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It's called a city because that's what we wanted to be called.

I've lived in Lee's Summit since I was 3. I'm 25 now, bought my first house here six months ago.

It's not a big city, but saying it's "Not much" of one is a bit of an understatement. This town has grown exponentially in my lifetime. It has plenty of undeveloped area to grow exponentially still. Apparently we're ranked one of the best places to live in the country.

I think it's more an investment on Google's part. They lay down the infrastructure now and watch us continue to grow into it.

The PlayStation 4 is x86-64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD

Funny how Sony tried to woo Apple over to the Cell architecture, even offering Apple Sony authored PS3 games for the Mac.

As it happens, Intel's was not the only alternative chip design that Apple had explored for the Mac. An executive close to Sony said that last year Mr. Jobs met in California with both Nobuyuki Idei, then the chairman and chief executive of the Japanese consumer electronics firm, and with Kenichi Kutaragi, the creator of the Sony PlayStation.

Mr. Kutaragi tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.

source: What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance / NYTimes / 2005

Other sources I am too lazy to dig up cited Jobs as stating that his main mover for this decision was that he in no way wanted any Apple product associated with a gaming console. Call it Platformism, but if that citation is correct, it was very solid reasoning from Jobs. Every PC pundit on the planet would have had a field day with that one. Never mind that the US DoD (and likely the NSA) has found the Cell architecture in PS3s most useful for clustering, since the Cell architecture is so very cheap and so very good at that. citation

quality of life indicators

If you compare Des Moines to the the average of the 100 best cities this tool has data for, Des Moines has a lot of crime, terrible education, and not a lot to do. All it seems to have going for it is short commute times and a low cost of living. Even the financial incentives aren't that great in my opinion. The average home price may be $100,000, but the median familyincome is only $55,000. Considering fuel, groceries, and utilities (probably expensive because of hot summers and cold winters), probably aren't any cheaper than other cities, I doubt that $55,000 goes very far. I agree with the other posters that they are doing this because it is cheap.

Nice try. For one, NOTHING in that report- which was NOT a Presidential directive to do anything and had not the power of law- said

  "make bad loans to people who won't pay them back",

much less

"go out in force and persuade as many people as you can who you know know nothing about real estate, variable interest rates, or real-estate appreciation to take on loans you know for a fact they will never be able to service and do so by directly lying to them about the long term implications of what they're signing ".

What it WAS was an acknowledgment that many working people do NOT NOT NOT buy things on credit (unlike say, bankers) but instead have a pay as you go philosophy towards making purchases.Thanks to the bankers and frothing greedheads in the credit industry that was the ONLY criteria use to loan people money. The result was that poor people who didn't use credit were not considered for home mortgage loans although their incomes and employment histories justified receiving loans.

For 15 years - since 1993 - that system was observed by some banks and there was no melt down.

Meanwhile the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street cooked up that successively more risky forms of derivatives and CDOs unwittingly linking into one gigantic causal chain the entire banking industry insurance while lobbying to prevent CDOs from being regulated like insurance.

Of course Alan Greenspan, a direct Ayn Rand apostle who *literally sat at her feet* at her NY apartment (this was before she became a professional Social Security recipient... sponging off the state...) approved this all asserting that markets are "sophisticated" and "know what they're doing" and don't need government and unsophisticated people to oversee their activities (just to bail them out ) .

So what do we have? We have an edifice of masked causality and interconnected dependencies created by "superstar quants" who apparently don't understand that probability models based on an arbitrarily limited historical window of previous events actually DON'T and CAN'T be properly applied to the real world because none of the outcomes of the sample space can be definitively said to be independent in the first place, which is a mother fucking AXIOM of probability, and therefore any "events" composed of such outcomes are entirely fictional and any probability assigned to those events are both entirely fictional.

Any models which derive "risk" from said models are apriori known to be invalid (except by bankers and their quants! ) since as any 10th grader knows if the axioms of a system are not upheld , none of the conclusions are valid.

Which is exactly what the 2008 meltdown proved, as if it needed proving again.

So 2008 was a 16 trillion dollar lesson
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/news/economy/household_wealth/index.htm in 10th grade math inflicted on the country by the nations financial elite who treat your savings as their piggybank to backstop incredibly stupid financial theories they and their quants cook up at stripper clubs over lines of blow.

And you blame it on some poor car mechanic / elementary school teacher couple who've never had a home loan in their life, who think the loan officer is prevented by law and conscious from lying to them .

Yeah, your kind can never each too far or dream too big when it comes to excusing the depravity of the wealthy elite and blame everything on poor folks.

Filth.

As it happens, they're KKK members.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/justice/new-york-x-ray-plot/index.html

I'm pretty sure the government doesn't care about your purchase history of... an inflatable love goat and a 55 gallon drum of lube. Nice. Your file still says "Mostly Harmless."

