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FYI: The "Those jobs are never coming back" quote was from Steve Jobs when Obama asked him if iPhones can be made in the USA. It wasn't Obama who coined the phrase. Source: https://www.heraldtribune.com/...

When have 2nd amendment proponents ever done anything to protect people's privacy rights? I don't see them protesting data collection

Actually, gun rights proponents are almost certainly the most successful lobbyists against data collection in modern America, which, depending on your views, may not be a good thing.

Mind you, it’s their own privacy that they’re interested in protecting, but they’ve lobbied Congress so we’ll that it’s currently illegal for the US government to create or maintain databases of gun owners, historical gun purchases, or even the guns themselves, despite massive efforts by people on the other side of those debates to collect exactly that information. And even the paltry records that do exist (i.e. records from private gun stores that went out of business), are not allowed to be computerized. If you’d like more information, it’s easy to come by because the ways that the ATF has been hamstrung by the NRA get re-reported every time there’s another major shooting. And it’s not just at the national level either. Gun enthusiasts are quite active in protesting locally as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news... (paywalled)
https://www.informationweek.co...
http://www.heraldtribune.com/n...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

I do agree with the overarching point you were trying to get at, but that particular argument you used to make your point was an extraordinarily poor choice.

Except of course that the Winnebago story is just an urban legend. http://www.heraldtribune.com/n...

What's a therapy dog?

It's a dog that is trained to assist someone with a physical or mental disorder. Carrie Fisher is a self-confessed addict and alcoholic. Her therapy dog helps her to deal with stress and anxiety.

People have been arrested for stealing electricity by charging a phone on an outlet in park. That probably was theft of less than a penny.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/a...

Last year some jackass named John Greenewald Jr. ripped off a small open source software project designed to data-mine FOIA websites that scan and digitize historical documents. Amusingly the public reaction was completely reversed from how people are flipping out about the OkCupid data theft.

Despite the fact that this loser of a human being, John Greenewald, ripped off hundreds of thousands of documents, and never uttered a single word about where he got the data, or how he ripped off an open source software team that had been developing the project for years, nor did he give attribution to the company that did the actual work of scanning the documents—and made them available for free no less. On top of all that this complete parasitic loser even had the balls to try monetize Fold3's work. Yet hilariously people still have the temerity to attack Fold3 and Ancestry.com claiming the company was somehow in the wrong for forcing this attention-whoring sideshow clown to remove the data from his website or face a lawsuit.

The sad truth is people don't care about the actual morality of data theft. They only care about whether or not the data is personally beneficial to them, and if it is, well, ... then it's okay.

Citation? I see where a homeless man spent one night in jail and it was thrown out. That was one individual cop, not Florida.

However, the argument for others goes that if stores begin selling smart guns, then legislators will draft laws requiring the technology."

You're too late subby, at least in the case of New Jersey it's already law.

And they've already been sued over NOT enforcing it.

I don't think that a .22 is going to satisfy the courts, it being too light of a round for common self-defense or other tasks, but it's an actual problem. I personally don't have any problem with smart gun tech as long as it's optional.

But it's a HUGE expense for not much gain - the vast majority of shootings are either by a user that would be authorized, or by a criminal having had possession of the firearm for long enough to bypass or reprogram any such system.

Before or after you get shot for not opening your door, which the police have then broken down because you must be hiding something if you're not willing to open it on demand?

Far fetched? No. Statistically unlikely, but it happens, and with the increase of armed raids, I wouldn't be surprised if it is more common.

These raids being discussed above are to get the populace to accept them as normal, and to eventually get immediate compliance and prostration on "routine" raids in the future. Then disarming people, or shooting them, "for their own good" so that "misunderstandings" don't happen in "routine" raids in the future. These early raids will weed out those who will resist, as they ramp up eventually they'll get everyone who would resist.

People think there are sheep and wolves. Truth is there are sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. The job of the wolf is to get the sheep to fear the sheep dog - and it's working. The sheep dog is the biggest threat to the wolf, and the wolves are systematically weeding them out.

A near miss.

Nowhere near a miss.
My thoughts on that one.

That's good because preserving student's privacy is more important than preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.

Don't presume my politics, or that using in-house IT staff provides any guarantee of improved student privacy.

Quick cites: "...It would require the DOE to create a web-based point for authorized researchers to gather aggregated data as well as a âoeresearch engine,â allowing access to âoestudent levelâ data...."

