There is quite a big difference between a thriving small business which is taken over by organized crime and a large company that has gone broke and is legally taken over by a government under the auspices of a bankruptcy court. The moral is don't invest in Russia and don't invest in failing companies.

Rio Tinto is an iron ore miner that sells the ore to Chinese and Japanese steel producers. They don't make the steel themselves. An article in today's Financial Times claims that the big iron ore producers have frozen China out of talks on iron ore prices and are negotiating pretty much with the Japanese and then will make the Chinese steel producers a "take it or leave it" offer based on those prices.

There are some allegations making the rounds that Obama was played by the Chinese in Copenhagen. The mining case plus Google's actions makes me wonder if the West has decided that China has gotten too big for its britches and is being reminded that they are not a superpower yet and that they need to learn to be a little more cooperative with the rest of the world.

India, O.K. Eastern Europe? Stay out of Russia. Guy I know had his business taken over by the Russian Mob. There is no Rule of Law in either Russia or China.

My first CS course in my freshman year (1977) was "Structured Programming in PL/I. The only thing I really remember was that the following was legal:

IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;

The NRDC is pulling guesses out of their asses.

And the Heritage Foundation isn't?

From your article^H^H^H^H^H^H^H editorial:

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change.

There's actually nine rootkits out there for Linux?

Yes, they are supposed to be pretty scary, too. But what is worse, is that there is a ring 0 rootkit that rules them all.

At the same time, the majority of the population is not willing to pay the 20% (or more) hit to GDP it would take to prevent more CO2 from going into the atmosphere.

Cite. please. NRDC estimates the cost doing nothing could be as high as 3.6% of GDP. The IEA estimates the cost of a 50% reduction in CO2 would run about 1.1% of world GDP over the next 30 years.

Did Fox Noise cover this incident? Check their search engine. The answer is no (although they did cover a similar issue with Indymedia in 2004). Why not? Maybe, just maybe, no one except /. readers and 1st Amendment lawyer types thought it was a very interesting story. You'll notice that the link in the story is to a blog that covers 1st Amendment issues on a CBS News site, an outfit that is not exactly a darling of the right. Also, RTFA! EFF tried to discuss the issue of the gag order in a letter filed at the end of May. Given it has been 5 months with no response from DOJ, maybe Indymedia and EFF are only just now considering it safe and legal to release the story.

Not everything is a left-wing media conspiracy except to reality-challenged bozos like yourself who can't be bothered to think beyond whatever sound bite you were handed this morning.

How is it that, with such easy access to information, people still think the crash had anything to do with business? It was the Congress under Bill Clinton that mandated banks sell homes to people without money ("no money down" mortgages), and banks that said "no sorry you don't have enough cash" were subject to prosecution to racial discrimination.

Sorry Charlie, but a very selective choice of one sided youtube vids doesn't qualify as serious evidence. The actual foreclosure stats show that most foreclosures were on loans made to white folks in the burbs and that only a small fraction were the result of Clinton housing policies. This shows up in that most of the problems were with loans made by mortgage loan companies that were not subject to the Community Reinvestment Act which is the rule set that you are referring to and which covers the actual banks. It is a flat out lie to claim that the banks were afraid of being prosecuted for racial discrimination and so made the loans they did.

No, this was all about 3rd party mortgage brokers who acted as middlemen for the lenders who in turn never bothered to look at the actual credit risk of the borrower because they were able to securitise the loans and sell them on to some unsuspecting yahoo based on high credit ratings supplied by Fitch and Moody's who used models of foreclosure rates that were not based on actual reality. Couple that with the low rates supplied by Greenspan and Bernanke who refused to recognize that we had a housing bubble because they refused to believe that private enterprise would ever do something that dumb and you have the makings of a real disaster.

You need to turn off Fox Noise and realize that the world is much, much more complicated than your simplistic and rather pathetic partisan blather would suggest. There is a huge amount of blame to be shared in large helpings by Congressional Republicrats and Democans, the Fed, the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations, the banks, the mortgage brokers, the ratings agencies, the individual borrowers, and the buyers of the CDOs.

For a great set of articles on the whole mess, read Michael Lewis's book _Panic_ which is a wide-ranging compilation of articles on the '87 stock market crash, the '97 Asia crisis that led to the demise of LTCM, the internet bubble, and the housing crash. The articles appeared in places like the WSJ, NYT, Congressional testimony, etc. The articles show each crisis from a before, during, and after perspective. The seeds of the housing bubble go way, way back and are largely the end product of 30 years of financial "innovation."

Oh, BTW, Congress doesn't prosecute people or banks. That function belongs to the Justice Dep't which is part of the Executive Branch.

The TSA's reason for why you have to take off your shoes is so they can x-ray for all kinds of stuff. (I know for a fact the archway metal detectors don't reliably pick up metal near the floor, and I've noticed the personnel don't wand all the way down.)

Last time I was in India (Oct of 2001), they were using a standard metal detector with a two stair step in the center that raised you up enough to check your feet without requiring you to remove your shoes. Its probably too simple a solution for the U.S. though.

Its not that hard to outgun the police.

Yes, spending bills originate in the House and have to pass the Senate, too,...

Um, no

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

The trick is to prove that the judge is as guilty as the defendant. There was a case some years ago involving alleged cocaine cash seized at an airport under RICO where the prosecution sought to use as evidence the fact that the money carried by the defendant was contaminated with traces of cocaine. The defense lawyer asked for some cash from the wallet of the judge and tested it right there in the courtroom for cocaine traces. Sure enough, the judge's cash also showed traces of cocaine. The prosecutor's evidence was tossed and the government forced to return the seized money.

... form i8675j

No, you will need form twenty-seven B stroke six.

The worst thing you can possibly do in a UI is hide stuff inconsistently (ie, outside of user control) or move stuff around.

This is a general principal that is not limited to UIs. I wish I could convince my wife to put kitchen tools back where they belong rather than randomly choosing a new storage location each time she uses one.

The natural-language UI is a monstrous encumbrance, which needs to be taken out back and shot. It won't be.

Yes. Try obtaining a list of each individual nation's GDP as a percentage of world GDP. The engine understands "Norway GDP / World GDP" but I don't want to have to type 160 queries to get the list and all the queries I have tried basically return with a "huh?". The fact base is problematic as well: (N Amer GDP)/(World GDP) + (S Amer GDP)/(World GDP) + (Europe GDP)/(World GDP) + (Asia GDP)/(World GDP) + (Aussie GDP)/(World GDP) adds up to 113% of World GDP.

When one of your children is diagnosed with, say, Type I diabetes and cannot get private coverage after the age of 24 due to a pre-existing condition, you will realize why Gov't health care is, indeed, a basic necessity.