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Maybe because the VW CEO resigned in disgrace and the Porsche CEO took over with a mandate to clean up VW's act, purportedly because Porsche was squeaky clean?

The proposition is that 'The Left in America *despises* the common folk.'

This sounds like a great topic for Intelligence Squared Debates!

It means that the FAA can't pull my "certificate" first and ask questions later while I go broke.

A pilot certificate is actually the least of your concerns.

What happens if the FAA fines you $500 per day until you comply with their orders?

Yes, the FAA can fine you, and when you refuse to pay it, you end up in administrative court where you aren't innocent until proven guilty, and your refusal ultimately ends up with the sheriff showing up.

Despite all that, once the FAA passes its new rules, it'll still be legal for me to fly my unregistered helis, still legal for me to buy or build new models without registering them, and still legal for me to fly them.

It can be really expensive to prove that your actions are legal, but you're welcome to try. Someone gets to be the test case.

At the end of the day, neither you nor I are the person who actually decides if it is legal or not, a judge is.

You're probably familiar with this case:

http://www.outsideonline.com/1...

Are you aware it was overturned?

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Here is the final outcome of that case:

http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

---

Look, I'm not the FAA, I'm not here to tell you that you're right or wrong, I honestly don't care. What I am telling you is that your "tough guy attitude" doesn't work against an agency like the FAA who ultimately will get some type of drone regulations into place and if they decide to come after you, they'll almost always win.

You seem to be under some illusions about the working conditions of University professors. Most of your professors are adjuncts, working part time for less than minimum wage.

You're upset because your professor didn't contact you way before the first class to tell you what the expectations were? Guess what? The University probably hadn't even gotten around to hiring her yet. And even if they had, they reserved the right to say "just kidding" and cancel it at the last minute.

You want someone to blame for the poor quality of your education? It's not your professors. It's the "dooshbags" they are working for.

I am sorry to hear that you are out an extra $50 for the cost of a new textbook. Your professor, who makes about $20,000 a year by working at three different schools with no benefits, no job security and no support from their employer, knows what that feels like.

carbohydrates? glucose? fructose? galactose? sucrose? maltose? lactose?

If you cut them all, what would you eat? Meat causes cancer. Where would you get the calories necessary to survive?

Seems to me we have spent thousands of years to come to the same conclusions as the ancient Greeks. "Nothing to Excess."

Look at Baltimore Maryland after the police largely slowed down.

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/04/...

And before someone chimes in about how NPR is a conservative wind chime or something, the news articles are available at plenty of other places not normally associated with political douchebaggery.

a news article on the very report finding male units more effective.

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

It's not that women are not interested in technology. It's that men are assholes in a learning environment.
This is the same argument why Curves gym exist. Or Planet Fitness.
IT folks are bunch of little childish assholes constantly trying to one-up each other.

Why Women Stopped Coding

And please, stop talking on behalf of women and what women think or want. It sounds exactly like anti-abortionists telling us what's best for our bodies.

re 'And the air space is regulated in most countries"
The US mil has been trying drones for years. From the 1970's efforts with NITE GAZELLE NITE GAZELLE and the DASH prototypes.
Battlefield UAVs of the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The gov/mil/contractor drone "industry" has been running in the US for decades just not for the wider public.
As for the "agriculture, search and rescue, journalism, real estate, oil and gas, insurance, infrastructure surveying, photography, and videography industries" most of that is covered by lots of regulations, or established well funded and protected work for helicopters, sat and traditional aircraft.
States are also considering their Ag-gag or anti-whistleblower bills
Deploying Drones To Get An Overview Of Factory Farms (JULY 19, 2014)
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
Some state wish to criminalize collection of "resource data" (photos and video), have local laws about no access to any "non-public area", "making secret recordings", to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means...
State laws, just been 'near' a mil sites, flight height issues makes drone use interesting in the USA until legal clarifications cover drone flight height and what can be done federally and per state over public and private land.
Re "but not in the hands of everyone"
DSB (Defense Science Board), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) have been interested in backing, understanding emerging drone like projects for a while.

