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So you use a bunch of left-wing websites to "debunk" the news?

I don't have time to go into everything, and in fact most of the list doesn't interest me that much.

But the IRS scandal wasn't hatched a couple days before the national press finally noticed. The IRS behavior was being noticed and complained about for many many months before it became widespread knowledge. You probably heard about the IRS being used as a political weapon in spring of 2013.

From July of 2012, "Even worse, the IRS has responded to dozens of tax-exemption applications by tea-party groups with astonishingly intrusive document demands, seeking not only donor lists but also lists of volunteers." http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/310384/obama-s-sunshine-policy-david-french

Mr. French is referring to a DailyCaller article from February 2012, http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/22/congressional-investigations-sought-over-irs-assault-on-tea-party-groups/

Yes it's true that these are all conservative websites, but who else was going to cover news at that time that was negative to President Obama and wasn't already high profile?

Anyway, here is a non-conservative site debunking your debunking http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/

Relevant link: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/29/body-shape-objectification-technology/3287287/

Don't worry, as it stands politicians have been doing it for years anyway.

Indeed. And thieves have been stealing for even longer time. But only fairly recently has it become possible to steal vast sums of money without physically going to were it is stored — without even traveling into the country, where the storage is located.

Once we create some sort of e-vote, the politicians — the incumbents, especially — will be in a position to rig not just a few precincts here and there, but an entire polity (city, state, nation). "If it's not close, they can't cheat," — was the saying about elections. With an electronic vote, much as I'd like the convenience, cheating will become easier and will no longer need a close vote...

The irony here is that the FDA itself conducts no scientific review.

As reported last October: (emphasis added)

Q: Does the FDA test these foods before they're allowed on the market?

A: No. Instead there is a voluntary consultation process. Genetically engineered foods are overseen by the FDA, but there is no approval process. Foods are presumed to be safe unless the FDA has evidence to the contrary, Jaffe says. The FDA "has to show that there may be a problem with the food, as opposed to the company needing to prove it's safe to FDA's satisfaction before it can get on the market," he says.

And from the horse's mouth itself: (emphasis added)

[Section V B] It is the responsibility of the producer of a new food to evaluate the safety of the food and assure that the safety requirement of section 402(a)(1) of the act is met. In section VII., FDA provides guidance to the industry regarding prudent, scientific approaches to evaluating the safety of foods derived from new plant varieties, including the safety of the added substances that are subject to section 402(a)(1) of the act. FDA encourages informal consultation between producers and FDA scientists to ensure that safety concerns are resolved. However, producers remain legally responsible for satisfying section 402(a)(1) of the act, and they will continue to be held accountable by FDA through application of the agency's enforcement powers.

Also, the basis for the fallacious assumption that genes introduced from other species are not worth rigorous testing: (emphasis added)

[excerpted Section V C] With respect to transferred genetic material (nucleic acids), generally FDA does not anticipate that transferred genetic material would itself be subject to food additive regulation. Nucleic acids are present in the cells of every living organism, including every plant and animal used for food by humans or animals, and do not raise a safety concern as a component of food. In regulatory terms, such material is presumed to be GRAS. Although the guidance provided in section VII. calls for a good understanding of the identity of the genetic material being transferred through genetic modification techniques, FDA does not expect that there will be any serious question about the GRAS status of transferred genetic material.

"Obviously GMO organisms are safe because we have no expectations they won't be safe." Most people would call BS on that kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Does the FDA really not understand it's how those nucleic acids are arranged, not just what nucleic acids are present?

You're absolutely right that he could have done this anonymously (like Deep Throat w/ the Pentagon Papers), and Glenn Greenwald bears part of the responsibility. It's obvious that Honk Kong's huge propaganda posters we saw early in his international escapades were *not* put there by citizens of China. His Russian girlfriend was obviously a cover...did you see the early reporting about their relationship? It was all a sham narrative.

He probably had good intentions, but let his ego guide his choices, which **put him in a place to be blackmailed**

I think we should bring him home to the US. I *do not* consider him a hero, patriot, or 'national conversation starter', but he's not a free man in Russia.

The Patriot Act text has been publicly available since 2001 (EVERYONE ignores the Patriot Act in this whole mess!!!), and USA Today reported on the NSA metadata program **in 2006** http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Anyone who felt that they had digital privacy before Snowden's revelations was an idiot. No one here on slashdot felt their data was secure...just browse the 'Your Rights Online' slashdot section back to before the Patriot Act even. Just because idiot news producers were too dumb to report on privacy issues as front page news before this does not in any way justify how this went down.

I genuinely feel bad for him. In the past I could have let my hubris guide me to the same mistakes.

He's a victim of his own ego and hubris, and a victim of blackmail and espionage. We should bring him home where he belongs. I think he's probably suffered enough.

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low 2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

Yes it will. Or next week. That's kind of the point.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/unseasonable-tornadoes-in-midwest-damage-illinois-towns-killing-6/2013/11/18/36c26332-5064-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low
2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

If this was an OD due to illegal drugs, then it's likely that it wouldn't have occurred if the drugs were simply legal.

What a bunch of crackpot nonsense.

I guess Micheal Jackson would have been alive if just propofol would be legal??

