Slashdot Mirror

"The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney's agenda? "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. "But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."

A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703886904576031512110086694.html

Our apps are already watching us beyond what we've authorized. How is that not malware?

Yes, that rarely happens, but apparently the current DoJ is changing the rules to increase the rate.

I'm seeing both sides of this debate, corps and net neutrality activists, going all foamy at the mouth over this, and I'm not seeing any valid reasons one way or another. It seems to me that everyone is afraid of what could be in this, but nobody knows what *is* in it!

From the WSJ:

"The new FCC rules, for example, would prevent a broadband provider, such as Comcast Corp., AT&T, Inc. or Verizon Communications Inc., from hobbling access to an online video service, such as Netflix, that competes with its own video services."

From the HuffPo:

"Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road. "

So which is it??

To balance the crazy left-wing nutcase view of huffington post here is the opinion of one of the FCC commissioners who is against the proposal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395204576023452250748540.html
 
"To date, the FCC hasn't ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths."
 
If the passed regulation plan does not meet any of the goals of the net neutrality supporters (as huff po article suggests) then why pass it? I am inclined to believe that net neutrality is less of the goal of the FCC here that to establish a principle that the Internet is subject to FCC regulation even though the Congress has never given it any such powers.

"One iPhone app, Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission."

That is flat out impossible. I am an iPhone developer; there is no way for an application to obtain user location without the user being prompted if that is OK.

It makes the rest of the conclusions very suspect to me. Just how would an app get age and gender? Again I cannot think of a way that is even possible on an iPhone without being asked; no-where on my iPhone is my birthday or age stored.

Impossible? Anything's possible. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/12/19/how-one-apps-sees-location-without-asking/

Commercial support corrupts. Look at the history at Game Spot, for example. Or the fact that the financial assistance by the government (and tax payers) to GE were not covered by GE owned news agencies.

You mean like the time Wikimedia Foundation Chairman Jimmy Wales edited his own bio, in direct contravention of Wikipedia COI guidelines, to make himself look like the sole founder?

Or how Wikipedia editors increasingly invent new rules and revert new content, which serves to depress new authorship, and bias the material toward the preferred point of view of those editors?

It does not take money to corrupt an organization. But it does take money to run an organization--over $5 million per year for Wikipedia. So whether we like it or not, commerce is already playing a part and always will. IMO the big question is whether Wikipedia runs fairly and objectively, and answer is already no.

A phyrric victory, really. Spanish "reforms" outside economics can't do the EU any good due to its waning strength (ratings) relative to its stronger EU neighbors. It's been warned since around summer at least, and is now the EU's next Ireland-bailout-like candidate.

Countries with good laws and no economic [ergo, political] power can do little positive for their neighbors, let alone be a game-changer in America and Japan till it can get its economy back together. They've got too many problems to worry about games, and consoles/gaming are only serious social (WoW), legal (laws about who can/can't play) and major investment factors (all or nothing, folks) in Japan and the United States.

Are Twitter at any point going to get a revenue stream?

Yes. They're now selling promoted tweets for up to $100,000. Engagement rates were significantly higher than what was seen on Google's sponsored links, though that's likely due to its novelty. With enough promoted tweets however, you could start to see some serious cash rolling in.

but it was in a court settlement

For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to
        keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an
        unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal,
        non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices
        purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or
        modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work
        (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order
        requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to
        protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device
        communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to
        a Device). This paragraph does not apply to (a) applications (whether developed or offered by
        Amazon or by third parties), software or other code; (b) transient content such as blogs; or (c)
        content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer
        content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in
        this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are
        automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action
        by the Device user to save older issues.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/amazon20091001.pdf

( thanks http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1910796&cid=34558118 )

After the 1984 incident, Amazon was sued by a customer and settled for $150,000. They also agreed not to remove books from customer's devices - not just in a wishy-washy statement but in their court settlement:

