Please keep in mind that Bill Gates' interview was aimed at a US readership, and that comes with certain complexities.

All of us know that whosoever dares criticise the "free market" in any form or way whatsoever in front of a US audience will automatically be branded a 'Bleeding Heart Liberal', a 'Socialist', if not 'Communist' by that same audience (depending on their mood and how threatened they feel) without further investigation of what he actually has to say.

Practically the only way a US audience will pause long enough to actually listen is to bring impeccable credentials as a 'Capitalist' and to start off by clear endorsements of Capitalism in general. Only then is it considered acceptable to point out one or two weaknesses or deficiencies of the system and suggest improvements.

This is what Bill Gates has done, and he's one of the few people alive who can not only say something like that and still be listened to, but who *wants* to point anything like that out to the world. I guess that Warren Buffet is another, but I wouldn't know many others. That's why he said that.

And please note that the quality of MS software or its competitive practices have no bearing on the issue.

No scholar worth his salt would ever publish his own articles on a Wiki (although he might help Wikipedia by publishing articles anonymously if he's got a lot of time to spend).

Now why would that be?

Well, the whole point of a Wiki is that every man jack with an internet connection can edit it.

And that's totally unacceptable on three counts.

Firstly because, as regards my own articles I won't accept random idiots modifying what I wrote because I'm reporting *my own* work, which nobody in the world except me has any business editing.

Secondly for any article I would want to cite I can't accept something that the author (or anyone) else might modify behind my back after it was published. Simply because I'll be citing from, referring to, or commenting on that article in my own work. I can't have it change and then have my own article out of sync.

Thirdly, a pile of articles serves as a scholar's professional CV. If you need to know if someone is any good as a scholar (e.g. because he's applying for a faculty position) you read his articles. Then you know most of what matters without ever going to the trouble of speaking with him. You simply cannot have it that someone can make himself look good by retroactively correcting his articles, changing his findings, or wiping out his mistakes.

I'm afraid that these are the reasons why publishing scholarly articles on a Wiki is out.

this power company secretly funds political propaganda.

I agree with their and your point of view that everyone connected to the grid should pay a fixed amount for upkeep and maintenance, regardless of how much they use. If people don't like it, they can go off the grid.

And I can't even blame the company for spending money on spreading the word of that to the public. But why can't they set up a publicity campaign just publicize their point of view and put their name to it? After all ... it's a legitimate use of (semi) public funds to educate the population about skewed distribution of maintenance costs.

So why sneakily funnel money to some right-wing propaganda groups to say it for them? That sort of thing is dangerous. Because ... who audits the money spent in this way? Who decides and who authorizes the expense? And besides ... why did they deny it first?

Their statement was "counter-factual", to put it politely. And this phrase "I know what I told you before but that was my understanding at the time" does sound like a blanket cop-out for everyone who wants to lie or deceive, doesn't it? So: what else does that company fund they're not telling us about, eh?

In summary, I'm afraid the company left the straight and narrow of technical necessity and business commonsense and plunged straight into politics when they surreptitiously funded a political faction to say things on their behalf.

Agreed.

In the current situation, insurance firms are free to pursue a player optimum (for themselves), which means they either try not to cover people with less than optimum risk profiles or they simply raise premiums to where they can confidently expect a profit. Since they can now determine risk at individual level they will simply exclude individuals who constitute a poor risk.

Of course this means that large parts of the population become un-insurable, hence bereft of cover and as a consequence bereft of life-saving medical attention. But that's not the insurance companies' problem. In a basically free (if regulated) market they have no responsibility to anyone except their shareholders. That would be the outcome of the player optimum situation.

On the other hand, mandating medical insurance of the population as a whole allows insurance companies to set realistic premiums that will guarantee basic affordable coverage.

But it does mean that you either allow care providers to set their own prices, in which case you will have to centrally determine how much a life is worth, and cap insurance cover to that level in order to keep the whole system affordable.

Or you can start regulating prices too, and have something resembling a national health service.

