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The idea behind a vaccine is not to just protect the individual who gets it, but to protect the population at large. Those who choose not to get vaccinated are threatening other people's lives—the lives of those who may not even know they are being threatened.

Measles? http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/measles/faqs-dis-vac-risks.htm

We are starting to see just the beginnings of the results of this anti-vaccination movement:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/05/29/u-s-measles-outbreak-sets-record-for-post-elimination-era
http://news.health.com/2015/01/28/u-s-measles-outbreak-now-numbers-87-cases/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/whooping-cough-outbreak-reaches-epidemic-level-in-california/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/24/health/ohio-mumps/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/24/nhl-mumps-vaccines_n_6375744.html

I think the most sickening part of it all is that most anti-vax parents have gotten their immunisations when they were a child, yet refuse to let their own children get them. It's sad that it will take at least another 5-10+ years, and many more outbreaks, before the anti-vaxers will even start to get swayed. We may likely see pre-immunisation-era numbers of infections before then though, especially with the world being as small as it is today compared to yesteryear.

I agree with Christie's comments in this case. There are plenty of vaccines that should be mandated, with MMR being at the top of the list.

But read this:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/15/...

The point is that Perry tried to mandate that girls get the HPV vaccine made by Merck, with the implication being that Merck bought the support. HPV is a good vaccine to have but there's no comparison between HPV and measles.

We again have this issue where the soundbite media can't handle nuance and blind partisanship is going to reign. Let's face it, had Christie parroted Obama's exact words there would still be people here who would claim he's an idiot for saying that.

The anti-vax crowd is wrong - deadly wrong - but that doesn't mean that every vaccine out there should be mandated. I mean, how about the flu vaccine? Shingles?

Where's that line?

I agree we shouldn't live in fear, but we need to keep our eyes open. As parents you have to have concern for your kids given the amount of incidents that happen, some are anecdotal like "drug bust near school" others hit home.

From today's news..

http://6abc.com/news/school-te...
http://www.wsmv.com/story/2797...
http://cjonline.com/news/2015-...
http://www.wdrb.com/story/2787...

recent past:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/...
https://news.yahoo.com/portlan...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

... because "fracking."

Fossil fuel price has tanked to the point that people are gearing up with muscle machines again.

Even the Hummer H2 saw a jump in sales on the used car market, according to Kelley Blue Book. General Motors (GM) discontinued the line as part of its 2009 bankruptcy.

Biofuels is a panic solution for an energy crises that has (for now) disappeared.

Speaking of Dell, failure, and lawyers, back during the 'capacitor plague' era the law firm that Dell retained to fight capacitor-plague related lawsuits was itself stuck with capacitor-plagued Dells. I can only imagine that their IT people saw the humor in the situation. True story.

So let's be daring and take a chance and at least decriminalize possession and stop making criminals out of our kids. (And remember, alcohol is the most destructive drug on the planet.)

http://ithp.org/articles/alcoh...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH...

Is their lab at the bottom of death valley or are they using a pressure cooker?
Every time C vs F comes up, the C fans invariably point to C being vastly superior mainly because 100 C is water's boiling point.

Yeah, for a bunch of chemistry profs to use "boiling" as 90C makes me wonder if they're related to the Beagle probe programmers.

the start menu still contains a mini start screen. George Lucas pulled this shit in the prequels by wedging jar jar binks into the last one, and you know what it has in common? Lucas and Microsoft are doing it as a big "Fuck You" to their respective audiences for refusing to accept what everyone but the author knew sucked. Saying "continuum is the future" is a strange way of saying, "Listening to your fucking customers is a novel approach microsoft is begrudgingly accepting piecemeal after a blinding 2 years of profit loss"

Huh - 2 years of profit loss eh?
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/2...

I'm no friend of MS, but you really need to work on your facts. The rest of your comment I can agree with.

They do admit what they can figure out about the success of this year's flu shot.

