Did the the everest area ice melt yet? (don't blame me - blame the head of the IPCC we're all expected to slavishly believe in qithout question)
Did the climate change caused by humanity group properly answer why warming since around 200 ballpark has not matched computer models?

You'll have to excuse me, but I'm not wholly a skeptic. But I am skeptical that all the money tends to be poured in from one side that *actually* wants a particular answer and not the answers. Gov pour in funding to find climate change, not research it. If you are someone who isn't fitting the flat earth science model - you don't get money from multiple sources now. I'm as deeply skeptical on that as I am about power or oil paying for science with the same premise. Neither case is something I find acceptable, and I believe that both cases are skewed wildly, and I don't believe the picture presented by that landscape.

Despite very large advancements, our dependance on computer modelling in this area still leaves enormous variances and open ended questions that it can't be said someone 'knows'. They do not.

And I'm not impressed by the knee jerk reactions that frankly would have everyone on a bicycle, and eliminate modern life as we know it 'to save the planet'. Slow ratchet efforts to take us there don't impress me either, nor do slow cooking frog methods work for me.

The human race, and political classes have to cut human population, not just attempt to have every human living an ever poorer life to fit their green/communist cretinous fascism. You can start by changing how we think about society - and not paying people to have children (UK child benefit is a loose example) - but in fact create a system that rewards people for not having children, and very heavy layers against mass migration (where it creates population expansion), and reducing support for human growth in areas where its not sustainable.

'Oh we'd rather not do that, stop driving your car' - actually no. (Note - I don't own a car, but anyway) - don't tell someone to do that, tell someone else 'no we're not supporting you with social benefits and support because you've decided to have a 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th 9th child.

And no, I don't care if you disklike what I've just written.

Take your points in turn:

1. Your citizens are living in a recession. The chinese are not. You need to understand the width and depth of this war to understand that your citizens in the millions are being degraded and suffering a lower standard of living, unemployment, and all that goes with it, while the chinese take the other direction. Its not a one for one price, because the chinese operate an economic war where each economic soldier - for thats what they are ultimatly operates far below the cost of the opponent. Chinese workers work at costs far below US or Western workers do. Part of this means yes - your citizens get cheap goods, but its not free. They do this by unseating and uneploying you, your friends, your neighbours. And the overall numbers game means in China, they can employ 3-10 workers for the same cost of one of your own.

Chinese factories don't need to be more efficient than western ones, they operate on a base thats simply cheaper. They can have many times the workers at the same or lower cost, and given they have a billion + citizens, they won't change that any time soon. *But* - for each worker they take from west to east - everyone needs to understand that - if that worker then ceases employment - the unemployment costs to the nation state are again much higher than if it affected a chinese worker 1 to 1.

It is war - make no mistake. And if you don't think so, explore how hard it is for western companies to deal in china with knock off copies of IP and products. Examine that in scale and you begin to see the issue. If chinese companies have that done here, they go straight to the rule of law and we then help them defeat us in every way. I'm not proclaiming that we should mimic their action at home, but rather, if china and chinese companies steal and rip IP, they should garner no protection here and punishing damages should be a matter of course.

2. China is not served in the long term by their war activity. Period. In the future, they will need to be able to export and reside in the markets they are ripping militarily and politically. And they even know this themselves. The issue is when that crossing point will come, and how long they can maintain their current war winning strategic operation. Their activities are enormously damaging on a scale not being calculated fully today. Its not just about the IP, Its about the products, the cheap prices, the flooding of markets, the subsidies, and the rest. Their actions are directly unemploying people, and are very much part of a western picture of recession. In the long term, chinese workers and standards will rise, and they will lose the large edge they hold in costs and undercutting. But by that time, they will have gained the fruits to ever larger degrees from their activities. They will have gained immesurable technology, science, capacity, development, and a great deal of it is not indiginous, and never was. And by that time, you can count on the fact that they will have stealth planes, modern tanks, weapons and a capability stolen from their opponents.

3. Waaaaa waaaa, This is slashdot, and whining and self hating is a common feature, as its endless leftist drivel about the powerful. Most people don't want change, or the loss of cheap chinese computers and equipment. But most don't understand that the cost of this isn't free. Wethere its slave workers in a factory, or workers in texas no longer employed at the Dell Texas factories, the price mounts over time.
This is not a typical economic imbalabce between countries trading. Its a war strategic operation by the chinese, and they are being given a free hand.
This is why you have a slow trail of officials at multiple levels talking about this, even if its still semi under the radar.

At the end of the day, millions of people are beginning to ask - where have the jobs gone? And the damage being made is nominkally permanant. The west can't dig its way out of this by employing ever larger numbers of people in hamburger joints, and small business.

Being passive or self hating won't help you either. If someone makes war on you - its not your fault. Thats a choice on their side. And make no mistake, war is always economic in its nature, its just in this one its being played at a higher level than in some other wars.

