Slashdot Mirror

Not as many references from a quick google search as their
used to be:
http://www.boston.com/news/daily/21/paddling.htm

Reed was charged with assault after she was accused of paddling the buttocks of another woman who was strapped to a table during the party. Police said that according to state law, a person cannot consent to being assaulted, even for sexual pleasure.

"Diverse society is bound to fail" --Putnam.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/

... getting through a TSA checkpoint wearing said smart clothing.

Remember back in 2007 when a guy almost got shot at an airport for wearing a tech-art shirt with a only small motherboard attacked? Slashdot reported it here. Or in Nov 2012, a got arrested at an airport for wearing a strange watch.

Oh what fun a whole ensemble of tech-clothing will be.

Look, I've already said that I am personally convinced in the reality of AGW and that I favor a policy (carbon taxes) that seeks to control it. I also am very interested in science, am a member of several environmental organizations, wrote for an environmental/alt-energy blog and follow a lot of interesting alt-energy companies (for instance, Cool Planet Fuels has a carbon negative fuel cycle and soil amendment process that seems very cool to me).

I simply think that using loaded terms to describe a range of people, from industry shills on one end to people who simply have policy differences on the other, is counterproductive. It alienates people you can work with and just gives ammunition to those you can't.

It's not "paranoid" to point out that newspapers have been running prominent op-eds making the Holocaust denial link for years - Ellen Goodman, George Monbiot, Peter Christoff , Joel Connelly and a host of others. Grist had to issue a retraction for an admittedly stupid piece calling for Nuremberg trials for denialists. Even one Holocaust survivor has jumped on the bus.

I'm a free speech absolutist - if people want to make analogies to Nazis, Stalinists, Pol Pot or the Psychlo Terl from Battlefield Earth, they have every right to do so. But it's the climate equivalent of fan service - it makes a tiny part of your audience cheer and the rest are either confused or roll their eyes...

Did you know that Hack originally meant "student prank"? Now tell me that it is not an apt description for the actions of Anonymous.

Federal Prosecutor Oritz said Aaron's suicide won't change how she handles cases:
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/ortiz_says_suicide_will_not_change_handling_cases

And Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann 'drove another hacker Jonathan James to suicide in 2008 after he named him in a cyber crime case':
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262831/Revealed-Aaron-Swartz-prosecutor-drove-hacker-suicide-2008-named-cyber-crime-case.html

Here are some other grubby cases Oritz has been involved in: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/01/17/carmen-ortizs-sordid-rap-sheet/

Ortiz’s husband attacked the Swartz family on Twitter: "Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer ... 6 months is not 35 years or lifetime" What an asshole.
http://www.boston.com/business/innovation/blogs/inside-the-hive/2013/01/15/attorney-carmen-ortiz-husband-attacks-swartz-family-twitter/vzxbY5lrrG7BvGjQGnNDtJ/blog.html
http://twitchy.com/2013/01/15/husband-of-mass-attorney-general-deletes-twitter-account-after-defending-prosecution-of-aaron-swartz/

There are "We the people" petitions to remove both Orirz and Heryman, but don't hold your breath. She is an Obama appointee and Heymann's father is a Clinton staffer. How about Someone in the press corps ask Obama what he thinks of his appointees killing off bright young kids?
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate said of Aaron: "He was being made into a highly visible lesson, He was enhancing the careers of a group of career prosecutors and a very ambitious — politically-ambitious — U.S. attorney who loves to have her name in lights.” http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57564212-38/prosecutor-in-aaron-swartz-hacking-case-comes-under-fire/

The problem is Federal Prosecutors pick a career-building target and then shop for a crime. Big Criminals are too much work, but small fry like Aaron don't have the resources to fight back so all they have to do is bully them into taking a plea bargain and then bask in the glory. It's been going on for a long time and many people have been swallowed up, but the media usually never reports it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tu5RB6YHf10C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=51Ya4U8XFt&dq=lynch+in+the+name+of+justice (Go to page 43 of this Google Books preview).

I've read that he was offered a six month sentence in a plea bargain. Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility

Here is a case that expresses the duality of the situation: the judge went far above the prosecutors' recommendations. So. Once you plead guilty to 17 felonies the prosecutor's promise is no guarantee - but there will of course be no appeal. And the sentence in that case, 25 years, was for a myriad of offenses: robbery, attempted murder, kidnapping and so on was less that Ortiz prosecutor proposed for Aaron if he was put to the work of actually trying the case.