Not in their advertising.

Do you have any evidence that anybody makes much money on flu shots?

Sure, no problem. First-page hits for "flu vaccine profit". Your inquiry is disingenuous, if you cared you'd have used google.

What might be ok in small towns where the population isn't very mobile is utterly insane in such an area.

Rural populations can be decimated by diseases that are rarely fatal elsewhere.

Idaho is gaining a reputation as a place where rigidly libertarian politics and local, hermetically sealed, nominally Christian religious sects combine to deny urgently needed medical care to children.

Fallen followers: Investigation finds 10 more dead children of faith healers. Sect shuns doctors, children pay the price

The Republicans are traditionally allied to (dirty) energy industries: coal, oil, gas, as well as Big Ag, and military/defense contractors.

The Democrats are traditionally allied to finance (Wall Street), big media (RIAA/MPAA)/the "copyright cartel", unions (not so much these days), and these days, the tech industry (the CEOs, not the STEM workers).

Pretty much, except for Wall Street. WS used to be massively Republican, but that was when there used to be a strong Northeast wing of the GOP. Nowadays, what few Republican officeholders are left in the Northeast are termed "RINOs" by the rest of the party.

But WS still leans pretty heavily towards the GOP, the party that always wants to cut capital gains taxes and the top brackets of income taxes. Obama got close to a 50-50 split of this group in 2008, but that was an aberation because of the banking disaster. GOP campaign donations swung back to the Republicans by 2012, and even more so by 2014.

I think that the difference here is that the HoloLens won't be intended for outdoor use. It is way too conspicuous. People hated the relatively tiny Google Glass.

Instead, I think it will focus more on improving home and office life. From the videos I have seen, I can imagine a world where you can have additional virtual computer monitors to display information that you typically won't interact with. Such as logging information during coding. I would have IRC windows displayed on walls inside my house. When you get an email you could alter the colour of your desk by projecting slightly on top of it... etc...

I think that Google realised how much of a backlash they were causing by creating a head mounted device that can record other people, since they pulled the Explorer program. The everyday public despises it (as you say, Glasshole). It has been banned in many places, you can't use it driving in many areas (illegal, one person was pulled over citing that it is a monitor). I don't think that is something that will change either, at least not until wearing headsets like this at home becomes mainstream.

lol.. There is no municipalities rights in the US constitution that is supposed to limit what the feds can do.

Well, kinda there is. The 10th amendment expressly reserves for the states any powers not specifically specified by the Constitution to the Fed. On the other hand, your local municipality only has powers as outlined by your state constitution. Typically, any city is completely subordinate to whatever state it happens to be in, but states, and therefore cities, have rights over the Feds unless the Constitution specifically says otherwise (most often, by virtue of the commerce clause).

With municipal broadband, however, things get really twisted. It's not the Feds who are trampling on local efforts to set up public broadband... the states are doing the trampling, perhaps because the states are easier and cheaper for big telecom to lobby, and the Feds are trying to use the authority of the FCC to preempt the power of the states to squash what local authorities want to do within their community. Follow?

Lots of the successful municipal internet projects grew out from local municipalities that already own and run their own electric grid. Since they already own the poles and other conduits for carrying cables, along with trucks and technicians and other infrastructure for supporting them, running fiber is easy. But this makes Big Telecomm upset. Competition takes money out of their pockets. So, they lobby the states to restrict it.

So, in this case, the Fed is a city's or county's best friend, because its state wants to shut down what the citizens wanted to do for themselves. Either the FCC comes to the rescue, or the city has to go it alone in the state capitol against a very very wealthy powerful lobby whose money can easily make the difference between winning and losing in a state election. Suck it up. Sometimes, the Feds are the only friends you've got... if they have the authority, that is, and if big lobby has anything to say about it, they don't.

If the Republicans are so concerned for consumers, then why aren't they making local monopolies illegal? Why are they not going along with the Obama administration with Net Neutrality?

