Slashdot Mirror

See http://news.yahoo.com/influence-game-leaks-show-groups-climate-efforts-210616751.html.

it was against Honda. Not Toyota. Here is the link http://finance.yahoo.com/news/woman-sues-honda-unlikely-place-195014842.html/

Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky, a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocide denier.

. . . . Back in the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party recruited a former Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to give speeches on the eve of World War II denouncing military preparedness as a capitalist racket. The idea was that by persuading an individual man of valor to propound shameful views, those views would somehow become less shameful. It didn’t work then. I doubt it will work now. - Wesley Who?

War is sometimes chosen for you by your enemies, not by some secret cabal in government or industry. Other nations and groups have their own plans, such as forcing Islamic conversion and Sharia law to replace the US Constitution on the US independent of anything the US does.

If the so called Military-Industrial complex is so powerful, why has the long term trend since World War 2 been towards decreased spending as a percentage of the economy?
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average

If there is no threat, why do we keep seeing arrests and convictions like this?

Federal agents arrest Amine El Khalifi; he allegedly planned to bomb Capitol
Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria,

To wit, a woman chose not to join a CAL against Honda and took them to small claims court. Instead of $100 and a $1000 credit towards a new Honda, she won $9,867.

Citations

On the food thing before anyone asks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/11/how-will-the-world-feed-itself

Peak Oil:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/481433a.html

Tar sands:
http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-winners-urge-eu-leaders-back-tar-sands-110130470.html

I know this isn't tech gadgets, but some jobs are in fact coming back to America. Master Lock brings manufacturing Stateside

Obama is going about this all wrong in a socialist way, by making our tax code bigger and more bloated. There should be no exceptions and conditions for a lower tax, just a flat out lower tax, Eliminate large portions of the tax code, make taxes more simple, and lower the tax rates on businesses. That's just the beginning of it, things like minimum wage should also be eliminated since the people it hurts most are the people such laws are intended to help Minimum wage harms young minorities the most

Anyhow, go out and buy a Master Lock, I know I will.

Seems apropos that this just came across my RSS feed...

http://news.yahoo.com/indiana-13-cases-measles-vaccinations-decline-200625088.html

ATT capped bonch's bandwidth; he couldn't post from his iDevice:

http://news.yahoo.com/t-customers-surprised-unlimited-data-limit-080906861.html

You're forgetting the military. He's collected far more money from active-duty military families than any other candidate.

He may not have the popularity of the other candidates in the Mainstream Media (who all but ignore him anyway, and always have) but his "main base" is much more than just "college students in Iowa". He just stomped the shit out of Santorum in Maine, and wasn't very far behind Romney.

Where "stomped the shit" means that 2000 people out of a Maine population of 1.3 million voted for Paul (about 1000 voted for Santorum). If we assume that the state is about half Republican, then we have a contest so critical and compelling that a whole 0.8% of the state's Republican voters bothered to turn out.

You're forgetting the military. He's collected far more money from active-duty military families than any other candidate.

He may not have the popularity of the other candidates in the Mainstream Media (who all but ignore him anyway, and always have) but his "main base" is much more than just "college students in Iowa". He just stomped the shit out of Santorum in Maine, and wasn't very far behind Romney.

Given that it's the anti-racists that seem to be oblivious to the obvious, who's really simple minded?

I guess you'd like to wind up like South Africa?

Have fun!

You're delusional. WD had a terrible quarter. compared to the previous quarter, Revenue: down $700 million. Profits: down $100 million
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=WDC

You wanted http://search.yahoo.com/ :)

You don't have to fly to get to Hawaii:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070312202806AA3NgZq

Not really, but [the Feds] did put on a big PR stunt where a big, popular file-sharing site, seemingly out-of-reach on the other side of the world, were shut down and the operators arrested. I'm not convinced that is was anything but a scripted reality show, but it seemed to have convinced the operators of BTJunkie that they should quit while they're ahead.

Yes indeed, just after the Megaupload circus Btjunkie removed all the latest torrents from their home page - it became Google style, with basically just a search box. This was before Rapidshare restricted their functionality. Btjunkie were obviously being very cautious.

