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OK then, we'll just stick with the left-wing college newspapers who cheered it on and called for more.

The mysteriously unnamed ones. For all we know, you've been looking at copies of the Harvard Lampoon.

Or the people in the crowd holding typical liberal protest signs cheering on the beating and silencing of the people they don't like.

Mysteriously unidentified ones, you can't even point us out a sign that actually requires you to believe what it says.

Regardless of which of their factions shows up to beat and destroy, isn't the fact that the liberals who watch it or write about it LIKE it enough for you?

Which ones? You keep ranting and railing at these alleged people, but...you never identify them. Why is that?

Why??

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army .” And see this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and falsely blame it on the Nazis.

(6) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis

You should go back and read the post you replied to. I specifically described that storage is an associated and recurring cost with battery-driven solar plants.

Also, solar does not require batteries. That's just the most common way to do it. For instance, the solar system in my radio trailer is 100% ultracap based. No recurring costs of any kind in the power systems. Right now, a home system requires a lot of space for such a thing, and new ultracaps are still pretty expensive (I haunt Ebay for used ones, though, and they aren't so costly.) But those curves are changing in increasingly favorable ways.

But the bulk of Americans would probably support it...

Until the price of their latest 4K TV doubled, then they'd scream blue murder.

What people conveniently forget is how expensive US-made consumer goods used to be.

Here's a 19" color TV from the 1977 Sears Catalog.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

$1700 in 2016 dollars.

I just have paint, carpet and doors left! (Full photos) https://www.flickr.com/photos/... They'll be a series of blog posts at https://cultivatenow.com/

Actually, the greening of the planet has been predicted for a long time. So has the drying, burning, and desertification.

Other predictions have already come to pass, such as weather patterns behind the extreme cold caused by the polar vortex of Winter 2012 in North America. The weather in Michigan very much resembled "The Day After Tomorrow".

Climate change deniers simply like to imagine that scientists have missed a magic solution. There is simply too much data from too many sources to be denied any longer.

For whatever it's worth (exactly one anecdote), I really like my smartwatch (it's a Gear Live, square face, fairly early vintage.) Picture here.

It puts text, email, slack and other notifications right where I can see them without having to reach for anything, turn it on, etc. That alone is worth a lot, as most things can be ignored until later, but for the ones I want to know about and respond to immediately, I can. Timers are very useful, I use them for many things from timing aquarium water top-offs to cooking and reminding me to let the dog back in. The watch faces are very clever and pretty, and I like them a lot, even though I answer to no one and very rarely care what time it is. The tracking of my heart rate and steps is nice too, as I need to pay attention to my health. Doesn't hurt to be able to ask it questions, either. All of this is either nearly or completely hands-free. For instance, rotate wrist so the watch is up, it wakes up. Then say: "Ok google, set a timer for five minutes." Easy. Awesome. Super-useful.

This stuff is quite practical (even the time... most people need to know, even if I don't.)

Just like any gadget, it's not for everyone, I'm sure. But I really don't think you can put a smartwatch in the general category of "doesn't make sense." Instead, put anyone who says that in either the "doesn't make sense for me" category, or in the "I don't understand smartwatches" category, for which you can, if you like, lay the responsibility for at the watch manufacturer's feet -- specifically, marketing. Most smartwatch ads I've seen haven't been very... smart.

The British seem to have a somewhat more relaxed view of secutity.

Thanks. Also, you usually don't take pictures, but videos, and use the best details out of the frames :
http://www.autostakkert.com/wp...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

I wanted to see what that kind of corrupt person would look like and I found this image, https://www.flickr.com/photos/.... So how's that backup plan going now ;D.

If Apple is going to pretend that their phones double as cameras and throw in things like 4K video support

Give credit where credit is due - according to Flickr's data suggests that they're not just pretending - people actually are using the phone in such a way that the phone doubles as a camera. iPhones occupy 4 of the top 5 "most popular camera" rankings there.

They should have removable media support. No photographer is going to use a camera without removable media.

Several questions. First - Why? What magical feature does a microSD slot give you that you can't get in any other way?

Second - why not upload to dropbox or icloud, with no need to juggle little bits of plastic, risk losing or damaging them, and also feed the photos into a computer when you get back home? Personally, I rather like the convenience of having my photos already loaded on my laptop and waiting for me when I return home.

Third - how many of the MILLIONS of phone owners do you imagine qualify as professional photographers? I'd wager that, comparatively speaking, you're looking at perhaps a few (single-digits) percent might try to make money off photography in some way. The rest are amateurs who simply want a quick point and shoot, and in that sort of use case, the best camera for the job is the one you have with you at the time you want to take a photo.