Until that day comes that they DO care. Like say, you end up a prominent civil rights leader.

Ever wonder how much of the Occupy movement was derailed by quiet government pressure on key people?

This only confirms an article by Bruce Schneir that I just read, he surmises if the U.S has started a secret cyberwar arms race putting all internet infrastructure at perils. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/schneier-cyberwar-policy/index.html "... advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging" fuckers

Than a new periodic table.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/world/americas/brazil-protests-montague/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Here is one example that has been on CNN's front page for the better part of a month (as of yesterday it's off the front page)

Parents sue South Carolina for surgically making child female

That one was IS to F but IS to M is a lot more common than people think. It's said "it's easier to make a hole than a pole" but all too often when there is a micropenis or enlarged clit, they remove the female plumbing, and also very often if both are reasonably well formed the parents are often pressured by doctors and even clergy to make a decision, which is something equally as likely to be accurate if chosen by a coin toss as it is a "medical evaluation." In the case of IS children there is a 66% chance of making the wrong choice, because for us there are really three valid choices: 1. Make us female 2. Make us male 3. leave us the fuck alone. In all but the rarest of cases (such as a hypospadias being wide open revealing vital organs) the correct choice is #3 and let us make our own god damned decision when we're old enough to understand what such decisions make. To allow doctors or even parents play god and make that decision on our behalf is absolutely unforgivable.

Now now, don't confuse Senator Obama with President Obama. They're entirely different people...

(I'm not sure to what extent I'm joking...)

In a sense they are. It's easy to make big sweeping claims when you're uninformed about the threats out there, on unfamiliar legal ground, and not the one responsible for national security. One election takes care of the question of who is responsible. A couple of daily presidential intelligence briefings will start to take care of the uninformed part. Some briefings by the Justice and Defense departments on the Law of War and national security law will firm up the legal ground. The world is going to start looking different at this point.

When you're President of the United States, you own whatever happens on your watch. President Obama already owns at least two successful terrorist attacks, and two attempted attacks, ignoring the ones that were intercepted. He probably doesn't want to own any more. It's bad for the party at the polls, bad for his record as president, and bad for America, let alone the victims. Also note that he hasn't asked Congress to rescind the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed after 9/11, and legally the same as a declaration of war.

If you're responsible and assumed that there were no terrorist threats before becoming informed, you might have a change of view as well. And if he hadn't, or wavers in the future, and that results in more successful terrorist attacks, the Congress would likely become a Republican congress within an election or two, and at that point they would help the President along.

2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.

2010 Attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City by the Taliban - Attack failed, car bomb could have been mass casualty event.

2009 The "Underwear" bomber - Attack failed, potentially could have brought down aircraft with death of all aboard

2009 Fort Hood massacre - 13 dead, 30 wounded

Just a few weekly arrest reports from the FBI during President Obama's term:

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

the navy is ceasing its use of all caps as well. what's this world coming to?

We are still animals, we are driven to mate, to prize health and vitality in prospective partners, and outward appearance and youthful appearance continues to be one of the visual indicators of health and vitality.

I'm sure you will all be really surprised - nay, shocked, awed and stunned to discover that beautiful people sell more products and services than their average looking counterparts,
http://psysociety.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/beautiful-people-beautiful-products/ .. that beautiful people earn more money than average looking peers,
http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/news/funny/beautiful_money/

Sorry, we're all stuck in meat suits being driven by genetic operating code millenia old. Are you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9p8LXD5UDs

According to:
http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

200K in Brooklyn is equivalent to $101K in Austin, TX.

Not that hard to make 100K in Austin, the only issue is that is surrounded by Texas.

According to the state legislature, Austin is very much a part of Texas. In fact we're so much a part of Texas that they carved Austin up into 5 parts and stuck them into majority rural-conservative congressional districts just to help us "feel at home" in Texas. Every engineer here gets his/her vote balanced by 2 guys, Bubba and Cleatus, that both attended some of rural Texas' finest high schools.

According to: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

200K in Brooklyn is equivalent to $101K in Austin, TX.

Not that hard to make 100K in Austin, the only issue is that is surrounded by Texas.

Surrounded? Like in... shoot out at high noon, pa'dner?

Two factors to consider: Location and risk/reward ratio.

The "$200,000" figure -- as mentioned earlier in the discussion -- is extremely location-dependent. Let's say you live in Salt Lake City, UT and make $100,000 per year. I'm from the area, and $90K-$110K seems to be a very typical pay rate for sysadmins and programmers with 10 or more years of experience in their field, if you include health and other benefits in the W-2 (all the employers do!). Then let's cross-reference that with the Cost Of Living calculator at http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ . To enjoy an equivalent quality of life, here's what that guy needs to make (these are all area averages, not the specific cities referenced):

San Francisco, CA: $171,987
Los Angeles, CA: $140,380
Seattle, WA: $123,784
Raleigh, NC: $99,154
Austin, TX: $97,991
Washington, DC:$151,479
New York, NY (Manhattan): $231,289
New York, NY (Queens): $162,684

Advice for earning the big bucks? If you want to earn a high-end "salary", move to one of the technology hubs. Get an education in finance and high-end mathematics. Or get a security clearance, shine up your resume and skills, and plan to have no life outside of work due to travel abroad. Get some solid experience, get in on some high-profile projects, and job-hop when you're at the apex of your visibility in your company for much better pay.

