That doesn't seem likely. In fact, I think this is a side effect of Microsoft preparing to integrate the 100 million msn messenger users into Skype. Somebody has been trying to ensure that the accounts will overlap nicely and has obviously made a huge mistake which allows this to happen.

Yes but many libertarians seem to have no issue whatsoever with Ron Paul wanting to ban abortion (he would want to overturn Roe v. Wade and has co sponsored 4 separate bills to "To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.")

I've never understood all the hype about Ron Paul. The guy has some good ideas but also very many that are close to sheer lunacy (many of them being because he's very much a religious conservative. Among other things he sponsored the original Marriage Protection Act).

Anti-IP or not, I could never vote for someone who wants to mess with people's right to their own bodies. No-one can honestly hold a "pro-life" (quotes because I think the very term itself is loaded) stance and at the same time claim that they're for small government. It doesn't get bigger than government telling you what to do and what not to do with your own body.

"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people." -House

I get and fully agree with your point about gullibility being the real issue. However what you're proposing (ignoring the religious part of the matter) sounds a bit like saying that instead of getting treatment for an illness a person should simply switch to a healthier lifestyle and the disease will magically fix itself.

Complicity to auhtority is an integral part of most religions. And I'm not talking just about muslims here. Members of the abrahamic religions usually gorw up in an enviroment where they are told that their view of the world is the correct one and everyone else - no matter what kind of reasoning or evidence they might use - is wrong. Likewise they are most often than not told that questioning anything told to them by their religious leaders is wrong. No adult would swallow all of this without questioning it but the mind of a child is extremely gullible, especially when it comes to information coming from his/her own parents so they come to accept it as the norm.

Don't get me wrong. The problem isn't that these people are stupid. The problem is that they've been told to never question anything that comes from a position of authority, no matter how much they dislike it. Many of the Iranian people probably disagree with the regime but - just like they're afraid to question the existence of God (in public) - they're afraid to question their leaders, no matter how vastly they might outnumber the people in power. Some people see and understand this but they tend to escape from the country instead of risking their lives (and the lives of their families) by trying to speak up because they also know that the majority of their fellow men will - out of fear - be demanding their public execution rather than standing with them.

That is essentially what organized religions are used for by both religious and govermental leaders: as a tool to control people and make them obidient and fearful. So while I agree with you that the true problem is indeed gullibility: I don't agree that religioin is a red herring because as far as I can see the vast majority of these people wouldn't be so gullible if it wasn't for their religion and religious upbringing.

Recent leaked documents have revealed the email sent by CIA to the Iranian officials, it reads:

"These are not the drones you are looking for, move along."

I cannot speak for everybody, but at least with me your statement is more than true.

I listen to a wide variety of music, but metal and its extreme forms are my favorite genre overall. And most of the bands I love I would never had heard about if it wasn't for piracy. Bands like that aren't much played on the radio and I as a stundent can't really afford to buy unkown albums to sample them out.

So, what I do is I pirate much of the works of larger bands that I know are doing well and I support them by paying 50-100 dollars of their concert tickest every once in a while when they happen to come around here and perhaps by buying a t-shirt.

But the cds that I buy are mostly from smaller, unkown bands that a friend or a friend of a friend has recommended and I have decided they're worth supporting. I also subscribe to Spotify premium which alone costs me 120 euros a year but allows me to listen to thousands of artists on my cellphone (I don't even use my mp3-player anymore). And even thouygh I haven't bought a dvd in over a year, I go to the movies a lot.

So yes, I pirate a lot of stuff. But despite that and largely because of that I spoend a lot money on music and art in general, I haven't done exact figures but a fair estimate (counting all the cds, concert tickets, plays, movies and so on) would be that in the past year I've spent in between 500-700 euros on art. I'd gladly spend even more, but I can't afford it,

These (among huge concerns for things like privacy) is also the reason why I am a member and a supporter of the Finnish Pirate Party.

Just my 2 (euro)cents on the matter.

As is usual with these types of news the story has been blown out of proportion. Other then some social security numbers, nothing "personal" was leaked. The information in the leak ios mostly data like adresses and phone numbers which are puiblicly available in the first place.

Yes, someone could in theory use the leaked SSNs to do something malicious but that's extremely difficult. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the fact that these sorts of leaks are becomming more and more common even though you'd think the security would've improved by now, but this time it seems we got lucky. Hopefully whoever is responsible for the security of whereever the data was leaked has learned his/her lesson.

Also, as far as I know this was done by a single individual, not "anonymous".

That's one of the things I always wonder when you get these types of "X causes autism" studies. These people treat autism as if it's a thing that can be contracted, that you can somehow "catch" autism from something (like vaccines).

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not a medical professional), but isn't it like OP said that autism is indeed a genetic defect. This means that it cannot be caught after birth. You either have it or you don't. As far as I know excessive exposure to radiation is one of the only things that can potentially damage your DNA in each cell, but that's not systematic as the damage done to each cell is random so it usually causes things like tumors (or death) but should not be able to cause autism.

