Microsoft gave a bit of detail about how this is done:
"We are permitted to publish data on national security orders received (including, if any, FISA Orders and FISA Directives), but only if aggregated with law enforcement requests from all other U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; only for the six-month period of July 1, 2012 thru December 31, 2012; only if the totals are presented in bands of 1,000; and all Microsoft consumer services had to be reported together."
That way nobody can really tell what these numbers mean...
Inflation is good for bankers and Wall Street, not the common man.
The income gap has been rising consistently, independent of government policy and party since 1971 when the last tenuous tie to gold was cut. That might not be due to monetary policy, but I know of zero economists (not even Krugman) who claims inflation raises the real value of wages and savings.
I would like to do actual development on a smart phone, and why not? It has more hundreds of times the computing power of mainframe I, as a student, shared with the entire university!
I want an app that lets me use any computer and keyboard to connect to my phone, and use it as a gateway to the cloud, to hold my personal work, etc.
Walling yourself up and limiting consumer choices and controlling the platform...
It works for Apple for the natural 20 percent of the market where people will tolerate limited choices. Apple got ahead of the curve with the IPod, IPhone, and IPad. But they are destine to drop back to their natural 20 percent. The rest of us demand more control, more chaos, and more competition.
It is the secure boot technology. I don't want to buy a laptop or desktop that does not easily let me use the Operating System of my own build and choice.
On the other hand, we are producing more oil. Why hasn't the price fallen?
We have embarked on QE3 (after QE2 and QE1). We are printing money and injecting it into the Financial Institutions on Wall Street. Obviously countries who have been producing products for the United States (like oil) for decades and decades know that the value of the dollar is going to slide. Not saying crash necessarily, but there isn't any doubt in the world it is going to slide.
What do you do if you are such a country? You raise your prices. Because the dollar isn't going to be worth as much going forward.
This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.
So the result is going to be higher prices and lower real wages, less ability to buy goods (because we increasingly uses foreign components and raw materials even in domestic goods).
We are proudly following Japan into 20 years of dragging economic activity. And I think that is the up side.
The costs of developing drugs is more like 55 million (on average, including the costs of drug failures) than the 1.3 billion that the drug companies claim. On the face of it, there isn't any way drugs cost as much to develop as the drug companies claim, or (given their revenue) they would be losing money rather than making money (which they most certainly are).
Competition is a good thing. We have never had an industry anywhere in the world that has failed as an industry due to competition. But what the drug companies are saying is that they cannot stand up to competition. Well, why not? Innovation comes from solving problems, not sitting behind government enforced monopolies.
Big Pharma pushes the myth that their investment is Big and is Important, so they really need patents. All the while, they are pulling in huge margins on drugs that are not provably better in many cases than placebos.
You want to do the one thing today that would have the biggest impact on reducing Healthcare costs?
End Patents on Drugs, Genes, Medical devices, and Medical procedures.
All of them.
You still have the FDA to approve quality and safety. Anyone wanting to produce the latest anti-depression drug, or blood pressure medication still must jump through those hoops in insure quality and safety. That is barrier enough for drug companies to recoup R&D costs and gain position in the market place.
But wait! What about the profits?!? Think of the money that drug companies won't be able to make! Think of all the little competitors that will be able to leverage existing technology and undercut our costs! Think of all the little stinking improvements little companies could make to drugs and devices to displace the big companies on which we all depend!
It is totally naive to think that just because someone can look at your product, they can execute the production, distribution, and support for your product.
IP is not our primary resource. And if it is, we deserve to fail utterly.
Companies should be successful for building, selling, distributing, and supporting products. There isn't any reason to Tax the world for their willingness to compete just because we pass a law that says they have to.
Today there are nearly 200,000 patents on various aspects of smart phones. Maybe even more! If we gave every patent holder a penny, a cell phone would cost 2,000 dollars for IP alone.
Get over it. IP is important to some extent. But Apple's abuse of the system is unethical and shouldn't be tolerated.
You do know how medical studies work, don't you? Control groups, and those that get the treatment? Double blind studies?
If more people die from the treatment, you don't do it. If more control people die, you approve it.
How is that different than what you are making fun of?