Or field-replaceable batteries, but that's a different issue

Again, this is baffling. I have a 6ft lightning cable and an 18k-20k-ish mAh battery pack that gives my iPhone 6s+ at least 4 full charges. It weighs about 12 ounces, and fits easily in a pocket. If I'm taking photos, and running low on battery, I hook the cable up, and leave the battery pack in my back pocket, and can continue using the phone while it's charging. Compare that with carting around chargers and 4 extra battery packs, and I'm pretty sure I get the better deal in terms of the convenience of field replaceable batteries. In addition, my battery pack can also be used to charge literally any other device that has a USB charging cable, versus your need to carry around 5 "field-replaceable" batteries for every device you own. Furthermore, your need for field-replaceable battery packs also adds weight and thickness to the device itself, making the all around experience more clunky than mine. Why do you imagine that field-replaceable batteries are an issue, when a $40 external battery pack and a $6 usb-lightning cable will last you for several days worth of charging?

Repeat after me: "My use case is not the typical, or even a COMMON, use case."

That would suck. It would be like drawing with a marker on glass. No one ever does that.

Never been to an office with a shortage of white boards, but no shortage of big windows? People do it all the time. Not ideal but it works.

Or the Combat Information Center (CIC) room on a Navy ship. The people who write on those have to write backwards so the officers on the "correct" side can read what is written. The best ones can write a single sentence with both hands starting at each end and meet up at the middle. A couple of pictures.

That would suck. It would be like drawing with a marker on glass. No one ever does that.

Never been to an office with a shortage of white boards, but no shortage of big windows? People do it all the time. Not ideal but it works.

Or the Combat Information Center (CIC) room on a Navy ship. The people who write on those have to write backwards so the officers on the "correct" side can read what is written. The best ones can write a single sentence with both hands starting at each end and meet up at the middle. A couple of pictures.

My answer to temporary light incursion is curtains, generally speaking, as heavy as required. It's an easy problem to solve, and the solution also sources worthy privacy benefits. However, if the laser is powerful enough to do harm, and the beam crosses my property line, much less enters my home, then my feeling is someone needs to be shot, same as with any other innately reckless use of a dangerous instrument.

I'm pretty unhappy with more general light "pollution" -- I think we lose a great deal when we can't see, photograph, and otherwise explore and appreciate the night sky -- but first, it's not something we can solve easily at this point in time, and second, it's not inherently permanent -- the problem goes completely away the instant the lights go off -- so "pollution" is at least somewhat hyperbolic. I'm particularly sensitive to this as I live where there are dark skies, which we came very close to losing because of the Bakken oil development failing to deal with the gas output of the wells over there in any way other than burning it off. Made a huge amount of light. Lucky for us here, oil prices fell so far that the field's economic case turned negative.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com...

Well I would feel safe if it is connected to one of these canadian ones

Relevant Pictures for Sad Children:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com...

I'd link to the original, but I'm pretty sure it was deleted in John's mentally unstable rage-quit.

I have one here, and hope to write a proper network server for it; right now its in limbo, as they're being spotty in terms of developer communications. As it stands -- as a USB interface device -- it suffers from the wildly differing USB APIs between linux, OS X and Windows. Supporting it directly means writing three completely different sets of code; supporting it via the supplied libraries means low OS revision compatibility.

So far, the best bang for the buck I've run into are the ANDRUS MK 1.5, AFEDRI and RFSPACE models for 0-30 MHz. For above, the cheap and obvious way is an el cheapo USB stick, with which you can do some fun things, but the units have all kinds of weak points and you will definitely run into them if you use them in any kind of real RF surfing. They make really fun commercial FM receivers if the stations are reasonably local. And preamps can make them into real monsters, FM-wise. I regularly listen to a station almost 200 miles away here on the plains. In decent fidelity, in stereo.

This unit looks to have a proper ethernet interface, but the kickstarter page doesn't seem to specifically say so - I'm going by the picture. If it does, then it may be possible (should be, I would think) to support it beyond the minimal web interface they're talking about on the page. The direct sampling design is a very, very attractive feature and can potentially result in awesome RF capabilities, all depending on the unit's front end. And I love the idea of the integral GPS unit. You can do some really cool things with a solid frequency reference. Like this, for instance.

Don't forget sanitation laws. There is a reason why the vending machines that dispensed tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and Jack Daniel's by just pressing a button to have it fling into a cup are all gone.