If you don't want to live in Silicon Valley or New York, then be your own boss. Write your own products. Innovate in a field that lacks innovation. Develop software nobody has really thought of before. Monetize it and make a living. Cash out by selling the company to a bigger fish, and start working on your next idea. My company, for instance, buys small companies who create innovative software a LOT and integrates that software into its other offerings. And that strategy works very well for continually expanding the customer base and revenue. Sometimes it works out well for the little guy, sometimes not. It's a risk of running your own business.

Working for someone in a "typical" IT or software engineering field is typically not gonna make you rich. It can make you a good living with solid pay and far less stress than running your own business or working in high-pressure financial and security markets, though. And you're less likely to lose several fortunes on your way to making a fortune if someone else takes the risk, and you get paid the salary. Risk/Reward.

For me, quality of life matters a lot. I've been on both sides of the fence (trying to make it in business for myself vs. drawing a salary), and right now in my life it makes more sense to draw a reasonable salary doing a job that I love in a great environment working with quality people and making a positive difference without feeling that my job is my life. But I know I'm probably not going to strike it rich doing so... and I'm OK with that.

According to:
http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

200K in Brooklyn is equivalent to $101K in Austin, TX.

Not that hard to make 100K in Austin, the only issue is that is surrounded by Texas.

... your onus is showing.

But as I am good sport... I'll give you not one but TWO examples.

And to think that George Carlin died without (probably) learning about that.

I still don't really see you making any counterarguments or providing any new facts. Its pretty much all personal attack. So I'll give you one more attempt. Where do I go wrong below? Where is the hyperbole, the straw men? The blinding fear? I understand that injecting actual facts on this subject is unpopular with many people.

Terrorists exist. They've conducted attacks in the past. They'll continue to attempt attacks in the future. A significant part of the reason the number of successful attacks has been limited is due to hard work by the security services, good intelligence, and civic minded people. Crippling the intelligence agencies is a bad idea. In the past, people that stole large amounts of classified documents from the intelligence agencies, fled the country, and took refuge in a communist country where they began making the documents available to America's adversaries have been considered and called spies and traitors. Below is a list of a few attacks and arrests of terrorists.

2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.

2010 Attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City by the Taliban - Attack failed, car bomb could have been mass casualty event.

2009 The "Underwear" bomber - Attack failed, potentially could have brought down aircraft with death of all aboard

2009 Fort Hood massacre - 13 dead, 30 wounded

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

1.Tampa: Florida Resident Charged with Plotting to Bomb Locations in Tampa

A 25-year-old resident of Pinellas Park, Florida was charged in connection with an alleged plot to attack locations in Tampa with a vehicle bomb, assault rifle, and other explosives.

I know little that you couldn't, but apparently much that you don't. And that is sad, really. But you aren't alone. So, here is what I'm talking about to help you along.

Attacks against Americans that were attempted and not intercepted, or completed (this excludes war zones):

2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.

2010 Attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City by the Taliban - Attack failed, car bomb could have been mass casualty event.

2009 The "Underwear" bomber - Attack failed, potentially could have brought down aircraft with death of all aboard

2009 Fort Hood massacre - 13 dead, 30 wounded

2001 9/11 attacks - 2,973 dead. Two skyscraper towers destroyed, heavy damage to Pentagon.
Estimated damage to US economy: ~ $100,000,000,000.

2000 Photo: USS Cole - Video USS Cole - 17 dead, 39 wounded, major damage to US Navy destroyer

1998 Bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya - 224 dead, est. 4,000 wounded, both embassies heavily damaged

1996 Bin Laden's Fatwa - Text of the fatwa, or declaration of war, by Osama bin Laden first published in Al Quds Al Arabi

Small, limited sample, of other terrorism arrests and trials in the US:

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

1.Tampa: Florida Resident Charged with Plotting to Bomb Locations in Tampa

A

"massive amounts of food poisoning " What!?!? 70% of the people in your country get food poisoning daily?

1 in 6 americans get food poisoning annually. In Britain, about 5 million people annually get food poisoning. The population of Britain is about 63 million, or a rate of about 1 in 14.

I think a rate of over double in a country with similar eating habits, socioeconomic status, and climate, constitutes massive.

The British have a reputation for overcooking everything. Americans like rare meat. That may explain most of the difference right there.