The real problem is when we make government regulation the means of enforcing monopolies where none need exist. If a nurse knows how to drain a Cauliflower ear and properly pack it, why go to an ER where the doctor might not have a clue? And if I want to do it myself, why can't I go buy the $3 worth of syringes required to drain it myself? (Luckily I also take B12 injections, so they would sell me what I needed).
And why was I draining my son's Cauliflower ear myself? Because two doctors at two different clinics couldn't do it. And I couldn't REALLY do it legally. Because the law doesn't let you do medical procedures even on yourself. That would deny money to the medical corporate interests. Who cares about actual care?
>We've been doing doing about a million jobs a month better lately than the economy he took over in 2009. As economists know, spending is what pulls an economy out of a recession. You can clearly see when the stimulus worked in the unemployment numbers, but Congress blocked the jobs bill and has forced austerity, which is a drag on the economy.
We are neither spending, nor implementing an austerity approach.
In the 1800's we had a number of recessions (and even a period called "The Great Depression" which we now call "The Long Depression." And yet none of them reduced productivity, increased the income gap, or lasted for years and years like what is done today when we try and "spend" our way out of recessions. So while most economists believe you should spend your way out of a recession, it isn't a universal truth even among economists. What we really do is "Inflate Currancy" out of the recession, which necessarily dilutes the value of our money. Great for banks and Wall Street (since they are the only game in town for trying to beat the inflation rate), but it isn't the best thing for the rest of us.
What we really should do is take our losses on the chin, liquidate the losses, reorganize, and make way for new businesses, new leadership, and provide new opportunities for most of us. Yeah, we will have a tough year. But just like a burnt field, or a forest fire, what is left is fertile ground for new growth. What the Fed does is suppress economic problems until they are absolutely devastating. Maybe all the problems have been suppressed too long. But if forestry has taught us anything, it has taught us you can't prevent forest fires forever. Eventually it will burn.
> You're ignoring some of the violence in the Bible. For instance, look at the book of > Revelations and how it speaks approvingly of war and torture. Certainly Christians > can easily take these parts literally as well as the other parts. (And even if the > torture is a metaphor, the comparison still implies that torture is good.)
It is a small post on Slashdot, not a comprehensive defense of pacifism in Christianity. The only point I was making is that we have in the texts certain standards for governments to follow. *IF* someone wants to claim we are a "Christian Nation" (whatever that means), *THEN* I think they should consider following a few clearly defined principles and limits as defined in their scriptures.
The post wasn't intended to be more than that. One *could* argue pacifism, but in fact we are far beyond that. As I said, we don't even met "Old Testament" standards for resolving conflicts.
Some ethical and moral principles apply regardless. I think as an upper limit only inflicting harm proportional to the harm done to you is a pretty reasonable ethical and moral standard regardless of your ethical/moral/religious views.
Some multiple of the harm to you might be okay as a deterrent, in the mind of some.
Almost anyone would consider someone who can forgive and forgo retribution to be someone following a high moral and ethical standard.
See? I think the post *can* apply, even if you are in no way Christian. That is because I am talking about moral and ethical standards here, not about Christianity. But it remains interesting that Christianity demands more from us, and the fact that we don't meet that standard is more of an argument that we are not a Christian Nation than any historical argument (of which there are plenty).
Slashdot Mirror
If he has secured his private keys, then nobody can touch his Bitcoins. Not the NSA, FBI, CIA...
If he has the key in some obvious place, well, he is toast. But if it has been this long, I'd guess he secured is stuff.
Microsoft gave a bit of detail about how this is done:
"We are permitted to publish data on national security orders received (including, if any, FISA Orders and FISA Directives), but only if aggregated with law enforcement requests from all other U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; only for the six-month period of July 1, 2012 thru December 31, 2012; only if the totals are presented in bands of 1,000; and all Microsoft consumer services had to be reported together."
That way nobody can really tell what these numbers mean...
Inflation is good for bankers and Wall Street, not the common man.
The income gap has been rising consistently, independent of government policy and party since 1971 when the last tenuous tie to gold was cut. That might not be due to monetary policy, but I know of zero economists (not even Krugman) who claims inflation raises the real value of wages and savings.
