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WWWWolf, I agree with the moderation that your comment is insightful. And we do have to make moral choices about how we use our tools, as well as moral choices for how we distribute the fruits of our labors with tools (why I support a "basic income" for all, for example).

But there are at least two other aspects to this, and they relate to the point you made in your last sentence: "Perhaps it'd be best to see exactly how those best ideas that were leeched off of good honest scientists are put to action - maybe that'll help us build nicer things for nicer purposes."

One is Langdon Winner's point (such as in his book "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought") about moving beyond a tool/use distinction (e.g. "knives can be used for good or bad") and looking at how we create complex socio-technical systems that embed assumptions about social organization, intent, acceptabilty, and other things into them. In that sense, the choices we make about what to research, how to build things, and what priorities to set are very much political choices about how we want our social world to be, even if they may not seem so at the time. So, for example, if we research and work towards centralized nuclear power plants, we've made a different statement about how we want society to operate, how accessible technology should be, and what are acceptable risks and to whom, then if we research and work towards, say, solar panels on every roof, or for that matter, long-lasting non-maintenance nuclear batteries. (Although distributed solar and even small-scale home or neighborhood nuclear batteries still may have very different implications on recycling, proliferation, weaponization, privacy, and monitoring).

For example, it is well known that a previous CIA director, R. James Woolsey, supports the development of an electric car infrastructure. See, for example:
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052702303411604575168130469848598.html
Whatever else one might say about the CIA policies under his tenure, electric cars are a fundamentally more democratic technology than gasoline-powered cars because they would would eliminate the USA's dependence on foreign oil (also reducing the need for a big US military to defend long oil supply lines), and electric cars would be easier for the average person to service given less parts or to recharge at home using local renewable energy production.

Diesel engines, which can be powered by local biofuels, have some of these aspects, too -- which was part of why Rudolf Diesel intentionally invented them. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
"Though best known for his invention of the pressure-ignited heat engine that bears his name, Rudolf Diesel was also a well-respected thermal engineer and a social theorist. Diesel's inventions have three points in common: they relate to heat transfer by natural physical processes or laws; they involve markedly creative mechanical design; and they were initially motivated by the inventor's concept of sociological needs. Rudolf Diesel originally conceived the diesel engine to enable independent craftsmen and artisans to compete with industry.[8]"

Stirling engines also have some of these attributes. So the choice to research and develop electric cars, diesel cars, or stirling engines is, in that sense, fundamentally different in social implications than a choice to improve gasoline-fueled cars (given gasoline takes oil to make, and big refineries). On the other hand, research on, say, producing gasoline safely at home from vats of sunlit algae would have more democratic implications.

It would be nice to have open source (in the OSI and FSF sense) collaborative software tools for public intelligence that help scientists, engineers, and the general public discuss and thin

WSJ: It is likely the senator was going for 'body shop,' also a derogatory term, but one that describes firms who shuffle low-cost tech engineers around the globe.

Apple has been building a WiFi-based location database using data collected by the iPhone and other mobile devices since January 2008, and finally replaced Skyhook as his provider last April.

The real news is that Apple is building a universal mashup of location-based services related to traveling. This will include any service, preference, or purchase, you can make while traveling. The patent claim mentions a comprehensive list, including arrival notification, restaurant reservations, travel itinerary, airport maps, control seat services (audio, video, temperature, lights, entertainment), preferences (seating, flying times, meals, airlines, airports), access to 3rd party services, and more.

In this manner, through an integrated application, a travel service provider can maintain a constant connection between the travel service provider and the user. This can result in changing a user's travel experience from a fragmented and disjointed process to one that is instead seamless and fluid.

At one point they use the WhereTo application as a sample UI that could access the service. WhereTo is a wheel where you click to jump to Google Places. This does not mean they intent to patent the UI, but the technology behind it. I mean, read the damn thing:

Accordingly, through the integrated application, airport services can be searched for, browsed, viewed, and otherwise listed or presented to the user. For example, an interface such as interface 602 [602 refers to the Where To? drawing] can be provided on a user’s electronic device.

The UI is not the subject of the patent claim, but an example of how to use it.

WhereTo developers said This paragraph sounds like a claim that describes Where To?’s functionality pretty exactly. Yes, yours and the hundred more apps that also use the same service, but you didn't invent Google Places. Hell, if I design a cube interface tomorrow, I still didn't invent Google Places.

In the words of Brian Ford:

The real problem, as I see it, is that no one thought to approach FutureTap, and let them know that they’d be doing so. I deal with patent applications a lot at work because they’re often used as evidence in trials that I work on, and there’s no way around the fact that they’re hard to decipher. Bloggers are bound to read a lot into this, and a lot of the speculation is going to be based on a lack of information.

