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I suspect some small fraction of that 3% isn't actively illiterate, but simply unread enough to not recognize the difference between aliterate and illiterate... or to recognize that aliterate is a legitimate word which is not merely another synonym for "illiterate".

Don't forget SWAT raids on those dangerous and seditious home poker games.

It's a Salon article but I had to use the google link because salon put a " in the URL and I don't want to try to figure out how to deal with that.

This is not fully correct. I live in Beltsville, Maryland. There is a huge USDA research center here, people in there grow wheat, corn, soy and all kinds of other crops. This google map street view shows the road I drive to work every day, you can see crops are growing. This research center covers area around Cherry Hill Road, Sellman Road, Power Mill Road and etc. And along Powder Mill Road, there are roads named like "Poultry Road", "Diary Road", "Animal Husbandry Road", "Pesticide Road", "Soil conservation Road", I bet you've can guess what they are doing over there.

If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

What is it called after you attempt the same thing fourty-two times ?

I think I'll have to try this new tea party bargaining method. See I have the keys to the office. I can refuse to let anyone in the building unless *I* get a raise and they agree to get rid of the healthy snacks in the vending machines.

...and that Supreme Court ruling...
Most of the developed western countries have something like universal healthcare. And yet for some reason this is a huge problem in the US. Obama seems to be hell-bent to drag the US into the twentieth century. Kicking and screaming. And even has to be considered a progress. The current discussion(which is very much over and resolved) is so ninetieth century it's not even funny anymore.

If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

What is it called after you attempt the same thing fourty-two times ?

I think I'll have to try this new tea party bargaining method. See I have the keys to the office. I can refuse to let anyone in the building unless *I* get a raise and they agree to get rid of the healthy snacks in the vending machines.

They also need to understand why people are posting. People talked about Breaking Bad a lot because it was so good, and they also talked about Dexter because it got so bad. When good shows drop in quality hard core fans stick around but start to complain. So you could conceivably get an uptick in chatter that instead of signalling a rise in ratings actually precedes a drop in ratings.

Enter Sentiment Analysis [1]. Even a word-count analysis of positive/negative connotation words vs. a neutral sentiment control corpus could tell you with a reasonably high accuracy whether a show is being slagged or praised. And that's a simplistic guess of a prediction model from someone with a single machine learning course to brag about - nothing like using Google's prediction API.

[1] https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/sentiment_analysis

Oh geeze. So the question is which source to trust? Looks like the original source is the last link. Reads like the author of the second link looked at slide #45 of the above and paid more attention to the right-hand side. I guess I must concede, they're referring to the equivalent of 128 or 256 bits of security due to the hash being 256 or 512 bits long.

This does leave the potential for nasty things being done in the other tweaks.

To be fair, Bill Gates was also incompetent in pretty much every domain except organized crime, and was unable to avoid arrest.

The laws of California, U.S.A., excluding California’s conflict of laws rules, will apply to any disputes arising out of or relating to these terms or the Services. All claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the Services will be litigated exclusively in the federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA, and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

So even if I am very well versed in the laws of my country that is of of no use for me to determine if it would even be worth the effort to start a litigation, as even if I would have good grounds in my home country that might not be the case in California.

If they did, his estate would sue.

If you mean globally, Christianity is a distant second to Islam.

That's an incorrect statement, easily refuted by checking Wikipedia or a Google search.

And I suspect there's been more Apple products sold in America than there are Christians.

At first I was skeptical. There are 234 million adults in the United States, of whom approximately 44% attend church regularly; so you're guessing that more than 103 million Apple devices have been sold in the US? Apple, Inc. has been around since 1976, so you may be right, if you count every iPod and every Mac and so on all the way back to the Apple I.

Ok, so French citizens can't read the EULA. Isn't that an indication that the French education system needs reform more than Google's very clear EULA? I'm sure if your comment warranted it I could dig up the french version

I mean, google's policy is written for the much lamented 8th grade education in US Public Schools. If the French can't read that then they probably don't use google's services anyway.

Anyone know how to prevent Android Device Manager being able to access my location anytime it feels like it?

https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager

I'm on a Droid Razr Maxx.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/EDUCATION/collection/topselling_paid?hl=en

Oh, you asked for this and all the others that modded you up, you AC, you!

