Slashdot Mirror

Oops, that's not comparable to the previous one as this is per PPP. There's a per capita one where Luxembourg comes out top.

Later source (from here).

Norway, Sweden (both very close), Denmark, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Netherlands come out on top.

What surprises me is that the TSA scenario haven't been used in porn yet. (as far as I know.)

"Would you walk this way for a ... personal screening please."

Let's crunch the numbers, shall we:

Traditional pr0n:
-House rental in Chatsworth, California
$600/day

-Pizza box prop
$9.95

TSA pr0n:
-Airport terminal rental
$21,000/day

-Background extras
$3,200/day

-Backscatter X-ray scanner rental
$17,000/day

-pr0n that looks like this:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0MAh0_Oa3iU/TQLtweY2OuI/AAAAAAAAE00/aomwDmV6nP0/s1600/Backscatter++8.jpg

---priceless!

:-(

Dissing the almost blind...

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2006/06/introducing-blue-pill.html

Or at the very least, mention what you are talking about --> Blue Pill.

And this has NOTHING to do with bypassing an existing guest-hypervisor to get to dom0. It is about creating an ultrathin-hypervisor to hide your malware so it is not discoverable by the OS it is running on.

+5 informative, my butt. More like +5 misleading and incomplete information

WP8 has smaller tiles, which are then about the same size as icons in iOS and Android (you get 4 small tiles in each horizontal row). Also don't forget that it doesn't put all your tiles on the start screen, you pick & choose, and there's a separate list of all installed apps, much like Android.

So the only real difference is that in WP live tiles always serve as launchers for the associated app, while in Android widgets can do whatever when tapped. Well, and widgets are much less restricted in what kind of UI they can present compared to tiles - there's no way to write something like the Android email or full-size calendar widget for WP8. But, on the other hand, a poorly written Android widget can rapidly siphon your battery in the background, precisely because of that.

Actually, a good source of steel for barrels is old truck axles:

http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2009/08/history-harry-pope.html

William

Indeed, though if you dig around you'll find that a great deal of the site isn't centered around design patterns.

Not entirely sure it's true, but it's certainly a pain to search up and down an inheritance tree to find where a function gets defined.

That's a different problem with so-called object oriented languages. Adele Goldberg sums it up: "In Smalltalk, everything happens somewhere else"

Other things to consider would be things like the circle-ellipse problem, the limits of hierarchies, etc. Really, there's a whole world of new problems caused by OPP. The question, of course, is does it improve code quality or developer productivity?

Not according to Potok, T. E., Vouk, M. & Rindos, A. (1999) Productivity Analysis of Object-Oriented Software Developed in a Commercial Environment Software - Practice and Experience, 29(10), pp 833-847

Other studies have come to similar conclusions. It seems like we're adding complexity for no practical benefit when we buy in to the OOP hype.

At least I'm in good company, OOP was dropped from the freshman curriculum at CMU. You may remember this from a few years ago: "Object-oriented programming is eliminated entirely from the introductory curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-parallel by its very nature, and hence unsuitable for a modern CS curriculum."

Just for fun, this classic essay which has made quite a splash, despite it's origins as a blog post: Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns

I'm just tossing stuff out here. There's tons of stuff on the web and a few zillion discussions we could have. I don't even know where to begin, there isn't any focus. If you have an ACM DL subscription, there is enough reading to keep you busy for a few years.

Indeed, they might not care at all, but they act like they may give an iota of a crap.

The debacle with Google collecting Publicly Open Unencrypted WiFi Communications was controversial, and even intentional *gasp*, yet:

But, the commission said, Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data was flowing, unencrypted, over open radio waves.

I concede this means little regarding moral privacy, I mean they did it anyway, right?!

It was a wake-up call to people who are too ignorant or lazy to secure their networks. People need to learn, good for Them!

It falls in line with a campaign to raise awareness about what information you put out there.

Crowd Funding Freedom
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2012/08/crowdfundingfreedom.html

Perhaps the funding folk need to read and think.

all the best,

drew
with a little blatant self promotion.
on topic though.

