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Though I admit to have partaken of some relish last month, which was due not only to the justifiable joy of my vindicating victory, but also from the harder to justify glee over your spectacular loss, it is becoming kinda tedious... Please, apply the necessary ointments to wherever it still feels sore and stop making yourself an object of continuing mockery. I'm not especially proud of the parts of my personality, that still savors ridiculing your kind...

See - it's not that you criticize, it's having a good enough reason to criticize.

All criticism of Obama was racist, get it? And, for good measure, racism-themed insults were imagined where there weren't any... Here is one good collection. There is absolutely no doubt, that, had Hillary Clinton won, the same verbiage would've been recycled with the word "racism" replaced by the word "sexism". Her side already blames sexism for the loss — we would've had 8 more years of it being scandalous to criticize the President.

I for one welcome the comeback of the dissent is patriotic notion...

And this is all in pursuit of something nobody needs—third-party remote driving or proprietary software driving. As Bradley Kuhn has pointed out, software freedom doesn't kill people, your security through obscurity kills people. I'm no fan of the driverless vehicle but it's worth noting how one-sided it is; the party being left out of knowing how their vehicle will behave is the vehicle's owner. This is a recipe for bad outcomes and we already have evidence of one driverless vehicle killing someone and the VW proprietary exhaust scandal adding more pollutants killing people more slowly.

Eric "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process" Holder has returned to working for Covington & Burling, whose clients include many of the banks Holder chose not to prosecute when he was Attorney General (despite considerable evidence) and as the Intercept points out, President-elect Trump has made America Goldman's again so if you voted for Trump thinking you were dodging the Goldman Sachs favoritism Hillary Clinton showed, that didn't work.

The name was NOT coined by Obama.

And that's just the tip of the factually-challenged iceberg.

Bullshit. The cops frequently empty their magazine or use a ridiculous quantity of ammo to suppress someone who isn't even confirmed to be a threat.
http://www.thewire.com/nationa...

You need to remember that Mozilla is a non-profit charitable organisation which is a miniscule mouse compared to its competition, especially from one of the world's biggest multi-billion dollar spying corp empire Google (who are coincidentally, the biggest bribers ("lobbyist") to the US Government).

Since no one ever donates to Mozilla, how else are their full-time staff and devs supposed to live in a world run by money?!

But you do make a good last point however, which is that since they can't appeal to the masses like the billions Google spends on Chrome adverts, Mozilla could however go down a different direction. But to be fair to Mozilla, they are trying to become more privacy focused, but again, they can only do so much because that's like going against the hand that feeds them!

We could have continued increasing productivity, at least into the foreseeable future.

I remember a couple of decades ago when telecommuting became possible (roughly 1990), and the IRS stepped in with rules that made it less inviting as an option. Among other things, you couldn't deduct the expenses of your home office, and you could no longer be a consultant (1099), you still had to be a regular employee (W-2). Unless, of course, you were a doctor, lawyer, or architect - those three professions were excepted from the rule.

A little later, someone pointed out that GE pays no taxes (among many other businesses), leading to the conclusion that it's nigh impossible to start a business that makes a competing product.

Microsoft did its "embrace, extend, extinguish" thing to a bunch of other companies. Microsoft would "consider purchasing" your software business, sign an NDA and send in some engineers to check out the internals and otherwise determine the fitness of the purchase, choose not to purchase, then come out with a competing product 6 months later.

This happened so many times it became a meme.

(Let's not forget that Microsoft illegally forced itself on many computers. Whole companies sprang up to deal with viruses and other security exploits, while a viable alternative floundered. The first person to purchase a computer and return the Windows software got sued by Microsoft, and had to justify his actions.)

We gave the telecom companies $200 billion to bring everyone up to broadband. They took the money and did nothing - much of the country can't get internet access, Comcast can be the most hated company in America, and mobile phone service is spotty, the quality is choppy, and the communications insecure.

We give away our productivity and resources to other countries for little or no gain, we've been neglecting our roads and bridges, our electric service is outdated and increasingly unreliable, our health care is third-world-class. Our education is top-heavy with administration and mindless rules, and the cost of extended education burdens the student for the rest of their life.