The Times of London noted, "In just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, The Times found the names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing detailed intelligence to U.S. forces. Their villages are given for identification and also, in many cases, their fathers' names." In some cases, their precise GPS locations were included.

Or cause one.

By deferring to the authority of the Federal government, they shut down their own common sense. Maybe, JUST MAYBE if people were held responsible for these things instead of the nanny state doling out approval or denial for projects they don't really know anything about, maybe the world would be a better place. Instead, we spend a huge amount of time and money doing "compliance" that is often only marginally related to actual safety issues, leaving no money left over to deal with REAL safety issues.

In cases like the gulf oil spill, simply requiring people to carry insurance against such liabilities would go a long way, ostensibly privatizing the permitting process, as the persons insurance rates would go up the more risky a given project was. By spreading out that risk, a catastrophe like a land slide or an oil spill won't bankrupt the person or company involved (though they will have to face consequences from higher rates), while ensuring that people are properly compensated for their damages. I mean, you don't need to get a special permit to drive a Humvee rather than Geo Metro, despite the fact that a Humvee certainly poses a much greater threat to other drivers.

I was expecting Giant mutant boars rampaging through cities and destroying buildings and then ultimately being stopped by a Giant Robot (or a Giant Lizard).

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB122937877627908421.html

Or because the average user is running around the Internet looking for instant gratification and simply won't learn about security.

But what if that's changing?

We can bitch and moan about how worthless Facebook is but these privacy debacles seem to finally be waking people up to the real issues at stake. Thankfully to raise this issue it took just a few sensitive pictures of some fools to get out after they posted them to the world instead of a totally invasive all knowing nexus of everyone's everything. Seems like the past 20 or so years it's slowly been getting worse and worse on the internet. And now WSJ has this huge "expose" called What They Know with an intuitive display of what's affecting you without your knowledge. And that indicates that WSJ thinks people want to hear about this and that it will sell eyeballs. I say it's about damned time. I hope it doesn't stop here with Microsoft or even stop at browsers. It should continue from websites all the way back to The Patriot Act. Hopefully the spirit of privacy from government and corporations has merely been sleeping in Americans and not completely dead/relinquished. Unfortunately they say it's always much harder to win back liberties lost than to give them up.

Or because the average user is running around the Internet looking for instant gratification and simply won't learn about security.

But what if that's changing?

We can bitch and moan about how worthless Facebook is but these privacy debacles seem to finally be waking people up to the real issues at stake. Thankfully to raise this issue it took just a few sensitive pictures of some fools to get out after they posted them to the world instead of a totally invasive all knowing nexus of everyone's everything. Seems like the past 20 or so years it's slowly been getting worse and worse on the internet. And now WSJ has this huge "expose" called What They Know with an intuitive display of what's affecting you without your knowledge. And that indicates that WSJ thinks people want to hear about this and that it will sell eyeballs. I say it's about damned time. I hope it doesn't stop here with Microsoft or even stop at browsers. It should continue from websites all the way back to The Patriot Act. Hopefully the spirit of privacy from government and corporations has merely been sleeping in Americans and not completely dead/relinquished. Unfortunately they say it's always much harder to win back liberties lost than to give them up.

Citibank is a goner for me - despite their virtual number thingie which is great.

They changed their game plan - either take it or loose your account.
I had cash reward cards and they dropped the % of rewards and other rules to my disadvantage.
You will get a new card, your current card will no longer be valid was one of their writings, if you don't use your new card, your accounts will be closed...

So - what happened is that the new cards were issued, accounts transferred but cards were in the mail and could not get activated.
Effect was virtual number generation failed, I am on an internet purchase, PayPal would take up to 3 days to verify a new CC - could not complete transaction.

Citi customer service (bad connection, probably far away...) hung up 3 x until I was able to find out why it does no longer work.

Background for this changeover is probably the new rules coming out against abusive CC bank behavior cutting into profits and to keep up their C?O bonanza payments, they will use new tricks to milk a lot of people even more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895004575395823497473064.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Free software types are not opposed to for-pay software, at all. The two concepts are not related.

This distinction was somewhat valid when one had to order software on tapes and disks. But in an era when the cost of distribution is just about zero, it's very difficult to charge for copyleft software.

What are the options to earn income from software that's entirely copyleft?

• Panhandling: But most won't pay if the only new thing they're getting is a warm feeling. It turns programmers into beggars and servants.
• Selling support: But many users don't need it, or can't afford it, and they need it less the higher the quality of the software.
• Embedded Advertisng: Users find this very valuable.
• Sell Documentation: Now we're introducing a proprietary component again, preventing open community involvement in its development.