For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to
keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an
unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal,
non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices
purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or
modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work
(e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order
requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to
protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device
communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to
a Device). This paragraph does not apply to (a) applications (whether developed or offered by
Amazon or by third parties), software or other code; (b) transient content such as blogs; or (c)
content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer
content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in
this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are
automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action
by the Device user to save older issues.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/amazon20091001.pdf

If Amazon did this again, then they may be in for another lawsuit. I can believe that they removed the books from their service. But it doesn't make sense for them to pull the books from devices. Until we see more evidence than a couple of random unnamed sources in a blog post, I don't buy it.

That sounds expensive until you consider that AT&T just spent 18 billion to upgrade its system. 350 million sounds like chump by comparison.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101207-714727.html

[ But, in countries like china, other places, your free speech DIRECTLY has an effect. everything hinges on opinions of people -> not the money people has to exercise their freedoms. You can reach anyone, and you can change minds, if you are let speak freely. ]

Good luck voicing your opinion in China....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704444304575628410670226430.html

The US is better than china, anyone can be free to twitter and tweet and post on facebook etc..., in china you bad mouth the government and you have to go to a "reeducation through hard labor camp".

http://worldjournalism.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/1-tweet-1-year-of-jail-time-in-china/

Here are two sites where people can bad mouth the government in the USA, not shut down yet...nor should they ever be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/

As for your Money=Free Speech in America argument, are you talking about Talk Radio and TV?

Do you think anyone should be able to have their own talk radio station who has an opinion? I don't see any private or public talk radio stations in china airing anti-chinese government opinion, do you? Do you think everyone has a "right" to use a government provided photocopier so you can publish anti government flyers everywhere? Who pays for the toner, the paper?

The internet is a new vast and wild frontier where people can post their opinions to be picked up my Millions of citizens, be it either youtube, twitter, facebook or your own website.

Even the poorest individual in the USA can go into a public library and post things that can potentially be read by millions if not billions of internet citizens.

[this is the recent data about situation in usa. 80% of population only get 15% of income. basically, 80% of 300 million, basically 240 million people, are not in a position to exercise their freedoms. had it been possible, there would be at least any kind of different political or social situation due to these people 'becoming rich' and practicing their freedoms. ]

How many people in the above have internet access or easy access to it?

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/14/18-of-us-households-have-no-internet-access

Only 18% of households in the USA don't have internet, most of those are older people who don't care to have it in the first place. And last i heard you cannot be turned away from a public library for being "too poor".

What is the wealth distribution in China? China does have a growing Middle Class, but it is no where nearly as big percentage wise as the US.

If I pulled some nonsense like this with my ISP or other service provider, they'd have something in their TOS to throw me off the system for making bogus requests.

I assume you're referring to "quote stuffing", which the SEC is pursuing aggressively. Just like your ISP. Also just like your ISP, it's not always clear-cut whether high-volume activity is reasonable (market making with rapid quote changes, or an Ubuntu .torrent) or unreasonable (intentional quote stuffing, or the latest **AA movie .torrent). It requires content analysis, and knee-jerk reactions are just as dangerous as inaction.

Self healing perhaps but I would not bet anything on the replicating part.

Parthenogenesis hasn't been shown to work in anything more advanced than a frog, but there is hope yet.

I RTFA,(naive mistake?). Typos are typos; but I find it uncomfortable that GM is withholding those who gave of their time, their moment of recognition. I believe that folks do good things, and should be recognised for it. I know there's a trend to humanise businesses, but businesses represent a group of people, and businesses appear to be above the law when it comes to issues like incarceration. So I ask myself, "who are the people that did this?"

Then its unique ID's on the internet,

No need for unique IDs when a device can be fingerprinted

The Wall Street Journal has a video. It's pretty creepy the way they have the head turn to "look" at what the robot is doing with its fingers, etc. as if to imply self-awareness.

