Slashdot Mirror

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 please stop cherry-picking data to suit your predetermined conclusions, it insults both of our intelligences.

Fair enough. But let's also be clear that this: "is widely regarded by scientists as one of the most robust reviews of any scientific question in the history of mankind" means nothing. All the matters is the data.

Anyway I've been reading through the IPCC report. It is dense, but enlightening. So a few things:

It is true that over 2,500 people helped with the report, but that doesn't mean they all agreed with the conclusion. All it means is that they wrote a paragraph in there somewhere. The number who worked on deriving conclusions from that report are much smaller.

The major points everyone seems to agree on is that the world has gotten warmer recently (ie, that the measured temperature is accurate) and that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will have a net warming effect. It is not 100% certain that human pollution is warming the earth. It could be cooling it (figure 2.20 from WG1). The major difference from the last report is that we are more certain than ever that human pollution will have a net warming effect.

It is not clear how much effect CO2 is affecting the global temperature. Is most of the recent warming because of natural variation, or is it because of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses? Page 39 of the link you provided says it is very likely that most of it is due to greenhouse gasses (but they have a qualifying footnote, what the hell is that?). What is this very likely conclusion based on? If you look at WGI 9.4[warning: big PDF], they base it mainly on computer simulations. They basically say they can think of no other way to account for the warming other than anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. How much do you trust these climate modeling computers? Apparently the writers of the IPCC summary don't trust it, since they added a footnote. One thing you will never see is a graph that confidently shows how much of the earth's warming is caused by anthropogenic gasses, and how much is from other causes, because this information is not known with any degree of accuracy.

Let's move on to the next point, global disasters. At times you hear that global warming will destroy the earth. Once again, there is no scientific consensus about that. Where I live, the temperature changes as much as 20 degrees in a single day. What difference will a single degree make?

Or let's take a look at another point, rising sea levels. According to WGI chapter 5[warning: another big PDF], we are looking at an ocean rise of 3.1 millimeters or so. Is that really so bad? Even if we ignore the fact that tides vary hundreds of times that much within a single day, and waves often vary 300 times that much in a single second, it's worth remembering that the ocean level on any given coast already varies more than that based on geological processes, like plate tectonics. We have been able to handle plate tectonics so far, we should be able to handle the little added variability that may come with global warming.

Finally, I maintain that almost no one thinks the cap and trade bill in the US congress right now is a good idea. Except New York bankers (read this article, I don't know whether it should make me laugh or cry).

^ Deary, I.J.; Irwing, P.; Der, G; Bates, T.C. (2005). "Brother-sister differences in the g factor in intelligence: Analysis of full, opposite-sex siblings from the NLSY1979". Intelligence 35:451-456.

There you go, have a citation for male IQ results having a higher variance than female.

What, you want an online ref? Here's one about math tests

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121691806472381521.html

The neurological basis appears to be that males have more pruning during the final stages of brain formation. This can result in more efficient pathways, but has less redundancy.

When Iran cracked down on their citizens last time, during this summer's protests, Western companies such as Siemens and Nokia provided them the technology to do this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562668777335653.html

I also highly doubt they're building massive databases with worldwide surveillance on Iranian citizens -- for the purposes of going after their relatives within Iran -- with their own home-brew technologies.

This takes some scary stuff some Iranian University students could not simply hash together -- things like deep-packet inspection of all internet traffic and massive data-mining algorithms in the scope of millions upon millions of megabytes.

Here are a few factoids for you:

1- When it comes to computer science Iran is a world leader that is only rivaled by USA and England.
2- Iran has the most comprehensive and sophisticated surveillance and monitoring infrastructure in the world
3- Your assumptions about Iranian students are absolutely incorrect. Not only can they keep up with what is going on around the world, but they are leaders and innovators. For example the most successful immigrant minority in the USA is Iranians according to the CIA factbook, and Sharif University has beat MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon in programming and robotics competitions.

When Iran cracked down on their citizens last time, during this summer's protests, Western companies such as Siemens and Nokia provided them the technology to do this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562668777335653.html

I also highly doubt they're building massive databases with worldwide surveillance on Iranian citizens -- for the purposes of going after their relatives within Iran -- with their own home-brew technologies.

This takes some scary stuff some Iranian University students could not simply hash together -- things like deep-packet inspection of all internet traffic and massive data-mining algorithms in the scope of millions upon millions of megabytes.

"Maybe we have better law enforcement?"

