Progress plods on, and if they keep trying, they will eventually get it right, even if it isn't particularly easy.
Maybe this will shut up all the people who said that the achievements of SpaceX and Falcon 9 were nothing... when a nation state with a GDP of $929 billion and space agency annual budget of ~$250 million fails twice to achieve the same thing.
Do you remember the arson attack on the Saint Michel theater in Paris when it showed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988? Many people ended up in hospital. There were Christians all over the world calling for the film to be banned. Muslims hardly have a monopoly on calls for censorship.
The tone of your post is quite alarmist. People said similar things about the E.U. disintegrating when the former USSR nations joined (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic..). All had big problems with governance, corruption, criminality, etc. Those countries were (and still are) conduit routes to criminal enterprises in the East. The people in those nations were far poorer and less well educated than those in Western Europe. And yet, somehow, those nations joined the E.U., and the world didn't fall apart. Yes, there were growing pains, and problems with the local shouts of "they're taking our jobs", but the E.U. is still here, and there is no realistic chance of the UK leaving it anytime soon.
The Eastern European immigration issue is overblown by the right-wing press. You might like to watch The day the immigrants left for some insight into exactly why corporations are employing immigrants rather than the local unemployed. For a more economics oriented read, see this post by the economics editor of the Sunday Times, some choice quotes "migrants paid £2.5 billion more in taxes than they took out in benefits and the use of public services. This net gain to the exchequer is likely to have grown, the government suggests." Nobody is forcing businesses to employ immigrants - they do so because they are the best option. Forcing businesses to employ locals is not the answer - that will either stunt the growth of British business, or make that business uncompetitive in the global marketplace.
A sizable number clearly do support the conservative/islamicists, or they wouldn't have been elected.
"A sizable number (of Americans) clearly do support the conservative/Christian fundamentalists, or they wouldn't have been elected." - Would that be a fair assessment of Bush-era American politics? Maybe. Or maybe the real world is more complex than that.
You should try to read and understand why AKP was elected, and what they represent. Note that 57.4% of the Turkish electorate did not vote for AKP.
AKP advocate a liberal, capitalist economics. Does this sound like Islamism to you? Surely a true Islamist party would reject capitalism?
AKP has more female representatives in power than any other Turkish political party. Does this sound like Islamism to you? Surely a true Islamist party would not allow women to take positions of power?
AKP advocates further economic and cultural integration with the traditionally Christian nations of Europe. Does this sound like Islamism? Surely a true Islamist party would reject Europe as "nations of heretics"?
The leadership of AKP supported the USA in attempts to launch attacks on Iraq, against the wishes of the rest of parliament, and their backbenchers. Surely a true Islamist party would never support U.S. attacks on another Muslim nation, in any way whatsoever?
In some Kurdish areas AKP candidates have been voted in rather than those of Kurdish political parties. Surely a true Islamist party would never have representatives from non-Muslim backgrounds, and would stand no chance of being elected in non-Muslim areas? What is AKP doing?
As usual, the true situation is more complicated in real life than the simplistic parodies that people like to believe. AKP represents Islamism in the same way that the Christian Democratic Union represents Christian governance. Would you also denounce the CDU for advocating a conservative, Christian form of government?
Islam didn't experience the Enlightenment and rejects it today
There are many Christians who feel the same way about the Enlightenment and the way it has led to our modern liberal democracies.
How many Christians truly support freedom of speech when it comes to pornography? How many truly support homosexual rights? How many truly believe that academic education and the progress of science is a good thing, versus those who rail against academic, science, and "evilution"? How many support the right of a woman to choose an abortion? For that matter, how many support the right of women to work, versus those who would prefer to see all women mothering children in the home? How many Christians truly support the separation of church and state, versus those who would want to see a Christian in control of the country? Someone who truly endorsed the Enlightenment wouldn't care what religion their president was. How many Christians can you truly say that of? How many Christians would like to see a legal system based on Christian principles?
