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Its [sic] not OK to attack the character of an individual when they are skeptical of your conclusions.

But it's OK to attack the character of an individual when they are skeptical of the facts.

Re: "There was malware installed to get more information than just the IP."
The press has more details on the word "software":
http://gizmodo.com/fbi-plants-...
"....-brand malware would be planted on his computer, allowing the Agency to ultimately nab the purported perpetrator. "
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut... (OCT. 28 2014)
"...using a phony—and malware-laced..."
http://www.theguardian.com/com... (29 October 2014)
"...all to deliver malware to a suspect in a criminal case.." http://rt.com/usa/200131-seatt... ( October 28, 2014)
"... was made possible with the use of a so-called “Computer & Internet Protocol Address Verifier” program, or CIPAV, that had been remotely installed on the
individual’s machine to collect and then communicate to the authorities the user-specific information that eventually identified the suspect."

No, that would be a red herring that is totally unrelated to this issue.

Totally unrelated? Do you read things, or do you just see a headline, and quickly retreat to your political handlers to see what your opinion is?

It is exactly related to the issue, because........... it exactly IS the issue. That is why they were denied the funds. A religious test as a requirement for employment. Even Kentucky doesn't want that.

Here's the link:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Since that probably isn't allowed for you to read, allow me to give a little info from the page:

The trouble began when the park, officially called Ark Encounter, listed its employment opportunities in August. Nestled among the requirements for all job applicants were three troubling obligatory documents: “Salvation testimony,” “Creation belief statement,” and a “Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG statement of faith.” (AiG is Answers in Genesis, Ham’s ministry and Ark Encounter’s parent company.) These first two requirements are problematic enough: The park is quite openly instructing all applicants to pledge that they personally believe in creationist Christianity. If an applicant has other beliefs, her application to Ark Encounter isn’t welcome.

But the third requirement is far, far worse. AiG’s statement of faith is no mere loyalty oath: It’s a four-part theological declaration mandating that all signatories accept dozens of fundamentalist Christian principles. Employees at Ark Encounter don’t just have to believe in God; they have to believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit, Satan (as “the personal spiritual adversary of both God and mankind”), Adam and Eve, “the Great Flood of Genesis,” a 6,000-year-old Earth, and the eternal damnation of “those who do not believe in Christ.” All employees must follow “the duty of Christians” and attend “a local Bible believing church.” Just for good measure, employees must oppose abortion, euthanasia, gay rights, and trans rights.

And that, kind sir, is exactly why they were denied funding.

People are way too willing to believe the hype; the Google driverless car is basically vaporware. Google engineers were recently interviewed for a piece on Slate.com. It was a remarkably well-written article on a technical level that describes the actual limitations of the technology. In short, it is not really autonomous at all, it follows a programmed route with some ability to detect obstacles. For example, the technology won't even observe traffic lights if they are absent from it's internal pre-programmed map. So forget about any compatibility with construction areas with temporary signals.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.

From the article, quoting Ms. Attkisson:

It was described to me by the computer experts I consulted with afterwards that that was purely an attempt to let me know that they could do that, that they were watching, that they were in my computer.

She's not a computer expert and this part of the story I would want more proof before I buy it. I'd like to know who looked at her computer: what exactly this person's qualifications were and what exactly this person found.

She said that the malware found on her laptop was commonly used by the government... what was it exactly? Is there any malware in the world that is effective but isn't used by anyone except U.S. government agencies? From the article:

Attkisson says the source, who's "connected to government three-letter agencies," told her the computer was hacked into by "a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that's proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency."

Slashdot collectively knows a lot about computers. Has anyone heard of spyware that matches the above description?

If I were a government spook and I was trying to crack a reporter's computer, I would use an off-the-shelf exploit, not something that pointed straight back at the government. I presume that computer spooks know where the black-hat marketplaces are, and thus where to buy new cracks as they go up for sale.

As for the classified documents, again I want more evidence. She should have gone to the FBI immediately with those documents if they really were classified. On the one hand that seems like a far-fetched thing, but on the other hand, the current Presidential administration is the first administration ever to prosecute journalists as spies.