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/muslim-man-workplace-quip-made-terror-suspect-211334769.html?back=%2F&.ts=1328402603&.intl=ca&.lang=en-ca

Link in OP does not seem to work.

Sagely words, cffrost.

Some others:

"I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one."

"Corporations are born in a lawyerâ(TM)s office, exist only on paper, have no social conscience, no soul and can never die."

The worst example of blind love for a corporation would have to be the way consumers worship Apple; a company whose workers are treated cruelly and ruthlessly. What is 'Cool' about this?

Apple's Chinese workers treated 'inhumanely, like machines'
Investigation finds evidence of draconian rules and excessive overtime to meet western demand for iPhones and iPads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/30/apple-chinese-workers-treated-inhumanely

Apple Store Employees Speak Out Against Demoralizing, Draining Work Conditions
http://www.cultofmac.com/103041/apple-store-employees-speak-out-against-demoralizing-draining-work-conditions/

The Darker Side of Apple: The Human Cost of Your iProducts
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/darker-side-apple-human-cost-iproducts-164412176.html

At least 14 workers at Foxconn factories in China have killed themselves in the last 16 months as a result of horrendous working conditions.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html

Anyone can use google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”) to see the original page without geographical redirection.

Unfortunately this is not totally correct. I live in Australia and if I have my cookies cleared (in firefox) and I type in www.yahoo.com/ncr I get redirected to an error page then finally to http://au.yahoo.com/?p=us. So currently I'm using http://72.30.2.43/. The website tv.com used to be easy then they implemented regional redirection. Suffice to say I was mildly pissed off.

I want to go where I want to go, when I want to and no I do not want you to tell me what I should and should not do. So I got around that by using http://us.tv.com./ After reading this particular article I tried http://us.tv.com/ and it did not work. I even used there American IP adddress but no luck there so I just used Tor, stuff them. As John Gilmore said, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

What Blogspot, Yahoo and TV.com have done and others is censorship at its worse and greed a close second if not a tie with censorship. Because, to impose any form of censorship a government must have the ability to monitor and therefore restrict communication. Therefore local laws are what are influencing these companies so they can continue to operate in those countries.

Kind regards
Slashdotgirl

I wrote an article on social websites a while ago which refutes most of your claims and proves why Facebook will definitely keep growing and profiting. It's too long for /., though, so you'll have to go visit my GeoCities page.

There's a big difference between sending an easily ignored email and dealing with a store that is deliberately designed to make it harder to find stuff easily, as well as force you to walk through as many aisles as possible.

Grocery stores put the staples like milk and butter in the back of the store, and fresh produce in the front, for a reason. It's all painstakingly coordinated to ensure you walk out of there with as much stuff you didn't intend to buy when you went in as possible.

I can't blame a business for doing this, necessarily, but my time is valuable, and when I want something, I want to get in, buy it, and get out. As many stores are designed to make that as difficult as possible, online ordering is the way to go for me.

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power." http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081010142651AAPvMox

When I see "should of" or such similar alliteracy*, it says to me that whoever wrote it reads very little and is therefore probably not very well educated.

In this case, the similarity in the pronunciation of "have" and "of" - both have "v" sounds - is likely a factor. I could be slack writing or proofreading skills, but I refer to the visual/linguistic experiment loosely entitled, "Count the number of "F" characters." For example: Count the number of F's in the following sentence.

Most people miss the "f" in the all the words "of" as they sound like "v", because, even when read silently, I think the speech/hearing centers of the brain are involved and people simply gloss over them. The same thing often happen with repeated words like "the" - the brain silently edits them out. To more reliably catch things like this, proofread things by reading them backwards.

So when are they going to investigate the actual definition of a pump and dump scheme ran by NIA, everything that they do, from Agria Corp (GRO) and Mega Precious Metals (MGP:CN) and now to Broadvision (BVSN)? They had plenty of notifications on this, it doesn't bother them or are they in on it?

I don't see absolutely anything wrong with Lebed did. He wasn't involved in any inside trading, and didn't have any more information on those companies than anybody else. He went on forums and bullshitted to get people to buy some stocks, but if you're buying stocks based on the advice of some dude in a forum without doing any of your own research...well, learn to take some responsibilities for your own actions and stop blaming others.