Fundamentalist beliefs are the same everywhere, regardless of which God they happen to worship.
The UN is populated more by dictatorships than anything approaching "free countries",
You are wrong. According to the Freedom in the World measure of democracy and political freedom, 46% of nations are "free" and 30% are "mostly free". Only 24% are "not free". Clearly, 76%>24%, so the majority of nations are in fact not dictatorships.
The -people- of Turkey want a religious, sharia law based, dictatorship.
I take it you have never met any of the Turkish people, or ever travelling to Turkey? I have, and found that most people do not want anything to do with the kind of ultra-conservative views you attribute to them.
Basically, your position is the same as saying "The -people- of the United States want a religious, Ten Commandments law based, dictatorship", based on the government of George Bush being overtly Fundamentalist Christian, and being elected by the people of the U.S.
In fact, what the people of Turkey mostly want is good government and an end to corruption, security and prosperity, and for much of the youth, to be E.U. citizens so that they can freely study and travel in the rest of Europe. The election of AKP was more to do with rejecting the policies of the previous administration than endorsing Islamism.
Try again, I have family that works in this and they use frangible bullets.
You criticise the use of a 2006 citation but fail to provide a citation for your own claim? There are more recent forum posts etc. that say they don't use frangible bullets, but these (like your post) are just hearsay.
The United States didn't sign the addtional protocals mainly because
Wrong. "the United States (..) signed it on 12 December 1977". However, the U.S. has not ratified them. Nevertheless, "a number of the articles contained in both protocols are recognized as rules of customary international law valid for all states."
Also note of the 4th Geneva Convention: "In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts." The United States is a member of the U.N. Security Council.
... the Russians wrote this section during the Cold War, so they do not apply to this.
(I linked that particular site because it is one of the first search results I found for the citation from Google, but this is really irrelevant - the text of the Convention is what is important.)
Regardless of whether or not Lamo is liable, no hacker will ever again trust him as their "go-to" journalist. OTOH, this will massively increase his profile, and he will be well paid for writing this story for various newspapers around the world. So maybe it is worth it for him.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words.
The same article states that Adrian Lamo is a journalist. We have no idea what the context of their talks were, or whether Agent Manning was bragging or not. It is entirely possible that he was merely talking to a journalist that he thought he could trust, and Lamo thought he would get a better story by burning his source.
showed some very UNdamning things that the pilots did, like NOT firing when children/innocents were in the line of fire.
I am sure that there have been times that, for one reason or another, an Al Qaeda in Iraq bomber has watched a U.S. patrol pass without bombing it. Does that make the actual bombing of patrols okay?
Should be given a free pass, because he only raped one or two women, and what about the hundreds of women that he walked past and didn't rape? Shouldn't that be taken into account? This is clearly not a rational argument.
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question.
Article 50 of the Geneva Convention defines a "civilian", and makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence on the part of civilians - a solder is not allowed to "assume" that an unidentified person is an enemy combatant and then fire upon them:
"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population
1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian. 2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians. 3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."
It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.
One of the important distinctions is that this was an occupying military force battling internal resistance fighters. It was not a war between nation states. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force has the absolute responsibility of providing for the basic needs of the people under its control, including food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and the maintenance of law and order. It is not supposed to kill them. Under the conventions, in an actual battle with soldiers of an opposing nation state, a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Hence, a soldier could not slaughter a million civilians in order to kill 100 enemy, but if the enemy had one civilian amongst them, then the killing of that civilian as a side effect of killing the enemy may be justifiable. But this is a completely different matter to that of killing civilians because you "presume" them to be combatants due to their presence in an occupied city. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
Yes, but they did fire on children and other noncombatants at least once without getting a positive ID on insurgents, and it was captured on video. And that is the point. Or are we supposed to give everyone a free pass for doing a bad thing if they do a good thing now and again - to paraphrase your argument - "nobody ever mentions all the black people that the KKK didn't discriminate against, or that time a KKK guy walked past a black man without beating him...".
