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Not only is it outrageous and unconstitutional, it's totally valueless. The Feds can't even stand in the way of people for whom they have good information that they might be interested in doing harm, let alone find anything new. The real purpose of a program that is so ineffective, can only be to retroactively find dirt on political outcasts and then put them in prison.

Citations:

• Feds warned about Boston bombers: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
• The Feds monitored one of the Texas shooters, and he spent time in jail: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/p...
• Uselessness of the mass surveillance program:
  http://www.tomsguide.com/us/rs...
  http://articles.chicagotribune...

...will it detect when my passenger is a corporation?

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

Nope, it is because diet soda makes you fat. It promotes the wrong kind of gut bacteria. The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach. So people end up eating even more to compensate. Sales of Diet Pepsi are falling because people are becoming more educated about just how unhealthy that crap is. If you are thirsty, try tap water.

BONK!

As a life long type 1 diabetic who is NOT fat and never has been.. your statement about "the sugar the tongue predicted" is completely wrong and I can attest to this by the fact that drinking diet soda is not correlated to insulin release of any kind with or without diabetes. That is simply not how it works.

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

Nope, it is because diet soda makes you fat. It promotes the wrong kind of gut bacteria. The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach. So people end up eating even more to compensate. Sales of Diet Pepsi are falling because people are becoming more educated about just how unhealthy that crap is. If you are thirsty, try tap water.

Wouldn't surprise me if they tried to sue. Note she has an ISS pin instead of Star fleet emblem, so I guess it's different enough. Somehow though I'm reminded of the episode "Live Fast and Prosper"

Publicity like this is hard to buy. Same as the tribute astronaut Terry Virts gave Leonard Nimoy over Boston.

I'm sure the Star Trek franchise played a small part in a number of astronauts' interest in space.

I figured that he would be denied a heart transplant because of his bad criminal and academic history, until his mom and the popular media play the race card, and in a huge public outcry the medical team is forced to reverse their decision, and then not long afterwards he tries to rob an old lady, shoots at her, runs over a pedestrian, and then dies after he crashes into a very racist utility poll.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/cr...

In about 9 months, Solaren will be supplying California's PG&E with space-based solar power, so the whole carbon dioxide thing will be moot.

I mean with private space and 3D printing, surely 9 months is plenty of time to build the whole thing and launch it, just as promised? Space will save us, right?

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3019...

Sure, all the news is from 2009, surely they have been working in "Stealth" mode all the more to surprise the species?

Did you not notice the stories about how random people have breached security at airports many times over the last few years? If there were any serious terrorists, there would have been attacks at airports. The fact that teenagers were able to get on planes while we haven't had any terrorist attacks shows that the threats are wildly over-stated.

Security is not perfect, but it may still be effective -- after all, you don't hear about all the potentially huge numbers of idiot teenagers who are stopped by security. One would expect that far more teenagers than terrorists try to bypass airport security. This doesn't mean that terrorism is not a threat.

Did you not notice the stories about how random people have breached security at airports many times over the last few years? If there were any serious terrorists, there would have been attacks at airports. The fact that teenagers were able to get on planes while we haven't had any terrorist attacks shows that the threats are wildly over-stated.

I have to wonder what would happen if Snowden returned home to stand trial. Would they be able to convict him? I think they'd have to try him many times to get past a hung jury. In the end I think he'd walk free. At least a third of the population support him in some way.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us...

To convict requires a unanimous jury and I really don't think that's possible. My father is a 90 year old WWII Navy vet who supported the war in Vietnam and even he, who watches Fox news every day and by the standards of today is heavily conservative, thinks Snowden is a hero. I personally disagree but I doubt they'd ever be able to panel a jury to convict him.

> Well, seems they are going to be rolling out "Work Scores" -- ratings of performance of employees that companies can use when the time comes to hire.

Old news.

Also you should be pissed that Equifax has access to salary info on one third of americans and is selling access to that.

Next thing you know, insider companies like Halliburton will be doing all kinds of work for Iran. The feds are just a preppy mafia. If you swear loyalty, give them a piece of your action and get made, you're in!
Otherwise, you're a target.

