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Then why does Chrome for Android display a scare bar for PDF downloads even on a platform to which Adobe Reader isn't even ported?

It is ported, actually

Unfortunately those same people have continued to streamline newer Diablo release far past the point they should have. When i play a character based rpg, I don't want to respec for each area I go through. It breaks my sense of character, and they all feel the same. I really enjoyed playing Skyrim, but after a while it turns into a 'follow the waypoint' sort of game, and even though every character has individual stories, I don't end up caring.

Personally, I prefer something like Brogue, Sil, or Dwarf Fortress. Even if they have ascii graphics, the emergent gameplay is far more in-depth than AAA titles.

There must be some happy middle ground where we can have the depth but also acceptable graphics.

Did some searching today, and it seems Google has actually defined some extensions to add IMAP commands to support labels so clients could use them. This is the same thing I'm looking for in any replacement, because the concept of labels is the one of the biggest draws to Gmail for me, along with it's message filtering capabilities and spam filtering.

A quick skim of the IMAP RFC doesn't mention anything obvious about labels, but there are flags which seem like they could serve a similar purpose. However, I'd expect that no clients support this (of course, if gmail implemented it, they probably would before long.)

Though, it looks like they do something sorta similar.

Not if you do it outside of the US. Hence the link to the GCHQ.

From undisclosed interception points, the agencies copy entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of Yahoo and Google.

Certainly there are multiple interception possibilities for Google and one possibility I think for Yahoo outside of the US. Also you have to remember that very rarely does the US government or the people doing nefarious deeds for the US government ever rarely get called to justice for what they do. Shit, Nixon violated wiretap laws, authorized breaking and entering and committed other possible misdeeds but all he lost was reputation and the White House. He never did any prison time. His cronies did time but he didn't.

Oliver North was labelled as a hero even though he violated the law, never saw any time in Club Fed.

One thing you have to remember is that the Ruling Elite usually have an escape plan with a requisite golden parachute. It's been that way since the French Revolution and has worked pretty much for everybody with a few exceptions.

Sure, they're standard, and it's cool if gmail implemented them compeltely

I don't understand the problem either. Gmail works fine with any IMAP client I care to configure. IMAP itself has some weirdness around how clients interact with various folders, but that's not Gmail's fault.

Yes they are, they decided to implement their IMAP support in a non-standard way.
Also, plenty of other issues ARE their fault.

Don't you feel that you're taking the Google boycott a bit far if you won't even search for how to sync contacts.

Not far enough when you think about it. I mean he's already got Google.com right in front of him and didn't think to do that. Think about that for a moment. He's the kind of user who is a support nightmare and potentially the cause of many antidepressant prescrptions among front-end tech-support staff who have to talk to people like him. By "boycotting" Google users like him are doing them a huge favor and sparing them much time and expense.

You ever see those users who do deeply involved non-trivial damage to a computer, and when you ask them what happened, they tell you something like "all I did was open Notepad and all of this just happened!" Yeah. Providing support for people like that costs you more than you could ever hope to regain. That's just a business reality, I won't go into my personal feelings about it.

Don't you feel that you're taking the Google boycott a bit far if you won't even search for how to sync contacts.

Sections 23123 and 23123.5 of the California Vehicle Code prohibit use of a mobile phone while driving unless "the electronic wireless communications device is specifically designed and configured to allow voice-operated and hands-free operation" or "that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving."

According to Google Glass' product page, ALL control is done via voice command: http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/

There's a specific provision disallowing drivers under 18 years of age from using mobile devices at all, but that's not the case here.

HOWEVER, the ticket in the article says in part that the charge was under Section 27602 of the Vehicle Code, which says that "A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at a point forward of the back of the driver’s seat, or is operating and the monitor, screen, or display is visible to the driver while driving the motor vehicle."

the main problem is that the vehicle code does not even contemplate devices that have multiple uses, like smartphones, that can act as phones, texting devices, GPS devices, AND potential video streaming devices.

i'd say the person's best legal recourse is to argue that Google Glass is a mobile phone device and should be considered under Section 23123, rather than a "television" or "video monitor" under Section 27602. and while i'm angry at the police officer for issuing such a charge, the officer also is not in the position of determining what the law is. that's going to have to be a judge.

the ticket also charges the person with generic speeding, so, really, she kinda screwed up to begin with. my guess is that a traffic judge will dismiss the 27602 charge and fine her handily for speeding.