"Harvard University raised concern on and off campus with the revelation that the administration searched e-mails for leaks to the media during the cheating scandal revealed last year...."

"U. of Iowa Ceases Sending Student Data to Sheriffâ(TM)s Office Over Privacy Questions"

and my favorite...a school administrator spying on his students (see interview at 4:37).

Some bankers are in jail.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120612/ARTICLE/120619859

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/walker-365061-theft-farmers.html

http://www.fbi.gov/tampa/press-releases/2012/tampa-man-and-maryland-banker-sentenced-for-bank-fraud-and-other-offenses

It isn't that unusual.

Steve Jobs said it best: it's not about wages, it's not about OSHA, it's not even about the government.

Americans won't live 20 to a dorm room where they can be woken up at 3AM to make phones in a facility paid for by the government.

Don't be so sure. Usually this winds up with some exchange and agreement, i.e., "you can't copy me" or "we get to look at your designs before you go to market" or a cross licensing deal. The thing that has bothered me all along about this case is that Apple relies on Samsung and while there are manufacturers that Apple could turn to to help build their stuff, Samsung is pretty much in bed with Apple and vice-versa. This I think will have more ramifications down the road. Samsung is already posturing in the US, they just announced a $4B investment in their Austin TX Fab that makes the chips for Apple's toys and all those nice pretty screens, well the retina displays are LG but look at this for example. While the lawsuit was started under the eye of jobs it was finished on Cook's watch. I hardly think they'll cut off their nose to spite their face so to speak. Besides Apple doesn't have a really great public opinion when it comes to creating US jobs..

Why is it that the Westboro Baptist Church gets away with picketing real-life funerals again and again, while this schmuck gets four months for internet douchebaggery? By "picketing", I mean standing there with giant signs that say things like "god hates fags" at the funeral of a dead soldier: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20060121/NEWS/601210405?p=3&tc=pg

The way I see it, free speech comes at a cost: you have to put up with other people saying things that are stupid, offensive, and downright wrong. If you want a right to free speech, you can't have a right not to be offended. Mr. Coss' behavior was certainly wrong, but nobody should serve jail time for posting to a Facebook page.

Meaning, mods have done zero confirmatory investigation before "doing their job."

You assume?

Or they could have done a quick Google search beforehand. How do you know they didn’t?

Oh, and apparently he was suspended, not fired.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100901/znyt05/9013014&template=printpicart

Perhaps a better comparison would be with the algal blooms...

Many of the problems associated with algal blooms also trace back to an oxygen deficiency:

When phosphates are introduced into water systems, higher concentrations cause increased growth of algae and plants. Algae tend to grow very quickly under high nutrient availability, but each alga is short-lived, and the result is a high concentration of dead organic matter which starts to decay. The decay process consumes dissolved oxygen in the water, resulting in hypoxic conditions. Without sufficient dissolved oxygen in the water, animals and plants may die off in large numbers.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_bloom

The end products of crude oil bioremediation are carbon dioxide and whatever heavy metals were in the crude oil to begin with. Here are some links:

Oil-Eating Microbes a Possible Solution
Local company volunteers oil-eating bacteria

Thanks for your comments!

There are climate _models_ that claim we should see an increase, but so far it hasn't happened and it's likely the models does not contain enough data to be able to model reality just quite yet.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090517/article/905171028?Title=Scientist-says-climate-change-isn-t-fueling-hurricanes

I wonder these people are in the same group that vandalized the GOP office in Sarasota, FL

Now we just need another that prevents asshats from doing this.

This is the same crap as the drug seizure laws. Everyone thought--great, take the houses, cars, property of the drug dealers. However, what's ended up happening is people are having their cars seized because a friend had a small amount of pot. Worse yet people are having large amounts of cash seized with the attitude that you must prove yourself innocent. It doesn't matter that no drugs were found or any evidence of drug dealing, just the fact that you're carrying a large amount of cash is considered a crime. And good luck getting it back!

Friends, our freedoms are being eroded away while we stand by. According to the Supreme Court, municipalities can grab your land under imminent domain to sell to Wal-Mart or someone building condos. Police can seize your cash for no reason other than you're carrying it and now they want the right to seize you computers on the claim that you might have illegally downloaded something. It's got to stop or this really will be a police state.

Nope. It would NOT be smacked down like in WWF.
It would be "settled".
The company would pay a visible compensation and an invisible large contribution to campaign funds and the matter would be closed; without the company ever admitting it did wrong.