The West was on top. So its a target. Its values are oppsed by the enemy.

War comes in multiple forms. There isn't any requirement for someone to fight you directly. The lessons of this are available through history. The problem is that in general, the population is cretinously stupid. In the west, in america, and prevelent on Slashdot.

The chinese long ago choose war with the west. And yes, this white house commentry is correct. Its years late to the party though. The chinese choose to make information and IP collection a military grade target, and applied military level resources to the task in hand.

In exchange for taking all your information, IP and data, they then went back to said companies and said - we can do what you do, at a 10th of the price.
Que economic damage doubled.

At no point have I see anything - anywhere thats showing any willingness to even begin to face up to this challenge.

Cutting to the chase, they do not have to use bombs and direct weapons to eliminate your factories, to commit economic damage, to diminish your state, lower your standard of living, and damage your way of life. If the end justifies the result - then its a valid technical stragetic aim. Its been and remains a highly effective strategic application of a militaristic and political plan.

Assuming nothing is done, and its simply allowed to continue, then you will simply see a spiralling issue of damage here, and benefit there. A zero sum game that favours only one side.

And there is no simple answer. In the west, we're so stupid, over payed, flabby, lazy and ill led that it will be a long time before an equalisation of fundamentals allows a reverse of the flow. American or Euro workers will still be paid many times the cost of a chinese worker. Even if you steal back the tech at a later date, the damage is largely done because you can't undercut enough to make stuff at the same cost level. But your structure will still have to pay out multiple times the cost to the now millions of unemployed. Que strike 3 of the cost of the enemy strategic plan.

And how will you defend yourselves?
With windows based networks that are an unholy security mess?
With a military thats suffering the same windows based security mess?
With open source software bases that however anyone might paint it, has enough security issues that its not a trivial issue?

All of these are treated like a play ground by the enemy. A proverbial open door.
Security worsens every day, and in the west IT is in most places simply treated as a red headed step child and an overhead people would like to eradicate if they could.

Until companies and governments get serious, its only going to worsen. And while this is the state of play - with no penalty for the chinese - its well worth playing to a very full extent. At the end of the day, in the west, as the unemployed grow, eventually your customers will dwindle. The fact you get your shit made in the enemy factory now won't help you find exhausted customers in your home lands, and you are not going to outsell Lenovo in china to make up the now drastic shortfall. In the end, binning your own workers in exchange for cheap goods made in china has a culmative effect in you losing your own customers. The unemployed can't really buy from you, and that will turn to bite sooner or later.

It could be ended tommorow assuming some spine can be found.
A singular threat of complete bans on any chinese imports - on scale and across the western would would have sobering affect on the chinese. And at the same time reparations and damages should gained. And some spine should be found, because everyone basically knows this is going on, and has been for an extended period.

China does not give a shit about you, or the west. It will under cut you, subsidise fuel to its operations, steal your data, rob you of your intellectual property, and take your job or life away from you. Its operating on the correct directive which is self interest. The nations and people's suffering at this policy - need to understand that its no use playing possom. Being sanguine about this won't stop it, slow it or provide an answer. It_must be addressed.

At the moment, no one is quite willing to do this.

At some stage, democracies and the west will see some final figures and data from the losses, and a slow process of anger will start to take place. Late. Slow, Stupid.

At some point in future history, you might ask yourself, or those round you - what were you doing while the chinese were raping you and yours.

And generally this is why. I don't buy defective, faulty, or badly designed products and nor should you.

I do have sympathy with people over piracy, but creating the above in answer to it isn't tolerable.

This law simply looks like an empowering of the EU, and giving it the ability to assault companies and organisations. None of which really deals with the issue at all.

This law needs individual assertion. A citizen needs to have the right to have access to their data, and have rights to control it with limited caveats. Only laid out circumstances should exist where someone can hold your data (your employer for example) or government departments (your passport or health records) - and the citizen should have a right to challenge/edit or amend the data. In other cases of data usage (for example on the web, facebook, marketing companies) - citizens should have rights to (at least some of the) money earned from their data, a right to control what is held, and a right to have it removed on request. Where data is misused or abused, the citizen should have a direct route to compensation, with heavy compensation in cases of personal damage, damage to reputation, or so on.

I don't want Vivian Reading to give Facebook a multi billion dollar fine, that gets chucked down the back of the brussels gravy train, screw that for a game of soldiers, they already lose and waste far too much and abuse too much already. No, screw that, I want my own individual rights brought back in line so I at least have a recourse in all cases in terms of my data.

I believe that re-establishing the basics, and allowing a person to talk to an org with laid out and clear rights is a fair re-establishment of a status quo thats been blitzed for too long. I don't want or wish for the EU to gain powers for itself in my name, and to load up taxes and businesses for its own benefit.

