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Well, it was reported by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, CBS, and others (ABC, Fox News, NPR, etc.).

As far as I can tell, all the major US news companies reported on the closings.

Although there are stronger laws in Europe, I would not bet any money on that. Compare this story on the web (published in 2010) with this story (published in 2012).

For those who don't want to read both articles: Basically, in 2010, Europol was to oversee (secretly) the financial information that was going to be given to the U.S. and the law makers were promised bulk information wouldn't be passed to the U.S. As of 2012, it has been discovered that bulk information is being passed to the U.S. My logic is this: if we can't trust financial data to be passed properly, how can we expect any other information to be passed (or not passed) properly? Frankly, I'm surprised how unhappy Europeans are about how the U.S. is handling Snowden while being strangely quiet over the whole debacle with Morales' plane. That does not pass the sniff test with me.

Disclaimer: I'm an American living in Germany. I cannot read German yet so I don't know specifically what the news is saying concerning this. I do know Snowden is in the German Google headlines more often than in the U.S. Google headlines.

To late, no cure but a possible vaccine.

U.S. reports malaria vaccine breakthrough http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/malaria-vaccine/

The three major Airports around NYC (La Guardia, Newark, and JFK) closed by 8 pm on Oct 29. Flights to Newark & JFK had resumed by 7 am on Oct 31, and La Guardia resumed at 7 am the next morning, Nov. 1.

Compare how often trains are late or canceled vs. airplanes

Okay, why don't we?

Most of these Amtrak lines are well below 100% on-time. Most seem to be in the 60-70% "on time" range, with some as low as 50%:
http://www.amtrak.com/historical-on-time-performance

Several of the busiest US airports are ranked at 70-80% on time performance.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/17/travel/flight-delay-map-business-traveller/index.html

Overall, I'd say that the delays are pretty comparable.

You know what would improve the US even more than making people travel abroad? Making HSR proponents like you actually cite facts to support your arguments.

People may not, but the government cares enough to support Red Flag. And may have happened once, if briefly, if only in a few government ministries . Still, I'd be pessimistic about the prospects too. For one thing, its harder to hide a backdoor in open source software.

People prefer to take orders from guys with good hair...

They rent white people like that in China

The Bitcoin network's computational power "far exceeds the combined processing strength of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers". Plenty of nodes have specialized hardware developed specifically for Bitcoin mining; the only way any actor could take over the network would be to invest shit tons of money in specialized hardware they can't use for anything else. This isn't a situation where they can just repurpose their existing supercomputers for a day.

Sure it's within the realm of physical possibilities, but what gains would there be besides pissing a lot of people off by spending huge sums of money? The ratio of people pissed off to money spent is very small, so practically any other method of pissing people off would be much more cost effective.

By a godly coincidence, I read this article on CNN right after bumping into this one. For those wanting more information on the mysterious amber alert, here it is: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/justice/california-amber-alert/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Aside from base assumptions, what makes you believe that Snowden entered employment with the NSA with the intent to release data he was exposed to?

Because he said that.

Snowden to newspaper: I took contractor job to gather evidence

Also, what gives you the impression that he has an interest backing him

He did manage to steal an enormous amount of wide ranging data in only 90 days of employment, don't you think?

Who Helped Snowden Steal State Secrets?

In my opinion, the fact that the US gov't has hunted him so furiously and has taken the exact opposite approach that they mandate regarding any other nation's political refugees ...

He isn't a political refuge. He stole national defense secrets and has revealed a few of them. Nobody really knows what he is doing with the rest of them.

Charles Moore: Snowden is a traitor - The beneficiaries of his betrayal are not civil liberties, but those who wish to embarrass us.

Snowden leaks give edge to U.S. rivals, officials say - Russia, China and terrorism suspects have altered how they communicate to evade U.S. detection, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

Snowden’s Nuclear War on Intelligence

Geoffrey Ingersoll: It's Now Clear That Russian Intelligence Speaks For Edward Snowden

Used 2 feel it was "conspiracy theorist" stuff till CNN http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/