Access to the source and build systems, and the ability to distribute modified versions, are the real strengths of open software. By removing the freedom-to-run requirement it becomes easier to charge for software that still gives users all the freedoms that motivated Richard Stallman to start GNU and the FSF.

From here:

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

And yet the papers he was referring to did get cited in the IPCC AR4 report, but not particularly favorably.

From here:

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.

Had that handy, having just used it against a different ad hominem attack.

Have a nice day!

No, I am saying you are engaging in straw man arguments by generating a conspiracy against the truth where there is no conspiracy.

I never said any such thing, and you're using loaded, weasel-words to impart a connotation that I never myself asserted. Why?

Your argument is: "OH, why should I believe people who eject non-believers!!"

You're simply a liar. My argument was stated above, and I'll repeat it in hopes you'll catch it this time:

In a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.

I never once stated a disability of belief in anything other than the consensus, and you damn well know it. Stop putting words in my mouth and make points that can stand without such trickery.

From here:

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.

Have a nice day!

The real issue is how to most efficiently funnel money to Goldman Sachs now that the housing bubble and the bank bailouts are over. The need to keep doing God's work after all.

Meet Gerald Walpin, the former Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, who was fired for questioning irregularities regarding an AmeriCorps grant given to an Obama supporter as well as opening an investigation into $80 million given to the City University of NY. That is, he was fired for doing his job, he just happened to look into the "wrong" people.

Why isn't anybody commenting on the Intel side of this story? After all, they were the ones paying the bribes, or whatever you want to call that.

Having suffered from Intel's legal belligerence in the past, I know that they are pretty good at getting their will done. But, are not two parts required for this, er, illicit transaction to take place?

Strictly speaking, this article is less about anti-trust and more about shareholder abuse. The transaction itself is anti-trust -- what Dell did with it was the shareholder abuse for which the SEC fined Dell. In any case, Intel isn't getting of scott free from this, it seems. From the WSJ:

Dell first disclosed the SEC investigation into its accounting in 2006. The SEC, whose focus on the Intel payments came to light last month, alleged the payments from the chip maker were designed to ensure that Dell only bought microprocessors from Intel, not rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Allegations about Intel's subsidies to Dell and other computer makers have figured prominently in a series of antitrust cases against Intel, including a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission that is expected to be settled soon. Intel has consistently denied wrong-doing in the cases, but paid $1.45 billion to settle a case brought by the European Union and $1.25 billion to settle an antitrust suit brought by AMD.

given the evidence everywhere in the western world ... Socialism requires the creation of social programs which, in turn, need to be funded

That's anecdotal evidence, and not much of it. And you're ignoring my point that spending is not strictly a social thing. Granted, expenses related to social programs require spending, but it does not follow that this spending necessarily must exceed tax revenue. Your implication to the contrary is what is disingenuous.

However, to qualify as an investment, there must be a "return" on it - in the form of increased economic output, quality of life, or some other benefit - that outweighs the cost of that investment

You're making the same mistake I commented on earlier: "spending does not equal spending". You're confusing the two here. You also ignore the fact that investment carries risk, so no, there's no "must" on the return. As to "private investment of that money", the private sector was not in fact spending- neither business, which clamped up and stopped investing in their business and laying off people, as well as individuals who pulled money out of the market, thus reducing their investment. So, yes, if investment was to be made, it would be public.

A country with a high debt-to-GDP ratio is in danger of being unable to pay the interest on its debt

Irrelevant, since acquiring more debt is pointless as you point out yourself in trying to getting out of debt.

All the more reason to stop planning new entitlement programs.... get the most votes by enacting social programs

Who's planning new entitlement programs? You can try to argue that healthcare reform is a new program, but you'd be wrong for many reasons. Your description of them as deficit spending is also wrong, because at the moment they are still fully paid for by employment taxes. Insolvency hasn't come yet.

As for sarcasm, there's a massive difference between the right wing propaganda we've seen since Obama took office and anything democrats have done to advance their issues. And comparing Fox to MSNBC takes a serious right-wing bias and inferiority complex. Olbermann and Maddow are about as liberal as you can get, but they don't deceive viewers into thinking they're objective newscasters or even as more serious than Jon Stewart. So you're sarcasm fails when you compared that rant to stuff said by real crazies.

Halliburton did the cementing job. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214593564769072.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/halliburton-deepwater-hor_n_570733.html

Exactly just look at this WSJ article to see how much FUD is surrounding this issue...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575378932246998208.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Not to mention how to bill for it.