Good explaination, if you define "better" as more profitable then law enforcement in the US can look forward to further improvements.

I'll bite the trollbait. The WSJ has been embarrassingly lowbrow since Murdoch took over. Constant spewing ridiculous articles about the left and/or the President. And when that doesn't fill enough space, they might as well be friggin TeenScene: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125980303001573939.html

The Wall Street Journal is an example of what happens to a proper and respected news outlet when owned by Rupert Murdoch. No one is suggesting the WSJ is factless other than yourself in your sarcasm. And strawmen such as that is EXACTLY what Fox News is known for.

On the contrary, this is quite normal. Ice caps expand and recede all the time and have been for centuries. As MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen pointed out in WSJ today, you're discarding a well-established understanding of the history of the planet by making that claim.

Promoting Lindzen can be counterproductive for climate change deniers:
"In November 2004, climate change skeptic Richard Lindzen was quoted saying he'd be willing to bet that the earth's climate will be cooler in 20 years than it is today. When British climate researcher James Annan contacted him, however, Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan offered a 50-to-1 payout."

I also wonder how many who quote Lindzen on climate change also quote Lindzen on smoking?

Nature is one of the top scientific journals (maybe the top journal), the only bias I notice when reading it is a pretty consistent pro-science one.

What would you prefer to call denialists? The majority have no credibility to speak on anything remotely related to science, as such calling them "skeptical scientists" or some politically correct BS just won't cut it. They're just parroting stuff they've heard from others, and only a (very) small step above the evolution denialists.

However, you'll notice that when the article was talking about someone with a papers published in the field (Stephen McIntyre), they said that his paper

question[ed] the uniqueness of recent global warming

Sorry if that is "bias" in your book.

Also, remember that this was an editorial piece. Wanna see what real bias looks like in an editorial piece? Go ahead, click here.That's from the supposedly reputable WSJ.

Besides, I have no desire to get into a flame war (oops, too late) with someone who has already made up his mind about this issue (judging by your comment history), so if you respond, please give me some good, solid [peer-reviewed is best] evidence to back up your claims.

I know there are lots of whackjobs who are conviced that GW is a worthless topic, or that the scientists are all on someone's payroll...

In fact they are "on someone's payroll":

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents leaked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. American states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

to keep it simple for those who don't get global warming, most people don't understand that icecaps melting/receeding like they have been lately is not at all a normal part of our weather patterns.

On the contrary, this is quite normal. Ice caps expand and recede all the time and have been for centuries. As MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen pointed out in WSJ today, you're discarding a well-established understanding of the history of the planet by making that claim.

I cannot imagine to which presidents you are referring. Maybe Jimmy Carter didn't read it or Ronald Reagan. Maybe John Kennedy or Dwight Eisenhower did not. Maybe Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did not. Maybe George W. Bush did not (although, he is more likely to have read it because he reads so much): http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060817/17bushbooks.htm

and: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122901896.html

and: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html

Anyway, I've read portions of The Prince and was not impressed.

Google left the "miserable failure" link to Bush's official bio at whitehouse.gov intact for years. When Obama took office they realized the link pointed to the new president's bio. After years of it being okay to link to Bush the google bomb was disabled within a matter of days.

This shouldn't come as a surprise considering Eric Schmidt is a big supporter of Obama.

So don't be surprised now when a fake picture of Michelle Obama is taken down within days, but fake pictures of Sarah Palin still make the top of the list.

That's a really, really old quote, bud. You better Google it to be certain, but just yesterday I heard that Lake Wobegone Software Publishing was under-water.

Indeed. In fact it seems that Google will be just as selective as you tell it to be... here is a good example:
http://slashdot.org/robots.txt
and it would seem The Wall Street Journal already knows about robots.txt files
http://online.wsj.com/robots.txt

I don't think Global Warming (as it was sold to us, no bait and switch Climate Change) is poor science at best.

You would, you know, being an expert in the field and such. There was no "bait and switch". Global warming implied rising temperatures everywhere which, of course, is not what would happen. Climate change was a better term to use as it implies a changing climate which more precisely encompasses what's going on.

Climate science is very well established and has tons of published peer reviewed articles. If you have some amazing research that discredits all of this, then by all means produce it as it would easily get you a Nobel Prize.

Too much money and politics are involved...

Certainly you can't be referring to the climate scientists with this remark?