"California Strategies, a US west coast PR firm, has been employed to use blogs, Twitter accounts and a multimillion pound PR and advertising budget to this end. "
"California Strategies set up a website for him – rakforthepeople.com – and a Twitter account. It placed adverts on the side of municipal buses in Washington featuring Khalid's face and the quote: "Thank you America, our people will soon be safe, secure and prosperous again". He attended Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009, took out full-page adverts in US newspapers congratulating Obama and embarked on "a friendship tour of the US"."
Whether a congressman approves or disapproves of Space-X has nothing to do with his/her party, beliefs, or political position, and everything to do with, "Do I have a NASA manned spaceflight center in my district?"
The Republican line is that private industry is always better than government organisations. They are happy to see the people's money being given to Lockheed-Martin, Haliburton, Boeing etc. in exchange for regular flight R&D. But when Obama suggests that the provision of space flight R&D should move from a government organisation towards private corporations, then some Republicans start proclaiming that government run organisations achieve better results than private industry. This is obviously a contradiction to their regular line, and the "Do I have a NASA manned spaceflight center in my district?" question points out the hypocrisy of this position. The Democrat line is less hypocritical, as they have never stated that private industry is always better than government organisations, and hence there is no contradiction in their position.
Restricting emissions in the industrialized world will have a negative impact on heavy industry, manufacturing is the biggest example. It will immediately result in leading countries not being able to compete on the world market with "developing" countries.
Then explain how Germany is the world's second largest exporter, behind only China, despite having some of the world's toughest emissions standards - including the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.
neither article tells me how it is to the advantage of the hackers to give random people big telephone bills
International premium rate numbers are big business, see my other reply. Here's another provider offering 1+ euro a minute. The lines usually cost a couple of hundred Euros to set up, so it's easy to make the money back if you can get people to call them.
What I don't exactly see is how they're profiting off the number.
There are plenty of providers of international premium rate numbers that will ask no questions about the callers and deposit a percentage of the call termination fees into a bank account at the end of the month - the article mentions they used Somalia ($0.14/min), Dominica (€0.45/min), Antarctica (€0.46/min). The provider I linked to was the top of Google's search - you can probably find others offering higher rates.
It should be a simple matter to follow the money back to the source of the problem
Not really. These crimes cross multiple legal jurisdictions, and there is no evidence to tie the trojan writer to the person profiting from the calls. Authorities in, say, Switzerland, will not break the banking secrecy of an individual just because they profited from running a premium rate phone number.
I remember hearing a story back in the early 90s about a French guy who had over 30 land lines installed in his house, and had set up an automated blueboxing dialler to call international premium rate numbers 24/7. Allegedly, he was earning $1.50/min from each call, and he quickly became a millionaire.
you can still prove that certain forms of religion are wrong and self-contradicting
The core principles of science are that you can NEVER PROVE a single thing.
Why do you assume the poster meant he would use science to prove "that certain forms of religion are wrong and self-contradicting", rather than mathematics? If a religious book makes factual statements, then those statements can be mapped onto the symbols of a predicate logic system. By manipulating those symbols, you could probably prove that at least some really are contradictory.
But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets
The deal is that the patent describes capturing and analysing wireless data packets to extract the IP adress alongside GPS coordinates in order to enhance Google's IP geolocation accuracy. The "mistake" that they owned up to is actually dumping and storing all packets, not just the external IP address. Those are two different things.
Slashdot Mirror
Parent said -- "Look at SpaceX, they got it right on the first try..."
Er, no I didn't...
Progress plods on, and if they keep trying, they will eventually get it right, even if it isn't particularly easy.
Maybe this will shut up all the people who said that the achievements of SpaceX and Falcon 9 were nothing... when a nation state with a GDP of $929 billion and space agency annual budget of ~$250 million fails twice to achieve the same thing.
