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It's not an urban legend. France has a special appreciation for the comedic genius of Msr Jerry Lewis.

Jerry Lewis gets Legion of Honor medal

PARIS (AP) — France formalized its fascination with Jerry Lewis Thursday with a uniquely Gallic gift for his 80th birthday: a medal and induction into the Legion of Honor.

Legion of Honour

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour (French: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur)[1] is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte on 19 May 1802. The Order is the highest decoration in France and is divided into five degrees: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer), and Grand Croix (Grand Cross).

Well if they were worried about the public learning of the program in 2009, they were three years too late. Here is a USA Today article from May, 2006 that completely describes the NSA's phone metadata collection program. In 2006 it was reported and it was a non-story with few people very concerned about it. While this story is the life blood of those posting here on Slashdot, most people still don't really care about it.

Please explain to us how recording tv shows, sporting events all of which state no rebroadcasting allowed, innovative? we can record all the TV shows/sporting events the last 20 some odd years we want for personal use so no innovation there.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/

"Quote"The company uses huge arrays of tiny digital antennas to record the local broadcasts, then charges a fee to stream that content directly to your PC, iPhone, iPad, Android device (4.1+), or Roku box."End Quote"

That's their business model "record for paid rebroadcast" Something they are already warned they cant do. Innovating way of breaking copyright laws maybe? Plus the court rulings against them as well.

Bush drafted the pullout plan...

Yes, the plan drafted by him years earlier — but it was Obama's execution, and his failure to make corrections when new developments made it obvious, the plan's original projections were too optimistic. Face it, Obama wanted to do it for political reasons — to look better...

You mean, like Reagan did with the USSR and Afghanistan invasion?

Hah! You lie, but that's a good example, thank you! USSR invaded Afghanistain in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was is office — another example of a weak "it is all America's fault" excuse for a President. But even he imposed sanctions against USSR. And the whole world boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Reagan assumed Presidency in 1981, with the invasion over a year-old, and proceeded to arm Russia's opponents in Afghanistan. He did not lift Carter-era sanctions — he expanded them. Obama, on the other hand, would not send Ukraine anything lethal, and even to get him to agree to supply blankets and body-armor took some arm-twisting and was delayed by months.

1) Gitmo is still open. 2) Drone strikes were started by Bush.

Yes, which is an embarrassment for Obama. To reduce the embarrassment, he is doing two things both of which are far worse: 1) he is releasing the current detainees — including bona-fide enemies of the US; 2) he vastly expanded the drone strikes "started by Bush". Bush used air-strikes to kill enemies, who could not be detained. Obama is using against all — such is his reluctance to increase the number of inconvenient detainees, he prefers to lose the intelligence value of interrogating them. That the remotely-killed people have no chance of clearing up any confusion makes Obama's policy even more immoral.

So far you've listed exactly the things that Republicans do.

Nonsense. You have no leg to stand on in this argument — the extrajudicial killing of bin Laden (ordered by Obama) defeats your point by itself... That you chose to ignore the earlier-raised point of Obama taking the drone-strikes to the whole new level, and his order to kill rather the detain bin Laden, shows your dishonesty.

On top of that you got Reagan's reaction to USSR's invasion exactly backwards, which demonstrates the level of ignorance so deep, I'm unlikely to respond again...

How about animals?

Hey - how about them animals?

It impacts animals a lot less than when woods are cleared for housing subdivisions or urban spread. There are trees growing right up to the fences around our local wind turbines. Townhouses wer put up in what used to be a wooded area a mle form us. A lot of wildlife simply went away for good.

And as for solar off grid applications - ever see how many birds are killed by power lines

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

http://archive.audubonmagazine...

http://www.eagles.org/vu-study...

You make the common mistake of believing that whatever you are accustomed to is safe, while displaying great fear of what you aren't used to.

To put this in perspective, California is aiming for 100 fueling stations by 2024 and as of May this year only 9 actually existed.

"California, Oregon, New York and five other states pledged to put more than three million zero-emission vehicles on their roads by 2025"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...

"The government" is not an organized entity with a secret agenda.

In this case some agency is paying shills to post nonsense on the internet, and which agency--be it the FBI, the originators of COINTELPRO, or the CIA, or any other alphabet soup entity--isn't relevant to the fact of those trolls existing. Hence, "the government". If I said it was the NSA, you'd be busy telling me how incompetent the NSA is. Instead you've chosen to conveniently overlook the cooperation of the NSA and its pet, the GCHQ.