• The device is way too small - the consequence is that the cameras are too close together and thus the tracked working volume is tiny. If you use both hands at the same time, you can barely move before you run out of space and the camera stops tracking your hand.
• It is very sensitive to occlusions - if the fingers (or some reflection) aren't visible, no tracking. E.g. making a grabbing gesture is really hard, because closing the hand into a fist hides the fingertips and the software gets confused. Rotating a closed hand is outright impossible - the software doesn't know how to distinguish the top and the bottom of the hand unless it can see the fingers (i.e. you are holding the palm open and spread out)
• The API is more targeted towards emulating a mouse or a multitouch desktop than actual 3D interaction. Unfortunately, a real mouse or a proper touchscreen are way more comfortable, accurate and robust to use for such tasks than the Leap, with its glitchy tracking and buggy software. There is no way to get the raw video from the SDK, so no custom algorithms are possible.
• The available software is crap. There is no way around it. The very buggy "Airspace store" is full of paid apps that are often little more than a buggy demo that you would throw away after 5 minutes once the novelty of wiggling your fingers at the screen wears off. Yay for drawing with your finger in the air ... Many of the apps are things that could be hacked together in Flash in a few minutes. Furthermore, many of the available apps try to do things that would be way better handled using a simple mouse or some other controller, thus there is little benefit from using the Leap.

So all in all - unless you are the type of person that wants to show off at the next Powerpoint presentation by changing slides by waving one's hands (and be a laughing stock when the device won't work or skip several slides instead), there isn't much to be excited about. It is really a solution looking for a problem.

Samsung TV has Android in it http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/01/technology/security/tv-hack/index.html?iid=HP_River

Combine the natural outcome of these stories... Look at the Xbox One debacle. It ain't pretty...

Nobody cares enough about Africa to listen in on them. The only thing Africa has is resources, and China already is buying them. Is the infrastructure subject to surveillance? Sure, but every infrastructure is, even heterogeneous ones like the US.

So, nothing to see in Africa? Just move along? I don't think so.

Just like Europe, South America, and Asia, Africa is an entire continent of nations, some of which have drawn considerable attention in the last couple of years. I assume you've heard of Libya? Egypt? Algeria? South Africa? There is a lot going on in Africa, and the Chinese are heavily involved. There are plenty of things they might want to listen to.

Africa has more mobile phone users than the U.S. or E.U.
How mobile phones are making cash obsolete in Africa
European Rocket Launches 2 African Satellites

China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn't understand

Seven out of the world's 10 fastest growing economies are African. According to a 2010 report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the rate of return on foreign investments in Africa was, in the first decade of this century, higher than in any other region. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Africa is now growing faster than Asia.

Sino-African trade volumes have grown accordingly. Negligible in 2000, trade hit $198.5 billion in 2012. By comparison, U.S.-Africa trade volume was $108.9 billon, and is slated to fall further behind: Research from Standard Chartered estimates that trade between China and Africa will hit $385 billion by 2015

MAP: Here Are All Of The Big Chinese Investments In Africa Since 2010
China’s Increasing Interest in Africa: Benign but Hardly Altruistic

South Africa Could Have a Spaceport

The Republic of South Africa has considered using Israel's Shavit space booster to send a satellite to orbit. The South Africans have tested the Israeli Jericho 2 intermediate-range ballistic missile which converts to the Shavit space rocket.

International Effort Seeks to Counter Jihadists in Africa

China To Establish A Naval Base Around Somalia

As the threat of piracy continues. And as Somali pirates continue with their awkward trade to kidnap foreign ships, a Chinese Admiral has revealed China’s proposal to establish a naval base in the region in its commitment to thwart piracy and finally end this tragedy in the gulf of Eden. The lazy pirates who have no intentions to pursue an education or employment see piracy as an easy way to make money. About 75% of piracy in the region is being masterminded by terror groups to finance their illegal activities.

Rear Admiral Yin Zhou’s, a senior Chinese naval officer has suggested that China will establish a permanent base in the Gulf of Aden to aid its anti-piracy operations. The proposal was posted on China’s Defence ministry website. The Admiral went on to say that supplying and maintaining the fleet off Somalia was challenging without such a base, and said other nations were unlikely to object. The Chinese navy curr

Now we have had various ample proof that parts of the government are exceeding their power, that they are literally breaking laws, and even the checks and balances of our system do nothing to detect and correct, often times due to collusion or tacit approval . We have whistleblowers pointing out these abuses, and they're to be prosecuted, and while people may cheer for them and call them heroes, little else seems to be happening. There are more protests and support rallies for these folks in foreign lands than here in the US.