You mean why do they allow local jurisdictions have explicit access to areas provided they build out into the unprofitable portions of those areas? If some of these areas did not have monopolies, you would only find these services within the most densely populated portions and everyone else would be screwed.

I don't even have to look at the bill to know that it will favor the ISPs at the expense of the consumer.That's real intelligent. You do not even need to know what you are talking about before you start talking bullshit about it. The rest of your hogwash shows it too. I'm simply amazed as the stupidity of some people.

They want to crash the economy again will Wall Street crooks run away with billions in tax payer money!?

Are you a moron? The wall street bail out, as well as the GM bailout is said to have profited the tax payers something like 15 billion dollars. And if you actually check, it was many of the republicans in congress holding the damn bailouts up as well as who limited the TARP amounts in the Dodd Frank act.

But you already admitted to not needing to know about what you are talking about so it doesn't surprise me one bit at all. Everything is how someone told you it is in your mind right?

As for what the police believe, well they're going to parrot the prevailing current meme that all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslim.

Congratulations. You win the prize for most ignorant post of the day.BTW - the cop they killed in Paris was Muslim And so was the guy who hid Jews in the freezer in Paris. They're both being hailed as heroes in France and around the world.

You pretty much never hear of data being accidentally exposed

That's because it's intentionally exposed.

and I've never heard of Facebook being hacked.

Do you like to stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la la!". Top result:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/...

and why do you think they have this?
https://www.facebook.com/white...

(Hint: Openly selling data, as the user agreed to when they "signed" the terms of service, is *NOT* the same fucking someone over in a manner that would cause a private user with a different TOS concern.)

"Hint" maybe you should read this:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... .. and after you read that you can research and consider all the ways that Facebook has changed it's privacy settings over the years that constantly expose a wider assortment of information and allow greater data gathering by default, requiring users to maintain constant vigilance and opt-out, rather than opt-in. ... and then when you're done with that you can research how they have set up their "governance" system such that on the face of it they claim to take input from their user base about their major policy changes, but have set it up in such a way that there is virtually no chance that end users can override anything they want to do, despite the programs existence.

You have to be really nuts to be defending Facebook of all companies when it comes to user privacy.

As a follow up, see this article which mentions cars talking to one another. That's another term for networking.

Imagine someone able to hack this type of system and the chaos they could cause.

Again, analog is better than digital.

All 3 Charlie Hebdo terrorists were known extremists and were under surveillance. The French authorities simply dropped the ball and fucked up - for lack of resources or for negligence.

They could convincingly make a case for vastly increased means of putting known terrorists under 24/7 surveillance, but the Charlie Hebdo attacks are a really poor argument for enhanced decryption powers, because the FUCKING TERRORISTS HAD BEEN CLEARLY IDENTIFIED ALREADY!

Clearly this is yet another exploitation of people's fear-du-jour to bring the world closer to a panopticon society. Me, I'm more scared of the government than muslim terrorists. 1984 anyone?

$100 dollars a month, starting at age 20 is enough to generate a very substantial nest egg by the time you reach 65, even in future dollars.

Go here:
http://money.cnn.com/tools/sav...

Put in $1200 per year taxable saving. Put in zero's for how much you have (taxable) 28% federal, 6% state, 0 for tax deferred and 0 per year. Then 45 in years to save (20 to 65) and put in an annual growth of 6%.

Results:

Your current savings will grow to:
$183,100
Inflation adjusted:
$46,496

That is not nothing, you won't be living high on the hog but you will have a reliable nest egg and if you were smart and bought a house and paid it off during those 40 years you will have more than enough to survive even if they decimate social security.

I'm not sure the physical security is that much of a deterrent (there was another article that I couldn't find which listed a host of similar issues, including allowing pizza delivery guys to the silo). The job of being a silo-jockey is not considered particularly prestigious in the USAF and we aren't getting the best of the best to guard our most powerful weapons.