So if my understanding of things is correct - again, please correct me it's not - the only studies about "causes" of autism that have any credibility are those which link some acitivity done by the mother or the father to autism, because that's the only thing that can cause genetic defects. And even if that was what the study was going aftert it would still be a load of BS because there is no way a person spending too much time in front of a screen can damage his/her genes.

I understand why regular people blame things like vacciness for causing autims since it's is usually diagnosed when the child is a couple years old, usually some time after they've gotten their first vaccinations. But they're still every bit as wrong

There seems to be a strange cult of personality surrounding Ron Paul and a lot of people who see him as a huge revolutionarist and something completely new. Well, here are some reasons why I'd never vote for Paul:

1) Paul claims to be a constioutionalist and a libertarian but he opposes the seperation of church and state, apparently wishing to emphasize that america is a christian nation. He is also claming that the constitution is ""replete with references to God.", which is false.

2) He is a creationist who says that evolution is "just a theory". Now, I'm not sure whether or not he actively seeks to increase the teaching of creationism in schools (I think not) but this is an important point because the man is a doctor and calls himself "a scientist" while evidently he does not have a firm grip of either the definition of a scientific theory or genetics, which is something that modern medicine is heavily reliant on and which could not function without evolution. Paul should, as a doctor, have a far better understanding of these mechanisms than a layperson, yet he chooses to ignore the reality and put his own religious views ahead of it while still having the guts to call himself a "scienticst". This point alone demonstrates such levels of cognitive dissonance that I have a hard time understanding how anyone on Slashdot could actually vote for this guy.

3) He wants abortion to be banned on a federal level because in his words "If you can't protect life then how can you protect liberty?". There are several problems with this proposition. Now, I am pro-choice, but I have no problem as such with presidential candidates being against abortion. What I do have a poroblem with is when they seek to legislate their own ethics with no consideration of the consequences. Paul is a doctor, he should be more than aware that there are several means to abort the pregnancy other than the medical procedure, all of them (such as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol) are widely known and all of them are far more dangerous to the mother than an abortion performed by medical professionals. Now, Paul seems to think that banning abortions will end them, which is not true. Making abortions illegal will perhaps make some women reconsider it but it will also cause signifficant harm to a lot of women who end up choosing a back-alley abortion.

In addition, it's inconsistent with his stance on death penalty. According to Paul, the states should be allowed to decide whether or not to use the death penalty but the states should not be allowed to decide whether to alllow abortion. Not only is this stance ass-backwards (IMO the death penalty shopuld be banned on federal level and abortion allowed), it's also a conflicting position. According to him it seems, it should never be allowed to end the "life" of a couople weeks old fetus but it's alright for the state to terminate living adults if they so choose.

4) Paul claims to oppose "congressional overspenfdng" and claims that the goverment should not interfere in business at all, yet for example in 2007 he requested about 400 million dollars in earmarks, including 8 million dollars for the marketing of american shrimp. (source yes, I know, Fox News as a source is stupid but the figures come from the wall street journal)

5) He does not suppor equal rights for minorities, wishing to repeal affirmative action kee the IRS from investigating whether private schools used race as factor in denying entrance,

6) His enviromental policies would cause even more strain to the enviroment than the current ones. Among other things he supports off shore drilling, building more oil refineries, mining on federal lands, no taxes on the production of fuel, and would stop conservation efforts that could be a "Federal obstacle" to building and maintaining refineries. He has also sought to amend the Clean Air Act, repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977, and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to "restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters".

7) He wishes to withdraw the us form the United Nation

8) He has introduced legislation that would keep the Federal Government "from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification." In a separate piece of legislation he seeks to "prohibit the payment of Federal Education assistance in States which require the licensing or certification of private schools or private school teachers." So basically the federal government can't regulate teaching credentials and if states opt to require them for private schools they get no aid. So he thinks it's a good idea for teachers with no certification to teach in private schools that are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race.

Now, I admit he does have some good points when it comes to military spending but the above mentioned points (not to mention the whole thing with the gold standard) make me wonder why anyone, especially people as educated and thoughtful as the /. crowd, would want to vote for him.

But then again, I'm not american so maybe I just don't get it. But if I were, I would not want Ron Paul to lead my country.

Maybe so, but tell me: how is that different from history? Ever since the birth of organized societies, wealth has always equalled power.

I dislike Apple too but it's not as if they invented greed.

And unlike Sony, they aren't sending cease and desist letters to kinect hackers.- -And they could easily be far worse patent trolls than they currently are.

That still doesn't make them ethical though. Just because someone is not being as much of a douchebag as they potentially could be does not mean they're automatically ethical. That'd be like saying that a dictator is ethical because he only executed half of the citizens.

The Egyptions protests have demonstrated the incredible utility of social networking sites in enabling a large pool of people to organize around a common idea.

