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Any google search will provide any info that you'd be interested in reading. Here are some pages that you may want to read:
gut-and-weight-loss-connection
A Hidden Trigger of Obesity: Intestinal Bugs
New Study Reveals Bacteria Could Prevent Obesity and Weight Gain

There is loads of information regarding this. Don't trust me, go find the info yourself. But my point (and I'm assuming that ruir has the same point) is not that the food sits in the gut and causes the weight gain, but that improper digestion of foods leave the body in an improper shape.

There's also a few good Ted talks related to this concept:
Jeroen Raes (not sure why I can't find this on ted.com)
Heribert Watzka
Jonathan Eisen

And what conspiratorial extrapolations are you making about what the future has in store?

Dunno, why don't you ask the US government or any other dirty law enforcement agency?

The National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency have secretly infiltrated the virtual worlds of online multi-player games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, where they use avatars to recruit informants and seek out potential threats, according to a new report. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describe the potential of an online game to “become a target-rich communication network” where threat “targets hide in plain sight,”.

http://swampland.time.com/2013...

Cigarettes are undeniably bad. So are trans-fats, alcohol overconsumption, and too much stress.

The alcohol one is quite tricky. Yes, it's true that health outcomes for heavy alcohol consumption are often somewhat worse that moderate drinkers (in most studies). But there have been quite a few studies that show that heavy drinkers still do better than those who abstain completely. I wouldn't quite go as far as recommendations in this article, but the consensus of many, many studies that have included hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of people is that people who drink have better health outcomes, and heavy drinkers still do a lot better than abstainers.

So, is "alcohol overconsumption" "undeniably bad"? I don't know, but the evidence seems to suggest that it's less bad than other seemingly "better" choices, like not drinking at all.

(Note that these studies do NOT say that alcohol is the DIRECT cause of the better health outcomes, only that it is highly correlated. Most scientists don't think the effect is so much about alcohol protecting the body so much as it guards against depression, alleviates stress, helps social interactions which contribute toward better mental and physical health, etc.)

I get it, I really do, but the romanticism of the electric car is far more justified than the romanticism of the Prius. The Prius is a gasoline car that is good at using gasoline. An electric car is a replacement for gasoline, a Prius is an iteration on gasoline. If you believe gasoline production/use is bad, you have to believe that electric = good, while Prius = less bad.

as far as creating an affordable electric car, everybody agrees Teslas are too expensive, even Musk.... well, that is the POINT of this factory. Batteries suck, and our best batteries are horribly expensive, the only way to make them cheaper is to make more, faster. They have a 3 year plan for a $35,000 sedan. To go from $128,000 to $69,000 to $35,000 in 8 years is amazing, and that is where the "Musk Worship" comes from. Some of the first cars were electric, and since then incredibly wealthy auto manufacturers around the world have been telling us it is all but impossible.

Just because the crime rate in cities is decreasing doesn't go against the point that packing people closer together may increase violence. There are many factors that contribute to crime, population density may only be one.

This article http://science.time.com/2013/0... says cities are safer to live but if you read further its basically because you are far more likely to die from accidental death. murder per person is still higher in cities.

I personally don't know if it true that packing people in, increases violence I think at some point it probably does, but it is not a valid counter argument to look at decrease in city crime rates.

I don't think apathy needs an advocate. There really is no sense in loudly proclaiming defeatism. Sure, some people don't care, but the defendants would not have worked so hard to keep documents sealed if *nobody* cared. This case is being widely covered by the media:

Reuters: http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
Time: http://time.com/42322/steve-jo...
Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ee7535...

And over 186 more articles just from the past few days

So I don't know about what you said right there. I don't believe that "no one cares".

/there is always some subset of people who claim no one cares about any given news story.

Yes I'm sure this has never happened to a private company or multiple major financial institutions, or academic institutions, or security companies or IT companies.

Major financial institutions, academic institutions, security companies, and IT companies don't force us under penalty of law to use their wares and put our personal confidential information at risk. Furthermore, few if any of them have managed to create something of such colossal expense, enormous failure, corruption, and risk we see now.

Yes I'm sure this has never happened to a private company or multiple major financial institutions, or academic institutions, or security companies or IT companies.

Oh wait.

Lakers riots at least three times, plus a smattering of other cities when they win.

I don't necessarily like knowing cops have this information but so long as there's rules over the collection (see above) I'm okay with this.

