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After all, nobody acquires a patent warchest just to invite their competitors to sit around the campfire to sing Kumbaya.

"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." -- Nikola Tesla

The earth's magnetic field changes, and can flip..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/e...

So I guess it just has essentially a map inside of it and "if the strength is so-and-so, we must be here"? So that data would theoretically have to be kept up to date? (The page above says a flip can take hundreds or thousands of years.. but still, seems like there would be fluctuation to make the reading not accurate.)

Amazing so many slashdotters ignore it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
"Deutsche Bank says, that in January 2014 already more than 19 countries are under grid parity for solar power and sees starting a second gold rush for solar power..."

Of course, had we been paying the true cost of fossil fuels up front (pollution costs, health costs, defense costs, democratic costs of centralized wealth, other risks) as well as for nuclear (no insurance company will touch it), then renewables and energy efficiency (including passive solar) would have crowded out everything else in the market in the 1980s. Instead we got the Reagan years.

President Carter was wrong about a lot of things regarding energy policy. He should have focused more on appropriately pricing fossil fuel and nuclear externalities into the market, with any related taxes distributed generally as a basic income. Hard for him to do that with nukes as a previous nuclear engineer perhaps. But he was right when he said:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny."

We took the wrong path to fragmentation and self-interest under Reagan and have gone down that road in the USA for about thirty years. So many have suffered, including in the most recent financial crisis. It is a long hard walk back to community and public interest but we have to do it.

Pope Francis has been writing about this like in his book "The Joy of the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium" which I just got to see what he had to say on the topic of economics and social justice as informed by ethics.

Fortunately, many people have worked at solutions anyway despite this thirty years of widespread pervasive market failure to account for externalities or distribute purchasing power equitably. Thanks to the hard work of engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs along with consumers who purchased expensive products anyway for environmental and practical reasons, now renewables and efficiency are cheaper than fossil fuels in many situation despite the unaccounted for externalities. This is a huge tremendous success but you would not know it reading most of the slashdot comments on this story. Part of the issue is that until grid parity is reached, people still deny it will happen and most do nothing. After grid parity is reached and surpassed, then it is foolish economically to use anything but renewables. Just like humanity did not leave the stone age because we ran out of rocks (but we still use rock for building sometimes), and humanity did not stop using whale oil because we ran out of it, so too we will not stop using fossil fuels because we run out of them (not will we likely stop using liquid chemical carriers for energy, but they may be made by renewables and likely someday fusion).

Granted, we in theory know how to make much safer nuclear plants too. In theory, somehtign like Thorium-based power run by respo

Figure out how to deal with the waste, then we can talk.

Dude, that was solved a quarter century ago.

Until then, you nuke advocates need to be shown for the selfish, short-sighted dumbshits that you are.

It's more the flaming ignoramuses who are the problem as their rigid anti-science stance keeps the light water reactors in operation. Yeah, you - you're responsible for Fukushima-type incidents by lending your political power to those who would seek to prevent progress.

It might be a version of 4. He probably just wants to appear tough on terror and is scared that if/when another attack happens and he was the one to scale back mass surveillance, his party would be blamed. Oh wait, Boston Marathon. Sanctioned mass surveillance and still the intel community dropped the ball.

documentary on how mass surveillance started: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

drug users are in the same class as terrorists and pedophiles?

Yes. Thanks to the War on Some Drugs, the government can steal your property without warrant or due process via Civil Forfeiture: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... since it apparently went over about a dozen slashdotter's heads.

His reference to solitary confinement caught my attention. There was a recent Frontline on solitary confinement. It is scary. It is a modern-day dungeon. These guys are so messed up there is nothing to do but lock them up and throw away the key, which messes them up even further. The convicts certainly aren't blameless to begin with, but we are over-doing it. I non-violent hacker (if that's what "weev" is/was) should not be there.

Well worth the watch if you have the time, gives a very good overview of how the NSA amassed as much power as it has: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Here we go again, with the same idiotic line of thinking that brought us "Blackfish". I wonder if these people are trolling or just really this ignorant.

Activist claim: Working with captive cetaceans endangers trainers.
Reality: Cell tower technicians fall to their death all the time (who knew LTE had to be paid for with blood?). Can we at least agree advancing our understanding of marine mammals and inspiring future generations to give a damn might be worth at least as much blood as being able to Tweet about Miley Cyrus twerking? Also, it's probably possible to be accidentally killed in just about any line of work.