Records compiled by the State Division of Motor Vehicles show six of seven speeding tickets and one for running a red light issued to Republican gubernatorial candidate Tommy Thompson have been reduced since 1979.
Five of the speeding tickets were lowered to defective speedometer convictions and one to imprudent speed, the records showed.
Thompson said he believed it necessary to avoid speeding convictions because it was important politically to keep his driver's license.
Thompson, a lawyer and the Assembly minority leader, said he hired hsi Mauston law partner, Dennis Schuh to win defective speedometer pleas to avoid speeding convictions.
Recrods of Thompson's tickets show the defective speedometer claim was used for at least three vehicles Thompson was driving when arrested for speeding.
Schuh said he did not recall whether speedometers were repaired in any of the cases.

That's how it works for the rich and well connected.

I hope this doesn't mean we'll start getting like a telekinetic Hitler or something right? I mean we already had Teller and his wacko theories like "Plowshare" and he was supposedly a smart guy, right?

Yeah, it is amazing what is possible technologically compared to politically/socially. I wrote a related essay here:
"Getting to 100 social-technical points"
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openmanufacturing/BByqMARHqOw
"One can think of it this simplified way. Imagine abundance for all takes a society earning 100 "social-technical" points. :-) These points come from the multiplication of the "social" points times the "technical" points.
So, 50 * 2 = 100.
Or, 2 * 50 = 100.
or, 10 * 10 = 100.
    Social points might be things like learning to share better, or learning to get along with each other better in resolving conflicts with less damage, or in general, even eventually a global mindshift:
      "Global Mindshift: The Wombat"
      http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml
Technical points are like the ones we are usually talking about here, how to make things efficiently and effectively.
    Let us consider three scenarios for these points, with the numbers as above. ..."

These levels can probably go up and down. So, the USA is maybe a 3 out of 100 socially (for emphasizing selfishness over community and short-term over long-term) but maybe an 10 out of 100 technologically/infrastructurally? So, 3 * 10 = 30, or about a third of the way to abundance for all? Fusion power might increase that technology level to 20? A 1960s/1970s-like social renaissance might bring the social level back up to 10? Put both of those together, and we easily could provide abundance for all (like Bucky Fuller wrote about being possible decades ago). Add nanotech-based 3D printers to fusion to bring the US tech level up to, say, 30, and even with social problems keeping the US at 3, at 3 * 30 = 90 we would be close to providing abundance for all. Still might not be there because at a social level of 3, ideas like "artificial scarcity" (such as copyright, patents, DRM, etc.) still seem like productive helpful ideas as opposed to immoral harmful ones. Or, if the USA got up to 10 socially, with say a "basic income" for all, then our current technology might be enough for abundance for all. Yet, having said that, "the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed" (William Gibson), so one can see more advanced communities socially here and there (including on the internet here and there) and some technology ideas have not yet become widespread but may soon. Inside a social bubble like, say, the Google Corporation, there is abundance for all already.

Metal is cool, but wood is pretty amazing in its own way. It is in a sense self-replicating, And to work with it artistically you need to think about grain and species and dryness and so on. Some woodworkers look for special branches shapes in the forest that they convert to things like chairs, tables, or special sculptures.

I've heard of education at some universities like MIT being called "drinking from a firehose". There is always so much to learn. The Buddhist path, in the sense of prioritization and simplification to some meaningful end may be a good strategy for having fun. Even just one Minecraft-like simulated world could be made effectively infinite, if you are looking for endless new vistas -- although in another sense, much of it is probably just more of the same.

Why, too lazy to look it up yourself?

Researching every unsubstantiated claim on /. isn't feasible. There's just not enough time.
It works much better if the commenters include the pertinent links in their posts. After all, they already (claim to) have the info.

