That must be it because they aren't in it for justice. Neither is wikileaks. This is why I hate both of them. They take it upon themselves to be guardians of justice but have no concern for their own wrongdoings. For example, wikileaks original claim to fame was the collateral murder video, which they put off as US soldiers simply committing murder. When it was investigated though, there was no wrongdoing - you can clearly see those guys carrying weapons (a Kalashnikov of some variation and an RPG are easily made out by anybody who has ever handled either - meanwhile wikileaks still claims that they are cameras, and I can't think of a commonly used camera that has a shape even remotely similar, neither as long, narrow, and pointed as the RPG, nor with something akin to a buttstock and pistol grip with a narrow front end.)

Groups like anonymous and wikileaks don't really seem to give a shit which innocents they expose or whether anything they put out is a flat out fabrication - they just want a name for themselves. Julian Assange was called out by people within wikileaks on exactly this. I think they like having zero accountability.

Who watches the watchmen?

What if you pronounced it linooks? You know, if say you only heard the term ubuntu and figured that the word linux had a derivative of a non-english u.

So given that can have a third and fourth pronunciation, surely we can call it gnu/linux now right? :D

Perhaps with marshmallow inside.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153005/chocolate-suicide

Wait a minute, are we talking about an actual "router" (as in something that deterministically routes packets) or are we talking about the a "layer 3 switch that also includes a wireless access point" which laypeople refer to simply as a router?

There are quite some not-so-subtle differences between the two, and if we're being scientific about this, we should note the distinction. If it is just the access point component, then that has broader implications on anything that runs at the 2.4ghz spectrum (or 5ghz, another potentially important detail.)

I haven't seen the new one yet, but your point does hold true for the 2009 one now that I think about it. Abrams has done some very good jobs at the more cerebral sci-fi. Lost (even though it wasn't sci-fi per se - or rather it didn't start that way at least) and Fringe definitely offer that thought invoking aspect, so it isn't as if he is incapable of it.

That's basically the way I look at it. In fact geology cross referenced with the fossil record tells us that macro scale life thrived in a climate far warmer than what we have now.

If the pangae theory is correct, then pangaea ultima is correct too. And that being the case, we're already guaranteed to have much warmer times in the future - solar activity or atmospheric contents notwithstanding. And no, the greenhouse effect won't amplify this, though solar activity could.

You can say that again. I personally am not concerned with global warming (basically for all of the same reasons that Patrick Moore isn't), but I really do love evolution. Nothing would frustrate me more than for the religious nuts to suddenly have the ammunition to remove all traces of evolution from education, all on the basic premise that empirical science is inherently flawed, using this as the basis of their argument. That would be some damn good ammunition that I really don't want to go against.

Sometimes I really REALLY doubt the effectiveness of the slashdot moderation system, and this is one of those times.

I'd really like to hear a good argument for why the parent post is either overrated or is flamebait.

In fact, I really think slashdot should get rid of the "overrated" option from the moderation system, because when I myself moderate, I haven't seen any good use for it. Anybody care to argue why the overrated option should be there in the first place?

I think I'm more interested in what will happen with the quality of care received. Presently the US is THE destination of the world for nearly all forms of specialty care, such as e.g. cancer, cardiac, and neurology. It often happens that somebody in Europe or Canada needs care that simply isn't offered there, or the physicians there say that the person stands a much better chance of survival at X hospital in the US, so their country pays to send them here to be cared for.

I really don't want to see that go away.

A Stanford researcher examined the issue of why in spite of this, the US ranks low in outcome of care compared to many other first world countries, and it turns out that this is due to poor lifestyle habits:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/15/facts-about-americas-health-care-quality-that-world-doesnt-know/

(I know, the source is fox news, so most of slashdot will simply dismiss it outright, but it's merely a summary of what somebody else found)

This also explains why, for example, that the claim that our lifespans are shorter than most first world countries because we don't have free health care is a false one. Denmark for example as as free health care as you can get, is a first world country, and yet their lifespans are within a margin of error of ours.

Mod parent up.

How can the rich be out of touch with reality? I mean I get that on slashdot, the wealthy are the bane to our existence, but you you can't have it both ways here.