You mean the same people that endlessly promote utter nonsense?

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9705/2...

How's that coming along? You space fanbois are either extremely naive, stupid, or masochistic. Probably all three.

But wait! There's a much closer one! How's the Solaren deal with PG&E working out?

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3019...

2016!

LOL!!! You guys are nuts.

The first picture seems to be from Fudai that was actually saved thanks to the tsunami wall.
Don't know about the second pic.

Sure, they shoot them down without any attempt to contact the aircraft.

The Japanese twitter meme contest was a far better counter attack than or censorship or war.

Terror is a feeling and humor is the antidote. Just as the Scary Movie franchise ruined classic horror, once it's mocked and funny, those giggling are no longer scared. They are empowered and immune to that pattern of fear. The Daily Show is also founded on this, as is/was Charlie Hebdo. France agrees with Charlie, but still fails to understand the guiding principles.

ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...

UN says US violating international law, calls for closure of Guantanamo
US Attack On Syria Violates International Law
US drone strikes violate international law, harm civilians: Amnesty and HRW (VIDEO)
NATO Violates International Law
US: Prolonged Indefinite Detention Violates International Law
UN says US drone war in Pakistan violates international law
The Military Admitted Force-Feeding Gitmo Detainees Violates International Law and Medical Ethics
US violates int’l laws; moves USS Enterprise into Pakistani water near Balochistan
International community concerned America violating international law by striking Syria
Americans Abandon International Law

Whether they realize it or not, Americans are increasingly embracing policies that undermine the international rule of law, with self-identified liberals, in particular, seemingly reversing their positions on matters such as the Guantanamo prison camp, extrajudicial assassinations and arbitrary detention.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, for example, found that 70 percent of the American public approves of the U.S. government’s decision to indefinitely keep the Guantanamo prison open, despite widespread international condemnation of this policy.

But it will cause change

Well, Utah's found a way around any possible change because of the availability of lethal injection drugs. They're doing lethal injections of lead.

http://time.com/3742818/utah-f...

And you can draw a straight line from the reinstatement of firing squads to the growing militarization of police departments from big cities to small towns, and county and state police. There are already firing squads for poor people, they call them, "police". And not just unarmed black men on the street. The new trend in American law enforcement is for young black men to somehow commit suicide by firearm or being shot by police while in police custody with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/in...

http://legalinsurrection.com/2...

In conclusion: Unarmed black guys get killed by representatives of the government, but if a white guy threatens an officer with a weapon, of course, he's taken alive and even given back his gun. What a country.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-...

At least two or three schemes aim to do fusion with D-D or p-B11... they are more practical than the white elephant in France and make the helium 3 issue moot.

This now makes me wonder what would happen if one where to try to use one of those high denomination bills at Wal*Mart. I know they have had problems in the past with the novelty $1,000,000 bills. Maybe Best Buy would also be worth visiting.

This now makes me wonder what would happen if one where to try to use one of those high denomination bills at Wal*Mart. I know they have had problems in the past with the novelty $1,000,000 bills. Maybe Best Buy would also be worth visiting.

tell me how we are one iota better off today with the democrat in the White House.

Your justifiable disappointment in both parties leads you to renouncing both of them equally, which is not justifiable in the slightest.

Had a Republican won, we would've still been capturing enemies to be held in Guantanamo — instead of simply killing them. Osama bin Laden would've been on trial, rather than fallen victim to extrajudicial killing .

Putin would not have dared to invade Ukraine. Gaddafi — who has made amends with US after seeing the capture of Saddam Hussein on TV — would've remained in charge of Lybia, instead of that country plunging into chaos. We wouldn't have left Iraq in such haste, which would've kept ISIS in check.

Domestically we would not have had the grossly unpopular Obamacare forced upon us with such vigor, most people — proponents and detractors alike — could not even understand the proposed law before the voting took place.

Republicans and Democrats are an inbred family, sleeping together for the past three generations.

Though the less principled "centrists" or "pragmatists" of the two parties do meet in the middle like stalactites and stalagmites, as those geological phenomena they too come from opposite ends.

