Slashdot Mirror

Since HP is apparently paying every tech news site include Slashdot not to mention their recent court ruling, I'll just leave this here:

"Hewlett-Packard and three subsidiaries pleaded guilty Thursday to paying bribes to foreign officials in Russia, Mexico and Poland and agreed to pay $108 million in criminal and regulatory penalties. For over 10 years Hewlett-Packard kept 2 sets of books to track slush-funds they used to bribe government officials for favorable contracts."

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

"Under the EU's state aid rules, national authorities cannot take measures allowing certain companies to pay less tax than they should if the tax rules of the Member State were applied in a fair and non-discriminatory way,"

It is not possible to specifically write one company into the law as exempt. Now it has been done by making laws such that they only apply to one company, but these practices are being sued now.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...

So no, it is not common place outside the US, and certainly not as easy.

But the voting in the US is dominated by companies anyways, it is a very different climate and understanding of democracy than anywhere else.

You could apply hardware to the DRIVER that prevents them from texting while driving. That seems to work more effectively than more complicated technical solutions.

http://www.fitbit.com/forcesup...

While only 1.7% of Force users have reported any type of skin irritation, we care about every one of our customers. On behalf of the entire Fitbit team, I want to apologize to anyone affected. ...
Independent test results have not found any issues with the battery or electrical systems.
Test results show that users are likely experiencing allergic contact dermatitis.
All Force materials are commonly used in consumer products. However, some users may be reacting to the nickel present in the surgical grade stainless steel used in the device. Other users are likely experiencing an allergic reaction to the materials used in the strap or the adhesives used to assemble the product.

And that's just one of them, that Fitbit ran into.
Apple may be running into that same one, AND MORE, once people start using their watch instead of the Fitbit or using it like the Fitbit.

For one, Fitbit's battery lasts a week. Tim Cook suggested charging Apple Watch over night.
With all those sensors, "Taptic" actuators, color screens... I have a feeling that's a rather optimistic estimate.
They didn't mention the battery for a reason.

Also, I have a feeling that the "Digital Crown" won't last. At least for people trying to use the watch for tracking their activity.
Either it will be replaced by a slide sensor, dropped, or Apple may come out with a iBrush to clean the iGrime.

Price, naturally is an issue for many as Fitbit is 3.5 times cheaper AND does not require a new iPhone too boot.

Apple Watch also features the same old issues which caused Woz to throw away his Samsung Galaxy Gear, dubbing it "worthless".
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

You had to hold it up to your ear and stuff. ...
"I want my smartphone [on my wrist], but I really want the whole thing," said Wozniak. "I don't want just a little Bluetooth connection to the smartphone in my pocket because then it's just an intermediary, an extra thing I buy to get what I already have and have to carry anyway."

His comments reflect a trend seen in the adoption of wearable technology by consumers. Around 40% of UK consumers ended up abandoning them because they got bored with the idea or simply forgot to put them on, according to research by CCS Insight. Fewer than half a million smartwatches were in use in the UK by March this year, according to data from research company KWP ComTech.

The story is similar in the US. One-third of American consumers have also stopped using a smart wearable device within six months of purchase according to data from Endeavour Partners.

Though, the reality distortion field is a powerful force, and one that must be reckoned with.
From USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

As with other smartwatches, consumers will be able to change watch faces on the new Apple Watch and customize it in various ways.
I especially liked a watchface featuring Mickey Mouse.

Customizable wallpaper/skin. A highlighted feature for the Apple crowd.

The incentive package Nevada offered Tesla includes $8 million in discounted electricity rates. So it's definitely a net-zero thing, not off-grid. In fact I'm still trying to figure out if it's net-zero in electrical production, or net-zero in electricity cost (i.e. sell solar to the grid during the day when rates are high, buy it back at night when rates are lower).

Well if California was actually betrayed by anyone, the first blame would have to fall at the feet of the state legislature, which failed to vote on the incentive package before the latest session ended. When the California governor promised Tesla the incentives the company responded with interest, and a few days after those incentives disappeared in puff of legislative smoke Tesla announced their decision to go with Nevada.

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

When the topic first came up on Slashdot a number of people seemed to think offering such incentives was a bad idea. Maybe the California legislature agreed with that reasoning, but if they've made any statements about why they did what they did i haven't heard about it.

The US media is now in full ass-clown mode.