On the other hand, finding a floppy disk these days to launch the damn things might be a bit harder to manage.

With the increasingly violent actions of some of the radical offshoots of Islam like ISIS and BOKO HARAM, how long do you think it will be before we have Senators asking for ISIS to be kept in check? And what if that look for ISIS extends to inside the US? Then what?

With the increasingly violent actions of some of the radical offshoots of Islam like ISIS and BOKO HARAM, how long do you think it will be before we have Senators asking for ISIS to be kept in check? And what if that look for ISIS extends to inside the US? Then what?

It is important that people know who the 'hero of Vincennes' is. Way too many people are looking for an excuse to indulge their bigotry and attack muslims. Which is pretty much what the terrorists hope to make happen.

Screw Mars! Go to Venus or stay home!

Egypt's president called for a religious revolution against extremism.

Now we'll see if others start echoing this...

You make some interesting points, especially this:

Images lead to veneration, and Prophets are not to be venerated; that is the path of idol worship. Not even God's own Son may be praised! All praise must go to God, all veneration must go to God. So the people getting upset a niche group not well supported by the theology whose name they adopt.

I read something similar on CNN. But that leaves those of us on the outside wondering why anyone would find it so offensive that someone else had made an image of Mohamed. Apparently, there is no known image of him drawn from life, so any depiction must be a work of imagination. Therefore, an image only becomes "an image of Mohammed" because one puts a "Mohammed" label on it - much as we've seen on the clever little textual pictures of him in this thread. And from the outside, the zeal we've seen applied to this - to the point of murder - looks like nothing less than the very veneration of a man that's it's supposed to be preventing.

I can understand the idea that someone finds an unflattering image related to one's beliefs to be offensive. But we in America value freedom of religion (and are therefore willing to pay the price of granting same to others), whereas in other value systems, freedom of religion would be seen as something that's explicitly wrong - or maybe even evil.

So, is that's what's going on here? Is perhaps a prohibition against making images of Mohammed right in one value system, whereas freedom of expression is right in another? If so, it's hard to see how two diametrically opposed views could ever be reconciled among all us folks who are stuck living together here on Planet Earth.

Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs.

Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not. The have only one single block of IPv4 addresses.

Why would DPRK hackers be using the DPRK IPv4 address space when they are reportedly set up in China ? When I visited North Korea 6 months ago, the largest, most modern, and most prestigious hotel in the largest and most prestigious city (Pyongyang) was using dialup for internet access. To a Chinese ISP.

There are too many inconsistencies in the FBI's story. There are too many liars and too many suspects on all sides. Unless someone takes credit, there is no way to know who did the hacking.

No they do not, not nearly enough of them, especially in leadership positions, and it doesn't get nearly enough media attention.

Thankfully, we have someone taking a leadership position on this - bloody Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of all people! Maybe his challenge will raise enough eyebrows to get something done.

Egypt's President calls for a 'religious revolution'

I'm not a big fan of this guy, but I am a huge fan of what he has done today. I'd even say it's heroic. I wish him good fortune and pray that his pleading does not fall on deaf ears.

What is the obvious technical or economic advantage of not having a human driver?

How about preventing some of the 43k deaths, $164.2B in damages caused by car accidents a year? Give a car enough sensors and the right programming and it shouldn't hit stuff. If it doesn't hit stuff, no damage. Note: I'm not even demanding NO accidents, just reduced. Half the rate or something. I'd expect the car to be excellent in preventing accidents via 'fast twitch' responses, but lousier in avoiding obvious but unusual events (something getting ready to fall onto the highway, for example).

Get it good enough, and now you're increasing the mobility of the disabled who can't currently drive themselves. Not to mention those who don't have a license due to DUI or just being a bad driver. Heck, now I can take a nap or read on the way to/from work. Or that long trip.

Package delivery/pickup doesn't need a dedicated driver. Reduces costs.