So when are they going to investigate the actual definition of a pump and dump scheme ran by NIA, everything that they do, from Agria Corp (GRO) and Mega Precious Metals (MGP:CN) and now to Broadvision (BVSN)? They had plenty of notifications on this, it doesn't bother them or are they in on it?

Care to narrow it down a bit?
None of the results on the first page of results mentions the death of sea life.

The "best" I could find is this.
But even that reports: Water tests have not picked up any evidence of elevated radiation in U.S. Pacific waters since the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan

IANAL, but I believe, here in the US, pleading guilty is kind of like saying "Yeah, I did those things you are accusing me of."

IANALE(ither), but I believe, here in the US, pleading no contest isn't.

Also, in the UK, AFAICT, you can't plead "no contest".

Not quite sure there's an easy or gentle way of letting little Susie know that her cool little science experiment was responsible for 3 million lives lost. Good luck with that.

Every life "lost" on the other side is lives "saved" on the side of righteousness and virtue. Old spin, heavily practiced and usually accepted by little Susie, especially if you can prejudice her against the opponent.

Perhaps you haven't seen shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Apple is a mere raindrop in the bucket to some investors.

An example?

Sigh... I don't know if anything from Yahoo is even worthy of /. idle. The site is really a testament to what happens when a company stands still. Frequent users are almost exclusively people who landed there after AOL ceased to be a premiere destination (in popular culture). Just like Yahoo, they didn't upgrade and adapt. And that's why their user base is on the left side of the curve and their user-generated content is terrifyingly ignorant.

Come, stare into the abyss of people just smart enough to use a computer: Exhibit A: http://answers.yahoo.com/

Yet your words, or lack thereof, certainly implies you do.

For a great example of theft take a look at this and then please tell me oh great and wise Kohath, who seemingly has all the answers and proclaims that you "don't want anything stolen from anyone", how this isn't stealing?

How is this even tangentially related to the point ? If another ideology's excesses excuses islam's barbarism, why not just go with "islam is ok, after all nazism is worse ?".

Although it should be said, it is kinda hard finding ideologies that approach islam's level of brutality and disgustingness. As for genocides, nazism is actually only small change compared to the number of bodies islam seems to constanly require : nazism killed maybe 50 million. muslims killed 50 million people in the last two decades alone. Only communism really qualifies as worse than islam as far as genocides is concerned. While hitler was inspired by muslims, even an admirer as some claim, he never got anywhere near their level of massacring.

Sorry, but you are the one who doesn't get it. First, learn what a balance sheet is and how to read it. Here is Disney's. Notice the three categories: assets ($72B), liabilities ($35B), and equity ($37B). Nowhere does your figure at $107B appear - because it doesn't exist. The equity (value) of the company right now is $37B.

Your last paragraph makes even less sense than your math. Disney is a publicly traded company. The only way you can buy it is to buy all of the stock from all of the shareholders. So if Apple wants to buy Disney, it has to cough up $70B of real cash to buy out all of Disney's shareholders, which gets it $37B in equity. In other words, Apple now has $33B LESS equity than it had before the purchase. Alternatively, if Disney approves it, Apple could buy the Disney shares with shares of Apple stock. However, to do that they would either need to buy back their own shares so they could give them to the Disney shareholders (thus costing Apple real dollars to buy back the shares), or they could issue new stock, which would dilute the value of the existing Apple shares. In either case, a rise in the price of Disney stock most certainly DOES affect how much the purchase costs. If the price of Disney stock rises 10% on the news of a buyout it is now going to cost Apple $77B is real dollars to buy Disney. They are still only getting $37B of equity, so now Apple's equity has dropped by $40B

So the only reason Apple would buy Disney is because they think that the $37B they lost in equity is going to be made up by the profits gained by having Disney.

Seriously. Apple has 76B sitting in the bank, Microsoft has 55B. Time Warner has a market cap of 37B, hell even the media giant that is Disney/Pixar has a market cap of only 70B. A lot of the music companies are a fair bit smaller.

The distribution channels (Apple, Google, etc) are bending over backwards on deals with companies that they could acquire in a hostile takeover tomorrow if they wanted to. It's crazy.

Seriously. Apple has 76B sitting in the bank, Microsoft has 55B. Time Warner has a market cap of 37B, hell even the media giant that is Disney/Pixar has a market cap of only 70B. A lot of the music companies are a fair bit smaller.

