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According to a more informative article, this won't be nearly as bad, then.

180 decibels. The maximum underwater noise from sonic cannons allowed within 500 meters, mitigating physical damage to marine mammals.

Well it can work out well.

Hey it does work, and the swat team member may even get medals for their botched raid when you return fire. In the end you may end up getting a nice settlement. Also in this case the home owner fired back with a 20 gauge with bird shot IIRC.

Hey it does work, and the swat team member may even get medals for their botched raid when you return fire. In the end you may end up getting a nice settlement. Also in this case the home owner fired back with a 20 gauge with bird shot IIRC.

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I really love that last one, because people KNOW It's a glitch; they KNOW they don't have unlimited EBT funds, but yet they will still claim that they weren't abusing the system. Bollocks.

As for the statistics, I definitely spoke too broadly, but my views are still consistent because I have seen first hand accounts of this type of activity. I can't find any interweb pagez to support my claim currently, but I still stand firm that the amount of low-income subsidiary services are abused and we need to keep closing loopholes.

My point isn't that these kids need help, my point is that the school system is not the right place to do it because it subverts the educational process (are schools an educational delivery system or a social welfare delivery system?), schools are not funded adequately for education, let alone addressing massive social welfare problems with people outside the school system (school funding is limited to the property tax base of their district), and the scale and complexity of the social welfare problems are beyond the mandate of the school (which is really a combination of subverting the educational mandate and inadequate resources).

The educational mission of the school system gets subverted when funding is spent on social welfare (staffing, administration, benefits) and when educators careen from one new and improved curricula to another as the politicians elected to school positions make promises they can't keep about improving test scores. There is a myopic focus on only poor minorities. A school board member in my city, Minneapolis, was quoted in the paper opposing a badly needed facility expansion for a successful high school because "the most important kids aren't there." http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/232723051.html

School funding is extremely dependent on regressive property taxes and schools in urban areas have trouble funding their putative primary mission, education. Social welfare needs greatly exceed the ability of these districts to raise funds for education and social welfare. If you try to do both you will do neither well. Our elementary school was identified as having a dozen children who scored in the "gifted" category yet there are ZERO gifted programs or resources for these kids, yet lots of resources for kids in need of social welfare services. I guess, like the school board member quoted above, these kids are "good enough" and we should sacrifice their further development.

The depth and severity of the social welfare problems are just too great for them to be solved through the school system. None of the problems you note, broken families, housing, criminal injustice or lack of parental involvement are issues of the school system. The school system is not the organization that should be dealing with housing, criminal justice or family dynamics, these are all broader social problems that need to be addressed and funded through broader state and federal organizations, not a local school district.

It's not that we shouldn't try to help poor black kids get an education, but that the school system can't be the focus of all the problem solving, otherwise we risk giving EVERYONE a slipshod, useless education and making these social problems worse.

Yup, and as a consequence, Boeing just lost a 5 billion Dollar Brazillian aircraft order to the Swede SAAB.

That damned NSA, always costing Western Europe, costing the French business! Was it spying? Or just a business decision to go with the LOW BIDDER?

UPDATE 3-Saab wins Brazil jet deal after NSA spying sours Boeing bid

Dassault, for its part, said it regrets Brazil's decision and called Saab's fighter an aircraft that was inferior to its Rafale jet.

"The Gripen is a lighter, single engine aircraft that does not match the Rafale in terms of performance and therefore does not carry the same price tag," it said.

Saab says the Gripen NG has the lowest logistical and operational costs of all fighters currently in service.

France soothes nerves over Dassault jets after Brazil setback
Dassault Aviation shares fall after Brazil snubs rafale jet

The simple fact is that Saab has a very competitive fighter that has won contracts in a number of countries, both in and out of Europe in the last few years, long before the NSA controversy. I think it is quite likely that they won completely on the merits but this is just a "twist of the knife" at an opportune time, but it has little reality. If you want to claim that it was really about the NSA instead of Saab being the low bidder with its fabulous Grippen, then you need to explain how Dassault lost too. Or is it French spying to blame? Why haven't we heard about that?

Brazil is continuing to do business with Russia aren't they? If you think that Brazil isn't crawling with Russian spies that are at least as aggressive as any the US has you are crazy. The Brazilians thought that the Russians warranted being spied up, just like they spied on the US.