Especially to the Bankers who are used to a currency expanding by letting them print money.
The horrors that monetary expansion should go to wages and savings!
That was 34 years ago. Some of us are that old.
I would like to do actual development on a smart phone, and why not? It has more hundreds of times the computing power of mainframe I, as a student, shared with the entire university!
I want an app that lets me use any computer and keyboard to connect to my phone, and use it as a gateway to the cloud, to hold my personal work, etc.
Walling yourself up and limiting consumer choices and controlling the platform ...
It works for Apple for the natural 20 percent of the market where people will tolerate limited choices. Apple got ahead of the curve with the IPod, IPhone, and IPad. But they are destine to drop back to their natural 20 percent. The rest of us demand more control, more chaos, and more competition.
Seriously, Germany's copyright views should be canned by anyone willing to take up the fight.
It is the secure boot technology. I don't want to buy a laptop or desktop that does not easily let me use the Operating System of my own build and choice.
The price of Gas is not reacting to a Supply vs Demand price rise. 2005 remains the peak of oil consumption in the U.S.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTUPUS2&f=M
On the other hand, we are producing more oil. Why hasn't the price fallen?
We have embarked on QE3 (after QE2 and QE1). We are printing money and injecting it into the Financial Institutions on Wall Street. Obviously countries who have been producing products for the United States (like oil) for decades and decades know that the value of the dollar is going to slide. Not saying crash necessarily, but there isn't any doubt in the world it is going to slide.
What do you do if you are such a country? You raise your prices. Because the dollar isn't going to be worth as much going forward.
This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.
So the result is going to be higher prices and lower real wages, less ability to buy goods (because we increasingly uses foreign components and raw materials even in domestic goods).
We are proudly following Japan into 20 years of dragging economic activity. And I think that is the up side.
The costs of developing drugs is more like 55 million (on average, including the costs of drug failures) than the 1.3 billion that the drug companies claim. On the face of it, there isn't any way drugs cost as much to develop as the drug companies claim, or (given their revenue) they would be losing money rather than making money (which they most certainly are).
Competition is a good thing. We have never had an industry anywhere in the world that has failed as an industry due to competition. But what the drug companies are saying is that they cannot stand up to competition. Well, why not? Innovation comes from solving problems, not sitting behind government enforced monopolies.
Big Pharma pushes the myth that their investment is Big and is Important, so they really need patents. All the while, they are pulling in huge margins on drugs that are not provably better in many cases than placebos.
You want to do the one thing today that would have the biggest impact on reducing Healthcare costs?
End Patents on Drugs, Genes, Medical devices, and Medical procedures.
All of them.
You still have the FDA to approve quality and safety. Anyone wanting to produce the latest anti-depression drug, or blood pressure medication still must jump through those hoops in insure quality and safety. That is barrier enough for drug companies to recoup R&D costs and gain position in the market place.
But wait! What about the profits?!? Think of the money that drug companies won't be able to make! Think of all the little competitors that will be able to leverage existing technology and undercut our costs! Think of all the little stinking improvements little companies could make to drugs and devices to displace the big companies on which we all depend!
Exactly.
And this is how it begins. First the computers keep you from crashing your car. Then they are injected into every car.
Then they eliminate us all.
It is totally naive to think that just because someone can look at your product, they can execute the production, distribution, and support for your product.
IP is not our primary resource. And if it is, we deserve to fail utterly.
Companies should be successful for building, selling, distributing, and supporting products. There isn't any reason to Tax the world for their willingness to compete just because we pass a law that says they have to.
Today there are nearly 200,000 patents on various aspects of smart phones. Maybe even more! If we gave every patent holder a penny, a cell phone would cost 2,000 dollars for IP alone.
Get over it. IP is important to some extent. But Apple's abuse of the system is unethical and shouldn't be tolerated.
You do know how medical studies work, don't you? Control groups, and those that get the treatment? Double blind studies?
If more people die from the treatment, you don't do it. If more control people die, you approve it.
How is that different than what you are making fun of?
