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Rockwell Collins is headquartered in Cedar Rapids Iowa and has several products in development for or deployed in UAVs. A postage stamp-sized secure GPS sounds pretty nifty, and they're also working on some things related to autonomous UAVs.

I'd need you to define "rare". Perhaps they are rare in comparison to the number of times a cop has to draw a gun, but you could probably spend the rest of the decade pouring through news stories about young black men being shot a dozen times for drawing a 3Muskateers candy bar out of their pocket. All you need to do is google phrases like "police [shoot|kill] unarmed [black|woman]". Throw in some searches for things like "police use taser on unarmed elderly woman", while you're at it.

How many times is acceptable? Shouldn't abuse be pretty much a zero-tolerance issue? Shouldn't excessive (but not abusive) force be both a rare exception and one that is dealt with much more seriously than it is? There are far more stories of "police shoot unarmed black man" and "police shoot unarmed woman" and "police tased person because he had a smart mouth or they were too lazy to overpower him despite having a dozen officers surrounding him" and 'police tase or pepper spray 84 year old woman" stories than there are stories of police being killed.

I mean, for fuck's sake, how many times did cops unload on innocent citizens in the search for that ex-military guy a few weeks ago? Wasn't it twice? And one of them actually *was* a blue van with asian women driving when the APB was for a muscular black man in a green truck? Not only that but the police SHOT ONE OF THOSE WOMEN IN THE FUCKING ****BACK****?! (source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/ex-cop-manhunt-newspaper-delivery-women-shot.html ).

Nobody could seriously assert that all cops are corrupted or mentally imbalanced or anything of the sort. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying what seems pretty obvious from our culture and the news that has covered it for decades -- cops *are* quick to shoot, often shoot without justification, often without thorough investivation, and often without proper persecution. As a whole, they should be taken as a danger to society. Yes, they exist to protect (or, at least, clean up after someone's done some evil shit too you before they got there), but it'd be insane not to treat every encounter with one as one in which you could potentially be shot.

Also, yes they face potentially dangerous situations every day. And they're trained to handle those, so that they don't shoot unarmed and/or innocent people not posing an immediate threat.

Researchers at the Fermilab Tevatron accelerator near Batavia, Ill., have pulled together their final findings in the search for the elusive Higgs boson. Their announcement comes just two days before scientists using the powerful Large Hadron Collider at the European particle-physics center CERN plan to unveil highly anticipated results from their high-energy, proton-smashing experiments.

RTFA there were over 1 billion of them in 1890 and then went extinct by 1914. You really think their natural predators have now all evolved to ignore them?

Some of their natural predators are now endangered themselves. Some of them are also known to be a nuisance to humans. Do you really want to give them an unlimited food source? Maybe the birds won't be a problem, but the rise of predators will be.

And are you sure that the predators can reproduce fast enough to keep up with the growth of pigeons?

And what happens to the ecosystems that are taken over by the expanding population of new predators (and the predators of the predators?)? And what happens to the new predator population if the pigeons are eradicated again?

This country is much different than it was 100 years ago, so maybe the birds will no longer thrive and it's a non-issue. Or maybe the easy access to crops and current lack of predators will let them grow to even greater numbers than before.

"I don't know why she swallowed the fly"

Arntzen once had high hopes for the concept (he worked on something similar in tomatoes), but the regulatory hurdles for an edible vaccine plus the money needed for safety trials made the whole endeavor too complicated, he said. He and most others have abandoned the effort and moved on to growing non-edible vaccines in tobacco plants.

If the process was viable, Bayer would be producing it right now, but that hasn't happened because of a vast and powerful organization of anti-GMO hippies?
Call me naive if you want, but i assume they're just tweaking the process because they have productivity/financial/market/efficiency problems.

