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AFAIC, I don't actually care whether his treatment is fake or not, I really do not care. He seems to have gotten the FDA Trial Phase I and Phase II approvals. So the stuff is safe for consumption, that's all that is actually important to know.

At that point I don't want government being anywhere near the treatments. There are plenty of cases where FDA involvement does one thing only: increase the cost of drugs or worse. If FDA even has to exist, it's role should be limited to questions concerning safety and nothing more, as it's useless in most important cases anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mifepristone#FDA_controversy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QqIN9EfQwM

The musem's founder, Bob Cassilly, says that $1 of every $12 admission ticket goes to pay insurance, and he has posted a 'wall of shame' listing all the lawyers who have sued the museum.

There's an excellent and relevant article in the WSJ about it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304159304575183463721620890.html?KEYWORDS=city+museum

Hackers target smb references this exact issue - lulz/anon are harmless. Everyone sees the big headlines but its thousands of small businesses that are getting their data stolen every day and left with no ability to recover.

Granted, you make your own mess when you hire the $20/hour web guy out of college who thinks that online transactions are safe because he used magento out of the box, but the real hacking is occuring daily and there's no way to stop it, or even properly monitor it. Even when these are overseas cybercrimes and owners get the secret service or other agencies involved, the end result is nothing.

We're too busy monitoring Americans online terrorist activity to worry about real crimes.

I don't think 'the rich' will leave.That argument is just as much as demagoguery as the 'tax-cuts for the rich' sleight mentioned in your post above.

Are you seriously saying that nobody would move from a high-tax area to a lower-tax area? Because there are plenty of examples.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/study_the_rich_are_leaving_new_jersey_a5E4Ti0z6CxWelbf6nGwOL

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23735878-darlings-50-percent-tax-sends-tycoons-to-switzerland.do

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8466160/Rich-Chinese-consider-leaving-China.html

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/20/more-rich-americans-renounce-u-s-citizenship-for-lower-taxes/

It won't be 100% of course; some rich folks will stay, even if taxes get really high. (There's a cynical old rule of thumb: if you want to hang onto your money, do the same things that retired Senators and Congressmen do. There will always be a way for the rich to keep their money, as long as retired politicians have money.) And some people will just pay the taxes. But there are limits, and the more severe the tax rate, the more it will encourage people to leave.

I don't think it's fair to accuse me of demagoguery.

steveha

The French are more productive than both Sweden and Germany, and is only surpassed by the U.S. And that's with working 35 hours a week and taking the entire August off every year.

Steven Chu said it earlier:

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/27/steven-chu-white-roofs-to-fight-global-warming/

Given the existence of the placebo effect, in what way do you suppose that the market -- consisting of individuals who operate on limited information -- will be able to tell the difference in efficacy between a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory and acupuncture?

- ha ha, the way it was always done, by doctors sharing information among each other, learning what works and what doesn't - the only real way things are found to be useful or not.

Especially given that so-called "alternative medicines" such as Zicam can effectively compete against science-based medicine even with FDA regulations in place? Do you propose we go back to the patent medicine era?

- I am against all patents altogether. There should be no gov't creating artificial barriers to entry against individuals and for monopolies and there should be no special treatment provided to monopolies, like in case with this, falsifying the results to help out some friends in giant pharma. However FDA routinely denies people in US access to drugs, that are used all over the world, for example the drug RU 386, which was used in Europe and was banned in US by FDA.

Why the fuck should some piece of shit government organization deny you access to drugs, any drugs if you wish so and especially drugs that are known to be effective and are in use in the rest of the world?

The reason we have the regulations we have by the FDA is because we tried working without them and, unsurprisingly, people died and a lot of unscrupulous hucksters made a lot of money.

- no, the reason you have FDA being what it is, is because it has enormous power, which translates into dollars for monopolies, who kill off the small competitors and make sure prices never fall.

We have the same thing going on now with homeopathic medicine.

- there is no reason for FDA to get involved into this homeopathic stuff, especially since it is just placebo.

What we need are good, functional, and smarter regulations, not merely fewer or more regulations.

- seriously? You truly believe that? You truly want government to regulate your life? To tell you, probably a grown ass man, what you can and cannot use in your life as drugs? To ensure that only monopolies can sell you drugs? To make sure you have to pay a small fortune for any real treatment?