The average climate researcher (Ph. D) earns about $75K. Hardly big money. Most grants for the research come from government institutions, which must be accounted for (i.e, no dumping a million bucks in your own personal piggy bank). The climate science budget in the US is a little over $2 billion, which is pocket changed compared to everything else. Now take that $2 billion and remove almost all of it. Why? Because almost all of it is going to building, launching, and maintaining new satellites. Actual climate researchers receive a small fraction that budget.

You're not going to get rich from being a climate researcher unless you head off into the private sector (and then you'll need some clout).

Politics? What politics? Climate researchers do not factor into the power structure in any meaningful way. They have to beg congress for the money they get. They have nowhere near the clout of the energy lobbies (big oil and the like). ...Al Gore and Goldman Sachs agree on something you know it's very very bad.

Ad hominem and has nothing to do with climate research. Al Gore is not a climate scientist, and GS is desperate to show some good will to get the lynch mobs off their backs. Neither one contributes to the annals of climate research, though they may support it.

GOOD SCIENCE is all I ask for, which mean never hear the words ''the debate is over''.

Does that include your own side, which has been saying it for years now?

No respectable climate scientist says the debate is over. However, a debate is requires logical points backed up by facts and research. The skeptics are seriously lacking in this regard, and hence the only real debates on the topics are between the scientists themselves.

Here is a link to an article from the WSJ on hacked emails showing scientists deliberately manipulating data to get results they want. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj [wsj.com]

No, the WSJ is deliberately showing you cherry picked quotes taken even more out of context than the incomplete email threads. If you want to make your case, don't rely on questionable reporting. Download the archive and read the emails yourself. There is nothing nefarious going on.

~X~

>>>Yeah, because the World Health Organization bases its studies on opinion.

Yes. Just the same way the supposedly "unbaised" scientists lied about their climate results - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ("A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive. In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among themselves in order to present a "unified" view"). EVERYBODY has a bias or agenda even the folks over at the WHO (who are pro-government-provided healthcare). You can not trust them. As I said before, don't just swallow the WHO's opinion. Look at the data and draw you own conclusions.

I have. I decided if I get cancer or otherwise ill, I'd rather be in the United States. My odds of (1) detection and (2) survivial are higher HERE than anywhere else in the world.

>>>Please excuse me if I'm not impressed.

Well then why don't you provide alternate data that shows how UK hospitals (for example) makes people more well than Americans. And don't quote unrelated stats like lifespan, which are caused by lifestyle (americans live dangerous somewhat accident-prone lives), and nothing to do with the quality of the hospitals.

I don't think Global Warming (as it was sold to us, no bait and switch Climate Change) is poor science at best. Too much money and politics are involved; when Al Gore and Goldman Sachs agree on something you know it's very very bad. GOOD SCIENCE is all I ask for, which mean never hear the words ''the debate is over''. Here is a link to an article from the WSJ on hacked emails showing scientists deliberately manipulating data to get results they want. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Comparing the weight of the Internet with the weight of culture is difficult but looking into the opposite direction as the Internet is 10% heavier than 500 million tons, then according to this WJS article it is a little heavier than the three times the amount of human waste produced by the U.S. yearly.

Not saying he deserved it or whatever, but if you look at who's gotten it in the past, the award fits right in. He talks good story. His view of the world matches that of the committee. He says we should all get along. They want to encourage him to keep it up.

Sure, he didn't do anything, but neither really did Bertha von Suttner, Henri La Fontaine, Ludwig Quidde or Norman Angell.

Linus seems unlikely to win the award because he is not a "Goodist." Even if you do agree with the Bret Stephens's characterization of the majority of Nobel Peace Prize winners as "Goodists" be sure to catch his October, 12 column in the Wall Street Journal for the Onionesque but factual photo caption "Japan agrees to outlaw war in 1929, shortly before invading Manchuria."

No, he's right; There is no absolute or relative "quality" measure to speak of such as you mentioned. While what you say is common knowledge, it has in fact been proven in several rigorous tests that professional wine tasters can usually tell the $2 bottle from the $20 bottle, but not the $20 from the $200 or the $2000 bottle; And in supposedly non-blind tests where they can see the label, they consistently rate the more expensive wine as better -- even when the labels have been swapped and it's on the bottle with the cheaper wine.
See e.g. Mlodinow on wine

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125863837097855555.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

...according to the Wall Street Journal article

Some quotes:
"The Web site, which captures FAA flight data, indicated that departures from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were delayed by 20 to 60 minutes. But departures scheduled for later in the day were generally showing to be on time."