But you have no idea if they are following those rules at all. Police have a long history of flagrantly violating such rules:
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com...
http://www.thenewsherald.com/a...
http://articles.courant.com/20...

And using their position to rape and murder:
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetim...
http://time.com/3159146/oklaho...
http://articles.courant.com/20...

Access to 1 weeks worth of data would allow the public as a whole to see how they are being monitored. The few criminal investigations that may be impacted pale in comparison to the overwhelming public right to know what the police are up to.

That Reason article redzoned my bullshitometer, I found this explanation:

http://time.com/3198225/britai...

It's not even clear that the issue is weapons. This isn't 1980s Afghanistan we're talking about. Ukraine is a former member of the USSR and was within spitting distance of NATO, so they're armed with fighter and attack aircraft, helicopter gunships, transport aircraft, artillery, armored personnel carriers, etc. etc.

None of it in a particularly good order, most of it a generation behind. And not enough of it to withstand Russia, which poured their gas-monies into weapons and training — in addition to skilful propaganda relying not only on the Leftists traditionally sympathetic to anything "revolutionary", but also on the Rigthists this time...

early on in the conflict, a group of soldiers simply surrendered their armored personnel carriers without a shot being fired

And the keyword here is "early in the conflict". Up until late Spring Russian television was allowed to broadcast in Ukraine... But, yes, Ukrainian's regular military does have issues of its own — many senior officers entered service during Soviet times. But not the newly-formed National Guard volunteers, who remain the shining edge of Ukraine's otherwise rusty blade. And they had to scrounge equipment themselves — from guns and ammunition to infra-red detectors to life-saving Celox...

presumably they're offering intelligence support such as satellite photos as well

Yeah, "presumably". Maybe, now they do alright. But what prevented them from doing it before Crimea got invaded? Russia was massing forces for it for a month in advance — had Pentagon not seen it from above? They had... And they surely had informed the President. But Mr. Incompetent did no see fit to inform Ukraine — neither side of the political fight there — so the invasion was a complete surprise for them... Ukrainian units stationed on peninsula did not know, what to do, and the new leaders did not have a worked-out policy. Their excuse is, they had more important things to do, what's Obama's? Too busy signing people up for Obamacare?

The US has sent body armor and night vision goggles.

Only in June! Four months since Russia first invaded — and only after multiple people, both Republican and Democrats, demanded it. Had Obama been anything more than a pathetic "community organizer", he would've reacted in March instead of trying to glue the pitiful attempts to "Reset" his relationship with Russia back together. But then, if he had been, Putin might not even have dared to invade in the first place...

Perhaps more importantly, the West has committed $27 billion in aid to Ukraine over the next two years

First of all, it is an IMF loan, not true aid. It is still welcome, of course, but it will be a while before it helps troops on the ground. Putin remains a step ahead of our amateur, who is training on-the job (as his own Vice-Amateur once said).

I admit I was oversimplifying a bit when I said the environmentalists caused nuclear R&D in this country to get all but killed outright. Of course it's a bit more complicated and you need to follow the money to find out who's really behind the push. Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and campaigns like Solar not nuclear have often been financed by fossil fuel industries, the reason being that these industries knew damn well that while solar & wind might pose a threat down the line but at present still require fossil fuel backup (thus cementing their position in the grid), nuclear posed an imminent threat should the US go and pull a French on them, kicking them off the grid in one or two decades. Nuclear development projects such as the IFR got caught in political cross fire and for some reason got labeled as being "Republican", so Democratic congresspeople like Kerry led a massive push against it in the early 90s to get it defunded, which they ultimately succeeded in doing in 1994. After the Republicans took office following the Clinton administration, their oil buddies sure as hell didn't want to see the project resurrected, so it was left alone. Ultimately, the IFR project was killed by a lack of political allies, the Democrats being backed by powerful environmental groups (who are often, but not always backed by Big Gas and friends, though they've also got strong grassroots movements) and the Republicans being a wholly-owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry.
Now if you look at counties who are less susceptible to industry lobbying with more centrally planned economies, like China and Russian, they are moving towards nuclear in a big way and are bringing it online both on-time and on-budget.

> transmission of a vehicle's location, which comes with privacy concerns.