But I'll go ahead and tear about your stupid shit about there not being web propaganda, because why not.

Leon Panetta publicly admits to web propaganda efforts by the Pentagon. However, it's a contractor performing the propaganda, which would confuse your poor mind into wanting to associate it with some government agency, since "the government" after all is too much of a summary for you. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

USA TODAY found that the owners of the top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan, Leonie Industries, had failed to pay $4 million in federal taxes on time despite earning more than $200 million in contracts from the government. Their tax bills were paid after the story was published.

Shortly after USA TODAY made inquiries about the tax bills, fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as phony fan club websites, were set up to disparage USA TODAY reporters. The co-owner of the company, Camille Chidiac, admitted to setting up some of the sites but said he did not use company resources in doing so. He had been suspended from receiving federal contracts because of the campaign, but the military lifted the suspension late last year.

Domestic propaganda legalized in 2013, for the first time since the cold war: http://rt.com/usa/propaganda-u...
Military Announces New Social Media Policy: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com...
Many months behind schedule, the Department of Defense on Friday issued a new policy that, on the surface, seems likely to expand access to popular social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter by troops using military computers.

And most importantly: Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media: Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech...

In summary, you're bad at this, and should feel bad.

Trenton council rejects expansion of 'ShotSpotter' gunshot detection system
“That body was shot there in the head and it stayed there for five hours with ShotSpotter being only a few blocks away. This product does not work, at least not for Trenton.”
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index...

Shotspotter gun sensor technology halted in Birmingham after failed trial
http://www.birminghammail.co.u...

Gunshot detection system in Delaware comes up blank
600 reports of shots fired, 175 actual shootings, shots detected only five or six times, a camera only turned toward the shooting once and it was unable to see anything due to foliage in the way.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Broward sheriff dropping gunshot detection system
"the system was picking up noises such as firecrackers or a backfiring car and registering those sounds as gunfire. The sensors were also triggered by helicopters and the roar of downshifting trucks from nearby Interstate 95...the problems at BSO with the gunshot detection system mirror findings of a 2008 report...called the system useful but took issue with an apparent high rate of false calls."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.c...

Well... Not so fast. Amazon actually loses money. Pretty consistently too.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon-...

They really don't make much money at all...

This, and the the previous poster's point about using a temporary shift in fuel price as a basis for a long-term decision, show that there is a kind of desperate denial in place for many Americans.

They were sold the big dream and are unwilling to see the simple truth; the dream of an easy, middle class life for most Americans is gone. The SUV is their symbol that they still have the kind of economic freedom that a widely-shared national prosperity used to offer. The inconvenient truths that it will cost them outrageous amounts of money to fuel, and that it will probably need major repairs long before the 7 year loan is paid off are comfortably far away when they are in the showroom buying their toy.

Why is the dream gone? That is a whole nother' thread that covers many parallel trends.

But one overarching factor is that the overall pie is stagnant or shrinking. Aside from the unproductive shenanigans of the finance parasites, and a similar milking of trillions of dollars through the for-profit health care system, plus the temporary fracking bubble that drills most of its wells at a loss using other sucker's money, there really aren't many growing sectors of the economy. We've lost many of the productive activities that had broadly-shared economic multipliers.

I'm not sure why that is exactly, but I suspect that it is driven by the inexorable decline in the ease of extraction of energy and all forms of raw materials. The easy oil and gas, the rich deposits of minerals, the virgin forests holding hundreds of years worth of stored growth, the teeming fisheries are all nearly gone. And the easy wealth goes with it.

So rather than clinging to the illusion that our lives will continue to be about which status-enhancing consumer product we should buy next, we probably should start looking at what elements are actually required to have a satisfying life without the pumped-up economic circus.

I'll give a hint--it's not about what you buy, its more about who you love and who can trust you to do what you say you will.

No one died.... except for this guy

You are not your race, gender, age, or place of birth.

But those things are all part of you and are life experiences that helped shape you into what you are. The entire rest of your statement is a ridiculous strawman.