"The US government should have secured it's own databases then if that information is so important.
they're the ones who fucked up.
not wikileaks."

Oh, I completely agree that the US needs to do a better job of information security. One of our problems is that we have far too many people with security clearances and access to secret documents and data. We've been violating the "need to know" principle for a very long time.

BUT... that doesn't clear Wikileaks of the violation of diplomatic secrecy. Julian Assange has been quite clear that he's not fighting for anything as noble as "government transparency". He simply doesn't like the United States very much, and wants to harm the government. Take the man at his own words:

Mr. Assange told Time magazine last week, "It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it's our goal to achieve a more just society." If leaks cause U.S. officials to "lock down internally and to balkanize," they will "cease to be as efficient as they were."

Assange's aim is not a more open United States, but a crippled United States. He sees the US as the pre-eminent evil in the world, and this is his way of making war with it.

Freedom of speech, priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Your freedom of speech doesn't include the right to violate your government's diplomatic privacy, which is a long established principle of civilization... the confidentiality of diplomatic communications. Governments have to have the assurance that they can speak to each other at times confidentially, and Julian Assange is basically trying to that. There are damned good reasons why governments need to have this confidentiality with each other at times, and a story I read just this morning provides a stark example of why.

Two up and coming leaders in the Chinese government have now had their private conversations with US diplomats leaked by Assange and his gang, with probable consequences for US-Chinese relations. The men in question were on the fast track to replacing men in very, very high positions in the Chinese government... one of them equivilant to the Vice Presidency of the US. Both of these men were becoming known to US diplomats as believers in the rule of law, of technological and societal progress, and of friendlier cross-pacific trade and in particular, they had a zeal for cracking down on crime and corruption in China, including crime in the booming business community.

The leaks may have dealt their careers a blow. They're members of the Chinese Communist Party... officially, it's still a one party state, after all... and now they'll likely be seen as too soft and friendly towards the west by the hardliners in China's military industrial wing and the military leadership. Their ascensions to higher office may now be jeapordized. Had Wikileaks been around in the mid-80's, it's likely that someone like Mikhail Gorbachev could have never become General Secretary. This kind of practice will make it much harder for government reformers the world over to move into positions of authority, especially in non-democratic societies.

Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of the negotiations that ended the standoff were held secretely, behind the scenes. The compromises that both sides made... the Soviets pulling their missiles from Cuba, the US pulling their Jupiter missiles from Turkey six months later... would have NEVER been supported by the rest of the governments of both nations, nor the publics of both nations. Instead of cooler heads prevailing, you'd have gotten more heated confrontation. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.

Julian Assange is not fighting for your freedom. Wikileaks is not fighting for your freedom of speech. Because no one is stopping you from speaking. No one is stopping your free speech, because the diplomatic cables are not your speech. You have no right to them, nor any burning need to see what's in them. What Assange is doing is an act of petty vandalism. Like some half-ass Tyler Durden wannabe, he just wants to blow it all up.

Uh- he didn't introduce those compromises as a "bridging the divide" type thing, he did those because there was absolutely no way a public option or a tax bill not extending the full Bush tax cut would have made it through Congress.

Really? That liberal bastion, the wall street journal, totally disagrees with you, and they are far from alone on that topic.

I wonder if they'd feel the same if they saw themselves taking the money directly away from the artist instead of a big nameless, faceless conglomerate music publisher? Not that the industry helps by coming down like a hammer on some grandma who's granddaughter used her computer. I also think a lot of piracy could have been avoided had the industry snapped up the customer base that wanted to be able to purchase single songs vs. an entire CD.

I don't know how the artists feel, with a few notable exceptions. As I understand it, they make they're money more from concerts than putting out a new CD. They may (if a lesser known band) look on it as a way to get their music out and draw more people to their concert.

As artists become more independent of the large publishing corporations, I don't know that that will change people's habits. I rather doubt it at this point once people get a taste for "free" songs, it's probably hard to get them to turn around and shell out $. Although, in a similar industry Stephen King reported that he has made $80K so far on his novella UR (written exclusively for the Kindle) that he did as an experiment in 2009.