5000 defected over the wall

How many more went under?

Funny how changing one word (cost -> value) can change the whole intention of your post, isn't it?

Not at all. Because the intention of my post was to expose yet another bit of an orchestrated campaign in support of mass immigration.

And not by people like myself, who are attracted by Americans' freedoms and seek to escape oppressive regimes at home. No, those folks are rather inconvenient — for they tend to argue and fight for preservation of those freedoms that they found so attractive in the first place.

No, our overlords in Washington (one party only slight more so than the other) are happy with docile people from poor countries coming here for purely economic reasons. These immigrants don't love America (some outright hate it), they root for foreign sports-teams and can not be trusted to defend the country.

But they come from corrupt poor countries, where government is the primary source of wealth, and are not bothered by the same becoming the accepted state of affairs here. Which suits our prosperous elites perfectly...

And they have at least 365 shows a year. Which one? According to a search on their site their only reference to a failure at that time are these. Those are coverage of the failed landing.

And they have at least 365 shows a year. Which one? According to a search on their site their only reference to a failure at that time are these. Those are coverage of the failed landing.

And they have at least 365 shows a year. Which one? According to a search on their site their only reference to a failure at that time are these. Those are coverage of the failed landing.

Uber has something others have too... employees. They just don't want to admit it.

Lenovo is dual-headquartered in China and North Carolina. Which branch was responsible for planting spyware in the English language version of the OS is debatable.

In China they actually do execute corrupt corporate executives and government officials (the overlap between the two job descriptions can be extensive). See the examples of Liu Han, Zeng Chengjie, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, and Zheng Xiaoyu. So, yeah, heads could actually roll, if the Chinese felt that the offense was of detriment to China, but planting spyware on English-language computers probably doesn't fall into that category. In fact, someone in China is probably getting a round of free drinks.

Ah yes this old myth myth explained

how desperate for a story has /. become

Well, maybe the explanation is here: "Brain Injuries and the NFL" http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-th...

The 'stealing' is basically industrial espionage. It is similar to what the Japanese used to do several decades back. Except the Chinese do it for military technology as well and unlike what the Japanese used to do, which was mostly reverse engineering, the Chinese actually steal design documents and other things like that as well.

This guy is one example.

Freedom is *far* more at risk from our own governments than it ever was from terrorists.

Really? How many newspapers feel free to publish cartoons featuring Mohammed as a character? Is it the government that causes that fear? There has been a recent terrorist attack over this resulting in a dozen deaths, with more threatened. And that isn't the only problem from this vector.

Oxford University Press bans use of pig, sausage or pork-related words to avoid offending Muslims
Salafist Muslim Group Forms 'Sharia Police' Patrol in Germany
Anti-gay, anti-alcohol: London's "Sharia patrol"
Swedish Police Release Extensive Report Detailing Control Of 55 ‘No-Go Zones’ By Muslim Criminal Gangs

Like most problems I'm sure this one will get better by simply ignoring it, or even better, pretending that measures to solve it are the cause of it.

Because terrorism is a red herring, and this looks like a shiny new power they can grab without much hassle from the rabble. Fear is a great vehicle for stripping away liberties.

Fear is a great vehicle? You mean like fear of government, the same governments that provide universal health care in Europe that everyone claims is the very height of civilization? So you can't trust government when it comes to stopping people with a demonstrated and announced desire to poison, shoot, or blow you up, but you can trust them to pump your body full of chemicals, with the power of life or death over you, to decide if you get food or water when you are too sick or weak to take care of yourself? Given the persistent confusion on these points this will probably not end well.

And your .sig? Pay attention to the bold: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Those that pay no heed to their security are unlikely to remain free.

Well, in theory. In reality companies abuse the H1B visas. I personally have several friends who have trained their eventual replacements, H1B visa holders.

More info:

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

http://www.nbcnews.com/busines...