In this scenario you simply legislate away companies' and hospitals' freedom to maximise profits and constrain them to beaviour that you feel is desirable.That would be the system optimum.

Note that it can work fairly well (including the cost of bureaucratic overhead), as shown in various places around the world. Note that e.g. per capita spending on medical costs in the US is about 2.5 times higher than in the UK (around $8,000 versus around $3,300 see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita ) and that for all its warts the NHS does provide adequate medical treatment for everyone.

Please note that the issue of "rights" is removed from the equation if you legislate this, because it's a choice on part of the population as a whole. And the will of the majority is binding in this matter.

The only remaining question is whether a sufficiently large majority wants it.

Don't get me wrong: it's good that gcc continues its development, even if some of it was spurred only by the comparisons with clang,

It's just that I'm sceptical about the news value of what gcc is *planning* to do next year. It's nice to hear that they actually have a road map, but I think that a thorough evaluation of what they have actually released would be more interesting.

E.g. a thorough and up-to-date comparison of gcc object code quality, quality of optimisations, quality of vectorisation, clarity of error messages, errors caught at compile time, speed of compilation with those of other compilers. Like Intel's compiler, Microsoft's compiler, and Clang.

Now that would be useful I think. Not stories about their road map. But that's just me.

that it's now out in the open.

Don't kid yourself that the EU didn't know the NSA was hoovering their data. They knew (with the probable exception of bugging their embassies), and they were doing approximately the same thing.

Only ... as long as that was done in secret, only a handful of intelligence professionals, senior military officers, senior civil servants, and politicians charged with intelligence oversight knew about it (and in particular the public and parliament didn't). And such people see data-collection in a different light than the public, because they depend on it to do their jobs.

It was also readily deniable by politicians (in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary), and isolated cases where evidence did surface could be dismissed as "incidents". So it didn't have a big political dimension. As it is now, John Q. Public (who never cared before) has suddenly found out and decided he resents it. This leaves the responsible politicians embarrassed and in need to be seen to respond to it (and do something about it). In other words: it all got a political dimension.

That's the downside of Snowden's revelations, and that's what's meant by the claim that those revelations are "damaging".

My personal guess is that it will lead to a tightening of rules (for the next 10 years) for data storage by Internet companies and will cause the bill for tapping communications in the EU, Brazil, and other countries to go up and the volume and quality to go down somewhat.

What will definitely not happen is that this sort of thing will stop. Just consider: there are milions of muslims within the EU with ties to a range if Islamic nations, and if even 0.1% of them radicalise you have a steady supply of terrorists. And given the EU's openness (not to mention its porous borders) you are going to have international terrorists within your borders.

The EU knows this full well and also knows that it doesn't have the wide signals interception coverage the US has. So their intelligence professionals will advise their governments that it's in their national interest to cooperate with the US and not to make massive data collection by the US (or even data-sharing) unreasonably hard or even impossible.

Only ... the NSA must in return accord them the courtesy of staying off the front page. Nobody likes to be embarrassed, and politicians can afford it less than most.

The first question: "when was it ever proper to suppress information" is an easy one to answer.

Ever since the potential damage of releasing information outweighed the potential utility of releasing said information it has been right and proper to keep information under wraps.

Now how about this case?

As the article states, botulism toxin is the most potent toxin we know (as in smallest lethal dose), and what researchers found was a new variant of it to which there is no antidote as of yet.

With the DNA sequence published, anyone with a simple bacteriological lab can produce it. There is a substantial risk that e.g. Al Quaeda (or worse, some home grown terrorist or some disgruntled Harris & Klebold combo or another McVeigh) gets their hands on it and will dump it somewhere in the drinking water supply of a large US city.

What's the risk of suppressing the information? Well, first that it becomes a habit, second that we might delay finding an antidote because we keep the sequence under wraps.

I personally believe that the risk of disclosure is a little too large to allow this particular sequence to be published, and outweighs the risk of suppressing it. So I'm convinced it's better to allow this information to be suppressed than to disallow it to be suppressed.