If a company of 5 people doesn't include 1 woman, that's perfectly believable as a result of pure chance just like a company of 5 people not including anybody who grew up in poverty, or anybody who did not grow up in poverty, or anybody whose parents were not religious, or whatever.

If a company of ten thousand doesn't, that seems like evidence of some sort of filtering (a filter which may be removing other things!). And if a representative sample of 2000 companies, each of 5 people, doesn't include 1 woman, that's not chance there's some filter.

Somebody who speaks multiple languages may have something to say about localizability of software. A software company made up of only employees aged 50 or higher, trying to make a culturally-relevant educational game for university students, is likelier to fail than a company with diverse ages because of a failure to relate.

And if your company is making the ultimate in comfort-bras? Well there's good reason to include mostly women and mostly not men. Vice-versa for comfortable jockstraps. If your company is making something irrelevant, like a television remote control, then an extreme skew has a high chance of being evidence of bias. In remotes, that bias could lead to under-reporting the fact that the remote is too big to fit in the average woman's hand. Even if there is a small-handed male in the crowd too, he could be seen as the extreme exception. These are, of course, examples off the top of my head.

Race means nothing. Sex means nothing.

They mean something during hiring:

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/ca...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

etc.

People where literally the only difference in their resume is their first name, get consistent, measurably different results from the hiring process.

If you can't... that isn't my fault.

Well actually you are right now making it your fault by insisting that we not even examine whether there's a problem, and conflating the issue with a "push for sexual and racial quotas". Nobody but you is talking about explicit quotas.

Your first name should not matter to somebody who does hiring. If it does, that's an unreasonable bias. It's not "pushing a quota" to try to level off that bias. In fact, defending the status quo in the face of such biases is arguably pushing a quota.

Generally though, this isn't about blaming you or anybody else. It's about

Tell that to Todd Hoffner.

I blame Outbreak. http://nypdecider.files.wordpr...

One thing I don't get though... http://ebolatracking.org/ - I get there's a lot of stupid people in New York, California, Texas... but Maine? Why the hell is Maine over 10000 tweets... it's mother effing Maine.

Probably because that's where that Healthcare Worker who has been making such a stink about being voluntarily Quarantined for a whole 21 days in her own house (a Quarantine she decided on her own to break today), lives.

I blame Outbreak. http://nypdecider.files.wordpr...

One thing I don't get though... http://ebolatracking.org/ - I get there's a lot of stupid people in New York, California, Texas... but Maine? Why the hell is Maine over 10000 tweets... it's mother effing Maine.

Probably because that's where that Healthcare Worker who has been making such a stink about being voluntarily Quarantined for a whole 21 days in her own house (a Quarantine she decided on her own to break today), lives.

"Average life expectancy has actually been going down recently, at least in the US."

That is very interesting. Can you cite a source for your statement.

Here is what I read recently:

Life expectancy in the USA hits a record high by Larry Copeland, USA TODAY 3:54 a.m. EDT October 9, 2014:

Life expectancy in the USA rose in 2012 to 78.8 years - a record high.

That was an increase of 0.1 year from 2011 when it was 78.7 years, according to a new report on mortality in the USA from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

Well this is the same guy that said that the iPhone would never sell. Also the iPad was a "bubble". At the time I thought he was just cheerleading for MS and Windows because he was CEO. Now upon hearing that he's purging the LA Clippers of all non MS gear it appears that he has a strong bias.

When the minimum wage went up in San Jose, the downtown pizza parlor raised the per-slice price by $0.25 USD and per pie price by $1.00 USD. Business remained steady and the world didn't come to an end. Never mind that states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth

San Jose is the largest city in Silicon Valley, third largest city in California, and 10th largest city in the United States.

Silicon Valley is a terrible example to demonstrate the effects of a minimum wage increase and corresponding increases in local product/service costs. The area is too wealthy, this distorts the reaction to $1 more per pizza.

"The median household income is $90,000, according to the Census Bureau. The average single-family home sells for about $1 million. The airport is adding an $82 million private jet center."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

There certainly is an anti-trust issue here, but it's on the Hatchette side, not the Amazon side:

E-book price fixing settlements rolling out

In December, a judge approved settlements involving book publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin after a federal court ruled they conspired with Amazon rival Apple. In the lawsuit, the Justice Department claimed Apple conspired with book publishers to fix prices in order to thwart a discount initiative from Amazon.