In places where such surveillance is necessary, the US is providing financing to build power plants so I don't think this is much of an issue.

The WSJ recently reported on the Taliban being a beneficiary of a American-taxpayer-financed power plant built in south Afghanistan. Perhaps such devices could make the Taliban controlled cities receiving this power a bit easier to fly into.

"Yeah, I'm a strong supporter of legalizing marijuana (and most other drugs), but I think the 'medical marijuana' movement is a farce."

Please educate yourself on this subject. Marijuana is extremely useful in a medical context. One of its many uses is in helping with PTSD. There is an article in Science News (Pot Rx - June 19, 2010) that covers this topic in detail (all uses, not just PTSD.) You will be amazed to discover how far off you are if you read it.

Although gbutler69's remarks were tagged as flamebait, he is fundamentally correct.

Nuclear power plants do generate about 20% of the electricity in the US, which does bring into question rudy_wayne's facts and conclusions.

Second, the Obama administration's $8 Billion loan guarantee is just a guarantee for a specific project, not a loan. That is, the US government pays nothing unless the owner, Southern Co. defaults on the loan.

Though there are interesting speech recognition products for other applications ; for this task Dragon and IBM ViaVoice, both sold by ScanSoft, are pretty much the only software choices until someone qualified gets an NSF grant to beef up Sphinx.

I can second the recommendation of the LDC's XTrans if you're going to do this yourself.

If you want someone else to do it, here are a lot of podcasters who want transcripts, and a bunch of transcription services have sprung up to address the market. They've already implemented a lot of the quality-control mechanisms you'd have to address in order to get good results from something like the Mechnical Turk.

The Wall Street Journal ran a side-by-side comparison back in 2008 and recommended castingwords.com, but another provider may very well be better by now. Shop around.

A new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has put Facebook just above the taxman on America's lists. Out of 30 online companies, the two absolute worst were MySpace with 63 out of 100 and Facebook at 64 but other high scoring sites included Wikipedia (77) and YouTube (73). Unsurprisingly the report reveals that of the 233 companies they monitor year round, MySpace and Facebook are in the bottom 5% for customer satisfaction. That puts them with airlines and cable companies--two historically low ranked industries of customer satisfaction. You can see a brief overview of the scores and also note that on search engines, Bing hits 77 just behind Google at 80 for customer satisfaction. The full report with an overview of why consumers were satisfied or dissatisfied with each site can be found here in PDF.

Seriously, MySpace and Facebook are down there with cable companies and airlines. And their service is (on the surface) free. Must be doing a terrible job.

UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."

Oh, if only it ended there--he missed news feed control problems, advertising, spam, navigation issues and annoying applications. From the actual report:

When asked what they like least about Facebook, survey respondents gave answers including privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls the news feeds, advertising, the constant and unpredictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few. There is no shortage of complaints about Facebook.

The devices that are mandatory in most of europe (funnily the home of BP being one of the exceptions, presumably because of the much more shallow waters they're drilling in there), are a little bit more than just the blowout preventer, it's a device which can be triggered in case of emergencies where the wireguided signals from the rig is unable to reach the BOP. They were, as best I can tell, developed after a problem with a platform sinking, same as what happened in the gulf.

Not being an engineer, I'm really at a loss to explain the difference between the BOP installed at BPs site and the ones that are generally being required by most other offshore oil producing countries. But from what the engineers explained to me, these remote controlled shutoff valves would have been able to stop the spill once the pipe had burst, assuming the blowout preventer ofcourse worked (which some people have questioned, since the installed "dead-mans-switch" didn't activate it).
From what I understand, it may have been that such valves were not installed because of the expense of installing them when drilling at these depths, and a furhter combination of BP not being required to use them, and also questioning of their effectiveness at these depths.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html has some of the best graphics detailing the idea of the remote controlled switch. Again, the assumption being that the BOP is actually functioning. And from what I can understand, replacing or repairing a defective BOP IS possible.

Let us say, just for the sake of argument, that the AGWers are correct. What do you expect us to do? Don't say "cap and trade" because it is a scam that will kill the economy while making billionaires out of those pushing it (surprise surprise) and the cost of converting just the USA to electric cars would probably break us, if the production could even be ramped up that high. Not to mention simple logic states that cars that run on massive batteries won't last for shit in places like the south, where the heat and humidity will kill them dead quickly.