If you claim otherwise, please cite the law text.

How about four laws/regulations. Now, please tell me you've heard of David Petraeus, the CIA director who was prosecuted for....mishandling classified information.

"She's been investigated for years, and not one problem found"

There's been plenty of 'problems' found. Nothing that has yielded an indictment -- but enough that a reasonable person should keep her clear of public service.

"There are records of every "official" email to and from her in the State Department servers."

Clearly you've no idea what you are talking about.

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

The State Department received the emails from the Department of Defense "in the last several days," State department spokesman John Kirby said. "

Those emails werent ON the state department servers. Because she sent them from her PERSONAL account to the DoD. How many other emails have yet to surface because they aren't on the State Department's archive?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...

Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community, found the two emails containing what he determined was “Top Secret” information in the course of reviewing a sampling of 40 of Mrs. Clinton’s work-related emails for potential security breaches.

You know... if I see enough tell tale clues that a rat has been in my kitchen (chewed hole in dog food, for example) I can decide that there *IS* a rat without actually SEEING it. There MIGHT be a logical explanation for the hole, but as far as Clinton goes, every excuse comes with a lot more tell tale clues. Example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server said it has “no knowledge of the server being wiped,” the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered.

And then this:

http://www.npr.org/sections/al...

And it was wiped....

She could be spitting your your face and you'd be saying "it's raining!" Please, I'm not saying "beyond a reasonable doubt" in the legal sense that she did anything illegal. I'm saying that a reasonable person could only conclude that she hasn't been forth-coming and should not be trusted.

(please note all my citations are either liberal or left leaning sources).

And it all starts at the grassroots level.

Even the Kochs believe it starts at the grassroots level, so they've set up a number of "grassroots" organizations.

It's a horribly complex technology that it's adherents fucked up badly by not carefully and consistently holding to the highest of engineering standards (like naval reactors). They cheaped out and they are paying the price.

Yup, it's fucked up so badly that it kills fewer people per MWh generated than any other power source, including solar, wind, and hydro. Shame on us for creating the safest form of power generation in the history of mankind.

You can't compare to a vacuum. You can't look at fatalities or injuries caused by a nuclear accident, compare to some hypothetical universe where that nuclear power plant (and only that nuclear power plant) didn't exist, and criticize nuclear power for killing those people. A valid comparison must use opportunity cost. Everything has some danger, some risk of death.. If the nuclear plant hadn't been there, some other type of plant would've had to be there to generate the same amount of electricity. That's the alternative case you have to compare against, not a vacuum. How many deaths would that alternate power plant have caused?

When you crunch the statistics that way, you find that had the nuclear plant been replaced by any other type of power plant, statistically you would've killed more people. Even wind, solar, and hydro are more dangerous. Or put in relative terms, replacing coal, gas, hydro, wind, and solar plants with nuclear plants saves lives.

Looking at the graduation rate, I think they have bigger concerns.

This may be slightly off topic, but I always wondered whether high school graduation should be mandated by law, with the punishment being either a school camp or house arrest until the degree is obtained. I'd imagine the betterment of the younger people would give them more options in life and benefit society.

The link does not go to the article. Could somebody post the actual link?

Here are some other sources:
http://www.newser.com/story/21...
http://www.theguardian.com/bus...
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

The interesting thing is in the 80s there was even fewer girls into computers then now.

Well that would be a lot more interesting if it were true. Lets see what the department of labor says about that:

http://www.dol.gov/wb/factshee...

Scroll down to the 2nd graph "Employed computer systems analysts, scientists by sex 1983 - 2001"

In the 80s women made up nearly half, and the gap has increased. So there were in fact more women computer scientists and systems analysts in the 80 than now. Not less. That pretty much trashes your entire thesis.