P.S. Ms. Attkisson's first-hand stories about her bosses spiking stories, White House staff yelling at her for not being "reasonable", and all the rest of it are completely plausible to me (and fall within her area of expertise).

We already have 18 years of no warming

The last 6 months were the warmest on record for the NOAA and the GISTEMP data sets, so I think that the hiatus may have finished.

Throughout that time there was warming, it's just that the oceans and cryosphere have seen more warming than the global mean surface temperature.

along with every other of their claims being wrong.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas?

Sea level is rising?

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Either way, with a simple majority vote, they could change that too. Thats all they had to change the rules last time even if it was limited to judicial nominies.

Oh, and slate isn't exactly a conservative site last time i checked. But i see they are trying to be less liberal so go figure.

These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.

you also shouldn't care about us people trying to effect social and political changes.

We're not supposed to care about your deliberate interference, but you're allowed to care about the choices women make, because society got in their heads and made them make the wrong choices?

Normally I don't care. But people like you are not trying to eliminate the sexism (probably because your assertions of it are vastly overstated), but trying to change the nature of the field to make it more friendly to stereotypes about women, without any consideration as to whether these changes will actually improve the field and the skillset of CS graduates.

Read this article about one presumably successful effort.

And let's look at the assumptions these efforts make, and their solutions.

"The first class you take is a weed-out class, and they are shocked by the fact they don't get any women at the end."

CS is too hard for women because, despite growing up with computers, they never learned how to program before. Lighten the intro courses to be less "weed out".

"Know-it-alls in any section are told to cool it so no one is intimidated."

Women are intimidated by knowledge and enthusiasm. Don't show off. It's too... manly.

"Along with changes to the introductory courses, Mudd works hard to keep women interested in the field."

Women need to be pandered to to keep them interested.

"Women and men work through problems in very different ways"

Women's brains are different. But still, ignore those troglodytes who said women are naturally less inclined to be interested in abstract machines.

"They bemoaned middle and high school math teachers who didn't engage or inspire."

More pandering is the solution. Nevermind the boys who never got that encouragement either. (High school CS curriculum was a joke twenty years ago, and it still is.)

Is coddling women going to make them better programmers? Who knows, maybe it will. But don't pretend you aren't coddling them.

You do know it turns out that they didn't right?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

I wonder how long it will take someone to turn this into a secondary (and insecure) microphone. It's already been done with Android's gyroscope.

For some reason, according to Wired, SJSU is a major feeder for Apple and feeds to Yahoo as well, but not so much to other tech companies. Not sure why, though my guess would be there's a "critical mass" of SJSU alums at Apple.

You gotta vote for people who will make it so

Oh, I am voting for such people alright. But the last couple of elections I was overruled by the inane majority, who consider the color of a candidate's skin more important, than his qualifications.

Our "affirmative action" President plays golf with big cable CEO(s), and the rest of his party is in the big media's pocket as well.

Meanwhile, the rank-and-file partisans are encouraged to hate the Kochs brothers...

Do you honestly believe that someone would be allowed to run for president of the USA who wasn't in big media's pocket?

You gotta vote for people who will make it so

Oh, I am voting for such people alright. But the last couple of elections I was overruled by the inane majority, who consider the color of a candidate's skin more important, than his qualifications.

Our "affirmative action" President plays golf with big cable CEO(s), and the rest of his party is in the big media's pocket as well.

Meanwhile, the rank-and-file partisans are encouraged to hate the Kochs brothers...

The U.S. Navy has been researching ways to achieve LENR using nickel for many years now. Do you think the Navy is crazy?

Sometimes, yes. Read the story of "polywater":
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Over a hundred papers that turned out to be contamination.

Do you think it's crazy that a university professor might have discovered a way to do it?

Yes, because he refuses to allow normal scientific experiments and analysis. And if it actually worked, then he would be a very rich man generating energy from nothing.