So I'd love to hear a solution other than "line the pockets of Wall street leeches and Al Gore", because I honestly haven't heard anything else from the AGW camp. The simple fact is after years of searching we simply haven't found anything with the energy density of oil, and short of wiping out a good 60% of the world's population and going back to a pre-industrial society I don't see anything on the board that will cause any real change. After all China and India will tell you where to put your cap and trade, along with the rest of the third world, and the resulting shift as what remaining businesses jump overseas to avoid cap and trade will make outsourcing look pleasant by comparison. And with 2 wars and record deficits along with high unemployment is isn't like Americans could afford cap and trade anyway, unless you want the fed to just tack it onto our already insane debt.

So unless we come up with some magical McGuffin to fix it, I really don't see it making much of a difference. We simply don't have the money or resources to change our current direction ATM, and the last thing any politician will do right now is stick thousands more on the average Joe in electric and fuel bills in an economy that is starting to smell like death. So I'd really like to hear some real solutions, because cap and trade will be about as helpful as "too big to fail" was in the long run.

I can think of a much simpler explanation why this wasn't caught in testing. Apple has an AT&T tower on site. So all iPhone 4s tested in Apple's labs would've had a strong signal to work with. Apple also gave phones to select personnel to field test, but were so paranoid about it being spotted in the field that they disguised it with (you guessed it) a rubber bumper to hide the distinctive metal antenna band. So it was impossible to hold the field test units in a way which shorted out the two antennas.

• "Apple engineers were aware of the risks associated with the new antenna design as early as a year ago, but Chief Executive Steve Jobs liked the design so much that Apple went ahead with its development, said another person familiar with the matter."

So I guess both Bloomberg and the WSJ have anonymous sources who are full of shit.

I didn't see any of the other large multinationals drilling in the area jumping in and offering their solutions.

Well, you can't really offer to build the well correctly after the fact, now can you?

Other countries require safeguards to already be in place before the well goes into production. We could have required an acoustic dead-man switch, or relief wells to be in place, before the well went into production. If they had been in place, we would have already had the solution when the wellhead blew.

Brazil and Norway require these acoustic switches. If the oil companies don't want to do it on their own, we can just require them to do it.

Obama is much more right wing than Reagan.

Reagan:

* Signed bill to give amnesty to undocumented immigrants.
* Added entire cabinets to government
* Tripled deficit
* Bailed out and expanded social security with a tax increase
* Raised corporate taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars
* Raised taxes to the gas prices
* Signed largest tax increase ever
* Supported hand gun controls
* Wanted to reduce nuclear weapons

Obama
Here is a speech he just gave on immigration:

Here is a transcript, pay attention here:

I recognize the sense of compassion that drives this argument, but I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally.

Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.

So, yeah, Reagan was to the left of Obama. Obama is a right wing/opportunist/conservative/politician etc.

I don't really care, again, I am a libertarian, I am just pointing out the obvious here.

Moreover, from a WSJ article, the following:

Because the data recorders can lose their information if disconnected from the car's battery or if the battery dies—as could happen after a crash—the agency is focusing only on recent accidents, said a person familiar with the situation.

What the hell? Who designs a black box that needs continuous power to properly log information, and retain it? That makes no sense at all.

It's not an accident recording black box, it's an engineering data collection black box. What makes no sense is that they wouldn't have pulled the data from all of them immediately after each accident.

Moreover, from a WSJ article, the following:

Because the data recorders can lose their information if disconnected from the car's battery or if the battery dies—as could happen after a crash—the agency is focusing only on recent accidents, said a person familiar with the situation.

What the hell? Who designs a black box that needs continuous power to properly log information, and retain it? That makes no sense at all.

But now you can't shop at A&F, go to the hospital, stop at a shelter or vacation in the Hamptons now. Give us some DDT, screw the birds.

http://online.wsj.com/media/iad_D_20100709194420.jpg

I'd love to get a reliable source on that. I always imagine Apple as being evil as sin (ha!); it would do a lot for my impression of the company to believe that they were willing to work on something for nothing (OS X + PostScript GUI on a 433mhz Geode?).

This might be the best source WSJ
Quote:

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

As for OS X on a 433MHz X86 compatible - "OS X" seems to run just fine on an iPhone/iPod Touch which have 400MHz ARM processors. Sure it's not the full OS, but it can be cut down to run decently. I think OLPC could've cut out the fat and made it run decently...

Quoth the Wall Street Journal:

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The summary for the submitted article misses almost EVERY important aspect to this story, as it was initially reported! It almost looks like an attempt to deliberately minimize concern over the dubious legality and suspect agenda for "Perfect Citizen".

In fact, Samzenpus and "Wiggles" seem content not to mention the program's Orwellian name, nor the specific use of the term "Big Brother" by Ratheon contractors associated with the NSA on this effort.

