yokomoc comments

Anonymous seem to be taking credit for the Times hack, and now the Twitter servers have been taken down. It's getting interesting.

The final part should have read:

"Thank you gentlemen. Our them tonight: (link to YT vid of "Libera Me From Hell" from the anime Gurren Lagann.)

Zenny, whoever carried it out did it under the LulzSec name. Initially there was a fake story about Ruper Murdoch's death planted on the front page of the Sun website. The operation looks to purely vindictive, not any attempt to show up poor security.

Their twitter feed's been deleted (forcibly or voluntarily I don't know) but here's a selection of the LulzSec account tweets I have stored:

"So remember that secret pastebin operation...well... This is only the beginning. F#$% YOU MURDOCH. YOU ARE NEXT."

"WE HAVE JOY WE HAVE FUN, WE HAVE MESSED UP MURDOCH'S SUN"

"thesun.co.uk - what's going on here? Something up with the website? #correct"

"Arrest us. We dare you. We are the unstoppable hacking generation and you are a wasted old sack of s&*%, Murdoch. ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER."

"Thank you gentlemen. Our theme tonight:

*Salute breaking the unbreakable since 2011. Never stop sailing. You are free."

LulzSec just launched a massive hack on The Sun and The Times servers this morning taking passwords, emails, promising to publish to the worst. Looks like the servers have been pulled down.

Ratings can only be based off of past performance. If we start speculating on the payment capacity or wealth we open ourselves up to even more subjectivity and corruption.

I'm sorry but I think this is just wrong. The whole point of a rating system is to determine future ability and willingness to meet cash flow demands. There are two parts to any analysis - quantitative and qualitative. The qualitative part is by it's very nature subjective - it's an analysts interpretation of the data they have available (which in the ratings agencies case is usually limited). The quantitative part is largely model-based is includes a number of assumptions which again are subjective. If the analyst feels they have a good reason to change the assumptions and can back it up, they will. However if your qualitative analysis isn't good, the assumptions that go into the models will also not be good. Both require some amount of forward-looking or they have no relevance. The situation we're in now is unprecedented in recent times.

Moody's isn't my top choice and I've never relied on it as anything other than as a supplement to my other research but then they aren't meant to be used as an exclusive measure anyway.

Are you talking about Moody's Investor Services (rating's agency) or Moody's Analytics? I hope it's the latter.

The U.S, despite having massive debt problems, has never defaulted...

But that's the point - if their ratings are largely determined by what has happened in the past then it shows their models are still worthless and they haven't learned anything from the subprime mess. This is why pieces of crap bonds backed by ARM given to people who could in no way afford them were given double A ratings as late as 2006.

Anyway as it stands, Moody's just put the US on review for a downgrade after the latest attempt to get compromise from the Republicans ended predictably so at least they're responding. However if the US in on review then almost every financial asset in the world should be equally on review because the impact of default would be catastrophic.

Obama, having incurred more debt than all US presidents before him

Much of the debt the government's taken on has effectively been a debt transfer to relieve the private and corporate debt that had spun out of control before he took office, as well as the 'stimulus' package (which would be better labelled an anti-depressant - without it the economy would be beyond bad.) The gross external debt i.e. the total debt owed by all parties within the U.S. to other countries has risen from 13.5M before he took office to 14.8M as of June 30. Not good but unavoidable in the circumstances. You're also not accounting for inflation and relative economic growth.

The main thing though is you can't blame Obama for Congress' failings and the stubbornness of Republican senators to oppose everything. I do blame him for pushing Health Care Reform in 2009 at a time when the US needed urgent economic measures. Right idea but terrible timing.

The problem with the ratings agencies is they don't pay well so the staff they have are pretty poor quality and easily manipulated and their models are often years behind the market, but the market does respond to their conclusions despite their dubious value. That Ireland had the top Aaa rating 2 years ago should tell you how dependable these are.

Can you be more specific? Noone's claiming anyone is squeaky clean but to jump from that to corruption claims and putting them in the same bucket as News Corp is quite far-fetched.

But there's no chance Murdoch will be punished - he has way too much money.

The greatest punishment is to stop buying his newspapers, stop watching his TV stations, hit the bottom line. Already the anti-Murdoch backlash in the UK is massive. If the reports of hacking 9/11 victims' phones hold water the sentiment will spread to the US, then it may become a PR battle. One thing is for sure, the ability to manipulate and decieve the public is diminishing every day the world becomes more connected. Ironic that NewsCorp made such a mess of their one attempt to enter that market - MySpace. For a corporation that makes it's money on creating divisions to try to get into a market that brings people together was always doomed to failure.

Can anyone expand as I'm a bit confused by the article. What exactly are Nissan proposing - to have solar powered recharging stations around the country or is this some plan to recycle the batteries for another use ? If it's the former then logistically it could be difficult to implement if the number of electric vehicles on the road grows exponentially as you'd expect.