(It's really hard to start a new business, make an innovative invention or do scientific research, when you're burdened with education expenses for the rest of your life, have to hold down a low-paying job just to survive because the high-paying one was outsourced to a H1B, can't get good internet service, and are forced to use Windows compatible software, and have to purchase health insurance at $5,000 per year per family member.)

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This is in stark contrast with, for example, America of the 1920s. Reading newspaper articles of the times shows that the country was hopping with ideas. Just about everyone on the street in NYC had ideas on how to start a business, invent a new machine, or otherwise make their fortune in America.

Immigration was easy, just show up and get registered. Immigration was a self-selecting evolutionary sieve for people who were smart and could get along with other groups. You had to leave your family, community and support system behind, and learn a new language, culture, and laws. But if you could do it, you could make enough money to have the rest of your family come over to join you.

(Nowadays it takes 10 years and $30,000 for a Russian (to use an example) to emigrate to the US... if you win the immigration lottery.)

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My point for all this is that we *could* still be having increases in productivity. If we just eased up on all the arbitrary unfairness and burden we place on the people, The electronics revolution isn't quite over yet, the internet revolution is about half over, there's a ton of room for innovation in medical sciences, and the bio revolution is just getting started. (And the start of the AI revolution might be very cl

Where I can [sic] sign up for this?

You can start here... And some people have claimed to support the sitting President for the sole reason of having received such a phone. Racist but true.

Capitalists made the cell phones (and WiFi) possible, Socialists are making it a civil right .

Making some observations from recent events, I've noticed:

1) You can order a computer, and the delivery can be intercepted so that spyware can be installed. Especially laptops, which are difficult for the end user to peek inside.

2) The Intel management engine is essentially an attached microprocessor with complete and total remote control of your system, including access to all peripherals, the network, the disk data, and the ability to wake up and run while the main computer is off.

3) The Intel built-in programmable number generator was built in a way to be unverifiable. Essentially, the system reads physically generated random data and puts it through a hashing algorithm before giving it to the user. If the random number generator section is damaged (say, if someone modified the chip mask films before fab), you will get much less than the advertized 256-bits of entropy, but because the data is hashed there is no way to tell.

Buy American!

It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's not much of a "war" if your opponent has no way to defend themselves much less retaliate against your attacks.

Considering we also have a problem with cruelty, being able to determine when we are bombing a hospital and stopping the act, and making little kids fear the sky, I don't think assassination goes quite far enough to describe the US governments use of drones in combat. It's pure murder, caused by people who have gone insane with power, accountable to no one. Who will complain? The dead victims families? Who never saw the attacks coming? Who would take responsibility? A government that places no value on the lives of others during war, and places so much money into their war machine that attempting to get them to back down would require support from the entire world? No one should be able to kill like that. Not an individual, not a government, no one. The US government should be condemned and punished for their actions and the use of these things. I say that as a US Citizen, albeit as an AC, as even I would fear those drones being used on us.

The NYT article, however, is also misleading, saying that he was a "professor"; in fact, he was a "lecturer". And while he taught some constitutional law, that doesn't seem to have been his focus. He was also not a particularly good lecturer. http://www.thewire.com/politic... Good thing, too, for Chicago that they never made him a professor: Obama has turned out to be incompetent and dishonest.

Technically true, but say that in a Christian nation and you'll be tut-tutted. Say that in a Muslim country and you will die.

Here's the countries where what you just said is punishable by death:
http://www.thewire.com/global/...

Christianity is the most common religion on Earth. Why aren't any of those "if you don't believe in my sky fairy, you die" nations full of Christians? Statistically, you would expect MORE Christian nations than Muslim nations to have the death penalty for you. Assuming that they are all the equivalent form of whacko.

Snooper's Charter sounds even more ominous to be honest. At least a "firewall" has some implication of protection even if everyone knows its true purpose.

"Snooping" on the other hand has pretty much purely negative connotations since early grade school for most people.

Then again, its kind of refreshing that the government is at least being honest about the purpose of the program. If it was in the US it would be called PINKUNICORN or some other absurd backcronym created purely to sound "nice" in print without giving away its sinister underpinnings (see: USA PATRIOT.. and a whole lot more listed here.)