Russia has invaded nothing. Sat photos? I thought so:

Apparently all those T-90 tanks only fly in by night and their cloaking devices prevent any picture of them appearing anywhere.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/09/ukraine-war-for-now-over-and-nato-still-in-decline.html

The nuke bullshit comes from a collapsing Oligarch, who's hold on "NATO intervention" as a tactic becomes weaker by the minute, and thus his desperate squawking. Poor little Joe Biden's son will have to make his next millions by backing another corrupt scheme, elsewhere on the globe.

Get this straight: Russia has not provided any lethal support for breakaway regions in the Ukraine civil war.

Ukraine is not a historical entity prior to Imperial manoeuvrings in the late 19th century between Austria, Prussia and Russia. Now it is being used as the same, 150 years later, to hobble Russian gas export and contain the European pivot away from the dollar and American hegemony.
 

.

Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps says a story about him consuming 12,000 calories a day while training for the Beijing Olympics just isn't true.

"I never ate that much," Phelps said. "It's all a myth. I've never eaten that many calories."

Seacrest replied: "Good because I was starting to loathe you, that you could really eat all this."

Said Phelps: "I wish. It's too much though. It's pretty much impossible."

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

Mind you, they'll have to teach the thing to parallel park...

Actually, that part is old news.

Wow, just wow. That was the worst summation of the situation that didn't devolve into outright fantasies. Vox Day was only even tangentially involved to help prove the point of Sad Puppies II.
http://monsterhunternation.com...

http://monsterhunternation.com...

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

I started a post with the aim to thoroughly rebuke you and refute your claim. The first place I looked was a Google search for standard warranties which gives US manufacturers' warranties as about the same lengths as foreign warranties. Next I looked for how well manufcaturers actually stand by their warranties. The number of hate articles and lawsuits over various foreign and domestic manufacturers' warranties seems about the same. Cars still on the road is another way to look at reliability. After some research I have come to the conclusion that the oldest cars longevity isn't related to quality of manufacture but rather dedication of the owners, older common cars are foreign -- but that doesn't count toward my point since the increase in US manufacturers' quality is relatively recent -- and common cars aging on the road today are about the same across country of manufacture.*

The late 1980's and early 1990's saw Honda et al. Eating Ford's lunch and US manufacturers' advertising focused on brand recognition. Later ads focused on features. Since this is a case of competing against quality with features (and because Tesla) I'm not even going to contest that US manufacturers ever fell behind on features.

Foreign cars still dominate in the mileage category but that alone is insufficient to state in the grand sweeping way I did that US made cars are inferior.

In short I stand corrected. US manufacturers have fully caught up with foreign makers in most categories of vehicle quality.

*excluding outliers.

Some of it are listed here:

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

In addition, Obama was elected to undo and reverse some of the damage Bush had done; instead of doing that, Obama built on it.

Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us),

Too true. Having dealt with the government, I know this for a fact. It is what it is. The bureaucracy is so ingrained there's not much you can do about it.

Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.

This is just simply not correct. I know. I worked for Uncle Sam for a while. While it is difficult to fire federal workers, it's not impossible. Firing for cause can happen, although the more time a person has working there, the harder it becomes. And spare me the "they're in unions" argument. Unions do exist for federal employees, but at least where I worked in the Department of Defense, unions are a waste of money for most people. By federal law federal employees cannot strike (see Ronald Reagan vs. the air traffic controllers) so the union can't really do a lot in terms of collective bargaining. The only benefit I knew of that the union offered where I worked was that they had a supplemental insurance plan you could get through them that would pick up the consumer responsible charges of medical insurance and if you had a very expensive need, like major surgery, with such insurance you could get out of it paying nothing. I know of a case where a unionized worker was going to be fired for just cause. I don't remember what the guy did, but it was really bad and there was no doubt that he was guilty. The union called for hearings and drug their feet where it took a year to fire him but in the end the guy was fired. So other than giving you supplemental insurance or delaying a firing, that's about all a union could do where I worked. The majority of our workforce was not part of any union.

Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.

Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.

The real problem is that firing an underling reflects poorly on his manager(s). This is also the truth everywhere, of course, but in normal enterprises there is this dirty and otherwise reprehensible "profit" to think about, so a bad employee can still be fired even if the manager's record gets hurt in the process. But the glorious government enterprises do not defile their mission with concerns for profit — their revenue is collected for them at gun point by the IRS.

Hence, practically nobody ever gets fired from government — "counseling" and "discipline" is the worst, that usually happens to our civil servants. Is it not time, we put our health care into their capable hands? Oh, wait...

