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There are no 40" computer monitors, not to mention 50".

I beg to disagree.

The U.S. government has a higher percentage of its citizens in prison than any country in the history of the world. (The rate of 707 prisoners per 100,000 population is artificially reduced because of all the exclusions.)

Part of the reason the prison rate is so high is that, in the U.S., prisons are a very profitable business, with little oversight and plenty of chances to be abusive. For some detail, see Matt Taibbi's book, The Divide.

Oh, I agree that green groups are annoying in their tactics. I decry the uncivilized tone of all of it. Now, if you want to know who started it, then you have to read some history, and I assure you, there is a lifetime worth of references to read there. (Personally, I spot check about one in every 100 references -- and check more regularly if one fails the sniff test. I find this effective.)

Welcome to 2006: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

I have the bluetooth adapter and love it, save one annoying feature: you cannot turn the thing off without unplugging it. This means that it grabs my phone's signal whenever I walk in the house, regardless of whether I want it to or not (I have a speaker upstairs I sometimes use also). Other than that, it's a great product and solved the streaming issue via the stereo. Not sure the neighbors are so happy though...

Or, if you find using an onscreen keyboard with a remote deeply frustrating, how about grabbing a full size wireless keyboard that you can't possibly lose down the back of the sofa, this one is particularly pretty. It's RF and has a decent range, so you can still hide the pi.

Intuit is NOT making things completely right! Intuit is apparently just reducing the amount of abuse. See this explanation by an Intuit VP on Amazon:

"... returning customers who have already upgraded to Premier or Home & Business, we are continuing to offer $25 cash back through April 20."

Apparently only customers who know about the rebate will get money back; that may be a very small percentage. Many customers paid $30 extra, so Intuit will still make $5 extra for tricking customers. Some customers have automatic extensions of time to file, so they won't get the "$25 cash back", because they will file after April 20.

See this Amazon review: **UPDATE -- IT'S EVEN WORSE**. Quote: " Even in the high-priced Premier version, Schedule C is crippled -- limited to $100 of deductions in a couple of expense categories. I.e. only good for a tiny hobby business, and maybe not even that. So now having forced me to Premier, even that high priced product is useless to me."

See this story: Citing Tax Fraud Spike, TurboTax Suspends State E-Filings. Quote: "Cyber thieves have long sought stolen credentials for hijacked tax preparation accounts at TurboTax, H&R Block and related services."

Another quote:

"Stolen TurboTax or H&R Block credentials are cheaper and more plentiful that most people probably would imagine. According to the below-pictured well-known seller on the Dark Web forum Evolution Market, hacked accounts currently can be had for .0002 bitcoins, which works out to about 4 cents apiece."

Another:

"Unfortunately for Intuit and its users, calls for the company to support two-factor authentication have fallen on deaf ears so far, at least according to twofactorauth.org, a site that tracks which popular cloud-based services support the added security measure."

Intuit has a LONG history of abuse, of being anti-customer to make more money. Dishonest people don't later become honest, generally. This is an example of that. Dishonest people, when forced to correct their dishonesty, look for other ways to be dishonest.

If Intuit has a capable, strong board of directors, which I doubt, the board should consider getting a new CEO, and firing all the other dishonest people in Intuit top management.

This comment gives only a very short summary of what I consider to be Intuit's anti-customer behavior.

Intuit is NOT making things completely right! Intuit is apparently just reducing the amount of abuse. See this explanation by an Intuit VP on Amazon:

"... returning customers who have already upgraded to Premier or Home & Business, we are continuing to offer $25 cash back through April 20."

Apparently only customers who know about the rebate will get money back; that may be a very small percentage. Many customers paid $30 extra, so Intuit will still make $5 extra for tricking customers. Some customers have automatic extensions of time to file, so they won't get the "$25 cash back", because they will file after April 20.