We already had this debate when they mandated installing lights on vehicles, which also transmits the location of a vehicle and raised privacy concerns. In the end, the ability to not crash into invisible cars beat out the privacy concerns, IIRC.

Quite a bit different, depending on how far the transmission can be received.

For example, if your vehicle is equipped with OnStar, your location is Tracked and possibly SOLD, even if you have elected to NOT subscribe to the OnStar "Service".

Apparently, only pulling the fuse (or chopping the antenna wire), stops this ridiculous intrusion.

And worse yet, since OnStar isn't a Governmental Agency, by definition, it (technically) CANNOT abuse your Constitutional Rights, PERIOD.

Lets see..
False rape claims and 'honor councils' leading men to just give up on women all together
http://washingtonexaminer.com/...

43% of men have been ''Raped'' under what the feminist movement keeps trying to push a rape claim as.
http://time.com/37337/nearly-h...

Would you like to take a rethink if its 'Men are creepy bastards' or 'Humans are creepy ass bastards and bitches'

As soon as money changes hands it is no longer a "private arrangement". When you charge for a place to stay you are now a hotel unless it is on a month to month basis then you have a roommate. If you are providing the same service as a hotel you are operating a hotel. It is not a "public safety" issue.

This summary is inaccurate - it is a "public safety" issue. In the Nigel Warren case where he rented out his room on Airbnb in NYC, the judge levied a fine of fine of $2,400 after ruling that they were operating an unlicensed hotel.

The law on which the decision was based, Bill S6873B-2009 states:-

JUSTIFICATION:

The Multiple Dwelling Law and local Building, Fire and Housing Maintenance Codes establish stricter fire safety standards for dwellings such as hotels that rent rooms on a day to day (transient) basis than the standards for dwellings intended for month to month (permanent) residence. There are substantial penalties for owners who use dwellings constructed for permanent occupancy (Class A) as illegal hotels. However, the economic incentive for this unlawful and dangerous practice has increased, while it is easier than ever to advertise illegal hotel rooms for rent to tourists over the internet ... It endangers both the legal and illegal occupants of the building because it does not comply with fire and safety codes for transient use.

I.e. The reasoning given for the law was to protect public safety, specifically to ensure compliance with fire and safety codes.

While I broadly agree with your ideal that fair competition is good for customers and specifically with the example you gave, there is more to cheap prices than meets the eye. For example, not that long ago Walmart got into trouble for predatory pricing.

The complaint accused Wal-Mart of selling butter, milk, laundry detergent, and other staple goods below cost at stores in Beloit, Oshkosh, Racine, Tomah, and West Bend. A bottle of laundry detergent that cost Wal-Mart $6.51, for example, was sold for less than $5 at several stores> . The company’s intention, according to the complaint, was to force competitors out of business, gain a monopoly in local markets, and ultimately recoup its losses through higher prices.

I think most people will agree this kind of competition is bad from the consumer's point of view. The problem is, it is very hard to prove intention. That very same marketing tactic, i.e. selling products at or below their cost price, is also a popular marketing tactic known as loss leading.

It’s a classic retail technique: Attract shoppers by lowering prices on certain items, with the idea that once customers are in the store, they’ll buy full-priced items as well.

From the merchant's point of view, he is willing to take a loss on some items to earn traffic for his other goods. To his competitors selling the same loss leader items however, this is unfair competition. My point is, it is a very thorny issue deciding when certain competitive strategies are fair or unfair and much depends on the facts of each case.

The US dollar is quite overvalued. Actually, what keeps it propped up is that it is still the de facto international trade currency and that everyone who as much as thinks about trading internationally in a different currency gets a kick to the nuts. As soon as Ahmedingbats though aloud of creating an Euro-based oil exchange, he was being built up as the next target. Once he dropped the idea, suddenly no more talk about the Iran as the evil incarnate country. Did anything else change 'round that area in the meantime except that their Euro-oil plans were put on hold?

Btw, just for kicks, here's an even older article, talking about someone else who did and wasn't swayed so easily.

Not many to find, but here's a source that at least has a date in it.

There was nothing stored at this school.
http://time.com/3076108/gaza-i...

The only thing that link shows is that the UN chief is ignoring the facts to gain cheap headlines. Nothing there denies the facts alleged by either Israel nor the UNRWA press release I linked to.

Even if there had been, Israel could have sent in foot soldiers who could use those super weapons called eyeballs to decide who to kill and who not.

