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It amazes me when people are treated like criminals or animals and they don't become infuriated, or even react.

Who says that? You're marketing fodder, something that can be collected and used as data for monetary gain. Are you that Naive to assume that everybody out there wants to be your friend and just give you stuff for free? Free Services, step right up, get your Free Services, get your Free software right here. Yes, there are a *few* who have good intentions however there's a lot of folks out there making a buck on every click, every preference and every search you do. You use a credit card, the banks, the vendor, the credit card company are all tracking you. You buy an airline ticket, the same thing happens + the airline + the government and anybody else they'll sell your information to.

http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/a-rare-peek-at-homeland-securitys-files-on-travelers,10313/
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/06/pf/banks_sell_shopping_data/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Do you drive a car? If so your government is probably selling your information to dealerships, insurance companies and others.

http://blog.newsok.com/politics/2010/04/05/oklahoma-brings-in-millions-by-selling-personal-data/

Did you download that free app on your phone? It's tracking you.

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16530607-a-shock-in-the-dark-flashlight-app-tracks-your-location?lite

If you think that's treating you like a criminal then we're all criminals.

That has what to do with this?

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/creepy-graph-searchers/

Now you can have pedophiles stalk your kids all with the neat, new graph search!

The point is, you don't get something for nothing. Not in this day and age when every innocuous thing you do is tracked, mined and analyzed 100 different ways. In the case of Ubuntu, they're just following the crowd.

"Reusable grocery bag carried nasty norovirus, scientists say" http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/09/11604166-reusable-grocery-bag-carried-nasty-norovirus-scientists-say?lite

What asteroids/meteors? Those were American/Chinese/N Korean missiles.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/16977509-meteor-sparks-rumors-conspiracy-theories-in-russia?lite

And we haven't even heard from our 'Tin Foil Hat' brigade yet.

This proposal would clearly be:
- Against God's will
- A government conspiracy to subjugate us
- A plan by the Freemasons/Communists/Bankers/Democrats/Republicans to subjugate us
- Contrary to a natural cycle of extinctions

And most importantly "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S FAULT"

This is just a friendly reminder that we will eventually go extinct, and it will be our own damn fault.
 

Object Moved

This document may be found here

photo But was that a bolt of approval or condemnation? Its so hard to figure out these sky spirits.

You don't even need to shoot them. They are shooting themselves.

Not efficiently enough. I suggest somebody should offer them a helping hand.

You don't even need to shoot them. They are shooting themselves.

I think you might be thinking of the website, which underwent a rebranding recently to distance itself from the cable news network. This popular MSNBC show, for example, has MSNBC branding all over it: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_joe/

MSNBC really is not watched by anyone anymore, because it no longer exists. It rebranded itself as NBC News, dropping the Microsoft part, sometime last year, I believe.

"and the government does it anyway."
citation needed.

Really? Are you ignoring the news? ok sure, here is a citation.

", the easier it becomes" so what?

Not sure if its worth arguing with someone who doesn't see a problem with it becoming easier for people to take away human life. For the sake of anyone else reading - know that there are people who understand it is a problem. There are ethical people out there who grasp that problem with increasing the distance between the taking of a life and feeling the result of that action. At the very least, it could increase the number of deaths. It could also worm its way into the psyche of our national character, as government ordered death becomes more of a norm. What a horrible world, that.

No, but they could die (or at least suffer harm) if the mail was something like insulin or heart medication.

Merrly being snarky does not make a convincing argument.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/06/16869665-wait-a-minute-mr-postman-new-mail-delivery-schedule-raises-eyebrows?lite

The Postmaster General has already confirmed that mail-order medicine will continue to be delivered on Saturday.

Wow, that was an incredibly long list of FUD distortions. Let's tackle this one at a time, shall we?

1.His reform doesn't involve government taking over healthcare, it fines people who don't buy health care insurance. People still buy from private insurance providers. Having young, healthy people buy insurance is solves the problem ensures that young, healthy people won't freeload off the of system by buying insurance only when they get sick. Having everybody insured also reduces uninsured people freeloading by getting their healthcare in the emergency room, subsidized by other taxpayers.