Says the single guy who can't even comprehend life-changing events like having a child.

Ummm, so life changing events only happen to married people with children? And, I'm sorry but even single guys had childhoods and would have the ability later to recognize when one is about to get fucked up.

News Flash: Life happens. Even when you plan on having children, one cannot even remotely plan for every event forthcoming (especially four years later) that would elicit the need for a 4-year old to have a cell phone.

And if you would have shown even an inkling of experience in parenting in your smart-ass comments, you might have seen that.

There is *NO* reason a four year old "needs" a cell phone. None, zip, zero. If you were a reasonably sane adult you would know exactly why!

So, either father a child yourself and then come to the adult table to talk shop, or kindly STFU.

Again, you have to father a child to be an adult and talk "shop"? WTFTM

And no, it's not every parents fault if a kid grows "fucked up". That is likely more due to the influence of ignorance coming from society, as you have so deftly demonstrated.

Again, had you a shred of experience in this matter, you might have known that.

Actually, there are hundreds of studies that show that most fucked up children get fucked up by the home environment they are brought up in, i.e., Mom and Dad did it. "Fucked up" children seek acceptance and emotional support from outside the family and often in or with the wrong people that end up reinforcing bad behavior or leading them into new bad behaviors, all to get back at Mommy and/or Daddy. The "influence of ignorance coming from society" is the finger pointing BS that every bad parent tries to run up the flag pole to duck blame for their effed up child. One only wonders how many of yours need psychotherapy.

To the OP, cellphones aren't allowed in university classrooms let alone kindergarten. You truly are cracked and should get some help for yourself before you really screw things up. The child is young enough to forget this stupid crap if you stop now and think of something other than your needs, because that cell phone is certainly NOT fulfilling any four-year old's needs. Based on what I've read so far I'd say the child would be better off away from you and the mother, frankly.

https://www.kytephone.com/ Looks like it's a device administrator app or something like that. Worth looking at...?

Direct store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kytephone Looks like it's got pretty good reviews.

In other words: Maybe get a super cheap android phone and stick this on it...

I have one that's called "Navigating the Internet".

http://books.google.com/books/about/Navigating_the_internet.html?id=xh0-pXnRe6sC

Covers everything, ftp, gopher, veronica, archie, email, email_to_foo gateways, PGP, WAIS. The WWW is covered in two chapters, with the second focusing on the graphical web, total of 67 pages for both chapters. The authors said it had the potential to bring everything else under one easy to use umbrella as a swiss-army knife of the Internet.

I think I first touched the internet in late 98 or early 99, at the computer lab of the local community college satellite campus. Found out about their machines when I dropped my wheelchair using mother at GED classes. If memory serves me correctly they were PII 233's with 32MB RAM running Netscape Communicator on WinNT. 4.0 Netscape would crash if you looked at it funny. There was only 1 local ISP until spring of 99 which was ran by a local printing/graphics company and a lot of people didn't have access until there was competition from another local company which eventually ended up as part of Earthlink. If memory serves me well, AOL didn't even have a local access number until AFTER the cable company began offering broadband in late 2001 early 2002.

I spent three years sailing on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography research vessels, mostly the Revelle, and the Melville. One of my primary responsibilities was operating the multibeam sonar and other acoustic instruments. Working on ship is interesting, it's sort of like college, where you live in one small floating building housing the dorms, labs, cafeteria, and plant, with 40 people, except you cannot leave the building for 50 days at a stretch. It's like being on a reality show living and working with scientists of all types, and some other colorful characters.

None of the 50 or so marine biologists that I ever sailed with ever had the slightest concern about the multibeam's impact on marine life. And belive me they were very interested in sonar's effects on marine mammals. Anytime we would perform SEISMIC survey ops we were required by law to have a marine mammal observer on watch. If they sighted any whales in the area, we shut down the air guns. In the old days they used sticks of dynamite, now they use 3000psi air guns. Loud.