Here is the summary I supplied, when submitting this story as a front-pager for Slashdot. I believe that it is more cogent and INFORMATIVE than the blandness offered us.

The WSJ is reporting on an $100M NSA program "to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants." All of which sound nice enough, if one does not become critically focused on the name they chose for this effort: 'Perfect Citizen'. Releasing this to the WSJ has the appearance of PR cover for the expansion of both warrantless surveillance and the intrusion of the NSA into a theatre of domestic operations.
Ratheon, the NSA contractor charged with realizing the NSA vision for the 'Perfect Citizen' program openly called this the "Big Brother" system, in internal communications.

For once, I really wouldn't mind a "dupe" story, either my summary or that of another poster with some insight to the implications of "Perfect Citizen".

There's been a lot of fraud around asbestos. Recently it's also transferred to silica dust somewhat. It is based in truth, because asbestosis and silicosis are real dangers, but lawyers have committed real fraud with it. In some lawsuits, the same people who were made sick and diagnosed with asbestosis were later diagnosed by the same doctors with silicosis for a different lawsuit. Here is that story. Here are some other lawyers who were recently convicted for fraud with asbestos cases.

Lawyers are one of the biggest areas of fraud and corruption the US right now. In a lot of states, the attorney general sets up a pay-to-play system where they get kickbacks to let certain law firms handle certain legal issues (or even pursue cases that normally would be ignored). In other cases, lawyer lobby organizations try to get laws written in vague ways that will require extra legal work, or as in this case, create potential lawsuits where there doesn't seem to even be danger.

There's been a lot of fraud around asbestos. Recently it's also transferred to silica dust somewhat. It is based in truth, because asbestosis and silicosis are real dangers, but lawyers have committed real fraud with it. In some lawsuits, the same people who were made sick and diagnosed with asbestosis were later diagnosed by the same doctors with silicosis for a different lawsuit. Here is that story. Here are some other lawyers who were recently convicted for fraud with asbestos cases.

Lawyers are one of the biggest areas of fraud and corruption the US right now. In a lot of states, the attorney general sets up a pay-to-play system where they get kickbacks to let certain law firms handle certain legal issues (or even pursue cases that normally would be ignored). In other cases, lawyer lobby organizations try to get laws written in vague ways that will require extra legal work, or as in this case, create potential lawsuits where there doesn't seem to even be danger.

Mann gets millions from NSF and Penn State doesn't want that to stop. What a shock they exonerated him! Once again, the scientific community shows that when it all comes down to feasting on taxpayer money, they don't let the truth get in the way. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575010931344004278.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

European leaders are trying to rein in their spending because they see the economic writing on the wall. Obama and his Democrats insist on charging straight ahead and spending more, even if it means rolling back their worthless campaign promises not to raise taxes on earners under $250k. Make no mistake, they are targeting you and I to pick up the tab for their heavy-spending ways.

Taxation citation.

I realize liberals might not like the WSJ as a source, but the article is well-written and informative. They have a graph which shows the actual impact the tax hikes would have. It's not op-ed, it's straight-up reporting of what is already out on the news wires. See the Associated Press report as well.

"Raising revenue is part of the deficit solution, too," Hoyer said.

No, it's not. Throwing more money at a problem that is rooted in waste has never solved the problem, it has only extended it. We are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, yet instead of

Spot on. According to the Wall Street Journal, helmets increase the rate of injury in American Footbal Leg injuries have gone way up since they started using astroturf as well. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a bitch!

Insurance will only be cheap when it can target people who can be demonstrably responsible for their health. Proving that, though, is a tall order indeed.

Safeway has done a pretty good job cutting costs using that method.

Your use of the Bill O'Reilly tactic......

I'm not going to defend Bill O'Reilly.

Whereas less than half of Republicans believe that Obama was born in the U.S. Try to find something from the other side of the aisle that's on the same planet, much less the same page, as that bit of lunacy

It's all in how you frame it. You could take the same statistic and say way more Republicans agree that Obama is a citizen than not, but you decided to frame it in an anti-Republican way. We can do the same thing and say that liberals utterly fail at basic economics.

Feel free to give up your bogus false equivalency at any time.

It's not about equivalency, maybe one side has a higher percentage of idiots; I don't care so much about the idiots. The fact is there are good ideas on both sides. The good ideas are what matter.

I might as well point out that your smear of Helen Thomas is 100% bogus as well

I didn't have to smear her, she did it herself. If you don't see what's wrong with what she said, then something is wrong with you.