You are of course correct for the initial search, but at some point you hit diminishing returns. Even if the failure were a technical one, the value of locating the wreck and determining the cause is likely of limited value. There are only so many systems that can fail, and we already do thorough failure modes analyses when designing aircraft. That's why flying is so safe these days.

The 777 has a pretty good track record with 1,212 units built and five hull losses, only two of which were due to failure of flight systems. If the hull cost $261.5M and you estimate the value of a human life $10M, then the MH370 incident had a base cost of around $2.6B. If you only had one failure out of 1,212 hulls, that suggests you'd be willing to spend 0.08% or ~$2.1M to make sure it doesn't happen again.

This is just one formulation of the cost/benefit and of course excludes some important factors like the public relations cost to MA and airlines in general, but hopefully it illustrates that there's a bound on how much we should reasonably be expected to invest in understanding the events of the incident, and that it is not an absurdly high value.

There's a lot of hype on this Ebola topic in the media.

Lets have some scale:

The population of Africa: 1 billion
http://worldpopulationreview.c...

Number of people to die of Ebola in the past year: 887
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

The number of deaths in Liberia alone during the last flu outbreak: 5,561
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy...

You are not buying stuff at the same price as 6 years ago, maybe you should actually pay attention to the receipts.

beef, pork, avocado, fruits, veggies, almonds, pinenuts, walnuts, mozarella, cheddar, other cheeses, seafood, grains, soy, soy, palm oil, milk, gasoline, beer and more beer, limes, canadian bacon, barley, restaurants, restaurants, restaurants,electrical energy, car rentals, hotel rooms, cab fairs,

air travel and air travel gets more expensive in many other ways, various extra fees, less room, more seats on planes

aluminium,

Here's how a REAL professional behaves. The CEO of Boeing told analysis that he makes his employees "cower", and actually thought that would be a funny joke. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs was something of an asshole. So is Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. A lot of the most famous and effective military leaders were real sons of bitches as well. Patton comes to mind, as does his long-time rival, Monty. Norman Schwarzkopf was known for his fiery temper, which gave him the nickname "Stormin' Norman".

Most professional communities are rather pragmatic, and ultimately rewards *success* above all else, unless you cross over a very big line, like doing something illegal, or embarrassing your company to such a degree that it has a negative effect on business (e.g. Patton slapping a soldier). There may something about those personality types that are driven to succeed. It's not universal, of course. Pete Carrol, the head coach of last year's Superbowl winning Seattle Seahawks, is known for being a very nice and laid-back guy, and doesn't fit the typical mode of the "screamer" type coaches we've all seen.

Look, I'm not going to defend Torvold's rants. I think they're childish as well, but let's not kid ourselves. These sort of rants and worse happen all the time in "professional" environments. Would it be great if people were universally nicer to each other? Sure. But when getting a job done, is being nice or being competent more important?

At least he hasn't tossed any chairs around that we know of.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

College gender gap remains stable: 57% women

Just how much longer are we going to keep our foot on the back of young men's necks?

Free money, education, assistance to females even tho they are closing on 60% of the degrees.

Yes- from the beginning of time until about 50 years ago, men were in control of most societies. But things have changed rapidly.

At my last job, the supervisors and managers were 70% female. And they did things which would have resulted in lawsuits if a male did the same thing.

Are you shooting for fairness or retribution?

Mesa company bans workers from smoking, tests for nicotine
Workplaces ban not only smoking, but smokers themselves
Hospitals Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban

Those are just the first three that came up in a Google search, there are many more.

People can live without a clothing dryer.

It's been five years for me, and I have an unused front loader dryer for sale.

I have an umbrella line for good weather drying in the good Illinois weather months, and clothing racks and lines for winter drying.

After I switched to air drying, my clothing longevity jumped massively. I went from a pair of jeans lasting a year or two to never wearing out jeans (so far).

I believe that climate is cyclical, and is driven by solar changes, radiation changes, and world tilt. I don't believe in MMGW, and I don't believe we can change global climate.

But it's stupid not to scrub carbon from coal plants, put cleaner water back into the the environment than we take out, and do everything we can to make sure we don't pollute like china does. I don't want cities to be lost in a fog of bad like it regularly happens in China.

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

I can reliably say that China smog has no effect on Illinois. And that's why I think we should focus on real issues like local contamination rather than focus on enriching people that make money on carbon trading credits.