I can't understand . amartottho71

Oh Good, for a while there we sounded confused. My point was exactly that. But you're missing a key point, bacteria did not have the ability to metabolize citrate. You're ignoring that completely new structures developed in the cell to make the process possible, apparently because you just don't like the implication.

Do a search for "citrate" on this page: http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2008/07/answers-in-genesis-on-ecoli-and-citrate.html

This is a guy countering an anti-evolution article on this very subject - notice that he does not dispute that E Coli can metabolize citrate under specific conditions, and even cites a study that describes the process.

Your claim that E Coli completely evolved a new ability from scratch seems to be sadly mistaken. It seems to be more like the various types of antiobiotic resistances documented - there are existing structures within the bacterium that can be slightly modified for different effects. (For citrate E Coli, seems to be an existing metabolic pathway repurposed) Modifying existing structures is not the same as evolving a completely new structure. You cannot accomplish every aspect of evolution by minor tweaks (prove this claim wrong).

Citrate metabolizing E Coli is not slamdunk evidence for evolution, especially since you have not accounted for an alternative explanation - bacterium were designed to be robust and adaptible organisms. It'd also be worth testing how well the new functionality sticks around in the population within a competitive environment. Just because a lucky break happened doesn't mean it stuck.

You continue to conflate abiogenesis (the beginning of life) with evolution (the development of life), and you seem to do it in places that only serve to help your argument. This leads to fairly deep misunderstand about the requirements and processes of evolution because everytime I point out something you try a "NO TRUE SCOTTSMAN!" fallacy. So this conversation isn't getting very far.

You're the one who brought up, "once something's started". _If_ something is started, then you may indeed iterate upon it. It's a very big "if" that you insist that evolution may take for granted. That's all I had to say about your assumption - "If" - I was skeptical, but discussing it wasn't important to my point.

You're trying too hard to put all of my objections into the categories of "common evolutionary misunderstandings". I'm not bringing up abiogenesis - I'm pointing out how hard it is for a bacterium to evolve into a mammal. You're the one who took a single word - "If" - to mean that I'm conflating "abiogenesis" with "evolution".

Last try: Your claim was 'evolutionary processes CANNOT create new information'. Or more specifically it was: 'Random bit flips + filter can't create new information'.

...

Ultimately you've already acknowledging the process CAN create information. You've also acknowledge in previous responses to others that the environment qualifies as a filter, and mutations qualify as random bit flips. My contention is that you've already acknowledged evolution and are either trolling or have such irrational resistance to the word 'evolution' that you cannot think clearly.

It is not that it is perfectly impossible, but that it is practically improbable. Can a random string generator create a bestseller novel? A best seller novel (like Twilight, or LotR) is certain a possible outcome of a random string generator, but it is practically impossible for the random string generator to write a readable novel, let alone a best seller. Using a dictionary and grammar filter on the output and iterating isn't likely to help you any - were awl familiar wit automated spill cheek fails. The most likely outcome of a random string generator, even with generous filters, is junk - garbage in, garb

The President is an expensive office. There is a shit ton of money spent on keeping the person in it safe, happy, connected, getting them where they need to go, and so on. The cost of brewing some beer wouldn't even stack up to the salary of a single Secret Service agent, never mind the cost of running something like Air Force One.

The ENTIRE cost of the 2008 White House, to include Air Force One, the helicopter squadron, Secret Service, the White House Visitor's Center, the White House branch of the postal service, and all salaries including the president's, is about $1.5 billion. That's about 0.05% of the 2008 total budget (and that budget didn't include the cost of the wars, since they were still off the books in 2008.) Whatever costs for the beer project not paid out of the President's pocket presumably would be covered by the $1 million "unanticipated needs" line item in that budget.

Needless to say, I'm not worried about the cost of this project, and hey, if it increases the awareness of homebrewing, just the increase in economic activity around that area would probably raise enough taxes to cover the cost of the White House brewing project.