Bear in mind our ship cost up to $50,000 per DAY to operate. And that's just for the ship, crew, and technicians, not the scientists and who or what ever they bring. Commercial vessels probably cost much more to operate; the greatest cost is diesel; ships burn thousands of gallons per day; we bought ours from the Navy. But the MMO's were professional scientists and took their jobs seriously and we respected them and I would call them my friends. The idea that any of the other acoustic instruments could harm marine mammels was never broached. Another time I sailed with a large group of marine biologists who were basically pinging whales with high powered sonar to see what would happen because they were concerned with high powered sonars effects on whales. They never brought up any of the ships other acoustic instruments.

It's possible that MB has an effect. You could hear our MB all over the ship. We ran a Simrad EM-120 at 12khz, which I can hear pretty well. It sounded like a really loud bird chirping. And sometimes you could even hear the tinkling echos off the seabed. I can see how it MIGHT annoy whales. And I bet the commercial ships run a much higher-power sonar. They drag like 12 airguns when we drag one or two. I think a lot of it also depends on where you're operating. Most of the ocean is surprisingly empty and devoid of higher life forms. Perhaps greater percautions are needed close to whale populations. It's just surprising because as a member of the oceanographic community I for one was not aware that this issue was even on the radar (no pun intended).

MB sonar is generally a "good thing". We can only get very coarse bathymetry via satellite. MB is necessary to map the seabed in any detail and seabed maps are critical to earth science. I just hope this doesn't turn into some sort of sonar hysteria where we are unecessarily restricting good scence based on bad science.

Most people have no grounds of reference for sound underwater, which can mislead one to wayward conclusions. dB in water is not the same as dB in air. dB is always given relative to a reference pressure and distance, usually re 1 uPa 1 meter. The higher density of water means an equivalent sound volume (in terms of loudness, or amplitude) will have a much higher dB in water.

Typical sonars are about 160-200 dB re 1 uPa 1 m. The US Navy sonar which caused all the controversy years ago was 226 dB if I remember right. Yes these are loud, but remember it's measured at 1 meter. At 100 meters, it will have attenuated by -40 dB.

Yes those are loud, but I'm a little skeptical of all these claims of sonar harming whales because as most of you know, whales and dolphins use sonar themselves. It's typically 170-190 dB re 1 uPa 1m, with peaks over 220 dB. They're at different frequencies though (100+ kHz for dolphins, 10-25 kHz for most depth finders, 3 kHz for the Navy sonar), and higher frequencies attenuate more quickly in the water.

1. "120 decibels" is meaningless. Sound waves vary with the type of medium, and attenuates with distance. dB are always measured with respect to a certain pressure and distance, usually 1 uPa and 1 meter from the sound source. Further than that, the dB will be lower (-40 dB at 100 meters).

2. A typical sonar will be about 180-200 dB re 1 uPa 1 m, with the powerful one the US Navy was using being about 226 dB. That isn't because the sound is louder (measured as how much your eardrum moves). It's because water is a denser medium than air, and thus requires more energy to create a wave of the same pressure as in air. The sonar the whales themselves emit is about 170-190 dB re 1 uPa 1 m, with peaks exceeding 220 dB .

3. Dead whales float. The same bacteria which decompose human bodies and make them float do the same in whales. In a body as large as a whale, the buildup of these gases can be so great it causes the corpse to explode. It will eventually sink, but usually only after scavengers like sharks have stripped away most of the low-density tissue, leaving mostly high-density bones.

What you are thinking of is Swarm Robotics. And you misrepresent the field quite insultingly: it was far from a case of plonking down some simple robots and noting "wow, they do all sorts of things we didn't expect!". The entire point was to confirm that the emergent behaviour that had previous been simulated with virtual swarm agents, and prior to that theorised as the cause of insect behaviour, was possible to replicate, and to codify if the physical medium of interaction added any notable additional factors to the swarm behaviour (it does mainly due to computational imitations of the simulation, and computational robotics is now a big and mostly biomimetic field, e.g. using mobile driven whiskers for impact sensing).

