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Comment Re:Good for them. (Score 1) 165

Israel is actively occupying Palestine and stealing the Palestinian's land.

Yeah and that happened around the 6 day war (pre occupation) against a bunch of people who wanted to wipe out the jews. The Palestinians were on the wrong side of that war. ut that only happened because balh blah etc etc.

Basically pointing the finger at this point is a useless thing to do. Both sides have been colossal cunts and both sides have made some deeply unwise decitions. Pointing fingers is easy because for each act one has done, the other has done something worse.

But it makes for fun slashdotting.

You need to point the finger to understand why they're fighting.

The Palestinians in 1948 had a valid grievance, for decades while the British ruled Palestine they allowed European Jews to buy up huge chunks of the country with the goal of creating a friendly Jewish state in Palestine, then the UN partition made it official with a split they didn't agree to. The Palestinians (and sympathetic Arabs) also had a valid grievance in 1967, after the war in 1948 they fled or were expelled from huge portions of Israel and weren't allowed back in to their land or property. The current Palestinians in addition to those previous grievances are now also dealing with the occupation, an occupation stemming from a war they didn't actually start (Egypt was threatening war but Israel launched a sneak attack) in addition to active land thefts.

There's times when both sides are to blame but not so much in this one, the Palestinians are obviously doing bad things but the ones instigating the conflict are obviously Israel.

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 1) 397

Brewers can continue to sell this as animal feed. They just have to follow the same rules as everybody else who sells animal feed, like Purina Chows and Cargill.

Wonder if it was these companies who lobbied for the regulation change.

Comment Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score 1) 397

If you live in an area of where temperatures drop a fair bit below freezing for a fair chunk of the year, you would end up adding ethanol as a fuel anti-freeze.

The freezing point of hydrocarbon fuels is considerably below that of water. Even diesel (and ATF) will rarely actually freeze.

It is also a weak solvent for compounds that are not soluble in gasoline, absorbs moisture, reduces the likelihood of engine knocking and a handful of other benefits.

This diosn't need anything like 10% ethanol.

Comment Re:THROUGH North Korea?! (Score 1) 234

Seriously? Lay critical crucial infrastructure through North Korea to South Korea?

There's no way Pyongyang would manipulate those rails and pipes in a fit of political pique that seems to happen, oh, once every eight months. Absolutely now way.

Hmm, is it just me or does Pyongyang sound like the name of a Russian speaking city to me...

Comment Re:Good for them. (Score 4, Insightful) 165

That's nice and all, but maybe you can get the palestinian's government to explain why they're so pro-genocide in their teachings. With the various terrorist organizations, which were elected actively supporting said teachings, and taking money from the countries in the region to wage a proxy war.

Absolutely.

Israel is actively occupying Palestine and stealing the Palestinian's land.

Look at the racism that occurs against Hispanics in the US due to them taking some crappy jobs. Is it a surprise that a nation that's been constantly losing it's land to self-identified Zionists for over 100 years is going to end up really antisemitic? Having Palestinians spontaneously turn into a nation of Ghandis isn't a realistic prerequisite for peace in the middle east.

Comment Re:Figures (Score 2) 165

I would say there is a slight difference.

The Israelis would use a nuclear bomb as a last resort to keep what they have, a tiny strip of land.

Their adversaries and a few other rogue states and groups are not above using a nuclear bomb to get what they want, a tiny strip of land or even the whole western world.

Which strip of land? Israel or the West Bank? I agree that Iran has said some worrying things and Israel seems a nice place to live filled with generally pleasant people. But they are without a doubt the aggressors in the current conflict and having nukes is one of the factors that has emboldened them to adopt such an extreme strategy. Now their enemies having nukes is a really scary proposition because Israel has adopted an extremely aggravating position predicated on the idea that their enemies are powerless to harm them.

Comment Re:I think you're working from a few false assumpt (Score 1) 235

But I don't think the competition of the official prize with the black market is relevant at all.

Right now a big proportion of exploits come from security researchers, partially because they're looking for exploits, but also because they do have a strong incentive to find and report vulnerabilities. I don't think a cash prize is going to change their calculation much.

The place a prize could make a difference is in ordinary developers. I suspect a lot of bugs are partially discovered multiple times before they're officially reported. Some developer is working with the software, notices some weird behaviour, but doesn't follow up because they lack the incentive. A cash prize increases the incentive and potentially turns some of those dev hunches into new bug reports.

