Slashdot Mirror

Gee - this is encouraging. Just a week ago, an expert panel warned NASA not to outsource manned space to commercial entities.

Clearly, this panel was stacked with government bureaucrats, obviously biased against upstanding American businesses. The fact that commercial space has been 90% vaporware for the past three decades had nothing to do with it. And God forbid anyone suggest that for-profit organizations would cut corners for the sake of making more money.

And certainly corporate capture of NASA had nothing to do with today's announcement. Perish the thought.
 
/sarcasm

That's why WSJ's article on the IE exploit patch was titled "Microsoft Makes Web Browser More Secure."

It's all in how you tell the story.

Evidence continues to surface about American and other Western firms cooperating with repressive governments in their efforts to censor and eavesdrop on their citizens. Why didn't Mrs. Clinton mention them in her speech?

We have, for instance, Cisco, Nokia/Siemens, Microsoft, and Yahoo, just to name a few.

You know, you got a lot of nerve, telling people who live in China that they don't know what they're talking about. Link Link. Maybe closed mouth, open mind would work better next time.

Google cited increasingly tough censorship and recent cyberattacks on the Gmail accounts of human rights activists for its decision, which it said might force it to close its offices in China altogether.

Maybe, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.

Once the Wall Street Journal starts publishing details, you know that they are using a purposeful leak. They wouldn't put their reputation on a rumor, and Apple has to keep their secretive product development intact to preserve their brand identity.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703405704575015362653644260.html

Or you could get past the 'faceless corporation' meme and investigate what the actual people in charge of the company were thinking. According to this article, Eric Schmidt (the CEO) was strongly in favor of doing business in China. He's primarily a businessman, he sees the monetary potential, and he argued they could do good there.

Sergey Brin, who was born in the former USSR, has more personal feelings about censorship and human rights issues. He was never entirely in favor of doing business in China, but went along with it. When this happened, he wanted to stop doing business in China.

Estimates are that Google makes $300 million to $600 million in China, so while it's not going to break the bank, they are taking a hit from this. If they wanted to do the financially intelligent thing, they would keep operations in China (if they really have concerns about intellectual property, they can keep all that in the US and segregate their employees in China from the US).

Yep, I submitted an article in the WSJ about this to Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1152272/Googles-decision-about-China-was-very-personal

The card below was signed in English and Chinese by a group of self described Twitter and Google fans. An English note said "Thank you for holding values over profits!" Another note, in Chinese, reads, "Google, the mountains can't stop our contacts, and we'll get over the wall [a reference to the "Great Firewall"] to find you!"

It seems some people in China are mocking Google for having 'lost,' so this sentiment doesn't cover everyone, but it has surely had a surprising effect.

Google is just the highest-profile and latest case of a company asking whether China is really worth all that trouble. But it's not alone. Many companies have floundered in China, and others have just stayed out.

People are definitely noticing.

Are you sure? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126272143898416853.html

Come on dude, don't make me have to cut & paste.

The card below was signed in English and Chinese by a group of self described Twitter and Google fans. An English note said "Thank you for holding values over profits!" Another note, in Chinese, reads, "Google, the mountains can't stop our contacts, and we'll get over the wall [a reference to the "Great Firewall"] to find you!"

So it seems this move is actually having an effect on the people in China, at least the people who are paying attention.

What I don't understand is why the flowers are illegal. Do they really have a law against giving flowers to certain people/companies?

The morality of the market Is easily reflected in Google's stock price. I think this is why Google is still privately controlled instead of at the whim of the shareholders, or as I like to call them, the greedy ancient Court of Douchebags.

