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What are you basing your assumption on that the regime will be replaced by extremists? The protesters seem to be of every walk of life and from every ideological point of view. Even the Muslim Brotherhood recognizes the secular Nobel Peace Price laureate ElBaradai as the main opposition spokesperson now.

If anything, this could very well mean a good thing for the west, with a more secular and broader government of this huge power in the middle east. Of course, uncertainty doesn't make everyone in the different western governments jump up in joy (even though they arguably should) by this uprising. That said, it would obviously speed things up enormously if the Egypt military would throw their weight behind the protest, and the first signs to that end are already there.

The Wall Street Journal has a report including a comparison video.

Probably about as credible as this:

http://online.wsj.com/video/cctv-tries-to-pass-off-top-gun-clip-as-real/43EC0FC2-A440-4522-8E81-437EC747D30A.html

It may be one of the ways. The majority of their outage is via modified bgp entries (border gateway protocol) so that the routes themselves are gone.

http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=450
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/telecommunications/how-egypt-pulled-its-internet-plug
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/01/28/how-egypt-cut-itself-off-from-the-net/

DNS alternative would be easier to fix (alternative dns server, distributed hosts files, whatever)

You don't believe in links, do you? I tried to figure out what you were referring to, and came across this claim that the FCC is trying to regulate the Internet, specifically regarding Net Neutrality, using a 1930s rule. But right or wrong, authority to regulate is not the same as the power to disconnect. After all, the US government regulates the interstate highway system, but has no power to shut it down in peacetime.

The worst crime in history is allowing DHS to exist in violation with the constitution in the first place,, which has now digressed to the crimes (each one is separate) committed by banksters with no oversight. While reading, keep this fact about DHS vs Constitution in the top of your mind, everything comes from 911 and DHS and the missing 2.3 trillion the day before

(From that pdf let's just get right to it then)
STATEMENT OF
JASON WEINSTEIN
DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ENTITLED
“DATA RETENTION AS A TOOL FOR INVESTIGATING INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND OTHER INTERNET CRIMES”
PRESENTED
JANUARY 25, 2011

My opinion is this all has gone too far back when the nsa fios splitters were found out. This is another attempt at an "Internet ID" , a man in the middle attack. It's another cog in the end game, which is to shut up the truth while tyranny reins in. Clearly they need this cog to build lists to round people up.

... Hand me the taser, I smell that nasty camel nose in the tent again.

not to be an enabler of anyone's mental illness, but from a well-renowned science journal

ha ha, only kidding -- sort of

Then why is their prime minister saying that the debt is a problem, along with nearly everyone else around the world? Usually when a country thinks it's a necessary part of running the economy to have a bit of debt, they don't say "There is a huge risk of this thing fucking us in the future, and we need to do something about it now.".

source
source2

Certainly.

As for the new Chinese stealth fighter, it's reported to be an even match for the Raptor

Beijing is making faster-than-expected progress in developing a rival to the U.S. F-22—the world's only fully operational stealth fighter. [...] The Chinese prototype looks like it has "the potential to be a competitor with the F-22 and to be decisively superior to the F-35," said Mr. Fisher. The J-20 has two engines, like the F-22, and is about the same size, while the F-35 is smaller and has only one engine.

As for the HDD, it's supposed to be in the same article too, but I can't find it now, and the page fell apart, so get ready for a tiring read...

I agree that the distribution of wealth has tremendous effects on society as a whole. There are already notable mental ability differences between poor and rich kids in the U.S.by the age of 2.

However in this country any proposal that treats large wealth inequalities as a problem is met with extreme distrust if not outright dismissal.

For a microcosm of the problem look at the inheritance tax that recently lapsed. If The People really want to enforce meritocracy over aristocracy an inheritance tax is a must. Pure capitalism doesn't encourage innovation; it encourages those with advantages to utilize those advantages to their fullest extent, and in this society preexisting wealth is a huge advantage. That's how the robber barons of this country were able to accumulate so much power around the end of the 19th Century.

However, if any politician were to even point this out they would be called a Socialist, ostracized from the Republican party, or minimized in the Democratic Party, and most of The People in this country would consider that truth.