Your assertion that under battle you have better control over not killing bystanders need better basing on facts. Foot soldiers on the ground means less control over the fight, as you have to take care of defense as well as attack. This results in more, not less, civilian casualties.

The biggest number of Palestinian casualties this time around, by far, were in Shuja'iyya, where the Israeli forces were taken by surprise and had to bring in artilery support. This simply does not happen in air raids.

Instead, as Israel does not want to incur military casualties of their own which would cause political backlash in Israel itself, they shell at a distance - easy for them but incurring, overall, seven times as many dead Palestinian children as there have been Israeli military and civilian casualties combined. Dead Palestinian children being more acceptable in Israel, obviously, than dead Israeli soldiers.

The objectives of any army in conflict inside urban area has, is, and seems to always continue to be, in descending order of precendence:
1. Get the mission done
2. Minimize own casualties
3. Minimize civilian enemy casualties

The only thing in which the IDF is different is that it sometimes places "3" above "2", and even above "1" above. That anomality is only happening in the IDF. Most other moral armies use the above list as is. Israel used to abort missions if there was a high chance of civilian casualties. Hamas manuvered that into making it impossible for Israel to act at all. Such a thing, while I'm sure would be lauded by some, would be even more immoral. The result is the high number of casualties in this round of fighting.

Israel has a clear interest in minimizing the number of casualties. There is both internal and external pressure to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Hotheads like you blame Israel for every Palestinian dead, regardless of circumstances and actions, calling for boycotts and pressuring their own governments. Israel has no interest in killing Palestinians. Your asserted indifference is simply without grounding in reality.

Hamas, on the other hand. Well, that's a different story altogether. Every Palestinian dead is a Hamas win. Internally, they call them "Shahids" and claim that they are martyrs. I'm sure many Palestinians would love to call bulshit on this rehtorics, but the simply truth is that they do not. They are probably too afraid to fall out of line or to be accused of "cooporating with Israel", an accusation carrying the death penalty.

Externally, Hamas has equally little incentive to care for their own people. When you see horrible pictures of the dead (and they are horrible), you (i.e. sociocapitalist) don't stop to ask questions. You don't wonder why they did not clear out when warned. You don't seek media sources that will report to you Hamas explicit instructions (orders) to people to "defy" the Israeli warnings. People say that Israel is strong (which is true) and Hamas is weak (which is not as true as people believe, but definitely not false), and assign zero accountability to Hamas' actions. While I'm sure you congratulate yourself on being in the moral right, it is, in fact, your indifference to the truth that allows Hama

There was nothing stored at this school.
http://time.com/3076108/gaza-i...

Even if there had been, Israel could have sent in foot soldiers who could use those super weapons called eyeballs to decide who to kill and who not.

Instead, as Israel does not want to incur military casualties of their own which would cause political backlash in Israel itself, they shell at a distance - easy for them but incurring, overall, seven times as many dead Palestinian children as there have been Israeli military and civilian casualties combined. Dead Palestinian children being more acceptable in Israel, obviously, than dead Israeli soldiers.
http://www.france24.com/en/201...

At least he had a self-driving engine, it is an improvement over the usual idiot that go to drive drunk and kill several in the way. And in some cases keep driving after doing that.

You do note, and therefore know, you can have Private Insurance in the UK too. Even WHO thinks the American system is bad for consumers... http://content.time.com/time/h...

It's true. Cunnilingus can give you throat cancer. http://healthland.time.com/201...

The whole things seems as innocuous as Halliburton's billion dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. It's not just Joe Biden's son either who's been "hired" on to the gas producer, Burisma Holdings:

Time Magazine reports:

David Leiter, a former Senate chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, signed on to work as a lobbyist for Burisma on May 20, 2014, about a week after Biden announced he was joining the company, according to lobbying disclosures filed this month.

Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.

The team of Americans, made up of friends and family of Obama administration officials, seeks to influence Congress on Burisma Holding's role in Ukraine and the country's quest for energy independence.

A few States tried it too. And they succeeded

Georgia: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-unintended-consequences-georgias-immigration-law-backfires/
Arizona: http://business.time.com/2012/06/14/the-fiscal-fallout-of-state-immigration-laws/
Alabama: http://business.time.com/2012/06/14/the-fiscal-fallout-of-state-immigration-laws/
Indiana: I couldn't find a decent article specifically about Indiana, but it's the same story.