Question 1: The data language that defines the structure of a web page is:

a) HTML
b) Javascript

c) Microdata! Oh wait, that died. RDFa Lite!

Question 2: Your web browser is at version 4.1.2. You make some minor changes to the code base. The next version of your web browser will be:

a) 4.1.3
b) 37

c) 4.2.0 since you didn't say the minor changes were only for security/stability. What, you didn't think SeaMonkey counts in this Mozilla quiz?

Question 3: The web standard for full-color animated images is:

a) MNG
b) Verboten

c) I'd say aPNG, but since you didn't limit it to binary images: SVG with SMIL.

Question 4: This extensible feature allows a browser to load non-standard data formats:

a) Plug-ins
b) A hard-coded component for each format, each of which requires optional features be turned on

c) A newly added-on extension to the plug-in system that you came up with but decided not to implement yourself.

Question 5: Your browser does not support a certain feature in the web standards. You should:

a) Add a feature request in your bug tracking system
b) Get the feature removed from the next version of the web standards and close any related feature requests in your bug tracking system.

c) Send an RFC to developers for a better standard, collect feedback, implement it, document it, and publish an open-source implementation.

Question 6: Your browser does support a certain feature in the web standards, like tbody scrollbars. You should:

a) Celebrate
b) Get the feature removed from the next version of the web standards, remove it from the browser, and close any related feature requests in your bug tracking system.

c) Hold on valiantly to MathML while every other browser removes support.

Question 7: You don't feel like implementing all of XHTML2 in your browser. You should:

a) Implement the good parts, skip the bad parts, and develop alternatives to the bad parts.
b) Break XHTML1 pages so developers get a bad feeling about anything with XHTML in the name, then promote an alternate standard that is intentionally incompatible with both versions of XHTML.

c) Get over yourself and use HTML5

Question 8: You have an idea for a completely new web feature like cookies or scripting or a common gateway interface. You should:

a) Send an RFC to developers, collect feedback, implement it, document it, and publish an open-source implementation.
b) Wait for the W3 to act.

c) File an enhancement bug and watch it get resolved WONTFIX.

Question 9: A certain browser feature is found to be a severe threat to user privacy and security. You should:

a) Develop measures to protect users.
b) Remove the option to disable it.

c) Add this to the bookmarks toolbar> about:config?filter=javascript.enabled

Question 10: A user who wishes to view the source of a dynamically generated web page can:

a) Select 'view source'
b) Eat a dick

c) Ctrl A, right-click -> View Selected Source, or just Ctrl Shift C

It is trying to build a public (or so it says) database of where there is cell towers and or wifi, all geolocated by GPS.

For cell towers, there alredy exists such a database:

OpenCellID.org

There are numerous client apps for Android (e.g. Tower Collector) that allow you collect logs of GPS coordinates+visible tower cell IDs and submit these logs to OpenCellID.

Why, too lazy to look it up yourself?

Because searching Russia Today for the evils of the US government is like searching Fox News for the evils of the Democratic Party.

Why, too lazy to look it up yourself?

Here's one: NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American

A full year before Edward Snowden.

I remember showing that article to some friends of mine, people who were deeply involved with government work. They laughed at me and called me paranoid and gullible. Sure sucks when the tinfoil-hat crowd is right.

I just re-serve the CAPTCHAs on my own popular website. Crowdsourcing for the win.

That's the real problem with captchas. As long as you can hire people real cheap to brute force them how well a computer can do that is really just an interesting computational feat. I can create a test that says "Answer this: 1+3=" with instructions above it that say to answer with the name at the top of the blog; while a machine may be fooled a person who is served the entire web page can just as easily defeat that. If the gain from defeating a captcha is big enough someone will pay to brute force them.

to make a real world analogy, we use shredders to destroy documents. However, if you can throw enough people together in a room over time the can recreate the document in many cases. It's only a question is the effort worth the outcome.

You don't even have to hire people anymore. You can sneak in someone else's captcha onto your web page, then use this real person's entry to submit to the other site.

