Funny how, when we finally have an independent study that publishes result not in sync with the big corps interests, a bunch of scientists (often a majority of them) are quick to call for "caution" and to declare that there is "not enough evidence" to draw conclusions.

It happened with the study on OGM recently, and is happening again.

Everybody understands that scientists have to make a living, but what happens when the result of their sponsored studies are not in their employer's favor? Scientific research becomes corrupt and misleading, a disengagement from its ethics, resulting in a loss of honesty, integrity, objectivity, and autonomy....All swept aside in order.to put their professional sponsors, big business, and government agencies in their best light.

The deceit works because most of the general public still trusts people in white lab-coats who play authority figures. Science as the servant of money, power and politics, is for the most part dedicating itself to finding the "correct" result, i.e. the desired outcome, the one that is never unexpected and always conform to the establishment's views. Real science is never that predictable.

In Stalinist Russia, in order to suppress bad news about Soviet agriculture, the "State scientist" Lysenko advocated an ideologically correct biology that led to famines. Good thing were not there... yet.

Actually, Romans had a "light" version of it, mostly in the form of money lending activities. Apart from loans, they were deposits, checks and currency exchange.

The early bankers, were already looked upon with contempt...We can now see why, by looking at what can happen when they are given too much power....

No, most of the world is ruled by culture. The fact of the matter is that very little of religion's commandments are actually followed, whether we're considering Christians, Jews or Muslims.
Having read all three books (Torah, Bible and Koran - what can I say, I like to read science fiction stories before going to sleep), I can tell you that they all (yes, all) condemn such things as stealing, killing etc.

If religion was so powerful, there wouldn't be that much violation of its fundamentals, like stealing and killing. Religion is used as a means to not-so-religious ends, and that is because all three monotheist religions,are easy to misquote, misinterpret, and misuse.

Getting rid of all religions could be A Good Thing...or not. Even if they went away, there would still be plain godless Ideology, which has been proven to be at least as effective in turning whole countries into shit for supposedly noble causes.

That would actually be a wormhole. You can come back again "on the other side", in another universe, i.e. less the house and plus the alimony payments...if you were the husband of course.

Google's own reply to monopoly charges was something like: If people don’t like our search results, they're free to try Bing, Yahoo,etc., or "even Google Minus Google".

Pretty straightforward response and to the point, if you ask me. If you don't trust Google search, try other search engines. Who's stopping you? They're just one click away... and among the first - Google search - results for "search engine":
1. Wikipedia definition of Web search engine
2. Dogpile Web search
3. Bing
4. Yahoo! Search
Interestingly, Google''s own product, its Custom Search Engine, comes only in 7th position...Seems to me if I were to "abuse my position of dominance to hurt rivals", I wouldn't list my results as above.

This is not really surprising.

Apart from people generally not changing their habits during a recession, there is the fact that the recession itself didn't hit all countries with the same intensity. Some (e.g. China, India and South Korea) are still doing well, and as a consequence, their greenhouse emissions haven''t decreased much.

While the developed countries did diminish their total emissions (e,g, UK, Japan, US, Germany), there is still the fact that the manufacturing sector ha been mostly transferred (outsourced or lost to) to the developing markets.Not surprising that the overall emissions have not dropped, at least in the same proportions that it increased during economic expansion.

150 nations + not all going in the same direction. Do the math.

Neanderthal, largely considered inferior to"humans", managed to survive a quarter of a million years through several ice ages, by practicing strict birth-control and maintaining equilibrium with the surrounding environment.

Then came the crazy "modern" warlike Human with his "modern" tools, who rapidly wiped his predecessor out.

Then Modern Human spread like a virus, infecting every corner of the earth, killing off most species including large chunks of his own kind, until every natural resource was consumed, incapable of creating an environment of self-preservation. And he thought he was so smart and the sun shined out of his human ass...

And then one day, the last human died out in the middle of his desolated planet, with his iPhone500 charged up on solar energy but with nobody left to call from his depleted "social network". In the end, just another failed, closed-end mutation of a monkey.

If the majority of people catching malware are cheap bums who wanted pirated versions and end up paying much more in background messaging, , then it's all good, as far as I'm concerned.