The problem with this brand of feminism is that it promotes the creation and expansion of 'female spaces', while telling men it's not ok for them to have theirs, or that they have to 'tolerate' the inclusion of women until they become a large percentage, which effectively kills it. There's a reason military service (until recently thanks to the same shitty politics) was strictly regimented: Coed group dynamics trigger different behavior in both sexes. It's apparently ok for women to do this everywhere:all female run companies, clubs, scholarships, hell, there's even a push to force fraternities to include women. This of course ruins the whole point of having both fraternities and sororities in the first place.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
I'd link the hartford courant article but it's behind a paywall.

Life isn't fair. I'm sure there are plenty of CS sorts, here, who would be 'outliers' in other fields' social circles, and if they wanted in, they'd have to initially overcompensate by showing off elite skill in order to earn respect. Humans are naturally tribal. They organize themselves, by sex, by race, by culture, by trade, and by interest, and do so willingly. They prefer it. By all means, as an individual or as a group, mix it up if you want, but, as outliers, don't be surprised if you're met with hostility at times when trying to bring others in or imposing yourself on them. As far as the sexes go, with the one glaring exception of sexual pairing (which has its own separate dynamics), the two different spheres of mentality have their own spaces whose dynamics become less compatible as the stakes go up. Men and women work and think differently and that is due to radical differences in biology. They both need and deserve their spaces. For the same reason it is childish to think race ends with skin color because it ignores cultural differences, it is childish to think that men and women are the same except they have different genitals, and that any differences in performance are due to 'socially constructed' oppression. This 1970s era feminist mentality is not applicable in today's society, at least in western culture.

Greenpeace does not oppose GMO crops

They destroy research and lie about lifesaving GMOs. What do you call the destruction of scientific research? There's a reason I referred to the as book burning thugs. These people actually think destroying basic research is a good thing.

Greenpeace has concerns about the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops

No they don't. Thousands of varieties of crops co-exist just fine with the proper seed saving techniques. A transgene does not change that. To give an example in some GMO crops, yellow flesh is dominant over red flesh in papaya, and yellow kernels are dominant over white in corn, yet there is still white corn and red papaya. Why is it then that these varieties can co-exist? Proper seed saving techniques. The transgenes operate on the exact same principles, it's just that no one makes a fuss until genetic engineering is involved and Greenpeace relies on you not understanding the basics principles and understanding the background context of seed saving to spread that excuse. They are lying to you.

calls for more precautionary research and monitoring of GMO's before widespread adoption.

The precautionary principle is idiocy. It says that unless you can prove something will not happen, you do nothing. Imagine if I tried to ban vaccines or wifi on the same principles, demanding that someone prove they will not, through a currently unknown mechanism, cause autism in X+1 years, demanding that you prove a negative. How foolish would it be to say that? Why does that suddenly make sense once GMOs are involved? This precautionary principle excuse is the agricultural equivalent of Russell's teapot. I suggest you read Carl Sagan's Dragon in my Garage analogy to understand why the precautionary principle is completely irrational. GMOs are extensively studied. A rational risk assessment would say there is nothing wrong with using them.

It might be helpful to search out their position papers on these things

Okay. Here they say, quote: "We continue to work with governments to get rid of genetic engineering once and for all." Here they say: "Greenpeace has been an advocate for keeping Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) out of our food supply and encouraging consumers to only buy foods that are GMO-free." They use lots of fearmongering imagery. That's not anti-GMO? The hell it isn't. Greenpeace is one of the biggest anti-GMO organizations out there, they've got no science to back them, and their work has helped hold my field back by at least a decade and a half, as well as contributed to hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and climate change.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

California almond farms use 1.1 TRILLION gallons of water per year.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/09/02/global_warming_cryosat_observations_show_rapid_greenland_antarctic_ice_loss.html

Actually no. You completely misstated it.

The scientific viewpoint is that "No single weather event can be definitively tied to climate change", because the causal link has not yet been made definitively. But at the same time, weather events are happening more often. The phrase is "“statistically speaking, we’re seeing more extreme weather events, getting even more extreme over time”. And weather "seasons" are changing in duration; some starting earlier and lasting longer, others starting later and ending sooner.