Captchas are a pox on mankind. http://www.google.com/recaptcha claims that they serve 30 million daily. If each one takes just 6 seconds to complete (this is being pretty generous, especially if the first attempt fails), 50,000 man-hours are spent every day just on this idiotic practice. 5.7 man-years. Every single day. There has to be a better way.

Google already have the Hamina facility in Finland which has been using sea water to cool the centre since 2009/2011. They've had a good few years to start getting the kinks ironed out.

You're still clinging to some outdated notion that there's some difference between government and corporations. How quaint.

There is a difference. These institutions involve people working under different incentive structures. Lawmaking is complex, and includes the ideologies of the actors involved. It's not a purely corrupt process by a long stretch. Read "Private Rights in Public Resources" for a real-life breakdown of lawmaking in process. You got to study these things to work out how things happen in real life.

Yes, "much better", going by available data. Here's that table with version numbers converted into dates. I deleted rows with missing data for either compiler, and removed other compilers. If I get bored, I might actually go through their changelogs for missing data.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AsJ4G9Bsq42ddHRjbmJNbldUbWxFckpITTFQUkVJUUE&output=html

#BadBIOS - BIOS Malware

#

- Copernicus: Question Your Assumptions about BIOS Security

http://www.mitre.org/capabilities/cybersecurity/overview/cybersecurity-blog/copernicus-question-your-assumptions-about

- "Seems to have a BIOS hypervisor, SDR functionality that bridges air gaps, wifi card removed."

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388512915742937089

=

- #BadBIOS

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BadBIOS

=

- "More on my ongoing chase of #badBIOS malware."

https://plus.google.com/103470457057356043365/posts/9fyh5R9v2Ga
https://plus.google.com/103470457057356043365

=

- Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care: Government & Stealth Malware

http://slexy.org/view/s2otvoDuKW

=

- Gpu based paravirtualization rootkit, all os vulne

http://forum.sysinternals.com/gpu-based-paravirtualization-rootkit-all-os-vulne_topic26706.html

=

- #badBIOS (and lotsa paranoia, plus fireworks)

https://kabelmast.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/badbios-and-lotsa-paranoia-plus-fireworks/

=

- Air-Gap-Breaching BIOS Rootkits with SDRs Inside (and smartphones, Snowden, NSA, Wikileaks)

"A little while back I covered a paper on FPGAs that could turn themselves into SDRs. I suspected this would be one way to breach an air gap.

It seems I was right on the money. If a little behind the times.

Researchers have found an incredibly persistent BIOS rootkit in the wild that includes SDR functionality⦠literally turning your computer into a radio transmitter to exfiltrate data even if youâ(TM)re not connected to the Internet." [..]

"The researchers were using a new tool, Copernicus, which sadly seems to be Windows-only. Nevertheless a number of you might be interested in checking it out.

There is one enduring mystery of this rootkit⦠how does it survive BIOS reflashes?" [..]

https://kabelmast.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/air-gap-breaching-bios-rootkits-with-sdrs-inside-and-smartphones-snowden-nsa-wikileaks/

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388511686744764416

- IMHO Copernicus is the most important security tool in recent history. Already found persistent BIOS malware (survives reflashing) here.

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388512915742937089

- and thatâ(TM)s not even interesting part. Seems to have a BIOS hypervisor, SDR functionality that bridges air gaps, wifi card removed.

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388521551693217792

- Copernicus BIOS verification. Also if tool is mysteriously failing or weird output full of FFs you may have problem. http://goo.gl/AHLwbD

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388534580493287424

- This particular BIOS persistent malware sample seems use TLS encrypted DHCP HostOptions as a command and control.

https://twitter.com/drago

#BadBIOS - BIOS Malware

#

- Copernicus: Question Your Assumptions about BIOS Security

http://www.mitre.org/capabilities/cybersecurity/overview/cybersecurity-blog/copernicus-question-your-assumptions-about

- "Seems to have a BIOS hypervisor, SDR functionality that bridges air gaps, wifi card removed."