During 1800s many local counties had laws which prevented convicted companies from doing/establishing business in that locality.
But then now convicted companies like Deibold http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031217/APN/312170634 and Microsoft http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118681/microsoft-convicted-software-piracy
  not to mention Bechtel http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/reconstruct/2006/0905profiteers.htm Custer Battles do business with impunity in all states.

When am convicted of a crime, am forced to wear a badge [of honor] and municipalities would not allow me to setup business if am an ex-convict.
The same rules never apply to corporates. Municipalities like Mass Turnpike authorities welcome Bechtel with open arms.

Until Senator Leahy introduces a legislation (on the sly) that prevents counties from ALL convicts from establishing a business, this will go on.

"We're just glad it's all over," said Betty Beatty, whose husband, Gale, was teaching a line dancing class at the recreation hall.
"They bugged us with their phone calls something terrible," said Betty, who voted for Buchanan because "with all her calls, Jennings, Jennings, Jennings, I wouldn't have voted for that woman if she were the only one running."
"The campaign was so ugly, so nasty, by the time the election came along I decided I couldn't trust either one of them," said Cheryl Crawford, a La Casa voter who cast a ballot in all the other categories, but left Jennings-Buchanan blank.
Crawford was one of only a handful of voters on Thursday who acknowledged protesting the campaign in the same way.
But most everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who refused to vote in that race.
Some were concerned that they may have missed the ballot line -- easily overlooked, they said, at the top of the second page, just before the gubernatorial candidates.
"I just didn't see it," said Monique Nadeau, who realized her oversight after reading newspaper accounts of the Jennings-Buchanan undervote.
Some residents suggested that the age of many of the voters in the 55-and-over community affected their ability to maneuver the electronic balloting equipment.
But Roger Lumley, who is about to turn 84, insisted that "the machines were very simple. Everything seemed to run smoothly." If people didn't vote in the District 13 race, he said, "I think it was all the backstabbing."
The phone calls were the worst of it, he said, "two and three and more a day -- most of them seeming to start out as an appeal from Jennings but I had a feeling," he said, that some of them were calls from her opponent's organization.
"I think many, many people were simply disgusted by the tone and tactics of the campaign, just turned off by it," said David Surles, a retired engineer who lives in La Casa with his wife, Fran, an on-premises real estate broker.
"One is just as bad as the other" he said, "and I would expect that a lot of people felt that way. Not voting for either one of them was a way of saying, 'Aha, I'll show you.'"

A little while ago, I saw this story about Cingular trying to collect a $31,000 bill from some guy that was clearly the victim of network error. Things like 4 roaming calls/minute from Nicaragua. I got worried enough this might happen to me, so I went to my cellphone provider to ask to put a cap on my account. Something like, "If my bill ever reaches $300 just turn off my phone."

They can't. As far as I can figure, the only reason for this policy is to try and screw people who didn't intend to spend so much money, or were mistakenly billed.

Incidentally, while I'm here, I might as well mention I'm on Cingular/AT&T. ("Fewest dropped calls!") My experience with this network has been absolute garbage, with frequent dropped calls regardless of how many bars I have. As far as I can tell, they can make this claim because they don't have a way of differentiating regular hang-ups from a dropped call. (I asked a Cingular tech how I could tell which side of the conversation was dropping, and he said there's no way for me to differentiate me dropping the call, the other side dropping the call, and someone just hanging up.)

Oh well. Only 19 months left on my contract...

...Coffin, 56, had a right to defend his family and property because the deputies had no right to be in Coffin's house in the first place, De Furia said."

after the latest congressional elections.

Florida-13, enough said. Oh wait, that's right, since both sides had "missing" votes (so much for democrats being idiots who can't operate a voting machine), it must have been a poorly designed ballot that hit exactly one county, since the next county over had a 1% undervote rate even though it's in the same district.

They should have gone with Cingular

Are you kidding? Cingular will charge you upwards of $31,000 for calls you didn't even make.

Well, going by what they were charging this guy in Florida, they made at least that much.

As much as I hate Cingular and their pricing plans, I'm not sure I can wait five years for other networks to have that phone..

What, you mean $31,000 a month for Cingular service isn't cheap enough for you?

Why are people ignoring what is going on in Florida House District 13?