"I didn't do "Ur" for money. I did it because it was interesting. I'm fairly prolific. It took three days, and I've made about $80,000. You can't get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It's ridiculous."

While certainly I'm sure they're are pirated versions floating around, it does show fans are willing to pay for an artist's work directly and is encouraging even for not as well known artists.

I know that, but what I'm wondering about is at what point does Amazon admit that their format lost and add support for epub to their product. And hopefully drop .mobi as a failed file format.

Well, earlier this year, Amazon was enjoying 90% of the eBook market share. It's projected to plummet over the next five years and I think the iPad gobbled up 22% of the eBook marketshare instantly. Of course, I would bet that 22% was growth, not switch. Like, I think it's safe to say most people who bought iPads didn't sell/disable their Kindles immediately afterward and they probably had no eReader to begin with. I'm guessing that the Kindle still enjoys large numbers and has a comfortable lead still in market share.

At what point does Amazon admit defeat in this? Somewhere way down the road. If (as the article above predicts) they're still at 35% of the marketshare five years from now, then I'd say that it won't be happening until after then.

So aside from all that, you are dependent on Amazon just genuinely caring about the end user experience and giving up some lock-in that they've already established. *snicker*

Personally I'm making due with my android phone and awaiting the color readers (Hanvon, etc) as I'm really interested in what this could do for the graphic novel/comic industry. For too long it's been dominated by large publishers.

The article says installing one of these on a Ford adds $400 to the cost. According to the WSJ, the number of car sales for a year at current rates is about 12 million (it was 16 million during boom years).

That's $4.8 billion directly out of pocket from Americans, or almost $16.5 million per death.

Arizona has already established that a life is worth far less than this, so what's the logic? Well, the real cost is actually in the 18,000 injuries, so insurance companies save truckloads on claims that won't happen and, obviously, the cash goes right to automakers. Insurance and car companies. Again.

You assume that a network or "cyber" attack is negligible compared to a real military attack. What about when those attacks steal or reveal sensitive military information, compromise troop movements, or even better silently alter or changes plans? Or how about if malicious software were to cripple a nations infrastructure such as power and water? Or steal the information regarding the whereabouts of critical personnel in military branches? What if a nation were to conduct economic warfare, such as targeted pump and dump spam or hack into a nations banks and continually reveal customer information. A state player with large resources might be able to create a Heartland type data breach many times over, that could cause some serious chaos.

Malware like stuxnet could easily bring a nation to its knees if it was properly applied. The best thing we can do is to have a little foresight with regard to the true threat events like these pose especially where state actors are concerned.

Besides Schnier is one of the most level headed security people around.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html - DoD plans for jet fight stolen
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/pentagon_breach_assessment/ - Pentagon breached
http://datalossdb.org/incidents/2478 - Records of 40,000 plus army personnel stolen

The FCC doesn't regulate volume. But I think you're basically on the right track. The WSJ actually does a decent job of explaining the situation in layman's terms.

I found one article that said the govt would get everything back from GM, but I figure the WSJ would be a better source.

Looks like we're both (currently) wrong. Most of this depends on what GM's stock price does as the US sells its shares, but on paper, it's a 20% loss.

Do we have a right to know this stuff? No. It is nothing more than titillating information like what you would find in tabloids concerning celebrities. It is not our right to know private information about either celebrities or diplomats. What is said behind closed doors off the record is supposed to stay private.

Yeah except when a country like Saudi Arabia with close ties to US elites, like the bush family for example, urge the US to attack Iran then the population has a right to know that. They have a right to know that the reasons they are being given by their politicians might not be the whole story, for better or worse. Remember that $60 billion US-Saudi arms deal, the larget ever ? How's that looking in light of this information ?

Compromise? COMPROMISE? Two words: I won.