2. His executive orders are for stricter enforcement of existing gun laws, something well within his power to do.

3. He doesn't want children to be killed by guns, and he doesn't want victims of rape and incest to carry their attackers' babies? That's just fine with me.

4. Taxes are the price of civilization. They ensure I have a military to protect my country, that the roads stay safe, that police and fire departments are there to protect, that snake oil stays out of the pharmacy, that the food I buy is free of melamine, and that I can drink water safely out of any tap in the country. It sure does matter to who they were raised on. Romney paid less taxes on his millions, using the carried interest loophole to count his commissions as dividends, than his janitor or secretary did. The janitor or secretary are far more likely to spend money on daily necessities, than to transfer gains off to the Cayman Islands. Oh, and during the period of our country's greatest economic boom following WW2, the top marginal tax rate was 90%.

5. Take out the big bailouts which passed under the Bush administration but took effect under Obama, and he's the most frugal spender since Eisenhower. Citation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/

6. The stimulus saved the car industry and brought it back to life. As for temporary jobs, it keeps people working and prevents them from joining the ranks of the "takers". If I had the choice between either losing my house and going out into the streets, or taking a temp job, I'd do the latter. I suppose you'd rather have the unemployed out in the streets (with no health care), because they're all just "takers" anyway.

7.If you don't believe economic theory, feel free to move to Europe where they're basically slashing government spending during a recession, and places like Spain have 20% unemployment among young people joining the workforce.

8. Energy prices grew under the Bush administration but remained stable during the current one. Citation: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_3

9. The number of food stamp recipients grew by 14.7 million under the Bush administration, more than under the Obama. And part of the reason it grew under Obama is that the administration expanded the number of households able to receive the benefit, while decreasing the benefit per household. Now, certain poor working families can continue qualify for food stamps, with ramping down benefits, which makes sense, as those people have an incentive to keep working to increase their personal income, rather than having the perverse incentive to not find a job to avoid losing benefits. As a result, unemployment has been steadily decreasing under the administration. Citation: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/report-15-americans-food-stamps-980690

Please link to the original version of the story, rather than a more politically biased magazine's reporting on the original version of the story.

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-exclusive-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite

Reason Magazine is the libertarian Huffington Post. I know you like to think that your political view is smarter and more reasonable than others, and you love to have a trillion people pigheadedly arguing that they're right and everyone that disagrees with them is stupid, so you can go through the comments and cherry pick the 'zingers' that reinforce your world view, but it's a meaningless exercise.

I just wrote my congressman and senator.... feel free to copy and paste. This is so sick. Wait until the health information exchanges get installed, people will know your health history, social history..... I love the tech age, but this is one aspect of it that I can do without. -M Dear Mr./Mrs. Congressman/Senator: I am writing to request urgent regulation of the following unregulated data collection and resale activity; at minimum grant US citizens the ability to opt-out.... A subsidiary of Equifax named "The Work Number" is gathering and reselling personal salary data.... right down to the paystub. This data can be purchased by just about anyone including debt collectors. This data also includes Uneployment Insurance information, which might dissuade an employer from offering employment to an otherwise qualified individual. Please see this link for information: http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/30/16762661-exclusive-your-employer-may-share-your-salary-and-equifax-might-sell-that-data Please act on this soon. I don't feel that my salary information and paystub data should be resold, without my consent. This should be an opt-in program, but they have crept under the regulatory radar. All the best, [YOUR NAME HERE]

Flying drones and launching air strikes on Americans, like Obama has already done against suspected "terrorists" and killed those Americans. Oh yeah, due process is thrown out the window, Obama is making sure the dictatorship is known to all Americans. You will be bombed if you're suspected to be an "associated force" of some other arbitrarily defined "terrorists".

Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

the fact that efficiency continues to grow should make us richer, not poorer

This is still possible, if we figure out how to socialize those robotic factories that someone else built with money out of his pocket. Only the transition phase is unclear.

we better find something to do for the "useless" masses in their "spare" time.