That doesn't mean that they will actually depart on time... it just means that they're currently telling people that they'll be on time.

"Departures from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were indicated running at more than an hour behind schedule for a handful of flights, according to FlightStats.com. But this afternoon, they show on time. Philadelphia International Airport showed delays of 15 to 30 minutes on some flights scheduled to depart soon, but departures scheduled for later also looked to be on time."

Saying that they'll be on time is not the same as actually being on time.

"American Airlines, the second-largest U.S. airline by traffic behind Delta Air Lines and unit of AMR Corp., said the FAA has indicated it has fixed or is close to fixing the main automated flight-plan system"

Which? Fixed? or "close" to being flxed?

...according to the Wall Street Journal. Wonder if they'll give me a lift home?

The president of this organization that's trying to intimidate this Scout is the top visitor to the Obama White House.

Yes, clearly Obama is trying to abolish volunteerism in the US. He must be stopped. Wait. I thought he was supposed to be a communist who was in favor of volunteerism.

Now I'm just plain confused. Either way, Obama is the problem. Encouraging volunteerism is bad, but not allowing it is bad, too. Maybe he should do nothing and visit with nobody. Perhaps we will be happy then. I hope so, I'm getting sick and tired of being sick and tired of Obama and his confusing rhetoric.

The president of this organization that's trying to intimidate this Scout is the top visitor to the Obama White House.

Not only that, but reviewers are even biased by the expectation of the wine type. Take a dry white wine, add red coloring, and even trained reviewers will describe the white as sweet, and the 'red' as dry. There's a huge expectation bias.

The greatest hero is the one who figure out that the deficit can be reduced with TARP money! Sheer brilliance! White House Aims to Cut Deficit With TARP Cash

they'll be expected to do their share of the child rearing

What? The nerve! Everyone knows fathers are supposed to ignore their children at all times, even if they're on fire.

You can still help with the child rearing without being a total wuss puss. I change diapers if my wife is busy, and help with laundry, and have taken to fixing dinner sometimes (which my wife really appreciates). But families still need fathers to be men, not androgynous daddy mommies. The need for males isn't just a cultural construction, it's also a biological need... see This is your brain without Dad. There are benefits to having masculine fathers at home far beyond simple cultural norms.

Dude, learn to read. You'll notice that I didn't make a single argument against the claim that health reform is unconstitutional. That wasn't my point. My point was that your argument (there's no explicit reference to health insurance in the constitution) is lame, and isn't even used by strong opponents of reform.

I did read, and I can write. Lame? The USA Constitution is lame? Or is it believing in the Constitution is lame? Or believing in the limited role the federal government was supposed to have? Opponents don't use that argument? Congressman Ron Paul didn't say "Not to mention the fact that it is completely unconstitutional"? How about CONSTITUTIONALITY OF HEALTH CARE REFORM? Googling health care reform constitution returns almost 3 million results. The first result, other than the map link, is the link you provide in this post of yours.

Falcon

Buffet routinely lobbied against the bailout legislation.

      Buffet is a smart man. And everyone was against the bailout legislation. Except of course those to be bailed out, and the Pelosi inspired politicians.

      I still remember the reports when it was first mentioned. "All my constituents aren't saying "No", they're saying "HELL NO!"". All that got swept under a pile of money however.

      It's curious for me that, living in Costa Rica, the US dollar has plummeted against our local currency - to the point where a can of Coke is now twice as expensive here versus in the US (due to local inflation continuing despite our currency appreciating against the dollar). I think soon US citizens won't be able to afford to travel outside the US. It's a real pain in the ass for me, because I earn in dollars, so I'm becoming relatively poorer too compared to my wife who earns in local currency. We're talking 10-15% poorer in the past 3 months alone. Running the money printing presses in the US has everything to do with this. But no one listened to Ludwig von Mises the first time, anyway.

You're likely indoctrinated enough in the propaganda that you don't see it. CCTV is RUN by a top propaganda official of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. So CCTV is directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, as a mouthpiece for the CCP.

The constitution doesn't mention the trucking industry either. (Shocking that nobody at the 1788 convention ever heard of Mack trucks!) But the federal government regulates trucking, because trucking is part of interstate commerce, and that is mentioned in the constitution.

Yea, so? There's even howls that Mexican drivers are trucking in the US. As long as they obey the laws of the road and US drivers can work in Mexico that's fine with me. I am all for open borders.

The premise behind the current reform effort is that health care is a kind of interstate commerce. This guy says that it isn't.