The Rebublicans are claiming a 369 vote victory. However the EVMs in Sarasota county, reported an undervote of 18,000. or 1 in 6 of the total votes, which is much higher than the undervote in both the other counties and on average. Sarasota County also happened to be where the Democrat challenger won the vote by 6 percentage points (of the votes cast in that county).

There are some obviously severe issues with Electronic Voting, Particularly when there is no paper trail (as in the case for this district). Sure, there are ways to change the vote on a paper verification ballot, however large scale fraud becomes problematic to implement.

Links Below:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section ?CATEGORY=NEWS0521&template=ovr2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida's_13th_congre ssional_district
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.ph p?id=6423
http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/12/the_cqpolitics_i nterview_chris_1.html

"Testifying on behalf of Democrat Christine Jennings, MIT political scientist Charles Stewart said Jennings would have won the race by as many as 3,100 votes if there had not been an "excessive" undervote in the Nov. 7 election"

"Without the source code, it would be very difficult or impossible for me to determine how the software behaved," Dan Wallach, Rice University

was Re:Nothing tests code like the real world

The 2nd Amendment is the GUARANTOR of all the other rights.

And the Democrats don't actually do anything about it. It's an invented wedge issue. Some Democrats want to limit access to certain guns in certain places. The party as a whole doesn't do anything about them, and almost no such legislation actually gets passed.

You might also note that the Democrats seem to be just fine selling us out to big businesses, and taxing us to death.

And they last taxed us to death...when, exactly? When did these horribly crippling taxes happen?

One thing for sure, they'll happen in the future, and probably under Democratic control. It won't be the Democrat's fault, though, it will be to pay off the drunk-sailor-in-a-whorehouse Republicans debts.

As far as 2), I know of zero candidates who have even MENTIONED advocacy of modern, equitable, accurate voting mechanisms. That's because the Republicans and Democrats aren't interested in reflecting their constituency, they're interested in maintaining their duopoly.

Well, that's an interesting theory you have there. That was in 2004, BTW. The Republicans ignored it. (Despite some of them cosponsoring it!) In 2007, thanks to the Democratic majority, she's taking over the 'Senate Rules and Administration Committee', which, of course, is in charge of rule making for elections. So, to recap: An important Democrat has been yelling about electronic voting machines for at least two years, with the support of, at least, Harry Reid, and now that the Democrats are in power she's immediately being appointed to, you know, run the elections, and the Democrats are vowing to hold hearings on it. Yeah, damn, it's like the Democrats don't care about voting machines at all.

Of course, you don't 'know' this because the media doesn't think it's even vaguely important to present Democratic ideas, and you're bought the lie that both parties are the same. We'll see how much you're paying attention over the next years as the Democrats actually attempt to solve problems, instead of shoveling money as fast as possible to their friends and pulling stunts to pander to the religious right.

Does this statement hold true if a single company manufactures a large percentage of voting machines?

There are few companies making a significant majority of voting machines in tUS, which is a problem. However, many of those machines do have paper trails, either via optical scans, paper-trailed electronic machines, or otherwise. So long as those paper trails can be audited, the chance of a single entity (in this case, the voting machine manufacturer) swinging an election is extremely low.

This is, of course, why paper trails are so vital.

Especially when the code they run is not open to public scrutiny?

Generally speaking, it's far more important that the voter can physically look at a paper trail to confirm that his vote is recorded in meatspace (and hence audit-able) than the code itself be open to public scrutiny. While I do believe that open sourced voting code is better, I believe its far more important that the machines, open or closed source, are fully audit-able by physical count (so longs as those audits are actually happening with sufficient frequency).

Does it hold true in Florida? :-)

I would hope so, but Florida still seems to be having substantial voting problems.

The terrible writing can easily be overcome. Just look at these reeel smarte kidz from the posh school in Manatee County, FL.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article ?AID=/20060909/NEWS/609090372/
For a group of top Manatee County students, however, the line between Internet research and outright plagiarism has been blurred, and perhaps crossed.

So much for figuring out how to write bedder.

NoMorePoints.com

apple has always been reasonably priced they just appear expensive due to the face they don't do the low end tower which best buy flogs for $299

Read this the other day actually. When a dell is similarly configured, the mac can be much cheaper.