Prescriptions now biggest cause of fatal drug overdoses

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-30-drug-overdose_N.htm

Simply the reason that something is NOT illegal, does not make it safe. How many people die of alcohol overdose each year? Too lazy to find out? Let me help you.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/110-120.htm

he annual average number of deaths for which alcohol poisoning was listed as an underlying cause was 317, with an age-adjusted death rate of 0.11 per 100,000 population. An average of 1,076 additional deaths included alcohol poisoning as a contributing cause, bringing the total number of deaths with any mention of alcohol poisoning to 1,393 per year (0.49 per 100,000 population). Males accounted for more than 80 percent of these deaths.

If only alcohol was a legal drug, right?? Right?

There are many reasons for legalizing illegal drugs (mostly to do with 3rd party risk mitigation), but overdoses have nothing to do with it.

Of the last twenty TED talks, this one has the most views by nearly a two to one margin over the runner up:

David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful

I personally found it upbeat yet vacuous. He doesn't specify whether in the topology of his gratitude vector space, there's a primary node where all the gratitude goes in, and no gratitude comes out (presumably due to Hawking radiation, all that gratitude is re-emitted from the fearful symmetry as cosmic love). Asimov, of course, never held the majority standard for spiritual malaise.

I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, âoeIsaac is up in Heaven now.â That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored.

And yet ... the majority of the world's population continues to itch for any hint of a master honour roll for special snowflakes, no matter how shallowly disguised.

China did it. But yeah, it's really not a problem for first-worlders. Asimov didn't see that coming.

Brave New World was published in 1931. Asimov would have been thoroughly familiar with it. Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the only game in town concerning the control of the masses. First, we have all the drugs. Second, we do have laws forcing parents to turn their children over to the puppy mill of public education which--along with mass culture--promptly fills their heads full of all kinds of garbage, that only the most strenuous parental exertion can hope to mitigate.

So you can have a large family, but at some deep level, it's not entirely yours.

It amazes me the number of people attracted to the purity cult concerning the foods they eat (local/non-GMO/vegetarian/unprocessed), who barely blink over the obnoxiousness of the vast majority of the thousands of media impressions we soak in each day, the end result of which is that a billion people cared about two seconds of Janet Jackson's nipple.

We live in a society where it's a permanent, relentless battle to resist the frivolous.

We have this notion of "parental controls". We can keep our children ignorant of how sex functions in the real world (as opposed to the retail world), though this electronic chastity belt is ultimately futile if your child has half a brain. We can pretend we're filtering out violence. Yet most violence is social, and you can really only filter graphic depictions (unless sex is also involved, in which case social aggression is also considered graphic).

What you really want to filter out is not sex or violence, but stupidity, and for this the "parental control" widget has no back-lit chicklet engraved with an undiscoverable hieroglyphic rune. In 90% of MSM political coverage, they're not even trying, to put it kindly.

It was Asimov who postulated the discipline of psychohistory, in which the vacuous can be distinguished from the salient by the vigorous cranking of some vast algorithmic matrix. We've become very, very good at the vigorous cranking of vast algorithmic matrices, yet I have no channel where political figures never intrude on my consciousness unless in the act of making a substantive statement. I don't even want the operatic comedy of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" Whatever.

Wake me up when it reaches the level of 'Heck of a job, Brownie' calls Bush inattentive 'fratboy'.

That could be riddled with a hundred falsehoods, disto

and strict population controls

China did it. But yeah, it's really not a problem for first-worlders. Asimov didn't see that coming.

Precisely. *One* country has a problem with overpopulation. And their solution is NOT strict population controls, but economic disincentives for families that have more than one child (so it costs more, but rich families can afford it).

You might want to read up a little more on that. China was forcibly aborting fetuses, and probably still are. I don't call that an "economic disincentive". See? http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/story/2012-07-25/China-forced-abortions/56465974/1

So if kidnapping women and injecting them with chemicals to kill their unborn fetus isn't "strict", I'd hate to see how bedtime is enforced in your house.

Better go with higher than P(0.9). Mitch Albom tried what you suggest and got busted for it.

Target broke several cardinal rules. Not only was the DB accessible, they were storing PIN numbers in addition to card data.

The whole point of PCI is to control what and who can access the Database, Encrypt the Database, and separate data into different databases so that if you get a single DB server hacked a hacker does not have everything needed to commit fraud. Target admitted to storing PIN numbers (wholly fuck you have to be kidding me) in addition to having no separation to the DB as well as direct exposure. They broke every PCI rule you can think of, and quite frankly I will never ever shop there again (even with cash).

The Target spin of "It happens to other companies all the time" and that the breech is "unlawful access to customer data" is pathetic. source

Storing whole card data beyond the point where the company receives funds from the bank is asinine. What they are supposed to store is unique identification data. And they are never ever supposed to store a PIN.

I will say that you are close to how I have seen and worked with PCI data. iptables rules locks DB connections to 1 host, which acts as a middle man. Internet -> Load Balancer -> WebApp -> Load Balancer -> DB (HA). Rules lock every connection except for the load balancer accepting internet connections. It takes discipline and money, and those things are supposed to be so much better in massive companies.

shun anything electronic, or electric for that matter. Substinance farm and read dead-tree books for leasure.

Spooked by NSA, Russia reverts to paper documents
Kremlin returns to typewriters to avoid computer leaks

Only one of the many "benefits" from the leaks, not to mention:

Snowden revelations lead Russia to push for more spying on its own people

Are the textile workers in Bangladesh who make your clothes oppressed?

I have to agree. The NSA may or may not have stopped any attacks with this snooping... We also have the Fort Hood shooting. Where any Army person was using army computers to contact terrorists and went on to shoot up an army base. Where was the NSA there?...