Some say they first try the pirated versions for any problems before buying the real ones... Here's the thing:

- most Android apps don't cost more than a cup of coffee. Pretty cheap, considering the long hours of work needed to get some type of decent software on that platform.

- at Google Play, you can try an app for 15 minutes before getting an automatic cancel of your order.
http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134336

15 minutes is plenty of time to check if everything works as intended on your particular phone. If you discover a bug later on, you can always contact the developers who will be more than happy to make their app better on the next version.

I can't feel sorry for cheaters who get malware . Piracy is one reason (among others) why most Android developers can't make a living selling apps. It's already hard enough when you're not a big company and can't afford the advertising, and find your app on page # 120 on app search...

"We're less inhibited online because we don't have to see the reaction of the person we're addressing" says the article.

That's an understatement. Let's go a bit further, and say that we don't have to face the consequences, often physical (i.e. getting one's ass kicked). The typical internet abuser feels pretty safe hiding behind his Net anonymity and his bad-ass avatar.

The net has created loser types like the Internet Tough Guy or the Big Pretender: Fake PHDs, Special Forces,Martial Arts Master spreading their bullshit stories. Trolls and flamers, consumed by irrational hatred towards people they don't even know. As if the Internet was not polluted enough with pop-up adds and "marketing" companies smearing their logo feces on the "Web 2.0".

Why are people so rude online? Because they can. Because in real life interactions, they won't do the same since they would be often facing dire consequences. Because a sizable chunk of Internet users are plain cowards. As simple as that.

Here's my personal experience and ensuing opinion:

I live in Barcelona, Spain, where I have been using the city official bicycle network (bicing.com) as main public transportation for a couple of years now. The city has build bicycle lanes all over the place, an extensive network of stations where you can pick/station a city bike, using a simple card (yearly subscription).The city and company that built the physical & It infrastructure also provides free mobile apps ( for Android, iOS and Windows phones - I have the Android one), which gives you real-time info on available stations (slots to release the bicycle, or available bicycles to pick) , geo-location, hot line, etc.

Although the bicycle network had initial problems, it works quite nicely now. I have seen similar settings in other cities in Spain, like Seville, and others in different countries I visited, like France or Italy.

The adoption of the bicycle as a means of transportation seems to have been a success. Now, to the point: riding these bicycles is pretty safe. You don't need to wear helmets (nobody does), the bicycles have dedicated lanes and accidents are rare. The biggest problem here are motorcycles accidents, and yes, there, wearing a helmet is mandatory

Seems to me that any legislation on wearing bicycle helmets needs to be based on actual statistics, and a number of facts:

• 1) The percentage of bicycle users victim of serious accidents is significant
• 2) From 1), the percentage of bicycle accidents with head injuries is significant
• 3) From 2), there is proof that wearing (tested) helmets could prevent a significant portion of those head injuries
• 4) Possible negative side effects of the legislation, as outlined in the subject article

Otherwise the State only infantilizes its citizens, and meddles yet again with their freedom to decide for themselves.

Caesar, one of our lab monkeys on cocaine with an electronically-enhanced brain, has escaped from the biotech facility and stole a truck full of our latest brain prosthetic devices and all our reserves of experimental hard drugs. He has liberated the zoo gorillas and baboons, and supplied them with electronic brain-enhancers and narcotics. The war on us humans has already begun and is raging as I'm writing this.
...
The end is near...We are dying...Crack-head monkeys have just broken into my office....Good bye, good bye, and God save us all..Aaaaaaargh..

...And some (i.e the army ants) also practice a form of Denial of Service Attacks when they carry out massive raids over a specific area, denying food for other colonies.

They also wage wars of annihilation where weaker colonies are wiped out. But that's another story and the algorithm is way simpler.

The average man produces almost one whole pound of poop a day. Times 7 billion. No wonder life stinks.

Lots of marketing noise, relabeling of old products (aka "cloud washing"), misunderstandings & over-hype.

Might be true innovation in the long term. Or might be just another trick to lock us into proprietary systems. Or a bit of both.