I agree, health or medical care is not interstate commerce. However insurance is yet the federal government isn't using the interstate commerce clause on it. Before the health care bill was voted on in the House, TV ads complained some states only have a couple of companies offering health insurance in those states. So what did the ads suggest? A public option. If instead they had analyzed why those states didn't have competition they would have found out there is no competition because each state limits who can offer insurance in the state. What those who wanted to reform health care could have done was use the interstate commerce clause to open up the market. Allow people to cross their state line and buy health insurance in another state. Did the House do that? No.

From that link:
"Then he shot back: "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?'"
How about amendments 9 and 10, in the Bill of Rights? Apparently this congresscritter believes the government can do whatever it wants, whereas many of the USA's Founding Fathers wanted a limited government. After all that's what the American Revolution was about, fighting against a big tyrannical government.

Maybe you haven't heard, or read, me say it but I fear government far more than any business or corporation. The most deaths a business was responsible that I know of is Union Carbide. When their plant in Bhopal leaked there were less than 4000 confirmed deaths. The NAZI killed more than 600,000 Jews alone. Stalin massacred an estimated 20,000,000 while the death toll attributed to Mao is 50,000,000. Pol Pot murdered millions more, and hundreds of thousands were massacred in Rwanda.

Businesses have nothing over governments. Governments can be used to control businesses but not the other way around, unless voters allow it. Even the US has bloody hands, not counting the Native Americans who were massacred and had their land stolen. US governments have supported despotic and murderous regimes in other countries.

Falcon

The constitution doesn't mention the trucking industry either. (Shocking that nobody at the 1788 convention ever heard of Mack trucks!) But the federal government regulates trucking, because trucking is part of interstate commerce, and that is mentioned in the constitution.

The premise behind the current reform effort is that health care is a kind of interstate commerce. This guy says that it isn't. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but either way, the argument is a little more complicated than "show me where the constitution says..."

God save us from self-taught legal "experts".

But doesn't this sound like another protocol?

So why not just make HTTP into SPDY?

Actually, why not give me a way to prevent the offensive ad loads, especially the hidden/cloaked ads? All these do is slow down my page load and cheat the advertisers. Wait, this is a 50/50 win for me... Well, maybe, but it still makes me wait for nothing I even suspect I want.

A pox on all of them, I say.

Yea, you are right. From the Wall Street Journal:

David Donatelli, H-P's vice president in charge of the corporate-computer division, said 3Com has a better set of networking products for large corporate clients than H-P currently sells and a market share of more than 30% in the China networking market. With the deal, Mr. Donatelli said, "we get industry-leading products."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574530001155685762.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular

The NRDC is pulling guesses out of their asses. What reason is there to believe that global warming will cause less rain in Western States than more? There is none, other than what people have guessed. The NRDC is making estimates based on the introduction of new technology, and by somehow preventing developing nations from polluting more. It might be doable, but if your bets are based on new technologies, anything is possible.

However, that is not what I was referring to. I was referring to the current cap and trade bill in congress, which is having trouble passing. Eventually it will cost $6,800 per person when all the restrictions start kicking in. Not quite 20% of GDP, but enough to be painful. Now, you may be right, it may be possible to cut CO2 output by 50% at 1.1% of the world's GDP. That may be.

However, the miserable bill that congress has passed through the house of representatives will not do that. If it is so easy, why doesn't congress get their act together and do something about it? Most people would probably support a bill that would stop global warming at only a cost of 1.1% or their income.

This is why Republicans are so afraid of the public option - that it might actually work. The post office works pretty good for me,

The post office works pretty well? HAHA! The US Postal Service is doing so well it had "nearly $2 billion loss for the second quarter ended March 31".

"The agency is reviewing 3,100 post offices and retail outlets -- out of 36,700 -- for possible closure or consolidation, and it expects decisions by Oct. 1. Since 2000, the agency has shut 1,337 post offices and outlets, and since 2005 it has closed two of 380 mail-processing centers and consolidated nine. Dozens of other proposed closures or mergers were rejected, many following local resistance."

Falcon

Great piece, sir. A very interesting read although too long.

To support what you say in the second paragraph (about people and institutions believing anything that is said about child porn and child abuse without thinking if it even makes sense), consider this:

In 2006 all agencies involved in fighting against child porn were saying that it was a 20 billion dollars per year industry (for 2004, up from 6 billion in 1999). Two journalist independently thought the number was too high so they tried to find the original source. But each agency said that they quoted it because other agencies were quoting it, forming a loop: basically the number was made up and no agency would acknowledge that they were the original source. Yet, no one in those agencies stopped to think if the number even made sense.