Google Inc. (GOOG, $580.93, -$9.55, -1.62%) said it may leave China after an investigation found the company had been hit with major cyber attacks it believes originated from the country--a move that would amount to one of the highest-profile rebukes yet of China by a major U.S. firm. The talk tossed China's Internet economy into turmoil, and sent Chinese search company Baidu ($431.67, +$45.18, +11.69%) soaring. Deutsche Bank upgraded the company to buy from hold saying Google threat is likely a plus for Baidu no matter how it shakes out. Other Chinese Internet firms also rose, including Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU, $58.98, +$0.85, +1.46%) and Sina Corp. (SINA, $44.87, +$0.30, +0.67%).

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100113-708147.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLEHeadlinesEurope

"I assume you mean fluoridation [wikipedia.org]. Chlorination is what you do to pools, not drinking water."

No I meant that greenpeace wanted a world wide ban on chlorination a process that is used almost everywhere to sanitise drinking water. One of the founders quit over the issue and has been publicly pissing on them ever since.

Similar thing happens in Vietnam (a small China's mirror) btw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126311541085623535.html

I wouldn't call Vietnam China's small mirror. The difference is day and night when it comes to human rights. For example, you can freely access bbc, cnn, even amnesty international websites. You can even watch BBC in your home, in fact one of the providers is partly owned by the government (I'd like to see the day when the Chinese government provides cheap access to BBC to the general population).

As to businesses, I regularly follow the news, and the fact of the matter is that the government here goes out of its way trying to avoid any trouble with foreign companies. There is corruption, there are bribes, but there are no arrests simply because the government doesn't like a company. In fact, there aren't arrests when there actually should be. Recently a Taiwanese company was discovered to have been polluting a river for 14 years, building secret pipes and dumping all its wastewater into it untreated. Destroyed the whole ecosystem, including the livelihood of thousands of people. Many people think there should be arrests - but there are not. Unfortunately.

As I said, corruption is rampant (bribing the local authorities is part of doing business here) - but at least the government acknoledges that it's a problem, and discusses it openly. Now the only time I heard about arrests was when a company did something fishy. I never saw a case when there were no grounds for arrests.

Just my opinion. (Been living here for 2 years now).

Similar thing happens in Vietnam (a small China's mirror) btw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126311541085623535.html

More police is also not an answer

It isn't a matter of having more police necessarily, it's a matter doing better police work. Here is a piece that touches on some of the latest improvements in law enforcement practice. Such changes are much more likely to make a difference for crime than legalizing or making guns illegal would (depending which country you live in). The NRA's line is technically true, but it is mostly irrelevant. Most of us will never be in a position where seconds matter.

One such considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres (4,000 km). This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA's electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you'll charge that I'm overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.

from the wiki article.

An article on Sony and "betting it all" on 3D TVs was published in the Wall Street Journal, yesterday. A pretty detailed article, imo.

Basically, that article pointed out the fatal flaw:

The challenge for Sony and the other electronics makers: persuading people to adopt 3-D so quickly after hundreds of millions of households just made the transition to high-definition video. Consumers will have to buy brand new televisions, which, according to some estimates, could cost between 10% and 20% more than the high-definition TVs currently on the market.

Not going to happen. People are going to resist this like mad. "New TV? I just bought a new HDTV, and now you want me to go buy a new one so soon which is more expensive? Yeah, go fuck yourselves."

Inflammatory rhetoric aside, what I found most interesting, though, is that CEO Stringer appears to be his push (at least in this arena) against the "Not invented here" bias that is apparently so prevalent at Sony. Most slashdotters will agree--we don't need more proprietary, incompatible Sony formats. Hopefully this attitude is promoted outside the 3D TV realm.

Last time I saw a residential property with Faraday cage equivalent shielding... well, I never have. Even aluminum siding doesn't seem to keep me from seeing WiFi from the curb in most cases.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126221116097210861.html

Apparently it used to be pretty common to put chicken wire in plaster walls. So some older buildings work effectively as faraday cages.

with a couple "Venti's" daily and Alzheimer's is eradicated! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703278604574624032849271284.html

65 years - you know, that's pretty fast... considering that they are french.
And regarding the subtleness, the plan is almost heroic... for a french.