The real problem is when we make government regulation the means of enforcing monopolies where none need exist. If a nurse knows how to drain a Cauliflower ear and properly pack it, why go to an ER where the doctor might not have a clue? And if I want to do it myself, why can't I go buy the $3 worth of syringes required to drain it myself? (Luckily I also take B12 injections, so they would sell me what I needed).
And why was I draining my son's Cauliflower ear myself? Because two doctors at two different clinics couldn't do it. And I couldn't REALLY do it legally. Because the law doesn't let you do medical procedures even on yourself. That would deny money to the medical corporate interests. Who cares about actual care?
Actually, Obama's Administration claims he can approve ACTA by Executive Agreement because it does not change any US law.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84365507/State-Department-Response-to-Wyden-on-ACTA
>We've been doing doing about a million jobs a month better lately than the economy he took over in 2009. As economists know, spending is what pulls an economy out of a recession. You can clearly see when the stimulus worked in the unemployment numbers, but Congress blocked the jobs bill and has forced austerity, which is a drag on the economy.
We are neither spending, nor implementing an austerity approach.
In the 1800's we had a number of recessions (and even a period called "The Great Depression" which we now call "The Long Depression." And yet none of them reduced productivity, increased the income gap, or lasted for years and years like what is done today when we try and "spend" our way out of recessions. So while most economists believe you should spend your way out of a recession, it isn't a universal truth even among economists. What we really do is "Inflate Currancy" out of the recession, which necessarily dilutes the value of our money. Great for banks and Wall Street (since they are the only game in town for trying to beat the inflation rate), but it isn't the best thing for the rest of us.
What we really should do is take our losses on the chin, liquidate the losses, reorganize, and make way for new businesses, new leadership, and provide new opportunities for most of us. Yeah, we will have a tough year. But just like a burnt field, or a forest fire, what is left is fertile ground for new growth. What the Fed does is suppress economic problems until they are absolutely devastating. Maybe all the problems have been suppressed too long. But if forestry has taught us anything, it has taught us you can't prevent forest fires forever. Eventually it will burn.
Pan from behind the President addressing Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Press.
All standing and cheering
It is a sad day.
Consider signing the Petition for Obama to Submit ACTA to the Senate for Ratification.
We can defeat ACTA in the USA in the Senate... If we can get ACTA submitted there.
Right now ACTA is only signed via Executive Agreement.
http://wh.gov/KxA
Just for fun, let's get congress to copyright all of the Supreme Court's Rulings, and give them to Disney.
If they want to research something, then given them Pay For View and they can listen to Donald Duck act out their old rulings.
Maybe that would give them some insight into what they just did to the public.
Apple patent filing date: Jan 2008
First Android ships with said feature implemented: Oct 2008
With Duct Tape.
> You're ignoring some of the violence in the Bible. For instance, look at the book of
> Revelations and how it speaks approvingly of war and torture. Certainly Christians
> can easily take these parts literally as well as the other parts. (And even if the
> torture is a metaphor, the comparison still implies that torture is good.)
It is a small post on Slashdot, not a comprehensive defense of pacifism in Christianity. The only point I was making is that we have in the texts certain standards for governments to follow. *IF* someone wants to claim we are a "Christian Nation" (whatever that means), *THEN* I think they should consider following a few clearly defined principles and limits as defined in their scriptures.
The post wasn't intended to be more than that. One *could* argue pacifism, but in fact we are far beyond that. As I said, we don't even met "Old Testament" standards for resolving conflicts.
Some ethical and moral principles apply regardless. I think as an upper limit only inflicting harm proportional to the harm done to you is a pretty reasonable ethical and moral standard regardless of your ethical/moral/religious views.
Some multiple of the harm to you might be okay as a deterrent, in the mind of some.
Almost anyone would consider someone who can forgive and forgo retribution to be someone following a high moral and ethical standard.
See? I think the post *can* apply, even if you are in no way Christian. That is because I am talking about moral and ethical standards here, not about Christianity. But it remains interesting that Christianity demands more from us, and the fact that we don't meet that standard is more of an argument that we are not a Christian Nation than any historical argument (of which there are plenty).
I did not mean to imply we *are* a Christian Nation, but to point out that many "Christian" Hawks say one thing, and ignore what it means otherwise.
I did a quick re-read of my post, and I think this is at least close to what I wrote.