"massive amounts of food poisoning " What!?!? 70% of the people in your country get food poisoning daily?

1 in 6 americans get food poisoning annually. In Britain, about 5 million people annually get food poisoning. The population of Britain is about 63 million, or a rate of about 1 in 14.

I think a rate of over double in a country with similar eating habits, socioeconomic status, and climate, constitutes massive.

Actually, they have much the same problem with what's being done today – only the problem is much much worse. Schneier (as often) had a recent commentary on this.

Short story: there is simply too much data, and no magical "find the suspicious subgraph" algorithm actually exists. Of course I'm not suggesting this as a justification for the practice – it makes it much more frightening in some ways – but I'm not so sure the modern agencies are that different from the stasi with respect to the information overload problem...

Google, Yahoo, Skype... "We don't give the NSA access to your mail/chat". What they really mean is: "We let them take copies of everything via the backdoor API, before we even store it"

Agreed - Its no't like it hasn't happened that way before;

The long, strong arm of the NSA
    July 27, 1998 Web posted at: 4:15 PM EDT
    http://www.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.

    [...]

And it's clear that they're doing this stuff without the engineers;

Microsoft: Vista won't get a backdoor
    Published on ZDNet News: March 3, 2006, 6:00 PM PT
    http://www.zdnet.com/news/microsoft-vista-wont-get-a-backdoor/147081

    [...]

    "Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a
    company representative said in a statement sent via e-mail.

    [...]

    "The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create
    a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted
    data," Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft,
    wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. "Over my dead body," he
    wrote in his post titled "Back-door nonsense."

    [...]

    "Back doors are simply not acceptable," Ferguson wrote. "Besides,
    they wouldn't find anybody on this team willing to implement and
    test the back door."

Don't get me wrong... Agency has downsides. Lots of them. It's tremendously annoying that there are no sales on Agency books. Kobo (my preferred store) gives out lots of discount codes, but they're of limited use because they don't apply to Agency books. And those publishers that choose to price their ebooks above the paperback price are extremely frustrating (although a few of them seem to be getting a clue. Tor, for example, prices Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books at a decent discount from paperback. DRM free too.)

But without Agency, it's entirely possible we'd be living in a Kindle-only world.

Amazon was using ebooks as loss-leaders to sell Kindles. $9.99 for the latest bestseller. The publishers hated it because it cannibalized their hardcover sales. But the danger went a lot further then that.

One of the boards I read (I think it might be mobileread.com) introduced me to the concept of a monopsony. Call it the flip side to a monopoly. There existed a very real possibility that Amazon would become the only practical retailer for ebooks, thanks to their willingness to take a loss to build market share (and the deep pockets to enable taking that loss.)

I much prefer the current, varied ecosystem in ebook retailing. I like owning a Kobo Touch, which lets me read ebooks from anybody selling epubs (as long as they don't use customized DRM, but hey, it's a pain getting Barnes & Noble to sell to a Canadian anyways, so who cares.) Amazon wouldn't work nearly as well for me. Canada is an afterthought market for Amazon.

The trial is proving interesting. CNN/Fortune has really good coverage on their Apple blog.

I wonder if that broadcast will include the attack on the US Liberty in which they killed 34 American Sailors and was covered up for MANY years

The attack wasn't covered up, it was front page news. The fact that you didn't know about it doesn't mean nobody else did.

USS Liberty attack tapes released

The NSA on Tuesday released audiotapes of Israeli pilots and ground control speaking in Hebrew, along with English transcripts.

The recordings were made by a nearby American surveillance aircraft in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

"For your info, it is apparently an Arab ship," says ground control.

"Roger," says the pilot.

"It is an Egyptian supply ship," says ground control.

"Roger," comes the response.

The NSA released the tapes and transcripts under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request from Miami Judge Jay Cristol.

An author of a book on the attack, Cristol said the tapes show it was a tragic accident in a time of war -- that the Israelis mistook the ship for an Egyptian one.

"I don't think there's any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced there was the fog of war out there," Cristol said.

Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?

It is a view with which historian Michael B Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem academic research institute, concurs.

"Many thousands of documents related to the Liberty have been declassified and in none of these documents will you find a scintilla of evidence to suggest any of these conspiracy theories are true," he says.

"The Golan one is the easiest to disprove because of where the Liberty was, not off the coast of Israel, but Egypt. Its listening devices weren't that powerful that they could listen in on communications in Tel Aviv.
  "Moreover the Israelis were very upfront in telling the US that they planned to capture the Golan Heights and the Americans agreed to it.

"Regarding a massacre of Egyptian POWs, there's no evidence of that. And why would the Israelis try to cover up one atrocity by committing another?

He says the attack has remained a source of controversy because "it has all the ingredients of a good spy scandal. It involves espionage and it involves the Israelis, who are forever a focus of conspiracy theories.