Hatchette is now trying to reinstate the price-fixing it just got fined $69 million over via other avenues. And of course all the usual idiots are falling for the "Ooo, Amazon evil!" propaganda because Hatchette is the publisher for a lot of high power media personality who can go on TV and pretend this is all about "the little guy" rather than padding thier own pockets.

Thomas Duncan, the ebola patient, wasn't sent home because as you put it, "poor Nigger, not gonna pay his bills." He was misdiagnosed. That isn't hard to understand. It isn't hard to get right.

Timeline details missteps with Ebola patient who died

From WSJ: “Princess Duo, a niece of Ms. Troh who lives in Dallas and spoke with her following the ER visit, said Ms. Troh recounted being specific in the information she gave nurses that night. “They asked him for ID, and whether he had insurance. And she told them he did not because he had just come from Liberia,” Ms. Duo said."

Sure he was "misdiagnosed" (or more realistically, not diagnosed, unless you have information as to what he was positively diagnosed with) , but only because they did not take the travel history properly or act on it.

Unfortunately we tend to suck at this kind of introspection. If we had asked, the most glaring weakness in our system, "Not everybody has medical coverage", might have been considered. Then when a sick black man recently arrived from West Africa came to the hospital without medical insurance we might have thought "EBOLA" and treated him right away, instead of thinking "poor Nigger, not gonna pay his bills" and sent him home with some Tylenol.

Like most nations America can struggle with introspection. But you know what? There is an ever bigger problem, one of far greater significance that even undermines the democratic system of government. Do you know what that is? Lying through your ass when the facts are either known or knowable to achieve your ends, as it appears you may have just done. Thomas Duncan, the ebola patient, wasn't sent home because as you put it, "poor Nigger, not gonna pay his bills." He was misdiagnosed. That isn't hard to understand. It isn't hard to get right.

Timeline details missteps with Ebola patient who died

The record shows the physician "gathered personal history and health data" directly from Duncan and his companion. The data "reveal that Mr. Duncan and his companion advised that he was a 'local resident,' that he had not been in contact with sick people, and that he had not experienced nausea, vomiting or diarrhea" — symptoms of Ebola.

The physical examination of Duncan "was remarkable only for nasal congestion and a runny nose along with mild abdominal tenderness."

Duncan was given Extra Strength Tylenol and intravenous saline solution at 1:24 a.m.

Various lab tests all came back within normal ranges.

At 3:02 a.m., Duncan's temperature was 103 Fahrenheit. Thirty minutes later, it had eased to 101.2, and he was discharged five minutes later.

The diagnosis: "sinusitis and abdominal pain." The physician noted that "patient is feeling better and comfortable with going home."

Duncan, who had traveled to Dallas to visit family and prepare to marry, returned to the hospital Sept. 30 and was diagnosed with Ebola

At best your capacity for introspection seems to have failed you. Or are you one of those people still going hammer and tongs for Obamacare and government run healthcare so that we can all enjoy the "benefits" of the VA health system (and its many recently publicized failings) or Medicare? Do you ever reflect on that? Do you ever reflect on the possibility that false data can lead to bad decisions even when making public policy?

are you trusting that "off" means off.

Well in California, Yes now means "Yes". I'm afraid that it's only "off" in some context you don't (aren't meant to) understand. But it's OK, it's Apple, after all --they're just backing up all of your keystrokes and swipes to the iCloud in case you forget them. After all: you might forgot how to reenable it and they only want to help.

OTOH, I've got a current Onkyo amp with a bright blue OFF light. It recently confused a friend of mine who was trying to turn off the stereo. She couldn't get both the light and the speakers off at the same time and complained that it was broken.

I agreed.

See for yourself.

Sorry, you got it wrong. Saddam did NOT toss out the inspectors. Bush ordered them out to prevent hostages when his "Shock and Awe" killing of 15,000 Innocent Iraqis began.
Here, enjoy.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
Notice? NO demand by Saddam to remove the inspectors

The man lied to medical professionals.

"African guy shows up with disturbing symptoms."
No. A guy sowed up with an illness. Ebola symptoms look just like a cold at the beginning.

"What? a few questions might have been nice. "
They did ask him questions, he lied.

"Since it's in Texas, the nursing team and Doctors who worked on the guy should be executed in th eGrand Texas tradition."
You're a fucking idiot.