But you know what, I completely agree with you that men and women are likely biased towards different things. And I agree its pretty likely in a world with no sexism men would still be prevalent in some fields and women prevalent in others. I don't dispute that. I'm not suggesting every job needs to be 50:50 men and women or: sexism !!

But just because that is true, that doesn't mean sexism doesn't exist, and isn't a problem in any industry.

Additionally, when the women who ARE in tech leave tech they most frequently cite the culture as being the primary issue. That doesn't line up with your thesis that they aren't interested in the subject... they WERE interested in the subject, they enjoyed the subject, they left in droves because of the culture. And yeah... I have cites for that... three different studies.

http://www.npr.org/sections/al...

http://www.fastcoexist.com/301...

http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/...

Not totally convinced? That's fine; you owe it to your own intellectual integrity to accept that maybe the situation is more complicated than "women don't like computers as much as you do" after all.

So when you talk about sexism, give me a fucking break. No. Scratch that. There is a problem of sexism in tech : women are privileged over men.

In the sense that all these over-the-top-sexist (pro-feminist) and highly ineffective programs to get women back into tech exist, I completely agree. They don't solve anything, and if anything make things worse. They are part of the problem, but they are not the entire problem by a long shot.

Cannabis don't have to be smoked, it can be eaten. Peoples with psychiatric problem are more prone to substance abuse. The 1950 have called and they want their debunked argument back.

As much as I would like it to be different, the GP's claim is not unreasonable.

From the npr.org:
'There have been nine studies following hundreds to thousands of people for decades looking for a connection between marijuana use and psychosis. All but one of these studies suggest that marijuana use is associated with schizophrenia. Sir Robin Murray, a psychiatrist at King's College in London, says that evidence changed his mind about weed. "Even I, 20 years ago, used to tell patients that cannabis is safe. It's only after you see all the patients that go psychotic that you realize – it's not so safe."'

Is that fucking right?

You ignorance is exceeded only by your sanctimony.

Fuck Off, Donkey.

Yeah, that was pretty amazing:
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Well, if it doesn't come with a pencil box that looks like a small briefcase, I'm not buying this kit.

It has been a long time since I listened to it but IIRC some of the differences are:

Seatbelts - US has to assume that they aren't being used, EU assumes they are

Collisions with pedestrians - EU takes this into consideration, US is minimal

Emissions - All kinds of different

Wipers - US requires bigger ones

I vaguely remember thinking that none of the difference were contradictory though, been a year.

http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

http://www.npr.org/sections/th... House Speaker John Boehner will give up his seat in Congress at the end of October.

I'm sure we didn't overstate the danger at all to rally support for the war. No matter how close they were, Hitler was a giant asshole and we needed to be in that war so we could fuck him.

Interestingly, it seems there are a lot of misconceptions about that what was going on over there. One might draw parallels to what's going on over there today in Syria, but it seems that we're not in the business of fucking assholes so much anymore. No one has the energy to fuck those assholes anymore.

Reminds me of:

"Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!"

Interestingly, it seems there are a lot of misconceptions about that what was going on over there. One might draw parallels to what's going on over there today in Syria, but it seems that we're not in the business of fucking assholes so much anymore. No one has the energy to fuck those assholes anymore.

People have an amazing ability to teach themselves. Let them do it:

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/...

Generally speaking, automation makes us stupid. Oh, sure, it helps free us from drudgery, and won't get bored like up, but presents new failure modes that aren't always obvious during the design and testing phase.

Over the summer, 99% Invisible and NPR's Planet Money put out several podcasts ([1], [2], [3]) on the automation paradox, and the Google car is front and center. So is Air France Flight 447, which shows what happens when automation fails and humans can't properly respond.

Generally speaking, automation makes us stupid. Oh, sure, it helps free us from drudgery, and won't get bored like up, but presents new failure modes that aren't always obvious during the design and testing phase.