We are regularly told that advanced Western nations shouldn't worry about Ebola, because we have advanced Western medicine, and aren't like those poor and primitive African nations. And then things like this happen. Or the recent CDC biohazard scandals. Or the hospital in Texas, just trained about Ebola, sends a recent arrival from Liberia who is showing symptoms back to his relatives with some antibiotics. And then, after he vomits on the sidewalk on the way back to the hospital, people without protective gear "clean it up" with a pressure hose, while a sandal-wearing woman walks by . And they reuse the ambulance before they decontaminate it. And the family violates their quarantine.

So when Top Men tell us there's no danger of an outbreak here, I am not reassured.

I respectfully disagree. The obvious counter-example is Nazi Germany & Imperial Japan. Ignoring them or peace protests would have been pointless, the solution was regime change through violence. And now Germany and Japan are allies with the countries that destroyed them.

As for Israel? The peace treaties that exist have been created through violence, such as Egypt & Jordan. And the current 'peace' in Gaza is because Israel utterly devastated Hamas (and the civilian population) after they continuously launched rockets into Israel (from civilian areas), every single day for months until Israel finally responded.

Do you honestly think a hunger strike or peace protest would dissolve ISIS?

And Virginia, California, and Colorado are at the top of the "FU America Law".

I heard that Virginia once tried to break up the US and even went to war with them! How un-American they are.

Don't forget the Biden/Kerry connection to Ukrainian Oil and gas.

You got it all wrong. They are lizards! There is proof: http://www.thewire.com/nationa...
12 million Americans cannot all be wrong.

Sad that only 12 million are right! Here is a 6 hour interview with Credo Mutwa, the Zulu Shaman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - Credo Mutwa interviewed by David Icke - The Reptilian Agenda

You got it all wrong. They are lizards! There is proof: http://www.thewire.com/nationa... 12 million Americans cannot all be wrong.

Im not 100% clear why we wouldnt want to get involved here, if ever there were a time to get involved.

Because of natural gas interests to benefit Europe, naturally. European countries are spending themselves into the ground so they lean on the US to be World Police. Oligarchs protecting oligarchs, that is all.

And see, we can discredit everybody who claims this will be yet another "war for oil". "War for hydrocarbons" just doesn't have the same ring to it. There's no appetite for a "war for energy" because then people would point out that we have many safe ways of producing all the energy we need already (but the corporate arms dealers don't much care for those).

Ok, stop being a dipshit and look some stuff up. here's a good starting point:
http://www.thewire.com/nationa...

If you're to lazy to read that, here's the condensed version: Most available "Body Cams" for cops use a system where the cop turns the camera on when responding to a call/situation via a double click on a single button on the device. (exactly when the cop is required to turn on the device is decided by department regulations) They can stop recording via the same input. The devices have no controls to erase data, and it is stored until the unit returns to base, at which time it uploads to a secure server run by the manufacturer of the device, which is essentially a digital evidence vault. In the vault, it can only be accessed by verified administrators, usually police chiefs. Now, you may say "well the cop can just turn off the recorder if they want to do something bad." Sure, and at that point, they would be violating department regulations, and subject the case to a lot MORE scrutiny. The online system logs who and when anyone accesses the video in the vault, and wether or not it is copied out of the vault. The point is, the infrastructure is already in place, with hardware available through at least 3 different companies, with extremely well thought out safeguards against the exact sort of asshattery everyone here is claiming will go on if cops are required to use body cams.

No mater what, going from a "this story versus that story" to "two stories, and some video" is an great step towards fair treatment and accurately administered justice.

The Koch brothers are 74 and 78 years old. Their mentality is stuck in Cold War rhetoric because they lived through the whole thing. Same with most of the people they fool. The average Fox News viewer is almost 69 years old.

For people under 30, when you say Marxism, Stalin and Hitler, you might as well be talking about Emperor Wilhelm II.

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20 rockets were found in a UN owned school in the Gaza strip. The UN is caliming they were not using the building and did not know the rockets were in the building. What happened to the rockets once the UN discovered they were hiding munitions for Hamas in a school? The UN did the only responsible thing possible and handed those rockets over to Hamas.