Allow me to take this just a small step further. What good has the NSA spying been in preventing any mass shooting attacks on Americans?

Tell me about how the NSA prevented mass killings (of 4 or more people) in Sandy Hook, New York, Paris(TX), Tulsa, Callison, Terrell, Phoenix, Rice, Washington DC, Dallas, Clarksberg, Santa Monica, etc, etc, etc?

Please don't tell me that NSA spying is a matter of definition. Mass death is mass death, regardless of country of origin, skin color, or religious bent.

In theory. Remind me who was Time's Person of the Year in 2001? Osama Bin Laden, naturally?... no, it was Rudy Guliani. And here is a USA Today article from beforehand on their connundrum, on the difficulty of making the obvious pick. So, it's pretty clear Snowden isn't considered as radioactive as Bin Laden, anyways.

LOL all these "anonymous cowards" posting pro-government public relations. If they're tonguing government's balls why would they need anonymity? I smell government public relations all paid for with your taxpayer dollar.

Way to ignore another story and the FISA finding that the government was breaching the Constitution. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/16/judge-nsa-surveillance-fourth-amendment/4041995/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/08/22/fisa-court-ruled-nsa-program-unconstitutional-said-nsa-misled-them/ That you're ignoring these smacks of a shill. The right and left are united on this. On the other side are government workers like yourself living a parasitic existence off the hard-working taxpayer.

> Snowden is a sellout who took what he had and likely ran to the highest bidder with the info.
Not a shred of evidence do you have. Now get a real fucking job, you piece of shit government shill.

Ironic, then that it was USA Today who first broke the story about NSA warrantless wiretapping and phone metadata collection ***in 2006***

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

From that article, again, this was REPORTED BY USATODAY IN 2006:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime

Snowden is a dupe at best...he's probably being blackmailed...but assuming the best, any way you look at the situation, he was duped by high-level criminals or foreign governments, or both, into doing this.

He's probably being blackmailed. He's not a free man in Russia. All the reports indicate he's essentially in jail when not being paraded in front of reporters.

Again...this info was reported by USA Today itself...in 2006...Snowden just gave operational details.

The "national conversation" about privacy could have happened w/o Snowden releasing that info. We US citizens could have demanded more transparency w/o Snowden releasing this info...

Because...we already knew it was happening. Snowden told us it was called 'Prism'

Even Senator Ron Wyden was sounding alarms on the Senate floor, before Snowden's document release....this from 2011: Senators Say Patriot Act Is Being Misinterpreted. Remember the PATRIOT ACT people?

One last time, as my first link shows, the USA Today reported on the NSA phone meta-data program with significant details **in 2006**

Oh, look. An NSA shill posting AC on Slashdot. Didn't see that coming!

Name a single innocent person who has been affected by the NSA.

Besides everyone that has the constitutional right to not be searched without probably cause and warrant? How about the companies that were being spied on for economic purposes? Were they big winners from that? No? How strange.

How about the big tech companies (such as anyone in cloud computing or cryptography) that took a major hit as a result of the leaks? You think they are happy that they are losing money now that people know how insecure these systems really are? How about Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc. that are suffering the same backlash on top of needing to invest a lot more resources to fix holes that the NSA was exploiting? What about RSA?

How about Lavabit and Silent Circle? These are just two examples of businesses that were dismantled because of legal pressure. They are completely legal businesses.

How about anyone that isn't actually doing anything wrong, but our government decides to harass/blackmail/defame anyways? We know that the NSA will find your porn and be more than happy to tell everyone about it. Blackmail is NOT OK!

We also know that the NSA has been writing and distributing malware. How about TorMail or any other (legitimate) service provided by Freedom Hosting? We know that the FBI confiscated the servers, but the NSA helped with installing malware on any connection and siphoning data regardless of whether or not the user was attempting to access a legal service or not. Hell, we even know that the NSA took part in hacking consumer Tor nodes to initiate a MITM attack in the hope that they might be able to track someone unrelated.

I think I've made my point. I could keep going, if I had to. There is a hell of a lot of people being wronged by this program, but lets turn your own game on you.

Name a single innocent person who has been affected by the NSA.

It's your turn. Name a single person or incident that has been stopped, hindered, or investigated in relation to terrorism from the NSA's programs. Trick question, we already know that there isn't any These programs have nothing to do with terrorism, so get your head out of your ass and stop pretending that it's OK for the government to infringe on our rights for their own personal gain.

Tesla is a danger to the prostitute and coke habits of the CEOs and members of board of every Established Car Maker in the world

. . . not if those CEOs buy Tesla: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/12/26/gm-ford-tesla/4208273/

Cool story, bro. I could've asked for some references, but it does not change a thing.

Actually it does, because merely bringing up the subject of asking for references just makes you a sanctimonious snot.

You're not in an academic forum, or a Congressional hearing. It's not even Wikipedia. You're in a conversational forum on the Internet, and the people who ask for references?

Tend to be those most likely to use ones that are themselves flawed. Same with those who make assertions about their authority.

And no, I'm not going to provide you references for that, you can learn for yourself.

The point was — and remains — that Amtrak sucks.

Not really in the ways you think, Amtrak is neglected and ignored, it's made to suck, but continue serving anyway.