Over the summer, 99% Invisible and NPR's Planet Money put out several podcasts ([1], [2], [3]) on the automation paradox, and the Google car is front and center. So is Air France Flight 447, which shows what happens when automation fails and humans can't properly respond.

Yes, Your New Car Has A 'Black Box.' Where's The Off Switch?
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/03/20/174827589/yes-your-new-car-has-a-black-box-wheres-the-off-switch
March 20, 2013 4:46 PM ET
Martin Kaste

If you're a vehicle owner and happen to have a car accident in the near future (we hope you don't), it's likely the crash details will be recorded. Automotive "black boxes" are now built into more than 90 percent of new cars, and the government is considering making them mandatory.

Dave Wells, a detective at the King County Sheriff's Office in Washington state, specializes in accident reconstruction. That means he's often crouched under steering wheels, looking for the connector that mechanics use to get diagnostic codes. But Wells is using a different kind of tool, and it pulls out a very different kind of information.

Reading a sampling off his laptop, he says, "In the first 10 milliseconds they're up to a half-mile-per-hour acceleration."

This is crash data — moment-by-moment statistics saved from the car's most recent collision. There's speed, acceleration, braking — even information from inside the car.

"There are sensors under your seat," he explains. "So if someone tried to say there was another person in the car at a crash who had run away, this shows at the time of collision there was not."

The Black Box In Court

Put it all together, and you get a detailed picture of the seconds right before and after a crash. The information comes from something called an "event data recorder"; the EDR has become key to insurance investigations, lawsuits and even criminal cases. But that wasn't its original purpose.

"It was never designed for investigative purposes," Wells says. "It was designed for ... motor vehicle safety and keeping people less injured and alive."

EDRs are part of a car's safety system, which has to make split-second decisions, for example, whether to pull seat belts tighter or inflate the airbags. And engineers like to see data from real-world crashes to track how those systems are working. So the EDRs save the crash data, and as safety systems grow more complex, the recorders keep saving more information.

"I don't think you'll find very many Americans who know these devices are in their cars," says Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass. For eight years now, he has been trying to pass legislation giving drivers the right to opt out.

The Option To Turn It Off

"I would argue that this is a device that the average person should be able to turn off if they so desire," he says. "Obviously, if that were an option, some insurance companies might want to take that into consideration in pricing insurance; I understand that. But nonetheless, I think the average person should have that choice."

EDRs have been around for a while, but the issue is surfacing again because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed making the devices mandatory on all new cars, starting next year. That's caught the attention of privacy experts like Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"The amount of data that they record is vast. And it's not capped," Cardozo says. "And I found that to be quite problematic."

Cardozo sees the safety value of the crash data, but he says it's important to set limits — especially as cars' digital storage capacity grows. He also says the feds should clarify who gets the data.

A Gray Area

Some states restrict what insurance companies can do with EDR information and require police to get a warrant before plugging in. But in much of the country, it's still a gray area.

"They could do something like put a notification in the owner's manual saying that the driver has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that black box data. We think that would go a long way toward

You can still fix those cars/devices, it's just a little harder, especially for the people used to the old 'bolt and ratchet' style.

Not legally:

http://www.npr.org/sections/al...
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/d...

Vendor mark up and kickbacks was $1857 per IPad. Furthermore there was a high damage rate because kids didnt treat free stuff well. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed...

This phenomenon is occurring outside of the U.K. as well. You may be blaming the symptom. The problem is that anyone worth their salt can get a much more lucrative job in IT. How do I know this? I train IT instructors for schools.

The pattern is always the same:

1) School needs IT instructor yet nobody applies.
2) School fills position with non-qualified person.
3) I train person.
4) Person earns certifications / programming skills.
5) Person leaves teaching for IT industry.

Not a single student of mine has entered the teaching profession to my knowledge, and I would not recommend the profession as it is often blamed for societies woes. Check with the colleges. Students are not enrolling to become teachers.