The U.S. dollar bills last 5.9 years, not "less than a year". I just love Slashdotters who make up bogus facts out of thin air to support their viewpoint. There are 2 $1 bills in my pocket right now. Both were made in 2009, which supports the 5.9 years fact.

Well, I was a little off, but closer than you -- the average lifespan of the dollar bill is about 18 months. I do remember reading something a while back that estimated it to be a little less than a year, but this fact is from the people who make the bills (and thus have to replace them), so I'm tempted to believe them over an AC. I've seen other estimates, but none more than 2 years.

As for your other points, at no point did my post even argue in favor of eliminating dollar bills; I simply pointed out a savings by the government. I was just correcting a previous post that made it sound like the cost of dollar bills didn't have anything to do with him. You think coins are inconvenient? Fine. I never said they weren't. Try a course in reading comprehension before attacking people randomly (and making up your own "bogus facts").

Not buying it without some sort of citation.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/0... http://qz.com/127861/its-time-... http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... http://fortune.com/2013/09/20/... http://www.mhpbooks.com/indepe... Those were just the first few results from a simple google search. Why is it that every time someone asks for a citation, the "proof" is the first hit from a simple google search? In this case: "number of bookstores in the USA".

Hrrm. Pretty much all only deal with what seems to be opportunistic growth after the fall of Borders since 2009, and based on the same American Booksellers Association data. Assuming these numbers reflect the reality and are a constant percentage of all total bookstores in the USA, it still only deals with a recent phenominon with obvious cause, and even then "The current total is less than half the 1990s peak of around 4,000." Although amounts vary, everything else I've seen says the same thing, the number of bookstores is going down.

Not buying it without some sort of citation.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/0...
http://qz.com/127861/its-time-...
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
http://fortune.com/2013/09/20/...
http://www.mhpbooks.com/indepe...

Those were just the first few results from a simple google search. Why is it that every time someone asks for a citation, the "proof" is the first hit from a simple google search? In this case: "number of bookstores in the USA".

I usually ignore ACs, but your post is the standard rebuttal about "what subsidies?" and it's totally wrong...

1. Tax credit for paying foreign taxes. This is a "subsidy" as far as EVERY SINGLE COMPANY gets the same thing. If you pay $1 in income tax overseas, you do not have to pay that same $1 on the same income. It applies to profits earned overseas, and already taxed. ALL companies get this; if you want to call this an energy subsidy, then you can also call it a subsidy for renewables/solar/wind - because they get it as well (oh, and you can also say that every overseas US worker gets the subsidy because when they pay taxes on their overseas income, they get to deduct those paid taxes from the US taxes they owe).

2. Credit for alternative fuel production. Uhhh, you mean ALTERNATIVE energy credits? Yep - there's that dastardly Big Oil stealing the money from alternative energy to, uh, fund traditional oil/gas? Nope. It's for GREEN initiatives, like ethanol and the like. Fuels that would NOT be competitive on the market unless they are subsidized, fuels that are "green" and alternative. Why this is not included in the alternative energy subsidies I don't know - guess something had to stick somewhere?

3. Oil and gas exploration and expensing. I guess R&D for technology shouldn't be deductible. That land prep for farmers shouldn't be deductible. That planting new trees for tree farms shouldn't be deductible. That clearing land for solar and wind shouldn't be deductible. It's a standard business expense - R&D - that ALL BUSINESSES get to deduct.

Yep, some great list! Now, I wonder about those who shout about "Big Oil doesn't pay tax!" I wonder if they realize ExxonMobil paid over $31 BILLION in taxes last year, the most by any US company. Followed by Chevron? With Apple a distant 3rd?

I live in Canada . . . We go there for vacation whenever the fuck we want. Americans need to get fucking clue and get over themselves. It's just fucking Cuba. No big deal. America has relations with China, and they've executed WAY more political prisoners than Cuba has, and you;re probably reading this on a Chinese built computer. So bag the anti-communist BS and grow up.

By your words and tone I take it you're a fan? What's not to like about Cuba, eh?

How Cuba became the newest hotbed for tourists craving sex with minors

Foreign tourists, especially Canadians and Spaniards, are travelling to Cuba in surprising numbers for sex — and not just with adult prostitutes. They are finding underage girls and boys, a joint investigation by The Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald has found.

Cuban rights abuses, jailings up in new repressive wave

How Cuba is exporting repression to Venezuela

... another significant visit to a place where Internet access is either forbidden or impractical for most of the citizenry; hopefully it heralds change on that front.