See this Amazon review: **UPDATE -- IT'S EVEN WORSE**. Quote: " Even in the high-priced Premier version, Schedule C is crippled -- limited to $100 of deductions in a couple of expense categories. I.e. only good for a tiny hobby business, and maybe not even that. So now having forced me to Premier, even that high priced product is useless to me."

See this story: Citing Tax Fraud Spike, TurboTax Suspends State E-Filings. Quote: "Cyber thieves have long sought stolen credentials for hijacked tax preparation accounts at TurboTax, H&R Block and related services."

Another quote:

"Stolen TurboTax or H&R Block credentials are cheaper and more plentiful that most people probably would imagine. According to the below-pictured well-known seller on the Dark Web forum Evolution Market, hacked accounts currently can be had for .0002 bitcoins, which works out to about 4 cents apiece."

Another:

"Unfortunately for Intuit and its users, calls for the company to support two-factor authentication have fallen on deaf ears so far, at least according to twofactorauth.org, a site that tracks which popular cloud-based services support the added security measure."

Intuit has a LONG history of abuse, of being anti-customer to make more money. Dishonest people don't later become honest, generally. This is an example of that. Dishonest people, when forced to correct their dishonesty, look for other ways to be dishonest.

If Intuit has a capable, strong board of directors, which I doubt, the board should consider getting a new CEO, and firing all the other dishonest people in Intuit top management.

This comment gives only a very short summary of what I consider to be Intuit's anti-customer behavior.

Welcome to 2006: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

Welcome to 2012: http://www.amazon.com/Actionte...

Welcome to 2006: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

Welcome to 2012: http://www.amazon.com/Actionte...

There are 2,095 negative 1-star reviews on Amazon of Intuit's TurboTax Deluxe tax preparation software. Why? Because, without telling customers, Intuit removed important functions from TurboTax Deluxe.

Most helpful review: "The Deluxe version does not allow you to file Schedule D or E. ..."

Most helpful critical review: "I hate being gouged, and I hate weasel word explanations even more... I am angry about the deliberate disabling of critical features in TurboTax Deluxe. No Schedules C, D, or E."

The solution? In my opinion, the CEO of Intuit should be fired. Intuit should find a new CEO who will cure Intuit of its long-term abusiveness.

Estwald called, and says he has several tonnes of plutonium-186 in stock and ready to ship via para-universal transfer.

ISIS leans further to the right

It's left-wing groups that want to dictate what is acceptable to wear (schools often banning certain clothing for example), to drink (NYC and overly-large sodas) or even what women can do with their bodies (the constant slut-shaming of sex workers).

The only way for ISIS to go more left wing would be try to impose limits of speech - gh wait, they do that too...

Since you seem to be confused on this point please read the book Liberal Fascism for a better understanding of just where historically fascism comes from.

The U2 Elevation DVD used multi-angle really well - you could switch between different views of the concert, from the control room to BonoCam (yes really, even before Google Glass there were cameras in glasses) and general wide angle views. The control room view was especially fun.

I have to admit it never caught on generally but there are some select subjects where it can be really great - personally I think it could really flourish on a place like YouTube with and endless array of specialized subjects and millions of people to think up some creative use. I'm interested to see what comes of it.

Check out: http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-.... Look into finding ways to gain more control over school, vs leaving it entirely. Such as enrolling in college courses, etc. If you are using homeschooling to protect your child from science or the outside world - it will end poorly. If you are using freedom from traditional school to let your child really explore and treat middle/high school as early college - go for it! I recommend waiting until middle school.

Ok, aspirin is a well known example of this.... aside from that, [citation needed]

Seriously?

here's a few
http://chemistry.about.com/lib...

A whole paper on the topic
http://www.uesc.br/cursos/pos_...

Or how about an entire textbook
http://www.amazon.com/Medicina...

Thanks for the recommendation. Is there a particular Scott Meyers C++ book that covers general C++ techniques that you would recommend?

An Amazon search shows other books besides those written by Scott Meyers. So does Google. Also, there is no good way to understand what is the focus of each book, other than reading the very general title and the reviews.