"If I could prove the Liberty was attacked in a premeditated fashion, I would write it - it would be a great historical scoop - but the truth is far more mundane."

But to testify against yourself you have to be a suspect, you have to be the one on trial, that's why Lois Lerner, the IRS director "taking the fifth" makes no sense, she wasn't on trial.

Saying: 'I am taking the fifth' only makes sense when you are on trial or a suspect of a police investigation, but it doesn't make sense to say "fifth" when you are testifying to Congress.

You can refuse to answer questions, but invoking the fifth amendment has no meaning in that context, AFAIC she admits her guilt and/or lack of understanding of the law when she says that.

You are absolutely incorrect.

You do not have to be on trial to avail yourself of your 5th amendment rights. You do not have to be charged with a crime to avail yourself of your 5th amendment rights. You do not even have to be a suspect in a crime to avail yourself of your 5th amendment rights.

People frequently will avail themselves of their 5th amendment rights at civil depositions (or when offering sworn testimony before any body, such as congress) when they are concerned that their tesitmony may be self-incriminating.

Bin Laden's stated goal was to goad the US into a prolonged and expensive war that would cripple the US. He achieved that.

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

By the way, in case somebody doesn't understand what the 'fifth' is, it's the lack of authority by the government to force somebody to testify against themselves.

To understand its roots, you have to look back at when kings and other rulers would capture and torture somebody to get a 'confession'. When people are tortured, most will confess to just about anything, so torturing is a very simple way to get a conviction (or to murder somebody, whichever comes first) and using torture to get a conviction can often lead to murder at the end of torture anyway.

But that is the origin, when somebody says: "I take the fifth", what they mean is that they will not testify against themselves. But to testify against yourself you have to be a suspect, you have to be the one on trial, that's why Lois Lerner, the IRS director "taking the fifth" makes no sense, she wasn't on trial.

Saying: 'I am taking the fifth' only makes sense when you are on trial or a suspect of a police investigation, but it doesn't make sense to say "fifth" when you are testifying to Congress.

You can refuse to answer questions, but invoking the fifth amendment has no meaning in that context, AFAIC she admits her guilt and/or lack of understanding of the law when she says that.

OTOH in this case I am NOT convinced that the fifth amendment is relevant in cases of encrypted data!

Forcing somebody to unlock their data is not the same as forcing somebody to sign a statement. After all, it's real data, it's already there. By being forced to unlock the data you are not being forced to say something new, it's not new information that is on the disk, it's not like you are forced to say: I am guilty, here is the body.

You are forced to open a box that may have data providing that you are guilty, but that information is already there and it's not new, you weren't forced to first create that data and then give it up, you are forced to open the data that existed already in a form that is not attached to you, it's independent of you, it is already existing outside of you.

How is that equivalent of being tortured (or punished) into saying the words: I am guilty, here is the stuff you are looking for?

I am just being pedantic here, the fifth is not necessarily a protection against being forced to give up data that already exists that you do not have to create or produce at the moment of giving it up.

I disagree with your take on the "fifth", you should be able to take the fifth on any statement that COULD be used against you in court, just because you are not there now, doesn't mean that the statement you make will not land you there.

in addition, i will also take the counter point on decrypting the HD. i take the essential meaning of the fifth as to you should never have to provide evidence against yourself. By providing them with the password, or whatever the key is, to the encrypted HD, you are providing them with evidence that they would not be able to get with out your assistance. If they are able to get the evidence(brute force decryption, or what have you) without your assistance, with a warrant, that is fine, but you should never have to assist, in any way, in your own prosecution.

By the way, in case somebody doesn't understand what the 'fifth' is, it's the lack of authority by the government to force somebody to testify against themselves.

To understand its roots, you have to look back at when kings and other rulers would capture and torture somebody to get a 'confession'. When people are tortured, most will confess to just about anything, so torturing is a very simple way to get a conviction (or to murder somebody, whichever comes first) and using torture to get a conviction can often lead to murder at the end of torture anyway.

But that is the origin, when somebody says: "I take the fifth", what they mean is that they will not testify against themselves. But to testify against yourself you have to be a suspect, you have to be the one on trial, that's why Lois Lerner, the IRS director "taking the fifth" makes no sense, she wasn't on trial.

Saying: 'I am taking the fifth' only makes sense when you are on trial or a suspect of a police investigation, but it doesn't make sense to say "fifth" when you are testifying to Congress.

You can refuse to answer questions, but invoking the fifth amendment has no meaning in that context, AFAIC she admits her guilt and/or lack of understanding of the law when she says that.

OTOH in this case I am NOT convinced that the fifth amendment is relevant in cases of encrypted data!

Forcing somebody to unlock their data is not the same as forcing somebody to sign a statement. After all, it's real data, it's already there. By being forced to unlock the data you are not being forced to say something new, it's not new information that is on the disk, it's not like you are forced to say: I am guilty, here is the body.