The good news is that by shooting themselves in the foot, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana provided a wonderful example of what not to do. All the other States that were thinking about passing similar laws... didn't. Or they exempted farm and maid labor, which more or less undercuts the core purpose of such laws.

A few States tried it too. And they succeeded

Georgia: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-unintended-consequences-georgias-immigration-law-backfires/
Arizona: http://business.time.com/2012/06/14/the-fiscal-fallout-of-state-immigration-laws/
Alabama: http://business.time.com/2012/06/14/the-fiscal-fallout-of-state-immigration-laws/
Indiana: I couldn't find a decent article specifically about Indiana, but it's the same story.

The good news is that by shooting themselves in the foot, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana provided a wonderful example of what not to do. All the other States that were thinking about passing similar laws... didn't. Or they exempted farm and maid labor, which more or less undercuts the core purpose of such laws.

As for legalizing highly addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin, I don't see how decriminalizing them [could] possibly be a good idea.

As someone else pointed out: as counter-intuitive as it might be, the data is in since Portugal ran the experiment.

Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?

No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.

Certain parts, apparently not including the area this plane was flying over.

Please explain how social security is not a Ponzi scheme?

The first generation that received social security was paid by the working generation (2nd generation). The 2nd generation is paid for by the 3rd generation and so on. It only works as long as the next generation (new investors) grows fast enough to pay for the current generation. This is classic Ponzi scheme, the first investers get paid off right away (and well), and the second investers pay for them and they get paid less well, and then the 3rd generation get paid even less, and so on, and you can only sustain it if you get more investors or you actually generate income. Unless I am mistaken, the only income social security gets is from the current investors.

Social security now takes more than it gives: http://business.time.com/2012/...

Setting aside Apple for the moment, there's nothing "theoretical" about Amazon engaging in actions of this sort. They've been doing it as long as Apple has, at least.

Using most favored nation clauses and the agency model, which is exactly what got Apple in trouble: http://www.selfpublishingrevie...
Leveraging their near-monopsony to try and gouge the publishers: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks...
Making hard-to-implement immediate demands when the publishers pushed back: http://www.thepassivevoice.com...
Delisting multiple publishers during re-negotiations: http://time.com/110412/amazon-...
Jacking shipping times from a few days to 3-5 weeks: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The author's guild is outright accusing Amazon of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Spend 30 seconds Googling around. You'll be shocked at what all Amazon has already done when it comes to this industry, and it's only been getting worse in recent years. It's like looking inside the door at a sausage factory: you'd have wished you never looked.

Whoa! Wait a minute who ever said anything about solving overpopulation. I'm just saying that from a career perspective caregiver can be rewarding. Also, to really be a caregiver you are going to probably have to be married with your partner working, unless you want to be one of the government dependents but then why are you asking about jobs.

However, I do have some issues with your points.

Food scarcity is normally not caused by society not being able to produce enough food. Well maybe we can't produce a enough meat for everyone to eat like a fat American, but we could meet the current worlds total caloric needs with some work. However, due to war, oppression, terrible government, stupidity, and callously choosing to say screw the poor I want double Steak we make that hard.

Energy scarcity: We have tons of Uranium and Thorium. If we could get off our asses and actually use it to build useful things like Modern power plants instead of bombs we might be able to have a sensible energy agenda.

Pollution Levels: The modern world needs steel and steel is dirty. Unless you want to go back to a pre-steel world we are going to have to put up with some pollution for the foreseeable future. But with good management we can limit the pollution.

Disease Susceptibility: People get sick. Always have always will. Poor people get sick more than rich people due to malnutrition or improper hygiene. Things are still better now than they were though. Maybe we should raise the standard of living in the rest of the world some.

Psychological Disorder: Always existed, society just killed people with this because they were "Possessed by the devil" before the enlightenment. I am not for a return to that idea even if it puts stress on society.

Political unrest: Come on wars are as central to human activity as breathing. As long as humans exist there will be war or at least arguments over something. If you think otherwise have fun in your utopia fantasy land. I welcome getting proven wrong.

Overpopulation in the Western World: Most of the western world is in demographic decline. (I'm assuming this is a predominantly western audience being English language and all.) The US and EU only skirt by with immigrants. So clearly we are not prolific reproducers anymore. Now for the rest of the world, they may have to tone down the reproducing, but unless we want to use that war thing to stop them I'm not sure how we could. And I'm not sure I can support a government that would go to war against the breeders it sounds to Nazi like to me.