It's not even complex: Parts of the government have been knowingly breaking the laws that they themselves were supposed to protect and enforce, yet they have not been put in jail, or even brought to trial. Nothing appears like it will change.

I hate to sound all tin-foil-hat-infowars-crazy, but at the point where the government decides it doesn't have to follow the law, and can do anything it wants - without even a hand-waving distraction, it's not a democracy or republic - it's authoritarian leaning towards totalitarianism. Laws were broken. Someone, perhaps whole groups of someone, need to go to jail. Claiming that it's okay because a law is open to interpretation, without question, by a government body not privileged with the power of interpreting law, and then further masking it with secrecy in part to hide the legality is right out! That's not a senate committee issue. It's black and white - trial time. If the president says he knew and explicitly approved, it's also impeachment time, followed by jail time. This isn't getting a hummer in the oval office level stuff, this is beyond Nixon-level stuff.

People turned out in the thousands for the OWS, and they didn't even have a good argument, much less any sort of attempt at a solution. Where are the thousands for this?

Hands free technologies are not less distracting; in some cases, they're the worst. The cell phone lobby is desperately trying to focus on "hands free" stuff to sidetrack the issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012900053.html

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/12/autos/aaa-voice-to-text/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/even-hands-free-you-shouldnt-talk-or-text-while-driving/2013/07/29/4d7214ec-f3d0-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/opinion/hands-free-distractions.html?_r=0 ...and on and on, if you just google things like "hands free driving distracting"

Having your hands on the wheel simply increases your control of the car. It does not do ANYTHING about your brain being more preoccupied with the conversation or task.

Your job in your car is to DRIVE. Not to eat, not to put on makeup or comb your hair, not to text, not to read, not to talk to someone who isn't in the car. You're piloting 2-3 tons of metal that can and do injure, maim, and kill. People driving cars kill 30,000+ a year in the US alone. Take the responsibility seriously and stop faffing about trying to carry on your life in your car. If you need to get things done while traveling, RIDE THE BUS.

if you send a sealed package, you have the expectation of that package staying sealed. you have no expectation that UPS won't keep track of where they picked up the package, and where it was delivered to; that data belongs to them. you have an expectation that the cel carrier won't read your text (not much of one), but where they pick up the text and who they deliver it to is not data that belongs soley to you.

OK, so that explains tracking in/outbound call origin/destination information... but not location tracking or any of their other questionable practices. Besides, you said that we "shouldn't have an expectation of privacy" when it comes to carrier services in general, a philosophy I not only disagree with, but find incredibly dangerous were it to become the status quo (yea, yea, I know, don't remind me).

you have an expectation that the cel carrier won't read your text (not much of one)

Say hello to 2 years ago

I tease my kids that their kids will not know how to drive a car. .

Yep, bet they have never seen a manual transmission too.

You know the best theft protection these days is a clutch..

That's pretty region-specific... mainly North America, where manuals made up only 7% of sales in early 2012. And anyone targeting cars specifically would know how to drive stick, unlike say robbers trying to commandeer a running car as part of their escape (happened locally a few years ago).

Actually, it makes a nice portmanteau, but it is now factually incorrect.

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/total_taxes/

I believe you mean "and was factually incorrect over a decade ago, before the most recent round of tax hikes including this new tax, and before the disastrous Romneycare went into effect."

That chart is from data from over a decade ago. Things have changed slightly since then, and taxes have gone back up to cover new costs for things like burying a highway under Boston and messing with the existing healthcare system.

Its called Taxachusetts for a reason.

Actually, it makes a nice portmanteau, but it is now factually incorrect.

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/total_taxes/

Massachusetts is #40 on the total tax burden list. Lower than fucking Nevada and Louisiana.

This is really the central issue. There are few American values outside of money any longer, and this moral hazard is in the process of destroying the country.

In this case, we have a whistleblower providing evidence that

1) The American government is spying on American citizens without obtaining any warrants, unless you count secret court orders that have no judicial oversight*

2) This program is even kept as a secret from other parts of the government

3) Parts of the government have been lying to congress about what the spying program is about, who they have collected information on, and how they go about collecting it

*(This is a hugely important point. One of the favorite tricks of a totalitarian regime is to legitimize anti-democratic activity by simply making it legal. But if the constitution says we are free from unreasonable searches and seizures, a secret law passed by a secret court shouldn't hold sway. The only difference between our government and despotism is that they get more than one person to declare the government's will, pass it around in secret to co-conspirators who share the same backwards worldview, and then pretend that the theater they just acted for has some legitimacy.

