Since Japan is using UN resolutions/verdicts against China in its geo-political battles, they do not want to be seen as flouting UN verdicts themselves.

Also, whale meat is actually not that popular in Japan, so much so that the whalers have to dump their stocks: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/op.... The reason Japan has persisted in whaling despite all the protests is a mixture of lobbying, nationalist sentiments, and fears that banning whaling will open the door to more restrictions of fishing rights.

I'm sure some Japanese politicians will thank the gods of their choice for this verdict.

I think you are underestimating how remarkable and unusual this accident has been.

This is certainly not the first plane to have disappeared from the radar, but usually it becomes clear pretty quickly what happened to it, especially nowadays. Debris is found, there was some radio communication about the problem, or there are other obvious hints. In this case the hints have been so sparse and weak that I can well understand that they had to be evaluated carefully before anyone dared to act upon them. Moreover, gathering and interpreting the Inmarsat data also took time.

Considering that anything a crisis team says or does has a great impact on many people, in particular the family and friends of the missing, but also the searchers, personally I wouldn't dare to second-guess decisions of the crisis team. And doubly so in this baffling case.

The first few days the obvious extrapolations from the normal flight path was searched, and that search was not only conducted by Malaysia, so other countries were involved from the beginning. When they realised things were not as simple as that they asked for more international help. I fail to see what they did wrong, even in hindsight.

I was not complaining, I was not concerned, I was simply pointing out to an all-government-is-evil zealot that the paperwork and fees are there for a reason, even in `the land of the free'.

I am amused that on /. this draws both Insightful and Troll moderation, though.

However, I do apologise for the mental anguish I seem to have inflicted on the language purists. Usually I know better than this, and I imagine that life must be hard enough for them when they are patrolling /. without me adding to their burden.

The point is not that Google is likely to run dangerous busses; they have every reason not to. The point is that any city in a civilised country will have to do some kind regulation of its bus services, because otherwise all kind of shady bus companies will pop up. That will require paperwork and administration fees. Sneering at "papers and baksheesh" as the original AC did is therefore shortsighted.

Should this mythical land of the free allow you to run a bus service with vehicles that are a menace to its passengers or other road users? Without proper education of it's bus drivers? Without any insurance? Would you mind if this bus service cherry-picks the profitable routes, so that companies that try to offer more balanced public transport go bankrupt?

Unfortunately, that's not how discussions are conducted in practice. Everyone always thinks that they argue rationally and factual, and it's always the morans that disagree with you that are _ing blind idiotic sheeple for not seeing the obvious truth of your position. Just look at the pro/con climate change discussions here here on /., the heated US Rep/Dem discussions, or even the iOS/Android pie fights.

Add to that an entire industry that manufactures plausible rationalisations and helpful facts, and you have all the ingredients for large-scale underbelly-based public discussion that is easily manipulated.

You are absolutely right. Given that Solyndra is the only failure that the Obama critics can ever come up with, and given that a subsidy program for renewable energy obviously has high risks (but also high gains), Obama has a very impressive track record in this area. Better that he spends that public money on something that benefits not only the USA but the entire world, rather than, say, the NSA. (Or a Slashdot BETA.)

Ah yes, the But teach!?! Everyone is doing it! defence. That is always so convincing.

If the welfare is handouts that are entirely at the whim of the rich, then yes, you create a pathologically dependent lower class. However, a reliable safety net allows people to take more risks because they know they can fall back on that safety net. That allows those people to create jobs.

Why do you think they are not trying 'to produce something' at the moment? Being poor is for most people not a choice, but something they are working very hard to escape from.

Hunger is a serious problem far before people start to die of it. It makes people less healthy (and hence productive), it makes children do less well in school, and it also encourages criminal behaviour to get some food on the table. There were very good reasons to introduce food stamps in the US (even apart from the subsidy to farmers, I mean), and they are exactly the kind of investment that even the most psychopathic should approve of for entirely selfish reasons.

Where is that utopia you are dreaming of? It is certainly not the US. Possibly some of the scandinavian countries that have a reasonable balance between socialist and capitalist ideas.

Which is exactly why it is so shortsighted to cut on welfare programs and generally treat the poor as the enemy, as is the trend in the US and many european countries nowadays. When the poor start to starve, they will not die quietly, they will get violent. Keeping the masses reasonably well off is a good investment, even for the most psychopathic rich.

Supervision of a powerful instrument of state such as the NSA is not only the task of some senate or congress committee or even the entire senate/congress, it is a task of the public. Yes, some parts of the NSA work must remain secret, and for those parts supervision by a smaller group of people is appropriate, but those parts should be as small as possible. I think it is very hard to argue that Clapper lied about something that should be in that small set of necessary secrets.

Therefore, the congressman was doing his duty: he tried to force Clapper to inform the public, so that it could properly supervise the NSA. Clapper chose to lie instead.

That may be what NSA employees think, but the public disagrees. And rightly so, leaving all NSA practices so poorly supervised is very dangerous.

That's illogical. Clapper said something he knew was not true. That's a lie. You may think that the question was inappropriate, and the lie justified, but it was a lie.

And even if the question were inappropriate, it would not automatically justify a lie to answer it.