You are forced to open a box that may have data providing that you are guilty, but that information is already there and it's not new, you weren't forced to first create that data and then give it up, you are forced to open the data that existed already in a form that is not attached to you, it's independent of you, it is already existing outside of you.

How is that equivalent of being tortured (or punished) into saying the words: I am guilty, here is the stuff you are looking for?

I am just being pedantic here, the fifth is not necessarily a protection against being forced to give up data that already exists that you do not have to create or produce at the moment of giving it up.

The difference is, there is no evidence Amazon was telling the publishers they couldn't sell their books cheaper elsewhere - that's the crux of the issue with the way Apple was doing it here.

Yeah, absolutely no evidence

Both Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) have agreements with those publishers that ensure they'll receive the best prices for e-books over any of their competitors, Blumenthal said in a prepared statement.

Nobody ever saw Amazon do it

An agency model combined with most-favored-nation clauses were implemented by Apple and Amazon for e-book sales
Similar models used in other markets

And Amazon most certainly doesn't have anything called "most favored nation clause" in any of their terms, only something called "price matching". https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help/search?query=price%2520matching&page=1 - it's their most favored clause in the nation.

whats this? potatoes?

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2013/05/31/id-watson-istanbul-rioting.cnn

Dont be a fuck face

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2013/05/31/id-watson-istanbul-rioting.cnn

Most people at the moment are more interested in the beast storms that just came through.

CNN's front page has a link (under "trends") to a devoted page.

Fox doesn't have any thing on the home page, but it's World page has this.

NBC's home page has a link to its story.

Or maybe it's because it's not "one of Obama's close advisers", but one of his debate coaches that served as White House communications director for 7 months. Oh, and also because she was ironically quoting GOP strategist Lee Atwater, but you missed that while you were watching the Glenn Beck show - probably because his out-of-context attack didn't mention that key tidbit.

Unlike you, I'm willing to enlighten a dim-witted mind. Here, you should try reading this:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/16/beck.dunn/index.html

Are there any birth certificates we should be looking for, as long as you're dispensing political advice based on nonsense?

Second story on CNN's world news page: For a third day, police, protesters clash in Turkey

Second story on MSNBC's world news page (and shows up on their front page too): Tear gas, pepper spray fired at youths as thousands riot in Turkey

These stories are getting mentioned, mixed in between problems in Egypt and worse problems in Syria. It is not like they are hiding or downplaying such news. At worst, they are simply not spoon feeding you such news, instead concentrating on some other serious issues in the world.

Given the cost of batteries, I too would be somewhat dubious unless the car came with a warranty offering free (or extremely reduced cost) battery replacements for the first 10-15 years.

The Tesla Model S includes free battery replacements under warranty for the first 8 years or 125,000 miles for the 65 kWh battery (the 85 kWh battery warranty has no mileage limit). After 8 years, you can extend the warranty period for $7,500 for 3 years or 36,000 miles, which is ~10% of the Model S (85 kWh) purchase price.

(An average car does 12,000 miles per year, so one is unlikely to hit the 125,000 miles limit on the 65 kWh model. People who drive a lot will probably want the 85 kWh model anyway.)

My experience has been GPA only really matters for the first few jobs. I don't even include it any more as now my experience and past performance matters, although they do care that I actually have the degree. The same is also true for where you went to college. If you had a lower GPA or went to a lesser school (I went to a lesser state school in my state) instead of of the big name ones you will generally start out lower but if you don't suck at your job you can move up and out fast. Granted this has been my experience as a software engineer. I am sure where you went to school is more important for MBA jobs as those still seem to be the old boys club type of jobs.

As for the gravy train being over, by what metric? Their sales certainly aren't growing at the rate that Android's are, but by any measure, they are still massively successful. Their rate of sale has continued to grow incredibly fast, and their profits in PCs and mobile devices represent either a plurality or majority in each of those markets.

They bought back shares to stop the bleed in share price, and the negativity around it, and it has stabilised at around $450 from its high of $705. Its a poor move that slowed the drop in price of the shares, but not the cause of the drop; The end of the gravy train being over.

I am not sure why the post was modded informative. Here are the IDC numbers http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24085413. There rate of sales growth was single digit for Apple at 6.6% behind the market...at 41.6%...and samsung at 60.7%...and LG at 110.2%..and Huawei at 94%...and ZTE at 49.2%...even Others gets 37%...so you must be using some other measure of incredibly fast.

Nothing is mentioned about their PC's which are basically treated like cancer by Apple, but have incredible drops of 22%..and (the more manageable) 2% over the last 2 quarters, despite Windows 8 being hated universally. I cant help but notice Microsoft and Intel do not appear on the Pie chart...who are destroying the PC industry with their massive 70% margins.Its why Manufacturing companies are running to Android.