I think this is good. The family wanted the death penalty but deep emotions can cloud an issue like this. An eye for an eye will not bring closure, satisfaction or a sense of justice to Mr and Mrs Hawker. I hope they can look deeply into this. Life imprisonment is the right decision.

Rivals the BBC for corruption.

BTW being inspired by Andrew Breitbart then accusing others of corrupt practice takes incredible chutzpah.

We praised high standards, we demanded high standards but, as we are now only too painfully aware, for a period of a few years up to 2006 some who worked for us, or in our name, fell shamefully short of those standards

The front page bears an epitaph, “the world’s greatest newspaper 1843 - 2011”

News of the World - showing class and humility to the end. Throwing a few individuals under the bus to try and cover for the culture inbred in NewsCorp that allowed and encouraged them to take these underhanded measures, behaviours which come from the top of the tree. Thankfully in the new information age it's getting more difficult to get away with these practices. The tabloids will not be missed.

It's not Rinko Park. It's NEAR the park but the lack of green should give you a clue.

From the Sun to Fox News most of Murdoch's media empire is a sleazefest. Let this be the beginning of the end.

Ah Nokia, things were so much simple back then...in 2003. Gone but not forgotten.

http://www.freakingnews.com/Modern-Antique-Phone-Pictures-21738.asp

I read the company name as Bramate - what does that say about my mind? Speaking of which, Renho looks fantastic in this pic.

Interesting, the biggest thing missing (from my perspective) on the Facebook UI was video chat. Google Trends shows a levelling off of interest in FB recently and possibly the start of a decline. I'd like to see how usage changes once video chat is enabled.

so what's this Miss Earth thing? girls that are not beautiful enough for a Miss contest pulling the Captain Planet eco thing to raise their price?

Given the lack of information let's just assume they must be under 25, from both Earth and Japan, vegetarian and averse to shaving.

The unusual thing this time isn't the arrogant, bullying remarks of the minister, but the fact the press actually reported it as it likely happens all the time. I hope this is a sign that the press will start holding these useless old fools to accountability.

Cleo that's kind of backwards as one of the reasons using social media works for businesses is that it's NON-intrusive. If you don't want to hear from a business you just unlike them on FB, on unfollow them on Twitter or the media of your choice and the connection is broken. No more spam if you don't want it.

But what it does do is build a personal connection between company and customers. Remember most of the businesses involved here aren't going to be large corporations but bars, restaurants, family-run shops etc. Keeping in touch with regular customers outside of business hours is a huge boon for these places. Instead of a faceless email or cold-call you can have a realtime conversation with the person in charge, visible to anyone who chooses to.

Using "Social Media" isn't essential for running a business by any means but do it well and the rewards are there.

Do the research. You might be surprised.

OK, luckily there are other people out there who already have done the research.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

US ranks 3rd highest among Euopean and NA nations for the strength of the link between parental and personal earnings, only UK and Italy are worse. Top of the list are Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada and other such socialist hellholes.

US has the strongest link between parental background and student achievement in secondary education of all OECD countries.

naruhodo, I think you're reasoning is basically right. 80% of HNWIs in Japan are over 55 where the demographics favour women so many of them are probably widows or divorcees of rich men. North America actually has the largest fraction at 37%.

You can check out the full report for yourself (although it requires a quick and free registration)

http://www.capgemini.com/insights-and-resources/by-publication/world-wealth-report-2011/

Something interesting in the report that wasn't mentioned in this article:

31% of millionaires in Japan are female vs 18% in Western Europe.

Another one would not move out of my way and I had to push my pushchair perilously close to the platform edge because he wouldnt take one step back against the wall.

This. Some of these guys stand in the narrowest part of the platform and give you no space either side to get safely past.

However in this case the fault is first of all with the woman. We've seen it a thousand times where someone races to the door as it's closing and thinks that putting one part of their body in the way means the door will open and they'll get on. Even when the train is already packed. Even though their desperation to catch this train and not the one 3-4 minutes later means they're now delaying every other passenger as the guards have to come and help them out.

Before the financial crash impacted the passenger numbers, every morning at Naka-Meguro I'd see people delay the express train trying to cram into the front carriage even though the local train would come a minute later and it's only 2 stops to Shibuya. Often the time it would take to cram them was about the same as the time difference between waiting for the next train! Just selfish and stupid.

Maybe the funniest incident was where a woman tried to stop the doors with her bag, then had to watch as the train drove off with her bag half-in, half-out of the door. Made me laugh anyway.

The site is a definite improvement as the old one hadn't changed in years and was very dated in its appearance and UI. Are there more developments planned?

BTW For non-techy peeps using Chrome: click the spanner in the top right - Options - Under The Hood - Content Settings - All cookies and site data - Search for "japantoday" and delete all.

They're as complex as you choose them to be. Isn't this just a question about the user interface?

“We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

This just after the Mississippi floods? Who writes her lines for her - I think it's gone beyond gaffes now and it's become shtick.

Japanese TC badly needs to start doing something different, but will these be clever humour or just more headache-inducing slapstick?

Personally I'd like to see a Japanese version of the Daily Show if they could pull it off.