If you are arguing that they got rich because they steal and manipulate...how the fuck does somebody who is "out of touch" manipulate?
If you are arguing that they got rich because they understand the market so well that they can exploit it (in either a good way or a bad way)...how the fuck does somebody who is "out of touch" understand anything enough to be able to do that?

I think it is the ones who identify as the 99% that are out of touch. To me, out of touch means having your priorities so backwards that nobody would ever hire you because you aren't worth a shit. I am what the occupy movement identifies as the 99%, but I'll never associate myself with the crowd that just craves this kind of divisiveness to such a level that they create an arbitrary percentile number to point fingers at (see: Emmanuel Goldstein - and the government didn't create this one, rather the tyranny of the mob did.)

The poor today have it better than they have ever had it. Ever. If you don't believe that, YOU are out of touch with reality, not the rich.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/09/how_rich_are_poor_people.html

The only thing that is happening today is a widening gap in income, however in terms of wealth, every category (rich or poor) is getting wealthier. The analogy that there is a pie that everybody gets a slice of is a fallacy. Unless of course this pie were to constantly grow in size, and as it grows your "slice percent" might shrink, but at the same time your "slice size" still increases.

Prior to the industrial revolution, it used to be that being poor meant you could barely afford a pair of shoes and would be lucky if you could have a hot meal every now and again. Middle class meant you owned something akin to what today is a studio apartment. Today in first world countries, poor includes those owning a car, a house, and even a luxury item such as an ipad, in many cases even all three. I mean literally, people at occupy wall street were complaining about their ipads getting stolen...and yet they refer to themselves as the downtrodden and the oppressed.

I'm not so sure about the copyright issue - I don't think youtube claims copyright on any of the videos it hosts. I think their concern is for those who do upload what is otherwise published content (say music videos, or how the studio that produced gunsmoke put every single episode up) that they can be fairly sure that most people won't download it - thus they continue to upload their content, making youtube more valuable to both them and their visitors.

It's also a dick move, and exactly the kind of dick move that got Microsoft on everybody's shit list. If this is how google behaves in the future, they'll end up shitlisted too.

Two wrongs were done here:

- Microsoft added the download button when they themselves would never provide such functionality to their own services, and did it just because they deliberately wanted to anger google. (While I myself would absolutely love a download button - Microsoft's motivation for doing so isn't exactly benevolent.)

- And then of course there's google being angry about skipping ads, but not producing any means for those ads to be delivered. (I think? At first I thought MS was just skipping them on purpose, but now it seems that there's no means to put them there to begin with - without knowing how youtube works, I'm a bit shaky on this one) but beyond that, Google wanting to forbid access to youtube by microsoft's customers entirely.

Google is under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to write apps for any tom dick and harry who demands it for their platform. And given the tiny marketshare of windows phone, it would make sense because it would probably be costly to maintain and simply not worth their time. And while they legally can forbid access to it (after all - it is their service that they pay for,) doing so is - again - a dick move.

If google isn't making a youtube app for windows phone due to the reason I stated, it would make sense because they haven't made one for blackberry either, which currently has a larger market share than windows phone. A third party youtube app is available for blackberry, but it doesn't violate the TOS, and likewise google doesn't seem to have any issue with it.

Jobs are leaving silicon valley due to taxifornia syndrome. You know where they are going? Well the silicon desert, for one. Many other places as well. They're not simply disappearing - not at all. The states with more socialist policies such as higher minimum wages, union monopolies, and high taxation are losing out on jobs - they're moving to places like Arizona, South Carolina (boeing), Kansas, and Texas. Speak of Kansas, do you know why google picked KC as their first fiber deployment? Because KC has the fewest regulations. Did they get tax incentives? Absolutely, in fact most cities will happily grant that to somebody who is building infrastructure, however they already had some of the fewest ordinances restricting where you could dig and what politician you had to bribe.

Thank you for bringing up Germany! You know, they are the only thing keeping the EU afloat right now? The rest of the EU has such strong social policies that they are sinking, and Germany is bailing them out. Yes, there are a few there who will make absolute shit wages - those are the ones who I described to you. There aren't many though. You know who else does? Norway, Finland, and Denmark, all of the few countries that are actually self sustaining in Europe. Coincidence? I don't think so.