But that could be changing now too, as a new study says to have found something in the wake of the polar vortex:

A paper just came out by a team of climatologists possibly linking global warming to these extreme weather events. It’s based on an idea that’s been around a while, but hadn't been verified. Now we’re seeing evidence for it.

The key to this is what’s called a “blocking pattern”, where a high-pressure system becomes immobile, squatting over a specific spot. Under the high-pressure spot, this can bring long, grueling heat waves that don’t go away for days or weeks. On the edges it can bring a deluge of rain, as moist air from the south is brought up to meet colder air coming down from the north. That’s what Detroit and New York just went through.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

The majority of the gamers who wrote Intel agree with you. In fact, the entire furore over the past month seems to have cemented the idea of "gamer" as a inclusive, universal identity into the collective mind of the gaming community across the web.

However, that was not the argument the Gamasutra and other articles made. The gaming press collectively declared that "Gamers were dead", that gaming as a descriptor was obsolete, that the "identity was dead", or referred only to a obsolete subset of exclusionary, female unfriendly, "selfish", "conservative", "tribalistic", and -- implied by the accompanying stock images -- fat angry unkempt adult males.

Meanwhile, games companies, marketing firms and online game fansites were still actively using the term to refer to everyone who, well, plays games. Even Forbes magazine was shaking its head in disbelief at the game media's attack on its own consumers. People are now asking how much damage recent controversies may have done to the public image of the gaming industry.

A $80 billion dollar industry which had achieved almost universal consumer acceptance and success may have just been torpedoed as a woman-hating "Cathedral of Misogyny" by its own press publications. Intel is cutting its losses before the conflagration spreads to the rest of tech.

From the king of ignorant fucksticks:

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." -- Eric Schmidt

And yet, even G+ repealed it's real name policy.

For anyone more interested in the subject of moment magnitude and Richter scale I suggest that you read Is the Richter Scale Obsolete?.

For practical purposes it's the effects at ground level that are important anyway.

"Especially when it doesn't perpetuate 'gates' scandals for each iPhone release for a brand that I dislike.". FTFY...

AntennaGate. Watergate. ScuffGate. MapsGate. It would be amusing if it wasn't so embarrassing to see how each 'side' falls over themselves to do this each release cycle.

The actual number of people who reported a problem to Apple? 9.

BendGate

Streisand Effect

Evidently enough people had similar complaints across many brands - enough to warrant a potential class action lawsuit:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The court decided against hearing the case, but there were over 23,000 complaints for one manufacturer. That tells me there is something wrong with the design of many HE machines.

No warming for 18 years? Then how could we have just had the warmest summer ever recorded with continued melting of ice worldwide and rising sea levels? I think this was all predicted by the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, and is now being observed. If we see the warming stop, and the melting and sea level rise slow significantly, then we can talk about rethinking the hypothesis. Let me know when that happens.

"Continued melting of ice worldwide"?

WRONG!!!!!!>

Don't you hate it when reality intrudes?

Oops!

...

“All the climate models say it should be going down and it’s actually going up, and it’s making news,”

...

Wait? The models say Antarctic ice should be shrinking, yet it's GROWING!?!?!?!

Get this - THE MODELS ARE WRONG.

No warming for 18 years? Then how could we have just had the warmest summer ever recorded with continued melting of ice worldwide and rising sea levels? I think this was all predicted by the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, and is now being observed. If we see the warming stop, and the melting and sea level rise slow significantly, then we can talk about rethinking the hypothesis. Let me know when that happens.

We wouldn't have this problem if we filed our taxes online. Turbotax has prevented that, because they want to charge us for doing what the government could do free, as it does in less corrupt countries.