Taxis don't need a person anymore, reducing costs, and even your personal vehicle could pick you up at the door while parking in a remote(cheap) lot.

I take it you don't get much international news. The Chinese have had problems with individuals in their Uyghur population, yet apart from putting the screws to that ethnic group haven't wiped them from the map.

When a Wall Street program loses money for the owners, they eat it.

Not always...

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/0...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a040...

Not saying this is common, Knight provides a good example in the other direction and I honestly don't care enough about the markets to know of anything that didn't make national news, just that it seems it depends on the situation.

If I fuck up and code a program that goes out and buys or trades and buys illegal shit, then it's my fault for being stupid.

Legally of course this depends on the jurisdiction, IANAL. Morally I believe this is very grey area and depends primarily on intent. Obviously it's sort of hard to judge intent in most cases, though in this case unleashing it specifically on a "Dark Web" type site does imply at least some knowledge that it'll happen these days.

Then again I have to imagine part of the point of this exhibit was to counter that assumption, that all these sites are good for are illegal things.

By displaying them in such a conspicuous location also changes things compared to if one had tried to use "the computer did it" as an excuse when caught with the same things in their home.

Basically it's probably legally wrong, but I'd have a hard time being convinced that they should actually be punished for it.

Or let's put it this way, I code a program that looks for and downloads kiddie porn. Cops nab me and I just say, "Oopsie. The robot did it, not me!" So, I should get off...I mean let go?

Again depends on the context and the intent. If you wrote a bot that went out looking for anything it thinks is porn to display automatically in an art installation and it happened to come across kiddie porn, it'd certainly be illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. That said, due to the context of displaying the results of a search automatically as art I'd still be unconvinced that punishment is appropriate. The same excuse deployed by someone caught with a collection of images on their own machine should get laughed out of court and them right in to jail.

This is some funny shit.

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/...

So how many times have organizations of the Federal Government had information beforehand on suspects and have failed to put the pieces together and act vs. actually succeeding at stopping something? They've never given any evidence that they have been able to stop anything significant based on prior knowledge and yet I've lost count of how many times they have traced back having information and the threat *still* happened.

• 
     
• Why did U.S. intelligence fail on September 11th?

•    

• The 9/11 Comission Report

•    

• The Boston Bombing Intelligence Failure

•    

• Obama calls Christmas day attack an intelligence failure

•    

• Long history of intelligence failures

That doesn't even consider the many times when there is no intelligence failure and bad things still happen. Thinking that knowing everything about everyone will prevent problems only infringes liberties with no promise of protection. At some point you have to see through the claims that ". . . if only we do X we can ensure that this will never happen again!" as being unworkable and it's better to protect liberties than to infringe them . . . including liberties of foreign citizens. Trying to blame Snowden's disclosures for why bad things aren't prevented is ludicrous.

Of course there's always the root of the problem: who effected the bad thing? We should blame the implementors of the evil rather than some fringe player . . . unless all you want is a scape goat that's in arms reach.

What are they going to pay for it with?

Maybe they can fuel it with vodka, the price of which has dropped significan;y in Russia: http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/3...

What makes you decide it's okay to break the law and then complain about the judicial system's ability to identify that you did?

What makes you think the law is always fair or just? The speed limits and cameras are set up specifically to generate revenue, not protect lives. I can't battle a bad law in a tiny community where I don't live. Oh look, the off ramp from the interstate requires me to drop from 75MPH to 35MPH in a matter of a few hundred feet, and there's a camera. Quelle surprise.

These things have a way of sorting themselves though. Once a camera community is known, travelers avoid it like the plague. I received 2 speeding camera tickets in northern Arizona. Now, when we go on a weekend road trip, we head west to LA instead. Fuck you Sedona. Fuck you Vegas. Let your casinos, gas stations, and tourist traps rot with no business.

I don't even travel local intersections where I know red light cameras are located. Those strip malls and groceries can go out of business for all I care.