And therein lies the problem. Make-work will not do. What idiot would be working - say, rolling a big stone up a mountain - if he doesn't have to? You will get robots that cater to your every whim; you will be living the lazy life. What will happen? You will get a massive crime problem because people always crave for power - or at least for respect, for their well-earned place in the society. Today you can become rich and be respected; you can work hard and be respected. This will not be possible anymore. What remains? There is only one way - you can *force* someone to respect you. Remember the London riots? A group of hooligans forced a man to take his clothes off. This was entirely innocent and harmless, compared to the "knockout king" games that are now popular in all ghettoized locations. Gangs will be forming from young men who have nothing better to do, and gangs will be fighting each other. This is what's coming - millions and millions of young and strong men who have no purpose in life and no motivation whatsoever to do anything productive (there is nothing, actually, that they can contribute - too few can write books or compose music.) Power over other humans is a very strong and addictive feeling. Vandalism will be also widespread, especially because it will be practically not punished - robots will rebuild for free. You may even have problem hiring the police - who is going to walk the beat at night and in rain when there is no damn reason to do that, unless you are one of very few men who will work just because it is the right thing to do. Those men will not last long; their own wives will do a quick job on their priorities in life.

In best case the society will devolve to the level of monkeys who don't need to work, to study, to invent - they have all the food and all the sex within reach. What else the majority will need?

This is the real question, not the technicality of the transition. This problem became apparent in 1970's in USSR. The society was technically prepared for a decent level of socialism, but the humans refused to be good little socialists - they tended to grab a piece here, to steal something there, to skip work elsewhere. Without application of a good whip to the bare backs of those bad workers they wouldn't do anything - and they didn't, and they were given the same social benefits as anyone else. That was ultimately the downfall of the socialist experiment - the tragedy of commons on the scale of a country. You need to find an answer to that before well-fed members of the brave new, robotically maintained world will start burning cities to the ground just for fun. They will do that, I have no doubt. The USA saw enough riots to learn how that works.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-missile-takes-down-electronics-without-touching-them-1C6663618

I'm under the impression the above technology could reset electronics in flight. What good is a nuclear warhead that doesn't know when to go off or is no longer armed?

If you turn that around though, what good is a ship that can't see because all their electronics are shut off. While it's certainly interesting to consider this conversation, I believe there are other technologies unknown to the public that both aid in defence and offence that seriously make any number consideration pointless.

That point will probably be when the cops bust down the wrong door, and a firefight ensues.

Nearly already happened. But it was for kiddee porn so, it was ok.

You've spent a lifetime debunking claims of the paranormal, and for that we thank you.

In your opinion, are there areas in modern society which are not identified as paranormal that should be investigated? If you were addressing a cadre of young scientists willing to make efforts into verifying or debunking things, are there important social issues which should be examined? Which issues would those be?

To frame the question in context, here are examples of the types of issues I am referring to:

1) Economic opinions and "schools of thought", "a little inflation is good" even though no one can state what the best value is, or come up with an analytical way of measuring it

2) Antidepressants have no effect, 90 percent of cancer studies can't be reproduced. The peer review process and scientific publishing in general.

3) Most soft science papers are confident to 95%, implying that on average the results of 1 out of 20 scientific papers arose due to chance.

Actually, it was when I saw the story that Google was storing all your searches, going back years and associating them with your accounts. I decided to delete all accounts with them at that stage.
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/clear-your-google-search-history-now-240860

just saying,

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change

"James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.
Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared."

everybody chill.

Consumers in ten states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Texas) won't be affected, since laws in those states forbid the practice (it seems that gasoline station owners here in Massachusetts got a different memo, though).

Visa/MC contracts still state that merchants have to have the same policy across their business. For larger chains that have a retail presence in these ten states, the prohibition on surcharging there means no surcharging anywhere else either.

From NBCNews:

Visa and MasterCard have rules that require retailers to handle credit cards the same way in all of their stores across the country. That means a chain with stores in any of the 10 states where a surcharge is banned would not be able to have a surcharge at any of its stores.

The settlement also states that merchants have to apply the same policy equally to their other cards that they accept, such as AMEX or Discover. Since AMEX still prohibits surcharging, if a merchant accepts AMEX they cannot surcharge for credit cards.