I will start with Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14. Wow, 27 reviews, and all 5 stars.

Thanks for the recommendation. Is there a particular Scott Meyers C++ book that covers general C++ techniques that you would recommend?

An Amazon search shows other books besides those written by Scott Meyers. So does Google. Also, there is no good way to understand what is the focus of each book, other than reading the very general title and the reviews.

I will start with Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14. Wow, 27 reviews, and all 5 stars.

The kits are still out there. This one, for instance, is nearly identical to one that Radio Shack used to sell, and that I got lots of use out of when I was a kid. (The two chips are a 7400 and another 74xx chip...a couple of flip-flops IIRC.) Beyond that, there are probably more experimenter options now than ever. Not that long ago, I picked up a kit with an Arduino, a small breadboard, LEDs, switches, sensors, and passive components for maybe $30 or so.

Because what is the alternative? Alchemy? Voodoo? Religion?

There are two things to say about this:

1) Diet and fitness are hard problems because humans evolved as opportunistic hunter-gatherer-scavengers, so we are moderately well adapted to almost any imaginable lifestyle. When the optimum is broad and shallow (which it necessarily is, especially for diet, unless you are an evolution denialist) it is easy to wander around in the noise.

This is made worse by snake-oil salespeople who are dedicated to the idea that the optimum is narrow and deep, and they can sell you its precise location. They take any minor wobble that scientists identify--which based on evolution is almost certainly noise--and declare it the One True Location of Perfect Health.

2) The alternative is stories. Science fails to get traction with the public because it lacks narrative, which is an idea I explore in a lot more depth here: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-...

The most damaging event in modern nutritional science has been the false correlation between fat consumption and heart disease. In 2014 the WSJ published a fascinating article about how that happened:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Mary Enig's book Know Your Fats is an excellent place to learn what fats are so you correctly interpret the utter bullshit that people spout about particular fat types.

How can an unvaccinated kid infect and kill your child if your child was vaccinated?

No vaccine is 100% effective. So "herd immunity" still marginally benefits the vaccinated.

How can an unvaccinated kid infect and kill your child if your child was vaccinated?

No vaccine is 100% effective. So "herd immunity" still marginally benefits the vaccinated.

So show me a study on how effective the vaccine is? There are lots of other reasons for disease rates plummeting which are more to do with isolation practices and good hygenie.

http://www.amazon.com/Dissolvi...

This is a lift from an AC post

Where is the evidence for a working measles vaccine? There is no blinded RCT. It sure sounds like the observational evidence is confounded.

“A likely reason for this is that the case may have been misdiagnosed as a non-specific viral illness. Measles has become relatively uncommon in Singapore with two decades of widespread measles vaccination, and especially after the second dose policy was implemented in 1998. Many primary care doctors may not even see a single case of measles in a year. This makes diagnosis more difficult.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

“This was not a blind study, since the investigators knew which children had received measles vaccine. It seems probable that the occurrence of so much ‘measles-like’ illness in the vaccinated children was a reflexion of the difficulty in making a firm diagnosis of measles in the African child at one visit.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

“As only approximately 7% of the clinically-diagnosed cases of measles reported locally turned out to be measles by laboratory testing, there is a need for laboratory confirmation of measles to avoid misidentification of cases and improve disease surveillance.(2)”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

“Before the introduction of measles vaccines, measles virus infected 95%–98% of children by age 18 years [1–4], and measles was considered an inevitable rite of passage. Exposure was often actively sought for children in early school years because of the greater severity of measles in adults.”

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/...