The stark reality is that our government is corrupt and therefore does whatever it wants. As Nixon famously stated: When the President does it, it's not illegal. Then the question has to be asked: if that's the case, what is the difference between a President and a King?)

In essence, there is a part of our government that has approved its own spying program in a process that the public has no chance of knowing about.

So, why aren't we hearing about this in the media? Why are we instead hearing about his girlfriend, or his personal life? Because American media is no longer tasked with seeking the truth. Their primary concern is profit, and covering the birth of a British child is a lot more profitable than hiring skilled journalists to do journalism. Additionally, the Executive routinely threatens to cut off access to their staff for any news organizations that step out of line. For organizations like the Guardian, that risk is minimized, since they don't depend on empty stories to fill the vacuum of the 24 hour news cycle. For someone like CNN or Fox, the only thing that matters is the ratings, and that's best achieved by cheap, exasperated, stupid television. They can fill the airtime with "breaking news" about celebrities, or cat videos, or whatever pretend journalism is the cheapest to produce, but they feel like they need access so they can continue presenting the strained theater of left versus right. Every headline screams out: "Obama 'slams' GOP Leadership" or "Boehner threatens retaliation for 'nuclear option.'"

Boehner and his counterparts are barely able to communicate with regular voters, but that's because they have no idea what it's like to be a regular voter. They probably don't know what a loaf of bread costs, because they have servants and assistants who do that sort of thing for them. Half of congress is made up of millionaire lawyers, and the result of that is a bunch of outrageously overwrought laws that have nothing to do with helping anyone but their rich friends. Even now while they are discussing what tax breaks to keep, they have demanded that the proposal be kept a secret for fifty years . The reason is because if the truth were known, you could go down the line and see the leashes traveling from the election year donors to the politicians they have bought and paid for. Which would be great to know during the next election, but again, you don't matter. You don't exist, as far as they are concerned.

Back to the media... taking on the US government is expensive, and not only are the producers (who couldn't give two shits about our rights) not invested in the truth, but there's also probably an army of lawyers worried about getting entangled in expensive

Instead of wasting students money, the government would be wasting the money - you'd still have the same problem of "sorry, you don't have 5-7 years of experience."

That problem will never go away (though I did go to a school with a strong co-op program built into the curriculum). Most fields require you to "pay your dues". That doesn't make your undergrad a waste of money - it just means you have a few more years of training before you are useful. There was a recent study that showed, at least in the short-term, that associates degrees command a higher salary than either high school diplomas or bachelors degrees. I think that shows that associates degrees are the "sweet spot" of education right now, where government dollars would go furthest. Why educate a student for 13 years, only to stop 2 years shy of peak return-on-investment?

Hey, you know what else is really good at avoiding collisions? Trains.

Let me remind you this .... http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/world/americas/canada-runaway-train/index.html

Train accidents are so rare that when they ahppen, they're fucking front-page news!

Exactly, as a stockholder I only care about marketshare when it starts to drop to a point that become a problem maintaining the ecosystem. The margins are my main concern. If I ever look at marketshare, I want to see "profitshare".

Now that article that I linked disagrees with me. It argues that Apple might eventually lose the smartphone battle as cheap phones become "good enough". I'd argue two things: (a) Apple can still participate in the market with a high-margin cheaper phone. (b) Apple can abandon the market if it becomes unprofitable. They weren't a smart phone maker 7 years ago. They didn't make a (modern) tablet until 3 years ago. They weren't an MP3 maker for a very long time. I believe they are agile enough to use new technology to expand into new markets as the opportunity arises. If they were a one-trick pony I wouldn't be a stockholder. They are now a 3-trick pony :)

We should have H1B Visas for lawyers and politicians. It would be amazing how quickly the program would be shut down then.

I doubt you could do anything about politicians. The legal profession is heading for trouble. It is getting harder and harder for lawyers for find a good job coming out of law school (with that massive debt), law school enrollments are dropping, law schools are laying off faculty. There are a lot of things feeding into that, including over selling of law degrees, computer and web based legal services, and off-shore legal work. Off shore accounting work is also increasing with the usual implications for accountants.