Please check your facts before posting; this took me all of a minute with a search engine to find in PLoS.

- I'll give you some facts.

Here is one. A drug that before FDA approval only cost $10/shot (ten dollars), once approved by FDA was immediately repriced at $1500 dollars a shot (one thousand five hundred dollars), as FDA granted a monopoly to the producer company, so nobody could compete with them. This is for a drug that people need to take 20 times, so that's $30,000 for the 20 times instead of $200 as it was prior to FDA 'approval' - in reality granting a monopoly. The orders of magnitude, by which FDA raises costs to the end users are similar with this drug.

And yes, it only takes an Internet search.

Texas also created more jobs than any ALL the other states combined since the recovery began, which is why people are flocking there, hence why currently they take in more federal money than they send out. That will probably change... and as you say, become an issue in the future, for a variety of reasons. Just not with the effects YOU are thinking of.

Seriously. Visit a slum in India sometimes - but make sure to duck at the right time.

Really? I've been told by various people who have been to India that what many do is stop walking, lift their garments up a bit, maybe squat/spread the legs a bit, then shit (and it appears to be true: http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/india-failing-to-control-open-defecation-blunts-nation%E2%80%99s-growth/ ). FWIW many walls also have messages[1] on them telling people not to pee on them...

As for plastic bags, some places in the world are so poor that plastic bags would be too scarce or too useful to be used for throwing shit.

On a related note, there's an organization in India that builds public toilets (amongst other things): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulabh_International

[1] Sometimes even paintings of Indian gods in the hope of better deterrence: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-09-17/varanasi/28111767_1_ghats-rana-mahal-urinating
See also: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/06/11/peeing-in-pune-urinating-in-udaipur/

Had to post this link...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121219687026134617.html

Building inadequate sewage infrastructure... and its consequences.

Parent is correct. When you get past the junk science and put credible people under the spotlight Yucca Mountain is understood to be a safe long term solution. I watched the congressional testimony. The DOE had to have it beat out of them, because affirming the safety of Yucca kicks a leg out from under the Administration's policy. NRC scientists affirmed the same thing. There are no technical reasons why we should not open Yucca Mountain. The only actual reason for the shutdown that anyone could cite was the purely political view than Yucca is somehow "unworkable" for reasons known only to Chu.

Even worse was the NRC testimony. I don't believe this level of acrimony has existed at the NRC since TMI-2 melted down. NRC staff members publicly condemned the NRC Chairman Jaczko for politicizing the matter, withholding information from the board, manipulating scientific results and manipulating the process. 'Science based' government my ass. Jaczko is still withholding the completed results of the NRC's scientific assessment of Yucca mountain safety.

From the the NYT story

The [NRC] inspector general’s report said that Mr. Jaczko’s decision to halt the Yucca review was based on politics, however, not on a consideration of the acceptability of the site for long-term storage.

Criticism of the Administration, the DOE and Jaczko by the House committee was nearly bipartisan. Basically we have anti-energy anti-nuke activists playing political games inside the NRC and the DOE, and everyone knows it.

This nonsense needs to stop. We really need to get this waste secured at Yucca before some earthquake/tsunami/tornado/flood/hurricane/meteor/terrorist/busted-water-pump causes widespread nuclear contamination.

For thousands of years, Western society has insisted that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to go free than for one innocent defendant to be wrongly convicted. This daunting standard finds its roots in the biblical story of Abraham's argument with God about the sinners of Sodom.

Abraham admonishes God for planning to sweep away the innocent along with the guilty and asks Him whether it would be right to condemn the sinners of Sodom if there were 10 or more righteous people among them. God agrees and reassures Abraham that he would spare the city if there were 10 righteous. From this compelling account, the legal standard has emerged.

The flying car gets approved -- http://online.wsj.com/video/news-hub-flying-car-cleared-for-takeoff/5E00D599-345F-4E25-95EE-7915F9D2FE7F.html .