From NBCNews:

The National Retail Federation points out that under terms of the settlement, a merchant who adds a surcharge to purchases on a Visa or MasterCard would have to do the same with American Express cards. But AMEX prohibits surcharge fees. So a merchant who accepts American Express as well as Visa/MasterCard would not be able to surcharge any of those cards.

Consumers in ten states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Texas) won't be affected, since laws in those states forbid the practice (it seems that gasoline station owners here in Massachusetts got a different memo, though).

Visa/MC contracts still state that merchants have to have the same policy across their business. For larger chains that have a retail presence in these ten states, the prohibition on surcharging there means no surcharging anywhere else either.

From NBCNews:

Visa and MasterCard have rules that require retailers to handle credit cards the same way in all of their stores across the country. That means a chain with stores in any of the 10 states where a surcharge is banned would not be able to have a surcharge at any of its stores.

The settlement also states that merchants have to apply the same policy equally to their other cards that they accept, such as AMEX or Discover. Since AMEX still prohibits surcharging, if a merchant accepts AMEX they cannot surcharge for credit cards.

From NBCNews:

The National Retail Federation points out that under terms of the settlement, a merchant who adds a surcharge to purchases on a Visa or MasterCard would have to do the same with American Express cards. But AMEX prohibits surcharge fees. So a merchant who accepts American Express as well as Visa/MasterCard would not be able to surcharge any of those cards.

The whole thing is just a scare story anyway, only a few retailers are ever likely to exercise this ability anyway (just like few gas stations charge different prices anymore for cash vs. credit, not even Arco). From NBC news:

The big question is: Will any stores do this? Should you worry about paying a credit card surcharge?

"We have discussed the settlement with many, many merchants, and not a single merchant we have spoken to plans to surcharge," Craig Sherman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation (NRF), said in a statement. The NRF was not involved in the class action lawsuit.

NBC News contacted some of the country's largest retailers. Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Home Depot said they have no plans to add a credit card surcharge.

Taking soft sciences into consideration (psychology, social sciences, medical), most papers hinge on a 95% confidence level. This means that 1 out of every 20 results arise from chance, and no one bothers to check.

Recent reports tell us depression meds are no better than chance and scientists can only replicate 11% of cancer studies, so perhaps the ratio is higher than 1 in 20.

1 in 20 would be expected if errors are random and if no biases are in place like publication bias. We know that's not typically the case, so we can indeed expect it's worse than 1 in 20. The more I read about anti-depressant trials, the more I think we will come to view them as particularly egregious examples of deliberately badly designed trials. I've just read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre and it's mind-boggling what happens in real world trials. One little example: to take advantage of the 1 in 20 chances, simple hold 20 little trials and publish the one that gets good results! Or ignore your stated trial goals and measure and just cherrypick any good result afterwards. If you have many variables you're bound to get some correlations post hoc, just by chance alone.

The bloggers are not testing the scientific method, they are testing methods that are scientific. Those are two vastly different concepts. Their work is important, but not epic.

I'm not so sure about that.

We believe in a scientific method founded on observation and reproducible results, but for a great number of papers the results are not reproduced.

Taking soft sciences into consideration (psychology, social sciences, medical), most papers hinge on a 95% confidence level. This means that 1 out of every 20 results arise from chance, and no one bothers to check.

Recent reports tell us depression meds are no better than chance and scientists can only replicate 11% of cancer studies, so perhaps the ratio is higher than 1 in 20. And no one bothers to check.

I've read many follow-on studies in behavioral psychology where the researchers didn't bother to check the original results, and it all seems 'kinda fishy to me. Perhaps wide swaths of behavioral psychology have no foundation; or not, we can't really tell because the studies haven't been reproduced.

And finally, each of us has an "ontology" (ie - a representation of knowledge) which is used to convey information. If I tell you a recipe, I'm actually calling out bits of your ontology by name: add 3 cups of flour, mix, bake at 400 degrees, &c.

This assumes that your ontology is the same as mine, or similar enough that the differences are not relevant. If I say "mix", I assume that your mental image of "mix" is the same as mine. ...but people screw up recipes, don't understand assembly instructions, and are confused by small nuanced differences in documentation.