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388512915742937089

=

- #BadBIOS

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BadBIOS

=

- "More on my ongoing chase of #badBIOS malware."

https://plus.google.com/103470457057356043365/posts/9fyh5R9v2Ga
https://plus.google.com/103470457057356043365

=

- Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care: Government & Stealth Malware

http://slexy.org/view/s2otvoDuKW

=

- Gpu based paravirtualization rootkit, all os vulne

http://forum.sysinternals.com/gpu-based-paravirtualization-rootkit-all-os-vulne_topic26706.html

=

- #badBIOS (and lotsa paranoia, plus fireworks)

https://kabelmast.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/badbios-and-lotsa-paranoia-plus-fireworks/

=

- Air-Gap-Breaching BIOS Rootkits with SDRs Inside (and smartphones, Snowden, NSA, Wikileaks)

"A little while back I covered a paper on FPGAs that could turn themselves into SDRs. I suspected this would be one way to breach an air gap.

It seems I was right on the money. If a little behind the times.

Researchers have found an incredibly persistent BIOS rootkit in the wild that includes SDR functionality⦠literally turning your computer into a radio transmitter to exfiltrate data even if youâ(TM)re not connected to the Internet." [..]

"The researchers were using a new tool, Copernicus, which sadly seems to be Windows-only. Nevertheless a number of you might be interested in checking it out.

There is one enduring mystery of this rootkit⦠how does it survive BIOS reflashes?" [..]

https://kabelmast.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/air-gap-breaching-bios-rootkits-with-sdrs-inside-and-smartphones-snowden-nsa-wikileaks/

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388511686744764416

- IMHO Copernicus is the most important security tool in recent history. Already found persistent BIOS malware (survives reflashing) here.

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388512915742937089

- and thatâ(TM)s not even interesting part. Seems to have a BIOS hypervisor, SDR functionality that bridges air gaps, wifi card removed.

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388521551693217792

- Copernicus BIOS verification. Also if tool is mysteriously failing or weird output full of FFs you may have problem. http://goo.gl/AHLwbD

https://twitter.com/dragosr/status/388534580493287424

- This particular BIOS persistent malware sample seems use TLS encrypted DHCP HostOptions as a command and control.

https://twitter.com/drago

So long as Amazon's re-investment in itself results in solid growth, the stock continues a steady climb, which isn't so much different from paying a dividend.

Are you going for funny? reCAPTCHA has always been about deciphering books:

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

By me from 2009 (excerpts): https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openmanufacturing/bNyZ6qupGFU
"This essay explain why luxury safer electric (or plug-in hybrid) cars should be free-to-the-user at the point of sale in the USA, and why this will reduce US taxes overall. Essentially, unsafe gasoline-powered automobiles in the USA pose a high cost on society (accidents, injuries, pollution, defense), and the costs of making better cars would pay for themselves and then some. This essay is an example of using post-scarcity ideology to understand the scarcity-oriented ideological assumptions in our society and how those outdated scarcity assumptions are costing our society in terms of creating and maintaining artificial scarcity. ...
    As a rough approximation, sixteen million new cars a year times US$30,000 a car (lower price through volume) would be US$480 billion a year, an amount easily found by reducing some of the about US$1 trillion defense budget (including everything) and US$2.5 trillion health care cost which is about half paid in taxes (total US$3.trillion for those two things, about US$2,25 trillion in taxes). Essentially, US$480 billion a year for free-to-the-user safe electric cars would be only about 20% of the US$2.25 trillion a year in taxes we spend on health care and defense. And in turn, we would save a big chunk of US$164 billion a year for accidents, and a big chunk of the defense budget spent to defend oil supplies, and a big chunk of other medical costs related to environmental pollution, and a big chunk of costs related to global climate change. So, overall, the US tax payer would probably save money on taxes by giving away free open-source safe luxury electric cars (or, at least plug-in hybrids to start).
    Beyond that, then there is the additional benefits that more research in auto safety (even to the cost of hundreds of billions of US dollars a year), especially in perfecting cars that drive themselves at night using radar. Such cars might eliminate virtually all driving accidents eventually, as well as let the human "driver" of such a car use the internet or sleep during the trip (about 90% of serious accidents happen at night, often related to poor visibility or tiredness). One such example of great research in this area (although it may not be FOSS yet?):
      "Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering"
        http://pave.princeton.edu/
    So, why don't we do this right now? I'd suggest it is mainly due to scarcity ideology creating artificial scarcity. For instance, the same computer technologies that can be used to design and operate safer cars are instead used to manage electronic credit or to produce fancy advertising and astroturfing related to promoting free market fundamentalism.
    Essentially, it's all ideology (or ignorance, or corruption, or vested interests, which may all be essentially the same thing), because as I show above, it is even financially cheaper to be both financially-subsidized free-as-in-beer and open source free-as-in-freedom. There are also other various freedoms that safer free-to-the-user electric cars would give us (including freedom from seeing loved ones die in car accidents, by cancer caused by gasoline additives, or by hurricanes caused by global climate change).
    So, I'd suggest, over the next ten to twenty years, this is a major change we will likely see in the USA's personal transportation system -- self-driving free-to-the-user safer electric cars (or plug-in hybrids) built using FOSS methodology. And, taxes will then go *down*, along with other direct to the user expenses for insurance, maintenance, and energy, because our transportation system will then, by adjusting for externalities (like national security, pollution, and health care costs), be cheaper overall to design, build, operate, and recycle."

