Au contraire... What we need is to improve education so the average person has a lot of clues of what the government ought to be doing. And then in the elections they wouldn't vote whoever has the better publicist or promises the best snake oil. How do you "ensure that our representatives are actually actin on our behalf rather than their own" instead? Without education, the "way to ensure..." would be for the politics the same that elections (wait! the elections already are one of those "way to ensure...").
I really hope that there are no loose ends in this deal... it would be suck that, after getting the astronauts to the ISS, they discover that back-to-earth service is not included and they need to negotiate a new contract for it...
Some might like it but for the most part they don't want, because they would have to compete for their share of power with the other. Also, they would have to compete globally when most of them just want local advantages.
For example, Wal-Mart only has interest in getting "better" laws in the USA (or Canada), but it has no use for beign able to change the laws in Europe. In a global government, they would have to compete to lobby with Auchan, for example.
Also, building the lobbies is a time consuming task... why risk what you already have for something that will be no better?
It sounds strange to me... apart from the financial costs (building the railways means you have to borrow a lot of money and pay interest for it, or opportunity costs for not using it everywhere else), HSR is usually not a cheap transport medium. Usually the cheaper is ship, and only for expensive, urgent products (i.e. some kinds of food) is transported by plane. I cannot think of anything that is both so urgent and so massively produced that would justify this project (if you have any idea please tell me).
I too think this is cool, but are a couple of questions that get to my mind:
First, it is a BIG risk. A lot of investment depending of 14 countries getting to agree in something and keeping to agree in the future... i.e. if only one of these 14 countries has a change of government, a war with the neighbour from which the train comes to, etc. If the link comes down at the middle, it will be difficult to get benefits from traffic from/to only Kazakhstan, for example. And High Speed Tracks are expensive, both to build and to mantain.
Also, what would be the advantage? I mean, take that you get in from the South of Spain and from there you go, non-stop, at 300 km/h. For a track length of 15.000 km(and that assumes you can do almost a straight line from start to end) that would mean 50 hours. More than by plane, and that after making very optimistic calculus. Also think that I didn't include time from switching trains if you need to.
And finally, who would use it? Ok, there are are plane loads of flights that go to China every day from Europe and back, but those have better options by plane. And don't count on increasing traffic from/to the middle of the steppe as a way to make the numbers add.
Also, I am a little worried about the ambiental impact of the project. High-Speed Trains are as contaminants as airplanes, and here you'll add also all the energy and impact of deploying and maintaining tens of thousands of kilomets of railways. Given that in this case traffic is from both of the extremes of the link(with all my respects to Russia and Turkey), it looks like that maybe planes are indeed a better approach. If it was about joining railway nets already built with some short links, it could, but building thousands of kilometers through desert and semi-desert, no way.
Isn't in the USA where you could be busted by the Sheriff/FBI for setting unauthorized radio systems (for example the pringles'antenna)? I do not know what is wrong about asking people (including NGO) to abide to the laws of the country; an emergency situation may justify breaking them but after that the aim should be to return to legality.
Also, as it is posted, using the country infrastructures where available will help the country get the infrastructure they need, or are the NGO going to leave their systems for use by the Haitian people?
I do not know how many people of the USA can still have this attitude of "we are doing this for your good, so I won't care at all if you are ok with it and don't you dare protest about it". One would tell that since Irak you could have learnt something...
... That's not to say it's not invasive, only that (short of transporter technology where we can beam it all into space) it's about as good as we're going to get.
I don't think the sharks would like to be beamed into space, anyway...
I think it may be no so obvious... think of it, galaxies that collide are probably from the same local group, so that we don't see matter/anti-matter collisions shouldn't be strange.
I'll put a car analogy (in fact, the only reason of this post is to put the analogy): you are in Berlin a send a group of electric cars in a journey to Lisbon, and a group of diesel cars in a journey from Lisbon (and you go with them). Then you analize the crashes that happened in the journey, and since there are no signs of a collision of a electric car with a diesel car, you tell that all the cars were of the same type, and since yourself own a diesel car, you conclude that all cars were diesel.
Of course, not much of an scientific argument as a pointer to a logical weak point in your arguments...
In an ideal market, when the point of equilibrium is reached, profit margins are at the minimum (minimum here is the point where, if you get less than that, then you should sell your bussiness and put the cash in an account to get interests). In these markets prices change because the operation costs change, as there is no room to increase or decrease profit (already at a minimum). All the oil stations raising their prices mean that their gas is costing them more. If they did otherwise, more people would be interested in taking their money from their bank account to build new service stations as they would get more money that they would in the bank.