Actually, I would like to have another nationality, cause right know, telling you that I'm German looks like as if I'm racist...
Understand me, people! I couldn't get money since January 1st! We are eating our shoes over here!!! It's all desperation which brings me so far! Waargh!!!

You had your revenge, please upload the Patch!!!
Délivrez-nous!

"'a'a'aaa, Jaques, zey are crawling on zeir knees. 'ave you 'eard zem lamenting?"
"Bien sûr, zey are sherman."

In other news, the Wall Street Journal finds that software engineer is very nearly the best job ever.

In yet further news, these kinds of surveys are utterly worthless drivel foisted upon as as supposed 'news', and the less publicity we give them the better.

Having just gotten back from visiting a rehab center/nursing home in which a nasty stomach bug went through the residents and staff, I would place most of the blame on doctors and nurses coming to work sick. They're all hopelessly understaffed, so people feel like they have to come in even if they are ill. Add to that things like doctors and nurses wearing the same scrubs day after day and you have really serious problems with the hospital environment. I'm sure visitors are part of the problem, but I doubt they are a major contributor. Visitors don't generally come into contact with multiple patients. If things like MRSA are spreading from patient to patient, it is the fault of doctors and nurses, NOT visitors.

IBM, AT&T, HP, etc. have all cut back their research labs and divisions. That's not a total surprise; can you imagine trying to explain to some hedge fund guy who holds 10% of the company stock why he's spending money on research?

How about, "the company that basically 'won' the last decade spent big and smart on R&D in the 2001-2002 dot-com crash."

ref: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123819035034460761.html

You don't get iPods and iPhones without research money.

Really? It's because when most people see an article in a newspaper talking about the intricacies of copyright, their eyes glaze over in boredom. Some newspapers do cover copyright issues. News outlets mainly give people information on topics they are interested in. Similarly, I doubt you keep up with the latest developments in choral music.

Really? It's because when most people see an article in a newspaper talking about the intricacies of copyright, their eyes glaze over in boredom. Some newspapers do cover copyright issues. News outlets mainly give people information on topics they are interested in. Similarly, I doubt you keep up with the latest developments in choral music.

The majority of people in this country are against gay marriage as well: does this mean that gay marriage should be illegal?

I don't personally care if it is legal or not. I'll vote to let them get married, because I have no reason to stop them, but I don't care if they can't. But this is the thing about democracy: if the gays want to change the law, they have to convince the rest of the country (enough of them) that it is a good idea. If they can't, they won't be able to change the law. It really is that simple.

All you have to do is look at segregation, Japanese internment camps, and the Salem Witch Trials to realize that majority rule is not always the right way

People like to bring up the example of segregation, but by the time segregation was overturned, the majority of the country was actually opposed to it. I am not going to say that bad things don't happen in democracy, but they happen in every other type of government too, usually worse. We are living in a society with a bunch of other people, and living with other people is never easy.

In the words of Alexander Hamilton - the masses are asses. Irrational fears often overcome rational deduction.

Of course he felt that way: the masses disagreed with him. It is the old logical fallacy of, "those who disagree with me are wrong." That doesn't mean a minority can rule any more competently than the majority: for an example of this look at Iran right now.

There is a reason that the United States is a Republic and not a pure democracy.

It is, but that does little more than slow down the speed of the implementation of the public's will. If the public feels strongly about an issue, and their representatives go against their will, the representative will be gone quickly. The best example of that recently is perhaps Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

The "sceptic" arguments are nothing but a parade of cherry picking with little attempt at genuine investigation.

Only if you don't actually look around. Richard Lindzen is a climate researcher at MIT, and has investigated it well (he was one of the authors of the IPCC report). His argument is that there is no strong evidence linking anthropogenic CO2 and a global crisis.

And he is right. Check out the evidence for yourself. Look at it critically, and try to see if they can establish a link. They can't.

