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Businesses

Top Google Executives Approved Illegal Drug Ads 287

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that the U.S. government used convicted con artist David Whitaker, owner of an online business selling steroids and human growth hormone to U.S. consumers, to help federal agents in a sting operation against Google when he began advertising with Google with advertisements that included the statement 'no prescription needed,' clearly violating U.S. laws. Google's settlement with the U.S. government for $500 million blamed AdWords sales by Canadian pharmacies, who allegedly were selling drugs to U.S. consumers. 'We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago,' Google said then. 'However, it's obvious with hindsight that we shouldn't have allowed these ads on Google in the first place.' Peter Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting, claims that chief executive Larry Page had personal knowledge of the operation, as did Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who now is the chief operating officer for Facebook. In 2009 Google started requiring online pharmacy advertisers to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Sites program and hired an outside company to detect pharmacy advertisers exploiting flaws in the Google's screening systems."

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 658

Furthermore, we already have government run healthcare: the VA and Medicare--for vets and old people. Not only are these services popular, their more efficiently run than private insurance companies, with less administrative costs. Which lead to the absurd statement: "get your government hands off my medicare."

Excuse me when I say that I think you've been brain-washed by Fox News.

This report specifically talks about how INEFFICIENT Medicare is and makes recommendations to change that.

This USA Today article complains that Medicare funds the vast majority of residency training in the USA. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a substantial amount of money that is not going to treatment as you said.

This report says fraud is costing in the billions. And this article says that fraud is a growing problem in Medicare costing $60 billion per year and says that fewer than 5%... that's 5% of claims are audited.

According to this Congressional Research Service report Medicare's budget is $420 billion for 2009. If $60 billion is just fraud, that means nearly 15% of Medicare's budget is NOT going to treatment not including all the rest of Medicare's expenses (funding residency, other misc overhead).

Sorry, but to say that Medicare is efficient is just plain wrong.

Comment Re:What is the goal? (Score 1) 1799

For example: by setting up shop (even on paper) in Ireland, the Bahamas or where ever else, US companies can get out of paying federal tax. Legally.
Not so with an individual. As an American citizen, if I go live and work in Ireland, or anywhere else, without ANY ties to the US at all, I still am required to pay US Federal income tax on the money I earn(in addition to that countries taxes.)

Not even remotely true. Form 2555 on IRS.gov is stupidly easy to file. I live in Mozambique but have my bank accounts in the USA, money is deposited into those accounts from other USA accounts, and I pay NO Federal taxes. Why? Because I am physically out of the USA. Look it up. Form 2555 reduces my taxable income to $0 as long as I am outside of the USA.

Crime

FBI Leaves Cleared Names On Terrorist Watch List 181

x_IamSpartacus_x writes "According to a recent FOIA request the FBI doesn't always take names off of the Terrorist Watch List even when those people have been cleared of charges or had charges dropped. 'If an individual is acquitted or charges are dismissed for a crime related to terrorism, the individual must still meet the reasonable suspicion standard in order to remain on, or be subsequently nominated to, the terrorist watch list,' the once-classified memorandum says. The New York Times is running a story about it as well, saying the data is even used by local police officers to check names during traffic stops."

Submission + - FBI Leaves Cleared Names On Terrorist Watch List (documentcloud.org)

x_IamSpartacus_x writes: According to a recent FOIA request the FBI doesn't always take names off of the Terrorist Watch List even when those people have been cleared of charges or had charges dropped. “If an individual is acquitted or charges are dismissed for a crime related to terrorism, the individual must still meet the reasonable suspicion standard in order to remain on, or be subsequently nominated to, the terrorist watch list,” the once-classified memorandum says. The New York Times is running a story about it as well saying the data is even used by local police officers to check names during traffic stops.
Science

Submission + - Science and religion can and do mix, mostly (networkworld.com) 1

coondoggie writes: "An interesting study by Rice University recently found that in one of the one of the more voracious social (and increasingly political) battlegrounds, science v. religion there is more common ground that most folks believe. In fact, according to the study, only 15% of scientists at major US research universities see religion and science as always in conflict."

Comment Re:What do you think latex referred to? (Score 2) 417

And the underlying cause in Africa is not sex, it is rape. Mass rape. It is an cultural attitude to women that is getting ever more brutal.

Read a little about conditions in for instance South Africa before you go all indignant.

Source?
I live in Mozambique and, while there are definitely higher rape rates than in the USA, they DO NOT account for the HIV rates. I can tell you with certainty that there is a culture of promiscuous sex that runs rampant despite the knowledge of high HIV infection rates. It is not uncommon in the least for a man or a woman to have 10 partners within a month. From my experience (I lived in Botswana for 3 years the highest AIDS rate country in the world before moving here to Mozambique) consensual sex is absolutely the underlying cause for high HIV rates.

Comment Re:Distractions (Score 1) 511

I would actually question any study that showed ANY classroom additions increasing grades.
When they introduced white boards instead of the old chalk blackboards did that increase grades? When they introduced calculators instead of doing everything in long division did that increase grades? No, and they SHOULDN'T.
Any new teaching tool is just that... a new teaching tool. It creates new things that can be taught. When a child has a laptop in their classroom they should be taught new things that a child without a laptop does not have access to. The new things are just as rigorous to learn as the old curriculum but it is more expansive. Why should we expect a new tool in the classroom to automatically get every person who uses it high grades? A new tool in the classroom should increase the ability to learn MORE things not the same things better.
If every new tool in the classroom increased grades every student should be getting 'A's in every subject by now, as much as we've improved the classroom over the last hundred years. It's a ridiculous idea to thing that every classroom improvement will get GPAs higher.

Comment Publicity whore for a "scientist" (Score 5, Interesting) 286

FTFA

The theory of "assortative mating" was first put forth by neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading autism researcher and something of a rock star in the field. He's the first cousin of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and like his cousin, his prolific work tends toward the out-of-the-box. Combine that with his outspokenness — uncommon for a scientist — and it's clear why at a recent international conference in San Diego, he was "frequently mobbed by fellow attendees and treated with near universal adulation," Warner writes.

I don't have proof but this guy looks and sounds like he's just putting for a controversial theory to be controversial and get his name in the papers. I wouldn't give much credit here.

The Military

Submission + - Contact Lost with Hypersonic Glider (usatoday.com)

x_IamSpartacus_x writes: DARPA says contact with its experimental hypersonic glider was lost after launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast. The agency says in Twitter postings that its unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched Thursday atop a rocket, successfully separated from the booster and entered the mission's glide phase.
The agency says telemetry was subsequently lost, but released no details..

Comment Re:It seems good (Score 1) 591

I'm not even in a remote location. I'm in a the capitol of Mozambique (Maputo) and I have a decent internet connection BUT I have a bandwidth limitation every month. Connection to the internet is NOT cheap here and it is not worth wasting it on single player games that eat into that cap. Always on connection? I do not know anyone in this city (or for that matter, on this continent... South Africa also has bandwidth caps for their connections) who could afford such a game.

Comment Re:I for one pray they put the cat back in the bag (Score 2) 1040

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."
~Alexander Tytler~

Comment Re:Decent idea. (Score 1) 407

Very few/ no storms (dustorms maybe), I don't think it gets earthquakes, next to no rain.

Seriously, Arizona get's some wicked weather all during monsoon season that doea plenty of damage.

I am pretty excited about this tower (AZ is my home state though I live in Mozambique, Africa now) but I am definitely concerned about its viability under the extreme weather Arizona can bring.

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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

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