Source

I was just looking at this for a much smaller pile of data (aroudn 300GB) and came across this http://ldiracdelta.blogspot.com/2012/01/detect-duplicate-files-in-linux-or.html

That's because they are extortionate: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-egCdCQfOYgY/T3dLa1LjTrI/AAAAAAAAAX4/mIiryUnYncE/s1600/MMI%2B%2527RAND%2527%2Boffer%2BH.264.png

I want fried elephant bird legs - great for family reunions when there just isn't enough chicken. It went extinct so recently that there should be plenty of DNA to work with.

Thought you might appreciate this

I agree, Drupal is a steaming load. The only people who dig it haven't actually worked with maintainable well-engineered OO systems. Drupal seduces you with a facade of broad functionality but turns out to be a morass of bad architecture underneath. It is useful for run of the mill CMS sites, but anything slightly custom and you are fucked.

http://macnix.blogspot.com/2012/05/change-mac-os-108-mountain-lion.html

It was meant as a joke ... a joke intended to buttress OP's point that this particular skeuomorphic design doesn't actually "help you figure out how to work with it." But even as I was typing I thought "... hmm somebody probably has written a fix for this ..." :)

Thanks for the link.

http://macnix.blogspot.com/2012/05/change-mac-os-108-mountain-lion.html

dec 2006. 2 weeks before steve jobs even unveiled the iphone.. take a look at this picture on the following website http://www.slipperybrick.com/2006/12/lg-ke850-touch-screen-mobile-phone/ this following is from... june 2006 6 months before iphone unveiled. http://mobileanalystwatch.blogspot.com/2006/06/strategy-analytics-touch-screen-phones_30.html "Stuart Robinson at Strategy Analytics said, "The touch screen market in cellphones is nearly ready to take off, but before it can do so certain conditions must be met. First, the cost of touch screen technology must shrink from $5-10 dollars to under $3. Second, revenue-generating applications must be developed to differentiate touch screen devices from menu or icon driven phones. Finally the market requires a catalyst, such as the presence of an iconic touch screen phone in a Hollywood blockbuster, to generate demand." Strategy Analytics forecasts that "touch screen interfaces for mobile phones will remain at under 2 percent of total devices until such a catalytic event occurs, predicted to be at the end of 2007, at which point rapid growth will ignite interest in touch screen phones, growing the market to around 40 percent by 2012." Stephen Entwistle at Strategy Analytics added, "We expect most demand to come from finger-sensitive technology built into high-end feature phones. This will be a significant shift from today's wireless PDA segment, where most stylus-driven touch screen devices can be found." not only apple thought about making touchscreens finger tip sensitive. where then you need areas of design (think icons on your desktop) to know where to press your finger. so how are icons new and innovative?

Is that anything like salmon neuroscience?

Silly american!

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-856mpg-vw-polo-bluemotion-available.html

When I say that Mars rovers are things that could have been done with Cold War technologies, I pass for a boring unenthusiastic guy. But the thing is, we have been there, we have done that. When will we send an autonomous robot on Mars? Or one that can build stuff there? Or one that can dig deep enough to get to the water that we know is there, thanks to a high-tech spectrometer that scanned underground resources from orbit. Now that's a new piece of impressive tech that no one talks about.

How about trying to analyze and test filtering and electrolyse ice water that we know exist because we have pictures of it ? But forget about it. Yay remote controlled cars!

When I say that Mars rovers are things that could have been done with Cold War technologies, I pass for a boring unenthusiastic guy. But the thing is, we have been there, we have done that. When will we send an autonomous robot on Mars? Or one that can build stuff there? Or one that can dig deep enough to get to the water that we know is there, thanks to a high-tech spectrometer that scanned underground resources from orbit. Now that's a new piece of impressive tech that no one talks about.

How about trying to analyze and test filtering and electrolyse ice water that we know exist because we have pictures of it ? But forget about it. Yay remote controlled cars!

Agreed. Just about every serious economist out there will tell you that US gas taxes are much lower than would be socially optimal. For instance, Greg Mankiw, former chairman of the CEA and an adviser to Romney, listed a few key reasons for phasing in an extra $1/gal tax in an article for the WSJ. Steven Chu, Obama's energy secretary, had a broadly similar proposal.

