You repost by posting again. You are allowed to do this.

My point, which appears to have flown above you like an exploding Hindenberg showering corposes all over (sorry, too soon?) is that if the entire world started focussing on a different terrorist target, terrorists would be unlikely to immediately think "Let's kill people in NYC" as their first thought.

And let's be honest, nobody would miss Tallahassee. Not even those of us in Florida. Rick Scott's an asshole.

Also Texas, while (obviously) having a lower population density, probably has more people in it than Manhatten. So diverting terrorists there would both make it more difficult for them (more work per person killed) and would ensure that if they did they do the world a few favors by getting rid of the largest number of loudmouthed jerks possible.

Look people. Can we knock it off with the "Terrorists attacking New York City" scenarios? If we're going to protect NYC in the long term, we need to start playing up the relative importance of cities we actually wouldn't mind being attacked.

Can you repost your scenario as an attack on Tallahassee, or Phoenix, or some city in Texas or something?

NYC is awesome. Sure, the inhabitants get a little arrogant from time to time, but you kinda understand their point. We need to divert the terrorists to somewhere else, somewhere where the country would benefit from a terrorist attack.

FWIW, it doesn't matter if Google buys a baby mulching building (all running OpenBSD, natch'...), starts selling your information to advertisers (I mean really, not selling services to advertisers that work more effectively because Google has information about you, I mean actually selling your name, address, and fetishes to anyone who wants to advertise with them), arranges a Presidential assassination, blows up the Empire State Building, and worst of all, builds a private monorail to ferry employees between San Francisco and its offices.

Even if Google does all of those things, Android is still open.

This story is not about whether Android is open. It's about whether Google is putting pressure on its partners to ensure they stick with Google's vision about Android when distributing it, and likewise whether Microsoft are doing what they've done since the dawn of time.

Is Google right to this? Probably not. That said, the backlash seems far greater than it ought to be, probably because of a combination of anti-Google shill campaigns of late, because people expect Google to be better than this (nobody expects this of Microsoft which is why it's not a shock), and because several other things they've done lately with Android, such as pushing GMS, which were actually aimed at ending criticisms of Android for being "Fragmented" have been closed and against the entire perceived ethos of Android.

Also their search engine is worse than BIng these days, and that's not because Bing is any good.

Android? It's still open. Ask Amazon. Ask CyanogenMod and the non-commercial phone modding community. Google can't, and probably won't try to, close it. They will continue to try to control it, understandably, but the cat is out of the bag.

I've bought a few laptops recently but they've all been older models with Windows 7. I wouldn't buy a laptop with Windows 8. Used it in the store. The Metro interface sucks. Why do I want to waste time learning something that sucks when Win 7 worked fine.

My employer has ditched Windows versions of our software and we're now all tablet. Developers warned Microsoft this would happen and they arrogantly ignored us.

Everyone makes mistakes, but only an idiot refuses to admits it and keeps their jalopy pointed at the cliff edge while flipping the bird to horrified onlookers.

Clueless troll is clueless. And also punctuates poorly.

So "this one is deterministic" seems like a weak complaint.

By your standards, this PRNG isn't so bad.

Sadly, Russia is turning more and more to Soviet ways. Putin was even rehabilitating Stalin.

Well the West, thanks to the upstanding duo of Nixon & Kissinger, "rehabilitated" Mao's empire already in the mid-seventies and helped the fine western industrialists relocate their ("means of") production over to the PRC while helping their own profit margins in the process, at least for a while.

Mao Zedong, despite having achieved double the body count of Stalin, doesn't even need rehabilitation as his "Communist" Party's princelings have continued to rule the empire, albeit now under new and improved nationalist-corporatist style policies. Nothing wrong with that in the 21st century, right?

Mao also successfully (re-)incorporated the vast western territories of Tibet, South Mongolia and East Turkestan (chin. "Xinjiang") to the Han Chinese empire; Tibet actually well after WWII in 1950-51. Nice grab of Lebensraum, natural resources and new geo-political/military influence over South and Central Asia... and they're still militarily claiming control of massive maritime territories extending deep into South-East Asia and of course large areas belonging to both north-western and north-eastern provinces of India.

China's national (and increasingly international) media is naturally still totally harnessed to spreading CCP's nationalist propaganda.

I have zero sympathy for Putin or his policies to rebuild the Soviet/Russian Empire through threats and military aggression, but hey, the West (USA, EU et al) have okayed and are of course currently perfectly fine with the People's Republic of China doing all these things. The key lesson learned has been that business always wins in the end over morality or international law. We often reap what we sow.