Does this happen in chemistry?

(Ignoring the view that reactions can depend on aspects that the researchers were unaware of, or didn't think were relevant. One researcher told me that one of her assistants could always make the reaction work but no one else could. Turns out that the assistant didn't rinse the glassware very well after washing, leaving behind a tiny bit of soap.)

It's good that people are reproducing studies. Undergrads and post-grads should reproduce results as part of their training, and successful attempts should be published - if only as a footnote to the original paper ("this result was reproduced by the following 5 teams..."). It's good practice for them, it will hold the original research to a higher standard, and eliminate the 1 out of 20 irreproducible results.

Also, reproducing the results might add insight into descriptive weaknesses, and might inform better descriptions. Perhaps results should be kept "Wikipedia" style, where people can annotate and comment on the descriptions for better clarity.

But then again, that's a lot of work. What was the goal, again?

Good point. Or, ten or twenty trillion US$ in paper wealth disappeared as an externality of banking risk that some bankers made billions from and caused suffering for tens of millions of people:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"What does it take to produce large-scale social change? Most historians, if you catch them in an honest moment, will admit that the popular levers of social change, such as education or legislation, are bogus; they don't really amount to very much. What does make a difference -- and then only potentially -- is massive systemic breakdown, such as occurred in the United States in the fall of 2008. It was the greatest market crash since 1929, leading to widespread unemployment (something like 18% of the population, in real -- as opposed to official -- statistics*) and the loss of billions of dollars in retirement savings. In fact, the crash wiped out $11.1 trillion in household wealth, and this is not counting the several trillion lost in stock market investments. It had been many decades since the middle class found itself in soup kitchens, and yet there they were. In the face of all this, however, very little seems to have changed. Americans are still committed to the dream of unlimited abundance as a "reasonable" goal, when in reality it is (and always has been) the dream of an addict. President Obama's upwards of $19 trillion bailout and stimulus plan funneled money into the very banking establishment that gave us the disaster; it rescued the wealthy, not those who really needed the money. And while he could have appointed economic advisers such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz (both Nobel laureates), who would have attempted to put the nation on a different economic path, he chose instead two traditional neoliberal ideologues, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who believe in the very policies that led to the crash. "Change we can believe in" never sounded more hollow."

No doubt some of this is spin, but there is some truth in here:
http://www.infowars.com/100-million-poor-people-in-america-and-39-other-facts-about-poverty-that-will-blow-your-mind/

One of the links there goes to:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/15/9461848-dismal-prospects-1-in-2-americans-are-now-poor-or-low-income
"Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans -- nearly 1 in 2 -- have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income."

I'm not saying the average US citizen is as bad off as most people in North Korea in material ways -- just that there remains a lot of unnecessary suffering in the USA which is being justified by a crazy ideological bubble. For example, if the USA redistributed half of the US GDP equally as a "basic income", then every citizen would have US$2000 a month, and the other half could be competed over. It's only a cultural mythological bubble that keeps most of the USA from seeing this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120102011454/http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"That rationalization came in the form of a brand new science known as economics, which included a brand new mythology."

Despite books like this by Moshe Adler:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/B007F7WKV8
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance every

I don't think this is about the joke petitions but about the speed of getting 25000 signatories for the removal of publicity hound Carmen Ortiz because of her part in Aaron Swartz's suicide. She's part of The Establishment, they want to keep her so it is far better to raise the bar than address a perceived problem.

Failed hypothesis:

"[..] although petitions already underway as of Wednesday, such as the one to remove the federal prosecutor in the Aaron Swarz case, will only require the original 25,000 for White House review."

And the petition has already passed the threshold:

"SIGNATURES NEEDED BY FEBRUARY 11, 2013 TO REACH GOAL OF 25,000: 0"

TOTAL SIGNATURES ON THIS PETITION: 39,825"

Citation:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxpayers-make-money-tarp-treasury-says-715381

The problem with a free market approach is that we don't have a free market. We have a collection of oligopolies in a regulated economy. When somebody fails it results in market consolidation not renewal and diversification. ESPECIALLY in the banking sector.