The costs of road use and pollution need to be linked to the price of using the roads and the price of polluting. If we want people to use less gas, we should tax it more. Demand for gas is relatively inelastic, so gas tax revenues would greatly increase, and we could use that to either help with the deficit or reduce taxes on things we want people to do more of (like income/payroll taxes, which tax productivity).

The only trouble is that even though this is a no-brainer, it's a third rail which no mainstream politicians will touch.

(Here's a Washington Post article with more details.)

... fwiw, one of the most competent engineers that I know is a home-schooled dyed-in-the-wool creationist, has a gaggle of kids, goes to Church on Sundays. And not just regular-old-competent but rather a go-to guy for building stuff and solving problems whose ability to understand the interactions of a dozen complex systems is beyond question. That doesn't prove much, but working with a person like that reminds me on a daily basis that theology and engineering can be (at least for one person) completely orthogonal areas of life.

This reminds me of one of the planks of Mark Graber's post at Balkinization on amending the American People. Read the whole thing, but I've excerpted one relevant bit:

Constitutional democracies function best when citizens have substantial cross-cutting relationships or what Robert Putnam calls bridging capital. Notwithstanding any other provision in the Constitution, therefore, the American people are hereby amended so that all citizens have friends and associates who they recognize to be reasonable and morally decent individuals, even though they disagree with them on the fundamental political issues of the day. Provided, all Americans are allowed one issue (abortion, aid to foreign countries, the designated hitter rule) in which they may deem all opponents to be either intellectual morons or moral cretins.

And yet, the Galaxy Ace which is an almost exact replica of the iPhone, was ruled not to infringe. See here for a comparison.

I'm just hoping that the Galaxy 11.8 comes out in the next month or two as planned, since it will be the first with 128-bit ARM NEON vector double-precision floating point, useful for the scientific applications that I develop. The Galaxy 11.8 ushers in the era of tablet number crunching. iPad won't get it until iPad 5.

You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire, or Nokia over the Lumia.

...yet. Now that they've won against Samsung, if the verdict stands, do you honestly think they won't start going after other companies? Mark my words, if this verdict stands, Samsung was just the first and we can look forward to a whole new slew of "trade dress" and patent lawsuits.

In fact, I'll even go so far as to predict that if this verdict stands, Apple will have basically hung themselves. Now, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has ever built anything will be looking to patent the crap out of it all because it's clearly not acceptable any more to have something that cosmetically looks and vaguely works like something else any more. And when Tom, Dick, and Harry go looking for people to sue because hey, that thing has a triangle on it and my thing has a triangle on it, so they owe me a kazillion dollars!, who do you think they're going to go after? The companies with the deepest pockets, of course.

As has been pointed out a lot in these threads, a lot of Apple's products look almost identical to products that came before. Sure, Apple has endured some lawsuits, but nothing on the order of what they've just put Samsung through, and most people--especially large corporations who want to coexist with them--were content to just leave them alone. Not any more, though. The "thermonuclear war" of patent lawsuits among the big players is now starting, and this is inevitably going to do as much harm, if not more, to Apple as it is going to everyone else.

Also, I have to point out that I honestly believe that we had a so-called "runaway juror" running things. In an interview, the jury foreman told the local newspaper that he owns a patent. If you look up that patent, it is for a TiVo-like device that he patented several years after the TiVo was released. With such a large verdict, this opens the door for him to sue over his patent and get a crapton of money from it. Why Samsung didn't strike him from the jury is beyond me, but I wasn't there so I don't know. Other potential jurors may have been worse. At any rate, he is on the record that he wanted to "send a message," "we wanted something more than a slap on the wrist." This is in spite of the judge's instruction that damages shouldn't be assessed to punish the defendant. Other jurors have said that they were influenced by this guy. "He owned patents himself... so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier." Yeah, I'll bet it was.

I hope for the sake of everyone--including Apple--that this verdict is overturned and overturned quickly. As someone who grew up geeky and who loves technology, it scares me and angers me that we have gotten to the point where "it kind of looks and works like an X, but with these features and innovations" is the standard by which billion dollar-plus awards are given for "copying." I can't think of any modern device that we enjoy that hasn't come about by iterative innovation by multiple people and companies.