LOL. Good one.

A better discussion, however, would be one that relates to the specific issues before the court (i.e., the basis of the appeal, rather than the results of a Slashdot popularity poll). From the Wall Street Journal:

The high court said it will review a $290 million patent-infringement judgment against Microsoft that barred the company from selling certain versions of its Word software. A key question in the case is whether proving a patent invalid should require "clear and convincing evidence" or merely a preponderance of evidence.

Federal courts use the stricter "clear and convincing" standard. Big high-tech companies and others say that bar is too high, leading courts to uphold dubious patents and making it costly to defend against patent-infringement lawsuits.

On the other hand, digressions in the form of unsolicited snarkiness can be fun. If we're going to go down that route, allow me to start:

Clear and convincing? You can't handle "clear and convincing, Monkeyboy!"

A search. The first result for me is this study (pdf) that detects a negative correlation. By coincidence I came across this article today which says a similar thing about managers of investment funds.

---

Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.

Instead of, I dunno, raising the amount of money they take in. The political right cannot even conceive of raising revenue in any form or fashion.

Let's look at what happens when taxes are raised and lowered, then we can analyze why the political right doesn't want to consider increases in taxes.

From the Heritage Foundation, excerpted from , Daniel J. Mitchell's, Backgrounder, The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates, published July 19, 1996.

Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).

Each of these examples give a good idea of the result of lower taxes - increased revenue for the federal government. According to the WSJ , the opposite can be seen when raising taxes - that is, less revenue:

Historians and economists who've studied the 1930s conclude that the tax increases passed during that decade derailed the recovery and slowed the decline in unemployment. That was true of the 1935 tax on corporate earnings and of the 1937 introduction of the payroll tax. Japan did the same destructive thing by raising its value-added tax rate in 1997.

Perhaps, some states have tried this (being the incubators of democracy and all):

"One year [after raising income taxes 6.25% on the highest bracket], nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates." Quoted from Millionaires Go Missing

While you might reach different conclusions, it appears that those on the right have a lot of data to back up their claims. In fact, one could say that it is a rational response to the data. They are drawing a conclusion based on evidence. I haven't seen any evidence for your assertions yet.....

Instead of, I dunno, raising the amount of money they take in. The political right cannot even conceive of raising revenue in any form or fashion.

Let's look at what happens when taxes are raised and lowered, then we can analyze why the political right doesn't want to consider increases in taxes.

From the Heritage Foundation, excerpted from , Daniel J. Mitchell's, Backgrounder, The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates, published July 19, 1996.

Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).

Each of these examples give a good idea of the result of lower taxes - increased revenue for the federal government. According to the WSJ , the opposite can be seen when raising taxes - that is, less revenue:

Historians and economists who've studied the 1930s conclude that the tax increases passed during that decade derailed the recovery and slowed the decline in unemployment. That was true of the 1935 tax on corporate earnings and of the 1937 introduction of the payroll tax. Japan did the same destructive thing by raising its value-added tax rate in 1997.

Perhaps, some states have tried this (being the incubators of democracy and all):

"One year [after raising income taxes 6.25% on the highest bracket], nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates." Quoted from Millionaires Go Missing

While you might reach different conclusions, it appears that those on the right have a lot of data to back up their claims. In fact, one could say that it is a rational response to the data. They are drawing a conclusion based on evidence. I haven't seen any evidence for your assertions yet.....

This was entirely predictable. It's not easy to convince people to let other people--strangers of the same gender--touch them intimately as a form of protest.

From the WSJ:

George Donnelly, one of the organizers of the Opt Out day boycott, said Wednesday that his group hadn't received any reports of significant opt-outs. He said the group will continue its efforts after the Thanksgiving holiday. Few Travel Problems, as 'Opt Out' Day Fizzles

It's Thanksgiving.

Flights are booked solid weeks - often months - in advance.