We've discussed this on Slashdot before. It's like keeping marijuana illegal because the prison guards' unions want to keep their jobs.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon...
The Sleazy PR Campaign to Prevent the IRS From Making Your Taxes Simpler
By Jordan Weissmann
Slate
April 14 2014 3:41 PM

Theoretically, it should be far easier for Americans with simple finances to file their tax returns. Instead of making tax filers putz around W-2s and tax prep software, the IRS could electronically prepopulate their paperwork with the information it already receives from banks and employers, and tell filers how much they owe. If the final figure looked about right, you’d have the option to file. As Matt Yglesias wrote here last year, the whole process could be a five-minute snap.

Theoretically. But for years now, Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has fought tooth and nail to prevent automatic tax filing from becoming a reality, lobbying against bipartisan legislation to introduce it with the help of a powerful tech industry trade group and conservative anti-taxers like Grover Norquist. Intuit and its competitors in online tax prep don’t want the government cutting its market share. The tax-crusaders want to ensure that paying the government remains as much of a painful, resentment-generating slog as ever. And thus a potent alliance has been born.

http://www.propublica.org/arti...
How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
by Liz Day
ProPublica, March 26, 2013, 5 a.m.

So why hasn't it become a reality?

Well, for one thing, it doesn't help that it's been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.

Intuit has spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past five years — more than Apple or Amazon. Although the lobbying spans a range of issues, Intuit's disclosures pointedly note that the company "opposes IRS government tax preparation."

The disclosures show that Intuit as recently as 2011 lobbied on two bills, both of which died, that would have allowed many taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free. The company also lobbied on bills in 2007 and 2011 that would have barred the Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, from initiating return-free filing.

Intuit argues that allowing the IRS to act as a tax preparer could result in taxpayers paying more money. It is also a member of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which sponsors a "STOP IRS TAKEOVER" campaign and a website calling return-free filing a "massive expansion of the U.S. government through a big government program."

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Have been to these markets in Shenzhen and Foshan, and to similar marketplaces in Cairo and Lima and Jakarta. In Chinese there is a word "shenzhai" I think which means to "hack" or copy, but it doesn't have the nefarious English connotations. It's more like a musician jamming someone else's guitar riff, it's seen as a talent worthy of applause. Slate had a great article in 2012, "The Chinese Steve Jobs is Probably a Pirate". I'm now working with 3 researchers at universities to document what we call the "Tinkerer Blessing", which is the opposite of the "Resource Curse"... correlating that emerging markets with a lack of natural resources develop better through technology repair and "grey market" activity. Simon Lin of Acer, Terry Gou of Foxconn, both started in video display refurbishment, by the way. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

ULA has been a major player in trying to keep US heavy launch platforms dependent on Russian RD-180 engines by any means possible. Their employees in Congress, Representatives Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) have sent a letter to NASA "demanding that the agency investigate what they call 'an epidemic of anomalies' with SpaceX missions".

These three red, white and blue Republicans, defenders of American Freedom, critics of government interference in the market place, gung-ho capitalists, have ULA facilities in their districts. So what would be more natural then their trying to squash competition, make the US vulnerable to foreign pressure, and degrade US excellence in aerospace technology. They would never place campaign contributions and the narrow interests of their constituents ahead of the interests of the USA, would they?

So if Blue Origin and ULA prevail, do you think that Bezos would threaten to deny access to orbit if there were legislation that would negatively impact Amazon's business model or tax breaks? He already seems so in tune with the current ULA congressional caucus.

Try to keep up, will you?

But 3 consecutive years of expansion would be....

Good news?

It's not happening, though. This year is really, really close to last year so it's more like a 2 year rebound from a new record low. If we're really lucky, 2012's minimum extent record will stand for a decade or longer. That would be good news for us, but I don't expect it to.

Being higher than a record low is not "recovering".

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Mod this joker down. he is neither insightful, nor correct, and he deliberately misquotes in order to create false impressions.

To Mi:
You are wrong on all counts.
And the morphing is being done by you.

One:
The relevant passage in his speech, that is to say, THE FULL ACTUAL QUOTE, which you so thoughtfully left out in order to misconstrue what he said, is:

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.