I own some Samsung devices, and I didn't buy them because they were "copies" of iDevices. If I wanted an iDevice, I'd buy an iDevice. If you present any iDevice and any Samsung device in front of me, I will immediately be able to tell you which is which. If you hold them up fifteen feet away, it might take me a second, but I could still do it. If you turn the device on, I could probably tell you which is which from 20 or more feet away, even on phones with relatively tiny screens. To someone who's not as familiar with mobile technology, maybe they couldn't at a quick glance, but within a minute or two, I could show them enough that they'd be able to tell you what the differences are between them, including advantages and disadvantages of each device. No one is going into stores wanting an iDevice and walking out with a Galaxy Whatever.

If you want to try playing with a simulation of Quantum Computing, you can check out my tutorial that shows you how to do Gover's Algorithm using QCF on Octace.

>You do know LOIC is a generic, open-source, you-specify-the-target DoS/stress-testing tool, right?

Yes. Who doesn't?

"Who doesn't?" was my thought, but your post made me wonder.

>Yes, there are modified versions to automatically join some collective attack, but downloading and using the original is no more "turning your computer's control to someone" than downloading and using any other binary.

But that's not how it works in practice. Typically it's "join my botnet jihad against the RIAA or Scientology" and you download a LOIC already pre-targeted for whatever.

But "Anyone who installs LOIC..." != "Typically..."

If it's just going to be you, yourself using LOIC, you may as well be sending out "ping -s 65507 example.com."

That doesn't do the same attack, but even if it did, command lines scare some people -- and while I'd consider that a good indicator of dumbassery, their proportions are not epic if they maintain control of the target themselves. And LOIC gets a lot of press from Anonymous operations, so while I assume there are better GUI replacements, it's unsurprising that it should be the first DoS tool a dumbass of modest proportions would seek.

Between your equating LOIC's TCP and UDP attacks with a maximum-size ping, and your assertion below that it's completely non-configurable at runtime, it's clear you know next to nothing about it. At least look at a bloody screenshot before shooting your mouth off, ok?

Google is phasing out Message Filtering and Small Business Edition, with no migration to Apps for Business. They also killed Google Message Continuity for Exchange in favor of pushing Apps. That may work for some people, but others are only going to use an Exchange focused solution. That was $13 per user per month.

Can't delete or edit...crap: Voltage drop less, and current higher - Here's the site for said modification: http://himeshp.blogspot.com/2012/07/raspberry-pi-usb-power-issues-ultimate.html

Some people claim that all the top cyclists were doping, and if Lance won the Tour de France at all, he must have been doping as well.

That's possible, but if anyone could have won the tour without cheating, it was Lance Armstrong. He had all the legal advantages he could have: his team always had a bunch of the world's top cyclists, riding for him; his team always had enough money that they could just ride whatever training rides they thought would best help Lance win (many teams have to win races during the season to get the prize money; Lance's team had plenty of money and didn't need to do that). Manufacturers gave him their best new technology to use. Heck, he would go ride the toughest mountain climbs multiple times, trying different angles through the turns and seeing what numbers he got on his power meter. In short, he had every legal edge.

On the other hand, the Tour de France is possibly the toughest athletic competition in the world, without hyperbole. How many competitions take 21 days to complete, with the athletes working hard for hours and only two rest days? And all that in the July heat in France? My bike mechanic says that he believes all the top riders are cheating, just because with that level of effort, the cheating would give an edge that non-cheaters couldn't touch.

Also, I'm deeply suspicious of the anti-cheating lab work. When Floyd Landis was accused of doping with synthetic testosterone, all sorts of details came out: the lab knew which sample was his, the lab engaged in shoddy lab work and flawed chain-of-custody procedures, and (worst of all, in my opinion) the same lab tested both the "A" and "B" samples. (Never mind whether a French lab is "out to get" an American athlete... it would be highly embarrassing if the "B" result was negative after all the hoopla over the "A" result. I would have much rather seen that B sample sent to a different lab in Switzerland or something.)