Because there's a law passed that made it legal, because someone lobbied to pass a law to make lobbying legal? ;>)
.
Srsly, if you look up the laws limiting when former legislators are forbidden to work for private entities immediately after leaving office, you'll see a surge of these laws occurring right after some big ethics scandal when someone gets caught doing corporate bidding and then immediately bailing out of their legislative job into a high paying corporate job in an industry they recently regulated.
.
Then, as the years pass and people forget about the reason and need for these regulations, the currently new batch of state or federal level legislators votes the old restrictions out and give themselves the ability to receive "gifts" from constituents. This is playing out right now in california, and happens over and over again everywhere in this country. Here's an article in the L.A. Times about this on March 3rd, 2013:

I am completely serious about how easy it is to find these types of shenanigans being reported on. It happens in every county and every state in these United States of Shamerica. And probably also in every country in this world.

Someone lobbied to pass a law to make lobbying legal? ;>)
.
Srsly, if you look up the laws limiting when former legislators are forbidden to work for private entities immediately after leaving office, you'll see a surge of these laws occurring right after some big ethics scandal when someone gets caught doing corporate bidding and then immediately bailing out of their legislative job into a high paying corporate job in an industry they recently regulated.
.
Then, as the years pass and people forget about the reason and need for these regulations, the currently new batch of state or federal level legislators votes the old restrictions out and give themselves the ability to receive "gifts" from constituents. This is playing out right now in california, and happens over and over again everywhere in this country. Here's an article in the L.A. Times about this on March 3rd, 2013:

I am completely serious about how easy it is to find these types of shenanigans being reported on. It happens in every county and every state in these United States of Shamerica. And probably also in every country in this world.

While it is true that an idiot with a camera can manipulate footage for his own gain http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/07/local/la-me-0308-acorn-20130308 it's also true that lawyers know how to investigate criminal incidents and can often expose the manipulation. For example, a defense lawyer who deals with that stuff all the time said, the first thing you do is look at the whole unedited tape. If the Obama administration had done that with James O'Keefe's attack on ACORN, O'Keefe wouldn't have been able to get away with his lies. Under US law, BTW, if there is an investigation into a crime, a judge can subpoena the entire video. That applies even to journalists, as well as to fake journalists like O'Keefe, and to bystanders who record it on cellphones.

After an assault or a police confrontation, when different witnesses tell different stories, it's hard to reconstruct the facts. If you have a video of the incident, even part of the incident, that gives you some objective, reliable information to work with. Everybody knows that the video is just part of the story. The video doesn't testify by itself in court. Lawyers have to interview the photographer, consider the circumstances of the recording, and treat the video like any other piece of evidence. If you show a video of the cops beating up a suspect, the cops' lawyers have the right to give their version of what went on before that.

The more evidence you have, the more likely you are to figure out the truth.

When I look at the history of videos of police encounters in the last few years, I see a lot of incidents where the cops blatantly violated the law, committed assaults against innocent people, and committed perjury to cover it up. The videos at least got the false charges thrown out (although very seldom were the cops fired or prosecuted). Overall, the effect of videos has been good.

Everybody who dealt with the cops knew for years that this was going on. Videos are making it easier to prove it. Cities are going to get hit with $500,000 lawsuits like Manny Garcia is bringing. The experience has been that they just settle, don't punish the cops, and don't reform their practices. But maybe if they lose a few millions of dollars in lawsuits, and their taxpayers find their real estate taxes are doubling to pay for it, they'll start to pay attention.

I don't know why it would, given that Apple devices in general are terrible at time.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/apple-iphone-4-alarm-problems-worldwide-clock-app-alarm-broken-3-days-in-a-row.html

But what I want from an iWatch is the ability to access Siri, control music, and receive haptic alerts (since I often don't feel my phone vibrate in my pocket.) Two of those three are available on the Metawatch or Pebble, though the music control is really not great AFAICT.

2 years ago Google offered $5B to $6B to buy Groupon. Groupon turned them down and today their market cap is $3B. Oops.

get out of here with your "facts" you legal alien!

New Mexico must be foreign, the guy in paper said so:
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-01/sports/sp-41795_1_summer-olympics-ticket

new-mexico-utility-agrees-to-purchase-solar-power-at-a-lower-price-than-coal

Mexico doesn't have a Feinstein to wreck their solar build outs. For purposes of this discussion Mexico isn't in "the environment" either. It's just another destination for refugee industries evacuating the US.

Mexico =/= New Mexico. NM has the exact same Feinstein as CA, given that she isn't a state legislator.