You don't pay attention to the news much:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...

most rich donors actually support the Democrats over the Republicans, it just does not get reported because only 7% of journalists are Republican and most journalists who contribute to politicians give to Democrats

There's really no mystery here and it's no conspiracy with secret handshakes and secret meetings; the press in the US is largely concentrated in big liberal cities and these people all live and breathe in the resulting ideological/cultural bubbles while the very rich (also generally concentrated in those big liberal cities) often get that way via government-enabled crony capitalism and revolving doors between big government and big business.

Supply and demand. The US elderly have voted themselves a limitless supply of funding for their medical care, so demand for doctors is very high and every other prerogative of our nation is pushed down the list. We've got Medicare paying for 74 year old gender reassignments. You want to know where they've spent your dreams?

So you take your little degree and your dreams of academic success and sod off. We have millions upon millions of knees and hips to replace. Find something that pays well too, mule; we're going to need you to cover that ACA mandate no matter how high it climbs.

I think this is an incredibly short-sighted look at this. What we are talking about is changing genes, changing neural links, or fundamental brain chemistry (which we kinda do already... see medications). The human brain is incredibly complex and the only way we know to "fix" it is surgery to remove something like cancer, or via medications. To fundamentally change neural pathways or genes would be to fundamentally change the person, with unknown side effects. To suggest we can simply "fix" them ignores some well observed side effects of "traumatic brain injury". Likewise, the brain will adapt in a concept called neuroplasticity, it will rewire a damaged portion to a new section of the brain.

There are people out there who have no choice in the matter. For example intersex individuals, such as those born with 2 X's and a Y, are uncommon, but are out there. We are not necessarily talking gender dysphoria. Rather, we are talking someone who does not strongly express either gender. My understanding is that parents typically want males, so given the choice early on that's what they opt to have the doctor go for (and resulting surgery). Later on in life that may impose gender dysphoria, not because "he feels like a woman", but because his body is actively producing hormone levels of both, perhaps with a leaning toward one or another. This is not some psychological conditioning, this is a fundamental issue with the chemistry of their body. How do you suppose we fix that? A series of invasive surgeries? Years of therapy to "deal with it"?

This article has a funny way to describe the attempt to soft-land on a floating platform:

... SpaceX acknowledges that the maneuver won't be a slam-dunk. Maybe it'll just be a slam. Or a dunk.

Born in the US. Not much of a fan of the US, though. Then again, Iceland's current government is doing its best to try to turn us into mini-America. They even went so far as to have hundreds of machine guns secretly smuggled into the country in a plan to militarize our (currently mostly unarmed) police forces (per capita that'd be way higher than the number of machine guns with US police forces). Their economic reforms... well, let's just say that Ayn Rand would be tickled pink with most of them.

It's funny how many people picture Iceland as being some sort of socialist paradise. It's become so much of a running joke here that they poked fun at it during the last áramótaskaup. ;)

Actually thought about Iceland but it seem to just have grass.. Guess it's colder too.

No no, you get much colder than us in the winter. But our summers are colder than yours. We have very little average change in temperature between summer and winter, no more than 15 degrees or so in the Reykjavík area - more in the north, less in the far south. The reason there's not many forests is because of heavy deforstation and overgrazing long ago; before settlement about a quarter of the country was forested. The amount of forests bottomed out in the early to mid 20th century but since have been slowly recovering due to extensive replanting efforts. There's some actually quite lovely forests today. Still, it's going to take a long time to get back up to even a small fraction of what we once had.

Personally, outside of the current political situation, I find it extremely fun here. We have a massively disproportionately large music scene, we're an international tourist draw for our excellent outdoor opportunities, and if you like soaking in hot geothermal waters, there's no better place in the world. :) It's a beautiful, peaceful country with lots of spectacular wilderness and a huge arts scene. Unfortunately the political system here is a disaster, with biased vote weighting that helps ensure that we almost always get a conservative government, tons of corruption, lots of buisiness fields dominated by monopolies, etc. And our current government is succeeding quite well destroying everything that makes the country good. Someone recently asked me to write a year-in-review article for them and I sent them this picture.

(At risk of going even more off topic... what's up with the whole watching-donald-duck-on-christmas-eve thing over there? ;) )

but things like this are used more and more to justify land closures.