...the bottom line though in reference to Apples ONE saving grace...its profits...they dropped http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22274324, posting an opinion piece that pretends the reverse does not change that.

Start giving back some of that money, Apple.

I know it didn't get reported on Slashdot, but still, you're kidding, right? I mean, it was big news and only happened a few weeks ago.

Apple is currently engaging in the largest single share repurchase program in history , which will put $60B USD into their investors' pockets by the end of 2015. And that's on top of the $11B/year they're paying out in dividends already.

All told, they're giving back $100B by the end of 2015, which is over 2/3 of what they have in the bank right now. So, either you were unaware of that, or you think that their doing so is not a big enough step, in which case I have to ask: what would be sufficient?

As for the gravy train being over, by what metric? Their sales certainly aren't growing at the rate that Android's are, but by any measure, they are still massively successful. Their rate of sale has continued to grow incredibly fast, and their profits in PCs and mobile devices represent either a plurality or majority in each of those markets.

I doubt that something like this will be designed by just one person. Mistakes happen, even to rocket scientists. To wit

$15080 in pre-tax income is what a minimum wage worker sees in one year.

This convenient tool that Google pointed me towards suggests that a person with such an income, assuming they have no other monthly debt, and can secure the all-time lowest 30 year fixed mortgage APR of 3.31%, and have no property taxes or homeowner insurance to deal with (all very generous, even unrealistic assumptions), an aggressive house purchase would be $94,571.08. A conservative one would be $80242.13. Of course, with realistic figures used in place of those generous ones (4% APR, $3k/year tax, $300/year insurance), you'd be looking at a house in the $16k-$29k range.

Basically, that rules out home ownership for any one making minimum wage. To be fair, you did say rent. But even renting anymore more than a room in an apartment would be difficult. Minimum wage works out to $1256.67/month, and the old maxim is to never spend more than a quarter of one's monthly income on rent. That would bring us to $314.17/month, which is really unlikely to even pay for a room in a shared apartment, at least in any coastal state.

I've managed to be able to pay rent making even less than minimum wage. But I was living off a potato a day at the time, and the rent was paid late more often than not. Most people would agree that this is no way to live in a civilized country. There's a difference between having a cell phone and maintaining an adequate diet.

And although Fox is playing the indignant victim all over the news right now, they've know about this for a long time.

Regardless of all that, the exit clause of "deliberate abuse" of the battery is pretty open-ended. Who determines if the battery was abused?

Given the rule about idiot-proofing resulting in the universe coming up with better idiots, it has to be pretty open-ended. As for 'who determines', well, the owner would get the first shot by applying for warranty 'I didn't deliberately abuse the battery', then Tesla gets to agree or disagree, and if the owner doesn't like the answer sufficiently, the courts would get their say, depending on the wording of the contract.

I found an article with actual examples:

"If you take a blow-torch to the battery pack or blow it up or use it for target practice" the warranty would be voided, Musk said. Also, of course Tesla would not cover battery damage resulting from a crash. Car insurance will have to pay for that.

So crash accident - Insurance. Standard
Blow-torch, blowing it up, target practice, all very deliberate abuses of the battery, not simply failing to plug it in or driving it until it dies. I find that acceptable, standard car companies can void warranties for things like not changing the oil on schedule as well.

Well, of course that's not feasible. But an EV in the garage, plugged into 240V, 100A circuit is a dangerous thing.

Do you have sources on the Volt? And reading about the Fisker shows that it's a hybrid, and the damage started from an exhaust point(IE it was caused by the ICE part, not the EV part). Dozens of ICE vehicles catch fire every year in the USA alone, for various reasons.

I'm not so sure. If the power fails one week after the caretaker checks it, the battery in a Roadster will be a brick by the next visit.

There are 4.3 weeks in a month. The battery will last 11 weeks when charged. If it fails a week after a check, that's only 3 weeks until the next check. You could miss it on the next check, and it's only if they miss it the 2nd check that it then becomes a problem.

Doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a 'storage mode' where you charge the battery to 70% then disconnect the battery to stop vampire loads. Heck, at pure storage if you're worried about the 100A fast charger you can use the 120V10A slow charger to keep the battery topped off.

I also find it interesting that you have as many links about the Fisker hybrid, as you do about Tesla, and both links about Tesla are for the same incident.

BTW, how do all these EVs react to being submerged? If a car falls into a river, what happens? A gas car just stalls.)

A gas car does a lot more than 'just stall' if submerged. If not specially designed for it, the car is totaled upon submersion. As for EVs, it's my understanding that the most likely scenario is that the safeties trip when you get phantom voltages from all the water, at which point it's a lot like if you dumped several hundred/thousand batteries into the drink - not much as they're DC voltage and aren't separately connected to ground.

There is, eventually, the possibility of a fire, but that should take a while.