What does this have to do with autonomous vehicles? For a start, while autonomous cars are in the minority they will be interacting almost entirely with human drivers. This is the WORST CASE scenario for autonomous vehicles. Once you have a large proportion of vehicles being autonomous, you can begin to have communication between vehicles, and produce behaviour like convoying that is impossible for human-operated or human/autonomous mixes to perform. There are plenty of simulations of large numbers of autonomous vehicles around, mostly to see how to optimise behaviour to produce superior traffic flow; for example removing junction signalling and allowing autonomous vehicles to freely and continuously merge and cross each other is far more efficient than turn-by-turn streamed releases. Papers and reports on this sort of modelling abound. Here's one that turned up after about 5 seconds of googling, with a few hundred thousand of its cohorts available.

Lots of sample content available for free. Just scroll down to "Contents" and browse around. Google

We're voting in November to approve the taxes on recreational pot (Colorado version).

Off the top of my head (the little election booklet is downstairs... it's Saturday, I'm not getting it) it is something along the lines of:

15% excise tax on wholesale (any sale from a cultivator to a processor).

10% sales tax on purchases, in addition to 2.9% state sales tax and I am assuming the additional municipal sales taxes (the booklet didn't really mention municipal sales taxes, though only really currently relevant for Denver since that's the only municipality that has approved recreational sale. Denver is I think 4.85%, so 7.75% total sales tax).

While these figures may seem high (hehe) it will only be the recreational shops that will be dealing with this. If you grow your own in the closet, you don't have to pay tax on it. One of the main points of Amendment 64 that proponents mentioned was the potential tax revenue being a boon to the state. Now, it remains to be seen, will the heavy tax simply push users to grow their own to avoid the tax? That much is expected from regular users, but not the occasional user who isn't going to bother growing as much as a basil plant.

In the end, though, I don't suspect my source of pot will change much if at all. I don't grow pot and I don't buy pot, yet, there is always pot around. Friends who work at grow-ops might stop by... "Oh you don't have any? Here's a jar full to keep around..." People give pot away all the time, and it is entirely legal to do so. Heck, one of my roommates works for a company that is selling these sweet vaporizers and catridges. If nothing else, there's usually "promotional models" laying around to use.

Article sayes First Cases of blah blah blah and http://www.google.com/patents/US1980972

I feel so like Breaking Bad right now.

things tend to go slow. Real slow. If you want things now, now, now, pay the man/men. It is free, as in someone-else-will-do-it, so you get what you, that's right, didn't pay for.

Fortunately, eventually people found this hobby project worth paying for, although I think it proved its worth before the big money started pouring in.

There are, of course, some other hobby projects that also manage to support a little more hardware than the Hurd does without huge amounts of money poured into them.

At this page it also states that her career included 'competing in the Ironhorse and Masters National races, and becoming a 5-time champion at the Masters World Cup in Australia'. Elsewhere it is explained that she introduced tandem racing to the Russians, won the Tandem World Cup Race with Glen Winkle in around 1992, won the Lotoja 203 in 1994 and set a new national record along with her partner, Tracy Lea. http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Ramona-Pierson states that she built a career in aviation.

And this newspaper article from 1994 describes a Ramona Pierson who is "a psychology professor living in Durango, Colo. In August, Ramona received her Ph.D. and was to deliver it to the convention of the American Psychology Association who was an invited speaker. She would have been able to attend the convention had she not been competing in bicycle races in Austria." Additionally, she was voted "Miss Congeniality" and "presented with special honours" in Russia. And before her accident she was apparently "a world-class runner and member of the U.S. Olympic Marathon team". In another article, it is said she has "degrees in physics, psychology, sociology, liberal arts and education", and that she has been "accepted into New York University and the New School for Social Research [where] she will begin work in a doctorate in political sociology later [in 1995]". She has also been "mugged and stabbed" (as was her guide-dog).

Dunno about you lot, but I'm... impressed...

At this page it also states that her career included 'competing in the Ironhorse and Masters National races, and becoming a 5-time champion at the Masters World Cup in Australia'. Elsewhere it is explained that she introduced tandem racing to the Russians, won the Tandem World Cup Race with Glen Winkle in around 1992, won the Lotoja 203 in 1994 and set a new national record along with her partner, Tracy Lea. http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Ramona-Pierson states that she built a career in aviation.