I'm also troubled by the question of fairness. There is an old saying, "military justice bears the same relationship to justice that military music bears to music." The anti-doping system is stacked against the athlete; once an athlete is accused, bad things happen to the athlete, and there is no hope. Even in the case of Floyd Landis, where a bunch of people worked to help him and submitted all sorts of testimony that (IMHO) invalidated all the evidence against him, he was still found guilty and stripped of his Tour win. (Later he confessed, so maybe he was guilty after all... but I still am not convinced that the evidence used against him should have been used.)

The USADA proceedings are not legal proceedings in a courtroom environment, and the protections that the accused receive in a courtroom are not there. The head of USADA gets to act as prosecutor, judge, and gets to hand-pick the jury: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/sports/other-sports/usada-s-travis-tygart-plays-prosecutor-jury-and-judge-lance-armstrong-case

Now for one moment assume that Lance Armstrong is completely innocent. What possible recourse does he have within the USADA system? How can you prove a negative? He was the most-tested man in all of sports and he never failed a test... USADA doesn't care. The witnesses against him have something to gain from denouncing him... USADA doesn't care. How can he prove that he wasn't doping 17 years ago? He doesn't have a witness who was with him 24/7 and can say he never doped. He doesn't have lab results of his own, and if he did he wouldn't be allowed to present them. So if he participates, all he can do is stand there and say "it's not true".

Some people think that Lance Armstrong is implicitly admitting guilt by not contesting this ruling. But his public statement explicitly says he n

Some people claim that all the top cyclists were doping, and if Lance won the Tour de France at all, he must have been doping as well.

That's possible, but if anyone could have won the tour without cheating, it was Lance Armstrong. He had all the legal advantages he could have: his team always had a bunch of the world's top cyclists, riding for him; his team always had enough money that they could just ride whatever training rides they thought would best help Lance win (many teams have to win races during the season to get the prize money; Lance's team had plenty of money and didn't need to do that). Manufacturers gave him their best new technology to use. Heck, he would go ride the toughest mountain climbs multiple times, trying different angles through the turns and seeing what numbers he got on his power meter. In short, he had every legal edge.

On the other hand, the Tour de France is possibly the toughest athletic competition in the world, without hyperbole. How many competitions take 21 days to complete, with the athletes working hard for hours and only two rest days? And all that in the July heat in France? My bike mechanic says that he believes all the top riders are cheating, just because with that level of effort, the cheating would give an edge that non-cheaters couldn't touch.

Also, I'm deeply suspicious of the anti-cheating lab work. When Floyd Landis was accused of doping with synthetic testosterone, all sorts of details came out: the lab knew which sample was his, the lab engaged in shoddy lab work and flawed chain-of-custody procedures, and (worst of all, in my opinion) the same lab tested both the "A" and "B" samples. (Never mind whether a French lab is "out to get" an American athlete... it would be highly embarrassing if the "B" result was negative after all the hoopla over the "A" result. I would have much rather seen that B sample sent to a different lab in Switzerland or something.)

I'm also troubled by the question of fairness. There is an old saying, "military justice bears the same relationship to justice that military music bears to music." The anti-doping system is stacked against the athlete; once an athlete is accused, bad things happen to the athlete, and there is no hope. Even in the case of Floyd Landis, where a bunch of people worked to help him and submitted all sorts of testimony that (IMHO) invalidated all the evidence against him, he was still found guilty and stripped of his Tour win. (Later he confessed, so maybe he was guilty after all... but I still am not convinced that the evidence used against him should have been used.)

The USADA proceedings are not legal proceedings in a courtroom environment, and the protections that the accused receive in a courtroom are not there. The head of USADA gets to act as prosecutor, judge, and gets to hand-pick the jury: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/sports/other-sports/usada-s-travis-tygart-plays-prosecutor-jury-and-judge-lance-armstrong-case

Now for one moment assume that Lance Armstrong is completely innocent. What possible recourse does he have within the USADA system? How can you prove a negative? He was the most-tested man in all of sports and he never failed a test... USADA doesn't care. The witnesses against him have something to gain from denouncing him... USADA doesn't care. How can he prove that he wasn't doping 17 years ago? He doesn't have a witness who was with him 24/7 and can say he never doped. He doesn't have lab results of his own, and if he did he wouldn't be allowed to present them. So if he participates, all he can do is stand there and say "it's not true".