Where the hell do you people work? Outer Mongolia? Afghanistan? Every workplace of any size I've been (west coast) has machines that grind coffee beans and brew a cup on demand, for free. The really fancy ones make lattes too.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

It's real. Stop denying it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

It's real. Here is a screenshot of the trojan horse in action. I was shocked when I first saw it.

> Because paper is immutable and can never be forged or replaced?

See my earlier comment about ballot stuffing.

> Of course the keywords are "correctly designed" and since politicians are the ones authorising the purchase of these machines, they either deliberately or incompetently leave that bit out.

Electronic ballot machines are designed by people, and people are fallable and make mistakes, cut corners, etc. The machines are sold by the lowest bidder. The companies in this business are the companies that make ATMs, like Diebold. Have you ever seen those pics of ATMs with a blue screen of death? Nuff said.

Also, its been shown that NSA (and presumably other countries) have subverted industry standard encryption. So it's hard to say if a well designed system is truly secure.

Then there's the open source issue. If a company makes the product, will the source code be auditable. Who will do the auditing?

Considering all these factors, why not just use paper, which is much more transparent? Also, paper is much more democratic, because anybody with a calculator can audit it. With comptuers, only a small subset of people have the skills to do the auditing.

Photo organizers, locally installed, Windows:
Zoner Photo Studio
xnView
Nero Mediahome
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Media Pro (Not Freeware)
ACDSee (Not Freeware>
Corel Aftershot (Not Freeware)

Photo editors, browser based:
Pixlr
Polarr
Fotor
iPiccy

Image Hosting:
Piwigo (free to self-host; first party hosting available)
Zenphoto (free to self-host; third party hosting available)
JuiceBox (freemium; self-hosted only)
Flickr
Amazon Prime Photos (you have to be Prime)

Okay, I'm tired of adding links...but depending on what functions of Picasa you're looking to replace, there are plenty of alternatives.

Yes, SaVi still works on SGI IRIX, as this recent January screenshot demonstrates.

Then why isn't it single payer? Why is McCarran-Ferguson still a thing? Socialized medicine is clearly inferior to the US shitpile healthcare system:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com...

It's also funny that 90% of the military are staunch conservatives but they love getting free healthcare for life for working stateside in a motor pool for 4 years and will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

Ed Yourdon

No. One day I wondered if someone had ever created a cross between Hello Kitty and the Punisher. The internet provides. I now want this.

... camel sex ...

So I learned something: Camels lie down to copulate; like lions.

But I prefer my sex-ed to be more pornographic: Like these elephants. Being the only mammal with muscles in the penis, an elephant can thrust his penis independently of his body.

... know of your 'Hello Kitty' purchases ...

Choose your victims wisely:

Armoured personal carrier
AK-47
M-16
M-16 variant
pistol

At which point, one says "No, Pierre*, I'll be cleaning the cat box today. Go ahead and see to the shopping."

* Pierre? Yes. So I have been informed by my S.O.

People also would rather not pay for their media, so if they have to choose between protected content and no content at all (because the content providers think that it is not economically viable enough for them to release it DRM-free) then the consumer will choose the former option.

Ecept that's crap. Just about everything is freely available on the Pirate Bay. Everything is released on DVD still which while technically hsa DRM, it's so thoroughly hacked that it may as well not have.

And guess what? People still pay.

Likewise, Amazon music store has DRM free, perfectly standard MP3s. (I gather Apple is DRM free, too, don't know if they're MP3 or AAC though). And people still go there. there are several resons:

1. Most people are actually happy to pay a fair price for a fair product in a timely manner.
2. The price is fair.
3. The product is fair.
4. Stuff is up in a timely manner.
5. The stores are good (everything in one place, good UI, easily searchable).

And if the protection is implemented well so that it doesn't adversely affect the consumer then they probably wouldn't give a damn.

Sooner or later it always affects someone in an adverse manner. Every DVD or BluRay with unskippable bullshit (and there are plenty of those) is affecting the consumer in an adverse manner.

This is what DRM gets you:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com...

Personally I don't know anyone who pirates music any more. It's just not worth it to fuck aronud when you can spend a quid and get the track you want. Also, you don't have that vaguely unpleasant feeling of screwing someone over.

Many of those same people use TPB. I bet if the video stores offered a better product, they'd get more business. In almost all cases TPB is not only free, but better in every regard.

I ended up torrenting stuff available on 4OD and iPlayer (note, both already free for me), because it was just flat out easier and the software I can use is much better.

