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These are pretty much what drives the outrageous costs these companies face.

Public pension plans are a huge driver of the cost of government.

Repeat this kind of largess at the state, local level, and union shops and there you go.

Really you dumb fuk? You haven't heard about this before? You haven't heard of Tommy Robinson who was put into prison? If you really haven't heard about this ish before you need to take your head out of your a$$.

Government agencies from San Francisco to Stockholm to Berlin to London have had issues and have covered it up. Not all the rape and crime issues are the same. It's the silencing of reporting that counts.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal....
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
http://wjla.com/news/inside-yo...

I haven't vetted these articles. It just shows that if you were at all paying attention you would have seen this.

What's as disturbing as the physical violence is the coordinated news blackout. This is horrible. Not discussing a problem doesn't make it go away.

From what I can see there is nothing special about him or what he did, he is just some cheeky kid who used a very naive way of getting attention and it got out of hand. All this talk of discrimination etc. seems like a beat-up and the poor kid will pay the price in the long run for all the manipulating adults have done to politically capitalise on his prank.

I didn't get the impression that the boy is cheeky or that this was a prank.

It just seems like he's a precocious kid interested in how things work and he wanted to show one of his teachers. Unfortunately, teachers' detectors are up for school violence (remember the child who was penalized for chewing his Pop Tart in the shape of a gun?) and the rise of radical Islam (Islamic gunmen attack the "Draw The Prophet" 40 minutes away in Garland Texas) resulted in this situation.

It's a tricky situation. However, calling the cops seems slightly absurd. They didn't think it was a bomb by the fact they didn't evacuate the premises and bring a bomb robot to blow it up. If the authorities find a credible threat, they bring in a bomb robot and blow up whatever the threat is. That didn't happen.

As far as taking things apart and putting them back together, Henry Ford did that sort of thing. This might have been simpler, but the boy correctly put it together in a different way.

Don't you think that the new agencies fact checked? I think it is strange that you do all of this "research" but don't cite any references. How did you do your research? Surfing the web? Don't you think that only interesting pictures would be posted? The internet is not a complete history. It only has what people post.

Take a look at these videos. Those two groups make up much more than a few dozen.

Looks like she made a wrong turn, toward a "wide street" and missed seeing the short posts wide spaced, painted in a decorative dark rather than traffic safety colors. Confronted by the armed plain clothes guy in shorts on drivers side, and a flash mob of guns waving, she stepped on the gas and ran. DOA.

People do forget they have firearms in their bags, believe it or not.

Sometimes they forget their fucking live grenades as well.

I don't care what your stance on the TSA or gun ownership is, those are dangerous weapons and they ought to be treated with care. If you're forgetting that you have a gun, or a live fucking grenade, then frankly speaking you deserve whatever hassle you get as a result of your carelessness.

People do forget they have firearms in their bags, believe it or not.

Sometimes they forget their fucking live grenades as well.

These guys are for real

The Harvard effort is amateurish...

soon in NY his comment would be

Nah, that's only when they charge you $10 for a bucket of popcorn and 2 16 oz cups of fizzy sugar water.

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/06/new-york-large-soda-ban-to-open-legal-battle--77055.html

Yes, it was a record setting warm winter in the contiguous 48 states... but it was an extremely cold winter in Alaska (see ABC news story for example) and in parts of the former Soviet Union.

If somebody wanted to select just those parts of the global temperature data for this past winter, he could honestly write a story with a bold headline shrieking about record cold weather and then warning about the potential nightmare of a new ice age, lamentations about man's impact of the planet, etc. all designed to manipulate the public (the story would be honest about the data subset, but would obviously be misleading and manipulative in the larger sense). The point is that one should always be wary of anybody on any side of an argument when they run with a data subset whose boundaries are political lines on a map rather than some boundary that isolates the data within the boundary from affecting or being affected by things outside the boundary.

"Data" is only valid/important/relevant when it is not manipulated, adjusted, pre-selected, etc.

...GM and Ford have both been improving (Ford much more than the former), but Chrysler has done so poorly that they were bought out by a company who hasn't been in the US since the 80's because they didn't want to spend the time and money dealing with the new emissions standards... Oh, and the fact that Chrysler's four differing divisions almost monopolized the bottom of JD Power and Associates' list of least dependable car manufacturer's (source, Chrysler, Dodge (made by Chrysler), Jaguar (made by Tata Motors), Jeep (made by Chrysler), Ram (made by Chrysler) in the order listed on the site) doesn't really help.

one obvious tax increase would be to repeal Obama's tax cut

Well duh, that's what we've been saying all along! -- the Republicans

along with Bush's tax cut.

Oh hell no! -- the Republicans

Note that the biggest proponent of NOT cutting Defense Spending is Obama's Secretary of Defense, not the Republicans.

"Those who have given us so much have nothing more to give," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., promising to introduce legislation to prevent the cuts.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the panel, said they would "pursue all options" to avoid deeper defense cuts.

source. To the Republican(?)s' credit, Rand Paul defends the "cut" (which he points out is a reduced increase, not a decrease in funding). Panetta may want his department to get as much money as possible, but it's Congress with the power to make it so.

yes 'accused' is perhaps correct, in a technical sense, since the government's indictment said he did it.
but when it came to actual criminal charges, there werent any, because there arent any laws about "leaking classified material".