When is the last time you heard anyone calling for murder of Jews
Documentary on the British National Party. The speaker was white and British.
Back in the day calling for the murder of Jews was quite the fashion amongst certain circles of European Christians - remember "Why should we not get rid of these parasites [Jews] who suck Rumanian Christian blood? It is logical and holy to react against them." There were Christian militias in WWII that carried out terrible pogroms, killing thousands of Jews at a time. If you're going to argue that Christianity is a peaceful religion, then the treatment of the Jews isn't exactly a great example to use.
or demonstrating to kill a book author, a colmunist or a cartoonist?
Author Philip Pullman received threats from militant Christians a couple of months ago.
Do you remember the arson attack on the Saint Michel theater in Paris when it showed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988? Many people ended up in hospital. There were Christians all over the world calling for the film to be banned. Muslims hardly have a monopoly on calls for censorship.
The tone of your post is quite alarmist. People said similar things about the E.U. disintegrating when the former USSR nations joined (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic..). All had big problems with governance, corruption, criminality, etc. Those countries were (and still are) conduit routes to criminal enterprises in the East. The people in those nations were far poorer and less well educated than those in Western Europe. And yet, somehow, those nations joined the E.U., and the world didn't fall apart. Yes, there were growing pains, and problems with the local shouts of "they're taking our jobs", but the E.U. is still here, and there is no realistic chance of the UK leaving it anytime soon.
The Eastern European immigration issue is overblown by the right-wing press. You might like to watch The day the immigrants left for some insight into exactly why corporations are employing immigrants rather than the local unemployed. For a more economics oriented read, see this post by the economics editor of the Sunday Times, some choice quotes "migrants paid £2.5 billion more in taxes than they took out in benefits and the use of public services. This net gain to the exchequer is likely to have grown, the government suggests." Nobody is forcing businesses to employ immigrants - they do so because they are the best option. Forcing businesses to employ locals is not the answer - that will either stunt the growth of British business, or make that business uncompetitive in the global marketplace.
A sizable number clearly do support the conservative/islamicists, or they wouldn't have been elected.
"A sizable number (of Americans) clearly do support the conservative/Christian fundamentalists, or they wouldn't have been elected." - Would that be a fair assessment of Bush-era American politics? Maybe. Or maybe the real world is more complex than that.
You should try to read and understand why AKP was elected, and what they represent. Note that 57.4% of the Turkish electorate did not vote for AKP.
As usual, the true situation is more complicated in real life than the simplistic parodies that people like to believe. AKP represents Islamism in the same way that the Christian Democratic Union represents Christian governance. Would you also denounce the CDU for advocating a conservative, Christian form of government?
Islam didn't experience the Enlightenment and rejects it today
There are many Christians who feel the same way about the Enlightenment and the way it has led to our modern liberal democracies.
How many Christians truly support freedom of speech when it comes to pornography? How many truly support homosexual rights? How many truly believe that academic education and the progress of science is a good thing, versus those who rail against academic, science, and "evilution"? How many support the right of a woman to choose an abortion? For that matter, how many support the right of women to work, versus those who would prefer to see all women mothering children in the home? How many Christians truly support the separation of church and state, versus those who would want to see a Christian in control of the country? Someone who truly endorsed the Enlightenment wouldn't care what religion their president was. How many Christians can you truly say that of? How many Christians would like to see a legal system based on Christian principles?
Fundamentalist beliefs are the same everywhere, regardless of which God they happen to worship.
The UN is populated more by dictatorships than anything approaching "free countries",
You are wrong. According to the Freedom in the World measure of democracy and political freedom, 46% of nations are "free" and 30% are "mostly free". Only 24% are "not free". Clearly, 76%>24%, so the majority of nations are in fact not dictatorships.
The -people- of Turkey want a religious, sharia law based, dictatorship.