The way the black market comes into play is the devs are competing against the black market. If the bug discovery rate goes up the price of zero-day exploits goes down (since they're shorter lasting) as does the incentive to discover them (since good devs are competing for the same bugs). So you can significantly impact the black hat market without approaching the black hat rate.

Comment Re:4 million people disagree (Score 1) 336

Of course you have to make it through the day without getting murdered. Detroit is exceeded only by New Orleans for murder capital of America (48 per 100,000 in 2011). Compare Silicon Valley (San Jose) at 4.6 per 100,000 in 2012. So by this time next year a couple thousand of those 4 million will be dead.

There's a lot more to avoid in Detroit than the snow. I guess that makes me a wuss.

Comment Re:Who are the pro-Russian commenters? (Score 1) 304

A lot of the comments comes from long established accounts that have commented on many other topics which doesn't really seem feasible for an astroturf network (unless they were 3rd party groups that get contracted by different entities). But moreso there's a lot of them who do engage in back and forths for quite a while, that's simply something that doesn't make sense for an astroturf because there's no point in a one-on-one with someone you clearly can't convince.

Comment Re:Frist pots (Score 1) 341

It is by design. The "original" retirement age of 65 was set there because that was the average life expectancy. The idea was that if you managed to beat the odds, then a small pension would pay for your food and incidentals while your family was expected to provide the rest until you managed to do the right thing and kick off.

Today, of course, "retirement" has become an entitlement and you expect the government to keep you in the style you have grown to expect with a sufficient pension to maintain your independence.

Submission + - Criminals use drones to find cannabis farms and then steal from growers (suasnews.com)

garymortimer writes: One such man, an unnamed 33-year-old, told the Halesowen News that after finding a property with a cannabis farm he and his crew either burgle or “tax” the victim.

“They are fair game,” he said. “It is not like I’m using my drone to see if people have nice televisions. I am just after drugs to steal and sell, if you break the law then you enter me and my drone’s world.

“Half the time we don’t even need to use violence to get the crop. Growing cannabis has gone mainstream and the people growing it are not gangsters, especially in places like Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury.”

Comment Re:Old proverb (Score 1) 396

If _Europe_ had the balls to call Putin to task, the US would stand behind them. It gets a little hollow when all of Russia/Ukraine's neighbors are saying "lets negotiate" and the US comes in with bombers and gives them an attitude adjustment. We are working with the pieces that are on the table. Tell the EU to get their head out of their ass and start moving troops to match, if not exceed, what Russia has done. The,n we can see what Putin is made of. Until then (to return to the original Proverb) the US really does not have a dog in the fight because there is no fight; there is an antagonist whose victims are not giving an ounce of resistance.

If I wanted to describe how you would start WWIII I think this passage would be a good start. Remember Europe actually knows what a real war looks like, even if you could keep it conventional a military confrontation with Russia is going to result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths. Add nukes to the equation and you really want to get hesitant about calling Russia's bluffs.

Personally my vote is for UN peacekeeping troops in Eastern Ukraine, ideally made up of troops from anywhere except the US (and ideally Europe). It puts a neutral party with a good reputation in the crosshairs, it makes a military invasion by Russia extremely costly, but it doesn't embarrass Putin by being overly pro-West and in the worst case of an invasion it won't escalate into a major war.

Comment Re:Useful Idiot (Score 5, Interesting) 396

What China does in surveillance of their own citizens isn't acceptable in my opinion but how is "they're even worse" a valid defence for the US which has constantly acted like it stands apart on these matters. Secondly, and something I think Americans really don't appreciate, as someone from outside both China and the US I know China would probably try and intercept my calls etc, but at least they don't pretend to be my friend while they are at it which America has been.

I don't think China and Russia being worse is a valid defence for the US. But I do think it's a valid point of criticism for Snowden. It is a bit hypocritical to criticize the US's surveillance activities, and then flee to the only two major powers that are demonstrably worse.

That being said I think he did have understandable motives, he wanted to go to somewhere that wouldn't extradite him to the US. That means a country that is a) not particularly friendly with the US, and b) powerful enough to resist US pressure, that pretty much means China and Russia. As the Evo Morales grounding incident demonstrates Europe was not an option. Maybe Ecuador was but they may not have been big enough and he still had to get there.

It's still unfortunate that he's in Russia, I think the Ukraine incident has revealed that Putin is a bit crazier than anyone anticipated and Snowden's position more tenuous. The Russians may have been threatening to send him back to the US as a concession to ease the sanctions unless he starts cooperating in their propaganda.

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