Report: Brazil spied on property, personnel from US, Russian, Iranian embassies

The Brazilian government confirmed Monday that its intelligence service targeted U.S., Russian, Iranian and Iraqi diplomats and property during spy activities carried out about a decade ago in the capital Brasilia.

Swedish industry has many fine products. They won contracts before the NSA scandal, they will continue to win them after the scandal. The only difference is now various people will engage in demagoguery proclaiming that every win by Sweden over the US, even if the rest of Europe competed and lost, will be because of NSA. "See! See! NSA!"

Thank goodness this isn't a food blog. Every order for Swedish lingonberries, meatballs, or aquavit would be proclaimed a victory over NSA.
 

That's not that case AT ALL. Take a look at California which has a very wealthy population, the rich there lean more to the left. The rich put Obama into office. Also in the South, Republicans tend to provide the people with most of their jobs since Republicans are very heavy on defense spending. Most military bases and recruitment are in the South and with the US spending nearly 3/4 of a trillion dollars each year on defense the South gains the most.

You also happen to be factually accurate as the MPAA and their latest set of statistics.

http://www.startribune.com/investigators/95692619.html

I could go on with example after example, but the fact is that people are routinely sued, put into jail and and have judgments put against them without their being in court every single day throughout the country.

I'm extremely familiar with how the back end of these systems work and what passes for 'evidence' in court from the creditors standpoint. The overwhelming majority of cases go to court with no more effort than a claim from the creditor that the money is owed and no debtor to dispute the claim.

I have also worked in credit (large balance) at one of the largest banks in the country. I am /very/ familiar with the laws on these things. Speaking without the anonymous coward tag...

Obama's green energy drive comes with an unadvertised environmental cost. This isn't what is advertised as a ""green"" solution.

I do IT work at Medtronic... My prior jobs were all IT jobs in really dismal, "selfish" industries - banking, credit cards, health insurance. Nothing I did helped make the world a better place.The work I did made a CEO richer and that was about it. The companies were built on "How can we cheapen this so we make more money on it."

http://www.startribune.com/business/208307771.html

StarTribune has an interesting article that demonstrates that if we taxed the superwealthy at 100% on ALL of their money that they have made in their ENTIRE LIFETIME, then we would be able to run the government for about 6 months. And that was superwealthy in terms of having $1 million in net worth, which is not even what I would consider "super" wealthy. I mean, it's a heck of a lot more than my net worth, but there are literally millions of households that have $1 million or more in net worth in the United States.

Since you aren't the same person who originally posted, and I don't know where you are, I can't really refute that. But I can point out that the OP said there are no flash floods in Minneapolis, yet here is an article about one that happened less than a month ago. If you have severe storms you have flash floods.

Well, this is /was going on.

I found that trying to find an article from the 90's (I think it was in the WSJ) about one man who tried to do just that - sue to get his personal information from the marketing firms - I think his strategy was to sue for monetary damages. IIRC/

The marketing people say that an individual's information isn't worth much but a list of thousands or millions of people is worth quite a bit.

Anyway, it's 2013 and the marketing industry (personal data industry) is as big and strong as ever.

Let's face it, all some big corp has to do is have their lobbyists go to Washington, spread some "gifts" around, and just whine how "it'll hurt their business" and America.

We NEED privacy laws like in Europe. We have this lop sided balance of power in this country.

Stories like this have come out previously but maybe this time it will get traction as it is happening in a big important city in CA. The city of Minneapolis MN has tried to get the data they have been collecting classified as non public data for a while now and this legislative session it was made private. This is the article that broke the story but doesn't mention how long Minneapolis had been doing it but the neighboring city of St. Paul has been doing it since 2008. At the time of the article Minneapolis had eight mobile vehicle cameras and at least two stationary cameras and St. Paul had 10 mobile units but those numbers are from about a year ago. For those of you who wonder why this type of thing is a bad idea there is the MPR article about just how some people used the Minneapolis license plate DB.

Stories like this have come out previously but maybe this time it will get traction as it is happening in a big important city in CA. The city of Minneapolis MN has tried to get the data they have been collecting classified as non public data for a while now and this legislative session it was made private. This is the article that broke the story but doesn't mention how long Minneapolis had been doing it but the neighboring city of St. Paul has been doing it since 2008. At the time of the article Minneapolis had eight mobile vehicle cameras and at least two stationary cameras and St. Paul had 10 mobile units but those numbers are from about a year ago. For those of you who wonder why this type of thing is a bad idea there is the MPR article about just how some people used the Minneapolis license plate DB.