Six months offer for 17 felonies would just stoke the fires of outrage. 12 days each? So there was not ever an actual federal case in the lot? This, if true, would be an admission that they were oppressing him without due cause. Of course, there would be no record of it anyway and if were weren't actually involved in the case - say, the US Attorney's husband, we would have no way to know. Him I don't believe.

Not that it matters at all. As another one of Mrs. Ortiz's victims discovered, once they have you in the system they never let you go.

You apologists for this horrifically broken system need to get a grip. This is outrageous.

My understanding is that Lanza's rifle was left in the car.

He left another gun (one of four) in the car and carried the rifle and two handguns into the school. That's what CBS claimed, anyhow.

The constitution allows for regulation of the `militia.' Firearms are among the most sought after items for thieves. Mandating the use of gun safes might actually produce a useful result. His mother apparently had these weapons unsecured throughout the house.

I can't claim a gun safe would have prevented this event. It might have if the impediment was sufficient to cause some other means to appear easier, and I do get the feeling this was an easily impeded stay-at-home kind of man-child, but there is no way to know. At the very least the gun-grabbers would not be able to indulge the outrage that comes from learning how trivial it was for this 20 year-old to lay his hands on a high capacity rifle and a bunch of pistols.

I can claim that safes would prevent many guns from ending up being traded among criminals or toyed with by children. Stealing a gun from an adult family member or friend is a common characteristic of these incidents, so some school shootings would be prevented as well.

One thing I have learned through experience; if someone knows you have a gun they think about it. Young men especially spend a lot of time thinking about your gun(s). If they have a mind to they will come for it.

There are two things you should be doing to deal with that reality. First, don't run your mouth about your guns; it isn't necessary for everyone and his dog to know about your weapons. Second, secure your weapons. My guess is this mother had about $3000 worth of guns, magazines and paraphernalia between the three handguns and the rifle. $300 of gun safe will hold 2-3 times that much iron. By the time you have $30,000 worth of guns you should be into a $1000 safe, at least.

A 10% burden on the `militia' won't make any founding fathers flop around in their crypts.

"Officers used a “dry force” taser, said Hansen, which is less painful than the type of taser that shoots electrodes at the target to deliver the shock. A dry force taser has no probes, and is instead pressed directly to the skin."

From the boston.com article

Not saying I agree that this was a shining moment in the history of the Nashua Police, but lets get the facts straight.

Well, now that the Charles River is, I believe, the cleanest water way in an urban city in the world, then other smells start to get noticed more.

I'm not sure about that. It's certainly very much improved, according to this article, but I don't see a claim that it's now the cleanest -- it has a B+ rating, so there's room for further improvement.

This article lists the Thames, but I don't believe that (I live in London). It's not bad, and this suggests a lot has improved (and I've seen some newly-created wetland areas and they do indeed have lots of birds etc). But it still gets sewage dumped into it after heavy rain.

But getting the US government out of the marijuana game as the first step...

Then we have to keep the UN from meddling...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/

Quite a few things, for example less sword rattling in the Iran/Israel region (A war would reduce US purchasing power and affect global economy just like Iraq did). Less of a "trade war" with China (calling them a "currency manipulator on day one" certainly doesn't help trade & relations.

The general perception is that Romney says whatever he thinks is most opportune at the moment. I think it is at least marginally better to look at actions rather than words. Based on that I agree that Romney is more likely to wage war on Iran because his chief foreign policy advisor is BFFs with some only-good-muslim-is-a-dead-muslim types. But I disagree with you on china because he's done business with china through Bain - personal experience tends to give one a more nuanced understanding of related issues.

Their swarm computing article (pdf link in the journal Complex Systems) is rather interesting.

He might have had some criticisms but he always asserted that Afghanistan was the 'good war' and Iraq was the 'bad war'. As President, he administered those two wars consistently with that position.

Cite: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/07/obama_afghanist.html

If you want to critique him on the wars, there's plenty to critique, but hypocrisy isn't part of that. For instance, perhaps you could argue that both wars were bad and should have been shut down on the first day; or that both wars were good and should have been prosecuted at a higher level.

Wait wait wait, Obama complained for years about the military action in afghanistan and Iraq, calling them unauthorized and unconstitutional:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. (from here)
How then can you defend his continuing the fight in Afghanistan? Dont get me wrong, I dont have a problem with that per say-- but by his own words HE did.
And how then can one even REMOTELY justify the action in Libya?