If people wouldn't screw things up, or destroy parts of a park, or just not think, then this wouldn't be an issue, would it?

To use a phrase, this is why we can't have nice things.

In other words: This shows that there isn't a real danger that this security theater is protecting us from.

No, that just shows that the Intent, Capability, and Opportunity haven't yet aligned to result in an incident or attack... that you know of. Absence of an attack isn't the same as absence of a threat. And you're kidding yourself if you think there aren't terrorists in Germany, or flying through it, that wouldn't attack the airport, planes, or other places in Germany specifically or Europe in general.

Attacks on Frankfurt Airport, Ramstein Planned: Three Islamist Terror Suspects Arrested in Germany - September 05, 2007

Germany Sends 240 Cops to Arrest Nine ISIS Suspects in Cologne - November 12th 2014

Colorado already proved that with the tax revenue they brought in from legalized marijuana,

False. Colorado brought in 20% of the promised revenue from legalization and the prospects of them meeting their initial projections are about as likely as Steve Ballmer running Linux.

Before you then say, "Well, they at least got something," I would like to remind you of this article wherein people on here were claiming Chicago's use of red light cameras a failure when they only got 44% of the initial projected income. Apparently getting 44% of of something is much worse than getting 20% of something.

Still further, Colorado is seeing the general effects of people being stoned, such as deaths, robberies and murder, and of course the general loss of productivity from people unable to perform their jobs such as two nurses who quit their good paying jobs at a hospital where a family member works because they would have failed the mandatory drug tests.

Just like Kansas' failed experiment of lowering taxes and cutting services didn't magically produce more revenue, whatever amount of money Colorado brings in will be eaten up by the side effects of legalization and, as this article clearly indicates, bordering states will also suffer financial losses and deaths.

I covered that. Read their denial closely - they spend as much time praising the attack as they do denying that it was them in an official capacity.

If they officially state that they did it, there would be official responses. But unless there's some absolutely definitive evidence found, even though it was quite obviously North Korea, no prosecutor would be willing to make that official accusation. By unofficially endorsing it, but officially disavowing that it was them, they are claiming responsibility in a fully deniable, un-actionable way.

Who else has motive to threaten the moviegoers? That doesn't fit with any alternative hypothesis, unless it's misdirection to make us think it's North Korea. If it were for profit, that doesn't get them any more money. If it were revenge for the shitty things Sony has done, they wouldn't threaten their customers (who are pretty much just innocent bystanders as far as that goes). If it were a rival studio, that could have just as much an effect on their movie performance as Sony's (terrorist attacks are notoriously imprecise).

Perhaps I'm wrong, and it's a group that's trying very hard to make it look like North Korea is behind it. As misdirection ploys go, it's a brilliant one. But their act is too convincing - this fits North Korea too well, in my opinion, to be anyone but them.

I know they're a bunch of unreliable liars, but it seems the US government agrees with me, for whatever that's worth.

A shit ton of non-vaccinated illegals flooding into the public schools is driving the spread of whopping cough and EV-D68.

A credible citation is indeed called for. Physicians appear to disagree with you; see, for example, an NBC News article in July, 2014 debunking the idea that immigrants are diseased. With respect to measles - the subject of the parent comment - Mexico vaccinates 99% of children, and the U.S. 92%.

Many of the retirees were going to be obsolete anyways, since they were so busy working they hadn't kept up with technologies. This is still a problem ... the treadmill is more like a hamster wheel - run faster just to stay in place. The more work you do, the greater the technical debt you build up.

Companies won't invest in keeping people up-to-date when they can hire someone else younger who is up to speed on the "latest and greatest" fad of the year. It's a poor long-term strategy, but if you don't survive the short term, who cares about the long term?

As for workers in the rest of the world, they're not going away in 10 years, or 20. The barriers of entry are simply too low. We're even exporting the reading of xrays to workers in other countries

At 6:30 a.m. that Saturday, teleradiologist Edward Wong, M.D., opened Drumm's file. Dr. Wong's employer, Virtual Radiologic Consultants, was headquartered in Minnesota. Dr. Wong was licensed to practice medicine in Pennsylvania. But as he studied the images of Drumm's head, he was at his home in Hong Kong.