You left out American football, with its 12 minutes of actual play time in a 3 hour game WSJ

The opposite is true. Teslas are still selling for close to retail.

There are only about 1,000 Teslas you could buy:

In the first quarter of [this] year, Tesla sold a total of 126 cars ... 9.7 cars a week.

A few qualifications: First, the company currently only sells the Tesla Roadster, which retails for $109,000. Only so many buyers for cars like that exist in the world. The company also continues to have a long waiting list. An estimated 2,200 customers have put $5,000 deposits down on the Model S, the all-electric sedan coming in 2012.
Tesla Sales Down on Eve of IPO

[June 23]

The Model S has an estimated base price around $60,000.

Tesla is regarded with some suspicion in the financial press.

The company will stop producing the vehicle it became known for, the Roadster sports car, and focus on a premium sedan called the Model-S. This car's selling point: According to Tesla, it will go up to 300 miles per charge, far further than other manufacturers claim for their electric cars. Tesla says it hasn't based its range forecast on a working prototype but chiefly on computer models. And, its IPO filing says, potential new government standards could result in a 30% cut to Tesla's advertised ranges.

The government also needs to ensure private investors don't cash out on the back of its largesse. It has tried that with Tesla, saying the loan will go into default if big shareholders, including Chief Executive Elon Musk, fail to hold at least 65% of their stock for at least a year after the Model-S project is complete. Guaranteed Risks in America's Green Loans [June 24]

Elon Musk is widely regarded as a big-time spender who always seems to be skating on the edge of disaster. Elon Musk, Head of Tesla Motors, Is Broke

- The current BP leak is a fine example, BP is being held to higher standards than the US companies that are responsible for Exxon Valdez sized leaks every single year in Nigeria, and well, Bhopal is a fine example of US environmental hypocrisy too

No it's not. BP spilled oil in American territory. That's why they're being held to a higher standard. Has nothing to do with their foreign/domestic status. If anything, their near and dear ties to Britain has caused us to temper our condemnation of them considerably.

- BAE was fined by the US over a bribery scandal in the Saudi Eurofighter deal, yet US companies do this exact same thing all the time

No we don't. I happen to work for a wholly owned subsidiary of the company that currently holds the record for the largest fine ever levied for corruption. Our punishment of bribery if anything makes us less competitive. Germany, for instance, allows German companies to claim tax deductions for bribes to foreign firms (just a cost of doing business). Makes it harder for US contractors to compete with German ones for business.

- Boeing was given massively unfair advantage in the next generation tanker deal

Alleged. Also, this is completely apples vs. oranges. The only way this would be comparable is if the US government required Airbus or Dassault to partner with Boeing/Lockheed Martin as a prerequisite for selling tankers in the US.

Other examples where the US has acted illegaly in a similar respect include lumber (Complainant: Canada), cotton (Complainant: Brazil), steel (Complainant: Britain), online gambling (Complainant: Antigua).

And none of these involved forcing foreign firms to partner with local firms to enable espionage.

It's a bit rich for an American company to complain about an overseas company bending the law to favour local companies when the US is one of the worst offenders internationally for this sort of thing.

I didn't see Google complaining about it? They just noted they won't be able to be certified in China.

It's hard to look badly at China when they do this- at least they're open and honest about it,

They're open and honest about wanting to steal foreign companies secrets and technology? Since when?

which is more than can be said about the US' hush hush attitude to turning a blind eye to corrupt practices for local companies,

I don't think you are at all familiar with corrupt practicies of US companies and how they're dealt with. Heck, here's an example from just this week. The US government very much does not turn a blind eye to espionage and corruption of local companies. Sure, you can find individual examples of it happening, but it's not systemic and it's not accepted policy.

and the environmental irresponsibility of US companies overseas.

That has nothing to do with this conversation whatsoever. You seem to have something of a complex.

It's hard to even blame China when they look across the Pacific and see the US doing exactly the same sort of thing.

What's sad is that you might even believe the US government and Chinese government are even remotely comparable. That implies such a disconnect with reality and rational thought so massive as to be insurmountable.

The "get out of jail free" cards were still flowing as late as 2008...

SDNY went 0-15. At that point, I became to disheartened to continue digging.

Tell that to the shareholders who lost $89 Billion. Just because you don't understand this loss doesn't make it any less real to the people who used to own something valuable and now they no longer do.

Most investors already understand the difference between a loss of market value and an actual loss, so maybe you should be asking them to clue you in. Here's a quick hint, though, as to one of the differences: Unless BP starts posting real losses, then their stock will recover and every investor who didn't liquidate while the stock was low will have lost nothing.