Though in the end I agree with you. If we keep growing our population we will eventually run out of resources to support that population. In the end the only real answer is to get off this rock and colonize space. But that's not really an answer to the problem. It's just kicking it down the road for a really long time. (Universal Entropy and what not) Any other form of forced population control will require some form of world government. Otherwise the countries that don't comply will just swallow you up in a few generations.

This is very "green lantern-ish" sounding to me. The way it's explained here: http://time.com/2987551/thor-m... makes it sound like whoever wields Mjolnir is Thor. Current Thor becomes unable to wield the hammer, so the hammer choses someone else, who happens to be a woman. She becomes Thor, and previous Thor becomes "big muscular guy but not superhero" or something.

I'm not sure where exactly on Earth is sufficiently "remote", dark, moist, and unreachable that this makes sense.

Thor's vagina.

You mean this Thor, right?

TPTB can freeze credit cards, bank accounts, etc on a whim, but can't freeze a wallet full of $20s.

Actually, yeah they can. North Korea did just this...to all the money in everyone's wallet...when they decided that the black market had gotten too powerful. They demoted the value of the won (their currency) by two orders of magnitude...and gave everyone only a week to change their currency in for the new notes, after which time the old notes would not be worth the paper they were printed on.

Now here's the part where you say "But that's North Korea!" right on the heels of everyone claiming that the reason to go cashless is because we're not really living in a free society...

There are a lot of things that can only be remembered.

Sometimes there is a reason for that.

I remember there was an announcement a day or two after 9/11 that all data was now being routed through government servers.

Two reactions:
1. - What is that they say about extraordinary claims?
2. - See link above.

The truth is that Gamestop guaranteed their eventual nonexistence when they dropped games for old consoles.

I don't remember a time when Gamestop didn't have old consoles. (They are a USED video game franchise.)

What will bring about the death of Gamestop is not supporting older systems, but the stupidity of trying to be like BestBuy.

In my opinion, they (Gamestop) is wasting their time (and money) by including the tablets and smartphone crap. Newsflash: You don't make (real business-sustaining) money in tablets and smartphones by selling hardware and accessories. You make money by having your own proprietary appstore, and making money on app and in-app purchaces.
(Although I doubt Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo / Apple / etc. will willingly allow a company like Gamestop to sell on their platforms.)

As for TFA, I thought this was common place already. However, I don't like the idea. This is just another example of screwing over the players.

"Oh you want to experience everything the game has to offer? Well you'll need to buy the game (now on multiple platforms), all of the DLC (for each platform), and (in some cases, not as bad as it used to be) play the online sections to unlock sections of the single-player mode. Don't forget to get the assured-pwnage gear from the online shop so you'll be at the same level as other players in multiplayer mode. Also, be sure to rebuy it's rerelease on our new platforms in the future, for even more crap that we decided to add (or not add) to it."

We already have the above, now Gamestop wants to add "Preorder the game at each retailer (for each supported system)" to that list? Hopefully the publishers release the content from the preorders after release or you would miss out on whatever it was. (Considering ANY part of the game can be DLC, this would be bad.) Currently they do for the most part, but I would not put it past some publishers to try and keep the exclusivity.

Ten bucks says the industry would love to use this as a way of boosting preorder sales. (Why not? they can get the sales before the hype build up comes crashing down on release day.)

Gamestop needs to quit supporting this crap, it's doing nothing but destroying the industry as a whole.

Trans-oceanic shipping is currently based on Bunker Oil. This nasty stuff is a major pollution source to the point it is included in the Greenhouse emission budget on a national level. It is also dirt cheap, being the bottom gunky by-product of regular cracking of heavy oil at a refinery. Environmentally sound techniques like bio-fuels are optimized for producing gas for cars and other high-margin industrial processes. These have quite a price hurtle to cross.

The transportation improvements section of the PDF is pretty hand-wavy on 'improvements' like electrification of vehicles. Techniques like Cold Ironing, taking port from port instead of internal engines, is mainly useful for preventing horrible pollution from this high-particular sulfurous fuel while near shore. It does nothing for a ship under steam. Unless countries start pushing out nuclear barges, a highly impractical solution, all these shiny electric vehicles and parts are going to be chuffing their way across the seven seas to the sound of a large sunken carbon footprint. Some of these ships build today will be in service years from now, deep into the 21st century.