I take it you have never met any of the Turkish people, or ever travelling to Turkey? I have, and found that most people do not want anything to do with the kind of ultra-conservative views you attribute to them.
Basically, your position is the same as saying "The -people- of the United States want a religious, Ten Commandments law based, dictatorship", based on the government of George Bush being overtly Fundamentalist Christian, and being elected by the people of the U.S.
In fact, what the people of Turkey mostly want is good government and an end to corruption, security and prosperity, and for much of the youth, to be E.U. citizens so that they can freely study and travel in the rest of Europe. The election of AKP was more to do with rejecting the policies of the previous administration than endorsing Islamism.
You're citing an article from 2006?
Try again, I have family that works in this and they use frangible bullets.
You criticise the use of a 2006 citation but fail to provide a citation for your own claim? There are more recent forum posts etc. that say they don't use frangible bullets, but these (like your post) are just hearsay.
The United States didn't sign the addtional protocals mainly because
Wrong. "the United States (..) signed it on 12 December 1977". However, the U.S. has not ratified them. Nevertheless, "a number of the articles contained in both protocols are recognized as rules of customary international law valid for all states."
Also note of the 4th Geneva Convention: "In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts." The United States is a member of the U.N. Security Council.
... the Russians wrote this section during the Cold War, so they do not apply to this.
What are you talking about? The Protocols were written by experts in the law of war and were endorsed by Ronald Reagan.
Oh, that is a nice link to a Bush-Cheney War Crime website.
The text itself is a direct copy of the original source. Here's the same text on Wikisource
(I linked that particular site because it is one of the first search results I found for the citation from Google, but this is really irrelevant - the text of the Convention is what is important.)
Regardless of whether or not Lamo is liable, no hacker will ever again trust him as their "go-to" journalist. OTOH, this will massively increase his profile, and he will be well paid for writing this story for various newspapers around the world. So maybe it is worth it for him.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words.
The same article states that Adrian Lamo is a journalist. We have no idea what the context of their talks were, or whether Agent Manning was bragging or not. It is entirely possible that he was merely talking to a journalist that he thought he could trust, and Lamo thought he would get a better story by burning his source.
showed some very UNdamning things that the pilots did, like NOT firing when children/innocents were in the line of fire.
I am sure that there have been times that, for one reason or another, an Al Qaeda in Iraq bomber has watched a U.S. patrol pass without bombing it. Does that make the actual bombing of patrols okay?
Should be given a free pass, because he only raped one or two women, and what about the hundreds of women that he walked past and didn't rape? Shouldn't that be taken into account? This is clearly not a rational argument.
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question.
Article 50 of the Geneva Convention defines a "civilian", and makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence on the part of civilians - a solder is not allowed to "assume" that an unidentified person is an enemy combatant and then fire upon them:
"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population
1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."
It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.
One of the important distinctions is that this was an occupying military force battling internal resistance fighters. It was not a war between nation states. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force has the absolute responsibility of providing for the basic needs of the people under its control, including food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and the maintenance of law and order. It is not supposed to kill them. Under the conventions, in an actual battle with soldiers of an opposing nation state, a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Hence, a soldier could not slaughter a million civilians in order to kill 100 enemy, but if the enemy had one civilian amongst them, then the killing of that civilian as a side effect of killing the enemy may be justifiable. But this is a completely different matter to that of killing civilians because you "presume" them to be combatants due to their presence in an occupied city. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
Yes, but they did fire on children and other noncombatants at least once without getting a positive ID on insurgents, and it was captured on video. And that is the point. Or are we supposed to give everyone a free pass for doing a bad thing if they do a good thing now and again - to paraphrase your argument - "nobody ever mentions all the black people that the KKK didn't discriminate against, or that time a KKK guy walked past a black man without beating him...".
"Aside from the fact that a legitimate officer would not fire his gun on a plane for fear of depressurising the aircraft."