We've got to play the cards we're dealt

We've long since played cards we've dealt ourselves. That's why there is a vast cloud of pollution drifting out of China. We've feathered our environmental pressure group nest at home and shipped our industry and its energy demands out of "the environment."

new-mexico-utility-agrees-to-purchase-solar-power-at-a-lower-price-than-coal

Mexico doesn't have a Feinstein to wreck their solar build outs. For purposes of this discussion Mexico isn't in "the environment" either. It's just another destination for refugee industries evacuating the US.

When the cats start killing California Condors and Golden Eagles this argument might have legs. Till then:

U.S. probes golden eagles' deaths at DWP wind farm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU

ON THE SPOT FEATURE: Wind turbines are killing condors

LFTRs would replace all the bullshit.

The US wants to meddle deeply in the affairs of its neighbors, maybe assassinate those who don't play along, support those who strike at Iran and the like.

If the shoe fits...

The Criminal Cult of Scientology has been doing this for decades. The only surprise is how long it took others to start.

When was the last time N Korea arrested visitors saying they were CIA spies? On the contrary, N Korea is very welcoming to foreigners, including Americans.

Charges as CIA spies? How bourgeois. It is much simpler and a better reflection of North Korean socialist morality to just hold a trial.

2 U.S. reporters get 12 years in N. Korea - June 08, 2009

Two American television journalists today were convicted of a "grave crime" against North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor, a move that increased mounting tensions between the U.S. and the reclusive Asian state.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced by the top Central Court in Pyongyang in a two-day trial that started Friday as U.S. officials demanded the release of the two women.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the court "sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor" but gave no further details.

Because the pair were tried by the nation's highest court, there can be no appeal.

Of course the North Koreans are not especially shy about grabbing Americans.

North Korea says it has arrested American citizen - Sun December 23, 2012
North Korea arrests American; continues shelling near disputed border - January 28, 2010
North Korea arrests US man - December 29, 2009

And foreigners? The North Korean government loves foreigners. . . in a sort of "collect them and trade them!" kind of way.

Japanese kidnapped by North Koreans return home in tears
Kidnapped by North Korea
Armed North Koreans kidnap Chinese sailors
Jenkins Photo Proof Of Kidnapping? - ". . .she is a Thai national who was kidnapped by North Korean agents. . ."
Did North Korea Just Kidnap Two American Journalists?
Kidnappers Incorporated
Japanese families fear that North Korea is still abducting - North Korea had kidnapped nationals from at least 11 other countries, including France, Italy and the United States.

It seems they want to impress them, not arrest them.

Impress them in a Potemkin village sort of way, yes.

Welcome to Lenin Disney: North Korea’s otherworldly tourism experience

The surreality of visiting North Korea begins at customs. Officials in full military dress — and there are a lot of them, judging by this clandestine video shot by a Canadian tourist — announce that anyone carrying a cell phone must surrender it, to be returned on leaving. The experience gets weirder from there, based on the numerous travelogues and reports that have emerged since the country lifted many of its restrictions on American tourists in 2010.

Tourism is an opportunity for North Korea, whic

That's what birth control is for.

You mean the stuff widely demonized throughout Africa?

The elapsed time has allowed for countless microorganism generations and nothing worse has replaced smallpox yet.

Ignoring things like HIV? Funny, because some research shows that the eradication of smallpox may have helped bring about the current HIV pandemic.

Uh no...
People will be banned from driving cars because the are the most deadly weapon in general circulation in this country.
Car massacre aftermath

On a lighter note...
Google's stock shot up based on the demand for their driverless car system.

There is no legitimate reason police in America need this technology. Let alone private industry.

FTFY - I'm sure they could come up with all sorts of reasons (cough cough Chris Dorner cough cough), though none of them have an ounce of Constitutional legitimacy.

That said, my question regarding domestic drone use is this - what legitimate purpose could they possibly serve, that manned aircraft do not?

Al Capone was a saint compared to some of today's business leaders. How many died bevause of Capone? How many FoxConn workers died? Damned near everything with wires in it comes from there. Today's business leaders have a sense of entitlement not seen since the kings of Medevil times. Case in point -- news over the weekend:

Hundley, president of Unitech Composites and Structures, an Idaho-based aerospace construction company, was sitting next to Jessica Bennett, 33, and her son Jonah, identified in court documents as JS, who began to cry as the plane descended into Atlanta.

