whole lot of info from any source, Krebs seems to be the best though:
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/#more-14393

As far as I can see modern conservatives would cut taxes immediately and maintain a permanent deficit position.

Ummm, 4 trillion in cuts is "maintain a permanent deficit"? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576240751124518520.html
It's certainly a hell of alot more than the other side is bringing to the table.

You are conflating scientists with policy makers. Policy makers will use whatever information they can to push their agenda. That agenda may or may not be based on sound reasoning. And while there are certainly some scientists who like to spout off about things outside their field, they are in the minority.

I suspect that your distaste with science and scientists comes from how policy makers and the media portray it. Case in point would be the recent OPERA faster than light neutrino results. The OPERA collaboration made a clear scientific statement: they observed a signal in their detector that indicated that neutrinos were traveling faster than the speed of light, they had double checked their procedure and were in the process of triple checking, and that they would be grateful for another experiment to confirm their results. The media goes crazy with all the craziness that would ensue if there were such a thing, while OPERA and other experiments go along doing what they do: science. Then a few weeks ago OPERA says they found a flaw in their method and another experiment shows no faster than light neutrinos. The discussion on Slashdot during that time had many angry comments from people blaming OPERA for the hype. It was not they who created the hype but the media and people like us on continually talking about it.

Something tells me getting contacted from an Apple email saying that they want to render the software useless is not going to get past that.

Why would Apple do that? They have their own police to get it for them.

As someone who's mother has actually worked the golden age of flight. Cost-omers don't want to pay the extra; they had no choice. The Government simply set the price of an airline ticket. Companies being competitive had to offer the customers more for their money to attract and hold them. Today's low service rock bottom fairs are what most cost-omers want plus sprinkle in the fact the direct price comparisons make factoring in things like extra costs for luggage harder to do and you get today's system. BTW, if you factor in today's inflation a golden age cattle class ticket gets you a business class ticket today. So really the system has just allow the average man to get where he's going affordable. If you want the extra service pony up the bills. [source]

I don't see how your position is any less childish or black-and-white. You make blanket statements about people you couldn't even name and you take complex economic issues and simplify them to the point of "itz all cauzed by teh greedy banksters!". Do you honestly claim to understand the complexities of the events you just listed... or are your "facts" based in populist sentiment? (it's a rhetorical question, the answer is obvious).

You mean, it's obvious that I track economic developments and read economics related news articles?

Good, I was worried you were being a hyperbolic, presumptive ass.

Do we put the government in charge of distributing wealth? If you think that rich greedy people are a problem now, just wait until their money/power is controlled by a bureaucrat who not doesn't care about wasting huge sums of money, and has even less consequences for wrongdoing.

Don't follow the news, do we?

Isn't it interesting that you have so much hatred for people with more money than you...

I don't hate anybody. I hate the way people let their greed blind them to the suffering they cause others, but I don't hate the people themselves.

do you care about the 98% of the worlds population that has far less than you do?

Indeed. I would love to live in a world where those with the most willingly and happily share their excess wealth with the less fortunate so that everyone can live a better life. Did you even read my OP, or were you so amped up about posting your argumentum ad hominem that you didn't bother?

How would you feel if someone told you that you had to give up 75% of your property to make society more fair?

short answer: I'm a survivalist :) material possessions (outside those necessary for survival) mean nothing to me.

Long answer: It wouldn't bother me in the least, although I would question the intent of the person telling me that, as I personally own very little; save the house and the car (which one would assume would be part of the 25% I keep, as we're trying to lessen poverty here, not increase it) might bring a few thousand dollars if you could manage to get retail out of my old, used junk...

I'm not defending the super-rich here, just pointing out that the threshold for how much is too much is conveniently above what *you* think it should be.

And what, precisely, do "I" think it should be?

Oh please, I seriously doubt you understand the true complexity of the world around you.

Considering all the baseless accusations and speculation you've offered thus far, I'm somehow not surprised.