Activist claim: Captive cetaceans would have a better life if freed.
Reality: Not even close. Over 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are killed each as a result of by-catch. Also, pollution.

Activist claim: But think of the animals!
Reality: Yes, think of the animals in the wild, you lazy sorry sack of shit. You know, like the ones in Africa being illegally poached. Oh sure, you might have to travel to a place that's a bit rougher of a neighborhood than Orlando or San Diego to protest that and put yourself at risk of being shot, but think of the animals, amiright?

Activist claim: Seaworld is just an evil profit driven empire, hell bent on the exploitation of animals.
Reality: Humanity has already fucked things up pretty bad for animals in the wild (warning: graphic content). We're past the point of taking a "hands off" approach and hoping things just go back to being peachy keen for our fine feathered and flippered friends. Seaworld exists to educate, inspire and inform people that they need to care about these animals today, or the only place we'll see them tomorrow will be in photographs and videos. They also (unlike most of these armchair activists), actually get off their ass and help animals.

Mark Twain wrote a scathing essay titled "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" which discusses "nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction–some say twenty-two", and mentions 18 in detail. Of course it's all an excuse to bash another author's writing, but there is a germ of truth behind it. Think of variables as "characters" in the "tale" being told (perhaps a user story?). http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/l...

without a work requirement: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ma...
http://www.basicincome.org/bie...

Yes, it is true -- we thought computers, AI, and robots would liberate us, but instead they are being used to spy on us, to micromanage us, and to force us to work like robots or else.

On depression and such, look into vitamin D deficiency, eating more fruits & vegetables, and getting more Omega 3s. Also, look into a treadmill workstation or a standing desk to help with ergonomics and joint pain.

Good luck! Hope you can find some way to make your work more meaningful -- even if just by practicing skills you can use on other projects in your spare time, like perhaps to make free software the world really needs?

Maybe contact this Dutch guy (in Toronto at the moment though) for some good ideas of stuff that really needs doing, including with Squeak:
http://nl.linkedin.com/in/cdeg...

No, they had billions of government dollars to do it a decade ago, and didn't. Just took the money and pocketed it.

I see this point repeated everywhere on various blogs, forums, and especially slashdot. And yet I have never seen any source for this information, reputable or not. I couldn't come up with a google search termto generate anything relevent.

Is there a source on this bold claim? It seems reasonable that it could be true, but I am a lot more skeptical than I used to be.

Part 3

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 2

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 1

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

No, they had billions of government dollars to do it a decade ago, and didn't. Just took the money and pocketed it.

I see this point repeated everywhere on various blogs, forums, and especially slashdot. And yet I have never seen any source for this information, reputable or not. I couldn't come up with a google search termto generate anything relevent.

Is there a source on this bold claim? It seems reasonable that it could be true, but I am a lot more skeptical than I used to be.

Part 3

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 2

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 1

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

No, they had billions of government dollars to do it a decade ago, and didn't. Just took the money and pocketed it.

I see this point repeated everywhere on various blogs, forums, and especially slashdot. And yet I have never seen any source for this information, reputable or not. I couldn't come up with a google search termto generate anything relevent.

Is there a source on this bold claim? It seems reasonable that it could be true, but I am a lot more skeptical than I used to be.

Part 3

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 2

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Part 1

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Press Release | "United States of Secrets": How the Government Came to Spy on Millions of Americans

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

FRONTLINE Presents
United States of Secrets
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Part One: Tuesday, May 13, 2014, at 9 p.m. on PBS
Part Two: Tuesday, May 20, 2014, at 10 p.m. on PBS

(Check local listings)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

pbs.org/frontline/united-states-of-secrets
http://www.facebook.com/frontl...
Twitter: @frontlinepbs #USofSecrets #frontlinepbs
Instagram: @frontlinepbs

Press Release | "United States of Secrets": How the Government Came to Spy on Millions of Americans

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

FRONTLINE Presents
United States of Secrets
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Part One: Tuesday, May 13, 2014, at 9 p.m. on PBS
Part Two: Tuesday, May 20, 2014, at 10 p.m. on PBS

(Check local listings)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

pbs.org/frontline/united-states-of-secrets
http://www.facebook.com/frontl...
Twitter: @frontlinepbs #USofSecrets #frontlinepbs
Instagram: @frontlinepbs

Press Release | "United States of Secrets": How the Government Came to Spy on Millions of Americans

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

FRONTLINE Presents
United States of Secrets
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Part One: Tuesday, May 13, 2014, at 9 p.m. on PBS
Part Two: Tuesday, May 20, 2014, at 10 p.m. on PBS

(Check local listings)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

pbs.org/frontline/united-states-of-secrets
http://www.facebook.com/frontl...
Twitter: @frontlinepbs #USofSecrets #frontlinepbs
Instagram: @frontlinepbs

Where you outlaws get those guns? Oh from good guys in states where it is legal to sell them in bulk.