So why do I stay? I am at the top of the teaching pay scale with full benefits. Also, if I leave retirement is lost. Finally, my employer lets me work on the side and in the summer.

So to answer the question, "Why aren't there more qualified IT instructors?" The good ones quit.

"The vast majority of routers are manufactured as System on Chip devices, with the radio module and CPU integrated in a single package."

Except the radio module is disabled as the FM radio stations lobbied against it. That's why you can't listen to FM stereo on your smartphone .. ref

So, if Microsoft and their business partners know these things about me: 1) I browse the web with Firefox, mostly hitting slashdot, the onion, amazon.com, and weather underground.
2) I play a lot of video games, especially racing games, action games, and the occational MMO.
3) I use openoffice instead of microsoft word.
4) I buy stuff on amazon, including sci-fi books, printer ink, and other random domestic stuff.
5) My tastes in porn are softcore, and I am a cheap bastard who refuses anything that isn't free.

In what way am I harmed? What are they going to do with this information, clean out my bank account? Burn down my house? Lock me in a cell?

So, if the USG and their business partners know these things about me:

1) My grandpa was Japanese, but my Dad was born in America.
2) As loyal Americans, we filled out the census in 1940.
3) Eat fish instead of beef.
4) Dad owns a small boat and a bit of land on the coast that might be worth something someday.
5) (Okay, we've always been weird about that, even before you nuked my ancestors fair-and-square :)

In what way am I harmed? What are they going to do with this information?

Seriously, dude. This is Slashdot. Code is law. But the converse is also true. Look back 20 years and ask yourself about things that were unacceptable then that are acceptable now -- and vice versa. Now look forward 20 years. You don't know whether the Republicans are correct and the Gay Furry Mafia will take over, banning heterosexual contact without a fursuit, or if the Democrats are correct and Margaret Atwood's dystopian Republic of Gilead will be regarded as a HOWTO.

As we've learned with every breach from the Office of Personnel Management to the Ashley Madison hack, the only way to secure your person is to secure your data, and the only way to secure your data is to keep it away from the fucking cloud in the first place.

*groan*

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/01/...

Planet money had a nice segment on this. Sticker prices are super high and climbing fast but the amount people are actually paying isn't. It is good advertising for the school, and shows how much they want you if they knock $40k off the sticker price.

Yale says 52% off their student are on need base aid and averages to $41,250

And while 480 millions is a huge number it is also 6%, and at the same time they seem to know what they are doing "Yale’s Endowment generated a 20.2 percent return in fiscal 2014".

That's just an absolutely ridiculous take for anyone even remotely familiar with the Knox case. At no point in the proceedings did the Italian justice system live up to the barest minimum standards of justice of the industrialized world.

This is not unique to Italy, although there were quite a few Italian quirks to the whole fiasco. Claiming that a prosecutor being able to successfully throw his weight around to defend the honor of the Italian legal system is somehow an indictment of the rights afforded US citizens is just plain silly.

And no, people successfully abusing their authority when they don't like what someone has to say is not unique to Italy. We just had a case in the US where a judge got pissed that some online commentors dissed her verdict in the Silk Road trial. That happened in a country where constitutional law and several directly related supreme court rulings have shown that this sort of behavior is illegal.

The moral: People with power are human beings. And human beings are capable of doing the wrong thing from time to time.

Surgeons leave tools in patients because they have no process when operating on a patient. Read the Checklist Manifesto sometime and read what the author has to say about best practices in the operating room. Everyone makes mistakes. The process we follow is what allows us to catch those mistakes, and prevent any mistakes from re-occurring.

Since Android phones can be hacked with a simple text, I was going on the presumption the M stood for Mine, as in, "Your phone is mine."

There was a story on NPR recently about farmers replacing all of their crops with even thirstier crops like pistachios because they are incredibly profitable right now, because of the drought. This is irresponsibly short term thinking that is only making the situation worse. But to quote the farmer in the interview, "we're trying to make money here."