They may have copied some technology in materials. The paint on the F-117 appears to be most prized secret. Externally they seemed to have copied some of the angles of the current generation of fighters (which isn't hard). However some parts of the plane appear to be not so stealthy. Notably the front canards and the engine exhaust do not appear to be designed for stealth.

Or the ever popular 'unlicensed' backyard pool fiasco:
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/08/03/google-earth-used-to-bust-illegal-pools-on-long-island/

Really? Engineers and Scientists not well paid? Care to cite a salary survey that doesn't have engineers in the top 5 professions according to pay? Besides Lawyer, Doctor, and Wall Street financier, what is better paid than engineering? Teaching? Auto Mechanic? Factory worker?

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/jobs-rated-2010-ranking-200-jobs-best-worst
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123119236117055127.html

When I got my first job out of engineering school, my salary was more than my mom made with 20 more years in the workforce. Potentially some of our bright folks are going to be in finance, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's why there's a gap in Engineers.

I didn't encourage either of my kids to be engineers when it's clear most of those jobs are being shipped overseas. This isn't a supply problem. It's a demand problem - fundamentally because as an engineer I make TOO MUCH and they can give my job to someone who is smart and lives in a country with a lower cost of living. Right now you can't do that with a doctor or someone who has to show up in a court room.

By the way, the finance jobs are going overseas too so don't get too envious.

In the sidebar of the WSJ CPA story - Google Gives $100 Million Award to Outgoing CEO: "Google Inc., fresh off announcing a management shake-up, will give a $100 million equity award to outgoing Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who in April will be succeeded by company co-founder Larry Page. Poornima Gupta, a spokeswoman for Google, confirmed on Saturday that it was the first such award for Mr. Schmidt since he joined the company in 2001. It includes stock and options. She declined to comment further...On Thursday, Mr. Schmidt filed paperwork to sell company shares currently valued at $335 million this year, his first such sale in more than three years. He currently owns 9.2 million Google shares, which are valued at nearly $5.8 billion"

The probably dropped him as CEO because he just comes off as creepy and not giving a damn about privacy; and this from the CEO of a company that's collecting information about everything and everyone. His insights and abilities are probably appreciated, but when he's in front of a camera he ends up saying something stupid that makes Google look evil. Here's an example from the WSJ. Here's another from the Atlantic. The crap he says makes him sound like someone who's Google's enemy and trying to scaremonger the public.

Because its open source, I'm going to make the following changes to your model and submit it.

Thank you for your submission. After due consideration by the committee, the changes you submitted will not be committed to main_street(). If you wish to make another submission you may want to base it on the most recent code from the current branch - code follows:

Spend less than you take in.

When cutting spending, try cutting big ticket items first.

Pay down more than the minimum payment on debts.

Round expenses up and round revenue down.

Do not create unnecessary obstacles to creating new business & jobs.

Do not make fiscal commitments you can't meet.

Not complying with the guidelines poses serious risk:
Illinois Braces for Tax Increases .

Facing one of the biggest budget shortfalls of any state, Illinois took the risky step of jacking up income and corporate taxes even as its economy struggles to shake off the recession.

In a deal hammered out by the state's Democratic leadership, the lame-duck legislature pushed through a 67% increase in the state income tax and a 45% increase in the corporate tax....

Republicans blasted the vote. "The General Assembly has found a way to maintain its runaway spending in the short term without addressing the fiscal crisis facing our state," said newly sworn-in state Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka.

The European Commission (EC) suspended trading in carbon credits on Wednesday after unknown hackers compromised the accounts of Czech traders and siphoned off around $38 million

According to Wall street journal (original poster yuna49) the latest theft was $7 million and the $38 million (0.02% of the market) is the total of the permits missing in action.

They may have sold the credits already. The WSJ piece I submitted about this story has more details:

"It started when an anonymous caller on Tuesday morning told Czech State Police that explosives had been placed at the offices of OTE AS, a private company that manages the Czech Republic's national registry. The police evacuated the registry for five hours.

During that time, the computer network wasn't monitored, OTE officials said. Hackers stole 475,000 allowances, worth 7 million, from a company called Blackstone Global Ventures, an environmental consultancy that trades carbon credits for industrial companies.

The thieves changed account-ownership information and executed illegal trades, said Nikos Tornikidis, a portfolio manager at Blackstone Global Ventures."