The main issue is that there is no ideal market because there are entry costs. It means oil stations* can count that, even getting extra benefits from agreeing in raises, no more people will be able to build new oil stations to try to cut them.
So, the fact that raises the prices would be not market madurity but monopolistic practics, which is a completely different issue (quite the opposite, in fact).
*: BTW, if you are looking for secret agreements, maybe you should look for the player with more entry costs (and less competition, and less parties that need to agree to keep the pact). That is no oil station but their providers (BP, Shell, etc.), from which the oil stations may be even forced to buy from them by lock-in contracts.
The point about that the responsability is from the taxpayer even if the data supplied by the government is also true in Spain.
Also, I find surprising your issue with Intuit, here the Agencia Tributaria (IRS) provides a program for free to fill (and directly print) your tax forms. You enter all the data from your household and then you can decide to view the totals for different options (mainly paying with your husband/wife/couple or individually). If you have had several jobs, you do not ever have to calculate the total to put it inside; you put the data of all the jobs and it just shows in the form the totals.
Your nerd card has been revoked for believing (or stating as if you believed) that there is some clerk writting down the data of your bank accounts in a government formulary. That's what EDI (in the multiple formats, from plain text to xml) exists for.
In a related point, I do not know how it works in the rest of the countries that give you the prepared forms, but at least in Spain if the form has an error and you accept it, you are still liable (although I am almost sure that, out of a exceptionally obvious case, it would be treated as a delay in paying rether than as a fraud).
They absorb nutrients through the roots, but only in very limited amounts. What they need more is water for the photsynthesis.
We eat to get both energy and raw materials to create our tissues. From photosynthesis, plants do not only get energy but most of the "structural" carbon and oxygen. From the root they only get the rest of elements that, while great in number (N, K, etc.) and vital, in wheight are a minimal part of the plant.
Well... they are insects, so their strategy is usually based in numbers. Maybe only 1 in 5 dragonflies (warning, numbers made up) get to end the travel safely; that would be unacceptable for men or other animals that take years to mature but for insects could be reasonable.
Terrorists or not, that was Extra Judicial Execution (they could have been detained easily). Had they been innocents bystanders mistaken by terrorists, they would be equally dead.
Remember, it is up to the Justice system to impose sentences related to the laws of the country (UK has no death sentence) and with due process. Police and other security forces have weapons just for self defence and defence of people(*), not for killing anyone they don't like in the spot.
Ah, and justice should not be a question of sympathy, so I won't try to defend the IRA guys at all. They could have been murders. They could have been killed by forcing the Police to lawfully shoot at them. But what happened is that they were shot shile taking a walk without any attempt to arrest them.
(*) I agree that, had they tried to escape and in the -honest- belief that there could be a bomb, you could consider shoting at them an act of defence. But that was not what happened.
Hey, if the TSA guys tell him to get in the floor (and don't shoot it while in the floor) then they are not too bad... in the UK it could have been way worse. Just out of my memory:
To grow plants you need light, and you don't want to put the crops in your garden in plain view. The bulbs needed to grow marijuana are powerful (the absolute minimum about 400W, more usual 1000W for bulb) and produce a lot of heating. The thermal imaging allowed them to see the heat of the bulbs, and while it is not enough for charges, it was good enough to get a warrant to search the house (and then they found the plants and presented charges).
As the judges deemed that the thermal image was unlawfully obtained and without it a warrant would have not been issued, the warrant was voided and the findings of it ignored (I think they call it "fruit of the poisoned tree", all data obtained directly or indirectly through improper ways is discarded).
Of course, I obtained all the information of the first paragraph out of Google...
Disclaimer: I have been in Tibet recently (November 2009), but I never have been in other parts of China proper to compare.
POINT 1: China is not in Tibet as a colonial power. The cost of building the infrastructure (roads, mobile coverage in places miles away from the neares town, etc.) and keeping the administration and army there must be orders of magnitude greater than anything you can take from it (a couple million habitants, no farmland, maybe a little mining but in need of infrastructure, etc.). You may agree or disagree with Chinese claims about its rights to Tibet, but they sure treat it as a part of its country. Also, keep in mind that the Tibet issue was played with by UK during the "Great Game" just as a part of an imperialist plan, what links it to isssues as sensitive to the Chinese as the Opium Wars
POINT 2: The power of the monasteries is freightning for a Western tourist, even now. The data our guide gave us was that there was about 1 monk for every 1.000-2.000 people. And they do not grow crops nor have cattle, they live out from the donations of peasants (and I am talking of nomad peasants, not rich farmers). And they show you many big statues and stupas made of gold, in a country so poor. I don't like the Christian Church displays of wealth, and I didn't like the Lama monasteries displays, neither.