And this newspaper article from 1994 describes a Ramona Pierson who is "a psychology professor living in Durango, Colo. In August, Ramona received her Ph.D. and was to deliver it to the convention of the American Psychology Association who was an invited speaker. She would have been able to attend the convention had she not been competing in bicycle races in Austria." Additionally, she was voted "Miss Congeniality" and "presented with special honours" in Russia. And before her accident she was apparently "a world-class runner and member of the U.S. Olympic Marathon team". In another article, it is said she has "degrees in physics, psychology, sociology, liberal arts and education", and that she has been "accepted into New York University and the New School for Social Research [where] she will begin work in a doctorate in political sociology later [in 1995]". She has also been "mugged and stabbed" (as was her guide-dog).

Dunno about you lot, but I'm... impressed...

At this page it also states that her career included 'competing in the Ironhorse and Masters National races, and becoming a 5-time champion at the Masters World Cup in Australia'. Elsewhere it is explained that she introduced tandem racing to the Russians, won the Tandem World Cup Race with Glen Winkle in around 1992, won the Lotoja 203 in 1994 and set a new national record along with her partner, Tracy Lea. http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Ramona-Pierson states that she built a career in aviation.

And this newspaper article from 1994 describes a Ramona Pierson who is "a psychology professor living in Durango, Colo. In August, Ramona received her Ph.D. and was to deliver it to the convention of the American Psychology Association who was an invited speaker. She would have been able to attend the convention had she not been competing in bicycle races in Austria." Additionally, she was voted "Miss Congeniality" and "presented with special honours" in Russia. And before her accident she was apparently "a world-class runner and member of the U.S. Olympic Marathon team". In another article, it is said she has "degrees in physics, psychology, sociology, liberal arts and education", and that she has been "accepted into New York University and the New School for Social Research [where] she will begin work in a doctorate in political sociology later [in 1995]". She has also been "mugged and stabbed" (as was her guide-dog).

Dunno about you lot, but I'm... impressed...

I work at Google. You can read (and edit) your own profile right here:
    www.google.com/settings/ads

It's really not that private stuff; here's four categories from my profile:
Business & Industrial
Business News
Computer & Video Games
Computer Components

The idea of a super-detailed profile is something with no original source, it has just been copied around the internet long enough that everyone accepts it as true. Of course you can claim that I'm not trustworthy, so below is an argument using only economics and public information.

There is no economic justification for a hyper-detailed profile. Here is why:

(1) Advertisers don't write ads for demographics so specific that there are only one or a few people in it. It is only in your interest to show to categories where many people apply, otherwise you are wasting your effort for no gain. Thus the worth of a profile is only in generalities.
(2) Specific keywords can be handled when the query is made or the page/email is shown. Just about all internet advertising is just-in-time like this, since anything else involves lots of serving-accessible storage which costs money. Even then, if the keyword only applies to a few people, the advertiser is wasting time as per #1.
(3) Every computation costs money. In advertising, if the cost to compute > incremental profit, you don't do it. The worth of a profile is only in its generalities as per #1, so that's the only thing worth computing, storing, and retrieving.
(4) If having a detailed profile on everyone was the holy grail of advertising, facebook would be making a lot more money per page view.

It turns out that if you search for software help on Google, by the third hit it's already tired of dealing with these bad decisions and suggests you get a Mac instead.

Google already did but it was an April Fool's joke in 2011.

And Douglas Adams did it before Google even existed:

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again.

(grabbed from http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329)

http://pki.google.com/faq.html The FAQ for Google Internet Authority also mentioned changes coming in Q3 2013, plus a lot of other cool stuff I had no idea about.

Google already did but it was an April Fool's joke in 2011. Typical MS: their joke is 30 months late and not as well executed. What you mean this is real? ;). I can see applications for Kinect for Windows but just not as a replacement for a keyboard and mouse that is right there. For presentations it might be okay.

Was the old cert due to expire? I have thought before that it would be nice if my browser etc gave me a warning like "Certificate has changed but wasn't due to expire for another 3 months". This still gives the bad guys a window where a subverted certificate could be slipped in without notice, but it closes the window a bit.