The big problem is that it utterly shreds his credibility. This isnt some stretching the truth or exaggeration thing, Obama called Bush's actions unconstitutional to help get himself elected, and then went on to one-up them with a completely unauthorized military excursion.

protecting the public far outweighs any inconvenience..."A driver's license is not a matter of civil rights. It's not a right. It's a privilege," she said. "Yes, it is an inconvenience [to have to clear your name], but lots of people have their identities stolen, and that's an inconvenience, too."

More like: 60% of the pee Michael Phelps put in the pool during the Olympics has been filtered out. Fancy a swim?

To stick with your (bad) analogy, here are photos of Michael Phelps' pee in the pool.

Deleting files won't magically make the demand go away. Consider, as an analogy, efforts to stop drug use and drug-related crime. Remember how well alcohol prohibition worked out? Now compare that to the portuguese experiment. Regardless of how much you want it to go away, banning it always seems to have the opposite effect. One of the main reasons being that banning it makes the whole system more opaque. How do we expect the consumers to cooperate with the police in finding the producers, if so much as having the stuff is enough to put them in jail? In other words, in order to stop the underground economy you need to find it, and the best way of doing that is to let it rise to the surface.

I'm from Western Massachusetts and can tell you that global warming has been driving maple syrup production northward for half my life.

The family with the farm nearest the subdivision where I grew up made and sold their own syrup all through the '70s and '80s from a long double row of old sugar maples along the road. Some time in the '90s, production began to fall off. Now I don't think they sell syrup at all, don't even know if they collect/boil sap for personal use. Could be just the age of their trees, or the age of their family members who know the work, but there's also a trend here. And FWIW, the neighborhood I'm talking about has always been right on the cusp between the weather forecasts for the Connecticut Valley and for the "hill towns." It's in the hill towns where maple syrup is still produced in quantity in MA.

Here's an article noting Massachusetts production has been up and down in recent years and a prediction "that climate change over roughly the next hundred years will result in the loss of maple trees across much of New England." http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-07/metro/31132698_1_maple-syrup-syrup-producers-sugaring-season

And here's a PDF noting a climate-affected declining trend in U.S. syrup production generally with corresponding increase in Canada. The statistics admittedly don't all point the same direction but they're still sad. http://www.cara.psu.edu/about/publications/Maple_syrup.pdf

The DoD pays for most of MIT's research.

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Graphic/2010/08/08/~2107881__1281260297_5023.gif

It appears you are right, at least for Boston. We'll have to see what the courts say about Chicago and other places. This battle is far from over, however, no matter how much chicken they sell, Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno will block building permits for them.

And it's the tip of the iceberg. The HHS mandate has now hit, and Catholic business owners now have the choice between violating their consciences on the subject of contraception (something many FEMINIST ethnic Catholics seem to already find easy to do) or lose their businesses.

There have been a lot of attacks on this subject. None that I am aware have have exhausted all appeal yet. The cold culture war is turning hot, and it's going to be interesting when Home Depot tries to build a store in the Bible Belt and the reverse happens.

It's not a viable currency, even for this particular illicit use.

Total 2003 was $321.6 billion/year in illegal drug trade:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/06/30/un_report_puts_worlds_illicit_drug_trade_at_estimated_321b/

So $1.9 million/month works out to just under 0.07%, less than 7/100ths of a percent of the total drug trade. That's presuming that the current economic climate hasn't resulted in higher drug use in the 9 years intervening since 2003. Judging by the increases in cigarette smoking and alcohol sales, I'm going to go out on a limb and say other drug use hasn't remained stable at 2003 levels.

Forgive the offtopicness, but I couldn't let this one fly:

Debt problem: real problem, but caused by Bush policies. At least things are headed in a better direction.

Wrong! Under the Bush presidency, the deficit never reached the $502 billion mark. Since 2009, the deficit has never reached BELOW the $1300 billion mark. I don't think it's Bush's policies that are the problem. Also note that the President does not write policy. Congress does. In Jan 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6%. Since 2009, it has not been below 8%. What changed in Jan 2007? Democrats took control of Congress.

Source

Not sure what your point is about the racist in the Justice dept, haven't heard anything to make me think that's remotely true.

Black Panthers harassed voters in front of a polling place. The justice department did nothing. If that were a Klan member doing the exact same thing, don't you think the Justice Department would have prosecuted?