According to a probable cause statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hundley "told her to shut that nigger baby up."

Bennett said Hundley "then turned around and slapped [JS] in the face with an open hand, which caused the juvenile victim to scream even louder," at which point other passengers came to her aid.

He was fired, of course -- for making the company look bad. He also had the temerity to plead "not guilty" despite the fact that a US Marshall was a witness!!

ALL of the 1% are thugs. Prove me wrong! Al Capone was a piker compared to these assholes. BTW, that scene in The Untouchables...

CALTRANS had an induction-charged bus deployed in Berkeley in the 1980s. It required precise parking at bus stops, so the two halves of the split transformer could connect magnetically. The system worked OK, but wasn't a huge win.

GE once patented a system where an entire lane had transformers, so vehicles could run on ground power. That was too expensive. It would cost like a maglev track.

Actually, Bill gates doesn't mind a little piracy. "Although the world's largest software maker spends millions of dollars annually to combat illegal copying and distribution of its products, critics allege -- and Microsoft acknowledges -- that piracy sometimes helps the company establish itself in emerging markets and fend off threats from free open-source programs." http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

That one favors the GOP so it's evil. No really, the wonkish left has been in a panic recently over a proposal to do just that in a few of the swing states (Pennsylvania and Ohio, I think).

The National Popular Vote is assumed to favor the Democrats so it's all sweetness and light. Unless you're a Republican, where it's an obvious abrogation of the Founder's federalism.

Here's the result cascading into anything connected with it & the "holy dollar" in publicly held companies (no small wonder Micheal Dell's attempting to BUY BACK the company he started - my guess is, even HE realizes it's a road to eventual ruin, & allows the WORST "virus of the spirt" as I call it, in greed, to take over everything).

* "Welcome to the WORLD, in 2013", folks...

APK

P.S.=> Worst still, is seeing things like this -> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dmv-project-20130215,0,7011139.story in MY field (computer sciences, mostly programming)... when that "profit motive" becomes the mantra, that's what you get, every single time! Screw hiring those that CAN & WILL "get the job done" & right, in experienced devs who yes - cost more but have done it before successfully vs. the std. modus operandi of "let's hire on "noobz" fresh outta academia with no experience since they cost less & who have NEVER gotten a large-scale job done who will, odds are, SCREW IT UP LARGE"

Talk about STUPID & bad business period (proving the dolts running the show @ the HIGHEST LEVELS aren't even good @ what they themselves claim to do being "masters of the universe", lol) - then again - they aren't there to do a good job & put out solid product (I learned that from mechanical & electrical engineers in fact, who are TOLD to keep making a product cheaper, at ANY cost, even to the point of shoddy/faulty workmanship, creating lawsuits that cost later too - bad business in the long haul)... these execs aren't THERE FOR THE LONG HAUL, this shows it. They're there for a "quick & dirty buck", no better than thieves robbing a bank in the dead of night imo.

Dumb - it ends up eroding any profit gains (the end-all/be-all goal) & costing not only the company itself millions (or more), but also taxpayers footing the bill. Worse yet? Seeing this happen also -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3468517&cid=42927255 because that also "passes the buck" right back to you, the taxpayers as well (via corporations evading their share in the corporate taxbase, via blatant OWNERSHIP imo of the politicians in office passing bills written by corporate execs who own those politicians essentially)...

... apk

Oh, it has been going on for even longer than that, since at least the late 1980s with Tandem Computers and Ernst & Young. I had the unfortunate career step of spending some time on this project from hell. I couldn't get off this black hole of deception and cynicism fast enough.

On the other hand, I've been spammed by people I've bought goods from through Amazon's Marketplace.

Are you in California? Sue them.

Merchants are not allowed to ask for your zip code or any other personally identifiable information except in rare circumstances. Furthermore, using said collected information for any other purpose (such as marketing) is illegal as well.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/11/business/la-fi-0211-privacy-20110211
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=civ&group=01001-02000&file=1747-1748.95

IANAL, so, obviously I don't know what I'm talking about. But now that I know Google shares this stuff you can be sure I'm going to go check my spam box to see if I'll be taking Google to small claims court.