Let's be thankful that we still have someone able and willing to screen this sort of information and delay or suppress its publication.

I think we need police to more closely monitor 911 calls and respond to them pro-actively. You just never know.

A nice example of what might happen when they do is given here: http://www.storyleak.com/woman-calls-911-diabetic-husband-police-shoot-kill-man-upon-arrival/

There's a quick-and-dirty litmus test to gauge whether proposals like these are reasonable: substitute the name of a foreign nation for the US and see if the US would stand for it.

Of course the whole idea of supra-national entities brings in the specter of more or less unaccountable bureaucracies and undemocratic governments gaining a lot of power. So (as most here), I'd ordinarily take the Wall-street gang over that any day. Their agenda is really simple and transparent (profits) and their planning horizon is blessedly short (short-term meaning "today before lunch", long-term meaning "today after lunch").

Only we're dealing with a national currency here, the US $, which also happens to be the world's reserve currency.

And that's where the US government comes into the picture, not Wall Street. Now over the past 60 years or so, the US government has proven itself reliable and dependable when it comes to financial matters.

Up until 2011 or so when S&P downgraded the US government from AAA to AA+ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_credit-rating_downgrade ) as a direct result of the political uncertainty caused by a certain wing of a certain party (you know who) about whether the budget ceiling would be increased in time to meet financial obligations. And now we're seeing exactly the same thing again, only with more overt party-political motives.

Unfortunately we'll have to face the fact that these antics have lost us trust that we'll behave responsibly. From China for instance.

And unfortunately losing trust in this way immediately means losing money. Because our lenders charge us an interest rate according to the risk-return curve (the riskier a prospect, the more interest you charge him).

Which is why for China, Japan, Brazil, India, the Middle East (and perhaps even Europe) it regrettably starts making sense to push for an international reserve currency that can't easily be held hostage by a small group of political extremists.

Allow me to respond to that.

First off, I'll have to acknowledge that you have a point. Social mobility in the US and the UK is relatively low when compared with other Western countries (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility ). I should have looked at this before I wrote what I did, but I didn't.

However ... and this is a really major "however" for many if not most students who are from India, Pakistan, Bangla-Desh, Malaysia, and parts of Afrika. In the US nobody asks you what tribe you're part of when interviewing you for a job. And not many firms refuse to hire you because you're from the South or from the North-East or from the swamps of from the corn belt. Nor (unless you apply to the FBI or the NSA or suchlike) do they ask you about your religion or political affiliation. And they don't usually bar you from entering because you're a woman either.

You're just a "human resource" being considered from a cost-benefit point of view, and that brutal simplicity can be enormously liberating compared to the background that many students are used to.

And yes, my focus is a bit narrow. I was talking about a foreign student who successfully completes her/his master degree or even a PhD at a US university in engineering, maths, or science. And I'm not talking about entering Boston's political in-crowd. I'm talking about joining an engineering firm, a consultancy, a car maker, and oil company, or a chemical company as an engineer / scientist. That's what I meant. And from what I've seen for a long time such firms select mostly on merit and not on who you know or who your daddy is.

Israel's brain drain is serious but it is also one of its life-lines. Whether it appreciates this or not. The constant stream of people traveling between Israel and the West is one of the things that maintain Israel's ties to the US and Europe.

As everywhere in the world the dominant language of discourse in science and engineering is English, and US universities continue to dominate the lists of best and most influential institutions of learning.

If you look around at MIT you will note that 50%-60% of the PhD. students are from abroad. And when they get their degree, they see all kinds of attractive job opportunities right where they live. From start-ups to established companies. And yes, it's one of the ways in which the US attracts talent. It out-competes almost everyone else by offering top-notch education, top-notch research, and top-notch jobs. And that isn't about to change (barring short-sighted politics such as de-funding research).

But perhaps the most important of all: the US really does offer anyone a chance to earn their way solely on personal merit. And that's something very precious that's not available in many other countries where "who you know" counts for more than "what you know".