My guess is that they executed the trades and siphoned the proceeds off to a bank account somewhere.

If there are 10.000 laws in the US

There are well over 10,000 laws in the US. Last year alone over 31,000 laws were passed across the country. In 2009 over 40,000 new laws were passed.

which everyone is breaking 5 times a day without knowing, it shouldn't be that hard to name a few so us average Joes can learn to avoid breaking that law

Well, there are some books on it (both of these are on my to-read list):

Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target The Innocent

Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything

in the first place and/or organize a petition to get rid of them.

You think they really care about petitions? It is very difficult to repeal laws and scale back power.

Give me a break? You buy this drivel? You just made the case that because our system is set-up to externalize as many costs as possible in favor of short-term profit, it must be OK. So goes the thinking of the rest of the idiots who have driven the economy off a cliff: "It's not illegal, so it must be OK." In the technology world, we have an entire industry dedicated to figuring out the impact of technological change on society and the human implications of that change. It's called Science Fiction. We think about what could happen; what could go wrong; what could go right and we write millions of stories about it. Of course many of these stories are unrealistic, but they're interesting and many have a kernel of truth. It plants seeds in our minds and we start to think about the implications of things like unfettered AI, bioengineering, nuclear arms and the expansion of humanity into new worlds where we are divided by vast chasms of time, space, environment and genetics. I'm not saying that we're somehow more moral or more responsible because Sci Fi exists. However, we have a clue and our awareness is heightened and we aren't completely blind to our own collective destiny. We do what we do because at some level we love it. Maybe the investment bankers and CEOs of the world love what they do too, but since the stakes are so high, the more likely motivating factor is just plain greed. There is no room for self-reflection in avaricious minds.

China is not an evil empire. But it has shown a tendency to systematically suppress the lives of the lower classes in favor of the ruling classes for thousands of years. There's little evidence that this is different today. So many of the values we claim to hold dear are antithetical to their way of life. Read, for instance, stories about Chinese Mothering to see where the individual is repressed to favor some other goal of more immediate and concrete utility. If mothers are forcing their wills relentlessly on their children all over China, what lessons does the Chinese ruling class take to it's job of governing and use of its increasing power? Since most of us aren't in the ruling class, we have a lot to lose if they become the next hegemony.

It's taken a lot of hard, expensive work and lives were lost in developing the technologies that gave us the edge to "win" the cold war. Now we're bartering this long-term advantage for some short-term profits? And you say this is justified? I see this as a sign that we're circling the drain. Our grandparents' generation would recognize this for what it is: Treason.

If you're HTC and had to come to some form of arrangement with Microsoft over the patens Microsoft alleged HTC was infringing upon, it might not actually be any cheaper to put Android on your handsets. Now that HTC is taken care of, they've started going after other big Android manufacturers.

From Wall Street Journal: "Odds of Dying in Terrorist Attack on Airline: 1 in 25 million; Struck by Lightning: 1 in 500,000". you have a 50 times greater chance of being struck by lightning than dying from a terrorist attack on an airplane.

And I'll add that death by US tsunami is 1 in 5000 and by car is 1 in 100. Scary numbers indeed, but still no reason to fear a terrorist.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704130904574644651587677752.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_emailed

No, the guy who wrote it (Phil Kaplan, aka "Pud") shut it down after the bubble burst. Ironically, today he's a VC and the founder of a company, Blippy, whose business model ("every time you buy something with your credit card, we post the details of your purchase online for all your friends to see!") sounds almost as silly as the companies he used to make fun of.

If you want a '90s nostalgia fix, he did write a FuckedCompany book after winding the site down.

and that of course you are honored to work these hours. After all you are not an ungrateful slacker like others

Why Chinese Moms are Superior , in the Wall Street Journal, the daily reading of every corporate leader

I don't know about the money, but the "men are evil" stranger-danger attitude endangers children too. Most strangers are nice people. Most kidnappers and molestors are not strangers.

In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html

He must have been exceptionally thick, as well as being the only tradesman in the UK without a mobile phone.

Or, perhaps more likely, he just couldn't be arsed at the time, but realised he'd been spotted and had to come up with an excuse for acting like a cunt.