Google announces they're tracking the flu (hey everyone, come see a map that will tell you how bad the flu is in your area!), Larry Page announces he's offering free flu shots to all kids in the Bay Area, and Google announces it's launching a flu shot locator. Of course searches for "flu" and "influenza" are going to increase. That will throw off the accuracy of your model. What they're really measuring is this: "people who are thinking about the flu and proactively reaching out to learn more."

Hey, ShanghaiShill, are you using Monsanto's definition of "unintentional" infringement? As you can see in this article, Monsanto believes it is the farmer's responsibility to create buffers between their crops and their neighbors, otherwise it is the fault of the farmer.

Yes "nice cushy bunker somewhere." with a female contractor standing behind them :)
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/29/world/la-fg-drones-civilians-20111230

Who could possibly be opposed to cheap, automated healthcare?

Doctors. Obviously.

People that can do math see Obamacare as infeasible given current practice and the number of practicing doctors. Doctors vociferously oppose delegating anything, however.

We're going to have to break the doctor monopoly in the US. The cost has gotten too high to indulge this exclusivity any longer. Automation, nurse practitioners, whatever. It's got to end. If there is anything good about Obamacare it is that this issue will be forced.

I don't wish to see Doctors punished, but the fact is that tens of millions of people are about to arrive in their offices with uncancel-able, no-lifetime-limit, fixed-rate Obamacare and a lifetime of accumulated, untreated damage. At the very least this is going to force a LOT of delegation.

Physics. It's a bitch.

I've been dealing with and reading about Comcast for a long time. This scares me. Already the country has forgotten about the obvious and egregious conflict of interest at the FCC. Face-palm. Comcast now has unprecedented access to the mind-share of the American public, from pre-production to eyeballs.

Comcast along with other companies like Disney, ClearChannel, etc. are not to be trusted. Be wary, my friends.

Start here to find out about how Gates profits from investments in Big Pharm, etc., etc. (although he wants you to think it is all about providing vaccines, etc. Yeah, Gates, the 'wonderful philanthropist, et al.' You drank the koolaid, etc. Highly susceptible to propaganda/advertising, etc. aren't you? :)) Or are you going to continue to fawn and praise your idol of greed without reading the article(s)?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-gatesx7jan07-sg,0,2046572.storygallery

No... My favorite part is from this article!

"Kickstart combines the best of all worlds -- it tastes great, has just the right amount of real fruit juice and gives them a kick to help them start their day," Baker said.
The amount of fruit juice Kickstart actually has is 5%, Baker said. ...

Or this ones. But how you distinguish evil cops from good ones? Because good ones don't lie? And how you distinguish evil (or crazy, or plain stupid) civilians/cops from good ones when giving them a gun permit, if current tests/training don't work?

Keep shooting random civilians until you find this man.

They're already way ahead of you
Victim 1: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130209,0,4414028.story
Victim 2: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130210,0,3955268.story

Keep shooting random civilians until you find this man.

They're already way ahead of you
Victim 1: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130209,0,4414028.story
Victim 2: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130210,0,3955268.story

I'm pretty sure any attempt at banning semiautomatic firearms will make things worse. There aren't many gun nuts out there who would resist a ban with violence, but a ban is usually proposed in the context of reducing a vanishingly rare kind of crime. Even if we assume only a percent of a percent of a percent of American gun owners - one in a million - take it badly, (I have no idea how accurate that is; let's just pretend) one must remember there's slightly more civilian-owned firearms than citizens. Let's pretend that all the old sources of mass shootings are successfully stopped by a ban. By my estimate, there's going to be a substantial short term increase in violence - thank you first-order unintended consequences. If the police response to 300 mass shootings, sniper attacks, and other sorts of high-profile violence in a month is half as bad as the LAPD is demonstrating right now, I'd guess more people - innocent bystanders - will be shot by the police than the bad guys.

This will go over with the public about as well as a church fart, alienating them from their erstwhile protectors - second order unintended consequences. What's the result of a population at odds with its domestic police force? I dunno, I'm not a political scientist, but I get the feeling I don't want to find out firsthand.