Should we be surprised if a Soviet-groomed KGB agent turned Russian authoritarian strongman feels that his regime deserves the same imperial carte blanche priviledges both domestically and over their smaller/weaker/more peaceful neighbours as China has been afforded (essentially with zero concessions)?

My old signature below may seem totally pointless to many, but the West set their tone already some forty years ago and the only reason the western democracies are now even considering diplomatic and economic sanctions seems to be that Ukraine happens to be located in eastern Europe, unlike those inconsequential (former) neighbours of China.

Friends who are not my friends apparently want me to stop finding meaningful results.

DuckDuckDon't.

See my reply here agreeing with your main points:
http://politics.slashdot.org/c...

Here is an essay I put together with about 100 positive and negative responses to the situation.
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
"There are a large number of possible cures that can be tried either to create jobs or to deal with the problems posed by widespread chronic unemployment, each with various different long term societal consequences (both good and bad). There are also other possible economic models like a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy where paid employment is not required to obtain basic goods and services, or a Gandhian swadeshi ecovillage economy that emphasizes community and family over abstract exchange. Some heterodox economists suggest moving towards those as another possible approach for dealing with the problems posed by a jobless recovery and other related economic issues like social equity and sustainability.
  There is a paradox that many people may be happier with more free time to spend with friends, families, and hobbies, if they still can acquire the basic goods and services they need somehow -- but this positive increase in satisfaction might appear as negative economic indicators like a shrinking GDP or a continually increasing unemployment rate. Also, not all jobs created by a recovery are equal in terms of their implications for overall societal well being (for example, more prison guard jobs may indicate some other social dysfunction is taking place). ...
    Here is a list of possible ways to deal with joblessness.[53] Some "cures" emerge mostly on their own; some require political action to start or to prevent. This list is intended to be complete in order to help in understanding the interaction between social changes and job creation; not all possibilities are desirable by most societies. The ones in the first half of the list (like wage subsidies, a shorter work week, or a basic income) in general would usually be considered more positive and adaptive responses than the ones in the second half of the list (like war, escapism, and luddism), although actual preferences or ordering of desirability and acceptability may vary depending on political beliefs and feelings about things like government intervention and taxation. Many of the items in the second half of the list have profit-making aspects for some individuals within the current economic system, although usually directly at the cost of others in society (like crime). Not all items on this list are compatible with each other. Not all might be considered moral or would be legal under international law or existing trade agreements. Some of these "cures" create new jobs (like public works), others make it easier to survive without a job (like frugality), others eliminate the unemployed individuals from the official statistics in various ways (like prisons), others in some way destroy abundance which has a side effect of creating jobs to build it back up (war), and some allow someone unemployed to take a job that someone else was doing but who no longer can do the job anymore for various reasons (like mandatory retirement). Some of the "cures" that help individuals survive without a job may actually increase the unemployment rate as they reduce demand for items in the market place produced by paid employment, contributing to overall increased joblessness even as the individual may be helped locally. Because these items may interact in unexpected ways, and people have many different feelings about them as different groups may benefit or be harmed in different ways, and many vested interests are involved, it is challenging for any economist, political scientist, politician or private citizen to make sense of all these issues or to pick a best way forward, even though people are trying in various ways to do that.[4] New approaches in social science involving computer simulation and agent-based modelling may also help in understanding the way these issues interact to gain insight into them.[54]"

That's complete claptrap. Yes, very recent (last 5-10 years) widget toolkits have started to force use of features that result in bitmaps being sent across the network, but that's hardly a reason to throw out X. And it's essentially a lie to pretend it means, somehow, that X11 doesn't have network transparency.

I find it pretty bad, to be honest, that the same devs who are protesting that X11's network transparency isn't what it could be are:

1. The devs that did this in the first place, refusing to advance the protocol to include the features that GTK3 et al required.
2. Apparently think the solution is getting rid of network transparency altogether.

I'm staggered, to be honest, by the whole thing. I appreciate old code is sometimes awkward to support, but the solution isn't a wholesale replacement of the project. Mozilla's developers may have made many mistakes in their decision to throw out the Netscape code that delayed the release of a great browser for many years, but they were NEVER, NEVER so stupid as to say "Well, we looked at the Netscape source code, and we think the solution is to get rid of HTML. It's too kludgy! I mean, just look at it, it's impossible to add features to it cleanly!"

If we were talking about a rewrite of X.org, nee XFree86.org, nee X86, that'd be one thing. It's probably necessary by now although I'd still say they need to seriously think in terms of refactoring the project. But throwing out the entire protocol because they refused to add the features necessary to make the protocol efficient? Fuck that.