I already mentioned multiple floors in my comments. If you're imagining something like the Burj Khalifa, imagine ONE THOUSAND of them side by side.
Or maybe you're prefer something wider and flatter, like the U.S. Pentagon building? No problem, just build EIGHT HUNDRED of those stacked on top of each other.

This is the world's largest building by floor area. 430 km^2 would be 400 of them.

Some conservatives seem to hate him just for being a smart black guy who is associated with science. He's not even really an outspoken liberal or anything. He's just a smart black guy and it drives them CRAZY.

That's some serious projection you've got going on there. Is he "bright and clean" too?

It's lefties who are race-obsessed.

Well there seems to be a bit of a theme developing here maybe if all Yanks got off their high horses and got rid of the bloody guns there would not be so many shot dead by the adle brained police you have out there .

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/...

Yep, that works really well. Case closed.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/0...

Why does it make no sense to deny you were involved? North Korea typically does deny things which they actually do ( for example) while taking credit for things they don't or can't do. Their whole game is to live behind an obfuscation of words. If we actually believed them when they said they were prepared to nuke us, they would be smoking crater already. However, if we didn't quietly worry about it, they wouldn't so easily milk concessions out of us (and would probably get invaded). Their ideal outcome would be for anyone planning another Kim Jong Un movie to decide it's not worth the financial risk, while still leaving the U.S. government insufficient proof to retaliate. Don't make the mistake of believing the leaders really are as deluded as their rhetoric. They have real strategic objectives behind it.

Because cowering under your desk will protect you from a nuclear blast!

It wasn't so much protection from the blast but from falling debris. If we assume one was far enough away from the blast to not be fried, getting under a desk would offer some protection from ceiling tiles and such which might fall, similar to how standing in a doorway during an earthquake offers some protection if you can't immediately get out.

This idea is still orders of magnitude better than former head of Homeland Security (and former Governor of my state who got the pension crisis rolling) Tom Ridge telling people to use duct tape to seal their windows and doors to protect them from chemical or biological attacks.

"Care to point to the source"

Haha is this wikipedia? I'm telling you things you can google, not applying for a job as your bitch.

You know that statement about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof?
Well, ordinary claims just need you to use a search engine, or even just start on wikipedia. You don't get to play skeptic with life, assuming that before you change your precious worldview something has to be tied up and cited. You have the power to google it your goddamned self.

But, fuck it. I'm on vacation.

You can find a TON of first hand accounts of crazy fucking bullshit in North Korea. Here's some who talk on social media after having been there as a tourist:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...

Here's one on social media who mentions having taught there, and brings up the "repelled incursions" I referred to, in addition to crazier shit involving netting on cars:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...

Also you can find firsthand accounts all over, not only from social media:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c... ..but from other media as well
http://www.cracked.com/article...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.dailylife.com.au/li...

Essentially ALL of these mention that the internet is pretty well shut down and only the North Korean fake version is available- in Pyongyang. You know, their BIG CITY.

Here's a wikipedia link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Some quotes:
"As of late 2014 there are 1,024 IP addresses in the country."
"Despite the incident, many citizens of North Korea may be oblivious to the existence of the internet."

http://qz.com/315969/in-north-...
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/2...

"Nearly all of the country's Internet traffic is routed through China. Firms that monitor that traffic say it is comparable to only about 1,000 high-speed homes in the United States."

I'd like to repeat my earlier point, however:
You don't need to source a claim to be correct. The world isn't wikipedia.

Sadly, it's still cheaper to just put twice the amount of solar panels on Earth than it is to engage in Space Nutter fantasies.

Space-based solar power will NEVER work. Ever. And even it could, magically, are you sure you want to pump even MORE energy into this system? Or will you 3D print giant radiator fins at the South Pole to evacuate the waste heat? You know, since we're talking about abstract ideals here anyways.