"“It is evident from Table IV that many children in all three groups were unwell and that the proportion was greatest in the live-vaccine group (61 %), less in the killed/live-vaccine group (54%), and least in the unvaccinated group (38%)...
Table VI shows the cases of measles reported by the parents and those seen and diagnosed by the doctor. Of the total cases reported the doctor saw about 60%, and, of these, confirmed the parents' diagnosis in 93 % in the control group, 64% in the killed/live-vaccine group, and 70% in the live vaccine group."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

"Measles
Evidence from cohort studies
Effectiveness against measles was investigated in three cohort studies (Marin 2006; Marolla 1998; Ong 2007)...
There was a lack of adequate description of exposure (vaccine content and schedules) in all cohort studies. Another recurring problem was the failure of any study to provide descriptions of all outc

AC as i have modded here.
I seriously hope your "6" was not in response to his point 6.

He wrote: 6) Vinyl cannot easily or conveniently be copied to any portable player
You wrote : 6. Ever hear of the analogue hole??

Where to start...

I think he means you need a turntable. This is made more complicated as many decent turntables need a "preamp" before you can even connect them to a stereo (some older stereo's use to have a "phono" jack, but this died off).

There is also the issue that there is no "analogue hole" since Vinyl is analog in the first place.

Note: by stereo i am referring to something the average joe bought from your local big box, not your $10,000 pre-amp connected to another $30,000 in amps.

First decent entry i found on a phono preamp... read before responding about how i dont know what i am talking about, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/richp...

I know plenty of kids who have been vaccinated against measles yet still caught it. Something fishy is going on.
One should always have a healthy skepticism when it involves complex biological systems.
Here is a book by an ex board certified nephrologist who saw issues with vaccines in her clinical practice and wrote a convincing book about the subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Dissolvi...

Amazon Echo

The cost of living has gone up as well

Hardly. The cost of living in 1960 was $29.60, or, in today's dollars $236.74. The cost of living in 2014 is quoted as 236.736.

No surprise — the table I linked to was already inflation-adjusted. And, although "cost of living" and "inflation" are different things, they are tightly correlated.

cannot, in any way, be used as a measure of students intelligence or desire, capacity to learn

It surely can not — nor has there been any attempt made to use it as such. The point is, the price of a service quadrupled while the quality remained (or even degraded).

If you read the article, the kid already has a suspension on file for daring to bring http://www.amazon.com/The-Book... to school.

Apparently because it had an illustration of a pregnant lady (I'm assuming, since it's a children's book, an appropriately clothed one...)

40 trillion Becquerels sounds like it's a lot - but remember, 1 Bq simply means one disintegration per second. My tritium keychain contains 74 gigabecquerels of radioactive material (2Ci)! So the total amount of the escaped radioactive material in Fukushima is equal to about 500 of those keychains: http://www.amazon.com/Titanium...

That's an absolutely utterly stupidly trivial amount.

I've used this camera in the past. It has a ton of options, even an FTP option when motion is detected. This could be easily made to upload a static image that should start updating when someone begins to change the menu and stop when they are done.

Available at Amazon, eBay, etc. starting around $70. These IP cameras will email or ftp still images at 640x480 or you can "pull ftp" motion sensed videos at 720p. Dericam cameras are Linux based and "hackable" because the administrator password let you overwrite flash memory. They are also easy to unbrick *if* you mess up.

This example is a indoor Pan-Tilt camera: http://www.amazon.com/Dericam-...

They do have some bugs, like all these Asian made IP Cameras seem to regardless of price, but unlike almost all the others you can work or hack around them.

http://us.dlink.com/products/c... ... supports FTP. $63 - problem solved.

I was looking for practical, real-world things I can do right now to enhance my life through science and technology.

That doesn't look like it was the point of the book. It looks like an overview of the field, not a how-to guide.

Instead, I got very thin treatments of many subjects

I don't think that's fair. According to Amazon, the book covers 90+ topics in 288 pages. I don't see how they could be in-depth about any of them.

important subjects left out (like the 19th Century Russian Cosmism movement (precursor to transhumanism))

The Cosmism entry is on page 52.

How could Soviet propaganda reach the US, or the Americas (excluding Cuba)?