In the U.S., they get them from friends who buy them in proxy "straw purchases", or from corrupt gun dealers.

But if you think that getting rid of these sources is possible and would stop bad guys from getting guns, nope; in the Philippines and Australia and India bad guys get guns from back alley gunsmiths. And these are not just zip guns, some of them are high quality firearms.

Guns just are not hard to make. The Nazis couldn't keep resistance movements from churning out submachine guns in clandestine factories.

If we magically made all guns in the U.S. disappear and sealed the borders so none could get in, your local meth lab would open up a metalworking annex and become a one-shop shop for crime. Only ordinary citizens -- the folks who are unlikely to shoot people anyway -- would be disarmed.

FAA has no jurisdiction over small commercial drones, judge rules A few things are problematic. One is the FAA's idea that a "model aircraft" and "drone" are the same thing, except the former is private use and the latter is commercial use. I think that's absurd. They should distinguish based on their momentum (mass times speed) because that's how people get hurt. The things that won't hurt people should operate only below 1000' AGL, and the things that do hurt people should operate only above 1000' AGL except when taking off or landing. The other thing it ought to be based on is how autonomous it is. If it's always operated within direct visual range of a human, by remote control, then at least historically that's a model aircraft. And if it's something that can accept a program to fly somewhere (warehouse in Queens to a landing pad on top of a building in lower Manhattan) then that's a drone. And I don't see why a private flight vs a commercial flight would differ when it comes to the categorization of the aircraft. Commercial operations, however, just like in pilot certification, should require more experience and training on the part of the operator. So the FAA is probably going to have to certify operators for at least commercial drone flight operations.

The reality is, the number of stupid people with more money than sense is what's going to dictate the amount of regulation

Anyway, the judge merely rejected the FAA's claims because the FAA has no regulations for model airplanes or drones. Not because they don't have the authority to create such regulation.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has dismissed the Federal Aviation Administration’s only fine against a commercial drone user on the grounds that the small drone was no different than a model aircraft, a decision that appears to undermine the agency’s power to keep a burgeoning civilian drone industry out of the skies.

Patrick Geraghty, a National Transportation Safety Board administrative law judge, said in his order dismissing the $10,000 fine that the FAA has no regulations governing model aircraft flights or for classifying model aircraft as an unmanned aircraft.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has dismissed the Federal Aviation Administration’s only fine against a commercial drone user on the grounds that the small drone was no different than a model aircraft, a decision that appears to undermine the agency’s power to keep a burgeoning civilian drone industry out of the skies.

Patrick Geraghty, a National Transportation Safety Board administrative law judge, said in his order dismissing the $10,000 fine that the FAA has no regulations governing model aircraft flights or for classifying model aircraft as an unmanned aircraft.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...

And also relevant is the "Death by Fire" arson episode Frontline did, specifically about the evidence in Cameron Todd Willingham's case.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

But he said, "It doesn't matter what people say, you can't let yourself catch on fire without trying to get away. And you can sit and say every day, I would burn up before I let my kids die in a fire," he said, "it's not humanly possible."

He also left his children to burn to death in a house fire, thinking only about saving his own ass. So, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him. If my daughter was in a burning house, I would run into it to save her, even at the threat of my own life.

You've never been near a major fire. It's not the abstract "threat" of possible death that stops you... It's the insane heat, guaranteed 3rd degree burns over your entire body in seconds even several feet away from the flames if you don't have fire fighter's protective gear, that most people can't possibly imagine until they've been up-close and personal with it.

Pour gasoline over your entire body, and light yourself on fire. Then spend two minutes doing any mundane task, without making any move to extinguish the fire and your melting skin the whole time. That's what running into a burning building is like. If you can't successfully overcome the urge to extinguish yourself while engulfed in flames, you wouldn't be able to overcome your body's overwhelming instinct to stops you dead in your tracks from running into a house fire. It's not like the movies.

saving his own ass. So, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him.