The President develops energy sources now? How does he find time to do all that scientific work and still fit in so many parties and rounds of golf?

That's an interesting question. It makes me wonder: Are you pretending not to understand the difference between a loss of market value and actual expenses just like you're pretending not to understand that we're talking about energy policy?

Also, alternative energy sources are still so economically inferior to petroleum that we could have a spill like this every summer, make oil companies pay double for each cleanup, and the alternative sources still couldn't compete. Alternative energy is just another way of saying "please let me pay 5-10 times as much for energy".

Please. Alternative energy would already be economically viable if we gave them the same assistance we do to oil. It's already viable in many places with no assistance at all.

Actually making oil companies pay the full price of their environmental damage? Ha! You'd be gagging for any alternative in a week!

Electric cars are similarly limited in comparison to real cars. As a real product, they don't make sense. They're more understandable as an environmental religious sacrifice or some kind of green asceticism.

They make great sense for anyone who isn't regularly traveling great distances. Gas cars will still exist for those times where its needed.

Where has it been shown that regulations would have made any difference?

Effective regulation at any one of the steps where BP decided to cut corners might have prevented this spill.

Of course, to have effective regulation, you have to not gut the regulation, and not run the regulatory body under the assumption that regulation itself is bad and collusion with the industry is good.

Eleven guys were killed in the explosion. You think they care more about what some bureaucrat says than whether they live or die?

"They", as in the ones who make decisions, don't give a flying fuck about the lives of "they" as in the workers who died. Just like they don't give a fuck about the environment, or the non-oil economy of the Gulf. That's why they cut corners that could result in the damage they did.

What they care about is the bottom line and their own asses. So yes, if a bureaucrat says "You are going to lose billions of dollars in future oil revenue if your rig doesn't pass a real inspection" they are going to care way more about that than mere loss of (not their) life.

When making a comparison, how can you ignore the ONLY benefits of the e-reader (e-ink, battery life, and the free data on some models)? Tablets win for the same thing that all superior products win: for anyone looking for MORE than a decent platform for reading text, e-readers suck. If that's all you want to do, that's great, enjoy your e-reader. The price cuts certainly help. The problem is that there are *so many* disadvantages to an e-reader that you're neglecting, along with a complementary list of advantages for tablets.

A tablet does many things well. The eReader is cheaper and does one thing well. As I said, the iPad will have its fans, but there will be people who want a single purpose device.

Of your four "advantages", two are restatements of each other (battery life is a function of power draw) and one is highly subjective at best ("easier on the eyes").

Not the same point. When you are sitting reading a page on the iPad, you are using just as much battery life as when you flip the page. Whereas you can leave an e-Ink page up for several minutes and the draw will be very minimal. e-ink uses big amounts of power to change the state, but keeping the text on screen takes virtually no battery power.

As for the allegedly subjective claim..., you are right, there is debate. Based on personal experience, that is my opinion.

Then there are the disadvantages: page flips are slow and clumsy, artwork is terrible unless it's line art, there's no color (and the color e-ink prototypes aren't going to cut it, either), there's essentially no interaction other than scrolling, it has limited/no multimedia capabilities, and it is, in the words of Alton Brown, a unitasker of the first degree.

As I said. Some will want everything and the kitchen sink, and others will want a good book reading device.

Compare a tablet, with a full range of information, Internet, multimedia, gaming, productivity, communication, and reading applications. Tablets done right have screens with good color, viewing angles, and contrast, and highly responsive multitouch interfaces. Battery life north of 10 hours is enough so as to make no difference to most people--they can use it all day, drop it into a charger at night, and use it all day again. The reading applications aren't limited to text, but fully-featured magazines, comic books, illustrated texts, and interactive content, all of which can be used without an external light source with a simple adjustment of background brightness.

Which appeals to some people and not others. A lot of people would enjoy the benefits. If I had infinite resources, I'd get some very nice (and expensive) technology, and my computer would have top of the line components.

People who complain about "headaches" when using an LCD are just doing so in an environment with insufficient ambient light, which e-readers only avoid because they're illegible without sufficient ambient light. Whining about staring into a "lightbulb" is only based on poor ergonomic choices that they've made themselves. There is no physical difference to the eye whether light is backlit or reflected; turn on a lamp and/or adjust your brightness in low-light conditions and your problems are magically solved.

True, to some degree. I would still prefer to read E-ink for hours over a regular display, even with a large amount of ambient light (either from bulbs or natural).

That said, personal preference is personal preference. If e-ink is the fairy dust cure-all, then it counts against tablets. Does it count enough to give up all the other functionality? That depends on what you're buying it for. But there's little question that