Any of the news items I referenced (because some of us "hacks" are still stuck on the notion of providing references in support of the assertions we make in argument - I see you are far above such plebeian tasks) can easily be found on alternate channels. Those URLs were just the ones that came up first in google.

And are you seriously calling CBC, the Globe&Mail, and CTV left-wing-anti-conservative outlets? I'll grant you the fact some Toronto Star columnists have a left-of-centre bias, but you do realize that the whole "bash the messenger" routine doesn't exactly enhance your credibility don't you?

Anyhow, I'll close with yet another brilliant piece of anti-democratic behaviour by the governing conservatives - hiding behind the Governor General in order to avoid transparency and accountability. And this time I'll reference the National Post and the Wall Street Journal ... unless you also consider those outlets to be left-wing rags?

I really doubt we will see a real estate bubble in China during the next decade. They are starting from a much different position. Many people from the country are still moving to the cities. Housing materials are not something that is exactly scarce either. Most of the costs are in construction labor which is something there is little shortage of in China.

That leaves the possibility of an energy crisis. Mind you the chinese are investing in every form of energy you can possibly think of, plus they have vast reserves of cheap coal. So if worst comes to worst, they can ramp up the construction of coal-to-liquids plants (they already have one) and use that instead of oil. They also still have enough of a command economy to rapidly ramp up construction of such plants if necessary. Their economy is quite far from reaching a point of diminishing returns on investment. The gap with "western" countries is still too wide.

The US also does ok with energy having large coal and shale reserves. The areas with the largest problem regarding their energy supply are Japan and the EU.

Rich men trying to give their hard earned money to the government? Blasphemy.

He favors an estate tax, which would force others to pay. It's not about trying to give his own money to the government. He has said he plans to give his money to charity, so the estate tax has no impact on him.

How do you think Buffett feels about taxes that actually affect him? Hmm well check out this article if you're curious: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125729682025626851.html

If you really hold that the general principle that "Nobody owes anybody anything" is valid, then I suppose "sharing" is delusional and childish, "sacrifice for others" is delayed gratification, "charity" a clever misdirection or an attempt at ego agggrandisement, and "community service" is an atonement for misplaced guilt.

Again those are all voluntary actions. Don't you think that's an important distinction from compulsory taxes?

Norman Borlaug - "saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived".

I see your Norman Borlaug and raise you Thomas Midgley - "Midgley had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history".

Your post doesn't take into account that as our computers have increased in complexity, our need for bandwidth has risen lock in step with that. We're paying them not just to maintain the existing connection, but also to upgrade it to support higher-demand applications at a nominal pace. But because these companies have an effective monopoly on the right of ways to your house -- a monopoly granted to them by municipalities, there is no competition and thus no incentive to do so. So they have been making a huge profit by delaying or avoiding upgrading. As anyone who has been a network administrator will tell you, the network will run without any problems until it gets very close to or at maximum capacity. And the moment it reaches that threshold, everything goes to hell. That's what started happening globally at major ISPs in this country over the past few years.

If they had been progressively upgrading -- as rising aggregate network utilization suggested they should, this wouldn't be a problem. But they decided to place short term profit over long term sustainability and now we're paying the price: We are locked into using their service (or none at all) and they are raising prices to pay for those upgrades now. In the midst of an economic depression unlike any seen since before WWII, Comcast and other major ISPs have been reporting enormous profits. The average profit a business makes is about 5% -- the rest is production cost and administration (including labor costs). Comcast's profitability last quarter? It rose 22% in Q3 2009, and it's overall profit margins are about 20%.

Now explain to me how a company has a profit margin that increases by 22% when the unemployment rate in this country is at record levels and we're in the middle of a several-year long dry spell. Monopoly power, pure and simple. They've got tens of millions of customers paying through the nose because they don't have any alternative. Does that 250GB cap seem so reasonable now?