I know it's much easier to understand a half-truth that appeals to emotion than to put in the effort required to really understand something.

See response above.

The idea that the "elites" must be overthrown to get "justice" for the "people" is not new, it has been tried many times but always fails miserably.

Yea, just look what happened in 1776; no good came of that, did it mate?

As soon as group X overthrows group Y, group X then becomes just as greedy and selfish (many times more so) than group Y was.

Change "as soon as" to "eventually" and I have to agree with that one.

The altruistic utopian world view where everyone is equal *and* prosperous is a fantasy that has never existed.

A guy can dream, can't he? (Answer: Yes, b

For several days after his ouster, censors took a hands-off approach to online gossip, letting speculation flow freely. That changed this week as popular microblogging site Sina Weibo reinstated an earlier block on searches for Mr. Bo's name and additionally blocked a wide range of user-invented code words for Mr. Bo, including the term "not thick"—a play on Mr. Bo's surname, which means "thin." Searches for Mr. Bo's name, "not thick" and other related terms were also blocked on Tencent Weibo, another of China's popular microblogging sites, which often impose their own blocks in anticipation of what the government will deem sensitive.

or Before BP Solar Went Under

Incorrect. Big banks do invest in oil commodities, and are into it big time. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576359704074143190.html
(I wish I could find the link that expresses it better, but the Wall Street Journal is the first link I could find quickly).

His plan sounds a lot like Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan detailed in The Case for Mars

Robert Zubrin actually had a piece in the Wall Street Journal last year where he described how to adapt his Mars Direct plan to use SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576317493923993056.html

Nothing in this plan is beyond our current technology, and the costs would not be excessive. Falcon-9 Heavy launches are priced at about $100 million each, and Dragons are cheaper. With this approach, we could send expeditions to Mars at half the cost to launch a Space Shuttle flight.

I'm not sure what's funnier:

a) You calling tekgoblin a spammy blog and then claiming cnet is better; seriously, load them both side by side, if you're browser doesn't crash in angst you'll notice they are almost identical in layout and just as spammy.

b) The fact that cnet isn't even the original source.

or c) This was modded +5 Informative.

Oh trust me, I am aware. I've been arrested (case later dismissed) because of women lying about me, and even had to call the cops three months ago to explain how another girl I'd been involved with was trying to spoof emails to frame me for "harassment" in order to avoid paying me the money she owed me. But the US government has wanted to get Assange extradited to the US so they could try him under the Espionage Act ever since the Collateral Murder video. I don't see how they'll be able to do that just from this, maybe they think they can put more pressure on the Swedish government than the UK, or maybe they think discrediting him as a rapist or putting him in Swedish jail is satisfactory. Sure, I admit I can't prove it's part of an ochestrated smear campaign or conspiracy, but given the fact that the accusations are based on an apparently obscure and rarely used "surprise sex" law, the timing of the incidents, the fact that at least some people in the Swedish legal system wanted to just throw the case out when it originally happened (this is from memory, sorry I couldn't find a link), I think I'd have to be gloriously naive to think the US didn't play a role in all this, even if they weren't directly involved with the two women making the accusations.

If this is unreasonable, call me out on it, but honestly how can anyone take these charges seriously?

The sad truth is that with the difference in the burden of truth between civil and criminal law AND the fact that the state collects a fine, there is ample reason for governments at any level to file civil rather than criminal charges. The latter generates no revenue, but does incur the cost of prosecution and incarceration. Sadly this makes the state an accomplice after the fact in many of these cases, and the victims do not recover their lost money. The wrongdoers have come to see paying the government as another form of taxation, "crime tax", but because the profits are so high, it works out nicely for them. In most cases the perpetrator agrees to pay a settlement without admitting to wrongdoing.

The SEC "agreed"not to file criminal charges against Fannie and Freddie or Mudd. The Wall Street Journal had a nice "Overview of the problem."