Law firms send case work overseas to boost efficiency - September 25, 2005

Guess which jobs are going abroad - February 25, 2004

If a tax preparer gets you an unexpected refund this year, you may have an accountant in India to thank. That's because accounting firms are joining the outsourcing trend established years ago by cost-conscious American manufacturers. In fact, companies in a number of unexpected industries are now sending work overseas. From scientific lab analysis to medical billing, the service-sector workforce has gone global. CPA firms are just one example. In the 2002 tax year, accounting firms sent some 25,000 tax returns to be completed by accountants in India. This year, that number is expected to quadruple. -- more

Australia is seeing a similar trend.

Get used to it: sending jobs overseas is the way of the future

We should have H1B Visas for lawyers and politicians. It would be amazing how quickly the program would be shut down then.

I doubt you could do anything about politicians. The legal profession is heading for trouble. It is getting harder and harder for lawyers for find a good job coming out of law school (with that massive debt), law school enrollments are dropping, law schools are laying off faculty. There are a lot of things feeding into that, including over selling of law degrees, computer and web based legal services, and off-shore legal work. Off shore accounting work is also increasing with the usual implications for accountants.

Law firms send case work overseas to boost efficiency - September 25, 2005

Guess which jobs are going abroad - February 25, 2004

If a tax preparer gets you an unexpected refund this year, you may have an accountant in India to thank. That's because accounting firms are joining the outsourcing trend established years ago by cost-conscious American manufacturers. In fact, companies in a number of unexpected industries are now sending work overseas. From scientific lab analysis to medical billing, the service-sector workforce has gone global. CPA firms are just one example. In the 2002 tax year, accounting firms sent some 25,000 tax returns to be completed by accountants in India. This year, that number is expected to quadruple. -- more

Australia is seeing a similar trend.

Get used to it: sending jobs overseas is the way of the future

Hey, you know what else is really good at avoiding collisions? Trains.

Let me remind you this .... http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/world/americas/canada-runaway-train/index.html

Also it's not just Apple that is hit with lower profits. Samsung and HTC also reported lower earnings on their phones as well.

CNN has had a couple of corespondents try and find Snowden at the airport. There's actually a hotel has a floor that isn't considered Russian territory (having not passed through customs) that they will bus you off airport property to. There's room service, and probably laundry as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/europe/russia-snowden-goodman-transit/index.html?iref=allsearch

Interesting read actually. And of course they didn't see him...

Two points:
1) iPad sales didn't tank. They were down, but that's to be expected considering they had a major product release (the 3rd gen iPad which introduced the retina display) that helped to drive sales in the year-ago quarter, but no corresponding release this quarter to drive sales similarly. If anything, I found it astounding that sales were only down about 10%, given that they're working with a nearly 9 month old product (the 4th gen iPad was released late last year), rather than a brand new one with a marquee feature.

2) Regarding the PC market and making money, Apple's low-volume/high-margin approach has allowed them to capture about 45% of the profit in the PC market (a plurality), despite their slim market share. To say the least, their share of the pie rather conclusively disproves your notion that the only way to survive in the space is with high-volume/low-margins.

I do agree that the analysts have been predicting that their margins would be compressed quite a bit, but Apple has been acknowledging that for quite awhile as well, ever since they introduced the iPhone 5, which has a rather high manufacturing cost, as well as the iPad mini, which has significantly lower margins so that it can compete more easily with other tablets in that space. Even so, their margins have remained relatively stable since the introduction of those products last year, and their sales have remained in line with or above what one would expect when you look at what products were actually released (i.e. few to none). Considering they've already acknowledged that they'll be having a rather full fall quarter in terms of product releases since they haven't been spreading them throughout the year as they typically do, it's not particularly surprising that they were down this quarter.

I know as a fact there was a "before" and an "after" in the life of our son -- he was an apt big baby till he was 26 monthes. Then he got this compulsory vaccination (we're French) and he was 'elsewhere' for a few days. To make it short, my son is now 8.5 years old and he's a non verbal autist.

"Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose.

cnn report

Don't encourage the endangering of other childrens health through a known problem (measels) because a liar (many liars in fact) tricked you into blaming the vaccinations. Also remember we have imperfect memories, particularly about things we feel emotional about.

"Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/09/22/kd.gupta.column/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/09/health/medical-mistakes

I enjoy telling the pharmacist that it's okay, I already have autism.

---

It concerns me that there's a growing distrust of medicine. Every day it seems there are more and more people who insist, "Doctors don't know anything." It's a very disturbing phenomenon that's getting people killed.

The medical community needs to start doing something about this.

The best approach for dealing with piracy is making your content easily accessible, hassle-free (i.e., no DRM), and offered at a fair price.

Let me expand on this point. There are broadly 2 kinds of pirates - those who enjoy your product and pirate for personal use (the fans), and those who pirate commercially to make money for themselves (the thieves).

The fans are normally concerned with easy and cheap access to your product. Give it to them and most fans will not bother to pirate because it is risky (exposure to malware), often time consuming (some obscure products can be really hard to find), inconvenient (usually need to assemble from multiple sources) or require technical expertise (eg. applying cracks, rooting). A good example would be Steam which provides cheap and convenient access to games. A counter example would be Game of Thrones - If you live in Oz, you can't get it (no access) and it is expensive (requires cable subscription).

As for the thieves, normally an obscure small technical magazine would not be of interest to them. The exception is if your product is so expensive that even your fans are willing to buy copies from pirates, making it financially worthwhile. Again, reducing your product to a fair price (by market standards) will largely solve this problem. One example is AutoCAD, which has a captive market, ridiculous monopoly pricing and a huge piracy problem.

Since you mentioned "secure", I assume you are contemplating some form of DRM. Just be aware of its disadvantages -its usually expensive (you need to buy/licence the DRM, maintain some way of policing it, maintain customer service to handle irate buyers, have some sort of refund sceheme for customers who cannot run the DRM), it can negatively impact sales (see Sony rootkits), and if badly implemented, can actually cause lawsuits e.g. SecureROM.

The terrorists won on September 11, 2001, although not in the way they planned.

More like not in the specific way that they had hoped. IIRC they hoped to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia. But the sort of stuff in the news now is also the kind of thing they were hoping for. A rather nice consolation prize. It is certainly a revenge of sorts. The entire country has been punished. Countless generations of Americans will be forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. They could not have done it without help from our own politicians, but nevertheless it is undeniably a very real victory for Bin Laden's group. No honest person can continue to call the US free and there is no going back.

Also known as Dreamliners

Did they get federal law enforcement training vs administrative upgrades?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/09/politics/tsa-badges

Implying Obama hasn't taken care of business?

He's been getting so much done, he's had time to comment on a trial in Florida! Forget about the IRS, Syria, Benghazi, Fast and Furious (fuck everyone involved in this), NSA unconstitutional domestic spying, keeping tax cuts, patriot act garbage. There is a long list of issues that really need to be addressed in this country, and we're too busy squabbling about little shit.

He averted an econopocalypse. There were not runs on the banks. FDIC didn't come into play. The stock market bounced back, if not the job market.

The whole thing began because of pressure from the government on the banks. In addition, 290,000 fewer people were counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work. That drop in those seeking jobs was the reason the unemployment rate fell to 7.6%, the lowest since December 2008. Second Largest Employer In America Is Temp Agency. And the stock market? Is not a bastion for the American middleclass.

He ramped down our military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. In such a way that was a non-newsworthy event. This is a SLAM DUNK.

Not according to the facts. All because of this due to the military industrial complex not to mention the deaths of thousands, for what, freedom?

But all in all he's got shit done. Despite the massive resistance he's facing from the Republicans.

Fuck all the partisan posturing. What's the narrative when he had a democrat majority in the senate and House? Why don't we take an objective look at what both of the hands are doing to for the body they're attached to?

Even CNN used the word credit right next to the screenshot

There is debate about this, and at least here in Europe, those with it are more and more living their own lives. The 17-year old daughter of a colleague has it - and she is not only learning the trade of a baker: she is preparing to live alone, in an apartment in the middle of the city. She already manages her own money and her own relationship with various administrative bodies. With her father's support, but still - this would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.

This is also happening in Australia. They are teaching people with disabilities to live on their own, not just in halfway houses but on their own, managing most of their own affairs. Some are down to 1 hour a week with social workers, stuff the cant take care of on their own they know to save for that time...

Exactly. The US is cleansing itself and future generations of people who suffer DS at the same time that services and support for these people to live productive and happy lives are better than they've ever been.