Random thoughts related to and inspired by your post; pardon me, but it's late:

• * A pistol grip is actually worse for "spraying fire from the hip" than a conventional rifle's grip angle, and vice-versa. There's a reason that, with the rise of bright, green laser sights, gunmakers are prototyping machine guns with chainsaw grips.
• * I think there's a scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where Tom Hanks' character is developing carpal tunnel syndrome due to the grip angle of his M1 Garand, which he carries constantly at the ready. If this is well researched like the rest of the movie, I can see why the military prefers pistol grips. VA healthcare is expensive.
• * Some of the more egregious lawmakers are proposing mandatory safety standards for firearms, while working to ban safety features. (I can't help but wonder if it's an attempt to set standards, and make meeting them impossible) The barrel shroud is there to keep you from burning your dumbass self, not "that shoulder thing that goes up". Some also promote mandatory ergonomic standards for offices, while trying to ban similar on firearms.
• * Olympic shooters rely on custom ergonomics to the point where, if their gun breaks, they bow out of an event instead of borrowing a gun - many times, they simply cannot fire another athlete's gun with acceptable accuracy; "acceptable" defined as "has any hope of winning".
• * When I said "By using a separate pistol grip and an adjustable stock", I forgot to point out that there are dozens of manufacturers making differently shaped grips, many making an assortment. By relying on modular parts, you can get a custom fit without a custom pricetag.

Sometimes I wonder about Aaron Swartz. Given my propensity to being similar in thoughts, I often find it odd he would have simply given up without a plan. I've reached a conclusion that perhaps his suicide was part of the plan. Because he just didn't have the resources to fight the corrupt system, and he figured he would be better suited as a martyr than to go down and serve a thirty year prison sentence.

Although who knows, perhaps mental illness got in the way. One thing is for certain: copyright law killed him.

---

As for Dorner, I have many questions about that as well. I think his heavy moral conviction drove him to this, and there's more corruption in the police than just kicking some man while he's down. Why would he lie about that incident? It doesn't make any sense -- I get the feeling things are terribly, terribly wrong with the police he was working with.

Especially when I read things like this: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/dorner-manhunt-shootings-newspaper-carriers.html

I don't know who's on the moral side, right now. Dorner has clearly become a vigilante, but he seems to do it out of vengeance, and his willingness to draw their families into it is excessive and completely morally obscene. On the other hand, the police are way out of line.

Ultimately I think the FBI should dispatch a very thorough investigation into the the local police as well as finding and stopping Dorner.

This is another good example of abusive DMCA take down requests circumventing due process. RIAA and MPAA abuse the law to suppress our creativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
  and are destroying our cultural heritage.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/11/48625?currentPage=all
To top it off, their outdated business model unfairly reimburses the artists for their hard work.
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
Copyright needs to be reformed. Some changes that I'd like to see are:

  * Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
  * Intellectual property should be taxed like real property. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-weaver20feb20,0,1675278.story It is an asset with a value, right? If you no longer make enough to pay your taxes on it, it goes to the state.
  * Copyrights are supposed to be an incentive to create. One that lasts unto your grandchildren are a dis-incentive, because not only are you not creating any more once you are dead, neither are your descendants. Copyright should last half a working lifetime (20 years), so that you have to get off your ass and make new stuff.
  * Someone who makes copies without permission should pay a fine, but it should be at the regular royalty rate for the item x copies made. So upload a song, it's iTunes price x number of downloads, with perhaps a factor of 3 penalty to discourage doing it, not $150,000 per copy.

If you feel the same way, you can make a difference by donating to the EFF
https://supporters.eff.org/donate
or at least signing this petition urging reform.
http://www.fightforthefuture.org/fixcopyright

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

Youre ignoring the whole "the controls werent equal, and the researchers didnt bother to control for experimental bias" thing. Thats not exactly minor, and criticism (even from "neutral" observers) for the princeton study isnt exactly rare.

If I read the criticisms correctly they also didnt bother measuring how much chow was eaten, which makes it pretty hard to link the weight gain to HFCS.