A google search for "WSJ civil criminal charges -BP -Madoff" will turn up enough to keep you busy all day.

The sad truth is that with the difference in the burden of truth between civil and criminal law AND the fact that the state collects a fine, there is ample reason for governments at any level to file civil rather than criminal charges. The latter generates no revenue, but does incur the cost of prosecution and incarceration. Sadly this makes the state an accomplice after the fact in many of these cases, and the victims do not recover their lost money. The wrongdoers have come to see paying the government as another form of taxation, "crime tax", but because the profits are so high, it works out nicely for them. In most cases the perpetrator agrees to pay a settlement without admitting to wrongdoing.

The SEC "agreed"not to file criminal charges against Fannie and Freddie or Mudd. The Wall Street Journal had a nice "Overview of the problem."

A google search for "WSJ civil criminal charges -BP -Madoff" will turn up enough to keep you busy all day.

Well there are enough laws on the books that for any given person, you can find at least one felony offense that they have committed. Look it up yourself if you do not believe me -- not only are there numerous overly broad laws, but there are so many laws in effect right now that the government itself has actually lost count:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920.html

Last time I checked every remaining candidate for the Republican nomination is competing on how much they love Jesus and how much they'd oppress people who don't follow their own stone age religious views.

Please, the coming political circus in the US is silly enough without inventing imaginary crimes. Sure, there's a lot of trashtalk among Republicans concerning Islam, but that's mostly deserved (Islam after all was founded by a misogynistic "prophet" who among other things, allowed for slavery, subjugation and rape of women, and institutionalized those activities in his edicts).

It wasn't the Republicans who attempt to force religious groups to fund acts which they consider immoral. That honor goes to the other party.

When it is more profitable to build an electric car than to invest in a credit card, we will know that the [economic] crisis is over

Also reminds me of the free silver movement. All that effort into extracting stuff from that ground that was ultimately worthless, then lobbying government to make it worth something.

Incidentally, on a completely unrelated note, saw this analysis of the economic crisis that is a bit unusual and I thought you might find interesting. Enjoy.

Of course, sometimes buildings just fall over, without any need for demolition: http://online.wsj.com/media/shbuilding_E_20100211045212.jpg (More complete explanation here)

Good she wasn't there ... she wouldn't have liked people writing all over her face and body!

Clearly you have a different definition of "life of the party" than I.

Good she wasn't there ... she wouldn't have liked people writing all over her face and body!

Investors valued Yelp restaurant and other reviews at $1.47B. How much is being spent on textbook reviews?

And now Academi
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577089021757803802.html

Have a nice day

"everything government does is an attack. What, you didn't know? Every single move by gov't is an attack. It's all violence. Whatever shape and form it takes, it is only possible because of the barrel of a gun pointed at your head, nothing else at all."

If you want to put it that way, I won't argue the point. But still, it behooves us to make a distinction between justifiable "attacks" on a corporation or the public, and unjustified attacks. I think we can agree that most of the time it's unjustified.

"As to 'anti-trust' -every time this was used, it was used by gov't as a response to various underhanded deals, helping out the competitors (existing or possible) of the company that is being attacked."

That's not true at all. Take the breakup of Ma Bell, for instance. While some of the consequences of that breakup were negative, a lot of the consequences were very positive. But more to the point: it was broken up for very, very good reasons. It had been soaking the American public, via monopolistic practices and in direct violation of a previous Federal court injunction, for over 20 years. And if it hadn't been broken up, you can bet you would not be walking around with a cell phone right now, because it had almost completely stifled innovation in regard to telephones.

"- that is irrelevant. Today we cannot say how things would have worked out for them, because we know how things worked out based on real events. It's impossible to know for a fact what would have happened, and that's why your argument is nonsense."

My argument isn't nonsense; that wasn't part of it. You brought Kodak up, not me. I was simply pointing out that it wasn't the government that drove Kodak out of business, it was Kodak itself. In fact, there was an article about that in the Wall Street Journal just the other day.