So, how's that private space thing going? Let's check:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Oh, still nothing. Well, just as good, that 1997 Space Hotel never got built either....

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9705/2...

Someone calls for the murder of everyone in your race/religion, get the fuck over it.

People listen and actually murder several million in your race/religion, get the fuck over it.

Speech is an act. It's a more powerful act in terms of efficiency than any sticks or stones. It has consequences - sometimes these consequences should involve legal sanctions, and often not, but there are always ethical consequences.

So Michael Brown's stepfather is responsible for some Ferguson riots because he said Burn this bitch down!!!" and he should be arrested, tried, presumably found guilty (hard to argue he didn't say that), and jailed?

OK, got it.

The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans.

They then go on to say that their soldiers along with the hackers in question are sharpening their bayonets. North Korea seems to want to have it both ways: claiming that they didn't do it, but wanting everyone to take their threats seriously like they did. At this point, there really shouldn't be substantial doubt that North Korea is responsible. The only question is what the proper response is.

If automation enables a human to do the work of ten people, and of demand is limited (a key point), then the need for 90% of jobs in that area goes away. Automation does not have to be 100% to have a have big effect on employment.

The Japanese are working hard on health care robots for their aging populations. Again, a robot that could do 90% of tasks, or let one real person support ten people via indirect means like tele-operation will change the employment dynamics of that field. Even just a doubling of effectiveness could make a huge difference -- even just by removing travel time or data logging for, say, a visiting nurse.

Other ways automation can change health aid employment is if people had more free and then could care for elderly relatives directly. Humans still provide the care, but it is outside formal employment. Also, even without more free time, a telepresence robot could let distant relatives care for an elderly relative, perhaps even doing physical tasks like the laundry if the robot manipulators had haptic feedback through the internet.

By the way, for stuff like showers, there are already machines for that for nursing homes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03...
"With an electronic whir, the machine released a dollop of "peach body shampoo," a kind of body wash. Then, as the cleansing bubbling action kicked in, Toshiko Shibahara, 89, settled back to enjoy the wash and soak cycle of her nursing home's new human washing machine."

Also, on robot lawyers:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/2...
"The law profession is being reshaped by new automation technologies that allow law firms to complete legal work in a fraction of the time and with far less manpower. Think IBM's "Jeopardy!"-winning computer Watson -- practicing law. "Watson the lawyer is coming," said Ralph Losey, a legal technology expert at the law firm Jackson Lewis. "He won't come up with the creative solutions, but when it comes to the regular games that lawyers play, he'll kill them." That means potentially huge cost savings for clients, though it's not so promising for law school graduates looking for work. The good news for lawyers is that no one thinks the profession can be automated entirely. But lots of legal work is already being computerized by some firms, including the drafting of simple contracts and the search for evidence in reams of documents."

There, stuff you said would never happen has already happened to some extent -- enough to make a difference to employment outlooks! And that is often the case in such discussions, as much as it is also possible to overestimate the difficulty of replacing humans in some tasks. As I mention in a previous post, what often happens with automation is that the task itself gets redesigned to be easier to automate (probably what happened with the bath). Or as in factories, the environment gets systematically structured so robots can navigate it within their limitations. Also, automation can often take the low-hanging fruit from a job (like legal search) which may eliminate 90% of the billable hours from some task while also removing the ladder by which an apprentice provides value to learn a trade and move up the employment ladder.

Of course, the good news is this means consumer prices will drop. But someone unemployed with zero income can't afford legal services or health services even if they are 1/10th the cost.... At least not without some form of "income" from the government or charity. Or, alternatively, some sort of gift of capital of personal robots to be used for local subsistence production or perhaps selling robot-produced products and services for exchange credits (sort of like renting your PC's idle time to bigger number crunching projects).

Also, since when do services have to be entirely *better* to compete? If I told you, you can hire a human health aid for US$4000 a month for e

To answer the first part of your query:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/...