As nice as that does sound it's not true. The egyptian protests had at the most 300 000 people involed. Now, while that's a lot of people we must remember that Egypt has nearly 80 million inhabitants so compared to thatt the protests were actually pretty small. And more importantly: most of the people arrived to the streets after the social networking sites had been blocked.

The media seems to be painting a picture of some sort of revolution facilitated by social networking sites while completely forgetting the fact that no revolution actually took place: Mubarak is gone but the millitary regime that he hailed from is still in power and in fact stronger than ever (actually, the reason the millitary allowed and even endorsed the protests was that Mubarak wanted his son - who has no ties with the military - to be his successor and that angered most of the people in the armed forces). In addition, as I alreasdy stated the 300 000 protestors is not a major achievement for "social media". There have been protest even in middle-east before the era of the internet where millions of people joined the protests, such as the 1979 revolution of Iran. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.

No, not anymore. She can still deny signing any law, but that only delays the law from coming into effect. If the senate (eduskunta) passes a law and she doesn't sign it, it will wait three months, after which the senate can the vote on it again and this time it will become a law and come into effect even without her signature.

Our president under the current constitutional law has no concrete power - she only has a role as na official representative of the State. All the actual power resides with the prime minister but she doesn't have a veto right on laws either.

For the most part I agree, the goverment is trying its best. But right now, the current ministers, especialy our minister of information, are slowly forgetting or things like ignoring freedom of speech. The fact that some pages are still being censorerd in the make of "preventing the spreading of child pornography" (even though most of the pages censored do not actually contain child pornigraphy, or pornography of any kind) and that they allow things like the "lex nokia" (effectively allowing not only corporations, but also some private organisations such as housing companies to monitor the network usage and emails of ther members) - though it hasn't apparently been used since it passed - proves that many people in the current goverment have seemingly forgotten the importance of these fundamental rights. Also, Finland has been repeatedly fined for breaking the EU articles on freedom of press and speech (note: link in finnish).

And our president hasn't said a thing about these issues - nor for example the fact that Finland is one of the few remaining countries ehere one can still be fined for blasphemy (a law, which has been used a couple times even in the 21st century). And with the current presidential powers being what they are, it wouldn't make a one damn difference. The office of the president under the current constitution is akin to the king of the Swedes: a public figure. All the concrete power rests in the hands of the prime minister, who also has done or said nothing to defend a citizen's right to freedom of speech and expression.

In the upcoming elections next year, none of the major parties have so far informed that they would be focussing on these kind of issues. And why would the? Taxation, budget and immigration are the "hot topics" here like in most western countries so they are what's being used to entice voters. I like being a Finn living here, I think this is a great country and that our educatioon system for exmpale is probably one of the best if not the best in the world. And the political system is beyond repair yet - the major parties just really need a wake up call; a snap on their fingers to remind them that they cannot keep slowly chiselling away our personal freedoms while we're distacted. They need to be shown that this is not the US of A (no offense to any americans) and we won't swallow any "patriot acts" they try to push down our trhoats and that in the spirit of true democracy we will throw them out the door of the senate if they do.

That's why, if you're like me and are truly worried and care about thigns such as freedom of speech, I advice you to consider strongly about not voting any of the major parties in the next elections. Instead, I'd recommedn voting for the Finnish Pirate Party which is not by any means only a party concerned with torrenst and p2p like many unfortunately think - if you check their themes and core values from the site you will notice that personal liberties and freedoms are infact their key points along with de-criminalization of piracy for personal use. They have many candidates focussed primarily on the personal freedoms.

So yes, we're still a great nation. But by no means perfect. So please, for the sake of all of us, stop thinking that we're flawless and vote for somebody who doesn't think that it's a good idea to censor the net abd limit personal freedoms because child pornography is EVIL or because we don't want to "offend" christians or muslims.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-William Pitt, 1783

Although you're right that no permanent waste repositories have yet been completed, one is currently being built. The Onkalo waste repository is being consturcted right here in Finland, and its one of those things that I'm especially proud as a Finn. Granted it is relatively small (designed to contain only all of our nuclear waste, and we're a small country by any comparison) but still, it's a project that gives a lot of important information and shows that permanent waste disposal sites are possible. The location should be choosen carefully, but that's a decission in which people should trust geologists and other scienticst more than politicians.

For those fellow /.'ers that are interested about these kinds of thigs: there's an interesting documentary about Onkalo (which is finnish for "a pit/cave") - and the challenges of selecting and building such a repository - called Into eternity directed by the danish director Michael Madsen. While I might not agree with everything that's said in the film, it's a documentary with exceptional cinematography and it perfectly illustrates how much time, effort and planning has to be put into projects this big.

Then again, when you find yourself high as fuck in the middle of the night in Amsterdam and notice that busses are readily available, it is very tempting to choose the bus. In fact, I've heard that for the right money, you can even ride two busses at once. How cool is that?

Yes, riding a bus under the influence of mind altering drugs is a peculiar experience, especially if it's one's first time of riding a bus, but I'd say it's definately worth it...

Disclaimer: All similarities between this post and my own personal life are purely coincidental. ;)