The link I gave earlier discusses — as an example — the cost of a can of soda... Despite selling it to passengers for $2, Amtrak loses money, because their own cost is $3.40 per can... Nobody can explain this — not only can you buy the cans in the supermarket for $.30-.50, even privately-run vending machines on each station sell the same cans for less than $2. Their proprietors would've been ecstatic to supply the passing trains with as much as they could take... But no, for some reason, Amtrak's costs are $3.40 — would not you love to be their supplier? Somebody is..

Yawn. You want the Inspector General's office then, Congress sure isn't going to answer that question, they have an agenda to pursue, and that's pushing their own narrative. Heck, so do you. Notice something in what you're saying? You're implying that Amtrak is being charged 3.40 per can of soda.

Hate to have to tell you this, but that's NOT what is being described in the article.

Learn to read something more than shoddy articles that don't even give you the information you're really talking about. A little insight into the difference might go a long way for you.

Darling, whatever you are trying to say here is decidedly not part of vernacular...

Sweetiepants, you've not been around much, have you? That notion is one you just got done carrying their water.

So is your decidedly pathetic argumentation style. Really, you think you're not transparently obvious with it?

Keep on trolling for the free-market bozos.

You — and others — seem to have misconstrued my argument to mean, the government simply can not do anything. That's not, what I said. They can do it — just poorly.

it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts

Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?

I base this on several years of the Wall Street Journal comments page, until I gave up on them. And I read lots of conservative articles on health care policy. There are conservatives who change their minds based on the facts, but in my experience they are rare. William Buckley is dead. The WSJ editorial page has turned into a Pravda for the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world

Citation needed?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Veterans'+Affairs%22

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1007474

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7979780

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/86/1/121.abstract

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/93/12/2128.abstract

In case you're not used to reading medical journal articles (and most people aren't), the point of these studies is that they took the medical conditions that they most frequently treated, and were responsible for the most deaths, like heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney disease, where different doctors treated the same patients different ways, and they did randomized, controlled trials to see which treatments worked at all and which were better. They also did studies of different VA hospitals to see which hospitals had better and worse outcomes. They tried to improve the hospitals with worse outcomes, and if that didn't work, they shut the departments down.

If you go to any major medical conference, and go to the sessions on important diseases, you'll usually hear them talking about the "VA study." That's because in many medical specialties, the VA did the major, best-designed study to find out which treatments work and didn't work. There are a few private non-government organizations, like Kaiser-Permanente and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who do the same thing, but (not to disparage them), the VA does a lot more of these studies.

The National Institutes of Health also does big studies like that. Of course, with the budget cuts, they can't do as many, and they're being forced right now to decide which important ongoing studies will have to go, as Science and Nature have been reporting.

Everybody who follows medical research knows this. If you say, the government can't do anything well, they'll know that you don't know anything about the reality in this important field.

And as for those complaints about the bad outcomes in VA hospitals -- those are the kind of thing that happen in any hospital. It's easier to find out what happens in the VA hospitals because of their internal accounting and disclosure policies. You'll notice that the story got that information from the government's own review. Try to get that same information from private hospitals. What matters is when doctors who know how to compare hospitals compare large numbers of patients, to see whether there are any statistically significant patterns. When they do that, the VA hospitals usually do well. And when they don't, they find out why and how to change it.

Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate su

Amtrak is the result of rail companies no longer wanting to deal with the passenger business they had left after the rise of the automobile. So they got together and convinced the government to take over that side of things

Cool story, bro. I could've asked for some references, but it does not change a thing. The point was — and remains — that Amtrak sucks. The link I gave earlier discusses — as an example — the cost of a can of soda... Despite selling it to passengers for $2, Amtrak loses money, because their own cost is $3.40 per can... Nobody can explain this — not only can you buy the cans in the supermarket for $.30-.50, even privately-run vending machines on each station sell the same cans for less than $2. Their proprietors would've been ecstatic to supply the passing trains with as much as they could take... But no, for some reason, Amtrak's costs are $3.40 — would not you love to be their supplier? Somebody is...

And you know what's a common part of the vernacular? The false notion that the well-meaning idealist and self-serving demagogues...

Darling, whatever you are trying to say here is decidedly not part of vernacular...

it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts

Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?

The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world

Citation needed?

Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate surgery at Walter Reed. Watch what they do, not what they say.

A person of Ronald Reagan's station will get the very best care available in any country and under any regime.

They've done more important research, and won more Nobel prizes, than the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry put together.

Several considerations destroy this argument too:

• Who knows, how much more the same people would have achieved — having spent the same amounts of money — if they worked for competing corporations?
• Could the pharmaceutical industry be more interested in actual cures, than in abstract research?
• Could the UN committees be a tad biased towards non-profit researchers?

Everybody, who works for government grants hates the process with passion. Various writers (including stars like Asimov) mocked the it viciously.

U.S. government created the Internet.

Are you honestly not aware of the numerous problems with this wonder — where everything is spoofable and nothing is encrypted? Where all sorts of data travels in clear text and security considerations are still — decades later — being bolted on?

NASA put the first man on the moon.

Yes, they did. Poorly... Billions of dollars to take 3 men there and back — with a handful of rocks... Where are the lunar settlements? Where are the retirement homes for the elderly to enjoy the improved quality of life in lower gravity? The shuttle-program — after consuming the untold more billions of dollars — is scuttled, we are using Russian vehicles to bring stuff up. And the Russian are government made too — just cheaper, because everything is cheaper in a poor country.