Maybe. If I skip the web browser and run: msmtp --serverinfo --host=smtp.gmail.com --tls=on --port=587 --tls-certcheck=off

I get:
Activation time: Tue Sep 10 00:54:47 2013
Expiration time: Wed Sep 10 00:54:47 2014
SHA1: 10:75:E1:8C:DF:93:15:3B:A1:8F:CD:FE:D3:11:79:D5:16:43:77:BC

That's a pretty recent change. If there was overlapping time between the activation of this one and the expiry of the last one... problem is, I don't have a time machine and can't find out what the last one was, nor when it was set to expire.

Googling (look, just because they can MITM every site, I don't think even NSA is doing DPI on every HTTP transaction so they can pipe every web page through 'sed s/valid-signature/fake-signature/g' :) around for prior signatures reveals:

As of June 19, 2010: Activation time: Thu Apr 22 21:02:45 2010
Expiration time: Fri Apr 22 21:12:45 2011
SHA1: 1A:6F:48:8F:BE:5B:FD:92:D8:12:30:F9:22:CE:84:49:B3:43:BD:2C

As of August 16, 2011: Activation time: Wed Feb 16 12:38:09 2011
Expiration time: Thu Feb 16 12:48:09 2012
SHA1: DB:A0:2A:07:00:F9:E3:23:7D:07:E7:52:3C:95:9D:E6:7E:12:54:3F

As of October 2, 2012, another user reports a change from:
SHA1: F3:92:AE:B4:28:FE:64:03:6F:E1:55:ED:71:9E:5F:F6:88:90:5A:57
to:
SHA1: 34:B4:3E:66:71:D8:AC:5A:47:76:7F:B7:CD:E4:31:08:F4:A5:DD:A8
but didn't include the dates.

There was also a 2013 hit for what looked like a tls_fingerprint of 52:99:F2:7F:82:4F:79:5A:71:1F:FF:D3:BE:22:7C:88:06:62:89:76 also without dates.

So on the one hand, this may simply be an innocuous expiry of a cert for smtp.google.com that's related to this May 2013 note about upcoming changes. On the other hand, there's nothing else that says what the old fingerprint was, when it expired, nor what the new fingerprint ought to be. And on the gripping hand, maybe the root (if you'll pardon the pun) cause of the problem is that if the the user has no tls_trust_file defined, and if Google changed intermediate certificate authority... umm, dammit, now even I'm confused. I think I sympathize with OP, though. There needs to be an easy-to-google, bing, apt-get, or git-init means by which of seeing the history of what's legit at any moment in time. It's up to the user to decide how many ISPs to run the search query from, or even to pick up the phone and call a friend in a non-US country and ask them to do the search and see if they get the same results.

Was the old cert due to expire? I have thought before that it would be nice if my browser etc gave me a warning like "Certificate has changed but wasn't due to expire for another 3 months". This still gives the bad guys a window where a subverted certificate could be slipped in without notice, but it closes the window a bit.

Maybe. If I skip the web browser and run: msmtp --serverinfo --host=smtp.gmail.com --tls=on --port=587 --tls-certcheck=off

I get:
Activation time: Tue Sep 10 00:54:47 2013
Expiration time: Wed Sep 10 00:54:47 2014
SHA1: 10:75:E1:8C:DF:93:15:3B:A1:8F:CD:FE:D3:11:79:D5:16:43:77:BC

That's a pretty recent change. If there was overlapping time between the activation of this one and the expiry of the last one... problem is, I don't have a time machine and can't find out what the last one was, nor when it was set to expire.

Googling (look, just because they can MITM every site, I don't think even NSA is doing DPI on every HTTP transaction so they can pipe every web page through 'sed s/valid-signature/fake-signature/g' :) around for prior signatures reveals:

As of June 19, 2010: Activation time: Thu Apr 22 21:02:45 2010
Expiration time: Fri Apr 22 21:12:45 2011
SHA1: 1A:6F:48:8F:BE:5B:FD:92:D8:12:30:F9:22:CE:84:49:B3:43:BD:2C

As of August 16, 2011: Activation time: Wed Feb 16 12:38:09 2011
Expiration time: Thu Feb 16 12:48:09 2012
SHA1: DB:A0:2A:07:00:F9:E3:23:7D:07:E7:52:3C:95:9D:E6:7E:12:54:3F

As of October 2, 2012, another user reports a change from:
SHA1: F3:92:AE:B4:28:FE:64:03:6F:E1:55:ED:71:9E:5F:F6:88:90:5A:57
to:
SHA1: 34:B4:3E:66:71:D8:AC:5A:47:76:7F:B7:CD:E4:31:08:F4:A5:DD:A8
but didn't include the dates.