The report is maybe good for a non-technical CIO, but some of us are nerds. We all want to know what kind of power plant our flying cars are going to be using. Sadly this glossy discussion of carbon markets seems well prepared but no more so than any "Stories from Future" TV special. In particular, the transport sections are requiring a "strong global R&D push on technologies." Sure, we'll get right back to you on that one.

Umm, Einstein wasn't bad at math. Apparently you're bad at history though.

http://content.time.com/time/s...

Remember the milkman?

I do not, actually, but there may be better explanations for his disappearance — and that of other conveniences, than the evil elite's plot to remove the services we like without lowering the prices on what's left. The milkman, for example, was killed by a combination of increased mobility of the customers (who can all go to a supermarket, when they please), and government regulations concerning both keeping of the cows and processing the milk. You just can't do it any more — not on a small scale. Even when people try to do it as a co-op (such as to have milk to processed a certain way), the government fights them tooth-and-nail.

Yes, some rather expensive cars include rather expensive insurance.

The car being overall expensive, will increase its insurance cost, yes. But I was talking about another aspect — an otherwise inexpensive machine with "overly" powerful engine will cost more to insure. People are buying them anyway... Point is, different models do cost slightly different to insure — which cars, that are easier to fix costing less, for example.

Auto insurance compete a lot on branding and somewhat on extras, but a lot less on price/service than they would have you believe.

That depends on the state. Collectivist places like Massachusetts dictate, what insurance is to cost — leaving the companies to compete on the service-quality only. In other places you may be able to get a different quote from a different company. There is still competition and, as I said, as long as the buyers are the actual users themselves (rather than employers), we are Ok.

Guess who lobbied for the seat belt laws!

Whoever it was, they are not lobbying for the "spies" being mandatory.

There's no Berlin Wall in America.

... Yet. They are working on it, thank you very much. See here. Or here.

I think you didn't get the memo on the whole Berlin Wall metaphor.

Your poor attempt at sarcasm betrays (a) an overly sensitivity to criticism of your country, and (b) a complete misunderstanding of the issue at hand. There is no Berlin Wall because there is no escaping the NSA. They are spying on the entire world. You can move to Mexico - that makes you a suspect. You can move to Canada - that makes you a suspect. If you even talk to someone who may know someone who may have been in contact with a suspect, you will be caught in the dragnet.

Everyone is fair game, everyone is a potential target. Everyone will be spied on, because terrorists! 9/11! Dirty bomb! Mushroom clouds! They hate our freedom!

I suspect YOU did not get THAT memo. Or maybe you are of the "I did not do anything wrong - so I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear from Big Brother" persuasion? Hmmm?

By the way, why are you reading Slashdot, citizen? Do you have your permit for that? And why talk to this terrorist suspect or that one?

The rest of your comment are more of the same drivel, so I will not even dignify it with a response.

they might sing another tune when all of this stuff you get for free now, like email, news content, etc, ends up costing even more money out of your pocket in addition to what you spend on the internet connection

You already are paying, you just don't realize it.

how the hell do you think that the companies that provide these free sites to you pay their bills?

Convincing you to pay inflated prices in order to pay for the ads is exactly how these "free" sites pay their bills.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.html

Time magazine "mainstream" enough for you?

http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1095057.html

Or that, less mainstream though. Note both are from 2000 (before we attacked Iraq/Saddam).

http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/4630-gadhafis-gold-money-plan-would-have-devastated-dollar

Several links in there, some stale but a few at least worked.

http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/iranian-oil-bourse-opening.php
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Iran-Opens-Oil-Bourse-Harbinger-of-Trouble-for-New-York-and-London.html
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2314.cfm

I'm sure there's a lot more on the Iran oil bourse, it's in wikipedia as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse

The current schooling environment is hostile to boys.

I know this has come up a bit in recent years, but mostly it's a claim made about draconian measures to stop boys from playing games involving imaginary guns and shootings... mostly because of ineffective and ridiculous overreactions to recent school shootings.

Maybe this is having an effect, and maybe it results in alienation of some boys. But I fail to see what this has to do with the number of female teachers....