The distribution channels (Apple, Google, etc) are bending over backwards on deals with companies that they could acquire in a hostile takeover tomorrow if they wanted to. It's crazy.

CO2? Some giant vents of methane have just been discovered in the Arctic, this might be due to warmer ocean and it ain't looking good. Methane is much more potent greenhouse gas then CO2.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/giant-plumes-methane-bubbling-surface-arctic-ocean-163804179.html

if it wants to charge the operator living in another country with some crime then it still needs to go through the normal channels for extraditing someone

They did. Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and another individual charged were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, by local authorities on Thursday and will face extradition hearings, the U.S. Justice Department said.

shutting the site down and arresting the operators who don't even live there is international terrorism and an assault on freedom that cannot be tolerated by the rest of the world.

They shut the servers down quite legally because it was in the U.S., within their jurisdiction. That's not international terrorism or an assault on freedom. They didn't arrest the operators; they cooperated with local authorities in foreign countries and asked them to arrest the perpertrators, just like you said they should.

Next problem that can be evaporated by reading for five minutes?

I would mod you up if I had the points. Current rates on a 15 year mortgage are around 3.25%. Its cake to beat that by investing in blue chip dividend stocks, especially when you take the tax benefits into account. For instance, ATT has a 5.8% dividend yield right now: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=T

I hate debt with a passion, and it actually annoys me that my mortgage rate is so low it doesn't make sense to pay it off.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210140645AADMNkG

Whats the difference between Straight and Strait?
Straight, as in a line without a waver or curve.
Strait: "A strait is a narrow, navigable channel of water that connects two larger navigable bodies of water. "

And for the love of foreigners, if you guys do something about your spelling issues, please remove unsounded letters (like the "gh" in straight"), don't add any more of them. That's just cheating at scrabble!

I might add that a number of people have written about another strategy for preventing "loss" of luggage or contents: Sending important/valuable luggage to your destination (typically a hotel) via any of the package delivery services (postal, FedEx, etc).

Yeah, they are so much better than baggage handlers:

http://news.yahoo.com/viral-video-fedex-delivery-man-throws-computer-monitor-050009440.html

So use http://search.yahoo.com/

Does a baby affect the global climate for hundreds of years?

I've seen many people claim this. What, exactly, are you searching for that it doesn't come up quickly? 90% of the things I search for are answered in the first 3-4 links. The only time I even have to go to the second page is if it is an obscure and/or very specific piece of information that I'm looking for. Facts are usually answered directly by Google even before the first link. Out of curiosity I did a quick comparison of searches for two facts (release date of The Darkness 2, one of the first things to spring to mind) by searching them on Google and Bing. Google knew the answer without my even visiting a link and told me what websites had the information. Bing didn't. I'd say that is pretty much a win.

For fun, I also did an Altavista search. Google is considerably better IMO.

You're not allowed to change the definition of a word to make your argument work.

You're the one changing definitions.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/credit : "9. a. An arrangement for deferred payment of a loan or purchase: a store that offers credit; bought my stereo on credit. b. The terms governing such an arrangement: low prices and easy credit. c. The time allowed for deferred payment: an automatic 30-day credit on all orders."

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/float : "4. A sum of money representing checks that are outstanding."

The check is your explicit statement that you have the money in the bank, and the float is the time it takes to go through the system. When you charge your American Express card, they are giving you a short-term loan. Your ability to call on that loan at any time is credit. It's that simple.

Moreover, the act of writing a bad check and the debt that it represents are separate things in the court (check fraud is a crime but debt is a civil matter), so even while you'd face criminal charges for purposely writing a bad check, you'd still have to handle the debt owed by some means and that's exactly the same as not paying a bill to AmEx for the card.

But it's more than just not paying the bill. Charging your card and writing a check are synonymous steps in the process, but you'll never be charged with a crime for making an American Express charge that you didn't have the money for, because you never claimed to have the money. It's a loan and you can only go into debt.

Misrepresenting that you have the money when writing a check is fraud. Of course, once you have committed fraud and not actually given payment, you are in debt, too.

"I said no such thing, I said 'Supreme Court only deals with laws within the sovereignty of the US.'"