"Either that, or forced to room with the Ebola patients."
That would be a waste of their time. Oh, you think being in a room will get you Ebola?
Like I said You're a fucking idiot.

"But also being Texas, I'll bet he was sent home the moment they found he had no health insurance."
False.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I didn't propose that males would necessarily be irrational in the same way as you think females are. It could easily manifest in different ways or even diferent domains. But even in the same domain... what of the many men who damage their family relationships and careers because they manifest a lack of Johnson control?

One of the core problems today is that the CDC has lost focus [usatoday.com] , and instead of controlling infectious disease, they spend money things like playground safety, workplace accidents, guns, and birth defects. And then there was the NIH grant to study why gay men are often thin and lesbians are often obese. [newsmax.com]

We don't need to change the Constitution, just the spending and research priorities of a bunch of bureaucracies.

Who says? Some right-winger who doesn't know anything about public health and has never been responsible for saving the life of a dying child, in an editorial that only gets one side of the story?

The CDC is setting its priorities according to the morbidity and mortality of the causes of illness, which is a rational way to do it.

Since there are about 4-5,000 workplace fatalities a year, virtually all of them preventable, that's a good return for the money.

There are about 30,000 firearms deaths a year, and when Congress, after NRA lobbying, cancelled the CDC's firearms research 15 years ago, nobody else did scientific research.

So if CDC doesn't do this stuff, nobody will. Particularly not the states, which are cutting back their local health departments.

I'm speaking as someone who has talked with CDC scientists, and read their MMWR regularly, so I know what they do.

What do you know about the CDC, besides what you get from anti-government opinion pieces?

A clear example of why the a strong Federal government is necessary is the case of Louisiana's attorney general telling Texas authorities not to bring Ebola victim waste to a disposal site in Louisiana.

Of course, State sovereignty is the moral equivalent of slavery so it is essential that the racists in Louisiana be taught a lesson by Obama commandeering the Louisiana National Guard to air drop waste from Texas Ebola victims on racist Louisiana with its badges of slavery -- especially the waste of Ebola victims that died for your racism -- sorta like Jesus or something. And if you think that's insane or horrifying or something, it just means you're in need of a "teachable moment" yourself before you start bull-whip crackin' that black man whose been comin' roun' to see hair-of-golden-brown, Lilly Belle you Southern Man you.

one could argue that the United States is hobbled by an outdated constitution in responding to epidemics

The USA has handled many epidemics in the past. The experience of Western Samoa vs. American Samoa during the Spanish Flu epidemic is an interesting example. The TL;DR: version: Western Samoa decided they couldn't stopping the importation of plantation laborers, and as a result 20-25% of the population died. American Samoa self-quarantined, and nobody died.

One of the core problems today is that the CDC has lost focus, and instead of controlling infectious disease, they spend money things like playground safety, workplace accidents, guns, and birth defects. And then there was the NIH grant to study why gay men are often thin and lesbians are often obese.

We don't need to change the Constitution, just the spending and research priorities of a bunch of bureaucracies.

Hospitals..... One of the most contagious places in an area. Being in an environment with the highest concentration of infected people is bad enough, but hospital employees have been known to have less than stellar hygiene. I think an entire technology product sector has had to be created just to encourage employees to wash their hands regularly.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I have no idea so let's get that out of the way and move on to the philosophical / logical arguments rather then the legal ones.

In a case like the OP's the only thing that matters is the legal issue.

Good points you made philosophically, however ...

If you're arguing that people shouldn't expect anonymity from a product designed to provide anonymity, maybe you should think it through again.

I simply Do Not Care what their expectations are from whatever product they bought. A company's promise about a product does not carry the weight of the law, and it certainly does not compel me to support their promises. For one thing, I am not the one who bought the product. I get no benefit.

I can tell you this about the law: I am on the USA's Do Not Call list. I get several calls most days, and almost every single one of them is illegal.
Who called? I have not a clue and no way to stop them.
I know I don't have to answer ( and usually I don't), and yet it is still annoying because if nothing else there's this ringing sound in my house.

Here's an extreme example: A common experience for older people is to have a relative in the hospital and to be waiting for the outcome. Answering the phone several times a day for these scams is worse than annoying. Not answering is not an option at such a time.