Venezuela to 'saturate market' with 50 million rolls of toilet paper - CNN.com

Actually, there are shortages of many products deemed basic, because of underproduction and hiccups in the supply chain, caused in turn by moronic gov't intervention, expropriations and incompetent exchange control.

this is what the Afghan people deal with all the time.

The Afghan people are dealing with US and UK troops who risk their lives so girls can attend school. You say that these troops senselessly, randomly kill Muslims, but in fact they try to narrowly focus their use of force against Taliban members who throw acid on those schoolgirls, or launch poison attacks against those schoolgirls.

Fear mongering, indeed -- on your part.

> A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.

This is a straw man argument, simply because you'd have to be pretty creative with your nailbat to mow down a school full of students and teachers before the police arrives or someone tackles you from behind. You can kill a couple of people with something home-made, but committing mass murder requires a gun or explosive.

In fact, around the time of the Sandy Hook school shooting (where I think over 20 children died), a guy in China attacked a bunch of school kids with a knife. Over 20 kids were wounded. Guess how many died? None.

So that pro-gun "you don't need a gun to kill someone" argument is both misleading and irresponsible. Every town, every city, has its share of mentally unbalanced individuals. There's quite a big difference between them having access to guns and access only to household items, don't you think?

Yes, it's always the physicists and mathematicians for some reason who hold these ideas.

No, not always. If I recall correctly, engineers are most likely to believe in God, but I would think that all scientific disciplines are represented. Here are just a few.

Francis Collins - Physician - director of the Human Genome Project
John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS - Physicist, author of From Physicist to Priest
Donald Knuth - Computer Scientist - Creator of TeX, and author of:
                                The Art of Computer Programming Availble on Amazon
                                Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About Available on Amazon
                                3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated Available on Amazon

There are many more.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that smart people can't be stupid.

Spending much time on Slashdot will disabuse you of that notion. What is smart and stupid can be an elusive quality, and you may find as you go through life that they will rearrange themselves at times. The phrase, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." exists for a reason. "Stupid" people can show up in surprising places, like the mirror. Everyone should check there, from time to time.

and the scientist then asked "So why is it in the literature you're selling in the lobby?"

I don't find that particularly persuasive, do you? Are all books with one or more superseded theories or now former "facts" gathered up and destroyed immediately as soon as one part of it is out of date? There is a bit of a problem keeping textbooks up to date with current science. I seem to recall a recent story that space science is particularly bad off in that regard with many books being 30-40 years out of date in some important areas. I don't find it any surprise that vendors don't throw their inventory on bonfires if it is dated, but rather prefer to sell them to get their money back. That is before you get into the question of classics in a field. Some of the classics in my fields are timeless, others have been superseded but still offer valuable insights into thinking about the problems, or approaches to consider. No, I don't find that a persuasive point at all.

I suspect it's something like the reason physicists don't feel a need to have Time Cube proponentists and historians don't need holocaust deniers.

Not, that isn't it. The problem with your quip is that physicists that ascribe to ID still do real physics. Chemists that ascribe to ID still do real chemistry. Biologists that ascribe to ID still do real biology. Doctors that ascribe to ID still do real medicine. The time cube guy probably needs (needed?) medication and therapy. Holocaust deniers are popular in Iran, and various parts of the Middle East, but not so much in the West.

This scientist clearly believes in God, perhaps he is even a Creationist. I don't think you can argue he hasn't made a solid contribution to science. He isn't alone, not by a long shot.

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God

As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. If you don't deal in facts, science doesn't need you.

Well, that always is one of the questions, isn't it? What are the facts? And do they support the theory? Some scientists prefer only friendly reviewers, and like minded theories.

The famous German physicist Max Planck said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. " He also said, "Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view. "

Journals can be discriminatory, or captured by a particular faction in a debate and exclude solid papers by those they disagree with. The science around "climate change" is not a shining model of scientific process even if you agree with the theory of man-made global warming.

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

. . . a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research”

...weighing 296 pounds.

What's your point?

So you're saying she was a Republican?

Backwards. The party with a vested interest in keeping people dependent on professionals who dole things out to them is the Democrats. That's the backbone of their entire constituency and the framework within which they describe everybody: needing a handout, or needing to be used to pay for handouts. Without playing middlemen to that one-way street, there would be almost not power in that camp. And so they seek to preserve it at every turn.

No, the guy to whom you replied got it right: Republicans are the most dependent on a culture of people dependent on professionals who dole things out to them. Red States are more dependent on the Government Dole than Blue States, because Red State policies create a constituency which needs a handout just to survive. Poverty-stricken, uneducated white people vote Republican more often than middle class educated people (who tend to vote Democrat), so Republicans seek to preserve a constituency trapped in poverty, voting Republican on social issues even as Republicans pull the economic rug out from under their collective feet.