Yes, I know. Which is incorrect. (I fixed the quotes for you, by the way.) Your example was of a U.S. citizen acting on their own outside the borders of the U.S. But that is irrelevant to the issue. Agents of the government do not automatically lose all legal restrictions on their behavior when they set foot outside U.S. territory. We also have laws regarding military behavior, which are also overseen by the Supreme Court, and which are still in effect wherever that military happens to be. Outside U.S. "sovereignty" or not, it doesn't matter. So you are very clearly wrong.

And yet you still swing and miss.

Note 2 things: they are agents of the government, and behaving on behalf of the government. This places them under the rule of the government. Note that if they happen to do something while off-duty, while they may still get punished by the US, often local rules apply first. Note the recent incarceration of a US serviceman in Korea for rape. He won't be punished by the US until he's done with his Korean jail sentence. (btw, this would be known as citing references in support of a point, it's not some opinion piece by an unknown website.)

Had his activities while being off-duty been legal, there would have been little recourse for the US gov against him. Should you argue that if he took drugs, and when he returned to duty, he would have been punished by failing a drug test, you'd still be incorrect, because the drugs would be in him at that time, and that's what he would have been his "crime".

"And yet you failed to produce a single one. Bullshit."

I shouldn't have to. If you can't find information about it, you are clearly inept. It took me 5 seconds. I am not here to hold your hand.

Ahem. Maybe you should try that Wikipedia article after all. It was the Yemenis who arrested him. The, AFTER he had been interviewed by the FBI, spent some time in that Yemeni jail, U.S. authorities told the Yemenis that it was okay to let him go.

Note that this was in 2006, not 2001 as alleged in your linked article and debunked as stated previously. Another "fail" on your part.

Seriously. And speaking of citations, you still haven't shown me ONE credible bit of evidence that he did anything other than spew hateful words (which, I repeat, is not a crime or at least sure as hell isn't treason under the law). Until you do, I still maintain that he was murdered. And here's a hint: things like "... such and such newspaper wrote that someone in the State Department reportedly said...", and "... he is thought to have met or talked to" are not evidence.

"I shouldn't have to. If you can't find information about it, you are clearly inept.... I am not here to hold your hand"

The problem is independent film makers! If just anybody can distribute their movie online and make a forture, why would they sell their movie to Paramount for a pennance?

I read the news. A lot. The current system is broken. Look at sites like my.yahoo.com, which used to aggregate credible sources and provide links. I could choose a Reuters group, a Sports Illustrated group, Asia News, whatever. Clicking on a link would take me to a Reuters, eg, page. Now all the news links go to news.yahoo.com and give shit like this: http://news.yahoo.com/single-tuna-fetches-record-736k-japan-auction-040041043.html That's a yahoo.com page, with Yahoo links and ads all over it, with a small logo suggesting that the article came from AFP. Yahoo is eating AFP's lunch (and all the other people who do the work getting the news and writing it up). Parasitic is the best way to describe this. If this new venture can get good sources of news rewarded by collecting from aggregators then how does it make things worse? I'm completely in agreement with fair use; this ain't it.

I see the the Internet as kind of the 21st century's "right to bare arms". You do not need a gun to live your life well. You can trust your government to protect you.

Uh, yeah. About that...

And let's not forget about this recent incident.

Except the BG Group's stock price has actually continued an upward trend since before Mr. Flexman was "forced to quit", and has actually risen by $100 / share in the past 5 days.

Yahoo Finance - BG Group

Seems as though they would have a hard time proving that Mr. Flexman leaving has negatively impacted them. Sure there are additional considerations, including the obvious Streisand effect that could have led to this change, but it is obvious that they did not see a mass exodus or a decrease on brand confidence with their investors.

Yeah it was. Yahoo was on top before google came around. I remember the yahoo directory and their rule of "pay $199 for -possible- inclusion of your website into our directory". So you'd have to pay $199 for them to look at your site and decide for themselves if your site was high enough calibur to be afforded the grace of being listed in their directory. Boy have things certainly changed for them since then (2001). I wonder what they'd do for you these days if you paid them $199....

Go ahead and talk about shorting yahoo's stock on their own stock message boards for their own company: http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/yhoo