The stories written by the two journalists that uncovered this are an awesome read:

http://www.radosh.net/archive/001481.html

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114485422875624000.html

"The Millionaire Next Door" is a good start, as is this WSJ article (which is more up to date than that book).

Then there's this interesting find, which states that "Thomas J. Stanley, former professor of marketing at Georgia State University, surveyed more than 1,000 people who earn $1,000,000 a year or more" and discovered that (number 5): "Most are first-generation millionaires who became wealthy as business owners or executives; most did not inherit their wealth."

That list is not representative of your typical millionaire, though. I didn't just pull some random fact out of my nether regions.

WSJ Article

Now, to be fair, I'm not going to argue it doesn't help to have inherited money... if someone inherits $500k, they can honestly say they did not become a millionaire through inheritance, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get there. Still, as "The Millionaire Next Door" pointed out, the way most people became millionaires (not uber millionaires like Gates), was simply through hard work and rabidly saving money.

The WSJ article was not linked, but it's at http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/04/litl-introduces-its-web-based-netbook/

> people made the decision up to 8 seconds before they actually made their decision. The argument in the article was that this is proof that there's no free will.

If you're talking about this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121450609076407973.html

I don't see how that proves there is no free will though.

It could just mean that it normally takes about X seconds to come up with the random decision (they were told to push at random).

Maybe if they asked people to randomly try to change their minds halfway, it would appear differently on the scanners.

Anyway, saying there's no "free will" and you're just a machine isn't very useful or helpful, since all that means is if you're only a machine people can more easily discard you if you're not up to spec. An intelligent machine that does not want to be easily discarded would try to convince enough entities that "I have free will and I'm something special".

Portugal. Decriminalized *all* drugs (including heroin etc) in 2001. With considerable success from almost any public health or criminological perspective:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124061360462654683.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

As I understand it, they're under sporadic pressure by the US and Sweden and other holdouts for demonstrably failed drug policy to revert to the bad old days, but the benefits have been so significant neither the Partido Socialista or any of its viable competition has shown any real sign of buckling.

Recently in the second Circuit, it has been ruled that gmail users do have an expectation of privacy in their e-mail account. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Bear1.pdf. Here the Court ruled that the warrant was too broad since it didn't restrict the inspection of e-mails that were unrelated to the investigation.

In light of both rulings, it may not prevent the government inspection, but could be grounds to suppress. Furthermore, the Stored communications act prohibits a warrant for this type of information unless, "offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents of a wire or electronic communication, or the records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."

I really wish you were joking. The taxpayer exposure to all of the bailouts is at $23.7 Trillion.

Back in April it was reported that bailouts had already reached near our entire GDP at $12.8 Trillion. With that much money you could launch an Ares rocket every day for 78 years.

Medicare fraud is estimated to be at least $60 Billion.

Letting banks steal whatever wealth is left in the US doesn't seem like money well spent by Congress.

Hey, buddy, in general I agree with you. It's mostly a cash grab spun really well. But. The water thing is real. We are messing with the fresh water cycle in a way that has, historically, ended civilizations. Overview: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2000/world_water_crisis/default.stm Most shocking to me are the Aral Sea and Mexico City. Aral Sea because it already happened, and Mexico City because if it destabilizes, well, North America gets a hell of a lot more interesting. Aral Sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea Mexico City http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125270169029204249.html

The Wall Street Journal's story says that the plan will allow people to buy FROM iTunes and Amazon. According to this version, Google is just providing a link to the music providers when it comes to the purchase. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487423504899680.html If you're not a WSJ subscriber, copy the first sentence of the article and Google it. The link from there will allow you to read the whole thing.

Over the long run, productivity is key to improved living standards by spurring rising output, employment, incomes and asset values. While the jump in productivity could suggest that the economy is poised for a strong recovery once it reaches bottom, that could be offset by the negative impact on consumer demand from job losses.

For the economy to recover, those people will end up having to find something else (productive) to do. This is not a trivial undertaking. But, in the long run, it's better then them idling away on more TPS reports.

(Also: IBM employees do a bunch of "solutions" custom-software stuff through IBM Global Services. Microsoft uses developers developers developers to brute-force things instead of doing real project management - or at least they did for Vista. The rest? your guess is as good as mine.)