There was also a 2013 hit for what looked like a tls_fingerprint of 52:99:F2:7F:82:4F:79:5A:71:1F:FF:D3:BE:22:7C:88:06:62:89:76 also without dates.

So on the one hand, this may simply be an innocuous expiry of a cert for smtp.google.com that's related to this May 2013 note about upcoming changes. On the other hand, there's nothing else that says what the old fingerprint was, when it expired, nor what the new fingerprint ought to be. And on the gripping hand, maybe the root (if you'll pardon the pun) cause of the problem is that if the the user has no tls_trust_file defined, and if Google changed intermediate certificate authority... umm, dammit, now even I'm confused. I think I sympathize with OP, though. There needs to be an easy-to-google, bing, apt-get, or git-init means by which of seeing the history of what's legit at any moment in time. It's up to the user to decide how many ISPs to run the search query from, or even to pick up the phone and call a friend in a non-US country and ask them to do the search and see if they get the same results.

Well here you go, I guess you can use a fiber optic funnel to collect and channel light down to a cell underneath without aiming anything.

You should try MPC-BE: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/
It's a fork of MPC-HC and it has thumbnail previews while seeking (like Youtube).

Also: 'codec packs'?
ffdshow-tryouts: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
and/or LAV: https://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/
There hasn't been the need for anything else for years.

Finally: when it comes to 'quality', proper framerate matching is way more noticeable than spatial resolution of the video. Using CTRL+J in MPC-HC or MPC-BE (using the Custom EVR or madVR) helps getting addictively good results.

Seriously, what sort of incompetence do you have to have on display to have someone actually manage to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Or the combover hairstyle. (Ostensibly to conceal baldness, but it usually just makes it more obvious...)

Or swinging sideways on a swingset.

There ain't shit that the US Patent Office does that passes any kind of smell test. The word incompetence doesn't begin to describe the situation.

Seriously, what sort of incompetence do you have to have on display to have someone actually manage to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Or the combover hairstyle. (Ostensibly to conceal baldness, but it usually just makes it more obvious...)

Or swinging sideways on a swingset.

There ain't shit that the US Patent Office does that passes any kind of smell test. The word incompetence doesn't begin to describe the situation.

This comment was made gold by having the essential "cloud-to-butt" chrome extension

Actually, there is more to it than that. Take a look at Wickard and Raich, the two supreme court cases he was probably alluding to.

The cases in question say that under the commerce clause the federal government can prevent you from growing your own food on your own land for you own consumption (in the case of Wickard v. Filburn) because if you hadn't grown the food (wheat in this case) you would have had to buy it in the marketplace, which thereby affects the market (because you didn't buy something you would have bought).

In Raich they extended this logic to marijuana. Growing a plant in your closet that you are only going to use for yourself is interstate commerce because if you hadn't grown it you would have to have bought it.... and even if you bought it from a local supplier, they would have had to buy it over state lines if they didn't grow it themselves locally. Ta-da! Everything that could be bought or sold is now interstate commerce.

Actually, there is more to it than that. Take a look at Wickard and Raich, the two supreme court cases he was probably alluding to.

The cases in question say that under the commerce clause the federal government can prevent you from growing your own food on your own land for you own consumption (in the case of Wickard v. Filburn) because if you hadn't grown the food (wheat in this case) you would have had to buy it in the marketplace, which thereby affects the market (because you didn't buy something you would have bought).

In Raich they extended this logic to marijuana. Growing a plant in your closet that you are only going to use for yourself is interstate commerce because if you hadn't grown it you would have to have bought it.... and even if you bought it from a local supplier, they would have had to buy it over state lines if they didn't grow it themselves locally. Ta-da! Everything that could be bought or sold is now interstate commerce.