So, in that sense, expensive cars are another example of market failure due to unaccounted-for externalities.

If Ann Coulter is associated with it..... I'm NOT

Audrey Hudson writes for Newsmax and formerly for the Washington Times. The story has appeared on WND, TheDailyCaller, TheBlaze and other right wing sites. It is being studiously ignored by all other Western media, as per a Google News search, just now.

Selective outrage; the jackboots kick in the door on a conservative reporter and you people and your MSM are fine with it.

what is "teabagger event"? There are events now? Tea Party is 10-20% of voters. You don't need to go to an "event" to find them.

What's being willfully obtuse?

And if he talked to Tea Party people about wanting to change the schools, they would realize that they need to break the union stranglehold to make any real changes that either of them wants.

You guys really have constructed this alternate reality to match your ideology, haven't you? Unions have nothing to do with unequal school funding and do nothing to prevent teachers from being fired with cause.

People act overly reserved around recording devices; wearing one of these makes you the death of the party.

Thousands of YouTube videos would suggest otherwise...

Anyway, video camera glasses are already widely available at minimal cost, and the world hasn't ended yet. https://www.google.com/search?q=Video+Camera+Sunglasses&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en. I doubt these offerings from Google, Samsung, Microsoft et al will change the world as video recording or surveillance devices. That niche is already well-stocked.

These things could be a genuine enabling technology, changing the way we do things in interesting and unpredictable ways. Classing them with simple concealed video recorders is - ahem - short sighted.

Perhaps you can show me where the "optional" part is so i can turn it off?

I don't have an AppleTV, but surely you're familiar with search engines that allow you to find stuff.

I think you are thinking of something like this: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/29970-disable-automatic-updates/

No, no I'm not. It clearly states that "The problem is that "trigger happy" kids are updating and leaving me with a new jailbreaking", so he ultimately wanting to put a stop to manual updating, which you would know if you bothered to actually read the first post of the link you posted.

Saw a presentation a couple years ago from Oregon State's beer professor. There's a lot of research being done on beer, and its foam, and some far more detailed than this story.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:oregonstate.edu+beer+foam+research

I'm telling you, it's not the FCC or federal laws that prevent google from Google from muscling in, it's local politics, goaded on by the existing monopolies, that is getting in the way.

Do you mean this book, by Tom Vanderbilt: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Tom_Vanderbilt_Traffic?id=O4lsPQttQ5IC

Huh? Erosion of Trust? Are you familiar with the Organized Labor movement in most countries? It's fraught with conflict and violence. I will give you an example of how things go.