The city should be in the business of finding the best value, not the dirt cheapest solution.

What I'm saying is: Maybe they would love to do just that, but everyone complains when they need a bigger budget because they are not going with the dirt cheap solutions anymore.

This isn't being paid for out of a budget, it's being paid for directly by the people that own the affected homes. I would have greatly appreciated it if they would have said "you can pay us $800, but you really shouldn't because we are going to hire the cheapest sloppiest contractor we can find". I would have gone and found someone else myself even if it cost a bit more.

I'm not sure what any of this really has to do with shoddy sidewalks installed by the city...

The big picture is that there is this liberal assumption floating around that anything the government does is bad and expensive, and everyone private enterprise does is cheap and good. And I'm saying that's bullshit.

There is a liberal assumption that private enterprise is good and government is bad? That seems to be the opposite of the typical meme I've heard...

Sidewalks! It's literally not rocket science.

No. But it's still a job that can be done well, or badly.

I'm just trying to make you think one step further, beyond "the city fucked this up" towards "why did they fuck this up?".

Look, I shouldn't have to worry about these things. If it's not the sidewalks, it's the gas lines (3 blocks from my home!):

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/203710911.html

Or how about the bridges collapsing into the river?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge

I expect better than this from my government. I don't mind paying taxes to make sure infrastructure is maintained, but they are doing a hell of a job convincing me they aren't the right people to be doing it.

Did you just equate "having an ID" with "a police state"

No. I said it was a step towards a police state. Nor was I referring to just "having an ID". If you look at the links the OP provided, it was about having a national ID card that was linked to a central biometric database, and for which there was no practical justification (particularly as existing forms of ID without centralized biometric databases work just fine).

You want to know what a police state looks like? This. It looks like this. You know, with ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business. That's a police state.

I guess I already live in a police state then, since I often encounter "ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business". Around here they usually drive around in cars, although there are good arguments for having them walk around the streets.

Did you just equate "having an ID" with "a police state", or did I misunderstand?

You want to know what a police state looks like? This. It looks like this. You know, with ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business. That's a police state. Stop it with the nonsense about how normal, unremarkable aspects of government are "police state".

I'm sorry, but you;'re incorrect about the wage gap being debunked "time and time again." While the wage gap is not 70cents on the dollar anymore, there is a significant difference in women's pay. In Ontario, according to Stats Canada, the gap is currently 25%. It's also the same in the US according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is worse than it has been since 2005.

I'm very sorry you feel discriminated against, but this supposed attack on male rights is horse shit made up by bitter people who cannot tolerate the fact that 1000 years of cultural manipulation by us white men is being undone.

The numbers of male nurses has increased incredibly in the last 30 years, and male nurses are currently making significantly more money than women, and are in higher positions.

There are massive campaigns to get more men involved teaching, and early child development. There's also employment campaigns to get more women involved in trades, including the more dangerous ones, those campaigns are primarily ones which you complain about in your first paragraph (scholarships directed at women).

Is less about outsourcing and more about pay rates and employer expectations.

http://www.startribune.com/business/164935926.html?refer=y

There was another story in this paper as well about this I couldn't find the link to -- a survey found that the "problem" wasn't a lack of workers, it was the low wages and working conditions that kept employers from recruiting workers.

Training is an issue as well -- employers have a desire to hire "ready for work" employers, even though the employees they often want need to have extensive education and experience with complex, high tech manufacturing systems that are difficult to get experience with...without working on one.

It's a self-perpetuating problem for employers. As long as they refuse to invest in training and paying salaries, they will have a shortage of workers.

I also think they have another problem -- the culture of manufacturing and blue collar employment generally. Manufacturing jobs have historically been "dumb" jobs -- the kind of work some high school dropout or grad got working on an assembly line turning a bolt, adding a part or whatever. Little to no skill, no education. Treat them awful and throw them away, we can always plug another body into this. It's why much of this COULD be outsourced -- there's little difference between an ex-jock who barely got a high school diploma and some third world country mouse who moved to the city.