If you can't see you're on the wrong (morally) side of the photo id laws ... that's just sad.

If you can't see that without ID laws that it's REALLY easy to vote for other people and almost impossible to catch... that's just dumb.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-16/metro/31062045_1_voter-fraud-absentee-ballot-application-absentee-voting-laws
http://www.wtoc.com/story/16571904/south-carolinas-attorney-general-detects-voter-fraud-for-primaries
http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/29/mississippi-naacp-leader-sent-to-prison-for-10-counts-of-voter-fraud/

Internet isn't cable, and it should't be operated for a profit any more than the street system.

An analogy with highway tolls comes to mind, and it scares me. Highway tolls can get diverted to other public works projects. Government could gouge us for Internet access just as easily as a private monopoly could, and I am sure they would think of all kinds of "wonderful" uses for that new revenue.

U.S. telephone and cable companies have arranged a 'negotiated truce' in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

Mainstream media is starting to pick up on this same very notion, with Verizon's latest quarterly report covered by the Boston Globe here which basically highlights the fact that Comcast and Verizon are getting cozy rather than competing. "Verizon Wireless struck a deal to market cable broadband from Comcast and Time Warner Cable in its stores, a move consumer advocates see as a capitulation by Verizon that will leave many areas with just one viable choice for home broadband: cable."

We as taxpaying Americans supporting these monopolies lose out on both fronts while this trend continues ....

War spending for the Iraq war was counted against the emergency or supplemental budgets, doesn't count against the budget ceiling, and doesn't get figured into estimates of the annual deficits. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/05/on_war_costs_bush_is_master_of_disguise/

All non-routine city business (new development proposals, top-level hires, etc) gets routed through his top aide, Michael Kineavy, who regularly deletes correspondence from his old Windows laptop w/o mail server backup. The city's IT systems are deliberately kept ancient.

(I personally experience this every year - the database of car owners liable for the auto excise tax is completely separate from the database of residents to whom excise tax bills are sent. I've had a number of discussions in City Hall and they couldn't care less).

So much for "transparency."

...angels with machine guns it seems.

Well, you're close

Denial of Service is difficult to defend against, but it is impossible to retaliate against, since it universally uses botnets. It is not "hacking," either. You basically have no recourse of any kind in that situation other than some not-so-useful technical stopgaps to mitigate damage. If you go after people who "attacked you," you're simply further hurting innocent civilians, and deserve to be slapped with the same jail time as the original attackers.

Not necessarily.

Interpol says 25 arrests target hackers

February 29, 2012

PARIS — Interpol said yesterday that 25 suspected members of the loose-knit Anonymous hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep across Europe and South America.

The international police agency said in a statement that the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Spain were carried out by national law enforcement officers working under the support of Interpol’s Latin American working group of specialists on information technology crime.

The suspects, between ages 17 and 40, are suspected of planning coordinated cyberattacks against institutions including Colombia’s defense ministry and presidential websites, Chile’s Endesa electricity company and national library, and other targets.

(A little old to be called "script kiddies", BTW.)

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/02/27/linux_camp_rages_over_novell_pact/?page=full

Sincerely,
A former SUSE user

I one can't wait. Where do I send my money?

Google.

Google announced Tuesday, June 5, 2012, that it has bought Quickoffice, the maker of a widely used mobile application for working on documents created in Microsoft's programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2012/06/06/google-buys-maker-quickoffice-mobile-app/YGEpy0iBT7PxGI09lSXhpM/story.html

That's one of the reasons I'm betting this sort of gadget will be a game-changer.

Alan Greenspan was not shy about the motivation for increased STEM immigration: "We pay the highest skilled labor wages in the world. If we would open up our borders to skilled labor far more than we do, we would attract a very substantial quantity of skilled labor which would suppress the wage levels of the skilled..." http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/03/14/greenspan_let_more_skilled_immigrants_in/ The idea of STEM shortages is advanced to shave corporate costs. The AFL-CIO explains that there is no shortage. “ Between 2006 and 2007, the U.S. Department of Education and the Computing Research Association show that colleges and universities graduated more than 203,000 students with Bachelor’s, Master’s or Ph.D.s in the core disciplines of computer and information sciences, math and engineering and engineering technology. This number more than surpasses the 82,000 new jobs expected to be added in computer and mathematical science occupations during this time period." http://dpeaflcio.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Guest-Worker-Programs-and-STEM.pdf 22 million Americans are unemployed. Let's take care of them first, *then* start thinking about the rest of the world.