POINT 3: Army presence was important, and very heavy in Lhasa. Our guide said it was specially since some riots in 2008. Either way, they were mainly for show; they stood in their positions without checking the people at all. Apart from the customs, the only time we had to identify ourselves was in an internal border, and it looked like more bureaucratic than oppressive (in a small cabin far from any city, they wrote our data in a big book, I remember wanting to ask the soldier if he thought that someone would ever use that data). Coupled with a massive show of strength, of course.
POINT 4: We saw no obstacles to religion, but there was a tight control. Pictures of the Lama that agree with the Chinese where available everywhere. No one was checking the people entering monasteries, but there was some discret presence (I remember seeing a lot of "fire inspectors" in a monastery). In some places, the suspected soldiers where indeed helping the monks, as I suppose they were there "just in case".
POINT 5: It is true that there was a sharp division between the main cities (with lots of Han people) and countryside with almost only tibetans. This has been document as a situtation favored by Beijing and may cause trouble for Tibetan people who want to use his traditions. In fact, in the cities you could see a sharp division between the two groups (even in the clothing). Many signs were bilingual.
Conclussion: First of all, as I stated above, I will not enter terms of legality. Also I am not claiming that China is a great place to live in; China has many human rights issues, but if we single out the Tibet cuestion my main concern/doubt would be knowing if the situation there is worse than in the rest of China (*1). Frankly, after being there my main objection would be to that of immigration and that it will cause "sinification" of tibetan culture (culture spreads from cities to countryside). For the rest of it, it looks like most of Tibet harm in the last 60 years are the same harms that China as a whole has suffered (Cultural Revolution, dictatorships, political repressions, human rights abuse)(*2). Also, in the other hands, let me tell you that Lama religion is not the spiritual kool-aid that we are told here in the West; a church is a church in Rome, in England and in Lhasa, and monks live well off his "sheeps". It looks, if anything, that political and religious issues where mixed in the Cultural Revolution and they didn't get to repare them(*3).
(*1)If someone can help me clarify this point I'd be grateful.
(*2)Perhaps a little more because realities there were different, so it wasn't understood from Beijing the shock that its politics meant. And also, religious resistance was mixed with political resistance.
(*3)Also, I have my doubts if some of our diplomacies aren't fueling the Dalai Lama position, as an useful card to play against China.
It makes me sick of people saying that Western Countries are worse than China just because they are not perfect.
First of all, nobody is saying that, by registering, you won't be prosecuted by the Government. If you register, post things in favor of Falung Long, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen students, be sure you'll be prosecuted. No need for you to post false statement, putting verified truths that harm no one will put you in trouble. Registering does not bring safety to you, it brings security to the Government that they will know where to find you if they want to.
Also, here in Western People we have the Empire of Law. It means you have to be judged by the law of the country(*) and, if you find an unfair judge, you can appeal. In China and similar countries, if you are labeled Enemy of the State, it does not matter if you never broke one of their laws. Even if you don't get condemned, you can easily lose your job and become a pariah. And forget about complaining of the behaviour of the security forces of the country, maybe here there are cover-ups but there you'll probably just get beaten by the same police to which you complain.
Saying that this measure is better than we have, is like saying that censorship is good because it allows newspapers to know that they won't be sued for libel. You give your freedom, and you don't ever get a security back
Depends of which is the game. If it is a service/good that you regularly buy, yes (it will be stupid for your gardener to rip you so much that you don't call him anymore). But if it is a one time buy (like buying a house, or something like that) it is in the seller best interest to ignore any ethics and just get the deal (the sales rep just wants a new contract, and knows that even if you are impressed of his works, most likely than not he'll never hear or get more bussiness from you again).
AFTER BERLUCONI ATTACK, ITALIAN GOVERNMENT SHOWS HIS PLANS FOR CENSORSHIP.
Anyone with info about how Berlusconi deals with the basis of democracy (independent news, respect to the Constitution, independent judges) would have expected these plans to be in the works. The attack gives them an opportunity to show them.