And if the only way Kodak could stay in business was to violate antitrust laws (read: act like a monopoly), then it deserved to get shut down anyway.

"You do not in fact know, what would have happened to Kodak if it was not for the government preventing their business ideas (acquisitions, whatever) from taking place."

No, nobody truly knows that, even the people who ran Kodak. Nevertheless, the antitrust suits were apparently for good reasons, and as I say, if the only way they could stay in business was to violate antitrust laws, then it's probably a good thing they went bye-bye.

In general, I agree with you that government interference in the marketplace is a bad thing. The bailouts, for example, were absolutely the wrong things to do. But also, again: clear back to Adam Smith, it was clearly recognized that we would have to have government-imposed antitrust laws, if we wanted to have any kind of free market at all.

Step two is about approaching companies like Pandora, Netflix, and Google and make them this offer: if you pay us a lot of money, data transferred from your service won't count in the data cap calculation. They want to be paid two times for a single user's network usage. It's so obvious to me that this is what they are working on and it's disgusting.

Indeed. It appears that's exactly what they plan on doing.

"BARCELONA—AT&T Inc. said it is considering a way to let the providers of mobile services pay for the cost of the data traffic associated with things like streaming movies and smartphone applications, opening up a new round of debate over the rules of the mobile Internet. "

AT&T May Try Billing App Makers

I wouldn't necessarily call what the Obama admin is doing on energy fascism. I would call it central planning though. High prices? They want this. His own energy secretary has long had a crusade to artificially jack up fuel prices in order to get Americans out of cars. Things are proceeding as hoped for:

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” - Steven Chu, 2008

What was it that Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel said? Ah yes. "Never waste a crisis". And if you have to make one... do it.

That is quite chilling. I'll add to the pot. (A tip of the hat to you, sir.)

. . . In recent years, I have spent many hours interviewing refugees from North Korea, including some who escaped from re-education camps. Their accounts of prison life accord with a recent assessment by the U.S. State Department. Conditions are brutal and life threatening, according to the February report. "Torture occurred," the report notes matter-of-factly. Refugees have spoken to me of newborns separated from their mothers and left to die.

North Koreans can end up in re-education camps for such crimes as listening to foreign radio broadcasts, secretly practicing a religion, or crossing the border to China in search of food. Inmates are subjected to forced labor and are required to memorize political tracts. They receive little food, no medical care and sometimes serve multiyear terms wearing the clothes in which they arrived at camp. I interviewed a woman who had been wearing high heels when she was arrested and had to bind her feet in rags when those wore out. Many prisoners die of abuse or malnutrition.

Political prisoners are held under even harsher conditions in kwan li so penal camps. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates the number of political prisoners at 200,000; the State Department puts it at between 150,000 and 200,000. Political offenses include such crimes as sitting on a newspaper that contains a picture of dictator Kim Jong Il. Punishment is often collective and can extend to three generations of the offender's entire family.

Shin Dong-Hyok may be the only person to have escaped from a kwan li so camp. Mr. Shin, now in his mid-20s and living in Seoul, was born and spent the first 22 years of his life in Camp No. 14, a so-called total control facility. In an interview at The Wall Street Journal's headquarters in New York last year, Mr. Shin spoke of growing up. His formal education was limited to the rudiments of reading and writing. Because political prisoners are usually incarcerated for life, the camps don't bother with political re-education; Mr. Shin said he didn't even know who Kim Jong Il was until after his escape. Nor did he understand the concept of money until, after his escape, he walked through a market and noticed bits of colored paper being exchanged for food.

