I remember when much the same concerns were raised about Chinese networking equipment. (If memory serves, being supplied into a large project in Australia).
This was before the Snowden revelations.

So, we now know that really what they were doing was preserving the supply of US networking equipment that could be pwned.

Thus, one wonders if the same thing is happening here?

Because the current state of Africa and South America has a *lot* to do with their colonisation by European countries. Murdering their people, passing on diseases, taking resources, abducting people as slaves.

So, tell me, who can't get it together in terms of morality?

Firstly, I'm sorry for your illness and your daughter's impending loss. It must be rough.

Whatever you do, I would ensure that your daughter's mother (or significant person) has the ability and the right to view what you've recorded or written and decide whether to show it to your daughter at a particular time.

The issue is that you can't make the judgement in the present as to what effect your words will have on your daughter in the future - and that effect may be unintentionally negative.

There was a This American Life episode where a parent did this: recorded messages for every birthday and significant event. The rule was that they were just for the child and weren't pre-viewed by anybody else. Over the years, the messages started to be viewed with a bit of dread. They talked about the parent's expectations for a particular future direct - which were not met by the child who, unsurprisingly, was finding their own path in life.

There's a lot of interesting and useful advice in this thread. Frankly, if it were me (may it never be me!) I would probably try and give her as good an experience *right now* as I could. Build those memories and leave lots of photos, videos, writing, etc.

Hell, that's probably good advice even when you're not dieing.

Er... as a New Zealander living in Canada I would suggest that New Zealand is *more* capitalist than the US. The US is quite a highly regulated economy - this is most visible in the way farmers can get subsidies. There are minimum prices, tariffs, all kinds of things.

New Zealand farmers do not get subsidies.

Not at all, nada, zilch.
Maybe some help when there's a drought or a flood.

Farming is also NZ's biggest export so it matters quite a lot.

Yes, there is a solid safety net - if that's what you mean by socialist.

You certainly can have a contract on the ticket - esp. if you get it from a human. You could read the ticket, protest the contract and hand it straight back.
See the obiter dicta in Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_v_Shoe_Lane_Parking_Ltd).

No ageism isn't okay with me.

The normal route for a work permit or immigration in Canada is to get a job offer and then follow the process to show that no Canadian could be found to do the job. There's nothing in there about age.

Many countries around the world have a Working Holiday program. It recognises that young people generally have fewer responsibilities and more desire to travel. It gives them a chance to try out a country or a continent and see if they can make a go of it. Typically, Kiwis and Aussies go to the UK, get a job, travel Europe and then come back after the visa expies after two years. It's so common that it's called the big OE (Overseas Experience).

Quite a lot of them do transition onto a normal migration route and stay. They are normally reciprocal arrangements and the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ and France all have them. The US refuses to make such arrangements so that route is closed to US citizens.

The Working Holiday was convenient for me because, instead of applying from NZ and trying to convince an employer to take me seriously, I could show up in Canada, ready to go and apply there.

I would note, that age often turns up as one of the criteria in an immigration scheme. Older migrants do generally have a harder time of it. It's more difficult to make the adjustments to make a go in a new culture.

In fairness, I blame the US on this one. The IRS is rather unusual in the world in demanding that US ex-pats report income to the US - even when they've lived overseas for years.

If you're resident in a country and enjoying its benefits then I think you should pay tax there. In fact, that's how it works for me. I pay tax in Canada at the normal rate for a Canadian. I have to declare NZ income to the NZ tax authorities (i.e. I used to own a house in NZ and had to declare that) but I would only be taxed on income generated in NZ.

If you have skills look up BC PNP.

Just copy Canada.

I'm a New Zealand-born software developer working in just one of those highly paid jobs in Vancouver BC. I refused to move to the US partly because I think the H1-B system has great potential for abuse.

As a country, you want the highly skilled migrants because they can work where they like and they bring great value. *Every* country in the world is competing to get them; except the US. US based developers have to compete against developers everywhere else anyway; preventing immigration doesn't help any. Even a low-skilled immigrant doesn't really steal a job. In many cases, the money they make is roughly matched by the money they spend that keeps the local economy moving. This is the experience in Alabama where they are actively trying to force immigrants out. Preventing immigration is also racist. As a country, you are claiming that those who are born in your country have a greater right to a job than somebody born anywhere else. Is there a fundamental difference between an American and an African other than their place of birth?

The Canadian system has a few ways in but they can be summarised as:
1. Find an employer who wants you enough to fill out some forms for you.
2. Show that you are young and smart
3. Wait for the paperwork. That gets you Permanent Resident status.
4. Wait 3 years actually in Canada
5. Apply for Citizenship.