Unions boosted the wages of these jobs until the early 70s, but there was always this cultural gulf between "labor" and "management"" and usually open hostility, as management sought to screw labor any way they could, and labor sought to take management for maximum compensation and minimum work. Labor were people to be piss-tested, searched and yelled at, and sic your security goons on if they step out of line.

Now we're at this point where the people manufacturers need aren't the dumb HS grads or third world peons, they are educated people with extensive skills, but business keep perpetuating this fucked up class warfare kind of culture, with the working conditions and pay to go with it. No wonder they can't find people -- anyone self-aware enough and smart enough to do this kind of work wants nothing to do with being treated as little more than a slave.

If we would have a manufacturing environment that treated the skilled workers more like white collar office workers and paid them that way, I can only imagine the talent pool would grow a lot deeper and the productivity would skyrocket.

Ten posts in, and I already see the guy chomping on the high-salary-bit modded at +5. Before that becomes the focus of these posts, let me add something to reflect on.

There is not only a very strong negative correlation between the percent of a school's low-socioeconomic-status students (measured by a school's free-and-reduced lunch rate) and test scores*, but there has proven to be causation as well. Now, urban Chicago has some of the highest poverty rates in the state of Illinois. Creating a system where half of a teacher's evaluation (and, ergo, the chance they keep their job) is based solely on test scores is simply setting up teachers to fail. Teachers know this; when they (or anyone else, for that matter) are put into a position where their evaluation likely will be poor, due to circumstances far beyond their control, resulting in dismissal from their job, it will negatively affect their performance in the classroom. Then, with high teacher turnaround, the quality of new hires will just suffer precipitously.

This evaluation system was never meant or designed to improve teacher performance. It was designed to set schools up to fail. And Chicago Area Teachers have every right to stand up and stop it. Anyone who tries to complain about salaries is merely throwing a red herring into the discussion.

* source: The Star Tribune. It appears that, sadly, they removed the free-and-reduced lunch data from this year's test results. In previous years, I ran simple correlation calculations between a district's free-and-reduced lunch percentage, and the percentage of students who were proficient on the tests. The correlation coefficient was -.87 for math and -.92 for reading.

What part of "wireless" implies WiFi frequencies or protocols? The Medtronic Minimed Paradigm insulin pump, and the Deltec Cozmo, Animas Ping, Insulet OmniPod, Accu-chek Spirit Combo, and Sooil DiabecareIIS pumps all communicate wirelessly (one via infrared) and a couple will adjust dosing automatically based on an unencrypted wireless signal from a glucose meter (basically: lie about the glucose level to the pump until it empties its 200 dose unit cartridge into the wearer, or lie about it so they don't get any insulin whatsoever).

http://www.startribune.com/business/128427593.html?refer=y
Demonstrated at Black Hat in 2011: wireless forced shutdown of the device.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/08/defcon-excuse-me-while-i-turn-off-your-pacemaker/
A similar turn-off attack on Legend RF controlled pacemakers was shown at Defcon in 2008, and which demonstrated the ability to pull out HIPAA protected information from the device itself, including the identity of the patient, the doctor, the diagnosis, and the pacemaker instructions.

Maybe this is a naive question, but what's wrong with bubble sheet voting ballots? Like those "A-B-C-D-E" forms you filled out when you took the SAT in high school. That's basically what we use in Minnesota, but just a little different because voting isn't just "A-B-C-D-E".

Everyone knows how to fill out bubble sheets, so they're dead simple to use. When you've voted, you insert them into a scanner (it's also a locked box, old-fashioned key-and-lock, so no one except election officials can access they ballots once they're inserted). The scanner checks for simple stuff like "Did you vote for more than one presidential candidate?" and immediately spits your ballot out if it finds a problem. I made a mistake on my ballot once, and there's a simple, established procedure where they destroy your invalid ballot in front of you and issue you another ballot so you can vote again. It's easy.

And bubble sheets are anonymous. No worrying about "Can someone figure out how I voted?"

Above all, bubble sheets are auditable. While the scanners can easily keep track of how many votes for Obama v Romney, election officials can always go back to manually count the bubble sheets in the case of a recount. You may have heard about our 2008 recount - they manually recounted the bubble sheets.

