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Comment Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score 1) 265

So lets say that's your unavoidable future. Do you want air conditioning in the desert, or no? Let's say you'll spend the next 5 years cleaning toilets - do you prefer they be the kind where you can flush the toilet paper, or the kind where you make the used toilet paper the maid's problem?

Incremental improvements remain better than no improvements. Do you know much about working and living conditions during the American industrial revolution? Living in 7-story walk-ups, heavy industry with child labor and no thought to safety at all, company stores, etc? And still people flocked to those jobs because it was better than rural America for most. It gets better, one increment at a time.

Comment Re:Yay big government! (Score 1) 310

It's worth noting that the more we depend on income taxes on high earners, the more federal revenue will suffer in bad economic times (the very times when the left would argue we need to spend most). Changes to the sum total of income of the bottom 95% in bad times are pretty small: maybe unemployment goes from 5% to 8%, so how much does that affect the total tax base? But top-tier incomes are really unstable, they go down fast in a downturn and up fast in an upturn, so federal revenue takes it on the chin from that group during times like 2008-2011.

That's probably the dominant factor in changes federal revenue as a percentage of GOP these days, now that 1% of tax payers pay about 1/3 of all income taxes, and that noise drowns out any signal we might get from changes in top marginal rate.

Comment Corporate welfare by another name (Score 1, Insightful) 92

Otherwise known as, "regulation to keep the competition out".

It seems to me that the tendency to over-regulate in order to give advantage to existing market movers simply isn't justified. Yes, you need to deal with liability, but there's nothing that says that over-regulation is the only (or the best) way to do it.

Comment Re:You have only yourself to blame... (Score 1) 143

They build the hardware, however they do not make or have access to the source code or take the lions share of the profits. So more a source code demand along with an economic preference as well as pay back for communications exclusions. You seriously didn't think there were not going to be repercussions for that. The government of China knows full well the US government is run by US corporations, hence any actions taken by the US government against China's interests will be paid back by economic attacks upon US or applicable multi-national corporations. Thus forcing the US or multinational corporations to make their puppet alter it's policies with regard to China. Get used to it, every time the US misbehaves Russia and China as well as large chunks of the rest of the world will take it out against those that control the US government and force policy change.

Comment Re:Will we ever stop celebrating him? (Score 5, Interesting) 157

No claim can be made about the moment of his decision, it was his own. Clearly no plan had gone into a more peaceful exit via nitrogen or drugs, instead a more brutal immediate method was chosen on the spur of the moment, that moment where the stresses of continuing exceeded the survival instinct. No one is a slave not even to their own life. It is really rather shallow to pick apart someone's demise. The law enforcement agency was clearly to blame purposefully apply as much stress as possible on order to force compliance to their demands, a ludicrously inflated sentence or false admission of fault for a reduced sentence. That pressure succeeded forcing a spur of the moment decision, one that ensures escape.

Submission + - Rocket Scientist Designs 'Flare' Pot That Cooks Food 40% Faster (inhabitat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Oxford University engineering professor Dr Thomas Povey just invented a new cooking pot that heats food 40% faster. The pot is made from cast aluminum, and it features fins that direct flames across the bottom and up the sides, capturing energy that would otherwise be wasted. The pot is set to hit the market next month in the UK.

Submission + - Cryptocat Secure Chat Kickstarter for Video Calls & Android App (kickstarter.com)

SaltTheFries writes: Cryptocat--a very accessible and secure open source chat client--is hosting a kickstarter to fund development of an android application and browser video chat to provide secure chats vs. PRISM compromised Skype and Google Hangouts. They're trying to raise CAD$ 45,000 by July 30th. You learn more about the project at https://www.crypto.cat/

Submission + - 14,000 dead men receive draft registration notices after data snafu (arstechnica.com)

mpicpp writes: Thanks to a small problem in data formatting, the US Selective Service System recently sent notices to more than 14,000 Pennsylvania men who were most likely eligible for military service... during World War I. The error came thanks to a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) clerk’s failure to include the century when exporting data from a drivers’ license database for transfer to the Selective Service.

According to an Associated Press report, the error wasn’t caught because the Selective Service System’s database only uses two-digit codes for birth years—so records from men born between 1893 and 1897 were flagged by the system as being from 1993 to 1997. As a result, men born over 117 years ago received notices that they would face imprisonment and fines if they did not immediately register for the draft.

PennDOT spokesperson Jan McKnight told the AP, "We made a mistake, a quite serious selection error."

Submission + - Chinese State Media Declares iPhone A Threat To National Security (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came forth last year with US government spying secrets, it didn't take long to realize that some of the information revealed could bring on serious repercussions — not just for the US government, but also for US-based companies. The latest to feel the hit? None other than Apple, and in a region the company has been working hard to increase market share: China. China, via state media, has today declared that Apple's iPhone is a threat to national security — all because of its thorough tracking capabilities. It has the ability to keep track of user locations, and to the country, this could potentially reveal "state secrets" somehow. It's being noted that the iPhone will continue to track the user to some extent even if the overall feature is disabled. China's iPhone ousting comes hot on the heels of Russia's industry and trade deeming AMD and Intel processors to be untrustworthy. The nation will instead be building its own ARM-based "Baikal" processor.

Submission + - FAA Intimidates Coldwell Banker, Other Realtors Into Shunning Drone Photography (forbes.com) 1

mpicpp writes: For months, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been investigating realtors who use drones to film their properties. Now, Forbes has learned that the FAA’s investigations have succeeded in intimidating NRT —the nation’s largest residential real estate brokerage company — into advising their members to not only cease flying drones as part of their work, but to also cease using drone footage.

This is a troubling development in an ongoing saga over the FAA’s rules which punish the safe commercial use of drones. Currently, the FAA does not prohibit the use of drones for a hobby — flying over your home and taking pictures of it for fun is allowed, but because real estate drones take pictures for a commercial purpose, the FAA prohibits their use.

Comment Falsifiability is not optional for science (Score 0) 725

Of course Karl Popper didn't define science - he simply wrote about the most basic requirement for the scientific method, that of falsifiability.

If you'd like to assert that falsifiability isn't required, by what method do you exclude astrology or creationism from being "science"? If falsifiability is not going to be the tool you use for demarcation, exactly what do you propose?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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