If you are at all interested in the actual answer, The Sword and the Shield is an absolutely fascinating book that answers your question. It was written by Vasily Mitrokhin, a senior historian for the KGB, who brought over thirty years of KGB mission records to the British after the fall of the Soviet Union. He discusses "active measures", which were propaganda campaigns designed to fracture public opinion and cast the US position in a questionable light. This includes really awful and regrettable things, like AIDS being formulated by the US Army at Ft. Detrick, those kinds of lies. Many of these rumors started by agents were spread to CPUSA members, who had members on college campuses around the country.

For a more entertaining version of how the Soviets influenced America and operated on her soil, I recommend watching 'The Americans' on FX network. Set in the 80's during the height of the cold war, the plotlines in the show are based roughly on actual events documented in the book, and from other sources of KGB history.

Yes, but generally any scientist* trusts the scientific method and experimental evidence over other methods of coming to a conclusion. There are a few exceptions with biases (climate scientists paid to parrot big oil's talking points, for example), but generally scientists try to discover the truth, whether or not it conforms with their world beliefs.

No.

The book 'Big Fat Surprise" in its explanation of how the dietary guidelines of how a low fat diet isn't backed by good science, showed how the scientific process was derailed by egos of scientists, eminent people, scientific politics, and group think in the scientific community - as well as lots of money from the big food companies.

The Millionaire Next Door

Highly recommended.

Cheers,
Dave

WorkMail Security Controls Let’s talk about security for a bit. WorkMail includes a number of security features and controls that will allow it to meet the needs of many types of organizations. Here’s an overview of some of the most important features and controls:

Location Control – The WorkMail administrator can choose to create mailboxes in any supported AWS region. All mail and other data will be stored within the region and will not be transferred to any other region. During the Preview, WorkMail will be supported in the US East (Northern Virginia) and Europe (Ireland) regions, with more to follow over time.

S/MIME – Data in transit to and from Outlook clients and certain iPhone and iPad apps is encrypted using S/MIME. Data in transit to other clients is encrypted using SSL.

Stored Data Encryption – Data at rest (messages, contacts, attachments, and metadata) is encrypted using keys supplied and managed by KMS ( https://aws.amazon.com/kms/ ).

Message Scanning – Incoming and outgoing email messages and attachments are scanned for malware, viruses, and spam.

Mobile Device Policies & Actions – The WorkMail administrator can selectively require encryption, password protection, and automatic screen locking for mobile devices. The administrator can also remotely wipe a lost or mislaid mobile device if necessary.

Sounds like it has the makings of a usable service.

WorkMail Security Controls Let’s talk about security for a bit. WorkMail includes a number of security features and controls that will allow it to meet the needs of many types of organizations. Here’s an overview of some of the most important features and controls:

Location Control – The WorkMail administrator can choose to create mailboxes in any supported AWS region. All mail and other data will be stored within the region and will not be transferred to any other region. During the Preview, WorkMail will be supported in the US East (Northern Virginia) and Europe (Ireland) regions, with more to follow over time.

S/MIME – Data in transit to and from Outlook clients and certain iPhone and iPad apps is encrypted using S/MIME. Data in transit to other clients is encrypted using SSL.

Stored Data Encryption – Data at rest (messages, contacts, attachments, and metadata) is encrypted using keys supplied and managed by KMS ( https://aws.amazon.com/kms/ ).

Message Scanning – Incoming and outgoing email messages and attachments are scanned for malware, viruses, and spam.

Mobile Device Policies & Actions – The WorkMail administrator can selectively require encryption, password protection, and automatic screen locking for mobile devices. The administrator can also remotely wipe a lost or mislaid mobile device if necessary.

Sounds like it has the makings of a usable service.

Here is the link to Amazon's official announcement so you don't have to go through the networkworld article.

It is notable that this is not just about email as it also supports many of the other features offered by Outlook like calendaring, tasks, etc. It also works with existing Outlook and ActiveSync clients so it is easy for an enterprise to start using it.