Some people think that Lance Armstrong is implicitly admitting guilt by not contesting this ruling. But his public statement explicitly says he n

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3vFsOeGVkd4/ShVBnWKXkGI/AAAAAAAAAHo/hF60UTm0Yo8/s1600/08212094-Table-Book2.jpg

First, its important to know exactly what the shirt said. Neither the summary nor the article quote it, but the image printed on the shirt seems to say:

BOMBS ZOMG ZOMG TERRORISTS GONNA KILL US ALL ZOMG ZOMG ALERT LEVEL BLOODRED RUN RUN TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES MOISTURE

Now, it's always been pretty clear to me that just saying the word "bomb" in an airpot is a recipe for trouble. Lots of signs are posted everywhere saying that all statements must be taken seriously, even if they're said in a joking manner. In other words, you just don't joke about bombs in an airport.

Secondly, the summary doesn't make it clear that it wasn't the TSA who took issue with things, and ultimately kicked him off the plane, but that it was a guy from Delta. It seems completely plausible to me that some of the other passengers saw his shirt and really were "very uncomfortable". Maybe they shouldn't have been, but nonetheless they were. Given that there were customers who were uncomfortable, and the fact that this guy really should have known better than wear a shirt with "bomb" on it in the airpot, I can see why the Delta rep kicked the guy off the flight.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E5NliRFCJ8U/T7QqQUiU2WI/AAAAAAAABwg/uJM4QBA7820/s1600/baghdad_bob_1.jpg

From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

I have a blog post up here as well:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

and there is an indieGoGO campaign going on here:

http://indiegogo.com/helios

Your last statement is a paradox for sure, but resolvable philosophically. I have spent a very long time trying to answer the question of whether or not the Universe needs a creator (more than 20 years) and the answer I have is the same that the overwhelming majority of people that investigate the question comes to. Yes, we need a creator. Note that this has nothing to do with Theology, and one of the hardest things to do while trying to investigate is to remove Theology and other human biases.

Note in my work, just like nearly every other Philosopher has concluded I admit that we can not know an answer. We can only measure what exists, and at the point the Universe was created, there is nothing to measure. It's impossible to answer the question definitively, so we look to logic to come to a conclusion. It's the only possible way of proof, though many are so biased they won't admit the same fact.

Here is a link to many of my thoughts on the subject. Note that I'm bothered all biases introduced into the discussion. Atheists tend to be the worst at having bias and ignoring their own bias, to I am a bit harsh on their evangelism rather intentionally. It's not perfect by any means, I work on improving it from time to time.

Another point may not be clear in that work. Which is that once you believe that we need a creator, one would start to investigate Theology. Theology is not important to someone that does not believe we need a creator, but it does become important if you believe we do.

Actually Akin is sort of kind of right. You see, when a woman is raped, the neurons in her brain can fire, causing her legs to take her to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic. Then those same neurons can trigger her mouth to say "give me an abortion." But that's the only way her body can 'shut that whole thing down' You can read the rest of the blog here.

Given the lack of testing

What about these hundreds of studies?

And it's been suggested that some "food allergies" are actually allergies to GMO ingredients.

Highly unlikely. That has no evidence and was basically pulled out someone's hindquarters. There are only a few proteins inserted into the GE crops you eat (the cry proteins long used in organic agriculture safely, an altered from of the epsps enzyme that all plants have, the PAT enzyme, two viral coat proteins that are going to be present in much higher concentration in the virus infected non-GE versions).. There is no evidence that they increase allergies. Ironically, there may be an increase in allergies due to new varieties though, but due to breeding, not GE. Pathogenesis-related proteins are good for increasing a plants resistance to disease. They are also a very allergenic class of compounds. Guess what good old fashioned 'safe and proven' breeding has been increasing for the last couple of decades in an effort to produce hardier crops? One of the disadvantages to breeding is that, unlike genetic engineering, you don't always know all the genes you're working with, nor does it require the massive amount of testing and regulatory hurdles that GE does. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between newer varieties of GE crops and allergies, but it I would be surprised if there was a causation.