The protestor does not get to the screening area without having purchased a ticket - for which he has probably paid full price. He stands a fair chance of cooling his kilts in the county lock-up until his wife can be persuaded to post bail.

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 ...

I will remind the Slashdot reader that the Dow as of 2010 is closer to 11,000 than 25,000.

Actually your odds are a bit high. The Wall Street Journal says:

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 NTSB says the odd for car accidents are:
The odds of dying in a car accident in a given year are 1 in 18,585.
The odds of simply being in a car accident in a given year are 1 in 5,889.
http://www.ntsb.gov/

not the same issue

Walled gardens are a perfectly acceptable consequence of a FREE web; net neutrality infringement is the opposite.

It depends on which issue you are referring to.

If "the issue" is "things the government should regulate", you are correct that these are not (or at least may not be) the same issue.

If, however, "the issue" is "things which threaten the web because of inefficient distribution of power", then these are the same issue. Whether it is government power or oligarch power -- in the context of "threats from inefficient power distribution" -- is irrelevant.

Walled gardens are not a problem when there is significant competition and limited barriers to entry. That is not the case with many major information service providers. There is a great deal of inefficiency in the distribution of power in the marketplace. This may be a temporary phenomenon, as posited in this recent Wall Street Journal article, or it may be longer lived. It may be the sort of thing in which the government can/should be involved, or it may be best solved in the free market. Time will tell. None of those things change the core fact: low competition markets which have self-reinforcing inefficient distribution of power tend to result in lower long-run GDP growth than high competition markets without such barriers. That is not some left-wing boobery, it is straight out of Adam Smith.

So while I completely agree that it is a valid perspective to say these two things are different under the characteristic "require government participation/interference", these things are the same under the characteristic "inefficient distribution of power threatens long-run prosperity". Not because they are harmful right now, nor necessarily because they are unregulated, but because the free market operates most efficiently when there are no barriers to entry and perfect competition. We do not have those things right now, in part because of the way these markets function, and that is a danger we should be cognizant of as lovers of the free market.

You won't find a bigger bunch of underpaid, overrworked deluded masochists than engineers

According to The Wall Street Journal, engineers make an average starting pay of $58k, which is pretty good considering they're only around 22, and the median personal income for all individuals in the United States is 32k.

I'm not sure that's an honest assessment. Their user base continues to grow and their advertising program has become a juggernaut in the industry. The WSJ reported that in September, 24% of all online ads were shown through Facebook. That's hardly consistent with "somehow some businesses still advertise there". The difference you might be interested in, is that they're only pulling down about 9% of the $'s spent on online advertising. They're not able to charge the premium for ad space that Google is.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703665904575600482851430358.html

I see no indication that Facebook is hurting itself in any way that should concern them. Not yet, anyway.

I'm willing to bet there are no terrorists whatsoever, this is all just mass hysteria, induced by opportunistic politics, grabbing of attention and votes, selling tons of security equipment, services, jobs, contracts, news, etc.

Regarding your bet, don't give up your day job.

Maybe you haven't heard, but an organization called Al Qaeda declared war on the United States, and essentially the rest of the world for not following their blighted form of Islam. You can read some of the goals of their leader, Osama Bin Laden, in Bin Laden's letter to America. As you can see, he has a fundamental hostility to democracy, non-Islamic religious belief, and many of our basic freedoms. He demands that we convert to Islam, give up democracy, drop the separation of church and state, and change many aspects of our culture or he and his minions will keep trying to kill us. He demands that we stop drinking alcohol, charging interest on bank loans, start separating the sexes, punishing homosexuality, oppress Jews, etc.

The sort term goal they have is to overthrow the governments in Arab & Muslim countries to install religious dictatorships to impose their narrow brand of Islam. They also hope to limit the spread of freedom and other "Western" ideas. Ultimately they plan to take over the world in a reborn Islamic super state. It sounds far fetched, but that is their goal. They understand that it might take 1,000 years, and that they are just moving the ball forward.