Heinlein argued before a congressional committee in favor of funding space-travel and related research. But in his books it was the entrepreneurs — motivated by both profit and passion — who did the exploration. If those billions were allowed to stay in the private hands — rather than be taxed away — could there have been a Luna Hilton up there by now?

Does the invasion of Normandy count?

Military organizations, by the very nature of the domain, are not easily subject to competitive markets — government's monopoly must exist there. And yet... The security organizations like Black Water (currently known as Academi) have shown, how much better a privately organized force can be — for far less money — than an official military.

Government sucks at everything — an efficient government is a dictatorship said John Kennedy. Some things can not be done outside of government. But whatever can, should...

The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly .

I realize that that's a right-wing meme, and it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts, but it's not true.

The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world. I've read the studies that compare them to other centers around the world. They've got the data.

Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate surgery at Walter Reed. Watch what they do, not what they say.

If you got a head injury in Iraq, you'd have the best chance in the world of surviving with as much of your brain left as possible in the military health system. Ditto with saving a leg or an arm.

The National Institutes of Health is the biggest medical research center in the world. They've done more important research, and won more Nobel prizes, than the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry put together.

I leave it to Gordon Crovitz to explain how the U.S. government created the Internet.

NASA put the first man on the moon.

Does the invasion of Normandy count?

The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly .

"Not bad for a government job," — is part of vernacular, yet, a curious mix of well-meaning idealists and self-serving demagogues manage to convince the public to try again every once in a while...

Only if you are paying that much a month in gas... I try not to... and I drive what the state calls an SUV.

Heck, even over 5 years, the savings is *only* 10k, which only brings the effective price of the 40k car down to 30k... which is still more than most of us are willing/able to pay for something newer.

Maybe *most* of us won't pay $30K for a car, but the average new car price in the USA is $31K so that brings it within reach of a lot of potential buyers.

sorry, here's the 2006 link:

http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

From TFA:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The answer to this last question is a resounding "No!" At the moment, my most pressing fear is of running into a deranged psycho in a public space who has decided to do the suicide by cop thing while taking out as many innocent bystanders as possible.

Well, you have some SERIOUSLY warped fears! I mean, first of all, there's the obvious 'you're far more likely to die in a car/train/bus/airline crash' argument...but actually sticking with guns, you're far more likely to be killed by the police -- even limiting that solely to accidental deaths -- than in a mass shooting.

A rational person would be more afraid of being shot dead while watching TV one night because the cops got the address of that drug raid wrong than of being shot by a deranged gunman.

900 killed in the past 7 years in mass shootings. That's about 130 per year:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/1937041/

Compared to 30 in January of this year alone accidentally murdered by the police:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2013

And that Wikipedia list is woefully incomplete -- I know of two right near my hometown in the past 10 years (Indiana, PA -- population 14,000,) one of which was just this year, and neither of which are on any of the Wikipedia listings. In fact, in my 18 years living there, the ONLY homicides I'm aware of were those two committed by the police, against unarmed innocent citizens.

Disarm the gang-- sorry, police officers, THEN we can start talking about disarming the law-abiding citizens.

Ok look, I'm with you on the fact that Snowden didn't release any new info, at best it confirmed and gave operational details to stuff that was known publicly since 2006...

Snowden isn't a free man. Whoever has been pulling his strings has got him on a tight leash.

Why doesn't he have a blog? Why haven't we seen or heard of him around town in Russia? Why is he always wearing the same light grey shirt?

He's in trouble...he got himself in it, either by doing something to get blackmailed (downloading kiddie pr0n from a scammer) or deluded himself into thinking he was some kind of 'Deep Throat' figure.

Other questions:

Why didn't Snowden use Wikileaks?

Why didn't Glenn Greenwald release Snowden's name?

Munich proved it took TEN YEARS to migrate off Microsoft to Linux, and in the process they had to roll-their-own distribution.

This won't convince major corporate installations to cutover to Linux, it will scare them off! I mean seriously, a ten year process?

How on earth can a properly skeptical person ever believe that letting the people who profit the most from a thing tell us what's best?

So wait, Steve Jobs was wrong? He said Apple stuff was the best, but he also profited off it greatly...

And what about all those politicians telling the kids they "have to go to college"? Last year the Federal Government made over $40 Billion in PROFITS off the Student Loan program - slightly less profit than (good) Apple and (evil) ExxonMobil...

SolarCity is rolling this out:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/12/10/solarcity-tesla/3948955/

Claimer: I am a very very recent SolarCity employee.

No, I do not believe it. I believe that you just made it up. Do you have a citation? Because a Google search finds nothing except a law banning "aggressive begging" (blocking traffic, badgering or pursuing people, loitering next to ATMs, etc.).

I wouldn't go so far as to accuse him of just making it up. There are several places he might have picked up the idea. Some, the courts overrule the laws or parts of it. Some are just proposed. Some require a permit to 'gather' (eg more than 5 people). On Thanksgiving, the church should have 1 person with food in the park. 4 at a time, the homeless could come over. Then, walk away and 4 more could come up. I think the homeless should not be able to look at each other either ;) Get a permit right? I believe in the Orlando case, the problem was, you can only get a permit twice a year for each park so you have to move around. Are the activist intentionally getting in trouble making their point? Sure. Does feeding the poor in the same park, week after week, putting wear and tear on the park? Sure.



Orlando, FL
Raleigh, NC
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Dallas, TX
Houston, TX
NYC, NY
USA Today
LA Times

Well, one question:

how much longer do you think that will be true?