Criticisms of the princeton study

The claim that the metabolic consequences of HFCS and sucrose differ radically should raise eyebrows among physiologists. While I’d be skeptical of any results that find a difference, I would find good evidence for differences fascinating...... So if I were a metabolic physiologist, I might be tempted to look into how HFCS makes rats less active.

Except that I wouldn’t because after reading the paper, I would note that the experimental design, statistical analysis, and interpretation of the results in Bocarsly et al 2010 are deeply flawed. ......
[Issues]

• Experimental Design. The experiment lacks a 24-h Sucrose treatment and thus any interpretation of the 24-h HFCS treatment confounds two potential factors, time (12-h v. 24-h) and sugar (HFCS v. sucrose).
• Second, and most importantly, because this is relevant to all of their results, the authors either fail or make no mention of controlling for type I error using something like a Tukey-HSD test

And so on, if you wish to read.

Another article which brings up a different issue...
Complicating things further, the researchers cite a related study of female rats that found no difference in weight gain between animals that consumed HFCS or sugar over an eight-week period.

And at the end of the day, the real issue is that one study does not prove a point, particularly when it doesnt even begin to offer a mechanism whereby 5% more fructose would cause a significant difference in weight. Studies showing negative effects from EM radiation come to mind.

I've been entertained by how wrong your predictions were in the past.

Please give an example. I'll note in my Fukushima predictions that I was correct way back at the end of March, 2011, that the worst of the disaster was over (and yet you still tried to contest it). In the thread to that second link, I also predicted that eventual human exposure would be at least two orders of magnitude less than it was for Chernobyl. Given that 20-50 times less radiation was actually released onto land than was the case for Chernobyl (combination of 4-10 times less overall radiation released and 80% of that radiation ending up in the sea) and the population around Fukushima was evacuated at least a day earlier than was the case for people living around Chernobyl, I think that prediction will succeed easily.

I also predicted that there would be witch hunts for TEPCO executives. There is a criminal investigation underway. We'll see if there is any actual criminal negligence out there with respect to the Fukushima accident or if my prediction there gets borne out.

I will note that there has been at least a couple local government actions that have been shifty (for example, a local government study that claimed hundreds of deaths due to the stress of evacuation for the Fukushima accident and subsequent months long displacement from home and business).

So sure, I've made a bunch of predictions, but my record there looks pretty good.

This time against the paper that brought down the Nixon administration. The Watergate scandal began with the arrest of the E. Howard Hunt and other lowlife security types at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington DC. "A third rate burglary attempt" commented Nixon's press secretary Ron Zieglar. But the Post kept following the money as the administration scrambled to cover up the White House's role in numerous illegal operations against political opponents. An anonymous administration official (since identified as the FBI's Mark Felt, who revealed himself just before he died) began tipping the Post's Bob Woodward. At the height of the scandal, Woodward and Carl Bernstein prepared a bombshell story about US Attorney General John Mitchell's role in the Watergate coverup. Mitchell was reached by phone late in the evening for his reaction, and he reportedly screamed "JEEEEEEEEE-SUSS! (Washington Post publisher) Katie Graham is going to get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if you print that."

They edited "her tit" out Mitchell's quote from the story that came out the next morning.

How many vendors are going to patch some obsolete hw to get the lib updated?

Zero.

Nope.

Toyota is recalling 907,000 vehicles, mostly Corolla models, around the world for faulty air bags and another 385,000 Lexus IS luxury cars for defective wipers.

Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Naoto Fuse said Wednesday there have been no accidents or injuries related to either of those defects

manufactured between December 2001 and May 2004.

So how old are these "obsolete" routers, and why is a ten year old piece of equipment seen as "obsolete"? My car is an '02, why can I still not only get it serviced, but recalled for design flaws, while Microsoft and Cisco can just tell me to fuck off when a defect is found in their wares?

Could it be that the do BECAUSE THEY CAN?? The real question is, why do we put up with this nonsesnse? Why aren't we up in arms and demanding product recalls, not just for routers but Windows XP as well?