A previous poster (stenvar) debunked this talking point already (I say talking point, because you're basically arguing that my new stuff is inherently worse than my old stuff simply because it costs less, without any sort of reasoning why) and he debunked it pretty thoroughly too. I'll simply refer you to him.

Personally I'm rather vehemently opposed to krugman, what I'm showing you was that even the liberal poster child of economists was at odds with what the common liberal view is on wage issues. However when he talks about redistribution, he isn't talking about handing around money, rather he's talking about government spending to provide jobs, such as public works. And of course, to fund it we need high taxes. Again, this is where I was pointing out how he still follows one of the few old keynesian theories that because government spending is part of GDP, therefore having a big complex government means a stronger economy (that's the gist of it anyways - I could go on forever why it's wrong, but I'm just outlining the difference.)

Actually worker safety should be something the employers/employees take into their own hands. Workplace accidents were on a constant decline long before OSHA came about, and that after that law passed they continued to decline at the rate they were already declining long before it was even proposed. With the lower numbers the proponents go "see, it worked!" even though all existing evidence suggested it would have happened anyways. Likewise, in places like China, workplace accidents are also on a steady decline. Historically, workplace accidents decline naturally along with modernization. The only thing that groups like OSHA do is add red tape. See the video in my signature for more on that.

No, that argument doesn't do you any favors. If having the most polluted cities made you more efficient, then India and Russia would be doing head over heels better than China.

Bottom line on that argument is this: In the 70's-90's, everything cheap was made in Japan. All of the same arguments you are making now applied to Japan. People had this fear that the Japanese would soon own the US, and we were in that so called race to the bottom with them. Where is this bottom? That race has long since ended, and both sides profitted massively off of that relationship, and Japan is very modernized and very clean. So again, race to what bottom? You can make these arguments all day long about how things are becoming too cheap to make them worthwhile, but all that happens instead is things just become so cheap that anybody can afford them. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

As you said though, China is becoming more expensive. However just like Japan, they'll remain an economic powerhouse. The future development is now moving to Vietnam who like China has largely abandonned their communist ways.

The concept of being a race to the bottom is just a flat out fallacy. It's all theory, but in reality it doesn't happen. Unless of course, by bottom you mean technology becoming so cheap that even the poor can easily afford it.

So far we've seen the following implemented under the idea of prevention of the so called race to the bottom:

- Ludditism (i.e. banning technology because in theory it takes away jobs)
- Lump of labor (mandating reduced working hours to increase employment)
- Living wage (aka minimum wage)
- Tariffs

The first three work under the assumption that the demand for labor always remains constant. That alone is a huge huge mistake.

As for the first one, even if new technology doesn't create new jobs while getting rid of the old ones but in the short term results in layoffs, in the long run the demand for labor continues to rise. So while your job might go the way of the dodo, new jobs will spring up somewhere else, likely in another unrelated industry. For example, in the classic case of the original Luddites, when it became cheaper to make clothing due to technological advance, people had more money to spend elsewhere, and that elsewhere is where the new jobs go, and you invariably see more jobs created than had existed before that "job costing" technology was invented. It happens every single time, without fail. No matter how automated things become, people will always find some place to spend their excess money.

As for the second - the argument that we need to reduce working hours is often tried, and instead of getting reduced unemployment, you get the opposite. Every single time. Counter-intuitive I realize, but it is a fact nonetheless. The reasoning for this is rather simple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

As for minimum wage...If your wage was below what you're willing to work for, then you'd simply not take the job. This is a fact. Most people do in fact work at above minimum wage. Minimum wage has the following effect: For the low end workers who really aren't worth a shit (there are many out there - this nobody can deny) they simply have no job at all. Whereas they could have at least had SOMETHING, they now have nothing. This has two effects: Increased unemployment, and higher prices. Because prices now go up to match that minimum wage increase, your purchasing power hasn't really gone anywhere. Most people tend to equate money with wealth, and that relationship isn't one to one.