Certainly, Atheism has no formal organization, but neither do many religions (see also "Wicca" as an example), so that cannot be a usable guideline. But there is even more damning evidence here: Atheism does have "saints" and "preachers" (e.g. Mr. Dawkins), it does have a dogma (centered around a fairly particular definition of "reason" as its central coda, I believe, yes?), and it certainly have its zealots (oftentimes more irritating than Mormon/JV missionaries, truth be told.) Also, they seem to have the same smug self-assurance that many religious folks carry.

Finally, your very post says (without specifically saying) point-blank that Atheism has very little tolerance for anything that may intrude into the full exercise of its tenets.

I daresay that there are times when Atheism is just as much of a religion as, well, a mainstream religious organization; with some people, it is even moreso.

Now, here's the deal from my POV: I happen to be Catholic, by birth and creed. I don't advertise it beyond disclosure here in this post, or when specifically asked - and I certainly don't go door-to-door or jam it down anyone's throat. I say as much because I'm here to tell you right now that you and I are only really different in philosophies, and in what we believe about those things which are beyond our 5-dimensioned realm (six if you count mathematics ;) ).

I guess I should also inform you that it gets "dragged" into {$arena} because at one time, it resided there. Take the schools for instance. Given the rise in violence, the fall of scholastic performance, and the outright degradation of character in our youth since religion left said schools says way too much about what its replacement has wrought, IMHO. Can't blame someone for thinking that maybe its return might fix a few broken things. If you have a better idea or two about how to fix these mounting woes, then let's hear them...

Finally, your statement that the Bible is "a book that tells them whatever they do is right and the will of whatever deity they worship." tells me that you have never actually read it, and are thus speaking in ignorance. The book is nothing of the sort, in spite of too-often being used as such by people with ill intent.

Wow, looking that up, on Applebees and Chili's: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-waiters-and-waitresses/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/12/02/applebees-tablets-table-top-devices-restaurant-technology/3698561/

I think people overestimate the "human touch" need in service (like mentioned as a reason everything won't be automated in other posts). While it is true humans need other humans to be human, and physical human touch is important, interactions with "strangers" can be stressful for many, and they also expose people to a risk of disease. And example if banking, where many people now prefer using an ATM machine to talking to a bank teller. Same with many automated phone systems for routine transactions. It may depend in part on a person's personality of course. At some point thought, "more sanitary" and "more personalized and interactive" may become arguments for more automation. For example, who likes to wait around for the wait staff to bring you a bill when you are ready to go at the end of a dinner out?

One can hope though that as we see more abundance from more automation, people may have more time to cook at home and entertain at home. That may be the bigger long term change here. Why go to a restaurant at all, where you have little control over the ingredients, the people around you, and so on? Or, alternatively, when a robot can fetch your meal for you, as in this video of a PR2 robot going to Subway to fetch a sandwich:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYRQC2iBp

Marshall Brain's "Manna" explores two possible answers to your last question.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Regarding "socialism", here is a great graph on US perceptions, preferences, and reality regarding wealth distribution:http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/
"As you can see from the figure, participants rather badly estimated the current state of wealth disparity! Furthermore, they offered an ideal wealth distribution (under a "veil of ignorance") that was even more different (and more equal) relative to the current state of affairs.
What this tells me is that Americans don't understand the extent of disparity in the US, and that they (we) desire a more equitable society. It is also interesting to note that the differences between people who make more money and less money, republicans and democrats, men and women -- were relatively small in magnitude, and that in general people who fall into these different categories seem to agree about the ideal wealth distribution under the veil of ignorance.
Maybe this suggests that when there are no labels, and we think about the core of our morality in abstract terms (and under the veil of ignorance), we are actually very similar?"

Graph picture there seems broken; see it here:
http://ecologicalsociology.blogspot.com/2012/06/us-income-inequality-real-perceived.html

Still, you are right about the "allergy", and that is why planning through the market in the USA along with a basic income may be the easiest way forward:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_market.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/establish-basic-income-guarantee-all-americans-similar-what-being-proposed-switzerland/jF

Blacks are inferior as a group.

Look at the way all of the blacks just go apeshit so to speak over a bunch of fucking sneakers of all things!

Then ask yourself why white people don't riot over the latest Apple gadget even though they gather in large crowds waiting for them. I mean an objective person might think whites are more civilized!

Oh does anyone remember when the blacks rioted like crazy after Hurricane Katrina? Isn't it JUST A LITTLE STRANGE the way white people in Colorado banded together and helped each other when they were hit with a natural disaster instead of rioting and looting like the blacks did? I mean an objective person might think whites are more civilized!

Oh and blacks are responsible for nearly all the murders in Marion County! That is what you would expect from a violent tribal uncivilized race.

Interesting when a black man admits blacks are to blame for the hellhole that is (86% black) Jackson Mississippi? Quote: "Look at recent history, like in South Africa, when apartheid was abolished,” Lambus said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Blacks went on a crime spree.""

It goes on and on. Probably no point in posting this since people who are objective already understand the destruction and violence and cost blacks bring anytime they are abundant. It is not just USA. All over the world black-governed nations are hellholes. But objective people knew this. It is the people indoctrinated to believe that acknowledging FACTS is somehow "racist" who just can't admit it. None are so blind as those who will not see.

Blacks are inferior as a group.

Look at the way all of the blacks just go apeshit so to speak over a bunch of fucking sneakers of all things!