Let me give you a quick refresher. Jan 29, 1933 Ford employs the use of Strike Breakers. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19330130&id=z_8MAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YGkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2487,5787301

in April, 1941 more violence with Ford.. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7-RfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgMGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4483,1409316&dq=ford+hires+strike&hl=en

PATCO workers in a sick out in 1970.. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C14FD3E5A157493C5A9178FD85F448785F9

Organized labor exists because workers aren't happy with their working conditions. Unfortunately over the last 30 years with the decline in US manufacturing and with concerted efforts by companies to keep unions out, we're seeing a reduced influence by Unions in general. With growing wage disparity however, we'll probably see a resurgence in the movement. In fact, recently we've seen it with Walmart and McDonalds workers and it's been openly encouraged by the past few administrations. More and more states are pushing for Right to Work laws, which on the surface may seem good but that also makes workers more of a commodity by driving out unions, rather than a vital part of any organization.

So, when you say erosion of trust, I'd like to know exactly what era, or company you're talking about because when you work for somebody else, you're a cog in the machine and they'll do whatever they want with you within the definition of the law. If you're in a Right to Work state, you can get fired without cause so don't expect any kind of trust to be developed there.

While I don't agree with tracking employees, I think it's a natural problem we have with privacy. Privacy in this country is eroding faster than a sand castle at high tide and unless we start pushing on our elected officials to get legislation that protects us form these kinds of things, well companies will do all kinds of things that by lack of decree, they'll be able to do and you won't be able to stop it. Even in Norway, companies are using such novel ideas like bathroom alarms limiting you to 8 minutes per day.... Think of how that works for your rights and your trust with your employer.

Huh? Erosion of Trust? Are you familiar with the Organized Labor movement in most countries? It's fraught with conflict and violence. I will give you an example of how things go.

Let me give you a quick refresher. Jan 29, 1933 Ford employs the use of Strike Breakers. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19330130&id=z_8MAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YGkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2487,5787301

in April, 1941 more violence with Ford.. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7-RfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgMGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4483,1409316&dq=ford+hires+strike&hl=en

PATCO workers in a sick out in 1970.. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C14FD3E5A157493C5A9178FD85F448785F9

Organized labor exists because workers aren't happy with their working conditions. Unfortunately over the last 30 years with the decline in US manufacturing and with concerted efforts by companies to keep unions out, we're seeing a reduced influence by Unions in general. With growing wage disparity however, we'll probably see a resurgence in the movement. In fact, recently we've seen it with Walmart and McDonalds workers and it's been openly encouraged by the past few administrations. More and more states are pushing for Right to Work laws, which on the surface may seem good but that also makes workers more of a commodity by driving out unions, rather than a vital part of any organization.

So, when you say erosion of trust, I'd like to know exactly what era, or company you're talking about because when you work for somebody else, you're a cog in the machine and they'll do whatever they want with you within the definition of the law. If you're in a Right to Work state, you can get fired without cause so don't expect any kind of trust to be developed there.

While I don't agree with tracking employees, I think it's a natural problem we have with privacy. Privacy in this country is eroding faster than a sand castle at high tide and unless we start pushing on our elected officials to get legislation that protects us form these kinds of things, well companies will do all kinds of things that by lack of decree, they'll be able to do and you won't be able to stop it. Even in Norway, companies are using such novel ideas like bathroom alarms limiting you to 8 minutes per day.... Think of how that works for your rights and your trust with your employer.

In the Netherlands, kids take a fairly thorough cycling exam to learn this stuff:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.veiligverkeernederland.nl%2Fverkeersexamen

Theory examples:
http://www.veiligverkeernederland.nl/node/67294 (Dutch, but it doesn't really matter)

On the other hand, there are still about 80.000 people (out of 17.000.000 inhabitants; ~0,5%) requiring immediate medical care yearly due to accidents on their bicycle (although many of them are older people breaking their hip):
http://www.veiligheid.nl/cijfers/fietsongevallen-algemeen (Dutch)

That's actually a myth:

https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/

You're talking about this study by Ian Walker:

http://drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf

The problem is that it was horribly flawed.

It was conducted by a single guy (who was both subject and researcher), who is an "anti-helmet" activist (seriously). It was a sample size of 1, and it didn't control for the behaviour of the cyclist himself, or any controls at all for that matter (obviously couldn't be double-blind!).