...

Perhaps most troubling: How do you know who is reading your scans? Ideally, a qualified radiologist would see them, or at least a physician with extra training in the field. But doctors are expensive, and unethical companies can reap profits by having lower-paid, unqualified technicians read scans. Radiologists warn of the potential for "ghosting," an illegal practice whereby a doctor simply rubber-stamps the reading by a technician without giving it so much as a glance. Doctor's electronic "signatures" on radiology reports are digitized, too, so it can be easy for techs to forge them. "Most people assume that images are going to be read in the hospital," says Arl Van Moore, M.D., former president of the American College of Radiology (ACR) in Reston, Virginia. That's usually not the case, and "there is no way for the patient to know if someone putting his name on the report has actually read it."

Expect more jobs to be offshored in the future.

Going quite a bit off topic here, but I'll bite:

Build a border that can be enforced

I hope you're not talking about building a wall. A wall is one of those ideas that seems pleasant, simple, and realistic at a quick glance, but when you get into details it starts to break down. Even the Great Wall of China failed many times.

Rather than trying to go back to Isolationist policies, we should be looking at A) why they come here, and B) what steps we can take to diminish A. In the long run, removing their need/desire to come to America illegally will have far more benefit for everyone than simply trying to hide the problem behind a chain-link fence.

A isn't easy; a lot of people will claim "because America is the greatest country in the world!" Except we aren't turning back a tide of Canadians at our northern border, so far as I'm aware, meaning either America and Canada are roughly equivalent in greatness or there are other reasons that Mexicans are risking quite a bit to come to the U.S. While I'm no expert on Hispanic relations, it seems to me that what is happening is not so much Mexicans wanting to come to the US, but Mexicans wanting to leave Mexico and the US being the most natural choice. (I'm not aware of Guatemala offering a lot, and in fact Mexico is facing its own illegal immigrant problem with Guatemalans)

The main cause that I'm aware of is the Mexican Cartels, who mainly use drugs as their source of revenue. The surging movement in America to legalize weed is having a growing impact on that. They still have crack and heroine, of course, but these are far more destructive drugs that will result in fewer return users.

There are likely other other factors, such as poverty, especially in the border towns (driving along the highway by the border in El Paso, TX gives you an eerie comparison between Juarez and El Paso, especially when you consider that much of the El Paso side is still lower class.) Government corruption might be a factor.

For B, I already mentioned the legalizing of weed in America. If we can change the discussion of our "War on Drugs" from punishment to rehabilitation, we could lower the demand for drugs from Mexico (and other countries dealing with the same thing) even further.

For poverty, I don't have a good plan. But let's consider that fence again. It could cost $22.4 Billion to build (though the full cost is hard to figure out, apparently). A quick search tells me that the estimated population amongst the six Mexican border states was 12,246,99... in 1990. So that number's a bit old, we'll bump it up to 20M (another source says 24M by 2020, but that's for both sides of the border.) With about 27.9% being kids, that's about 14M adults, giving us $1600/Mexican adult (more, actually, as the "kids" only includes up to age 14). The average yearly income for Mexico is about $13K, so that's significant but not huge.

What if, instead of spending that money on the border, we use it to improve the cities on the Mexican side of the border? They would give at least a small economical boost, though short-term, and while improving those cities we could have US law enforcement work with Mexican law enforcement to further route the gang

I believe the Ferguson rioters were left-wing. And they were certainly trying to use violence to terrorize people for political purposes. Of course, you could always be loose as to your definition of terrorism on the right and not so loose on the left. And Moscow didn't need to fund them, but they still count as left-wing terrorists by your overly loose definition.

Furthermore, since you went back to 1995 for the Oklahoma City bombing, I can point out the rise of ecoterrorism, and the Discovery building shooter.

And what happens when the fire department finds out you can't afford to pay them for putting out your house fire? Do they just let your house burn and put out the fire when it spreads to the houses of people that can pay?

Exactamundo

Maybe they can keep birds away, but frogs, not so much.