Look at happened to the companies that failed. They were adsorbed by those who didn't. And now we have an even more concentrated banking sector.

It's silly to spout off free market dogma when in fact we don't have any such thing. Until we do free market theory isn't a useful basis for policy decisions.

People have tried to implant bombs in people. What you propose would be going much too far and be completely impossible. Shutting down part of one airport for 30 minutes is no where near as disruptive. It is a matter of scale.

The difference in your scenario (the cat scan) is that there would be no external indication of something different. A buzzing package is "different". The reason for that difference may be iniquitous or it may be dangerous. Here is an instance where police were lured to the location of one bomb when there was another bomb there rigged to kill them. It is not out of the realm of possibility.

Shutting down part of an airport for half an hour is not a big deal and will not "paralyze society". Aircraft are delayed by more than that every day.

You might want to look up the term "cowardice". There is a big difference between caution and cowardice.

There are a couple of ways of looking at this report;
1. Those over reactive security agents just trying to justify their jobs and/or succumbing to fear and threat. The system is broken.
2. Competent security personnel taking precautions to safeguard the people they are sworn to protect. A half hour delay is nothing. The system works.

Coastal flooding is the least of our problems if global warming gets out of control.
The real kick in the balls would be changing weather patterns fucking over our agricultural industry.

Worst US drought in decades deepens to cover 60 percent of lower 48 states

as far as cellphones go (of which smartphones are a subset), nokia is still (as of 2012) only now second to samsung... nokia still sells more cellphones than apple

http://www.chipchick.com/2012/12/samsung-cellphone-sales.html
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/12/18/for-the-first-time-in-14-years-samsung-passes-nokia-as-top-cellphone-brand-in-2012-apple-in-third/
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/samsung-bumps-out-nokia-top-phone-maker-beats-apple-smartphones-1C7662756

apple may sell more smartphones than nokia, but more people are still going with the older (and cheaper) symbian-based phones

Knife deaths?! Hahahahaha! Stabbing or slashing takes a lot of work. You don't have the range or stopping power of a handgun. You'd be very lucky to injury someone through a barricade or another person. Will knife attacks happen? Oh, sure, but any such attacker would be better off run down a crowd in a car or truck. Look at the recent attack in China: 22 kids "slashed". Slashed, not killed. So, yeah, not having guns would reduce fatality rates.

Even worse still, there's a lot of methane trapped in permafrost, which is starting to thaw and release it. Methane's something like 20 times worse than carbon dioxide for global warming effects.

Katey Walter has been doing demonstrations for 5+ years to try and get it to sink in with people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3M4ou3kvw

Then there are the gigatons of frozen methane caltrate which are destabilizing: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14670511-climate-changing-methane-rapidly-destabilizing-off-east-coast-study-finds?lite

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we've long since fucked ourselves over - and the explosion of industrialization in China and India is just sealing the deal. Even if you ignore China and India, we appear to have built up so much momentum that even if we drastically curtailed our carbon and methane outputs (like from the cattle industry) instantly, we're still screwed.

Time to start planning for the worst.

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that one of the existing Mac lines will be manufactured exclusively in the United States next year, making the comments during an exclusive interview with Brian Williams airing tonight at 10pm/9c on NBC’s “Rock Center.” http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/06/15708290-apple-ceo-tim-cook-announces-plans-to-manufacture-mac-computers-in-usa

Instead of whining how about trying to add something positive to the discussion instead? The fact that you are obsessed with the messenger instead of the message proves you are being an Arrogant Cunt. Grow the fuck up.

Bringing this thread back on topic ...

. /oblg. Joke: "I heard they were renaming 'Windows' to 'Window' because that is all you can have open in new version!" (rimshot)

Looks like other people are running into the same retarded Win 8 design ...
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/8-worst-windows-8-annoyances-how-fix-them-962136

I also see Microsoft is copying Unix now via shutdown ... LOL
      "shutdown /r /t 0"

How do we not ever have to use an atomic bomb in warfare again?