No guns allowed to be owned by the citizens in Australia, but... this still happened. According to the anti-gun crowd, this should NEVER EVER EVER happen in gun-free paradises like Australia, and note how quiet those groups are on this incident.

Disarming the public can not work, will not work, and does not work, and the Australia hostage crisis has proven it. Firearms are a "Pandora" situation, and have been since the invention of gunpowder. Permitting only the cops and VIP bodyguards to be the only people who have firearms is not realistic; one of those will sell their firearm at the right cost to a bad guy, and the whole plan goes to hell. In order to stop heinous situations like this from happening, you have to change the instincts and mindsets of the human animal. Until that can be done, these situations will continue to happen, no matter the laws.

Do you believe that vigilantism is always wrong?

Vigilantism is necessary, so long as black men date white women.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12...
http://www.lipstickalley.com/s...

Thankfully these two were quickly closed as suicides, with little media attention, but suicide is high in black men that date white women.

I'm so glad I moved out of the US. I don't have to worry about my friends or neighbors being lynched here.

And lets take out the BS regarding the DPRK launching a massive attack on the US. If you spent a few minutes contemplating the logistics you would see that this is not valid.

Like reality matters. When I lived in the US, I kept advocating abolishing the military. We don't need it. And people explained how China would invade the day we made that declaration. But none explained how China could get people to the US and secure a beach-head to invade. A few hunters could keep China at bay, given their ability to project strength outside China. But nobody ever thought about the invasion. "What if China teleported 10,000,000 soldiers into the Capital? What would you do then?" As if Chinamen in D.C. was the problem, and teleportation wasn't. If they could do that, why not just teleport a nuke into the capitol building during a joint-session presidential address? It's more important to fear China than have a strong economy.

So the very polite and courteous email I received from the Cuban Foreign Office back after Hurricane Katrina will no longer be quite the unique bit of memorabilia after all?

Lest we forget, Cuba offered to send doctors and other medical assistance to help the suffering residents in New Orleans after Katrina did its thing .. and the US State Department was hardly even polite with their refusal.

http://fpif.org/bush_administr...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/...

So I emailed the Cuban Foreign Office to apologize :-) I'm sure I tripped some intelligence tripwires on that little gesture, but meh .. who cares? I, being previously assigned to the 8th Special Forces Group in Panama back in The Day, was probably on a Cuban Intelligence list or two in any event :-) Luckily everyone (Cuban and US) apparently had a sense of humor, or sense enough not to screw with the topic. Or maybe NSA wasn't quite as invasive then as now. I still thought it awfully decent of the Cuban government to respond to my unsolicited email.. startled no doubt by the "SGM, USA SF (Ret)" in my email's signature.

To be perfectly honest, does anyone have statistics (recent) on the number of terrorist acts that are committed by Christians? I'd like to compare them with Islamic terrorist acts, because it seems to me that Islamic apologists need a wake-up call.

I don't know about world-wide, but in Mexico extremists in the cult of Santa Muerte are out of control.

"A recent United Nations report estimated nearly 9,000 civilians have been killed and 17,386 wounded in Iraq in 2014, more than half since ISIL fighters seized large parts on northern Iraq in June. It is likely that the group is responsible another several thousand deaths in Syria. To be sure, these numbers are staggering. But in 2013 drug cartels murdered more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone, and another 60,000 from 2006 to 2012 — a rate of more than one killing every half hour for the last seven years. What is worse, these are estimates from the Mexican government, which is known to deflate the actual death toll by about 50 percent.

Statistics alone do not convey the depravity and threat of the cartels. They carry out hundreds of beheadings every year. In addition to decapitations, the cartels are known to dismember and otherwise mutilate the corpses of their victims — displaying piles of bodies prominently in towns to terrorize the public into compliance. They routinely target women and children to further intimidate communities. Like ISIL, the cartels use social media to post graphic images of their atrocious crimes."