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Comment Re:Should come with its own football team (Score 1) 102

The companies may dodge the taxes on their income, but it's pretty hard to dodge taxes on their employees. Granted, WA doesn't have income tax, but there are also property and sales taxes. It would actually be interesting to see just how much the employees of all the companies listed (specifically, their WA offices) generate.

Comment Re:Follow the money (Score 1) 136

Basically it is a different market. Face it people that buy Apple do not really buy all that wisely, if they did, Apple would have a whole lot smaller profit margin. So they target that Apple market where people will pay more for the same thing because 'er' 'umm' it feeds their ego that they can spend more, they are 'hmmm' 'special' consumers ;D.

Comment Re:Semantic games (Score 5, Interesting) 89

Problem with your analysis, damned if you do, damned if you do not. Many of the activities of the three letter US agencies have become largely criminal with gross and purposeful misinterpretations of the law and this not in pursuit of justice but in the pursuit of the psychopathic ego of many out of control 'agents' or upon the direct orders of political or corporate appointees. So doing nothing is no more or less effective at getting you door kicked in, being threatened with real and impending death for any reason imaginable including not obeying orders fast enough, a barking dog, happening to have some item in your hand at the time, any item. Then you and all other people in residence at the time being physically assaulted, really assaulted, not grab you hands put them behind your back and being handcuffed but thrown to the ground kicked and jumped on, a bought of "stop resisting' with more blows to the head and then of course your home trashed and your stuff stolen. Then if they hate you ludicrous bail conditions the ensure you remain in jail for years during an hugely purposefully extended trial and the inevitably had sucker you have been in jail for years, plead guilty and you will released with time server ha ha ha.

Basically you are attempting to defend yourself against really lazy and self serving types who in reality wont be bothered with the real leg work, the real reports or any real effort.

Besides it can be hugely fun. Be overtly covert, make a big show of analogue person to person communications. Don't be lazy yourself, do everything you can person to person, the more the merrier and the more wasted spy vs spy efforts. In the whole spy vs spy vs the rest of us, being overt, exposing your efforts, being more public about your activities, serves to protect you and will inevitably expose their spy vs spy efforts to the ridicule and derision it so often rightly deserves.

Comment Re:Flying Cars (Score 1) 199

"We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."

Flying cars have been produced for the last twenty years. Drivable aircraft for longer than that. The problem isn't technical, it's political. They can't license and regulate them. The Government systems are just too crude.

That is not the problem. You can fly one if you have a flying license or do it at low altitudes over your own private land. The problem is that they are a stupid idea, the power spend keeping the vehicle hovering is not spend moving it which makes the range ridiculous short, on top of a price set in hundreds if not millions of dollars.

Earth

Lawmakers Seek Information On Funding For Climate Change Critics 394

HughPickens.com writes: John Schwartz reports at the NY Times that prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are demanding information from universities, companies and trade groups about funding for scientists who publicly dispute widely held views on the causes and risks of climate change. In letters sent to seven universities, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member of the House committee on natural resources, sent detailed requests to the academic employers of scientists who had testified before Congress about climate change. "My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships." Grijalva asked for each university's policies on financial disclosure and the amount and sources of outside funding for each scholar, "communications regarding the funding" and "all drafts" of testimony. Meanwhile Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies, trade groups and other organizations asking about their funding of climate research and advocacy asking for responses by April 3. "Corporate special interests shouldn't be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy," said Senator Markey, denouncing what he called "denial-for-hire operations."

The letters come after evidence emerged over the weekend that Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had failed to disclose the industry funding for his academic work. The documents also included correspondence between Dr. Soon and the companies who funded his work in which he referred to his papers and testimony as "deliverables." Soon accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work. "What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," says Kert Davies.

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