I think the point here is that ad blockers will have more impact in the less sofisticated ads (popups and the like). Probably Google thinks that it has the muscle to get its ads in a way that won't suffer as much. Either as they are less intrusive so less people is likely to try hard to get rid of them, or because they have technological ways of distributing the ad that make much harder to dismiss it without breaking the page that the users wanted to see. Or both of these reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Au contraire... What we need is to improve education so the average person has a lot of clues of what the government ought to be doing. And then in the elections they wouldn't vote whoever has the better publicist or promises the best snake oil. How do you "ensure that our representatives are actually actin on our behalf rather than their own" instead? Without education, the "way to ensure..." would be for the politics the same that elections (wait! the elections already are one of those "way to ensure...").
I'd help, but I'll have some trouble finding a note denomination so low that all of slashdotters'money together adds up 20$.
Anyway don't lose hope and get await for the post with it to arrive... unless the postman keeps it to himself, of course.
I really hope that there are no loose ends in this deal... it would be suck that, after getting the astronauts to the ISS, they discover that back-to-earth service is not included and they need to negotiate a new contract for it...
Yes, I am Dogbert.
Some might like it but for the most part they don't want, because they would have to compete for their share of power with the other. Also, they would have to compete globally when most of them just want local advantages.
For example, Wal-Mart only has interest in getting "better" laws in the USA (or Canada), but it has no use for beign able to change the laws in Europe. In a global government, they would have to compete to lobby with Auchan, for example.
Also, building the lobbies is a time consuming task... why risk what you already have for something that will be no better?
It sounds strange to me... apart from the financial costs (building the railways means you have to borrow a lot of money and pay interest for it, or opportunity costs for not using it everywhere else), HSR is usually not a cheap transport medium. Usually the cheaper is ship, and only for expensive, urgent products (i.e. some kinds of food) is transported by plane. I cannot think of anything that is both so urgent and so massively produced that would justify this project (if you have any idea please tell me).
I too think this is cool, but are a couple of questions that get to my mind:
Also, I am a little worried about the ambiental impact of the project. High-Speed Trains are as contaminants as airplanes, and here you'll add also all the energy and impact of deploying and maintaining tens of thousands of kilomets of railways. Given that in this case traffic is from both of the extremes of the link(with all my respects to Russia and Turkey), it looks like that maybe planes are indeed a better approach. If it was about joining railway nets already built with some short links, it could, but building thousands of kilometers through desert and semi-desert, no way.
Isn't in the USA where you could be busted by the Sheriff/FBI for setting unauthorized radio systems (for example the pringles'antenna)? I do not know what is wrong about asking people (including NGO) to abide to the laws of the country; an emergency situation may justify breaking them but after that the aim should be to return to legality.
Also, as it is posted, using the country infrastructures where available will help the country get the infrastructure they need, or are the NGO going to leave their systems for use by the Haitian people?
I do not know how many people of the USA can still have this attitude of "we are doing this for your good, so I won't care at all if you are ok with it and don't you dare protest about it". One would tell that since Irak you could have learnt something...
... That's not to say it's not invasive, only that (short of transporter technology where we can beam it all into space) it's about as good as we're going to get.
I don't think the sharks would like to be beamed into space, anyway...
I think it may be no so obvious... think of it, galaxies that collide are probably from the same local group, so that we don't see matter/anti-matter collisions shouldn't be strange.
I'll put a car analogy (in fact, the only reason of this post is to put the analogy): you are in Berlin a send a group of electric cars in a journey to Lisbon, and a group of diesel cars in a journey from Lisbon (and you go with them). Then you analize the crashes that happened in the journey, and since there are no signs of a collision of a electric car with a diesel car, you tell that all the cars were of the same type, and since yourself own a diesel car, you conclude that all cars were diesel.
Of course, not much of an scientific argument as a pointer to a logical weak point in your arguments...
Yeah, it would be not wise to take into account scientific facts when doing political decissions... Polls should be everything a good politic needs.
In an ideal market, when the point of equilibrium is reached, profit margins are at the minimum (minimum here is the point where, if you get less than that, then you should sell your bussiness and put the cash in an account to get interests). In these markets prices change because the operation costs change, as there is no room to increase or decrease profit (already at a minimum). All the oil stations raising their prices mean that their gas is costing them more. If they did otherwise, more people would be interested in taking their money from their bank account to build new service stations as they would get more money that they would in the bank.
The main issue is that there is no ideal market because there are entry costs. It means oil stations* can count that, even getting extra benefits from agreeing in raises, no more people will be able to build new oil stations to try to cut them.
So, the fact that raises the prices would be not market madurity but monopolistic practics, which is a completely different issue (quite the opposite, in fact).