You shouldn't be surprised when they have engineers who publicly say things like "bugs are no big deal. They happen anyway, no matter how hard you try to prevent them, and somehow life goes on." (if you read the article you'll see he said "bugs are no big deal" in bold).

So stop worrying. When Google Earth crashes, it's no big deal. The fact that a message intended for my girl friend got sent to my sister-in-law, no big deal.

What is really exciting to me is the claimed support for mobile platforms. That kind of support for video is something I've really missed on Android.

I've been using MX Player. There's a free, Ad-supported version, and a paid version. I happily paid for it and haven't regretted it. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mxtech.videoplayer.pro

FYI, there's a pretty good free video player for android that supports quite a bit of codecs and such. I'm not sure what you're specifically looking for. It also supports natively browsing/playing from smb shares. I also like they way they created finger swipe controls on the playing video for volume, brightness, and ff/rev. After I used it, I really miss it when I play video in Netflix or somewhere else. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsplayer.bspandroid.free&hl=en

According to http://www.google.com/appsstatus it seems to have been fixed

If I can drive up to the airplane. . .

But you can't do this undetected. The BBC article doesn't explain that this is not over by the terminal. This is the east ramp, where private and small commercial operators are parked. You have to cross a huge open area in order to get to the large commercial planes.

And getting a vehicle that would look legit and legit clothing would do nothing to prevent anyone seeing you from thinking you were up to no good, so we are totally safe! Especially now that you cannot bring your nail clippers or bottled water on board.

I don't doubt that this is not a significant risk, but in comparison to the other risks we are guarding against, this seems at least as "dangerous". And accidentally bringing water on board is nowhere near as dangerous as accidental driving across the runway. There should be a physical barrier preventing "civilians" from accidentally getting onto the taxiway.

Google provides a better picture.

If I can drive up to the airplane. . .

But you can't do this undetected. The BBC article doesn't explain that this is not over by the terminal. This is the east ramp, where private and small commercial operators are parked. You have to cross a huge open area in order to get to the large commercial planes.

1) Why don't you think that human being evolved from primordial goo?

Talk about low odds! Have you even tried to fathom the extreme length and complexity of the chain required for a random collection of proteins to result in the enormously complex body we call human, not to mention the phenomenon of consciousness?

Ok, that an understandable position. One I've heard before. And yes, actually I have contemplated the odds of it all happening the way it did. I'm a software engineer and I've played around extensively with genetic algorithms so I understand what they're talking about when they say a "random mutation" lead to a new species. I've seen that happen. You know, simulated.

First off, you have to understand that it didn't have to happen exactly this way. Humans are not some ultimate design that everything has been working towards. And indeed there are a LOT of other attempts with more rudimentary designs hanging around. And if the slate gets wiped clean in fullscale nuclear war, they'll live on while we die. Whose the fittest now?

So the odds that we came out exactly as we did? Astronomical. The odds that we... say... process oxygen and consume plant matter (given that the early plant life terraformed the planet causing the Cambrian explosion), pretty good. The longest odds, given our current knowledge appears to be odds of amino acids bumping into each other and forming life. I'm talking about abiogenesis. And yeah, that's a damn good question about how that happened. But it's not part of evolution. Evolution is how life changed, not where it came from. And all signs point to life starting out as single-celled organisms about 3.6 billion years ago. Because we have evidence of that.

Second: Ok, so you think there's a long-shot of that happening. Fair enough. What are the alternatives? How did we get here. Come on. Don't be shy. Lay it out for everyone to see.

2) Do you think there's any compelling evidence to suggest any other alternative than human beings evolving from earlier primates? Could you share?

Oops, you jumped from "evolving from goo" to "evolving from earlier primates." These are wholly different questions.

And could you try this one again? I know it's a different question. You're allowed to give a wholly different answer. That's why it has a #2 next to it. Also, it's kind of a multi-parter. You see, if the best answer for "where did we come from?" is that we descended from primates, then where did primates come from? (Mammals). And then were did mammals come from? and so on and so on.

I mean, come on guy, you kind of dodged that question. Just give it a shot. What's the alternative to us descending from primates? If we didn't... Then why are there so many similarities? And who did all these proto-human skulls belong to?