In my case, I came to Canada on a Working Holiday Work Permit. This allowed me to work for anyone for 1 year and is only available to under-36 year olds. Then I found a job and explained what I needed them to do. I used a scheme where my province nominates me for immigration. My employer wrote a letter to the province, filled in some forms, added a copy of their incorporation certificate, I paid the money and off it went.

Google and Facebook are in one big battle - and it's going to get worse.

They're both ad platforms and Facebook is competing very, very well with Google. Google's continued failure to get social networking going is an enormous strategic problem.

So, yes, tieing everybody's bonuses to this is appropriate.

They gave him a knighthood, his studio USD50 million odd of tax breaks and subsidies and changed employment law so everybody who works on films is a contractor.

Exactly how much friendlier did you want the government to be?

IANAL but I studied 1 contract law paper at University.

You can't agree to something without having seen it first. The contract above would only hold for the second and subsequent emails you send him.

Contract law requires that there be an offer from one party which is accepted by the other party. The terms above would be the offer but the other party has to see the offer before they can accept it. Otherwise there can be no meeting of minds.

So who would you listen to? What would it take?

I couldn't find a simple answer for that but I'll give you my guess. The idea of warming is too simple. It sounds like every spot equally is going to get warmer by a few degrees. That's not the prediction.

Instead, some places will get drier (and get droughts) while other places will get wetter (and get floods). Some storms will probably become more violent (because storms are fueled by heat) and some of these storms may actually bring a lot of rain or snow making people feel colder. Lastly, there are some thoughts that climate change will switch off some important ocean currents which bring warm water to the likes of Britain and Northern Europe - which would make them a lot colder.

The term climate change is a nice catch-all to describe how the climate will change - and not simply become warmer.

(On a slightly more personal note, I'd suggest that your question indicates that you are not all that familiar with the predictions of climate change - which makes me think that you haven't researched the subject sufficiently to be able to rebut it well. This does not speak well for your position.)

Climate change looks to be an unmitigated disaster that is going to cause a very large amount of pain and suffering. This disaster will have been caused completely by us and we will have to put the work in to both deal with its effects and fix the damage in someway.

That some people, including some very powerful people (such as George W. Bush), do not accept there is a problem makes it extremely difficult to get started at dealing with it.

The scale of the problem is such that having people deny it seems criminally irresponsible and neglectful to the utmost degree.

Let me explain the scale of the disaster. There are already places in the Pacific that are starting to be inundated with salt water. The people of Carterets Island (near Papua New Guinea) are moving to Bougainville. The island nation of Tuvalu has sea water coming up through the middle of the island and ruining crops. Now one might argue that it is the land sinking and not sea level rising - this doesn't help the people who are removed from their homes and their country.

Bangladesh, with its 150 million people living on what is basically one very large river delta, is likely to be the country with the biggest problem. The country already has floods seemingly every other year during typhoon season. It would not take a lot of sea level rise before Bangladesh is uninhabitable. So where do those 150 million people go?

There's India to the west. Overcrowded and the (mostly Hindu) Indians aren't going to be exactly charitable to the (mostly Muslim) Bangladeshis. They haven't been in the past - that's why Bangladesh exists. Do they go north to Tibet? China would be distinctly unhappy about that. How about east - Myanmar/Burma. The backwards military junta there will not help.

Can you imagine the chaos if even 10% of the 150 million have to move somewhere?

The next problem is what it will do to the plants and animals on this world. The plants and animals we utterly rely on to live but never seem to acknowledge. A species lives in a certain place because it's found a niche there. It has a temperature it likes, food it likes and a place to live. As the temperature changes these species are going to have to move or they will die. Yet many of them probably can't move quickly enough to match the temperature change. It takes quite a long time for plants to reproduce and grow and many animals will require certain plants to be there. Secondly, as species move up mountain ranges to find cool enough temperatures, the species at the top will simply be pushed off - and become extinct.

Why do we care? Do you like breathing? Do you pay anything to create the oxygen to breathe? The biology of this planet is kind enough to do this for you. The planet is an incredibly detailed web. We do not know how it all fits together. We haven't even named and described all of the species. So how can we go changing the way the world lives if we have no way of predicting the outcome?

So, in the light of this massive problem, why shouldn't the world express exasperation at people who would rather ignore it?

You miss my point. The IPCC is not about the UN - it is about the number of scientists who signed up to agree with the findings of the report.

(Yes, the UN has its problems but most quasi-governmental organisations do. I will point out that your particular comment relates to events 40 years ago.)