*That* is the reason they aren't good at it, they are not taught how because the teachers are predominantly female and don't know or want to know how to teach boys.

Umm, are you being sarcastic? Female school teachers have greatly outnumbered males at least for the past 150 years in the U.S. or so. (See, for example, the chart on p. 29 here.) We're not even at historical high points for female teachers -- female teachers composed roughly 80-85% of the public school teaching force from 1920 to 1950 or so. These were periods where the vast, vast majority of high school graduates and college students were male.

Now, it's possible that our culture has changed and that female teachers no longer care about educating boys (actively discriminating against them), or that boys no longer respect female teachers (or teachers in general) and therefore aren't learning well from them. Or maybe other aspects of our culture have changed overall.

But the idea that because "teachers are predominantly female" that boys can't learn is simply stupid, as even the most cursory glance at historical trends would tell you.

Yeah, they're also the same kids who get their "news" from The Colbert Report.

Is that a bad thing?

http://time.com/2819459/study-...

"Just that simple"? You like the idea of closing borders, evidently, but do you like the idea of produce prices, meat prices, service-economy costs, and just about every other menial-labor field seeing its labor costs double overnight? Because that's the consequence of requiring that citizens do those jobs. Stoop work is awful, backbreaking work that pays bullshit. It only survives because the immigrants who do it are so desperate for the work that they'll take it.

The moment you kick the immigrants out, you see cases like these ones, where billions of dollars of produce were left to rot in the fields because all the immigrants who would have picked them were driven out by tough anti-immigrant laws.
The US agricultural economy -- and a lot of the service economy -- is built on a steady influx of sub-minimum-wage labor, and only survives because of undocumented immigrants. Take it away, and large swaths of the economy collapse.

First of all, the level of firearm ownership in an area does have an effect on the firearm homicide rate. It correlates -

http://ajph.aphapublications.o...

Violent crime has gone down in most of the industrialized world over the past 3 decades, regardless of whether a country restricts firearms or not -

http://rgambler.com/2013/11/03...
http://jpo.wrlc.org/bitstream/...
http://www.economist.com/news/...

However, America's violent crime rate is much higher than most developed countries -

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

The growing consensus (in public policy circles at least) these days is that it is not gun ownership that is causing this violence, but the American gun culture -

http://www.businessweek.com/ar...
http://world.time.com/2012/12/...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...

The problem is that we keep looking at gun ownership rates The Swiss has high levels of gun ownership, but they also have a very strict culture of gun safety and training. Men are required to undergo military training and be in the reserves for 10 years, keeping their sealed army-issued firearm at home or in the Zeughaus, for use in case of invasion. Thus, they have lots of guns, but little gun crime.

Now, the question is how do you measure gun culture? In America you have this issues with two main groups poisoning the culture - the gangs and the "don't tread on me" types. How can you design a study to measure the effect of this culture on gun crime?

Netflix already backed down: http://time.com/2848782/netfli...

> Mims is wrong.

No he is not.

First, Darwinism is NOT the cause of consciousness. Consciousness uses evolution as a tool. Stop confusing evolution as the source when it is only a minor process.

Second, there is no such thing as junk DNA. 100% of DNA has a purpose. Note: Scientists were currently only able to decode part of it so they made an assumption that the rest is "junk".

Thirdly, no amount of "selective" breeding or mutations is going to get cats and dogs to be able to produce offspring.

Lastly, Dr. Amit Goswami, Ph.D., theoretical nuclear physicist, in his documentary The Quantum Activist lists his reasons for why Darwinism is also incomplete: Namely the separation of matter and consciousness is based on an incorrect framework: the primacy of matter. The actually reality is that there is only consciousness.

Until scientists learns to quantity consciousness, and include it is in the physics equations Science is doomed to ignorance.

They already HAS paid Verizon for better service...and Verizon STILL isn't providing it...

No, not for "better service", they paid for an interconnect. That's it. It means that instead of streaming traversing from Netflix -> 3rd party backbone provider -> Verizon, it now goes directly from Netflix -> Verizon. So Verizon is correct - they are providing a connection from Netflix at the data rate specified in the agreement. Those messages may be the interconnect is actually too small (because Netflix undersized it), or something between the user's device and Verizon's network. Sure, it could be a crowded Verizon network, but claiming it's THE cause is speculation, and claiming that there is something Verizon isn't providing is completely wrong.