Well, one obvious solution is to kill everyone with some other superweapon so nobody is around to use atomic bombs in warfare. Otherwise, I think sooner or later atomic bombs will be used again. There are huge disincentives to using them, but there's no reason to expect those disincentives to always be good enough.

Consider for example, Syria's situation in the Middle East. The current government is facing its doom by a massive rebellion. But it might be able to hold on by using sarin nerve gas on the rebels. According to the media, various US military sources are claiming that Syria has mixed precursor chemicals for sarin and loaded it into warheads on aerial bombs.

Now it depends on whether a dying regime thinks it'll get better return from using sarin than not. A lot will depend on what sort of threat the rest of the world can and does choose to make with respect to these terrible weapons and whether Assad will be bold or desperate enough to call their bluff.

This is likely to be an occasional occurrence for dictatorships down the road as well. And some of those will be nuclear armed.

That being said, people here are losing sight of the fact that it is a parent's job to raise and educate their own children. The government is there as an assistance to the parents - absolutely not as a usurper.

It's a complex subject, but your argument is a slippery slope, if you ask me.
What if parents teach their kids things that are detrimental, false or illegal, or give them bad examples, like: "drugs are good", "$COLOR people are not human beings" "vaccination is bad", "evolution is false", or "kissing rattlesnakes is not dangerous"?

Actually, this last one is a more appropriate than I initially thought, since the guy died in the same way his father did.
Now, one thing is the right to be allowed to believe whatever you want, another is to force it to someone that doesn't have enough critical thinking and without giving him/her a choice.

You're either fucking stupid or fucking evil; pick one.

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/10/14340090-suicide-is-epidemic-for-american-indian-youth-what-more-can-be-done

A youth-suicide epidemic is sweeping Indian country, with Native American teens and young adults killing themselves at more than triple the rate of other young Americans, according to federal government figures.

In pockets of the United States, suicide among Native American youth is 9 to 19 times as frequent as among other youths, and rising. From Arizona to Alaska, tribes are declaring states of emergency and setting up crisis-intervention teams.

âoeIt feels like wartime,â said Diane Garreau, a child-welfare official on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota. âoeIâ(TM)ll see one of our youngsters one day, then find out a couple of days later sheâ(TM)s gone. Our children are self-destructing.â

http://www.google.com/search?q=suicide+rates+native+indians

Is your TV watching you? Latest models raise concerns

Gary Merson , HD Guru , hdguru@hdguru.com

- http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/your-tv-watching-you-latest-models-raise-concerns-483619

"The new Samsung HDTV has hard-wired camera and microphone, plus face recognition and other unprecedented features."

"Samsungâ(TM)s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it's the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung's own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.

Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets. And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung's app partners, Samsung has only stated that it "assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable" in the event that a product or service is not "appropriate."

Samsung demoed these features to the press earlier this month. The camera and microphones are built into the top if the screen bezel in the 2012 8000-series plasmas and are permanently attached to the top of the 7500- and 8000ES-series LED TVs[1]. A Samsung representative showed how, once set up and connected to the Internet, these models will automatically talk to the Samsung cloud and enable viewers to use new and exciting apps.

These Samsung TVs locate and make note of registered viewers via sophisticated face recognition[2] software. This means if you tell the TV whose faces belong to which users in your family, it personalizes the experience to each recognized family member. If you have friends over, it could log these faces as well.

In addition, the TV listens and responds to specific voice commands. To use the feature, the microphone is active. What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

And unlike other TVs, which have cameras and microphones as add-on accessories connected by a single, easily removable USB cable, you can't just unplug these sensors.

During our demo, unless the face recognition learning feature was activated, there was no indication as to whether the camera (such as a red light) and audio mics are on. And as far as the microphone is concerned the is no way to physically disconnect it or be assured it is not picking up your voice when you donâ(TM)t intend it to do so.

Samsung does provide the ability to manually reposition the TV's camera away from viewers. The LED TV models allow you to manually point it upward, facing the ceiling; the plasmaâ(TM)s camera can be re-aimed to capture objects in the rear of the TV according a Samsung spokesperson.

