The ironic bit is that the polygraph has no scientifically established power to detect lies (independent of people's abilities). The polygraph is an interrogation prop. So when he was worried about the polygraph, it wasn't the technology that was the threat but the interrogator.

Seems he's Jacob Weber, photo on a story of his here: http://baltimorereview.org/ind... - which links to his blog at http://http//workshopheretic.b...

The situation at the ATMs is not because Greece is spending too much, on a primary basis.

It is because the ECB removed ELA support - or rather kept the same cap. This is more about the liquidity of the banks in the face of a bank run, not capitalisation. The Greek banks were recapitalised a few years ago, so they're meant to be ok.

The bank run is because people think there is a real possibility of Greece returning to its own currency (which probably would overall be better for Greece, given the politics in the EU). It makes sense to get your money out of the bank in a hard currency like the €, rather than wait and risk your deposits being converted to drachma by a new law. The bank run is *not* because Greeks are afraid their banks are about to run out of money - they're well capitalised now AIUI (least, as well capitalised as most other EU banks).

Note, if for some weird there was a bank run on German banks tomorrow, they too would have to close, outside of special liquidity support being given.

This is a basic function of traditional banking: a bank lends out or otherwise invests the money deposited with it. So a bank generally doesn't have enough cash (itself) to pay /all/ depositors. Not German banks, not French banks, not US banks.

Which is why we have central banks, to support healthy banks (i.e. well capitalised) through any liquidity needs. Which the ECB has stopped doing for the Bank of Greece, and hence the general Greek banking sector.

Arg, "then it does *NOT* mean that B implies C" is what I meant.

State finances and macro-economics work very differently to personal finance and micro-economics. To analogise from personal finance to state finances and macro-economics is meaningless. It's what politicians do. To try argue about macro-economics on the basis of an analogy is a fallacy.

  (Indeed, it is generally always a fallacy to try draw authoritative conclusions about a situation by analogies with another. Analogies can be useful to help explain concepts, or to help look for postulates to try evaluate to other contexts, however an analogy of itself has no logical force. If A is a bit like B , and if A implies C, then it does *NOT* mean that B implies A, precisely because an analogy implies A is *not* completely B. I've been trying to get people to call this "argumentum ad vehiculum", because of how often arguments can end up in car analogies - especially here on /. in its earlier days).

E.g. "Greece doesn't have a job" - that's a completely meaningless statement for a state. Greece has significant economic activity, and exports (tourism notably), further its government has been running a primary surplus the last while, before the latest crisis, i.e. its government spending ex debt payments has been *lower* than its revenue.

Further, many of the statements you make about Greece are untrue - or at least are no less true of states like Germany. E.g., total Greek spending on pensions simply is not significantly greater than German spending on pensions - it is simply that Greece pensions tend to have more in public pension, and less in private, compared to Germany. Given the primary surplus, that means Greek government recently has been living within its means, so your statement that Greece would go bankrupt even if debt was forgiven is untrue.

Taxes, yes, Greece seemingly has a huge problem with that. The current leftist Greek government are committed to fixing that - and probably more so than previous governments that were more in favour with Greek (and EU) elites. Further, as you note, Greece's tax collection issues can't explain the reckless lending of other EU banks in the past - which is what caused the problem.

Their bail-out in 2010 wasn't in their interests though. They were *pressured into* taking a massive bail-out and paying off private debtors because many of those private debtors were in *Other* EU countries, and those countries were afraid their own banks would collapse and cause another financial crisis.

The 2010 bail-out was as much about saving French, German, Dutch, etc. banks as about saving Greece. The rest of the EU was bailing out many of its *own banks, and Greece took that debt on in *solidarity* with the EU *against* its own interests. Indeed, that bail-out was probably also financially stupid for the rest of the EU.

Now the creditors are no longer private institutions, but other EU states and institutions. Now what is being protected is the political reputation of the politicians who made the decisions to make those insanely stupid, unsustainable, and indirect 2010+ bailouts of our own banks. It politically suits the likes of Merkel to be able to blame the Greeks for all that money, and not have to acknowledge that otherwise they would have had to bail out their own banks directly. It would be politically a disaster for Merkel to admit now that the Greek bailout is unsustainable, and was a bad idea. Indeed, it could cause her downfall if Greece were given a sane arrangement now.

Basically, this about blame-shifting. It was about shifting blame and responsibility for the excesses of the €zone banking system - dominated by France, Germany - from the financiers on to the people, with the collusion of the political classes. In particular, onto poorer people in the peripheries. When that started to fall apart, it became about shifting blame from the political classes for their responsibility in the bogus deals they did that protected the financial elites.

Because the debt is not sustainable. It will leave the Greek economy with huge interest payments that will cripple its economy for decades to come.

It is in Greece's interests to at least significantly restructure the repayments (much longer terms, with 0 interest on much of it for significant periods). Ultimately, they can do this unilaterally - "default" - in which case they might as well give themselves the best possible terms.

The vast majority of debt is owed to EU member states and institutions, and France and Germany in particular. It suited France and Germany for Greece to take on massive public debt in a bailout in 2010, because a good chunk of that money went to repaying *French* and *German* banks which risked becoming insolvent and collapsing otherwise - as Greece didn't have the money. The 2010 bail-out was as much, if not more, about saving *French and German* banks as about bailing out Greece. Indeed that bail-out broke IMF rules, but the IMF made an exception because of the exceptional systemic risk to global finance and the fears of another Lehman Brothers like collapse.