... considering that 2 days ago he was going to "plow on" ..

http://www.startribune.com/business/146481945.html

Not a test. Not one of the reports of employers asking for FB account creds say anything about being turned away for saying yes. All of them seem to report a "growing trend" based on one guy in New York who was asked for his password, refused, and withdrew his application. And another person agreed, and got the job.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/143441856.html

According to this article, other people have been asked to "friend" HR so that they can see the person's profile, without asking for the password. Or have the user log in and click around.

http://con.ca/news/6572

So please, every time this story re-appears on Slashdot, you're not clever by coming up with the trick question angle. It's appeared on every previous Slashdot post, and a few basic searches will tell you it's not a test.

Nice concept if it was actually used. http://www.startribune.com/business/142371025.html

These farmers are owed money but the bankers still get bonuses.

As a math teacher, I'm tired of every Joe Millionaire stepping up and saying that education needs to be fixed. Education isn't the problem. For the millionaires who don't understand yet...public education is not about raising test scores. Public education is about civilizing our citizens. Without public education, the public will not understand civility en mass. As a teacher in a high-poverty rural school district, and I've seen how uncivil kids and adults can be even when they're educated. If we don't force parents to educate their kids, they'll run free, they'll run wild, and they'll be a plague on our populace.

That being said, if you want to raise test scores, there is one variable that has more correlation than all the others combined. Poverty. And I have the numbers to back it up. Using my home state of Minnesota as an example, look at the state test results hosted by the Star Tribune. Run a correlation study between percent proficiency on either test, and the % of test takers that are low-income. (Remove the districts w/ the small samples of less than 10 -- they're specialized cooperatives & magnet schools whose sample of students taking the test do not follow the same sampling as with general Independent School Districts.) Even better, run it on just the Minneapolis / St. Paul Metro Area districts.

I haven't calculated the results for 2011 yet, but I ran it for 2010 in the metro area. Metro-wide, the correlation coefficient between % proficient and low-income for math was -0.91 and -0.93 for reading. That's insane. You almost never get correlation coefficients that good anywhere in statistics, but it's happening here. Forget teachers. Forget schools. The single biggest factor impacting education is poverty and low-income. (And for those who want to chant, "correlation is not causation," I challenge you to walk into any inner-city school district and witness the behavior yourself. I promise you, there's more than just correlation there.)

If millionaires really wanted to fix schools, they'd have a much greater impact on education (and our society at large) if they gave away their money to the poor. Better yet, set up a stipend program like Brazil and other countries have.

Really? The headline reads "Trooper was on laptop moments before crash"

You didn't read the quote, right under the "Portland says it works" sub-headline?

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/138615169.html

Media stories like to get both sides to look balanced, and frequently shoehorn in an unsubstantiated quote just to make it look like they covered both sides. All it takes is one off-hand remark in an interview, and you bet it's going in the column. There's no doubt about it.

But it's important to direct your concern in the appropriate direction. You can't blame this one on Slashdot, at least no more than the usual click-generating sausage factory summaries.

As for classical music lovers, they feel it should be appreciated, and they feel uniquely qualified to appreciate it. Letting "the rabble" listen to it, without a chance to understand an appreciate it, cheapens it.

Personally, it annoys me to no end to hear some of the greatest music ever written played constantly, and perhaps by not-so-top-notch players. I become accustomed to it, and as with anything else it gives me no pleasure. And that is a shame. At the same time, once you have heard "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" for the hundredth time, maybe it's time to move on to something a bit more challenging. So I'm on both sides of the issue.

The same atmosphere could probably be created with Muzak, but it would cost more.

Ironic to point out something that has been proven false.

We don't get 10 foot snow drifts here in Minnesota unless you are talking along the north shore. We do get some rather bitter cold in the middle of January into the beginning of February as well as some oppressive humidity in the summer.

They're the department that bought the $16 muffins. link

It turned out what happened was a $16 breakfast, that among other things included muffins, got recorded as muffins.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/132803818.html

Good thing the public threw a shitfit over that.