At 12 or 13 -- he is unsure of the year in which he was born -- he was forced to watch the executions of his mother, who was hanged, and his brother, who was shot. They had attempted to escape. Hoping to pry information out of him -- Mr. Shin had none -- camp officials bound the boy's hands and feet, embedded a hook in his groin and dangled him over a fire. In the Journal's conference room, Mr. Shin pulled up a leg of his trousers to show me the scars. . . . -- Inside North Korea's Gulag

The 99th percentile starts at about $6M in net worth. Again, that's great money, but you're not going to quit your day job.

I would quit my job. $6M is $100K/yr for 60 years. Invested well, the interest would make it even more.

"If you're going to advocate something environmentally harmful, you had damn well better have a pretty good answer on how we're going to live that way without destroying our ecosystem"

That's the thing. The extreme environmentalists are now claiming that CO2 is a pollutant [1] (nevermind that plants consume it while producing oxygen). That means the very act of breathing is now considered polluting the environment. So according to your statement I now have to have a damn good reason as to why I breath?

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124001537515830975.html

The 99th percentile starts at about $6M in net worth. Again, that's great money, but you're not going to quit your day job.

This Sunday Times article is just the latest in a string of Rupert Murdoch media outlets (mostly the Wall Street Journal) posting exaggerated and questionably-researched stories about "hacking scandals" at large internet companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. The strategy seems to be to distract the public from real hacking scandals at News of the World and other Murdoch owned properties and make it appear that hacking is a normal activity for successful companies. What, you thought that scandal was old news? More details continue to get out (despite Murdoch's attempts to cover it up).

Motorola left Apple alone, but Apple had to try to sue Motorola and every other Android phone maker.

Nice exposé there, too bad the facts don't back up your selective view of recent history.

True global warming "believers" don't believe, they looked at the available evidence and weighed the opinions of experts and came to a conclusion based on facts and consensus.

I'm afraid your wrong on a number of counts.

First, most global warming believers probably hold that belief because that is what teacher said, or that is what they read in the paper, or on the web, and not through an independent review of data, papers, and reports. Although scientists and engineers may find the hard data more approachable, I expect that most of them are still at a casual level of familiarity with the material, not truly informed, let alone expert.

Second, there is something approaching consensus among scientists that the earth has gotten warmer in some measure. That doesn't mean that the data is not without disputes and controversies, including but not limited to data normalization techniques, sources, and transparency.

Third, it is trivially proven that there is no genuine consensus among scientists that the warming is caused by humanity, or what to do about it. There is at best a preponderance of opinion among scientists that it is caused by humanity. It isn't necessarily clear how strongly those views are held.

Now, this is before we consider the troubling revelations of Climategate.

ClimateGate: The Fix is In
Peer Pressure
Peer-Review Thuggery
Scientists Behaving Badly
Without candour, we can't trust climate science
Leaked Emails Raise Questions About NYT’s ClimateGate Coverage

Climategate 2.0

Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first "climategate" leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.

Climategate 2.0: Fresh trove of embarrassing emails

Analysis There was always an element of tragedy in the first “Climategate” emails, as scientists were under pressure to tell a story that the physical evidence couldn’t support – and that the scientists were reluctant to acknowledge in public. The new email archive, already dubbed “Climategate 2.0”, is much larger than the first, and provides an abundance of context for those earlier changes.

“I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story,” a civil servant wrote to Phil Jones in 2009. “They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”

Having elevated global warming to the most dramatic, urgent and over-riding issue of the day, bureaucrats, NGOs, politicians and funding agencies demanded that the scientists must keep the whole bandwagon rolling. I

but my personal theory is that people who dismiss the international scientific consensus on global warming have faith that it's not happening, and figure that the "believers" are also arguing based on faith.

You could just ask some real skeptics, the kind who actually do science, why they dismiss the 'scientific consensus.'

the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact..... But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming.

It drives me crazy when people point to a survey like this that shows 97% consensus, and then say, "therefore scientists all think we should send a hundred billion a year to poor countries." There's no scientific consensus on that at all, nor is there any consensus that there will be a disaster as a result of AGW. If people even read the questions of the surveys they quote, they would understand this.