A member of the House of Lords is preparing a bill that would, among other things, require foreigners to demonstrate that they have suffered actual harm in England before they can sue there.

They don't like being known for libel tourism.

Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup's Security and Investigative services, said, "We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses."

Apparently those tens of millions of dollars would have been on holiday somewhere around Cayman Islands, hehehe!

On the other hand, I've found no mention in WSJ article to child pornography. Where did that come from? It only rests to say these thieves are terrorists and are supposed to be linked to al-qaeda.

Losses to online crime of all types exceeded $260 million in the U.S. last year, the FBI estimates.

At least is much less than the amount that was paid to rescue US banks during the last crisis by US people.

• All the experts don't agree. (Nor did they in the Iraq war. the difference there was that Cheney et al had executive power, whereas scientists don't. Scientists also have to compete in the media with hacks and politicians. See this yt video)
• Do you believe/care about everything you're being told in the media? Who cares what those partisan quacks call you.
• Al Gore != climate scientist. Al Gore is a politician/media figure making money.
• You feel it is an argument against "climate science" that every (shit) disaster movie after 2000 has been using that as a theme? Astonishing.
• As said before, the experts don't agree on everything. Also, "citizen-researchers" (blame WSJ for thinking up this imbecilic word/notion.) are being denied access to data != breakdown of the peer review process.

"I could smell the BS a mile a way" does not actually prove you're intelligent or insightful. It might just as well prove that you distrust people who tell you you're doing something that is causing something bad. Or something else entirely. But feel free to interpret the CRU "Scandal" as you like to reinforce your own opinions.. just remember it doesn't really prove anything.

Ron Paul is an ok politician, but for economic advice, I'd rather turn to someone who really knows what they are talking about, and that is Paul Volcker. You can see what his plan is here, and I think you'll agree it makes sense.

If you fail, you're going to fail, and I am not going to help you, and your stockholders are going to be gone, and your creditors will be at risk, and that is the way that it should be.......We need a resolution facility. What can that resolution facility do? If one of you fails and has systemic risk, then it steps in, takes you over and either liquidates or merges you, but it does not save you.

As for the more exotic investment activities, he has this to say:

I found myself sitting next to one of the inventors of financial engineering. I didn't know him, but I knew who he was and that he had won a Nobel Prize, and I nudged him and asked what all the financial engineering does for the economy and what it does for productivity.

Much to my surprise, he leaned over and whispered in my ear that it does nothing--and this was from a leader in the world of financial engineering. I asked him what it did do, and he said that it moves around the rents in the financial system--and besides, it's a lot of intellectual fun.

Good stuff. I wish Geithner and Obama would listen. By the way, your numbers are wrong, TARP was closer to $2,000 per citizen.

Nonetheless, you need not cry for Saab. It will live again. According to a news report just issued by the "Wall Street Journal", Spyker has made another offer to buy Saab. This time, we have the real deal.

Sweet, we could finally get rid of Ron Paul.

There's very little of that. $16.5b in TANF (almost all of which is spent on things that get unemployed folks back in the workforce, which is an investment, not an expenditure), $36.4b in food stamps. I'd say having my tax money going to keep people from breaking into my house for money to buy food is a good expenditure.

The charity we should stop is the welfare that goes to big, rich corporations (like IBM and Kodak), which dwarfs what goes to the poor.

This guy, who was a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia claims he had papers that were suppressed. It is going to take a lot of work to figure out which side is correct, but at this point it is worth noticing that there are two sides on the issue.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/12/16/intel-responds-to-ftc-suit/

Why?
Be specific, list computer modeling you have done, as well as any weakness in the chemical compounds. Please link to appropriate chemical analysis

What's that? you can't do that? STFU.