They won't go to jail but will go through the wringer for it, even for severe forms of punishments. I have been taken to task by other parents for disciplining my oldest in public, and you know what I really don't care. I have hauled him out of stores and restaurants, given him the occasional swat on the ass (the mere fact he got a spanking it the worst part it doesn't matter how hard) and other things. Usually I get told that is abuse or will damage his self esteem but compared to a number of children he is very well behaved, he doesn't throw a tantrum, throw things, hit others, knock things over, or run wild in stores. Punishment needs to be swift and severe (no I don't mean beating the piss out of your kids, but it the punishment should be worse than the offense) so that they don't want to do it again. Sadly as you say there are too many parents who just want to be their kids' friend. I can be my kids' friend when we play or are go out to do things, but when it is punishment time I am the most loathed person in the world.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/123466069.html

Of course people are only going to start worrying when the shit has already hit the fan. Until then, everything's peachy.

How about you fix the tax loopholes, get rid of oil subsidies, and force the oil companies that for every cent above 2 dollars they charge per gallon, the US government gets 2 cents of it. Bet you it will make more than this plan and oil will miraculously go down to 2 dollars again!

Government already does that - but it's actually ~6 cents for every penny of profit. For example, ExxonMobil made about $0.07 per gallon of gas sold, in profit. Governments across the US made between $0.40 and $0.66, depending upon what State you live in (the Federal Government is a flat $0.184 per gallon). And when oil is $110 per barrel, and there are 42 gallons of oil per barrel, the raw cost of oil itself is $2.62 per gallon. Add transportation, refining, and delivery on top of that.

The only person stupider than her is Michele Bachmann, who isn't even bright enough to look into the network cameras

You deserve your Troll rating just for this comment. Michele Bachmann looked into the appropriate camera. Just because CNN/MSNBC didn't pony up for a feed off that camera doesn't mean she's dumb.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/blogs/114802314.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsl

here's today's news regarding a us citizen who (it would seem) has done nothing wrong but who has been tortured by Kuwaitis and put on the US no-fly list so he can't get home to the US.

Hopefully he wasn't on the same tour group as these other Somali men....

Sixth area Somali man is indicted in probe

A 24-year-old local Somali man has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on charges of conspiring to provide support to terrorists.

Omer Abdi Mohamed, an unemployed employment counselor and father of a 2-month-old boy, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" people in foreign countries, according to an indictment filed Tuesday but made public Thursday.

Mohamed, of Minneapolis, is the sixth Somali man with local ties to be charged in connection with a two-year-old federal counterterrorism investigation aimed at finding out who recruited as many as 20 area men of Somali descent to return to their homeland and train and fight with the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The probe is considered to be one of the most sweeping international counterterrorism investigations since Sept. 11, 2001.

So, he traveled to Yemen and Somalia to study....... Arabic and Islam? I'm sure it means nothing.

Reports: Al Qaeda's Leaders In Yemen Relocate to Somalia

an ad vehicle

Not really, given than the chart doesn't include ads in itself.

Well hey haw...guy....Hmmm... haw....
Are you by any chance a relation to Lord Haw ... Haw?
Well, never mind.

So, what sort of "education" do you suppose Gulet Mohamed was seeking in Somalia at a time when numerous other Somali Americans were returning to Somalia for training in extremist Islam, terrorism, and to engage in Jihad? (A number of them became suicide bombers.) Do you have any thoughts on that?

Although the Somalis I've met or worked with seem pleseant enough, clearly not all of them are.

Take this for example from last month:

The FBI arrested Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19—year—old Somali—born American, for plotting to detonate a bomb as thousands of people attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in the centre of Portland, Oregon.
Anwar al-Awlaki: terror plots linked to Yemen-based cleric

The Somalis are not the only ones engaging in so called Jihad. This Pakistani American who performed some curious travel to Pakistan was also a menace - he tried to detonate a bomb in Times Square.

I'm sure you must have some "progressive" ideas on the matter. Do you want to torture them too to get an answer, or only white people?

How about a US citizen who's been arrested and tortured in Kuwait, and has been put in a no-fly-list by the boogie-man-fearing DHS, and for what reason? He's of Somalian origin, moved to Virginia as a baby, US citizen, but traveled to study to Somalia, it was too dangerous, so he moved to Kuwait

So, you think there's no chance whatsoever that he is part of a bunch like this?

Sixth area Somali man is indicted in probe
  Mohamed, of Minneapolis, is the sixth Somali man with local ties to be charged in connection with a two-year-old federal counterterrorism investigation aimed at finding out who recruited as many as 20 area men of Somali descent to return to their homeland and train and fight with the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The probe is considered to be one of the most sweeping international counterterrorism investigations since Sept. 11, 2001.