In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html

In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that represented the largest issuance of non-voter-approved debt in the state's history. The bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries. The California Public Employees' Retirement System sold the pension boost to the state legislature by promising that "no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements" and that Calpers would "remain fully funded." They also claimed that enhanced pensions would not cost taxpayers "a dime" because investment bets would cover the expense.

What Calpers failed to disclose, however, was that (1) the state budget was on the hook for shortfalls should actual investment returns fall short of assumed investment returns, (2) those assumed investment returns implicitly projected the Dow Jones would reach roughly 25,000 by 2009 and 28,000,000 by 2099, unrealistic to say the least (3) shortfalls could turn out to be hundreds of billions of dollars, (4) Calpers's own employees would benefit from the pension increases and (5) members of Calpers's board had received contributions from the public employee unions who would benefit from the legislation. Had such a flagrant case of non-disclosure occurred in the private sector, even a sleepy SEC and US Attorney would have noticed.

-- Dow 28,000,000: The Unbelievable Expectations of California's Pension System

Not that this is the only problem with California, but it's a nice $3-4 billion chunk of the current $28 billion hole and is only set to grow bigger.

They favour the concentration of a large amount of power in the hands a few people. The larger the corporation (and thus the more power it wields), the more likely the CEO is to be a sociopathic bastard, because this is what it takes to compete with all the other sociopathic bastards to get to the top of that massive pyramid.

In reality, studies have shown this to be the exact opposite of true. Typically nice guys get elevated faster than sociopathic bastards, because people don't like to promote sociopathic bastards, especially not to positions above them. Would you?

What happens is once the people get to the top, they become corrupted by the power. It happens again and again. Here's a quote:

Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power

At least no one was hurt. White collar crimes only hurt insurance companies right?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165229009493675.html

Maybe there should be a new category, in addition to "white collar" there could be "black stethescope" crimes.

According to one person familiar with the matter, Messrs. Muglia and Ballmer disagreed about how to allocate resources within the division to new areas that aren't yet delivering big sales, such as cloud computing. Mr. Muglia's group oversees Windows Azure, an online service that lets businesses develop and run applications in Microsoft data centers.

From the sounds of it, Muglia placed less emphasis on cloud computing than Ballmer wanted him to.

It's really not the time for Fox and the right wing republicans to be making jokes about shooting people.

Is it time for Obama to talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight?

Like this?

No, of course it's OK when it's your guy using colorful rhetoric, it's only a problem when the opposition does it.

NTITE

oh wait you cant

You see thats what i hate about these "smart" phones, you have no idea exactly what data is being sent over 3G and no control over it, wifi i can fire up a packet sniffer and see and block at the edge routers, but 3G i cant (without some serious hardware tools)

no wonder 1 in 2 phones (iOS/Android) are full of spyware its a free for all for data mining/theft.
i'll stick with my "dumb" nokia until i can have a firewall to protect me

The US Navy seems to manage it OK:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30178013/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123953580718311447.html

"MOMBASA, Kenya -- In a daring high-seas rescue, U.S. Navy SEAL snipers killed three Somali pirates and freed the American sea captain who had offered himself as a hostage to save his crew...."

The public doesn't know for sure, but there's a whole lot of really strong evidence that's surfaced in the last week that they're announcing the Verizon iPhone this Tuesday (Jan 11), with a release date of later this month.

It's no guarantee of course, but there's a lot of oddly specific independent corroboration (including invites addressed to specific Apple-focused tech reporters instead of the news org itself, and no invite to Gizmodo [whom Apple has cut off from all events after the iPhone 4 leak]). Even WSJ has said that's what Tuesday's announcement is about (they've historically been right on this sort of thing).

It wasn't voter fraud you fucking retard

Saw your post, thought I would help out.

This are only two of many investigations into Acorn misdeeds:

More Acorn Voter Fraud Comes to Light
On Monday, Nevada officials charged Acorn, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms last year. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, says he believes 48% of Acorn's forms "are clearly fraudulent." On Thursday, prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven Acorn employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before last year's general election.