So yes, there is a tremendous pull. But before you bemoan the big bad US of A luring away all the talent, please realize that there is also (in the case of Israel) a substantial push.

Good friends of mine made Aliyah to Israel about 30 years ago. They were well-educated (an economist and a psychologist) learned Hebrew, did their Miluim (military service), one as a private the other as an officer, and found careers in Tel-Aviv.

What they saw around 15 years ago was a country that increasingly transformed itself from a Western country to a Middle Eastern country. Political polarization, rise of religious ultra-orthodoxy, privileges for religious people (e.g. Torah students exempt from the same military service that takes about a month per year from others), .

What they also saw was a country that was basically unwilling to reach a sustainable accommodation with the Palestinians despite the demographic, economic, legal, and humanitarian issues. They felt the consequences of that in person when their reserve army duties took them to e.g. the Gaza strip where they, in army uniform and armed, would have to face off against 16-18 year old Palestinian protestors / rioters and wield batons (or worse) against people who had no education to speak of, almost no wealth, no opportunities or prospects worth mentioning, no realistic way out, and no serious hopes for improvement. If that were a transitional phase, it would be bearable, but was it? It didn't look that way and it still doesn't.

Attempts to persuade the political majority to reach a sustainable settlement did not succeed (if there were any easy and simple solutions they would have been embraced long ago) and indeed a sustainable settlement seemed drifting further away all the time with the (in part religiously motivated) Eretz Israel (Big Israel) idea.

So they were left with the prospect of staying in an intransigent, polarizing and increasingly besieged country where their children would face the same difficulties, only worse, and without the frictionless alternative of having a double passport.

So they decided to leave and they are not alone. Obviously that segment of the population with the most portable assets (intellect) has the best prospects of leaving.

That's the "push" part of the equation.

So, yes, there's brain-drain but a lively exchange of people and ideas is (as I see it) needed for Israel's mental health. Also there are reasons for the brain-drain that have little to do with big bad US gobbling up all the talent.

We may need more data, as in scores on a wider skill range.

For instance: church attendance, shooting skills, family values, and moral re-armament level.

This would help in two ways: first it stands to reason that this would compensate our average scores (making them rise), and secondly it would give Tea-Party voters a chance to shine.

You claim two things here, namely that we can't produce a preponderance of evidence that:

(1) that more widespread and severe weather extremes aren't related to an global change in weather patterns (i.e. climate change), and

(2) and that this global change is related to human activity

Well, that's an improvement on earlier positions taken in this debate in that you implicitly acknowledge that there are measurable and impactful weather changes. That used to be denied too (and still is by people who don't follow the news and by people who's thinking is faith-based rather than fact-based).

As to whether climate change is happening, the successive IPCC reports are remarkably consistent. It is.

As to the linkage between human activity and climate change, it's just the paragraphs aimed at the public and policy makers have been rephrased. Not the underlying observations and thought.

New Scientist has a readable and accessible discourse on how people deal with the message.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929360.200-climate-science-why-the-world-wont-listen.html

One shouldn't confuse insurance companies' treatment of individuals with their risk assessment. In addition, ascribing them a thuggish motivation in warning that certain risks are about to become un-insurable is a knee-jerk reaction that is not warranted, not clever, and certainly not insightful.

Insurance companies live or die by correctly assessing the risk they cover, and translating the expected cost + safety margin + operating cost + profit margin into insurance premiums.

And yes, they will try to squeeze costs (as indeed anyone who ever tried to claim on their medical insurance will know all too well).

But this is something completely different. Insurance companies are giving notice that they will not offer cover anymore for certain risks (i.e. against premiums that are considered marketable).

They are leaving this piece of business on the table, which definitely causes them a loss in turnover. And that (counter to your superficial assumptions) is not a negotiating ploy. They just don't want it.

That in turn should set you thinking.

@Obfuscant

Sorry, was completely taken in by your obfuscation. You're just too good at it.