That's a pretty fucked-up view. While we all hope to be macho and heroic when it really matters, a guy falling just a bit short, sure as hell doesn't deserve to be killed for it.

But how did they never test those theories before? Not just that local fire department, but at several fire departments all across the country, years earlier, and publish the findings so everyone else would know they were wrong in so many ways. I know they do controlled burns, so why didn't they know for sure the difference in how glass crazes and cracks from slow or fast fires? Or how fire leaves marks on the floor similar to having gasoline poured on the floor and lit?

This entire topic... the problem with forensic "science," was explained extremely well two years ago by Frontline, Episode "The Real CSI". Viewable on their website:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

SPOILER: The upshot is, forensics aren't a science. They were conceived and perpetuated by law enforcement agencies, and have NO theoretical basis, nor standards for the procedures, nor the individuals who are certified as experts. Even something basic like finger prints aren't unique at all, everyone always just assumed they were.

Answer this question: Where were the GOA when Democrats were murdering blacks in the south and passing "gun control" laws to keep them disarmed? It was the NRA (founded in 1871 shortly after the civil war) that helped black men in the south to arm themselves to defend themselves and their families from the Klan. Oh, I KNOW that the democrats who run politifact don't like this and have tried hard to debunk this stuff (go there and read their "debunking"). Politifact attacks a specific claim that the NRA was founded by religious people to help blacks (and then finding no evidence either way on the religiosity claim or the purpose-of-founding claim, pronounces the whole concept "preposterous" - an unsubstantiated judgement call in itself) The politifact crew appears to hope that nobody notices they have no answer to the actual meat of the matter: that it's a historical fact that post-slavery Democrats (both in and out of the Klan) implented the so-called "black codes" in the south which included bans on black people owning guns - and the further fact that those Democrats formed posse-like groups and went around grabbing guns from blacks, and the NRA was on the side of blacks having the right to keep and bear arms.

The NRA gets most of its money, grassroots support (and voters who vote) from individual American gun owners NOT a few gun makers. GOA can keep pretending to be the top 2nd Amendment edvocates, but they seem (to me) to spend as much time going after the NRA as after the gun grabbers - NOT an effective strategy.

A couple historical notes for those who have been brainwashed about the whole Republican vs Democrat thing in reguards to the Klan, and black American gun rights:

"What is the President's plan? Is it to leave them to the Black Codes? Is it to call them free, thereby exasperating the late masters, and then suffer those masters unchecked to forbid them to own property, to bear arms, to testify, and to enjoy any of the rights of freedom?" - Harper's Weekly, 14 Apr 1866

"The significant fact in all this lawlessness and terror is that it is chiefly political. The masked blow of the Ku-Klux always falls upon some loyal man, black or white, and always upon a Republican. Democrats are unharmed. It is not a terror for those who attempted to destroy the government during the war, but for those who sustained it. The conclusion is irresistible that it is an organization of Democrats. This fact is made still more unquestionable by the denials and sneers of Northern Democrats. They call it rawhead and bloody-bones, a bugaboo of scared radicals, and a device invented to authorize military coercion of Democratic districts. But if every victim in the Southern States who is taken from his home and scourged, or mangled, or murdered were a Democrat instead of a Republican, how the land would ring with the cry that a radical Administration abandoned innocent citizens to the tender mercies of savages!" - Harper's Weekly, 4 Nov 1871

If we can make alternative energy work, that is.

Oil is... it's great, but there's a high cost, mainly air pollution which may cause autism and heart disease among other problems.

The spills are disasters which cause ongoing problems for decades if not longer.

In addition, the scarcity of the resource makes future wars, politics, etc. inevitable.

I'm looking for one of those reactor-type-devices from the end of "Back to the Future" that can deconstruct ordinary household waste and produce high amounts of energy. Were I President of the ol' USA, I'd slam resources into that before anything else but space exploration.

If your point is so proved and plain, why hide as AC?

Not the A/C, but this is why, on top of the point that you've utterly failed to disprove his point.

Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?

Point of order: No one is asking Mann to lay out his entire life - just the portion of it that we the taxpayers paid for, and the portion that actual science (at least should) demand. ...got any other arguments?