You're just plain wrong. Android phones have been by far outselling the iPhone, and they just recently surpassed the total iPhone sales numbers. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/05/androids-users-eclipse-iphones-for-first-time-comscore-says/

That doesn't paint the full picture of iOS vs Anderoid. The iPad and iPod Touch also have iOS and developers sell to them on the app store too. I wonder how the numbers look if you add iPad and iPod in there

You're just plain wrong. Android phones have been by far outselling the iPhone, and they just recently surpassed the total iPhone sales numbers. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/05/androids-users-eclipse-iphones-for-first-time-comscore-says/

The problem (for Android) is that its marketshare is far too fragmented to make a dent in iOS market penetration.

From what I can tell (and I own neither an iOS device nor an Android device), unlike the situation with Windows desktops, all those handsets don't run compatible-enough hardware/Android-versions/Vendor-Tweaks to make it practical for the "platform" to leverage the sheer combined numbers of all those handsets.

Nope. Unless Apple REALLY screws the pooch, they are as unstoppable with iOS as Windows was, well, still is, really, on the corporate desktop.

You're just plain wrong. Android phones have been by far outselling the iPhone, and they just recently surpassed the total iPhone sales numbers. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/05/androids-users-eclipse-iphones-for-first-time-comscore-says/

I would like to see more significant numbers. How is the iPhone doing compared to other Android Phones within ATT? After all, no one goes out saying that Sprint HTC Android phones are loosing market because the combination of all other smart-phones across all carriers is greater.

Things will get much more interesting once iPhones become available outside of ATT.

You're just plain wrong. Android phones have been by far outselling the iPhone, and they just recently surpassed the total iPhone sales numbers. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/05/androids-users-eclipse-iphones-for-first-time-comscore-says/

LONDON--"Brace yourself for five piping-hot minutes of inertia," said William Barrett. Then he began reciting the names of every single one of 415 colors listed in a paint catalog: damson dream, dauphin, dayroom yellow, dead salmon...and on and on and on. Mr. Barrett's talk was titled, "Like Listening to Paint Dry," and to judge from the droopy faces in the audience, it was a hit. He was speaking, after all, at a conference of boredom enthusiasts called Boring 2010, held here Dec. 11.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html

Are they looking at different photos than what were published? The side-view photo certainly doesn't appear to be a high-speed test. Hard to tell with all the grain, but I would expect some blurring of the background and/or jet exhaust if it was traveling at high speed, but you see neither in those two photos. For all I can tell it could be a mockup sitting still on the tarmac. Not to say the Chinese haven't conducted high-speed tests of it, I just disagree with the claim that these photos show any evidence of it.

Other Photos seem to have the same issues - that might be some heat waving in the Guardian photo, but tough to tell.

Claiming that this could be a prototype fighter that challenges the F-22 based on these photos is just ridiculous, and one would think a writer for Jane's would know better. It is quite possible, as China has really made no secret of the fact that they are pursuing aviation technology very aggressively (and I do seem to recall reports of large portions of engineering data for the F-22 being stolen a while back. My mistake - apparently it was the F-35), and no doubt they are working on bringing their high-tech fabrication technology up to speed. But there is a very big jump between putting together a stealthy-looking mockup (all that can really be determined from the photos) and producing an effective combat system, from airframe to FCS to weapons systems and avionics. Like I said, I don't doubt that this is their goal, and I don't doubt that they will be fully capable of it within a relatively short time, but a couple of photos really doesn't prove (or even really suggest) much of anything.

They showed off 25 new models of UAV at the last air show. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703374304575622350604500556.html

I'm not sure how interested they are in drones. In the US, we put a high value on human life. In China, it's much lower and they have so many of them.

Cost saving. Training, equipment, feeding lots of people and transporting them in the battlefiled vs making use of drones may make sense.
I think is naive to say US's primary motives stay in the high value on human life, I really think the cost saving is/was still the main reason US is making use of drones.

Aside from the fact that that kind of comment is potentially offensive, TFA has images of Chinese drones at a Chinese airshow last year: Image

The story is not that the Chinese are devious, acquisitive SOB's. It's that the west continues to be stupid enough to enable them. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704679204575646472655698844.html Frist post!

Is your google finger broken or something? I mean seriously, where do you get off saying "Do something that is so easy for me to do or I'll label you as something you don't want to be labeled as". Hell, you even added the obligatory, If your source is something I don't like because of my perceived biases towards them, I will counter with a sit you should have preconceived biases with.