Last year, Google blocked Facebook from accessing gmail contacts. This is just tit for tat.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596913266928110.html

The bulk of US debt is actually held domestically AFAIK, by an absolutely huge margin, with the fed marking up the single largest % of that. Japan and China *combined* finance about 20% of US debt. A quick google gives me this: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/06/09/the-fed-is-the-biggest-holder-of-us-debt/ though there are plenty of other sources too

A bubble, seriously. How did this happen? Too much money as a result of inflation? I don't know, but......

When people start talking about a trillion dollar valuation for Facebook, you know there is something wrong. Facebook has good revenue growth, but come on.

From the Wall Street Journal last two lines of the article: "In February, Zynga reportedly raised around $500 million from a group of investors at a valuation as high as $10 billion. The company is expected to go public with a valuation of up to $20 billion."

Only company from the list that I worry about is Apple. They're really been left and right everyone about patent issues. Microsoft, not so much, unless some patent troll has attacked them first. Same goes for RIM. Sony is bad in other fronts, they're not really suing for patent issues. But Apple has been handling their patent related issues really dirty, dumping thousand+ page sues, trying to enforce ban on competitor products and in their developer agreement for iPhone/iPad they require all software developers to give away their ideas to Apple when submitting their application - after which they can decide if to accept or reject the app and maybe implement it themselves. Like when Apple ripped off an wireless sync app made by a one guy.

based on what?

Probably the worst thing Microsoft is currently doing is threatening and then shaking down Android device manufacturers( http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/27/microsoft-inks-android-patent-deal-with-itronix-causes-more-hea/), it's also hard to ignore:

• Paul Allen... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382.html
• Microsoft funding SCO's litigation against the Linux Kernel http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Leaked-Memo-Revives-SCOMicrosoft-Connection-Furor/

Anyway, back to this topic - who was the NYC mayor at the time when this ridiculous project started I wonder? Oh wait, Bloomberg has been the mayor of NYC since 2002 and this project started in 2003

Not the only article I have read that says it started in the 1990's.

Take a deep breath

No wonder we have a huge deficit.

This argument only holds weight if we assume that government employees are qualified and capable of managing a project of this size and scope for less money than the private contractors' bid. We have a huge deficit because we keep spending like a piss-drunk sailor, without any regards for how much money the government actually has in its pocket - unless you're arguing that the government could do all of the work it outsources to private firms today for less money in-house, I'm not sure what your point is.

It's only the vendor's fault if he does not perform. It doesn't sound like SAIC performed.

Agreed, and Bloomberg is completely correct in trying to recoup some of the city's losses. However, it's also worth noting that there's way more than simple "management incompetence" at work here - indictments have already been filed against numerous people working on the project for defrauding the city out of millions of dollars. I suspect we'll find a lot of blame that can be shared around between SAIC and its subcontractors, and city officials.

See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576398100826124240.html for a fairly thorough writeup on what investigators have uncovered so far.

Most climatologists who support global warming are employed by public sector or non-profit universities and rely on research grants from the federal government. How is this in any way equivalent to taking money from Big Oil and Coal?

Well, to quote Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal (link):

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s. Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

"In response to the berm collapse, the NRC has activated its Incident Response Center." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410083499886642.html

The NRC chair will be inspecting both flood affected plants on Monday: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304569504576406163159603654.html Perhaps there is something to fear. The situation is uncertain and doubts about the safety of nuclear power are justified.

Sorry to come back to this old thread. This conversation got stuck in my head somehow. The topic was authentication of data.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110623-714031.html

It seems the first leak has already been authenticated at the source. See? Peers! =)

AS

How you're going to set up an arbitrage market in a livestock currency is beyond me,

No different between how it is right now: bid and ask... doesn't make any differences if the currency units are oxen, camels or bitcoins (but, again, stay away from virgins, they are perishable and highly volatile)

but if you can breed a camox/oxmel even right now, you'd do pretty damn well.

Problem to be approached when the time is right - don't need to actually do it, just suggest that there is a possibility (based on the existence of mules) and create "futures for astute investors". Hell, no different than Goldman-Sachs is doing for Facebook

Would cross-breading fail, I can always fall back in creating an investment fund, with fractional parts for the investment units (e.g. 23% ox, 65% camel and bitcoins for the rest).

Oxen dried dung works quite well, and is frequently used in South & South-east Asia. That said, following the collapse of society, I don't think you'll be terribly worried about being carbon neutral.