Really what has been happening to children in the last 50 years or so is an ascending curve of influences, combining to create a new "First World Race"(so to speak).
The effects of these influences have been studied and can be easily found on this "internet library".

Here are a few:
1. The increased intake of Sugar in the American diet.
2. The ill affects of Multi-Tasking
3. How the overuse of consumer electronics is ruining sleep patterns
4. Kids don't play outside as much or at all

So, in effect, we have a new generation that is:
less likely to play outside, interact/understand/empathize with the natural world, can't remember as much due to being able to look things up instantly online, is more likely to display symptoms of ADD/ADHD due to over-intake of sugar and ADD/ADHD drugs, has a much shorter attention span than previous generations, etc, etc.

None of this is any sort of conspiracy, but rather is due to the way technology and our modern world has "evolved" in the last half century.

To me one of the interesting things to note here is that less affluent children don't display these issues because they don't come from families who can afford the ADD-Constantly Connected-Sugar Ridden lifestyle that is now the norm in the middle and upper classes in the First World.

We are now and will continue seeing the affects of this "evolution".

I realize there is nothing I can say which will make you pull your head out of your ideological corner, but you have gone from claiming single payer systems have no competition to maybe they do but they are worthless and expensive to maybe they're ok, but you don't want to pay for mine. So let's take the next logical step and have medicare for all. That way we will all be paying and all be getting the benefit. It should have the added advantage of slowing the rate of growth of medical costs, since the US is the only OECD country with does not have some kind of government provided health care for all residents and it costs us 50% more than the next most expensive country for generally lower quality healthcare. Here are some links for you to consider.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/...

http://www.medicareforall.org/...

But the causes of autism are complex and poorly understood. If one identical twin is autistic, the other is likely to be, but not always.

There are cases of autism where one twin has severe autism but the other does not. So it's not 100% genetic.

This is Bridget. She passes her day running her fingers across her computer screen. Locked in her own world, she has spent the past 13 years drifting apart from her identical twin sister, Jenna.

"A study out of McGill University sought to examine historical temperature data going back .00001% of the earth's total age in order to determine the likelihood that global warming was caused by natural fluctuations in the earth's climate. The study concluded there was less than a 1% chance the warming could be attributed to simple fluctuations."

Interesting what happens when you plug correct data into the report. They used a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments from the last one ten-thousandth of a percent of the earths age to show they are right. even more interesting is over half of that about was the period of that if they were correct was be considered affected. So to be succinct they fudged the numbers. Its laughable that

“This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers,” Lovejoy says. “Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”

when he offers a study that only reviews .00001% of the earth's age. Thats like basing the temperature of a building over the last year on a single hour long visit. I assume Lovejoy couldn't get access to the antarctic core samples retrieved in 2003 that are 3/4 of a million years old. http://www.newscientist.com/ar... http://www.rmtrr.org/oldlist.h... talks about the oldest tree rings which date back to 300 BC almost all are in California. Even more amusing is Sister university UC Berkeley has ancient sediments at the bottom of Northern California’s Clear Lake they pulled in 2012. This is among thousands pulled up in the last 30 yrs. So when someone actually offers the same info from the last .01% of the earths age, I'll listen. That at least covers an ice age and several geologic periods. All that will happen is people who actual degrees in climatology will tear his paper apart. But at least its nice to know there are people falsifying climate data just like there are people doing the same to fossils http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/da... https://tumblehomelearning.com...

Alexander Graham Bell's central interest of his life was deaf education or that he was one of the most prominent proponents of oralism in the United States... After emigrating from England to Canada in 1870 Bell began to teach speech to deaf students using a universal alphabet invented by his father called "Visible Speech." In 1872 he opened a school in Boston to train teachers of deaf children.

  Bell's second chief interest was the study of heredity and animal breeding, - you can see where this is headed...
----
  Bell warned of a "great calamity" facing the nation: deaf people were forming clubs, socializing with one another and, consequently, marrying other deaf people. The creation of a "deaf race" that yearly would grow larger and more insular was underway. Bell noted that "a special language adapted for the use of such a race" already was in existence, "a language as different from English as French or German or Russian." Some eugenicists called for legislation outlawing intermarriage by deaf people http://www.pbs.org/weta/throug...

Found that by accident. I was searching for mass killings of the deaf; due to the mentioning that "the deaf can't have faith" - I would assume the Catholics alone would have a history of it.