"The US economy is rapidly splitting in two, into a blue-collar/lower education economy where unemployment is high and job prospects are low; and a white-collar/higher education economy where unemployment is low and that's where all the growth is happening (tech, finance, etc.)"

I agree the first one is not coming back, but as I see it, the second one is mostly going away too. To over-simplify, robotics eliminated blue collar jobs, but AI eliminates white collar jobs. A "basic income" is one solution to this. Below is a further elaboration on that theme.

Blue collar jobs making and mending things (and some "pink collar" service jobs like massage, hair cutting, bartending, nursing, and waitressing) are eliminated (or greatly reduced) by robotics and similar automation that can recognize and manipulate physical things (or empower one person to do more, like a powered exoskeleton or semi-autonomous welding rigs requiring only partial supervision). Better design of tools and products (including eventually 3D printing) also reduce such jobs by making "DIY" easier or making products that last longer or are easier to assemble and install yourself (like "John Guest" plumbing connections that press together).

White collar jobs and some other "service jobs" (like librarians, accountants, insurance agents, travel agents, system administrators, managers, teachers, radiologists, telemarketers, telephone-based support positions) are eliminated by AI and lesser programs that can recognize and manipulate information, or at least amplify the ability of an individual to "Do it yourself" like tax software. Again, even if they don't replace such jobs, they can empower one person to do what used to take dozens of people.

There is some overlap because most jobs in practice have a variety of aspects. Radiologists work mostly with visual patterns, for example, so software for robot vision is affecting them. Hair styling requires creative application of general principles to an individual with a certain shape of head and character of hair, so AI may be an important aspect for planing overall strategy. Improved telephone support may require recognizing human speech and holding a conversation.

So, the value of hiring a human for any job is going to diminish over time as robotics, AI, ad other automation improves. We saw that first in agriculture (in the USA, going from 90% of employment to 2% over two centuries while output grows, although gardening remains a popular hobby). Now we are seeing it in manufacturing (in the USA, going from about 35% to 15% over 50 years and still falling while output grows, and while the hobby maker movement rises). We will see that with white color jobs too. That is why we need a healthy mix of basic income, an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence, and more participatory democratic government planning.

By the way, it is true the USA imports more and more manufactured goods like from China. However, the smaller national US workforce still produces more than ever as well. The USA may bring those manufacturing back from China, but there will not be significantly more jobs from it because such jobs will be automated. Steve Jobs said this about Apple's manufacturing for example. The choice is between using humans acting like robots for pay in China (and shipping costs etc.) versus using real robots in the USA. Even China is automating to reduce labor costs. More discussion:
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

Other issues make this worse, such as ultimately limited demand for most goods and services with a law of diminishing returns, as well as money supply issues as most money moves to a mostly zero-sum FIRE sector casino economy concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and away from most human workers. But even without those issues, a robot or AI that never sleeps, never calls in sick, never files a lawsuit, never makes a careless mistake, never is rude to a customer, and so on is going to be preferable to a human worked for most jobs. And the nature of other jobs will change. If you were in a serious car accident, would you rather recover at home attached to a box that monitors your vitals and administers medication, with an AI on the lookout for any issues and supervised remotely by an MD, or would you rather recover in a hospital attended by human nurses and at risk of accidentally introduced antibiotic-resistant infection? Maybe people don't have that choice now, but they may soon. The recent monthly jobs reports show health care jobs stopped growing for the first time in decades. And much of health relates to diet and exercise and lifestyle anyway,not sick care.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sa...
http://america.aljazeera.com/a...
http://www.bluezones.com/

Self-directed education is great for self-development and being an informed citizen, but it won't solve this crisis. Education as compulsory schooling is mostly only making it worse (except as a jobs program to employ teachers and keep young people out of the general work force until their thirties if they pursue a PhD). More money to schooling only gets us more of the same results (preparing children for regimented existence in 19th century factories or the 19th century Prussian army). For example, as John Taylor Gatto puts it:
https://www.johntaylorgatto.co...
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"

See also: http://marshallbrain.com/manna...

Or see this article I put together of about 100 possible ways forward, both positive ones and negative ones:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society"

Back to the original topic, the pressure for fraud in academia and related research-results-celebrating industry is only going to increase as these trends continue, like, quoting Dr. David Goodstein:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

It's hard to see why anyone with an interest in Linux would want us to move away from X11 to an unstable untried display system that will be missing features by design, simply because some X11 developers feel that the core X.org server has a lot of cruft in it.

Wayland will look elegant to those programmers until the day they start adding the missing features. It'll be far more crufty and inefficient than X.org long before it ends up being feature complete. That's how programming works.