The sane solution for Greece in 2010 would have been to privately negotiate debt restructuring with its creditors, and unilaterally restructure payments where ever agreement couldn't have been reached. However, Greece was instead heavily pressurised by the rest of the EU to *not* do the sane thing, but instead take on *more* debt, because some of its creditors might have gone bust had Greece done the sane thing. Greece did this under pressure, and took this on to *save European banks*. Its own banking system got about €48 bn, to recapitalise, and its government got perhaps €20 bn to €30bn for operational needs (though even some amount of that went on financing costs).

Greece has been made to pay, very heavily, for the mistakes of the French and Northern European banking sector. Further, those who were *least* responsible for this crisis in Greece have been made to suffer the most - the poor, the young. This is fundamentally unfair.

Greece acted in solidarity with EU partners in taking on this bailout of, largely, *OTHER* European banks. The bailout was simply too big to be sustainable for the Greek economy, which has collapsed amid one of the largest recessions ever seen in the modern world. Instead of acting reasonably and recognising the solidarity the Greeks showed in 2010, several EU nations have - cowardly - instead tried to paint this as all the fault of lazy Greeks, which is an objective falsehood.

The EU *needs* a deal with Greece, because, as with all the previous deals, they are protecting *their own* banks, above all else. The Greeks now are saying any such deal also has to stop punishing them.

If the Greeks fucked up, then so did their lenders. Indeed, making the Greeks pay is about protecting France and Germany - Greece's biggest creditors - from the monumental stupidity of their own banks. The Eurozone forced Greek to take a bail-out in 2010 and pay off much of their private debt to French and German banks, rather than let those French and German banks go bust.

Unsustainable lending requires reckless lenders... And the EUs reaction since 2008 has been to protect those most responsible for the reckless lending - the financiers (and a small elite in Greece) - by making those least responsible pay for it.

Further, there is the mantra that it is unacceptable to default on debt. Of course, that only applies to debts owed to financiers it seems. Social debts to pensioners, who will have paid in all their working lives, and to whom there is a social contract of a (small) pension: default on them! But don't default on the financiers, never punish a financier.

The reaction to the 2008 crisis has been fundamentally inequitable, across Europe. The European people were of course always going to pay one way or another for the stupidity of the financial classes, of course. However, the financial classes have not been punished at all. They have been largely protected from their mistakes, and instead the rest of the population has been made to pay even greater prices for that protection. Usually in regressive ways too, so that the poorest have paid disproportionately more for the monumental stupidity of the financial classes.

The finance industry, globally, is out of control. It has been extracting ever greater rents from the world economy, without providing a commensurate increase in economic productivity.

The "double-tap" bombings, where they wait and bomb the rescuers, are surely clear breaches of the laws of war. Those rendering humanitarian aid onto others - even fighters if hors de combat - are meant to be protected.

It's an incredibly evil policy.

See e.g. the "collateral damage" wikileaks Iraq video - watch it past the initial strike on the photographers. They wait and then shoot up a van that stops, a random passerby who stopped to give assistance - a good samaritan - and they were *executed* for it. Their children were also visible in the front of the van and (at a minimum) very badly injured by the AH64 heavy cannon fire.

Evil, EVIL, **EVIL**.

And did Obama do, he approved this tactic for use in Afghanistan with drone strikes.

Post to undo a misclicked mod. :(

duckduckgo ?

The GPLv2 is not perfectly happy with DRM. It is very much possible to read the GPLv2 as requiring *all* material needed to install an executable, which would include keys:

“For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.”

The GPLv2 was very much intended to allow end-users to be able to *install* modified works. The incident which motivated RMS to start this whole free software thing and come up with the GPL was a printer whose software he wanted to fix but couldn't. The freedom to modify software on hardware you own is what the GPL was intended to provide.

The GPLv2 is *not* "happy" with DRM. At best, this is an untested grey area simply because the GPLv2 predates the notion of DRM and so could not use the language we use today. However, it clearly intended to cover installation. The GPLv3 unambiguously fixes this wording issue. That does not mean the GPLv2 allows it though.

Nae neeps and tatties?

Just get rid of the stupid locked door. The passengers have known since sept-11 that they must deal with hijackers from the cabin. The locked door just makes it harder for anyone (crew or pax) to assist in dealing with threats from within the cockpit.

How many suicidal hijackings have there been? 3 - and the passengers had already realised on the day and changed their behaviour as #3 was in progress. The best defence against these hijacks was already in place by September 12th - the passengers.

How many suicidal pilot crashes have there been of jet airliners? At least 4.This one, Egypt Air 990, Mozambique Airlines TM470, Silk Air Flight 185, since 1999.

There's just no good defence against a suicidal pilot. Bear in mind that Egypt Air 990 went from level flight at FLA330 to the ocean in 43s, even thought the captain was back in the cockpit within 12s (no locked door then) and behind the controls no later than 27s.

Also bear in mind cockpits have at least one crash axe (for crashes and getting at electrical fires behind panels).

IMO the best thing to do would be to get rid of the locked doors. Whatever chance the other pilot has, it would surely be increased if other crew and/or passengers could easily and quickly get in to assist with any man-handling needed.