And while this was supposedly discussed by conservatives as shocking, it was widely reported in the news media and dismissed out of hand so I figured it would be common knowledge by now.

But hey, I'll give you credit. I didn't realize that my google finger would bring up a story on this very topic from Salon.com. Nor did I realize that most of the larger media organizations I could find stories about this at ended up just talking down the the importance of the role ghostwriting plays on a book. And articles debunking it without actually debunking it. IT even goes on to describe the dangers in the values people assign to the authors of books they support. And that was my main point, I wouldn't give him that much credit.

So i guess it is all a conservative conspiracy or something right? I mean a big conspiracy in which Obama's Publisher was in on too. Maybe it was a ploy to build sales. Maybe it was a comment reflecting the truth. It's hard to say, and we all know we can trust the news media right? I mean especially this conservative media outlet.

Anyways, whether it's true or not, it doesn't seem to be that Obama is following his manifesto in practice.

Actually that number is wrong. The odds are much much higher.

The odds of dying in a terrorist attack on a plane in a given year are 1 in 25,000,000.
The odds of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist in a given year are 1 in 3,000,000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html

The odds of your dying in a 1 hour flight in a given year are less than 1 in 1,000,000.
http://planecrashinfo.com/

The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html

The odds of dying in a car accident within one year 1 in 18,585.
The odds of simply being in a car accident within one year are 1 in 5,889.
The odds of dying by an assault within one year are 1 in 16,421.
http://www.nsc.org/

I think, if I am not mistaken, I have a better chance to win a state lottery than die in an terrorist attack on an airplane. I am so much more likely to die from an assault than a terrorist, it is an order of magnitude that is just plain silly. So as you can see the odds are pretty slim to die by a terrorist attack of any kind. I think I can risk it, and have far less security at airport with no groping or radiation. If I get a choice, I choose my Constitutional freedoms, over being safe. If a terrorist kills me so be it. At least I died with all my freedoms, rather than beaten down by my own government.

Actually that number is wrong. The odds are much much higher.

The odds of dying in a terrorist attack on a plane in a given year are 1 in 25,000,000.
The odds of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist in a given year are 1 in 3,000,000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html

The odds of your dying in a 1 hour flight in a given year are less than 1 in 1,000,000.
http://planecrashinfo.com/

The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html

The odds of dying in a car accident within one year 1 in 18,585.
The odds of simply being in a car accident within one year are 1 in 5,889.
The odds of dying by an assault within one year are 1 in 16,421.
http://www.nsc.org/

I think, if I am not mistaken, I have a better chance to win a state lottery than die in an terrorist attack on an airplane. I am so much more likely to die from an assault than a terrorist, it is an order of magnitude that is just plain silly. So as you can see the odds are pretty slim to die by a terrorist attack of any kind. I think I can risk it, and have far less security at airport with no groping or radiation. If I get a choice, I choose my Constitutional freedoms, over being safe. If a terrorist kills me so be it. At least I died with all my freedoms, rather than beaten down by my own government.

First, the ebook market is only a tiny portion of the *book* market. This "censorship" will not have any noticeable impact on what people read and whether they can read it. These books are still available, people will just have to buy them from someone other than Amazon, even if they have to resort to buying paper books. Oh no, people might have to give their money to someone other than Amazon if they want a specific book! The world is ending!

Second, while Amazon currently holds most of the ebook market, analysts expect Amazon's share of this market to drop drastically - for example, one analyst thinks it will drop to 35% over the next five years. This will be true regardless of whether they sell gay rape fantasy books, but the market share drop will not come because a dozen customers are mad that they can't buy gay rape fantasy ebooks for their Kindle. No, the drop will come because of competition, one one of the things they will compete on is what books are available.

I don't think there's any evidence to support the notion that Amazon has enough control over the ebook market that their decision to stop selling gay rape fantasy books will have any impact on the freedom people have to read gay rape fantasy.

They've released it all to the participating old media magazines, and apparently other have access as well*. The logic, which you don't buy, is also based on earlier observations and thus can be said to be based in fact. It also seems those who have access to all of them believe the reasoning to be sound since no one has dumped them all yet.

*) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704278404576038170585686718.html