Interesting. Why not?

It's here He was angry at the neighbors for filing a police report on him. Apparently they called the cops after he grabbed and kissed their four year old kid.

Chances are it was wide open, no security. The guy does not sound bright enough to have even hacked WEP, let alone anything stronger.

The Star Tribune says different. He's at least smart enough to be a script kiddie.

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router.

The article also raises an interesting point about how the police determined that the victims here weren't at fault. I can't say whether or not the police would have worked this out on their own, but in this case they didn't have to. The victim (Kostolnik) worked for a law firm. When the creepy neighbor started sending forged, defamatory emails to Kostolnik's boss and coworkers, the firm hired their own investigator who was able to determine that the router had been hijacked.

This article makes it sound like he used a WEP-cracking utility:

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router.

Addendum: How much legal headache did his neighbor go through before Ardolf was suspected? The article doesn't say

There is a better article here that has a few more details:
http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU

He did apparently get a visit from the secret service regarding the death threats.

The one linked to at the end of the article http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU Is much better then the one linked to here.

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system, and since the courts often seem to make the mistake that 'IP address == person' it'd be good to see how they went about distinguishing the actual criminal from the victim here.

This is the scary thing about this case. I bet in most cases it would have succeeded but in this case the next door neighbour in question worked for a law firm so his company had easy access to private detectives. The private detective put on the case was the one who figured it out, not the police. Here is a better link regarding the story that has a few more details:

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU

It is also interesting that the neighbours had a previous beef with the guy: He had picked up and kissed their small child so he probably didn't have to look to far to get the child porn he planted. Although this couple have obviously been through hell at least they now don't have to worry about the weirdo next door going anywhere near their kid.

Browser history, cache, etc.

They would have gotten the guy who owns the net connections PC and gone to town, found it clean of any corroborating evidence and then gone looking for neighbours who might have been using it (since it would have been a regular thing over time). Cross reference which neighbours don't have their own net connections with a motive (who had a grudge against him).

Easier to narrow down the field of who would do it by motive, of course once it was established it was a frame up.

Yup Barny you got it right, they used your method - guesses plucked out of their arse.

Duh - or maybe the guy who was being framed worked for a law firm who believed he hadn't sent the emails - and who sent in an investigator who *busted* the neighbour hijacking their wireless connection.

And maybe the FBI did some "research" (like, why would someone who can spell and pass a Bar exam sign his name to death threats?). Research like the kind of stuff that leads to this:- story

I'm just guessing though.....

If you look at this story in depth there is a real warning of how badly it might have gone, a more in depth article http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU really indicates it was only a matter of timing.

If the actual perpetrator of the crime had stopped a little sooner, after his neighbours had been accused and prior to their lawyers assisting them with a private investigator (note the police had already defined their guilt they now had to prove their innocence) who tracked down the actual guilty party and provided substantive evidence sufficient that the police would further investigate the matter, the perpetrator would have gotten away with it.

A warning all round about IP addresses being insufficient for prosecution of any crime, about reasonable doubt being a rule for investigation as well as the court (they should not have had to pay for and use a private investigator, the police failed in their due care to properly investigate the matter) and of course the real risks you face when using a computer and the internet. First lesson, where possible use wired over wireless, when using wireless infra-red is better than radio signals sometimes convenience can come with too high a price.

Don't be so quick. Many innocent people plead guilty because they've been poorly advised by a public defender. A plea of guilty doesn't mean the person was guilty. It means that a deal was offered and the suspect had no faith in his defense at trial.

Where does it say he had a public defender?

He'd refused a more favorable plea deal last summer, insisting on fighting the government's case against him. But after two days of trial -- including Thursday's testimony from expert witnesses who showed the elaborate means Ardolf used to harass and smear neighbors who'd once called the police on him -- he stopped denying what he had done.
"The reality of it became apparent to him that this was going to happen and he didn't want to perpetuate his own distress or the pain for the victims," Ardolf's lawyer, Seamus Mahoney, said Friday. Vengeful neighbor in Blaine pleads to Biden threat, hacking

Seamus Mahoney is a criminal defense attorney with a state-wide practice in Minnnesota.