-mcgrew (can't log on here)

The same Eric Holder whose idea of justice is sentencing people to death in a Star Chamber? Not likely. When told he was not following due process over the drone killings, his response was that he could follow due process without involving the courts. And this is the Obama government's top lawyer! http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/07/opinion/la-ed-holder-20120307

When I said "before Reagan", I meant "before Reagan was president of the United States". The huge economic damage allowed because of Reagan's ignorance, carelessness, and willingness to reward supporters didn't begin until after he was elected president. See this 1986 L.A. Times article: 'Star Wars' Leads All Defense Costs: Anti-Missile Program Fast Becoming a Solidly Entrenched Part of Budget. Quote: "About 6,500 scientists have signed a pledge not to work on 'Star Wars.' "

"Low cost" hardware: Exactly correct. In the beginning, still quite expensive.

More about Electric Pencil: This 1982 InfoWorld article is interesting: "Electric Pencil, first micro word processor".

Quote: As Electric Pencil began to sell successfully, Shrayer was amazed at the demand for his product. He considered naming his firm the Electric Pencil and Eraser Company, but settled on Michael Shrayer Software. He sent a few brochures to dealers and the response was overwhelming.

Another quote: "We always felt that if Shrayer had had the inclination to upgrade Pencil, that no one could have taken that market away from him. Electric Pencil was like Kleenex and Coke. It was generic, and he could have owned the microcomputer word-processing market."

The California culture in the late 70s encouraged "do your own thing", but Michael Schrayer was the most counter-cultural person I've ever met, in both good and self-defeating ways.

The US Spreme Court ruled that tax laws can be allied retroactive

In 1993, I think August, Bill Clinton passed a retroactive estate tax back to Janurary 1993 and it was ruled as perfectly acceptable. The rules are not there to protect you, they are there to submit you to the government's will. David Gregory can break a firearms law in DC, Holder can ignore Congress and cover up mass killings, Hillary can lie about Lybia and say "What difference does it make?", but if you don't pay retroactive taxes you will eventually end up in jail. Its become a two-tiered system where they can kill anyone at anytime and not even have to answer questions or act indiginet when asked questions, but if you j-walk they can jail you.

Interesting. And yet, prescription drug deaths, being highly regulated, exceeded automotive deaths in 2011.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/17/local/la-me-drugs-epidemic-20110918

Seems like regulation, even strict regulation, does little to protect anyone.

Horse slaughter houses are currently legal in the US (they were banned for a while) but there aren't any so horses get shipped to Mexico instead. There is at least one horse slaughterhouse trying to open up in the US but the USDA is foot-dragging the process.

What amazes me is how overblown this thing is. Let's see last year all of the A380s were grounded because of wing cracks which is the latest in a long list of teething issues for that aircraft. Yes, there's a problem and when the 787 was undergoing certification testing there were problems with the electrical system.

From here.

On November 9, 2010, Boeing 787, ZA002 made an emergency landing after smoke and flames were detected in the main cabin during a test flight over Texas. A Boeing spokesperson said the airliner landed safely and the crew was evacuated after landing at the Laredo International Airport, Texas. The electrical fire caused some systems to fail before landing.[135] Following this incident, Boeing suspended flight testing on November 10, 2010. Ground testing was performed instead.[136][137] On November 22, 2010, Boeing announced that the in-flight fire can be primarily attributed to foreign object debris (FOD) that was present in the electrical bay.[138] After electrical system and software changes, the 787 resumed company flight testing on December 23, 2010.

Yes, this is highly publicized and visible because of the incredible amounts of money on the table, airlines will be beating on Boeing just like EADS has been beaten over the A380 problems recently.

All aircraft go through shakedown periods after they are put into the marketplace and sometimes it takes years for problems to show up.

So before everybody starts playing the blame game just understand that no complex system is without problems especially initially with less than 50 planes delivered thus far in the production run. The Lithium Battery question had been asked and answered to the satisfaction of the FAA and if it ultimately proves that there was a problem with those initial conclusions, then the FAA will have to change their regulations to cope with the issue. Despite what people say, commercial aviation didn't become as safe as it is today without a lot of processes and thorough follow through when problems did occur.

You may not remember TWA-800 but when that 747 exploded everybody thought it was a bomb or a terrorist rocket. it turned out to be an ignition of the vapors in a fuel tank.