Don't take me wrong, I won't be worried a bit about being carbon neutral, but... you totally miss the point: the genius salesmen don't follow markets, they create fashions, buzzwords, demand - thus they create markets.

Don't be too sure. The Wall Street Journal, which in the past has been highly critical of Bush's currency policies (Bush was trying to devalue the dollar, and succeeded), has just posted an editorial calling for inflation. The worst part is they have some reasonable arguments to back it up (americans are deeply in debt, a high inflation rate would help most of us). Don't expect the economy to recover easily if we do that though.......it's going to be bad no matter how we get out of debt.

The point is, the call to inflate the dollar is gaining traction. For better or worse.

Yes, there was some subsidy implicit in the interest rates, however along with those rates the guvmint was purchasing preferred stock in the banks which required payment of additional dividends of 5 to 9%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122390023840728367.html

As far as Shadowstats, you actually believe that hooey? It's complete bull.

http://blog.jparsons.net/2011/06/shadow-stats-debunked-part-ii.html

Their existing high speed rail lines are racking up serious debt. This plan to expand it is difficult to believe.

Believe it:

According to Zhao Jian, a researcher at Beijing Jiaotong University, “the debt had at least reached 2 trillion yuan by now, and the interests of those debts have grown too large for the government to afford.” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/02/18/will-massive-debt-derail-chinas-high-speed-trains/?KEYWORDS=china+high+speed+train

Except that people use the roads and airports in the US and other countries.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/02/high-speed_rail_china
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983104576262330447308782.html

"Tickets for high-speed trains can be twice as expensive as the highest-class tickets on regular-speed trains. A high-speed rail ticket between eastern China's Wuhan and Guangzhou, for example, costs 469 yuan, or about $70. That is prohibitively expensive for many Chinese, and has resulted in at least some trains operating almost empty, industry experts say."

As usual, Mr. Haselton uses many words when fewer would suffice. As a public service, here is his essay shortened to its essentials. I've tried to be as fair as possible to his main argument (which, really, can be summarized in a single sentence):

Facebook recently hired a PR firm to smear Google. The allegation was that Google created fake Facebook accounts so that it could crawl and index profiles. There is no evidence for these allegations. Regardless, would Google doing so really be a bad thing? It would violate the TOS, but could actually be a boon to privacy. The reason is simple: it would allow users an easy way to determine how much of the information on their Facebook profile is available to anyone with a Facebook account. Thus, this kind of indexing would empower users to make smarter privacy choices.

I love this discussion. It goes back and forth again and again. I wonder how long it will take for people to realise that BOTH Republicans and Democrats are inherently corrupt. With the current structure of both parties almost guaranteeing that neither will be close to free from corporate interests. They've even locked up the presidential debates after chasing off the former hosts due to too much political shenanigans. Remember seeing any independents since Perot in the debates?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_debates#Debate_sponsorship

In short BOTH parties receive considerable funding from rich, private interests. BOTH parties serve the sources of their revenue streams.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989304575503933125159928.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/21/AR2010052102513.html

Their will be no change in the status quo since there is no incentive to change. Both parties get their cut and a bunch of us nameless, faceless folk get screwed. The only real change will come from transferring the power to other parties. Almost any other party at this point will be better than these two but I think the Libertarians will really give the system a good cleaning. IMO they are also the best chance of holding some of these corrupt politicians to task for the damage done by their greed.

Potato, potato. is quantitative easing not defaulting by another (newspeak) name ?

No. Default is when the government is unable to service its debt and obtain new one. Interestingly, without QE there would be terrible deflation, which would push the US closer to default.

As things stand now, the US can borrow money with very low interest rates, and is thus very far from default.

Here you find rates:
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-govtbonds.html?mod=topnav_2_3000

Please bear in mind that most of the funding and the weapons for the Drug Cartels come from the US.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375961350290734.html

If you read the article carefully, the claim that most of the weapons come from the US isn't true. In particular:

The ATF figures show that 21,313 firearms recovered in Mexico in 2009 were submitted for tracing by the agency. Of these, 10,945 were manufactured in the U.S. and 3,268 were imported into the U.S. from third countries before ending up in Mexico. The origin of 7,100 firearms couldn't be determined.