Only came across the Holocaust where they were treated very badly (considering).

Could be the deaf weren't found in large numbers in the past.

Trying to race automation to the cost bottom is an exercise in futility; it's a race humans will not win. The only ones that benefit from it are the employers that get cheaper labour faster as a result.

Not only the employers. Consumers also benefit from the lower prices resulting from cheaper costs of production.

Not when they're all unemployed and cannot affor products at any price. That's like offering more incomed tax deductions to people who don't make enough money to be taxable in the first place.

  Basically the only ones that are worse off are those people who did the jobs that are now automated. That's only in the short-run since increased production always ends up leading to new jobs, be it in that industry in other capacities or in other industries that wouldn't have existed otherwise (consider whether we'd ever have something like a computer industry if 90% of the population were still farmers as in 1862).

People are inordinately fond of projecting things in straight-line fashion. Not everything follows straight lines or even simple curves.

Just because "it always worked that way" doesn't mean that it always will.

What do you mean by breeders?

He means fast breeder reactors. Start here.

Trying to race automation to the cost bottom is an exercise in futility; it's a race humans will not win. The only ones that benefit from it are the employers that get cheaper labour faster as a result.

Not only the employers. Consumers also benefit from the lower prices resulting from cheaper costs of production. Basically the only ones that are worse off are those people who did the jobs that are now automated. That's only in the short-run since increased production always ends up leading to new jobs, be it in that industry in other capacities or in other industries that wouldn't have existed otherwise (consider whether we'd ever have something like a computer industry if 90% of the population were still farmers as in 1862).

are the only real conspiracy theory in the medical industry:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...

How can they say with a straight face that the Crimea can't secede, when they themselves set a precedent for a local population to secede from a country?

Milosevic gave Kosovars the reason — and need — to secede, when he commenced ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The same sort of atrocities are being constantly alleged by Russian propaganda to be happening in Ukraine, except — unlike in Kosovo — they aren't real. Putin is playing your kind like a violin.

One of the mistakes of today's "golden billion" (that's you and me) is that the days of the Big Lie are over...

Yes they worry about it, and for good reason.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...

Cholera, typhoid, shigellosis, Ecoli, are just a few of the major medical problems you can get from poor sanitary conditions and if untreated which may be difficult in times of a disaster, you could die from it.

I'm not aware of how that might be absurd.. Unless I misunderstood the meaning of your post.

NSA_backdoor_trojan:

AMD processors were found to have similar vulnerabilities.

Mascarading as a debug mode, all hardware and thus software security features can be bypassed. Essentially allowing both stealth software operation, bypassing root and administrator authentication restrictions, and more. Intel is known to have similar functionality, but its not publically disclosed yet.. http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

NSA compiled and uses all these exploits whether it was installed there for them or not.

Windows also has NSAKEY installed and all vulnerabilities and the source code of Windows is turned over to the NSA before the things can be patched, allowing NSA to locate and exploit vulnerabilities for hacking us and everyone else. http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

RSA also put in exploits so SSL / Etc would be vulnerable to their attack, as the leaks indicated. http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

Stuxnet virus was created by NSA. http://rt.com/news/snowden-nsa...

NSA and GCHQ are recording us masturbating. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

FBI records us even when our devices are powered off. http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

NSA is ceiling cat watching us masturbate with space capability and electron imaging/radar systems. They are recording all calls and saving the content, not just metadata. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb... and http://youtu.be/d6m1XbWOfVk

NSA has Thought Amplifier and Mind Interface (patented by Robert Malech in 1974, deployed in all radar in 1976), aka Remote Neural Monitoring first disclosed in Nexus Magazine in 1996 by John St Claire Akwei. Backed up today by Dr. Robert Duncan who helped invented these weapons, being used to attack and control us. http://www.oregonstatehospital... http://www.oregonstatehospital...

TAO hacking unit, NSA: http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Obama is raping and murdering and torturing thousands of his own citizens, committing acts of Genocide worse than any dictator ever before. He has killed his own people and covered it up. http://www.obamasweapon.com/

Why not microwave transmission? Line of sight should be relatively easy to deal with over there. Not a lot of buildings in the way.

Clouds, snow?

Clouds are much higher than you'd need to build the towers for LoS.

Precipitation isn't an issue either. Antarctica gets only 6.5 inches of precipitation a year, almost all of it snow. The air is also very dry. Remember - Antarctica is a desert. You would need only a very small amount of battery capacity at each endpoint to handle interruptions due to weather.