You can see a limited list of their handiwork below:

The most recent attempted bombing
The Underwear bomber
African Embassy Bombing
9/11 suicide attacks
Bali bombing
Madrid bombing
7/7 bombing in London
Another of the countless bombings in Iraq
Pakistan hotel bombing
Hotel bombing in Jordan
The "shoe bomber", and his current hijinks
Plan to attack Wembley stadium
Plan to bring down seven airliners
Attempted bombing in Germany

PS - In order to cut down on the confusion, a simple rule of them you can use is that "mass hysteria" doesn't tend to leave craters and stip the walls off buildings, collapse buildings, or rips bodies apart by shrapnel.

It's pretty much confirmed to be the Beatles' catalogue on iTunes.

Results from the "TOPCODER" competition:

"...these competitions were dominated at their start in 2001 by Americans, but that's no longer the case -- not by a long shot. In fact, of the four Americans who won the top seats out of 4,500 contestants... By contrast, there were eight from Russia, and four each from Norway and China. The biggest delegation -- 11 -- came from Poland.... Much of Poland's abundant interest in coding contests can be traced to Tomasz Czajka, who as a multiple TopCoder champion has won more than $100,000 in prize money since the competition began. That has made him something of a national hero back home, and other students have been eager to follow suit."

From -> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114721319725548216-EPUotRD8d3aZ4HFijEN8r_DOdJQ_20070509.html?mod=blogs

(So, they've already "been there, & done that", and pretty handily)

APK

P.S.=> Polish here myself, by the by... apk

QQ-360 Battle Escalates into War.

Always fun to watch.

Maybe not. According to the Wall Street Journal , RIM is planning to move all of its devices toward a new OS based on QNX, beginning with the BlackBerry tablet. No word on what that might mean for Java development on the BlackBerry platform.

And to be clear, I don't think Sergei Brin is sitting atop a dark tower laughing maniacally and screaming "by the power of this monopoly SOON ALL WILL BE UNDER MY CONTROL".

Me neither. That's probably Larry Page's job. :)

Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. "It was awkward," this person said. "It was like watching your parents fight."

Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

--WSJ, 2010-08-10

Exactly. FC created a summary story of two old articles, but didn't even link them: "Employees Only Think They Control Thermostat" (2003) and "For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button" (2004).

I don't think we start by blaming Obama. Anti-outsoucing legislation was blocked by (mainly) Repubs last month. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703882404575520091126205702.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100930-716142.html

Looks like only 50 billion.

It also looks like we might actually make money from tarp

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/business/01tarp.html?_r=1

the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies — will expire after Sunday at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit.

Naïvely agreed. If they had only put a cap on frequencies from day one, this whole arms race could have been subverted, but with $141 billion being managed with high frequency trading, that seems quite impossible now. But I agree that there's no inherent value created by a market that rewards transactions that challenge the speed of light.

However, I recently learned that you can really lose out when you look at something and twist your face into a knot and start shouting about why it's completely worthless. I wrote a paper on limitations of a method and what can be attained; someone else used the limiting phenomenon in a new and innovative way (and made a lot of money).

And so I propose that we build a server farm at the true midpoint between New York, London, and Hong Kong. And so begins the Race to the Center of the Earth! Oh, and cooling might be an issue...

• Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims
• Aiming at Android, Microsoft sues Motorola
• Microsoft sues Salesforce.com for alleged patent infringement

That's before we get to the actions of the major Microsoft shareholders e.g: Microsoft Co-Founder Launches Patent War "

And finally of course ; Microsoft's apparent involvement in many proxy actions.

• Microsoft Proxy Fights Against Google in the United States
• Microsoft Proxy Attack on GNU/Linux Continues With TurboHercules
• Google Accuses Microsoft of Proxy Legal War
• Also suggestions of MS involvement in the SCO lawsuit

Under previous management MS may not have been lawsuit happy. Nowadays they pretty clearly are.