Emphasis added to show the oh so important part you left out.
http://www.truth-out.org/opini...
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...

Two:
It's only recovering if you ignore the past 3 decades of observation in order to focus on the past 2 years. The trend is down down down. 2012 was the lowest EVER RECORDED. So low it broke all records and even went beyond standard statistical deviation expectations. The last two years were more ice than 2012, but so was EVERY YEAR EVER RECORDED. That's what happens when you set a new record low. Make no mistake: The past 2 years of ice coverage have still be below average, and the trend is still down. It is NOT recovering, it is NOT increasing.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Three:
Oh hey, you tossed in Solyndra too (Drink!). Do we really REALLY need to cover how Slyndra is just another dogwhistle distraction from the facts? How Solyndra and its ilk represented not even 3% of all monies loaned out by the DOE? How the other 97% have not onlyy been successful, but the Government has actually earned a profit, such that over the course of the program it was made more money that it loaded out? How the government earned a return on its investment and success rate unseen and generally unheard of in the private venture capiltal world? How Solyndra's, and other solar panel startups, failing was not due to their own mistakes, not due to any scam or con, but due to the fact China's panel amkers are heaviliy subsidized and undercut the international market? Or how some of the companies who initially failed, are now getting up and back on their feet again?

Bringing up Solyndra is akin to saying "global warming can't be real because it's cold outside".
It's that kind of ignorance and posturing. It's that kind of denial of, or ignoring of, reality.

Thank you for playing, but your lies and half truths have no place here.
Go away.

You are wrong on all counts.

One: he never said it. The relevant passage in his speech, which you so thoughtfully left out in order to misconstrue what he said, is:

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.

http://www.truth-out.org/opini...
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...

Two: It's only recovering if you ignore the past 3 decades of observation in order to focus on the past 2 years. The trend is down down down. 2012 was the lowest EVER RECORDED. So low it broke all records and even went beyond standard statistical deviation expectations. The last two years were more ice than 2012, but so was EVERY YEAR EVER RECORDED. That's what happens when you set a new record low. Make no mistake: The past 2 years of ice coverage have still be below average, and the trend is still down. It is NOT recovering, it is NOT increasing.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Thank you for playing, but your lies and half truths have no place here.

Oh wait. Yeah, I can live with the 1/10,000 chance because THOSE THINGS NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPEN EXCEPT IN YOUR IMAGINATION. Or do you think the "liberal media" is covering up the hundreds of thousands of people who use guns to prevent themselves from being stabbed in our (incredibly safe) country every day?

Actually it turns out that is generally true according to the recent CDC study. (I don't know about an actual cover-up, but clearly these stories are not being reported on.)
From the conservative angle:
http://www.gunsandammo.com/pol...
Same thing from a progressive angle:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Interesting how both sides were basically surprised when we all just sat down to really look at the problem. They both had a spin to it, but nothing really fit the dialog from either side.

CBC's article is just a Canadian take on things. The original article (just as scary) is here:

Well, yes. But it's hardly "original" -- this is a problem that has been profiled extensively for years, yet few people seem to realize how far it extends. A couple of times over the past year, when posters on Slashdot mentioned random forfeitures that happened to them, they were met with comments saying, "You must have done something suspicious" or "What's the rest of the story," and I tried to provide links to point out the systemic problem, but have been met with ignorance and resistance.

For a sample of past coverage, here's an extensive piece from The New Yorker a year ago, a piece from Reason in 2012, a piece from Forbes in 2011, pieces in Slate and The Economist from 2010, a detailed piece on NPR from 2008, etc., etc., etc. Here's an extensive account of problems with the system from PBS almost 15 years ago (around the time that legal reform forced money to go to local municipalities in many cases rather than the federal government). The ACLU has been fighting this for decades.

I know some people here may be well aware of this problem, and others may find this shocking and new. Regardless, it's very sad that it may take other countries' shaming us into taking action to fix an unjust assault on our citizens that has been going on for many years.

http://boingboing.net/2013/05/...