Of 7,971 firearms recovered in Mexico in 2010 and traced by ATF, 4,186 were manufactured in the U.S. and 2,105 were imported into the U.S. The origin of 1,680 firearms couldn't be determined.

Collectively, the data show that of the 29,284 firearms recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 and submitted to the ATF for tracing, 20,504 or 70% passed through the U.S. at some point. The period is the most recent for which data are available.

The ATF said it traced the guns based on information provided by Mexican authorities. The Mexican government doesn't submit every firearm it recovers for tracing.

If you do a search for articles from previous years, they actually gave the total numbers of guns collected by the Mexican authorities, not just the number submitted to the ATF. The Mexican government only has the ATF trace the guns that appear likely to have originated in the US. These are mostly semi-automatic rifles and handguns, because fully-automatic weapons -- which are much more highly prized by the cartels -- are not available on the US market except in very small numbers and for very, very high prices (usually 15 to 20x their normal value). So all of the full-auto AK-47s, the grenade launchers, the RPGs, the various light and heavy machine guns, the small artillery pieces... none of that stuff is sent to the ATF for tracing because everyone knows it couldn't have come from the US. And that stuff accounts for the vast majority of weapons collected. IIRC (I suppose I ought to look it up myself), roughly 30% of guns recovered by Mexican officials are submitted for tracing. Of those submitted, about 2/3 are from the US, which means the total percentage of US guns among those recovered is about 20%.

But even the 20% figure is misleading. The vast majority of those are the least dangerous of the guns used by the cartels -- semi-automatic handguns. Of the few full-auto rifles, nearly all of them come from one of two sources -- the Mexican military, who purchased them from the US, and the ATF through their "Operation Gunrunner", which Congress is investigating.

So on the gun side, no, most of the weapons aren't from the US, only about a fifth of them are, and even that overrepresents the contribution of US guns to Mexican violence. The reason for this is obvious: Given all of the actual military arms available on the international black market and all over South America, cartels can buy more and better guns for less money elsewhere.

On the money side, you're absolutely right. The US drug markets are the reason the Mexican cartels exist in the form they do.

Oh, ...that's right... they're either sealed or burned.

Prohibitions are a problem? Actually, i think the "right to bear arms" is one of the main issues. 70% of the guns used by narcos come from USA.

When Clinton was president he passed a law that forbid to sell assault weapons, which Bush let expire in 2004. As soon as it expired, violence and traffic of guns in Mexico increased. Mexico has asked Obama to restore that law, but nobody in Washington seems to care. (or maybe they are trying to avoid annoying to all that people who thinks that the fix to a gun problem is to throw more guns at it)

Bullshit, the drug cartels in Mexico are being armed and funded by the US. The cartels have zero motivation to alienate the US.

70% of guns seized from the cartels were purchased in the US: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375961350290734.html

Even the US government has admitted to smuggling guns to the cartels: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0309/Mexico-lawmakers-livid-over-US-Operation-Fast-and-Furious

The US is the cartels #1 customer and main source of income.

So, if you do drugs or if you buy firearms in gun shows where identity checks are minimal, surprise! you are funding the cartels.

Please bear in mind that most of the funding and the weapons for the Drug Cartels come from the US.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375961350290734.html

I graduated in 2002. The cost of an Ivy League education has increased by about $10,000 per year since then, from about 40 to about 50. I still think education remains a great deal. If you will allow the appeal to authority, the guys at Freakonomics agree with me, cf 3:10 - 3:25, and the rest of the show is also very good.

Anyway, it's an untenable claim. The claim would be that the cost of an education, plus interest, is less than the marginal increase in salary over the expected career length. That's not credible. Sure, some dumb people somehow get through college and then can't make a career out of it, but those are the rare exceptions to the rule that the more you learn, the more you earn.

For what it's worth, this article says that I owed a bit more than average when I graduated, and now the average is up to about $23,000. That's low, easily within a few years' marginal salary increase for modest middle incomes.