I would disagree with you because I don't believe in protecting us from anything and everything as I think it takes away personal responsibility for protecting yourself.

That's a good point, and I agree. However, lines have to be drawn somewhere.

The crux to me is this: The entity making the call is approaching me (mention again they are breaking the law to do this). I did not approach them.
That, and that in itself should be enough to shed that entity's anonymity for telephone service.

I'm not afraid of being scammed, and I have no problem with the concept of personal responsibility for protecting yourself.
However, I'm not the only person on this planet.
There is an entire industry devoted to cheating seniors who have diminished mental abilities. The foundation of this industry is anonymity - there is no recourse after they got the money. There is no way to find out who they are to stop their endless calls.

Another one is the "This is Microsoft and you have a virus" call. People have children; children will answer the phone, and children
  can be coaxed into revealing anything, and there is no way to know who had called after the remote control software has been installed.
Sure I can wipe the PC and tell the kids not to trust anyone who calls. But I want justice, and I want those people put out of business.

Perhaps the entities that have a legitimate reason for anonymity can also be registered with the government's Do Not Call list and combine that with future requirements that carriers fix their technology to stop callerID spoofing and anonymous calls for non-registered entities.
No one that asks for money, credit card info, etc should be allowed anonymous calls. Companies have some rights, but their privacy rights are not the same as individual rights

If contact must be made anonymously for some reason, then they can use the postal service.

other info
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Here is the story for you:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I thought everyone had heard of this already.

As to the IRS not destroying evidence... *rollseyes* whatever, bro.

All you have to do in order to be accepted to an Ivy is be black and write a halfassed essay.

That's almost funny. Almost.

Anti-snitch campaign riles police, prosecutors

Of course we may see some irony unfold here.

14-Year-Old Shot In The Head Was Son Of ‘Stop Snitching’ DVDs Creator

Do you think he prefers his son's murder to go unsolved?

Obama administration scraps quarantine regulations

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.

The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. ...

I guess Ebola must be a JV virus...

are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness

How the fuck can the latter be stated with any kind of confidence in the same sentence as the former?

And remember, this is the same government that's being tight-lipped over enterovirus, which is already killing kids in the US.

Kneel to the mighty state!

Neither a plane ticket to India nor speaking with educated Indian atheists is necessary to understand social religion, or state religion. It's something that has been around a while.

"They will hold to an outward form of godliness but deny its power." - 2 Timothy 3:5

How widely do you think that Hindus accept their ritual without belief as Hinduism? I doubt it is universal. All they really are is atheists performing socially accepted rituals.

Hindu fundamentalists vs. Hinduism: Column

GM warns Chevrolet Corvette spy feature may break law

Smugglers are probably wringing their hands in anticipation, but hell, every advancement seems to have some tangential consequence.

Already done. http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

"Over the course of the official recession, men lost twice as many jobs as women," says Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress.

I had never heard of the term either but googling it before you claim it doesn't exist would be prudent.

Not always so well if you swallow them. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

The latest recession was never called the mancession.

How is this rated informative? It is plain wrong.

You could find the same few examples (among many others) with a simple Google search, but since that is obviously too much work ...

Mancession Definition
The Mancession
Thanks to the “mancession,” metrosexuals have become “manfluencers”
One Mancession Later, Are Women Really Victors in the New Economy?
Economy: The Man-cession and the He-covery
It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession!

I guess you don't have any grandparents who live alone, but can no longer reliably identify their own children....You are so deep into denial about the reality of aging

The "reality of aging" does include old people completely destroyed by aging. And we need to get serious about dealing with that, letting people check out when their life ain't no more fun.

But that reality also includes 90-something karate masters who are still practicing.

The "functional limitations" of which the author speaks can, to some degree, be mitigated by lifestyle. So can the supposed "lack of creativity" -- the problem isn't aging, it's stale ideas. Learn something new. Change fields.

My maternal grandfather was still quite aware, oriented, and active in his church at 90. And the heart disease that ultimately did him in could quite likely have been partially prevented or reversed with better lifestyle habits. My paternal grandfather was a bit short of his 79th birthday when complications from coronary bypass surgery (again, largely preventable) did him in. He never really recovered, emotionally, from the loss of his wife (could have used better social support, more community connections), but he was in no way crippled or suffering from dementia in his final years.