Then ask yourself why white people don't riot over the latest Apple gadget even though they gather in large crowds waiting for them. I mean an objective person might think whites are more civilized!

Oh does anyone remember when the blacks rioted like crazy after Hurricane Katrina? Isn't it JUST A LITTLE STRANGE the way white people in Colorado banded together and helped each other when they were hit with a natural disaster instead of rioting and looting like the blacks did? I mean an objective person might think whites are more civilized!

Oh and blacks are responsible for nearly all the murders in Marion County! That is what you would expect from a violent tribal uncivilized race.

Interesting when a black man admits blacks are to blame for the hellhole that is (86% black) Jackson Mississippi? Quote: "Look at recent history, like in South Africa, when apartheid was abolished,” Lambus said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Blacks went on a crime spree.""

It goes on and on. Probably no point in posting this since people who are objective already understand the destruction and violence and cost blacks bring anytime they are abundant. It is not just USA. All over the world black-governed nations are hellholes. But objective people knew this. It is the people indoctrinated to believe that acknowledging FACTS is somehow "racist" who just can't admit it. None are so blind as those who will not see.

Manufacturers require 92 or better for certain high compression engines. This trend is increasing as manufacturers turn to more compression and forced induction to achieve CAFE fleet averages.

"Enterprise" grade drives are often faster, having better processors and more cache, and they don't do dumbass things like park heads every 8 seconds because the drive manufacturers have to listen to server and storage array manufacturers and meet their requirements to get certification for use in advanced storage systems.

You're an idiot. Please, stay away from any important systems. Just spend your time poasting on slashdot so you don't do any (more) damage.

Howells amassed his Bitcoins in February 2009, reports Ars Technica, after just a week of running a program on his laptop; but he knocked lemonade on the laptop a year later and broke it down for parts. He eventually tossed the hard drive without remembering what was on it.

And his chances of getting it back don't look good. He tells the Guardian that even for the police to find it, they'd need "a team of 15 guys, two diggers, and all the personal protection equipment. So for me to fund that, it's not possible without the guarantee of money at the end."

As for those who want to give it a go on their own, bad news: A rep for the city council says searchers will be turned away.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/28/newser-bitcoin-landfill/3775271/

Meanwhile the occurance of voter impersonation is approximately zero. Yes, these are laws to counteract a problem which simply does not exist. Meanwhile, the real purpose of voter ID laws is to prevent votes.

Your "LMAO" comes from ignorance on your part.

Really? We have voter ID laws in Canada, and we still get people trying to vote illegally. Then again, perhaps you can explain why every other western country and some non-western countries in the world have voter ID laws, but the US doesn't.

I'll wait, but I'm sure it's going to be filled with some form of "you're a racist" comment. Don't forget that it's more common than you think.

The Arctic (and icebergs) are melting

Yeah, if you believe United Nations' reports on the matter. I don't — because United Nations has a conflict of interest — as do many of the politicians and the scientists funded by them. Sure, if you try hard enough — measuring what supports your agenda, while ignoring, what does not, you can "prove" a lot of things. Heck, those very icebergs were reportedly melting dangerously in 1922!

sea levels rise

Yeah, right. Wake me up, when Al Gore sells his — recently purchased — ocean front villa and moves to the hills.

Truth is, even where predictions are, sort of, materializing, it mostly happens at drastically lower rates than predicted.

Things like corn ethanol aren't about helping global warming

Bzzz! Wrong... Revising history again.

When members of our society think that their savings on lightbulbs are worth destroying the world over

Oh, another wonderful quote... The world-destroying lightbulbs — Edison (and Tesla) laughing sadly.

sometimes we have to coerce them to do the right thing.

Thanks for confirming the maxim: "Scratch a Global Warming alarmist, and you'll find a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath."

It's obvious you would never do anything to prevent global warming.

This is not about me — you'd do better next time, if you refrain from outright ad-hominems...

Of all countries US is one of the last in the failing list. Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and most of socialist Latin America, on the other hand are in utter misery. Social Democrat countries in Latin America and Europe, as France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina are not that bad but waaay worse than US.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/12/best-economies-in-the-world/2802701/

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570835-nordic-countries-are-probably-best-governed-world-secret-their

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

I'd suggest that your intentional cherry picking of specific countries, ones that have shifted the burden of debt from investors to the public in Europe, and ones that are trying to move into the new century (still) in South America, while ignoring the the most socialist democracies in Europe and how exceedingly well their economies are doing... better even than the US... you might be being a bit disingenuous. The biggest problem with most of the European countries that are having serious problems is they bought into the American bullshit way of debt management that Uncle Ronnie started, and Auntie Margret followed (first).

To further the comparison, at least in the US, the numbers I found indicate $97B annual donations to religious organizations, which also includes a substantial amount of aid organizations who provide charity services besides "spreadin' the faith."

Microsoft's annual revenue in 2013 was $78B, for pure selfish capitalism. So, Microsoft rakes in a comparable amount of money to all religious-affiliated donations (including legit aid/charity work) combined in the "highly religious" US.

Generally, I'd rate Microsoft's accumulation of wealth and power (to spread their own "religion" of lockin to Microsoft products) as a greater threat to global wellbeing than all religious institutions combined (who at least do a reasonable mix of altruistic good alongside self-serving power grabs, which is 100% the goal of a for-profit corporation).

Is America a democracy? It only has one more party than the Soviet Union did.