Good luck with that. Maybe they'll turn a few of their '57 Chevys into mobile hot spots.

Cuban rights abuses, jailings up in new repressive wave

The Lost World, Part I
The Lost World, Part II
Condom shortage hits Cuba

You don't OD on it in the classical sense that it kills you. You can OD on it to the point that you suffer very negative effects, particularly if you eat it. For a novice user the effects would be very overwhelming. Hell, even for a regular user the effects wouldn't be pleasant. Maureen Dowd wrote about this recently.

Consuming too much of any substance sucks. I only have first hand experience with THC, alcohol, and caffeine. Of the three I've found the caffeine overdose to be the worst experience, defining overdose here as "consuming more than I should", not "consuming so much my health is in danger".

Also, I know when I bring this up, it's bound to be controversial. But the research is easily found. Here's a reasonable summary (for a popular media story). Some interesting passages:

[S]mokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.

Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.

[SNIP]

Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

A Dutch study published last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal said that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age 20 on, compared to about $417,000 for thin and healthy people.

The reason: The thin, healthy people lived much longer.

Willard Manning, a professor of health economics and policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies, was lead author on a paper published two decades ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that, taking into account tobacco taxes in effect at the time, smokers were not a financial burden to society.

"We were actually quite surprised by the finding because we were pretty sure that smokers were getting cross-subsidized by everybody else," said Manning, who suspects the findings would be similar today. "But it was only when we put all the pieces together that we found it was pretty much a wash."

So, what's the REAL reason governments do this?

The goal of the U.S. health care system is "prolonging disability-free life," states the 2004 Surgeon General's report on the health consequences of smoking. "Thus any negative economic impacts from gains in longevity with smoking reduction should not be emphasized in public health decisions."

In other words -- governments deliberately avoid talking about the issue, lest it seem to encourage people to smoke.

By the way, there are similar studies about obesity -- in the end, it's not about savings.

Seriously do you want Muslims with exploding shoes and underwear on your planes?

Citation needed on point 1

Let me trump your vague "everything" with some actual reporting:

Nearly every university loses money on sports. Even after private donations and ticket sales, they fill the gap by tapping students paying tuition or state taxpayers.

Or how about this:

A recent NCAA report stated that only 14 of the 120 athletic programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision made money. .....At the same time, however, only 57% of football programs reported being profitable. Thus the other 43% of football programs are still part of the problem.

So, there are your citations. What do you have?

Not in the US. The government turns a profit on student loans. Nor is the demand artificial, because as bad a student debt is, being without a degree is still much worse.

> If research is paid for by outsiders, if sports pay for itself, then where is this ever growing cost of education coming from?

Those things are mostly false.

Only the Seminole Tribe of Florida sanction the use of the name, other Seminole tribes & nations disagree with the usage.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
But dissent has been voiced within the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, primarily by general council member David Narcomey, but the council has taken no official position on the FSU issue, according to Jennifer McBee, the tribe attorney general. Narcomey, saying he was voicing his opinion only, wrote in an e-mail to USA TODAY of the decision: "I am deeply appalled, incredulously disappointed ... I am nauseated that the NCAA is allowing this 'minstrel show' to carry on this form of racism in the 21st century."

While the grandparent hasn't submitted references for this particular claim, several other people have for various claims which are comparable. For example, this story says there were "perhaps dozens" of similar progressive/liberal groups which passed during a time when no group with "Tea Party" and similar strings in their name got through.

and flagged more progressive groups for review

"Review" meant a very different thing for groups that had things like "Tea Party" in their name, such as intrusive demands for information on participants and not actually approving any such groups for 27 months.

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

Your talking points are obsolete.

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

Quick version: IRS didn't want to (or was pressured to) not spend 10 million on a REAL archive system, so used users' desktop harddrives for that purpose instead, which is of course risky.

They'll never catch me then. I speak a secret language called "Syntactically Correct American English", an archaic language no one understands any more.[Emphasis Added]

Are you referring to this guy?

These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now.

The problem isn't that the Tea Party folks wanted to avoid paying taxes. The problem is that the IRS, which has vast powers so that it can extract tax revenue from the people, abused those powers for political ends. And what is worse, it abused those powers unequally, harassing one group while leaving another group alone.

For 27 months, not one single Tea Party group was approved for 501(c) status, while dozens of liberal groups were approved. And since you will automatically call me a liar if I link Fox News, here's a USA Today story about this.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/

I view this as tampering with an election, and it is very much NOT OKAY. I'm pissed about this and you should be.

Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?

Are you going to try to tell me that nobody's rights have been violated? Or is it just that you think it's okay to violate the rights of "Tea Party" groups since you don't approve of them?

If you think it's okay to violate the rights of those with whom you disagree, just be honest about it and say so.

If you think it's not okay for the IRS to abuse its powers for political ends, regardless of whom they were abusing, then wake up and start reading the news.

I want to see dozens of people from the IRS fired, tried in court, and go to jail if convicted. But if I can't have that, then I will look forward to the day when some conservative President gets elected and the IRS starts doing this stuff to liberal groups. Perhaps then you will take it seriously.

Has anybody smoked in space? You know it's going to come up at some point.

I remembered hearing something about smoking on Mir. This article was the fisrt I stumbled on when I just googled it.

Please reference the following resources:

• Antibiotic misuse
• Antibiotic prescribing rates by country
• Study shows overuse of antibiotics
• Antibiotic use in livestock - Use by country
• Scientists: overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture endangers humans

• Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance 2014

While these resources alone do not paint an absolute picture of the global problem of large scale antibiotic misuse, there is no question that the United States is indeed among the highest ranked nations and regions for these problems. As for the GP's second sentence regarding particularly nasty germs in hospitals versus hotels, his statement is overzealous at present, but the problem is rapidly worsening in the United States.

In light of this information, please explain why you believe the GP's statement to be speculative, wrong, stupid, "not nice at all" and wildly ignorant. Judging by your recent posting history, you appear to place higher value on your opinion of whether things sound "nice" and much less value on facts.

Please, demonstrate for me a technology that can tell you with reasonable certainty (preponderance of the evidence is the standard in a civil suit) where packets went missing? Now demonstrate that this technology scales to however many streams Netflix has in operation at a given time, and that they're actually using it every time they display this warning. Can't do those things? Guess what? They probably lose a contested lawsuit, irrespective of how much Verizon/Time Warner/Comcast/Mom & Pop ISP/Frontier may suck in the real world.

Don't take my word for it though. They seem to have backed down. Me thinks that some genius at Netflix didn't run this idea past legal before they put it into production.

If you believe that then you believe nonsense. The lack of personal belief in the divinity of Jesus and his offer of salvation doesn't undo his enormous influence as Messiah, the subsequent spread of Christianity beyond its Jewish origin, and the enormous influence Christianity has had in turn on religion, literature, music, law, and many other aspects of life and culture across the globe.

A non-Christian may not hold to the belief and sentiment that inspired Handal's Messiah, but the music is still played and sung. They don't cease to exist because of non-belief. The same holds true for the rest of the influence Jesus has had though the spread of Christianity.

Christianity spread in the Roman empire despite persecution. But if you think a Roman emperor 1700 years ago was the "real power" behind Christianity, how do you explain this today? The Romans are long gone.

China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years
Study: Christianity grows exponentially in Africa

You seem to be underestimating the influence of Jesus.

The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven

How racist could he really be? Sterling was about to be awarded his second Lifetime Achievement Award by the NAACP. You can't make this shit up.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/06/03/chrysler-general-motors-ford--may-sales/9788117/

"General Motors' sales of new vehicles appear unfazed by its widely publicized series of recalls, some of them linked to fatalities. GM said sales in May were up 13% from a year ago for its best month since August 2008."

so even though we knew "The NSA Has Massive Database of American's Phone Calls" in **2006**

and everyone else did it or worse

yet this news arrives with a thud...

This has nothing to do with the 1st amendment. That is only about being free of consequences from the government for your speech. Nobody in the government has pursued action against the guy for his speech here. But he did sign contracts with the NBA which included morals and ethics clauses the restricted him from speaking and acting in ways that brought disrepute on the league.

Or are you one of those people who think its OK to break contracts you sign to because free speech?

Nobody seems to be asking WHY.

Why would the Secret Service, in particular, want to tell sarcasm apart from other speech? Think about who they are.

They want to be able to distinguish sarcastic political speech, from sincere political speech. Of course both are protected speech.

Now, they might have a benign purpose, but from the description in TFA it doesn't seem so. After all, the administration would look pretty foolish if they tried to harass or jail someone for being sarcastic.

The reason the Secret Service wants sarcasm detection is because of the bad PR they get every time they harass someone for being sarcastic. The problem is not sarcastic political speech vs sincere political speech; it's sarcastic threats vs sincere threats.