"Don't feed the troll," they tell me. Whatever. I'll just leave this here.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of their desires was to saddle people with ridiculous overage charges. I remember a story a while back about a family whose son used his phone for all of his internet downloading needs. Verizon sent the family a bill for $18,000. Instead of helping their customers stay within the boundaries of their plans they try to rack up as many charges as possible. http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2010/05/18/verizon_forgives_dover_mans_18000_cellphone_bill/

We couldn't give a shit what's in your bag, we just want to get done and go home.

Some of your coworkers disagree.

This is a very flawed study that doesn't account for many things including a) It's based on patients "memories" of when they got x-rays and not actual dates b) Doesn't account for the dramatic reduction in amount of rays needed for the images in the last 20-30 years.

Proof? Check this far better article http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-10/metro/31313701_1_x-rays-tumor-risk-radiation-exposure

Diversity doesn't work.

In any form -- ethnic, religious, racial, class, caste, even wide disparities in intelligence -- it promotes alienation, distrust, lack of unity and self-hatred among a population. It destroys that nation.

Wherever it has been tried, it has failed and left behind unstable third-world countries. Even in "white" nations like the Balkans, Northern Ireland and Russia, diversity has been nothing more than a destructive bother.

The reason we have diversity is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was designed to switch the USA from a majority-European-descended population to a majority third world population, because minorities vote against the perceived majority and thus will always vote for Democrats. Many even credit that change with getting Barack Obama elected.

I don't see the point in revisiting the black crime figures. They're there in the FBI's uniform crime reports, produced by a government that for 60 years has tried as hard as possible to be as non-racist as possible. I think the figures are accurate. They reveal that although blacks commit much more crime per capita, and Mexicans are halfway between whites and blacks on the crime per capita scale, most victims of a criminal of a certain race are also of that race (the defining statistic is white male rape of black women, which is virtually nonexistent). The race and IQ statistics are probably also good science, given that they are consistent with international estimates. There is no reason to suppose any of this is wrong, but I find it unnecessary.

Racism is what happens when diversity happens. We all want to live with people like ourselves. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found that diversity destroys trust and makes paranoid communities. This does not affect liberals, who are concerned primarily with fairness by institutions to individuals. But conservatives, who value social order (per the research of Jonathan Haidt) find it disturbing.

In fact, many of the healthiest countries are almost entirely mono-racial -- Finland and Japan come to mind.

For background information, read the Race FAQ. Then check out the biological basis of race. This gives you a background in understanding race that isn't tainted by either racism or diversity, both of which are dead ends if you ask me.

Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

How about some evidence to back up your claims?

Shipping companies are arming themselves, because it happens to be the most cost effective solution to the problem. And it does work.

They're already taking care of this for minor offenses in Massachusetts. Want to contest a speeding ticket? Cough up 25 bucks just to get a hearing with a magistrate. Clearly innocent until proven guilty. They say its to deter people from frivolously contesting tickets, if they charge $25 for a 10 minute appeal I wonder what they'd charge for a whole week's trial if people starting excersizing their rights in full. http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/09/mass-high-court-upholds-fees-for-traffic-ticket-appeals/UxDFWrKT8yeNDmGMa1y41H/index.html

There was an instance of non-lethal weapon abuse by a Boston policeman who shot a Red Sox reveler with a projectile that's supposed to only cause the sensation of burning, like pouring hot sauce on the skin. It's like a targeted remote pepper spray. Problem is, the policeman hit this poor woman in the eye. She died as a result of the injury.

The words "non-lethal weapon" should more accurately be written as "not-usually-lethal weapon". A weapon designed to hurt enough to seriously distract everyone it is used against cannot be non-lethal in all cases, given the wide range of physiologies found in humans, and the wide ranges of unanticipated potential uses. While one might argue whether the officer in question above should have aimed at this student's head (if the weapons are so inaccurate that they cannot be controlled well enough to avoid hitting someone in the head, or if the officer was inadequately trained or prepared to do so, then that is another matter entirely), because he did hit her in the head that must therefore be an anticipated use. Thus this particular paintball-like weapon, and by extension, all non-lethal weapons, must be considered less lethal, but certainly not non-lethal.
 