Yes America is a democracy.* And no, the US does not have just one more party than the Soviet Union. The US actually has dozens of active political parties. Only a few of them attract enough support nationally to run a serious campaign for the two national level offices (president and vice-president). Within states, counties, and cities, parties besides the Republicans and Democrats are much more likely to obtain office. US Senator Bernie Sanders is a socialist (no, really - "... the only self-proclaimed socialist in Congress ...). The Reform party started by Ross Perot had a candidate that won the election for governor in the 1990s. Another recent amusing example of a third party win from the "I'm not dead department" - (icing on the cake - he is a software engineer):

Philadelphians Elect First Whig Since 19th Century
And just because: BECOME A WHIG RIGHT NOW! And 6 other vintage parties we should bring back

And the candidates are those nominated by the powers that be.

I think you misunderstand. Anyone that meets the requirements can run for pretty much any office they care to in the US. Nominations are mechanisms used by political parties to determine who the party will put forward as a candidate for a major election such as president. If you are a serious candidate with real support, that isn't going to be much of a problem. The much bigger problem is getting the support needed to be a serious candidate. Nominations generally take place at the national conventions of the parties after they have gone through the many primary elections and caucuses in the states. If you've won most of the primaries or caucuses, you will probably be the candidate.

And what does it matter, when the vote-counting process is highly suspect?

Counting the votes is a local function, the federal government doesn't play a part. If there is a problem it is a local problem. Voting procedures are subject to scrutiny by election judges.

* Democratic republic for the pendants.

I'm getting really sick of this shit over and over....

We've finally concluded that Snowden is no hero, by some a traitor, for others a dupe...and we're over it...

The media fucked up reporting this **from day 1**

We knew this in **2006** NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

yet there was no public outcry...

then the big one...PATRIOT ACT

full text of the Patriot Act has been reported on and available to anyone with an internet connection or library card since 2001...

I'm sick of Snowden's puppet masters having free reign of the news...we need smarter editors!

Recalls due to manufacturing defects that cause car fires have happened many times. Here is one for the Honda Fit from June of this year.

There have been three Telsa Model S fires during the past five weeks. If the feds failed to look into this, no matter how much you don't happen to like it, they would be derelict.

The grownups are stepping in now. Deal with it.

The spying is too much without enough oversight and should be scaled back, reined in, and controlled. BUT, spying on real, actual enemies is required.

And it isn't just the abuses of the NSA. The USA is FORCING people to have intrusive body cavity searches then being asked to PAY for them. And how about those border searches 100 miles from a border. There is a lot of government abuse that needs to be fixed.

But you still need to spy on your actual, real enemies.

Unfortunately EMP is a genuine serious threat, and North Korea poses a potential threat not just to the US, but to Australia, Japan, and other nations as well.

Inside the Ring: North Korean missiles deemed a serious threat to U.S.
'North Korea's nuclear weapons could hit UK': Alarm at David Cameron's claim

An EMP Could Cripple the U.S.

An EMP is a torrent of electromagnetic energy that disrupts and destroys electronic devices within an affected area. As a result of such an event, most electrical devices would fail, most cars would cease functioning, airplanes would fall from the sky, and critical infrastructure—such as water and sewers, banking, energy, transportation, information technology, and others—would shut down.

Importantly, the electrical components and transmission systems would be permanently destroyed, requiring enormous levels of repair and rebuilding. Huge swaths of the U.S. would be without even the most basic of services for years, and it could take decades to fully recover. The economic and human losses would be catastrophic.

EMP Attacks—What the U.S. Must Do Now

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack represents one of the greatest threats imaginable—to the United States and the world. An EMP occurs when a nuclear device is detonated high in the atmosphere—a phenomenon of which America’s enemies are well aware. The electromagnetic discharge can permanently disable the electrical systems that run nearly all civilian and military infrastructures. A massive EMP attack on the United States would produce almost unimaginable devastation. Communications would collapse, transportation would halt, and electrical power would simply be non-existent. Not even a global humanitarian effort would be enough to keep hundreds of millions of Americans from death by starvation, exposure, or lack of medicine. Nor would the catastrophe stop at U.S. borders. Most of Canada would be devastated, too, as its infrastructure is integrated with the U.S. power grid. Without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse. Much of the world’s intellectual brain power (half of it is in the United States) would be lost as well. Earth would most likely recede into the “new” Dark Ages.

A single nuke exploded above America could cause a national blackout for months.

One EMP burst and the world goes dark

But he offered the first undeniable PROOF.

wrong.

anyone can go online or to the local library and read the Patriot Act for themselves...

same for this article: "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" from **2006** http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

That's all the proof necessary. Snowden revealed **operational details** of programs everyone could have look at!!!

Knowing that it's called 'Prism' isn't functionally value-added information...it's just technical details...**we all knew since the fucking Patriot Act***

It depends on the fuel cell and the fuel. Platinum is used in lightweight, low-temperature fuel cells meant for rapid load changes (as in cars and such). If you are running from natural gas or other fuel sources, and are running with a high-temperature fuel cell, you don't need platinum.

But people are forgetting about the distribution costs with electricity. A significant portion of the energy is lost as heat in the distribution system - both as I2R losses in the wires and inefficiencies in the transformers. Unless you have a big leak in the piping, shipping natural gas around is basically loss-less aside from pumping costs.

Fuel cells running more or less at steady state at the point of use are very economical.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/fccs_omaha10.pdf

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1139680

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-06-21/ebay-fuel-cells/55732562/1