Good thing that's not why Oracle bought Sun, then. (Hint: multi-billion dollar (quarterly) hardware business, the entire Java stack, Solaris, etc)

That "multi-billion dollar (quarterly) hardware business" doesn't exist, and hasn't for quite some time. Last year, for example (and remember - this is post-scquisition), they dropped 32% while everyone rose 17%,The actual numbers,

Oracle doesn't "own" Java - they own the trademark, one implementation, and the conformance test suites to certify other implementations as to be able to use the name Java instead of, say, IcedTea.

As for Solaris, growth is tied to those (declining) Sun hardware sales. One reason why Oracle has their own linux distro.

Nailed that one. Sure looks like iOS is 'winning' to me. Just over half as many iOS devices as there are Android devices, But people must be sick of this fragmentation and wouldn't ever think of buying an Android device, right? It's a good thing that iOS doesn't have any malware on it, best of all no applications sending off all sorts of non-anonymous data to who knows where, without telling you that this would happen. Before you reply, note that I'm aware Android does this, but if you'll take a gander, you'll find your precious iOS sending uniquely identifiable info about 3x as often as Android, and it doesn't warn you.

I doubt that anyone officially on payroll for cyberwarfare are actually responsible (at present) for attacks coming out of China. China has too little to gain by doing anything that obviously has their fingerprints on it.

speaking of which:

"The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force." Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html#ixzz1NyHVe9Xg

Actually the Fox News article is a verbatim quote of The Wall Street Journal article.

Basically make as much as someone with a Harvard degree, get paid to go to school and retire making 85% of your working income as a prison guard in CA.

No wonder CA has budget problems.....

Except it is. And the OP exactly right.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123069467545545011.html

They sure as shit are.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123069467545545011.html

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#Development

. This was because the system's PowerPC 970 processor running the same PowerPC architecture that the Xbox 360 would eventually run under IBM's Xenon processor. The cores of the Xenon processor were developed using a slightly modified version of the PlayStation 3's Cell Processor PPE architecture. According to David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, the IBM employees were "hiding" their work from Sony and Toshiba.".[21] Jeff Minter created the music visualization program Neon which is included with the Xbox 360.

But keep modding me down because of your own ignorance, I don't mind. :)

Skype was down for a while last December for millions of users

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/12/22/skype-down-for-millions-of-users

I have privacy rights, but everytime I want to fly I yield them for public safety. I can't go anywhere without it being in some database. Being rich shouldn't buy you out of that. Private planes are apparently just as dangerous, just look at the Andrew Stack thing. Probably the main reason someone destroying a government building wasn't labeled "terrorism" was because, of the very few things the heads of our various press institutions have in common, using private planes is one of them (I'd love to see WSJ disclose Rupert Murdoch's and their own execs' usage). This makes the motivation behind this article pretty clear. Not that I think this information needs to be available to everyone, but any serious debate about whether or not it should be should probably consider this.

Well, wikileaks says they work with the government, though it's really just a suspicion so I don't know if you's regard that is credible. Here is an article about the IRS using facebook to catch tax cheats, and we've all heard about local law enforcement using it to catch criminals. There have also been cases of school districts expelling students over comments made on Facebook. None of this proves that Facebook is in on it, but they certainly haven't done anything to stop it, likely they know it would lead to problems for them if they weren't willing to cooperate with these government agencies. In this past, if the government were obtaining information like this it would have been a scandal. Now it's more or less accepted under the "well they shouldn't have been criminals in the first place" thinking. Basically, the courts have decided that this kind of communication, while nominally private, it open to free inspection by government agencies. Facebook doesn't really have to be in on it for it to be a freedom of speech problem at that point.

Apparently he only paid $800/night

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576327214085505544.html

One day you'll wake up and it'll be too late to do anything about their world markets domination.

China's got a buttload of problems coming up fast, like:

• o Wage Inflation - average wages are expected to double in the next 5 years while food and housing inflation is already here that means a significant loss in global competitiveness
• o Massive Gender Imbalance - 55% male to 45% female birth ratio - that means crime, revolution or possibly war is coming, because when young men can't get laid, they take their frustration out in violence
• o Too Many Retirees - The one child policy is turning their social security system upside down - there just aren't going to be enough young workers to support all the old people in non-productive retirement
• o Massive Waste - a command economy is great when the people running the show guess right, but when they guess wrong you get massive waste like Ghost Cities and boondoggle trains.