Yes, they show up alive and doing quite well. They pack them in plastic bags, some of which have black light-shields for the species that are prone to shock from sudden changes in light intensity, all inside said thermal envelope (a Styrofoam cooler, essentially.) They put a heating or cooling chemical packet in there with them, depending on the season, and then ship them overnight by FedEx or UPS. I unpack them immediately upon receipt, gradually acclimate them to the water and temperature they'll be living in, then pop them in the tanks. They have always survived, except when something else in there decides they'd make a good meal, or the corals get into a chemical war, which can be pretty severe and requires re-homing one of the species so engaged.

Where I live (rural Montana), this is about the only practical way to build and maintain a saltwater aquarium. I don't mind. The selection online for live rock, plants, corals, fish and invertebrates -- and gear -- is better than one could ever hope for in a storefront operation. It's a little dear, cost-wise, but I'm old and have a few bucks I can apply to my interests. My oldest tank has been running for about a decade; my most recent, an unusual configuration with a custom sump system I designed located well above the tank, about six months.

You can download my SdrDx for either Windows or OS X, download a saved RF file, and start receiving from a recording of, for instance, a ham band during a contest, or a SW band with some interesting stations on it. No SDR required to fool around, and the software is free.

You can tune around, play with bandwidths, demodulation modes, noise blanking, peak tracking, notch and other filtering, the analysis scope, etc. WIth a recording, you get the span of the spectrum that was recorded (for instance, 200 khz of spectrum) but within that, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

screenshot

Works with OS X 10.6.8 and up, XP and up.

If you want to use an actual SDR, SdrDx leans decidedly towards the middle and high end, but supports anything using the RFSPACE protocols, so (obviously) pretty much any RFSPACE SDR model, the Andrus MK 1.5, and the AFDRI. Also supports the Funcube. No one has written an RFSPACE compatible server for the RTL sticks, but perhaps someday they will. :)

And my favorite from the 90s: http://farm1.static.flickr.com...

The "Mac Addict" looks suspiciously like Seinfeld.

I've visited Cliff at his home and he had one of the giant teaching slide rules hanging up.

FWIW, here's a shot of some I own. They span from me back to my great grandfather:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

I'd like to add that the link in TFA should be replaced with the Album-based view, which is more informative and logically separated:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

That is not a thumb, it is a bum! https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

In this image (one of my favourites) , https://www.flickr.com/photos/... is that red dot Mars, off to the right of Earth?

Interesting to see how many shots they took of the famous "Earthrise" photo. A dozen shots ruined by something in the foreground blurring parts of the picture, and the sequence with the Earth actually rising blown by not pointing the camera in the right direction. Now I feel better about my photography.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2429/3635573389_7a34b231a2_o.jpg

I could not find a DOS screenshot, but would welcome one)

It is remarkably similar looking today, 30 years later.

Lets look at how a hedgerow is created. In medieval Europe fields were sectioned off into small areas with hedges between them. Every year due to frost action rocks are driven to the surface by frost action. Every year farmers go through their fields and throw these rocks into the hedges. Over the decades and centuries these hedgerows become very solid. In effect they were stone walls with hedges on top and there were a lot of them on Normandy. here is a better explanation of why hedgerows were a problem.

We simply have this again, albeit not by Obama

Apple specializes in selling to the hipster market, so their hipstermobile will probably have more in common with a Smart Car than a traditional automobile.

Maybe they'll have a contest here and a fresh new Apple car will be the second generation Slashdot Cruiser!

Now, Vodafone Australia has admitted that an employee went through her phone and text records to try and figure out who her sources were within the company. . . . Despite the admission, Vodafone has denied that it engaged in improper behavior (PDF). The company says it found no evidence the employee was directed to do so by management.

Oh. Well, as long as it was some IT vigilante whose love for Vodafone just got the better of him. Sounds fine to me!

Probably just some sweet, over-dedicated mook who took the workplace banner too seriously. Definitely not any of the top brass directing this to happen.

Came on, help this guy save these manuals. https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

Where I live, it's a one. Check my photos out.

Was I the only one who would check out the Godbout ad for this? https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

I patched dosbox to run the unpatched MSDOS version of Pinball Fantasies and provide I/O via an arduino controlling a replica of the PARTYLand Pinball table. Photos of the construction (work in progress) are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/... Videos here: https://www.youtube.com/user/f...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

Since when is London not an oppressive dystopian nightmare?

One might be thinking right now: MIDI? Wasn't that what my dad used to listen to music [youtube.com]?

Oddly, I also used to used to use a Midi of an entirely different type (*) to listen to music "back in the day" (cough). Always used to find it strange that MIDI had the same name as cheap all-in-one 80s hifi systems...

Get off my lawn et al.

(*) That's not actually mine- which I got rid of around a decade back- but it's the exact same model