Wow, this self-important wanker even has inventorofemail.com. The Boston interview seems to state his weak-ass case the best. When faced with Tomlinson's 1971 record, he says that isn't really e-mail. Apparently he thinks that some subset of having folders or blind carbon copy are somehow amazing innovations, the things that made his work modern e-mail while earlier ones were not. Whatever.

He has several more I believe ..... dremail.com?
LOL propoganda

Wow, this self-important wanker even has inventorofemail.com. The Boston interview seems to state his weak-ass case the best. When faced with Tomlinson's 1971 record, he says that isn't really e-mail. Apparently he thinks that some subset of having folders or blind carbon copy are somehow amazing innovations, the things that made his work modern e-mail while earlier ones were not. Whatever.

Science says the same thing. Facts make people believe even more, especially when they contradict belief.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

Sorry if it seems I have posted this before, you'd think more people would just let it go implied at this point, as common knowledge.

Consider the possibility of a person who is currently (and rightfully) on the Department of Homeland Security's 'No-Fly' list.

And if you are wrongfully on such a secret list? Then what?

Or are you saying that there are tons of terrorists in the US, but we don't need to worry about them because they are on the "no fly list"?? Or perhaps such a "no fly list" is simply used as means of trampling on constitutional rights of people to travel because such people are simply inconvenient.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/us_senate/articles/2004/08/20/no_fly_list_almost_grounded_kennedy_he_tells_hearing/

Wan to to see probems with LibreOffice's MS Office conversions? Head here for a more recent 'complaint' by one user.

Want to see to what extent close source shills will work to defeat open source implementations?

I have an example from more than half a decade ago; still relevant today as those folks are still living with the repercussions of that decision.

He may have gotten his start in the public realm, but he's sure gone private these days.

Of course, that doesn't mean that this sort of technology won't be used for other purposes eventually. Since we already have thought crime, the next step will be to wire these things us to cameras on the street.

Yeah, it sounds tin foil hat to me too - or would, if I hadn't experienced the changes over the last few decades.

The Occupy Movement is about inequality in the USA, and not about the entire world. It seems like that should be obvious, given that the average annual income across the entire globe is roughly equivalent to $7,000 USD, yet in the USA that's well below the poverty level and the average income is about 5x higher.

If you want to complain about them using Apple products, it's probably more pertinent to point out that they are buying very expensive products and then complaining that they don't have enough money to pay their bills. Then again, that wouldn't be on-topic here.

Note: The $7,000 figure comes from here: http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/
The data is a few years old, but I suspect is pretty similar, given the economic ups & downs during that time frame.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2012/01/gov-tim-murray-traveling-mph-time-nov-crash-fell-asleep-the-wheel/xb4PPxUcuG2PM4QzsS8lNJ/index.html You're wrong. He SHOULD be dead from the crash based on how fast he was going, but he miraculously was unhurt. It is still surmised he fell asleep at the wheel, but that has not been proven...

So at one level I can see your resentment. Its not fair to subsidize the irresponsible. My question is that when you see someone overweight coming out of a car in a handicapped parking place, do you even for one microsecond consider that their malady might be the reason for their obesity.

Of course I do. Hence my ending parenthetical about being unable to distinguish between self-inflicted disability and otherwise.

You have to admit though, that in the space of obese people, you are the exceptional case. For every obese person that has gone through what you did, there are plenty more who inflicted it on themselves. This is not an insult to you in any possible way, it's just a fact.

Ultimately it takes a doctor to say a person needs it or not, though most doctors will lean towards the needs and want of the patient, a good doctor would almost certain say to a simply obese patient, get your fat ass to the furthest parking space and walk... its good for you.

That's a joke right? I wish I could have such faith in doctors, in reality here there are scandals after scandals of doctors that will affirm (under oath) that individuals are sick for the purpose of getting them State benifits/pensions/disability. Some of them give out placards and disability letters for a fee. Sometimes, you find individuals who have a doctor's affirmation that they are disabled taking part in bodybuilding competitions!

In fact, as a legitimately disabled person, I reckon you should be more outraged about those doctors than the rest of us, since they are diluting your benefits!

[1] http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-27/new-york-rail-workers-sought-1-billion-for-fake-disabilities-u-s-says
[2] http://articles.boston.com/2011-08-06/news/29859246_1_pension-scandal-pension-abuse-tax-free-pension

TL;DR version: a doctor's note means nothing except a compliant doctor.

Don't be so quick to judge, unless you've walked a mile on my crutches.

I don't think I judged. If it came off that way, I apologize and clarify that it was not my intent.