Privacy concerns
We began to wonder exactly what data Samsung collects from its new âoeeyes and earsâ and how it and other companies intend use it, which raises the following questions:

Can Samsung or Samsung-authorized companies watch you watching your Samsung TV?
Do the televisions send a user ID or the TVâ(TM)s serial number to the Samsung cloud whenever it has an Internet connection?
Does Samsung cross reference a user ID or facial

Julie Larson-Green will be promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering. Tami Reller retains her roles as chief financial officer and chief marketing officer and will assume responsibility for the business of Windows.

Isn't the more important story here the rise of two women to senior positions in management and engineering at Microsoft?

The software and semiconductor sectors have the lowest percentages of women among the five highest-paid executives in a company, with 4.4 percent and 2.7 percent

Where Are the Women Executives in Silicon Valley?

Julie Larson-Green is no slouch when it comes to logging the years and time at Microsoft. She joined the company 19 years ago as a program manager for Visual C++ and has worked her way up through the ranks.

Larson-Green worked hand-in-hand with Sinofsky on Microsoft Office. Before that she worked on Microsoft SharePoint and Internet Explorer. She actually led one of the most dramatic redesigns at the company when she worked on the so-called ribbon interface in Office.

The Woman Behind Windows

''I don't even know how to explain how amazing and exciting that is to every woman who works in tech right now and probably in business across the board,'' said Michele Weisblatt, executive vice president for Women in Technology International.

''It"s not just about (the company) putting them over a division, it's about them leading the flagship product --- the money-making, revenue piece for Microsoft. It's just phenomenal.''

Women hold just a quarter of computing and mathematical jobs in the U.S., according to a 2008 report on women in technology from Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization.

''Microsoft's move is important because of its visibility as a technology and corporate giant, so girls in school who see women like Larson-Green and Reller move into such high-profile roles will carry that with them for a lifetime,''said Jenny Slade, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Women rising in the ranks at tech companies

so your telling me that I can screw your entire print service and DOS it by sending it a print job ?

..and halt and catch fire, possibly. http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/11/29/9076395-exclusive-millions-of-printers-open-to-devastating-hack-attack-researchers-say

HP do now support code signing, whereas previously they had code singeing. And of course, everyone with a networked HP printer has applied the patches, right?

    It means that we'll farm it to the edge of extinction, and then ponder what happened to them all... Kinda like...

Hunting whales for blubber, and then wondering why there whales are almost extinct.

Using pesticide on virtually everything, and then wondering why bees are dying off.

Farming marginally arid land, and being surprised by the result.

I'm not an environmentalist wingnut. Sometimes the answer to "what could possibly go wrong" is really obvious.

What has an extramarital affair got to do with running the CIA?

That question has been answered by a NBCNews headline: "Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say":

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/09/15056607-petraeus-biographer-paula-broadwell-under-fbi-investigation-over-access-to-his-email-law-enforcement-officials-say?/

More info here.

Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say

Petraeus Resigns Over Affair With Biographer

He had an affair with his biographer, which apparently began while he was active duty military in Afghanistan. Extramarital affairs are illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He'll be lucky if the DoD doesn't bring him out of retirement just to take a star off his shoulder.

My postfix server has been voting all day in NJ.

hmm, for some reason, NJ's email voting is suffering major glitches... http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/06/14974588-new-jerseys-email-voting-suffers-major-glitches?lite

If you can find some links that show Republicans up to shenanigans by all means post them.

I'm too bored to do much digging, but I read this one about an hour ago. http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/dont-pass-it-voting-booth-hoax-spreads-facebook-1C6884772. That said, maybe it isn't being perpetrated by R ... maybe a D is behind it in an effort to make it look like an R.

In either case, there's lots of shenanigans going on by both major parties. Don't act so surprised.

No. He talked about how people can vote if they don't have an official voter ID. Using Bills as ID. It's not legal*, and wrong but it isn't stuffing the ballot box.

Given that just a few days earlier, a Republican staffer in the same state was arrested and charged with voter fraud for discarding the voter registration cards of Democrats, the fraud probably balances out....

I can see your point, but I don't think this is a slippery slope issue.

Then
You're
Not
Paying
Enough
Attention