So given the example of my grandparents, with good dietary and exercise habits, good social connections, and a little medical help I can hope to get into my 80s with my brains mostly intact. (If we don't completely fsck up the planet, and if we make a few medical breakthroughs, with a little luck I hope to see the dawn of the 22nd century -- I'll only have to reach 131 to do that.)

Of course, I could also get run over by a bus this afternoon, or diagnosed with some particularly nasty cancer next month. One never knows.

Since it is a public entity you'll likely run into a roadblock of what the law lets them pay for. Honestly it isn't much and the rules are rather inflexible due to some abuses that regularly come up (a conference in Vegas is likely to be huge red flag after this).

It sucks, but it's one of the trade offs for working for a public entity.

Maybe you could look into this too.

France heat wave death toll set at 14,802

The new estimate comes a day after the French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly

You have never responded to the 6th Great Extinction issue.

What is there to respond to? We may or may not be experiencing the "6th Great Extinction", but if we are, we are at the very beginning of it, we don't know what to do about it, and there is no urgency to act either.

You're being very blasé about the whole extinction thing. You seem uncertain that it is even happening. Let's look at our own order - the primates. According to http://www.usatoday.com/story/... (first google hit), 25 are on the brink of extinction. It goes on to say "More than half of the world's 633 types of primates are in danger of becoming extinct" (where "type" must be referring to sub-species). How about amphibians - again, first google hit for "amphibian extinction, at http://www.nzfrogs.org/Amphibi...: "... 32% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.". Google "cat extinction" and we find this article: http://www.facekitty.com/2008/..., about 12 wild cat species that will be extinct by 2020 (out of, apparently, 36 wild cat species total). Sure, it's not a scientific journal. But I mean - please! This information is not hard to come by. It goes on and on. Pick a random complex animal genus, and see how its species are doing.

Is this a case of willful ignorance on your part? Or are you willing to admit that we "are" in a major extinction event, rather than "may be"? You have seemed ready to go along with the scientific consensus so far....

There seems to be cities in which are somewhat majority muslim. Dearborn Michigan I think is one of them. Youtube that and you will see a lot of videos posted by people protesting it.

But I think the original poster is thinking of the mosque that the boston bombers attended has produced many radicalized muslims and keeps being investigated but ignored by the FBI.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro...

GP is right...if you're a router jockey, none of it was news

also, it was first reported publicly **in 2006** right here: "NSA Has Massive Database of American's Phone Calls"

Snowden only gave operational specifics like the names of the programs...he himself was either a dupe or blackmailed or self-deluded...and he's probably not a free man in Russia

He does not get credit for "starting a national conversation"....because that conversation is dependent almost purely on how how mainstream news covers the event (we can scream until we are blue in the face here on /. but to influence non-techs you need mainstream news)

We could have had a "national conversation" about the Patriot Act or in 2006 when this info was first released.

No one should be upset with dead criminals

Normally I agree with your posts. This time, not so much.

I'm a fan of due process. While it seems like a great idea to shoot home intruders at night, sometimes shit happens and you end up shooting your daughter. It's not always quite this tragic, and sometimes you do end up shooting dead a person that was actually trying to steal a couple bucks from your castle. However, even in those cases, I'd argue that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Joe Sixpack shouldn't be judge, jury, and executioner.

And I say this as the owner of a variety of firearms who keeps one easily accessible for home defense.

When I talk to the average person on the street in the US, they talk about ISIS. They might even talk about the NSA. They don't talk about MRSA.

The demand SHOULD be huge, but the reality is that it isn't.

This article suggests that we only JUST started spending $30M per year on antibiotic research. At that pace it seems like it would take years to come up with a viable drug, and that is only if the NSF/NIH spend some of the money on actual development and not just blue-sky research, which they rarely do. Clinical trials are the expensive part, and usually the government just tries to sell the drug to a pharma company and get them to fund those. That means that only the strongest candidates would be pursued, and most likely the resulting drugs will be expensive. If there was money in any of this the drug companies would be spending their own money.

Being rude isn't going to make a cure emerge either. I realize that R&D isn't like building a bridge. There is a lot of serendipity involved. However, if you're spending $0 on R&D you'll probably have a lot less serendipity than if you are spending $100M on it.