Interesting, lets read the link then:

So where did the rockets go? Well, according to Israel, they went right back to Hamas. As an official told The Times of Israel:

The rockets were passed on to the government authorities in Gaza, which is Hamas. In other words, UNRWA handed to Hamas rockets that could well be shot at Israel.”

Ok, that sounds damning, but lets read till the end for the buried lede:

On Monday afternoon, Chris Gunness, the spokesman for U.N.R.W.A., denied that the rockets went back to Hamas.

UNRWA did not give the rockets to Hamas. The rockets were taken away by bomb disposal experts that were answerable to the newly formed government of national consensus, which Hamas has left."

So the rockets went to people most likely hostile to Hamas. Now maybe the UN could have done better disposing of the bombs themselves, but a UN bomb disposal mission in Gaza sounds like something that could also go really wrong. Remember the role of the UN isn't to fight for Israel, in that case they're just trying to provide humanitarian aid.

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20 rockets were found in a UN owned school in the Gaza strip. The UN is caliming they were not using the building and did not know the rockets were in the building. What happened to the rockets once the UN discovered they were hiding munitions for Hamas in a school? The UN did the only responsible thing possible and handed those rockets over to Hamas.

The progressivism stops at the HR office door, perhaps with the exception of some pro-gay-rights moves.

Of course they have no problem hiring brown foreigners for dirt-cheap labor, but if you want to get into their offices you'd better be a white or asian male who went to an elite school. Otherwise you'd be lucky to be hired and make "good money for an Indian."

Here's a good article that links to a few other good articles on the topic:

http://www.thewire.com/technol...

Some of them mention that the intent is not racism, but to copy a phrase on the topic used in the fashion industry, intent is irrelevant if the effect is still racism.

I don't think an incredibly skewed ethnic or gender makeup is concrete evidence of discrimination, but it's definitely an indicator that something is wrong.

Samsung has been on a real kick lately with locked bootloaders.

Fuck any company that tries to limit what I can do with my possessions.

Until they prove that this new tablet is easily rootable, so that you can do what you want on it, no self-respecting nerd should buy this.

(And before any smartass pipes up with "customers are leasing it, not buying it" yeah yeah, you are very clever, but you and I both know that's horseshit.)

It's reasonable to say that applying logistics to a network instead of treating it like a dumb pipe makes for better quality service, but since when is Comcast the most-qualified gatekeeper for our internet traffic?
*sigh* The only way to do this is to burn America down and write the Internet into the new constitution with the same protections as the postal system.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help the people in GOP states that refuse to expand Medicaid to cover those who cannot afford Obamacare... they're just left to die.
http://www.thewire.com/politic...

In a plane you are likely to die.

You and bussdriver are idiots.

40,000 people a year die in cars in the US alone.

700 people a year die in airplanes, in the whole world.

http://www.thewire.com/nationa...

The Wire asks astronomers about it.

Laws are for the commoners, not the elite. You should know that by now

Now you know why Steve Jobs' cars had no license plate ?

http://www.thewire.com/technol...

More on this subject is at http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/01/was-drone-feinstein-encountered-her-house-tiny-pink-helicopter/357061/

Just a couple links to more information about the incident on TechDirt and TheWire.

Pink Barbie helicopter scares Senator in her $16.5M mansion. The gals at Code Pink needed a man to fly a slightly larger top copter, but it wasn't successful either. http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/01/was-drone-feinstein-encountered-her-house-tiny-pink-helicopter/357061/

Hello, that word has been around since at least March 2013...

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/04/rise-term-glasshole-explained-linguists/64363/

I suspect the those pesky real journalists probably don't enough about the tech side of things to ask the questions they really need to be asking in order to debunk this.

The 60 Minutes piece has already been trashed by multiple outlets:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/60-minutes-hearts-the-nsa.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/nsa-surveillance-60-minutes-cbs-facts

http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/12/60-minutes-nsa-good-snowden-bad/356174/

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/why-did-em-60-minutes-em-let-the-head-of-the-nsa-fool-its-audience/282377/

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177598/sad-decline-60-minutes-continues-weeks-nsa-whitewash