A classic example I look at is this: Back in 2001, I paid $3800 for a 50" tv. The thing was pretty massive not just in diagonal length, but it was pretty fat too - it was rear projection. A really big and obnoxious TV by today's standard. Last year I "upgraded" my whole living room: Bought a new leather couch, ($1,200) built a 5.1 surround system from the ground up (none of the HTIB crap, a truly good sound system, $1,000ish with 8 channel lossless audio) and a new samsung 50" tv that has a MUCH better picture quality than the one from 11 years ago, consumes a lot less power and is light enough for one person to carry. Total spent was $3,200. Basically by spending less I have more "wealth" than I did 10 years ago - and that's even ignoring inflation.

When somebody tells you that the poor are poorer and the wealthy are wealthier because - adjusted for inflation - the poor are making fewer dollars today than they were in the 90's, they have no idea what they are talking about. Even though they say wealth, they aren't looking at wealth, rather they are simply using the medium of exchange as a guide. In reality it doesn't work that way. The example I gave above applies to a lot of things beyond just entertainment. Cheaper shoes, cheaper food, cheaper you name it. Something I might add - I have less money today than I did in the 90's. Mainly due to economic issues I am by the liberal definition "poorer", but nonetheless I have it better than I did then - I have a better car, I have a better house, I have a 50mbit internet connection at a lower cost than I used to pay for dialup, and I have a better entertainment system. But, according to the liberal, I am poorer thanks to the wealthy being too greedy, so clearly we need to raise taxes.

By the way, even the most liberal of liberal economists will tell you the same thing. The champion economist of the democratic party nearly all of the left politicians model their ideals after (including Obama,) Paul Krugman himself believes that sweat shop labor is better than no labor, and minimum wage causes more problems than it solves, and ultimately makes things worse. Of course where they differ vs say chicago school or austrian school economists (which the right and libertarians tend to follow) is with regard to how the government spends. But nearly all of them agree that there shouldn't be wage floors.

Now as for tariffs - many believe that because one country can make things cheaper than another country, then clearly we need tariffs to balance things out, otherwise we're just racing to the bottom. Not so fast. The reason tariffs are a very bad thing is because they completely ignore a concept economists refer to as comparative advantage. The original keynesians (basically Keynes himself) said that tariffs just do the trick. The new keynesians (such as Krugman - nobody follows old keynesian theory by the way - it was disproven in the 80's when it couldn't explain stagflation) will tell you that the only thing they do is make things worse.

The chinese for example, have a much better/more efficient capability than we do to create textiles and assemble electronics. We on the other hand have much better capability of fabricating semiconductors and building capital goods like jumbo jets and earth movers (by the way, in spite of what most people think, manufacturing is still big in the US - in fact we're #1 - whereas most people are lead to believe that we don't really manufacture anything and are just a service economy.) The best thing we could do is let china create the shirts, and us create the earth movers, and then trade them. This results in increased wealth for both countries at no net expense to either one. For example, by buying cheap shirts made in china, I can now spend that money saved elsewhere, meaning I have more wealth. The reverse is true in china - although they make earth movers, theirs are either vastly inferior or cost more. So, ditch the tariffs. Smoot-Hawley is a great example of the destruction that tariffs cause - in fact tariffs were THE cause of the great depression.

In the end, I'm not sure what part of "race to the bottom" you think is so bad, but the reality is that there hasn't been any harm caused by this so called race, rather it has only resulted in things being better for everybody, including the poor.

Oh, and unlike DNS, there is no way the end user can get around BGP route poisoning. It just can't happen. There's no mechanism for instructing the routers to provide an alternate route, they make those decisions entirely by themselves.

There are only a few things I can think of that *can* be done, but none of them are doable by the end user:

- Peering ISPs outside of the jurisdiction of the poisoned routers will all have to filter those route advertisements.
- The direct ISP of TBP will have to play with its local BGP table to subdivide it into smaller routes to make them more specific and thus preferred, which otherwise needlessly complicates the global BGP table, and doesn't completely solve the problem (some areas will still use the poisoned routes.)
- And finally, the blacklisted websites could move their services to be inside of the tor network. This is sort of the nuclear option though - tor is notoriously slow and your server compute requirements go through the roof, not to mention "domain names" inside of tor are hard to memorize.