They started in Sarasota and hosed quite a few local investers, then moved. So we follow the tale of these crooks.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article ?AID=/20060517/BUSINESS/605170595/-1/GOOGLE01

There was a recent article from the Herald Tribune whiched covered the troubles Infinium Labs Inc. had in 2005, including:

- CEO Tim Roberts leaves company in summer 2005 with million in shares and no products
- SEC sends notice to Tim Roberts it might sue him for securities law violations
- The next CEO Kevin Bachus quits after a few months in Nov. 2005
- Infinium reports to only have $5,000 in cash on hand and $62.7 million in debt.
- Infinium started paying employees in all stock
- IFLB shares down from $1.60 in Jan 2005 to $0.017 today

And here is the U.S.A. reply http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article ?AID=/20051126/BUSINESS/511260473

Would you call Venice, Florida a "terrorist ally"? That's the community Mohamed Atta operated from while learning to pilot the plane he hijacked.

Often, the community a terrorist "operates from" is completely neutral, or even our ally, and they just plain don't know about the terrorists in their midst. Witness the London bombings and the Madrid bombings, in addition to 9/11.

> In fact, this polarization has greatly decreased the effectiveness of terrorism since 9/11.

You got a cite for that "fact"?

No, pardon my paranoia, but why do the police need to track anyone without probable cause? Notice that the district has never had a kidnapping incident.

And I can't imagine that these are any better than any other technology designed to track students. These are ID badges with RFID chips in them that have to be swiped against a reader. This means they can still be lost, the reader can malfunction or Little Johnny can give his card to a friend and have an airtight alibi while he cherry bombs the toilets. And this is the type of system the police are using? The potential for abuse boggles the mind. Just read in the article about the problems they are experiencing already...

Herald Tribune
Washington Post, answers critics
Might be redundant cache
Dems want aditing Where have we heard this b4?Hmmmm...
F-L-O-R-I-DeU-H wants papertrail

I sincerely doubt now there is a single "legal" human inside the US, everyone is guilty of something now, and it will keep getting worse.

You're probobly right. Here's an example of a perfectly normal person falling foul of a obscure 19-th century law: Police dispatcher fired for living with boyfriend (other sources here and here).

Apparently in North Carolina, there is a law against unmarried people "co-habitating", and the woman's employer(a conservative sheriff) decided all his employees needed to follow the letter of the law. According to WECT TV, "In late May she was called into her supervisor's office and told if she didn't marry her boyfriend or stop living with him, she would be fired. It's called cohabitation, which is illegal in North Carolina, thought is a law that is rarely enforced."

If something this common and accepted is illegal, and it only came to light because some redneck sheriff decided to enforce it out of sheer fundamentalist fervor, how many other laws are there on the books that you're breaking, right now? Remember that guy who was arrested for cussing in front of kids in Minnesota or someplace? Or the "miscegnation" laws prohibiting mixed-race couples? There are some odd laws out there, and while some are amusing, it's really horrifing to think that someone could look hard enough and find some law you're breaking without even knowing it.

It's been shown that monkeys and typewriters are not a good combination for creating anything.

• Let's check in and see what
• Rodney King is up to these days.

Court Punts Sex.com Domain Case
4 Jan 2003
A dispute over the transfer of the domain name Sex.com may be heading
to California's highest court. In a decision published Friday ...

Tussle over sex.com
4 Jan 2003
... names and decide whether the nation's largest domain registry must face a multimillion-dollar
damage claim from the owner of the pornographic Web site sex.com....

Supreme Court Asked to Decide Domain Name Conversion Issue
7 Jan 2003
... true ownerâ(TM)s registration. The request is the latest turn in the
long legal battle over âoesex.com.â. The name was registered ...

News briefs from around California
4 Jan 2003
... SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court has asked California's top
court to rule on the alleged theft of the domain name sex.com.....

TECH TICKER
4 Jan 2003
... A federal appeals court asked California's high court to resolve questions about
the sex.com domain name in a dispute over whether VeriSign's Network Solutions ...

Putting a Price on Cyber Love
20 Dec 2002
... Although Kremen has since moved on to one of the Net's other profitable niches, and
is running the website Sex.com, he still views personals as one of the most ...

And while I'm up on the soap box, I also disagree with trying to directly compensate the artist for intellectual property that they've sold the rights to. I support more equitable recording contracts, but I also support the right of an artist to contractually sell his/her ownership of song rights in exchange for money. By insisting on tipping the artist at the same time as infringing on copyright, you're eroding the artists' ability to sell that copyright, regardless of whether or not it was a fair deal

Apparently the artist would agree with you.