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

then you havent looked very hard.
this study has been done many times over.

volcanoes emit ~3 billion tons of CO2 globally, yearly.
human emissions on the other hand are >40 billion tons, globally, annually.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

I just heard Phil Plait talking about coronal mass ejections wiping out satellites and the power grid, and possibly small electronics as well. That's my current favorite non-asteroid doomsday scenario. No direct danger to life or limb, it just takes out everything that makes modern civilization work. Hilarity ensues.

Get your facts right.

No, you.
2 years is not a sufficient sample size to ignore the preceeding several decades.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

And here you go, you ignorant twit:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Since you're probably too dumb to even understand such basic concepts, here's the nutshell:
Just by coincidence, 2 years ago was the lowest level EVER RECORDED. So yes, the past couple years have seen higher lvels than that...but those levels are still far below the average of the last several decades. A sample size of 2 is not sufficient to ignore decades of data.

btw, you even got your lies (both of them) wrong
-if it had expanded by 41%, it would be covering a fair portion of Canada.
-it's not the most ice since 2006. 2006 had a higher level of ice this year, followed by 2007 was was the lowest level ever recorded...until 2012 which went even lower.

Meanwhile the trend is still down down down down.
Stupid trolls.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Do try and keep up with recent research, eh?

Basically, she enjoyed inflicting pain on other people by denying access to painkillers. All while living quite a cushy life herself.

That's pretty much a lie, and character assassination. There is no evidence anywhere that she "enjoyed inflicting pain on other people". The quotes attributed to her and the Slate article in particular (which is suspect, seeing that the article's author wrote a book "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" and obviously has a vested interest in drumming up sales and controversy) does not say this.

As for the part about "denying access to painkillers" - this is misleading. Context, my dear, context. As stated in her Wikipedia entry :-

the use of opioids in India for managing cancer pain remains—ten years after Mother Teresa's death—highly problematic for legal, regulatory, cultural, and other reasons (including supply interruptions, harsh punishments imposed for even minor infractions of the rules, and the fear of addiction by health workers). Despite the lack of sophisticated analgesic regimes, volunteers (including those with western medical qualifications and experience) reported that her Home for the Dying was a place of joy not sadness.

Apart from that, I do not understand why her failings seem to offend you so much. It seems almost personal.

I'll just leave this here

a) there isn't one. the most that can be said is it's a concept misunderstood by deniers who have no clue what they are talking about.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

b) wrong.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-...

c1) wrong. they are NOT naturally absorbed. if they were, the planet would not be warming, leading to ever increasing amounts of stored energy unable to re-radiate out into space. the natural carbon cycle deals out no where near the amount of CO2 humans do. 40 billion tons. That's the YEARLY output of human activity. Imagine the biggest aircraft you can think of...they weigh ~100,000 tons. So now imagine 400,000 of those aircraft carriers. That's the weight of CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere yearly. Alternatively, think of a cubic volume of gas (CO2)....18 miles on each side (that's ~95k feet high...almost to space)...that's also 40 billion tons. And we do that every year. And before you spout some bullshit about volcanoes...no. Volcanic yearly output of the entire planet is only ~3 billion tons of CO2.

c2) the rest of c was pretty stupid, and just frankly not worth it.

The assertion that foraging people "traditionally didn't develop high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or cardiovascular disease" needs a big 'Citation Needed' mark.

This Slate article does a great job of explaining how decades of peer reviewed papers on the Inuit all make the mistake of assuming lower cardiovascular disease based on a flawed assumption in a single paper in the 1970s:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

I'll just leave this here.

a) What hiatus? The hiatus only appears when you use incomplete data. citation
b) Uh, what? I don't even know what you're talking about there.
c) Plant (and algae) growth is a negative feedback loop on CO2, but it doesn't work on the same timescales. We're dumping centuries worth of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. And we're combining that with deforestation. By the time plants have grown to stabilize the temperature, we'll be stabilized several degrees over our current temperature, and that's assuming any positive feedback loops don't override it (look at the "clathrate gun hypothesis" for an example of what could happen).