I'm sorry, but you're wrong - it was against the law. In 2014, the law was amended slightly to add a time frame required for someone to turn over emails, but data retention laws were still clear at the time. And previous office holders doing bad things in the past doesn't exactly excuse someone else from doing it later.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, you are wrong about that. It was amended after she left office, but the requirements to turn things over were still in place.

And yes, before you say something, I'd be happy to see previous (Republican) Secretaries of State be brought up on charges too, if they also violated the law.

No, you're wrong. In 2014, they amended the law to be more strict, but deleting records was already illegal, as was storing classified information on unauthorized personal servers. See here for a more thorough explanation.

Or pass a law saying that corps are not people, need to act somewhat responsibly and only have rights/privileges specifically granted to them.

Except that was also a decision of the Supreme Court. (You do realize there is no "Corporations Are People Act"? The whole concept is based on a series of Supreme Court rulings).

For those who like reading the (interesting) details: http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/...

Serious change to corporate legal status is likely going to require a Constitutional amendment. So, pretty much impossible. (That said I'd support it - I'm just a realist...)

Ah, but why is so much being spent to get a specific person elected? There must be some massive return on investment for that. There is the rub! If you want to get the money out of politics, you must get the money out of government. The real issue is that paying for lobbying or for candidates has such a large return on investment that it beats stocks or bonds. You remove that ROI and people will stop spending such massive amounts of money on elections. But it won't happen before that.

But there are NO Republicans in the Congress that even remotely care about people.

See? Now you're being blindly partisan again. Democrats say that Republicans don't care about people because Republicans don't like welfare. Republicans say that Democrats don't care about people because Democrats try to trap people in an inter-generational dependency scheme (Democrats just want to rule over you, etc).

Here's an example of a Republican view on how to tackle poverty, for example.

btw, I read this summary of the bill you linked to, and I can't find anything about the FDIC bailing out banks. Are you sure you linked to the right bill?

a) As other have said, this is a myth. All seeds are viable to some degree, specially those that produce seed crops, ie corn, wheat, soy, etc. You can't be sued for planting seeds with a terminal gene, since the child seeds wouldn't be viable.
b) You mean the process of introducing genes from another organism, like what happened to the sweet potato naturally?
c) Again, another myth. Monsanto(and other GMO makers) have not randomly sued poor farmers who didn't know what they were planting. But people who replanted seeds(which directly contradicts a) that they knew were "special". The cases that Monsanto won they showed that the farmer(usually a corporate farmer, not some poor guy who barely grows enough to pay his bills with) knew that he had seed that was protected by Monsanto's IP & that he willfully planted it without paying for it. Not much different than if Gearbox decided not to pay for the use of the Unreal engine.

There are quite a few farmers on the wrong end of Monsanto's legal team that would fucking disagree with you

Reference, please?

The only one I can find involves a Canadian farmer who intentionally obtained and used GMO seed from his neighbor's farm. He damn well knew what he was doing, and still it was ruled that he didn't owe Monsanto any money

>which are a: terminal

No they are not. While Monsanto has teh patent to the terminator gene, they have never used it in a commercial product. Right there I know I can disregard the rest of your post since you have started off with veritably false information.

Read myth #1
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Interesting perspective. Almost entirely wrong, but still interesting.

TL;DR:
1) Monsanto does not produce "sterile" seeds. They do hold a patent on that technology, but have promised not to create seeds using that technology. Yes, they could go back on that promise...but how about we wait until they actually do that before vilifying them?

2) They have never "litigated a farmer to death" over "marked strains are found sprouting in their hedgerows". The one lawsuit that occurred was a result of a farmer who intentionally replanted Monsanto seeds from crops adjoining his neighbors farm (who was using Monsanto seeds), after spraying those same crops with RoundUp, so he knew that was was left was pesticide resistant.

In this case, the amount the farmer (after appeal) had to pay Monsanto was: $0.

http://www.npr.org/sections/co...