He doesn't have to. Boeing themselves had admitted to some fairly serious issues with cracking in the airframe and wings, cracking that their computer models didn't predict. We're talking about an airplane in which major sections are literally baked together in a kind of giant oven. People have every right to be concerned about this aircraft until Boeing has proved that it's safe. From finance, to climate, to aircraft design, we seem to be relying too much on computer models, and in every case, it's bitten us in the ass. Computer models are a necessary tool, but aren't the panacea you seem to think they are.

Geez, look who's been confirmed.

An Attorney General who thinks it's OK to pick a fundamental Constitutional right and strip it from individuals.

A tax cheat in charge of the IRS.

A CIO who was strangely the ONLY one in his entire department that wasn't corrupt.

What "draconian disclosure requirements" are you referring to? These are the guys who were CONFIRMED in office.

I don't generally trust analysts who have problems with decimal points.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091119-702857.html says that Sony "reported a net loss of ¥98.9 billion for the fiscal year ended last March." Which is a little different than the ¥989.9 billion reporting in this article. Especially when you consider that Sony's revenue is listed as ¥7.730 trillion on Wikipedia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/14/sony-japan-sales-financial-loss seems to be the actual source of the numbers, as that lists the ¥58.8 billion number as well. So I think this article was a copy/paste that went a bit wrong.

There is another way -- you have to provide a service (or product) people want at a price that helps other people. The problem with being a bullshitting parasite is if you are one, you are incompetent. A company that gets filled with these types of people in the end will be filled with people who are incompetent. As a result, you will not be able to provide as good a service as other people.

Sure, it is true the banks managed to get their bailout through lucky lobbying, but unless they change what they are doing, they will fail again, and smart people are already working on ways to make sure they don't get bailed out another time. In the moment, it was easy for them to raise panic and get what they wanted, and smart people were willing to accept it even though it looked kind of shady, because smart people usually wait until they have the evidence before drawing conclusions. Now all the evidence is clear that the bailouts weren't necessary, that there were other ways to deal with the problem, and the next time it comes up it will be harder for the bankers to pull the wool over the eyes of the politicians (frankly it wasn't easy this time: they had to try to pass tarp twice and barely did it the second time, mainly based on fear).

In the end, progress depends on the competent, not the leaches. If the leaches outnumber the competent, the country will fail. Invent something great and you will do fine.

They weren't preventing dissenting opinions from being accepting into peer reviewed journals - they expressed disappointment in the fact that the peer review process wasn't doing its job: weeding out bad science.

I don't think you've captured the true flavor of their hijinks.

Rigging a Climate 'Consensus' - About those emails and 'peer review.'

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!"

Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

Scientists actually are pretty skeptical people by nature,...... Most "skeptics" are nothing more than contrarians; skepticism to me implies a willingness to investigate the issue for one's self, but most of the denial movement shows such a poor grasp of the science that they clearly haven't done so.

When it comes to climate, there seems to be two groups - skeptics, and believers. It is amazingly difficult to get believers to reevaluate new data (and perhaps endanger millions in grants?).

Climate of Fear - Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
Physics Group Splinters Over Global Warming Review
Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Can most scientists afford to be skeptics?

To which Paul Vaughan responded as follows:

Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:

Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW.
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.

Follow the money -- perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.

Opposing toxic pollution is not synonymous with supporting AGW.

After all, there is huge money to be made and transferred due to "Climate change", even if it all turns out to b

The Wall Street Journal says it's real.

I was doubtful myself, it seemed really weird that Google would compete against partners like this. It seems like most technical people that would even want Android to start with would flock to this phone and drop the others. Heck, I might even buy one to have something to tether my iPhone to when traveling internationally!!

I had a chance to try out a Droid, and it was still pretty pokey (especially when using the built in browser). Perhaps the Google phone will finally hit a good performance stride.

And from that link:

The phone is called the Nexus One and is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp.

But unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone

Subscription required beyond that.

So it's made by HTC. And "designed virtually the entire software experience" isn't saying much. Sounds like another "myTouch 3G with Google" sort of deal.