*: BTW, if you are looking for secret agreements, maybe you should look for the player with more entry costs (and less competition, and less parties that need to agree to keep the pact). That is no oil station but their providers (BP, Shell, etc.), from which the oil stations may be even forced to buy from them by lock-in contracts.
The point about that the responsability is from the taxpayer even if the data supplied by the government is also true in Spain.
Also, I find surprising your issue with Intuit, here the Agencia Tributaria (IRS) provides a program for free to fill (and directly print) your tax forms. You enter all the data from your household and then you can decide to view the totals for different options (mainly paying with your husband/wife/couple or individually). If you have had several jobs, you do not ever have to calculate the total to put it inside; you put the data of all the jobs and it just shows in the form the totals.
Your nerd card has been revoked for believing (or stating as if you believed) that there is some clerk writting down the data of your bank accounts in a government formulary. That's what EDI (in the multiple formats, from plain text to xml) exists for.
In a related point, I do not know how it works in the rest of the countries that give you the prepared forms, but at least in Spain if the form has an error and you accept it, you are still liable (although I am almost sure that, out of a exceptionally obvious case, it would be treated as a delay in paying rether than as a fraud).
We eat to get both energy and raw materials to create our tissues. From photosynthesis, plants do not only get energy but most of the "structural" carbon and oxygen. From the root they only get the rest of elements that, while great in number (N, K, etc.) and vital, in wheight are a minimal part of the plant.
Well... they are insects, so their strategy is usually based in numbers. Maybe only 1 in 5 dragonflies (warning, numbers made up) get to end the travel safely; that would be unacceptable for men or other animals that take years to mature but for insects could be reasonable.
Terrorists or not, that was Extra Judicial Execution (they could have been detained easily). Had they been innocents bystanders mistaken by terrorists, they would be equally dead.
Remember, it is up to the Justice system to impose sentences related to the laws of the country (UK has no death sentence) and with due process. Police and other security forces have weapons just for self defence and defence of people(*), not for killing anyone they don't like in the spot.
Ah, and justice should not be a question of sympathy, so I won't try to defend the IRA guys at all. They could have been murders. They could have been killed by forcing the Police to lawfully shoot at them. But what happened is that they were shot shile taking a walk without any attempt to arrest them.
(*) I agree that, had they tried to escape and in the -honest- belief that there could be a bomb, you could consider shoting at them an act of defence. But that was not what happened.
Oh, the Onion... FAA Considering Passenger Ban
Ok, a bit of karma whoring, but couldn't keep from telling that someone has already tested the fails in airport security:Reporters Expose Airport Security Lapses By Blowing Up Plane
Hey, if the TSA guys tell him to get in the floor (and don't shoot it while in the floor) then they are not too bad... in the UK it could have been way worse. Just out of my memory:
No punishment for anyone, all of the people responsible for these killings (and intents of cover-ups) still work for the Government.
Nothing like a little perspective, don't you think?
To grow plants you need light, and you don't want to put the crops in your garden in plain view. The bulbs needed to grow marijuana are powerful (the absolute minimum about 400W, more usual 1000W for bulb) and produce a lot of heating. The thermal imaging allowed them to see the heat of the bulbs, and while it is not enough for charges, it was good enough to get a warrant to search the house (and then they found the plants and presented charges).
As the judges deemed that the thermal image was unlawfully obtained and without it a warrant would have not been issued, the warrant was voided and the findings of it ignored (I think they call it "fruit of the poisoned tree", all data obtained directly or indirectly through improper ways is discarded).
Of course, I obtained all the information of the first paragraph out of Google...
Disclaimer: I have been in Tibet recently (November 2009), but I never have been in other parts of China proper to compare.
POINT 1: China is not in Tibet as a colonial power. The cost of building the infrastructure (roads, mobile coverage in places miles away from the neares town, etc.) and keeping the administration and army there must be orders of magnitude greater than anything you can take from it (a couple million habitants, no farmland, maybe a little mining but in need of infrastructure, etc.). You may agree or disagree with Chinese claims about its rights to Tibet, but they sure treat it as a part of its country. Also, keep in mind that the Tibet issue was played with by UK during the "Great Game" just as a part of an imperialist plan, what links it to isssues as sensitive to the Chinese as the Opium Wars
POINT 2: The power of the monasteries is freightning for a Western tourist, even now. The data our guide gave us was that there was about 1 monk for every 1.000-2.000 people. And they do not grow crops nor have cattle, they live out from the donations of peasants (and I am talking of nomad peasants, not rich farmers). And they show you many big statues and stupas made of gold, in a country so poor. I don't like the Christian Church displays of wealth, and I didn't like the Lama monasteries displays, neither.