Aside from the fact we've had bullets to prevent that very thing from happening for a while, now, you're almost correct.
Aside from the fact that federal air marshals don't use frangible bullets, you're almost correct.
Yes, How Peter Cathcart's Uxbridge offices became the base for a coup:
"California Strategies, a US west coast PR firm, has been employed to use blogs, Twitter accounts and a multimillion pound PR and advertising budget to this end. "
"California Strategies set up a website for him – rakforthepeople.com – and a Twitter account. It placed adverts on the side of municipal buses in Washington featuring Khalid's face and the quote: "Thank you America, our people will soon be safe, secure and prosperous again". He attended Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009, took out full-page adverts in US newspapers congratulating Obama and embarked on "a friendship tour of the US"."
Whether a congressman approves or disapproves of Space-X has nothing to do with his/her party, beliefs, or political position, and everything to do with, "Do I have a NASA manned spaceflight center in my district?"
The Republican line is that private industry is always better than government organisations. They are happy to see the people's money being given to Lockheed-Martin, Haliburton, Boeing etc. in exchange for regular flight R&D. But when Obama suggests that the provision of space flight R&D should move from a government organisation towards private corporations, then some Republicans start proclaiming that government run organisations achieve better results than private industry. This is obviously a contradiction to their regular line, and the "Do I have a NASA manned spaceflight center in my district?" question points out the hypocrisy of this position. The Democrat line is less hypocritical, as they have never stated that private industry is always better than government organisations, and hence there is no contradiction in their position.
You can get clean energy from nuclear fuel.
Which is not sustainable either.
Restricting emissions in the industrialized world will have a negative impact on heavy industry, manufacturing is the biggest example. It will immediately result in leading countries not being able to compete on the world market with "developing" countries.
Then explain how Germany is the world's second largest exporter, behind only China, despite having some of the world's toughest emissions standards - including the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.
No, the C API on Chrome OS and Android is closed. It's Google only.
No it isn't.
HTML5 and Flash and Java applets only on Android.
You can run Debian on Android. It works fine. You can run GCC and compile whatever you want.
neither article tells me how it is to the advantage of the hackers to give random people big telephone bills
International premium rate numbers are big business, see my other reply. Here's another provider offering 1+ euro a minute. The lines usually cost a couple of hundred Euros to set up, so it's easy to make the money back if you can get people to call them.
What I don't exactly see is how they're profiting off the number.
There are plenty of providers of international premium rate numbers that will ask no questions about the callers and deposit a percentage of the call termination fees into a bank account at the end of the month - the article mentions they used Somalia ($0.14/min), Dominica (€0.45/min), Antarctica (€0.46/min). The provider I linked to was the top of Google's search - you can probably find others offering higher rates.
It should be a simple matter to follow the money back to the source of the problem
Not really. These crimes cross multiple legal jurisdictions, and there is no evidence to tie the trojan writer to the person profiting from the calls. Authorities in, say, Switzerland, will not break the banking secrecy of an individual just because they profited from running a premium rate phone number.
I remember hearing a story back in the early 90s about a French guy who had over 30 land lines installed in his house, and had set up an automated blueboxing dialler to call international premium rate numbers 24/7. Allegedly, he was earning $1.50/min from each call, and he quickly became a millionaire.
you can still prove that certain forms of religion are wrong and self-contradicting
The core principles of science are that you can NEVER PROVE a single thing.
Why do you assume the poster meant he would use science to prove "that certain forms of religion are wrong and self-contradicting", rather than mathematics? If a religious book makes factual statements, then those statements can be mapped onto the symbols of a predicate logic system. By manipulating those symbols, you could probably prove that at least some really are contradictory.
But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets
The deal is that the patent describes capturing and analysing wireless data packets to extract the IP adress alongside GPS coordinates in order to enhance Google's IP geolocation accuracy. The "mistake" that they owned up to is actually dumping and storing all packets, not just the external IP address. Those are two different things.