All fines and reperations should be between the individual and the company that makes or causes the breach, government should not get its foot in there handing out red tape and crippling laws for its own benefits and empowerment.

It is indeed 'IT's' job to support the employee's ' who bring in the revenue.

However, don't confuse the issue. Its also IT's job to usually make everything work for peanuts, stop the chinese stealing all your IP, and provide a safe, workable, sane, secure, reliable environment. This frankly can only be done by companies who understand all this, and make solid good provision and provide a balance that works, and have a wide and deep understanding of what the score is.

The poster here seems to have gone off on a rant because his perception is that he knows more about IT than the IT people he is bitching about (which sometimes can be the case, but mostly isn't) - and frankly someone needs to tell him to go and do his job, and stop trying to meddle in IT.

Many people are applying this joker's stupidity to their IT, and while they get a short term 'usability' 'improvement' - later when the IT structure falls apart, gets overwhelmed by security failures, viruses, malware, or all the IP gets stolen, its people who like this idiot poster turn round and say 'Its IT's fault'.

Slashdot has always taken at least a partial interest in the wider world, with many articles on the technological or social angles of events. Hitchens often spoke about such events, and you might regard the linking as abstract or tenuous, but others will not. Technology is often cited as being part of a wider movement that unleashes forces for good, and unbinds people from tryannical and oppressed lives. Hitchens nominally shared *and* very publicly worked for the same thing.

Its only right such a man is noted. The fact it made slashdot is all the better.

Rest in peace.

I can't say I always agreed with him, but I will miss the now silent articles, fearsome intellect, and his wit and insight. And I am quite sure those who know him intimately will personally feel that the world has lost a very bright light too early.
Condolences to his family.

Various governmental departments, people, staff, generals, politicians are involved upto their necks in the development and robotisation and automation of weapons systems. Only the cretinously stupid could believe that they might build giant fleets of robot aircraft that are controlled from somewhere else, and have a wireless (I use the term loosely) method of command and control. The absolute faith in the idea that you can make such systems and maintain a functional and viable operation was just nullified by a second / third world state. I am *glad* they have done so.

It could be far worse.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

The technology at somepoint has to be broken down to grunt level (because at the end of the day, grunts hump around and do the fighting, and are mucho cheaper than scientists or expensive pilots who you 'retired' or made redundant as part of the 'benefits' of moving to a drone fleet.

Foreign powers like the chinese would not even have to invest in the structures to match, they just look at how the core can be circumvented, and they gain control of your fleet and bomb you back to your own stone age by your own weapons. And you'd deserve every inch of it for your own stupidity.

The last time I can recollect in this level of folly in aeronautics was in pre Vietnam days where the US got itself into a high level theory that manned flight and guns were no longer needed. It could all be done with missiles.

The US and the West in general have suffered a disaster of large proportion. The technology was circumvented, and is now sat in the enemies hands. Soon it will be sold on to the Chinese and Russians, and the billions spend in the core research handed over to the enemy states for just about zero.

The US might have played a part in Stuxnet, and since that day, automated systems have been rightly under the review rader. The paradoxical level of comedy that the Iranians just Stux'xxed a US drone out of the sky and onto their landing strips just makes the paradox a hilarious one.

The last thing I ever want to see is the disgusting Mullahs crowing around on their media, making a mockery of the universe. But they got themselves a bunch of prestige they do not deserve, and its ass kicking time in the US. Heads need to roll, and a complete revision of this stupidity needs to take place.

I've worked in IT for 20+ years. During that time, the security of systems has plummeted. The behaviour required to run systems with a level of 'hygiene' and appropriate controls has been systemic and eroding. Most businesses I see have most staff running as Admin, on old Windows machinery. And you can include significant chunks of government and elsewhere in the same state.

Spyware, and malware have reached a state where defenses and defensive measures are overwhelmed, beaten, ineffective - and the sheer scale and size of 'IT' structures out runs all efforts unless they are highly controlled environments. The points mooted by the Foreign minister are deeply delusional. The idea that you'd open up your security to try and encircle the shambles that is the real world computational landscape is erroneous.

The engineers get over-ruled by management, and the scale of the failings are the end result.

Most Chinese Government sponsored actors (and others) are able to walk into the greater number of interesting targets, and circumvent the appalling data protection layering - and take what they like.

And in due course, if you want to see the full scale hilarity and complete lack of knowledge in the area, I expect UK ministers to be signing up to deals with
http://www.huawei.com/uk/
in due course. At which point you can take it as read that its business as usual and that nobody who talked about it had any idea about what they are talking about.

Current data systems, and how they are operated from are fundamentally broken, and nobody can fix it as it currently stands. It required whole root and branch rethinking, incluing the idea that software can ship, be sold and be used full of security holes and problems, and the authors can write a license that eradicates all responsibility for it in totality, and the world just goes round building stuff on sand.