POINT 3: Army presence was important, and very heavy in Lhasa. Our guide said it was specially since some riots in 2008. Either way, they were mainly for show; they stood in their positions without checking the people at all. Apart from the customs, the only time we had to identify ourselves was in an internal border, and it looked like more bureaucratic than oppressive (in a small cabin far from any city, they wrote our data in a big book, I remember wanting to ask the soldier if he thought that someone would ever use that data). Coupled with a massive show of strength, of course.
POINT 4: We saw no obstacles to religion, but there was a tight control. Pictures of the Lama that agree with the Chinese where available everywhere. No one was checking the people entering monasteries, but there was some discret presence (I remember seeing a lot of "fire inspectors" in a monastery). In some places, the suspected soldiers where indeed helping the monks, as I suppose they were there "just in case".
POINT 5: It is true that there was a sharp division between the main cities (with lots of Han people) and countryside with almost only tibetans. This has been document as a situtation favored by Beijing and may cause trouble for Tibetan people who want to use his traditions. In fact, in the cities you could see a sharp division between the two groups (even in the clothing). Many signs were bilingual.
Conclussion: First of all, as I stated above, I will not enter terms of legality. Also I am not claiming that China is a great place to live in; China has many human rights issues, but if we single out the Tibet cuestion my main concern/doubt would be knowing if the situation there is worse than in the rest of China (*1). Frankly, after being there my main objection would be to that of immigration and that it will cause "sinification" of tibetan culture (culture spreads from cities to countryside). For the rest of it, it looks like most of Tibet harm in the last 60 years are the same harms that China as a whole has suffered (Cultural Revolution, dictatorships, political repressions, human rights abuse)(*2). Also, in the other hands, let me tell you that Lama religion is not the spiritual kool-aid that we are told here in the West; a church is a church in Rome, in England and in Lhasa, and monks live well off his "sheeps". It looks, if anything, that political and religious issues where mixed in the Cultural Revolution and they didn't get to repare them(*3).
(*1)If someone can help me clarify this point I'd be grateful.
(*2)Perhaps a little more because realities there were different, so it wasn't understood from Beijing the shock that its politics meant. And also, religious resistance was mixed with political resistance.
(*3)Also, I have my doubts if some of our diplomacies aren't fueling the Dalai Lama position, as an useful card to play against China.
It makes me sick of people saying that Western Countries are worse than China just because they are not perfect.
First of all, nobody is saying that, by registering, you won't be prosecuted by the Government. If you register, post things in favor of Falung Long, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen students, be sure you'll be prosecuted. No need for you to post false statement, putting verified truths that harm no one will put you in trouble. Registering does not bring safety to you, it brings security to the Government that they will know where to find you if they want to.
Also, here in Western People we have the Empire of Law. It means you have to be judged by the law of the country(*) and, if you find an unfair judge, you can appeal. In China and similar countries, if you are labeled Enemy of the State, it does not matter if you never broke one of their laws. Even if you don't get condemned, you can easily lose your job and become a pariah. And forget about complaining of the behaviour of the security forces of the country, maybe here there are cover-ups but there you'll probably just get beaten by the same police to which you complain.
Saying that this measure is better than we have, is like saying that censorship is good because it allows newspapers to know that they won't be sued for libel. You give your freedom, and you don't ever get a security back
Pick your choice
Depends of which is the game. If it is a service/good that you regularly buy, yes (it will be stupid for your gardener to rip you so much that you don't call him anymore). But if it is a one time buy (like buying a house, or something like that) it is in the seller best interest to ignore any ethics and just get the deal (the sales rep just wants a new contract, and knows that even if you are impressed of his works, most likely than not he'll never hear or get more bussiness from you again).
It should have read:
AFTER BERLUCONI ATTACK, ITALIAN GOVERNMENT SHOWS HIS PLANS FOR CENSORSHIP.
Anyone with info about how Berlusconi deals with the basis of democracy (independent news, respect to the Constitution, independent judges) would have expected these plans to be in the works. The attack gives them an opportunity to show them.
I think the point here is that ad blockers will have more impact in the less sofisticated ads (popups and the like). Probably Google thinks that it has the muscle to get its ads in a way that won't suffer as much. Either as they are less intrusive so less people is likely to try hard to get rid of them, or because they have technological ways of distributing the ad that make much harder to dismiss it without breaking the page that the users wanted to see. Or both of these reasons.