It's completely bogus. There's no way to tell if the difference in distance was caused by the behaviour of the driver or the behaviour of the cyclist.

Additionally, he used the shady "truncated axis" technique to visually exaggerate the difference between the distances observed in the two conditions. This might be ok if the data was significant and it was pointed out that this was being done to highlight the significant difference. However, while he claimed the difference was big, he never said it was significant and he didn't provide any statistical methodology or significance metrics (e.g. p values). If the differences were significant, then why would he have not said so and included the metrics? I don't know a single scientist that would omit that. This is the kind of thing I would have failed students for when I was grading papers in grad school. There is precisely *zero* reason to visually exaggerate differences on a graph, while simultaneously omitting statistical significance analyses, unless you are being deliberately deceptive.

Check out the following link for some better information and meta-analyses:

https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/

RIPPED from TODAY'S HEADLINES

Some animals are more equal than others. This is my surprised face.

If corporations were really people, I would be able to end one by squeezing my fingers around it's throat.

especially considering companies like Google would likely offer DNS for (here look at this advertisement) free

They already do.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

The activity of municipal entities is regulated by law. Law is made by legislators who are elected, and desire to be re-elected. And here is the flaw in your plan.

Maintaining a monopoly on broadband Internet and Cable TV in a municipal area is profitable so far and above the cost of being elected to legislative office that the incumbent monopolies have managed to influence all the elected folks to protect them from competition from municipal entities in the interest of "capitalism and fair play."

Some are grandfathered in. You can get gigabit in the grand Ephrata, WA metroplex (POP 7664) through the local power muni some 15 years now. Or in Aberdeen, WA (POP 16,265) through the local power muni for a decade or so. In Tacoma, WA, the Click network can sell you 100Mbps through the power utility, but even though they serve the greater metropolitan area with power (including me) you have to be within the city limits (not me) to get that Internet deal because: protective legislation protecting incumbent ISPs like Comcast.

So: Help us Google Fiber. You're our only hope.

Same with propane. Gases are like that. Time to switch to MK batteries. The only catch is that they are made on Mercury.

somebody's got to keep the aliens out!

Use your brain. Like it or not, that lame show/whatever is popular.

...and which is available now for $199

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb

I think we're all in agreement that a moron wrote the "can't argue with the price" thing.

And whole world lives in the USA, of course.

Otherwise, why isn't there finer-grained control [in Android] over what information those applications can access?

There's an experimental control panel called "App Ops" buried in vanilla Android 4.3 that allows turning individual permissions on and off for individual applications. It's not the folder- or file-level capability system that I'd prefer, but it is a step toward what various Android mods have been doing all along, and Android 4.3 users can download App Ops from Google Play Store.

The hardware is significantly worse than that of the Nexus 4 from a year ago which was available for $299.

...and which is available now for $199

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb

I think we're all in agreement that a moron wrote the "can't argue with the price" thing.

A 320x480 Android 4.0 phone is under $50 at Deal Extreme - albeit with less memory.

http://dx.com/p/mini-7100-android-4-1-gsm-smartphone-w-3-5-capacitive-screen-quad-band-and-wi-fi-black-226619

When I did my printer hunting a little over a year ago I ended up with a Xerox 6505. I was looking for a color printer, and they have overall good reviews. When you are looking at toner, there are fairly cheap aftermarket toners you can get for Xerox printers that keep costs down.

One thing I looked for in a printer that would let it work on any OS was that it could accept PCL and PostScript (that way you don't need a print driver). Though, still having a printer driver is nice for configuring little things (like duplex printing if your printer supports it).

This data is out-of-date at this point, but I put together a spreadsheet of all the different printers I was considering.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As4u6h7EmJ5sdHhRalNzMl9OV2x6Q2xRSU0zdjJHcEE&usp=sharing

I don't remember my exact issues with HP and Brothers printers at this point, but the one thing I did like about Xerox versus some of the others was their toner cartridges were stand-alone from other components. So it made it cheap to get after-market toner.

They are only deprecating NPAPI because they want plugins to use Pepper instead.