As I'm not an administrator of mail systems, I would like to hear from some experts about how the features Amazon has introduced today compare to the existing enterprise offerings.

For those too lazy to donate directly, do your Amazon shopping through smile.amazon.com and select the EFF as you charity of choice. This link might work if you're logged into your Amazon account: Amazon Smile EFF

The U.S. government is so weak in doing what it ought to do, take care of all citizens, that it can't even stop robo-calling.

The U.S. government is weak in doing what it ought to do, and powerful in doing secret, destructive things that make money for someone, the Bush family, for example.

Asking myself the same question, I went with MDisc technology, in the BluRay capacity, in addition to my hard drive backups. MDisc uses an inorganic pigment as opposed to the organic dyes that are common on CD/DVD/BluRay recordables (and degrade over time).

I'll do an MDisc burn every year and move it offsite, to keep with the 4TB ZFS drive I rotate offsite weekly. The MDisc won't get my mp3 or mp4 files, but the stuff I can't recreate.

My best idea currently is to write PAR files of loop-back mounted LUKS volumes and include the PAR software source and ISO of the distro on the disc, in case I need the data in 20 years (emulators should be readily available for 2015 hardware).

I needed a BluRay writer anyway, so I went with this LG and it's been a great drive so far, and at the right price point for me.

The cloud makes a great backup. If what you're archiving is small, encrypt it and upload it to a variety of cloud file companies with free offerings - Cloud Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.

For a moderate amount of data, use (encryption and) Amazon Glacier. If you don't know the trick: Amazon offers mail us a hard drive as an upload format for S3 and Glacier, and it's as good as way to do offsite backups as any.

I wouldn't use the cloud as my only archive, but as the offsite copy it's probably more disaster-survivable than most other choices most of us have available. (And affordable if we're talking a few hundred GB of personal stuff, not the entire multi-TB geek archive of "binaries").

Until the fines are set to a level to remove all profit and THEN put a punishment on top, large business will continue to flout the law because it's more profitable.

You're absolutely right on the theory, but then take the next step to recognize that it's the purpose of government to ensure their profits and help them take money from us (in addition to the FCC taking money from us directly and giving it to the telco corporations).

This is evidenced by these fines never having been at a level such as you describe and, more recently, the move to no-plead agreements between prosecutors and corporations. You'll be shouting from your wheelchair in a retirement home that the government should increase fines on corporations to be proportional to their income, unless the fundamental bases of the system are changed.

Of course, if you do something wrong on the scale of millions of dollars of damage, you go to prison. If a corporation does something similarly wrong, they pay out some pocket change. Because "corporations are people, my friend."

crap, forgot the link

http://www.amazon.com/Breett-D...

Every dollar store sells USB wall chargers

Speaking of that - maybe everybody knows this already but it had escaped my attention - I was getting annoyed that my phone charges very fast with the Samsung charger/cable but rather slowly with the well-rated 2A charger I bought off Amazon.

The issue was my dollar-store cables. Long story short, there is 28/28 gauge wire inside cheap cables and the resistance means they can only pull 500mA. The electronics at both ends are smart enough to figure this out. What you need is a
28/24 cable and then you can get a fast charge.

I'm using Galaxy Charging Current Lite to measure my existing USB cables and tossing the ones that can't handle at least 1.3A. This helps with my over-stuffed box of USB cables too.

Robert Conroy used the Trent Affair as the critical point in his alternate history novel 1862.

In the novel, Palmerston was not placated by Lincoln's actions, and Great Britain became an ally of the Confederacy.

Having worked at IBM Research and wondering if your contribution played a role in them developing Watson... You should check out this book. I'm reading it now and am enjoying reading about how the team(s) developed all the tech beneath Watson in preparation for the televised match.

It's chemical and GMO free, too! I'm excited to receive this vacuum bag. http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Him...

As well as Performance MX, the Anywhere MX also has a middle mouse button and scroll wheel. I use one at work.

Handheld Zapper to the rescue!

Would it not be one of these?