It's not a question of precipitation, but wind... (http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/pdf/2508_warnings_02.pdf)... the white stuff is already there, ready to be blown around.

Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the mansion and it's completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture, but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they're momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of—and couldn't exist without—the many months of stumbling around in the dark that proceed them.

"Under current law, only applicants for U.S. citizenship, not those applying for green cards, must prove English proficiency."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...

Maybe I was confused. I was pretty certain that I had to pass a proficiency test when I applied for a green card 25 years ago, but maybe it was for the citizenship, or maybe the law changed since then, or maybe it was just a policy of the US Immigration Services at the time.

Apparently English proficiency was a provision to the ill-fated immigration reform bill that was put together by a bi-partisan group last year. In my opinion, that would be a good thing. US born kids have to go to school (or be home-schooled) and therefore have to possess at least a minimum of English proficiency by the time they turn 18 (I will readily admit that in some cases it is really minimum.) I see little reason for not asking the same from immigrants.

You can thank places like University of Phoenix and Devry for this.

Laugh if you will, at people's gullibility, and then read up on the Radithor patent medicine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).

Of course it's well known that the food industry isn't worried about health effects of what it sells. They're happy to simply put in whatever ingredients make a product sell. Just look at all the stuff that contains sugar (often disguised as "corn syrup" to avoid having to print the word "sugar" on the label).

And "naturally risen" meat isn't all bull either (pardon the pun). It's because standard commercial beef is quite likely to contain antibiotics (see e.g. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/... ). The reason is of course that feeding animals antibiotics raises production, so it's cost-effective.

It's also grossly irresponsible and really should be banned on the spot. Why? Serving up diluted amounts of antibiotics ensures (through natural selection) that those bacteria that survive the initial onslaught are immune to those same antibiotics. And where do those bacteria and residual antibiotics end up? Well ... in animal poop and from there in surface waters, sewers and oceans. And via the slaughterhouse (if they're a teensy bit careless about separating out intestines in the thousands of carcasses they process each day) in your steak.

Given that those dirty little critters actually exchange pieces of DNA, it's easy to see how whole families of bacteria that live in sewers, surface waters and seas can gain resistance to antibiotics. Which is why we're now facing a crisis with perfectly ordinary bacteria being hard to treat when they cause an infection (just Google for MRSA). Or being even being impossible to treat, so that people with a weak immune system (elderly, post-surgery patients) die from infections that had stopped being a threat when antibiotics were discovered some 70 years ago.

Of course the industry resists. They're not responsible for public health or MRSA, they're responsible for their own bottom line (see e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/story/... ). Which is why the FDA is embarking on a campaign of voluntary reductions.

Reading labels (if you can be bothered) gives you a lot of information you need to make sensible choices in what you eat. That's why we have food labeling regulations (which incidentally are severely criticised by some libertarians as "undue interference with the markets").

Even then there's little defence against people who seek solace in bogus science. But it's better to light a candle ... etc. One very interesting site I have found that debunks various "power" food additives is this one ( http://www.ergo-log.com/ ). They genuinely impressed me by truthfully and insightfully reporting on scientific publications concerning food supplements. They know their stuff, both from a (bio)chemical point of view and from a statistical (and experimental design) point of view. Not a light read, but Recommended.

Why is it postmodern technology? Because it deconstructs the cells? ;-)

Nah, 'cause it was barely 'modern' six years ago when PBS did a special on the process.

Horse Shoe crabs area already a depleted resource as they have been used as cheap bait for fishermen for years. The impact being subsequent affects to migratory birds who feast on there eggs. I don't think the pharmacological community have a choice but to treat these crustaceans with the respect due

http://www.endangeredspeciesin...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature...

To make that easier, encourage the unorganized militia to self-train and equip.

Your whole idea is contrary to the goals of the elite. They don't want unbrainwashed individuals learning how to kill. That doesn't work for them at all. Also, we'd have to stop fattening America if you want those people to be able to serve as soldiers without being forced onto a food and exercise plan.

This, of course, is a design closer to that which was intended by the authors of the US Constitution.

And that's why the traitorous scum running the country today isn't interested in your ideas.

We tried that, it didn't go so well.

That's exactly what they did before they had government protection. Look up the Homestead Strike.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Here is a heartwarming story. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...