But if people CAN avoid GMO foods

You can do that already. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya. Avoid them, or buy non-GMO/organic items, and you avoid genetic engineering. It isn't hard to learn if those who wish to avoid GE crops take the time to educate themselves. A little knowledge completely negates the need for mandatory labels (which should raise the question of why this movement is not spreading education but is instead trying to make a new law...I'm guessing it has something to do with the funding from organic companies).

According to Thunderbirds are Go, the Martian rock-snakes will shoot back!.

This is one of those put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is situations. Ken Stark and his buddies have refurbished ~1,500 computers, putting Linux on them, and donating them to poor kids in central Texas since 2005 (interview at LXer.com). Now he's battling throat and neck cancer. From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html (written by her partner Diane):

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

Stupid, this Medicare exclusion. More about the guy, by Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDnet fame:

+Ken Starks is a Linux and open-source supporter. He also runs a non-profit that's donated thousands of PCs to low-income households. Now, he needs help to fight cancer. For more on what's happening with him see:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

https://plus.google.com/113169713749496726739/posts/aXdV6DZivhS

There's a donation page at Indiegogo, or you can do it directly from his blog. They have gathered about $7,700 and just reserving the OR costs about $50,000. Pitch in if you can. Anyway, spread the word.

Thanks for reading. I don't even know the guy; I only learned about it through an unsuccessful Firehose submission and decided to do something.

This is one of those put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is situations. Ken Stark and his buddies have refurbished ~1,500 computers, putting Linux on them, and donating them to poor kids in central Texas since 2005 (interview at LXer.com). Now he's battling throat and neck cancer. From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html (written by her partner Diane):

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

Stupid, this Medicare exclusion. More about the guy, by Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDnet fame:

+Ken Starks is a Linux and open-source supporter. He also runs a non-profit that's donated thousands of PCs to low-income households. Now, he needs help to fight cancer. For more on what's happening with him see:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

https://plus.google.com/113169713749496726739/posts/aXdV6DZivhS

There's a donation page at Indiegogo, or you can do it directly from his blog. They have gathered about $7,700 and just reserving the OR costs about $50,000. Pitch in if you can. Anyway, spread the word.

Thanks for reading. I don't even know the guy; I only learned about it through an unsuccessful Firehose submission and decided to do something.

[PSA] Ken Starks of HeliOS fame has 2-3 weeks left

This is one of those put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is situations. From his partner's blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

Stupid, this Medicare exclusion. More about the guy, by Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDnet fame:

+Ken Starks is a Linux and open-source supporter. He also runs a non-profit that's donated thousands of PCs to low-income households. Now, he needs help to fight cancer. For more on what's happening with him see:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

https://plus.google.com/app/plus/mp/374/#~loop:view=activity&aid=z132y3njjzjei5iic04cjds4ztnpef1pjb0

Pitch in if you can.

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

Stupid, the Medicare exclusion. Pitch in if you can.

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

The statistics on condom failure are very misleading. Yes, it happens, but the primary cause of "condom failure" is not using a condom . No, really.

It is crazy how they say their phones have a "fully optimized" version of Android. Yes, with CityID and Blur running. Optimized my ass. With (on some phones) over 20 apps installed by Moto and Verizon that you can't remove and don't want. (reference: http://gildude.blogspot.com/2011/08/call-to-action-for-verizon-and-motorola.html) When you get updates for those installed apps - so that it not only has the old copy that came with the ROM, but now has another copy in the update. (reference: http://gildude.blogspot.com/2012/04/apparently-its-bloat-week-for-verizon.html). Optimized? Not even close. There is a reason that those of us that like to tinker with our devices want to unlock them and put on something better. We also want updates. Not phones frozen at an old "optimized" version. Idiots.