Global warming is real. Now if the Department of Transportation starts digging lots of holes in the ground then I guess well also know the meteor is coming...

Old news. They've been collaborating since way back over a decade ago at least. This from Win98.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/03/windows.nsa.02/

UPDATE: July-17-2013. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/16/politics/zimmerman-holder/index.html

I told you so. (again)

Wasn't a gun range the scene of a killing of a veteran recently..
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed

Yea, even the gun ranges are not safe. But then again, no where is really 100% safe.

Is this the same Yahoo! that turned over data to the Chinese, which resulted in a bunch of people going to prison?

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/08/technology/yahoo_china_b20/

Seems like a convenient PR stunt to me.

There is a thought that MS is re-orging itself to be a copy of Apple's structure. But from the reporter's opinion it won't work because it requires a feared and obsessive dictator at the top which Ballmer isn't and it is unlikely that Apple will continue with it's current structure.

I am fully expecting ZImmerman to sue NBC, and settle for something in 7 figures.

It is already happening. The press engaged in a lot of intentionally inaccurate reporting, but NBC's behavior was especially egregious. I hope Zimmerman wins his case. There needs to be some consequences for slimy journalism.

And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust their OS with your personal files and/or communications?

What more do you need?

I don't understand why people even needed to hear it from Snowden. Here's the *exact* same story from almost exactly *15 years ago*;

    The long, strong arm of the NSA
    July 27, 1998
    Web posted at: 4:15 PM EDT
    http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/
   

It's gotten to the point where no vendor hip to the NSA's power will even start building products without checking in with Fort Meade first. This includes even that supposed ruler of the software universe, Microsoft Corp. "It's inevitable that you design products with specific [encryption] algorithms and key lengths in mind," said Ira Rubenstein, Microsoft attorney and a top lieutenant to Bill Gates. By his own account, Rubenstein acts as a "filter" between the NSA and Microsoft's design teams in Redmond, Wash. "Any time that you're developing a new product, you will be working closely with the NSA," he noted

Clearly wary of granting the government supervision over its products, Microsoft has stubbornly refused to submit a data-recovery plan, even though the Redmond giant already includes a data-recovery feature in its Exchange Server. "The Exchange Server can only be used when this feature is present," Rubenstein said. "Because we haven't filed a product plan, it's harder for us to export this than for companies that have filed plans."

Exchange was available in my country in 1998, so I trust the export issues were "resolved" then, as they have been (again) now ..

I agree, but if you do find a CxO with that kind of integrity, well, you really found a rare bird.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Ms. Corey spew out excuses for having just lost the case. Seems the jury proclaimed Mr. Zimmerman Not Guilty.

So not only will she have to put up with pissed-off constituents (both for Mr. Zimmerman because she pulled these hijinks, and again because she lost), now she'll likely have to put up with the potential lawsuit from the former IT dude in TFA.

I find it extremely interesting that she's *still* trying to press her case for locking the guy up, in spite of having just lost. It tends to support the allegations about her in TFA more than ever, truth be told.

More than that. I'd say Napolitano is probably the least knowledgeable person about terrorism in the Obama cabinet, which is just fucking sad.

She repeatedly claims there is no violence along the US/Mexico border, even though Arizona happens to be the kidnapping capital of the world, and people as far north as Chandler, AZ have been beheaded by Cartel members.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6848672&page=1#.UeBPe23aW2U

I remember it was her who made it sound like right wing groups were ready to storm the nation:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/extremism.report/

None of these "threats" ever actually panned out. Not a single one. The worse that happened is some idiot or two made a comment (e.g. talk about assassinating the president) but no physical violence ever surfaced.

Ironically most actual "acts" of domestic terror have been committed by left wing groups, usually environmentalists and/or animal rights groups, but including the mass shooters, nearly all of which considered themselves to be left wing:

http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/ecoterrorism.asp
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ba6_1345149941

I remember a few years back there was an article on slashdot about how medical researchers had to stop their work due to eco terrorism being so bad, with one researcher who was studying Parkinson's by manipulating rat neurons, and some group threatened to Molotov cocktail his family, so he quit.

Napolitano has never made a single mention of anything like that, not even once. Al Qaeda threats are probably 1% of actual terrorism that happens in the US, and the so called "right wing" threat practically doesn't even exist. But to her, those are the top priority.