The criminal charges were dropped because the NSA didn't want to allow their classified information to be introduced into evidence.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2011/06/plea-deal-for-thomas-drake-former-nsa-official-in-classified-leaks-case-62032.html

Problems in bringing the case to trial stemmed from a decision by US. District Judge Richard Bennett rejecting the government's efforts to mask references to "NSA's targeting of a specific telecommunications technology" in six documents entered into evidence, according to a June 5 letter from prosecutors. As a result, the prosecution said, it was withdrawing four of them and would eliminate any reference to the technology in two others.

After that, the criminal charges could not be supported with the remaining evidence.

What conceivable situation would fulfill all three, ie. being oppression rather than good police work?

Here's an easy example, since we are talking about smartphones. The police are now arresting people for taking video on public streets with their cellphone. No, really.

The referenced articles will lead you to a trove of cases where there is no other reason for police action other than oppression. Why might you want to record something happening on a public street if you are not a criminal?

Well, the cops might jump you, beat the crap out of you, charge you with felony assault on a police officer and then destroy the police surveillance videos that document the crime. In this case a cell phone video of what really happened surfaced and the charges were dropped. Lest you think this is a "one off", there are plenty of other cases where police video equipment mysteriously malfunctions just at the critical moment. You can find examples via the referenced articles.

Still wondering why you might want to keep your cellphone private if "you have done nothing wrong"? Follow those links and you'll find plenty of cases where people were arrested (and later released) and evidence on their cellphone was destroyed by the police. Catching bad guys by searching cell phones is probably quite possible. Does that mean that you should give up your right to privacy and have the police rifling through your electronic papers every time you interact with them? Does the 4th amendment really mean nothing?

According to a search warrant, the computer savvy boy was able to get a hold of an administrator's password at Spring Hill Elementary to get into the Blackboard learning system

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0410/726170.html

As a person living on the planet Earth, Link. Doesn't this say a lot about people who live in "Yankee Territory"?

"When you are in public, you are in public." should not equal "When you are public, you are presumed to have criminal intent." This is yet another symptom of the growing perceptual gap between the police and the community they are supposed to "protect and serve". There are new stories every day about the effects of the increased militarization of the civilian police forces. Some of the stories are about SWAT teams kicking in the wrong door and terrorizing and/or shooting innocent people in their own homes. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/10/06/tennessee.shooting.02.ap/index.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188934,00.html http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1107/474003.html
Some of the stories are about police view everyone they don't like as a "badguy" and then using that to justify violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tOVkT2YESU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2-qi0Rc3w&feature=related
And some of the stories are about police purposefully criminalizing citizens when they want to protest peacefully (another right fading away) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/28/SURVEILLANCE.TMP http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/infiltration-19feb04.htm http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0101/msg00193.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html

Why do we want to add power to an already out of control aspect of our government? When did the police stop serving the people of the community and start serving political masters?

Next, he'll link to here, to prove that gamers and people in the IT world are HOMOPHOBIC and must be stopped. It's all part of his larger plan. Seriously.

I hear the next part of his plan is to sue someone for $54 million over a pair of pants. Which brings him to step 3, profit.

I don't expect to see these stories on /.

http://xml.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/ba l-bromwell,0,350973.storygallery?coll=bal-local-ut ility
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0707/440424.html

Yep, Republicans have a monopoly on corruption. Get a clue. Politician = scum

I don't know about that, but I know Skywalkers in Korea cross Han Solo.

On Topic: Best headline ever.

--It would certainly go a distance in explaining the actions of some of the supposedly fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in the prelude to the grand 9-11 performance acting in ways most un-Islamic. (Booze and Cocaine and Women [gnn.tv] won't win the devout many points with Allah.) So what's the story here? Were they fundamentalist terrorists, or were they dupe mercenaries who didn't know what they were signing up for, and who were allowed to bring off their clutzy plan while the US secret services conveniently looked the other way [tvnewslies.org], while the secret/shadow government [washingtonpost.com] provided access to the remote controlled [911review.com] jets actually capable of performing the precision flying which badly-trained mercenary goof-balls could not have been asked to manage, and while the Israeli-owned security companies [whatreallyhappened.com] which held contracts at each of the airports involved during 9-11, gave them fast-lane service at the boarding check points?

There is a great antidote to some of that confusion: Debunking 9/11 Myths

Dudes with bombs and box-cutters working independently is still the false reality which needs to be understood here. The myth of terrorists is the preferred tool for building the fascist state. Luckily, this is increasingly well understood. It's the 'How' which seems to be causing some hiccups.

Here are some victories the good guys won against terrorism around the world in the last couple of weeks (this list doesn't include terrorist attacks):

11 suspected Islamic radicals arrested in Spanish African enclave
Spain arrests Chechen rebel suspect wanted in Russia
Turkey Arrests Suspected Regional Al Qaeda Leader
Turkey arrests 10 with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Pakistan arrests 47 suspected Taliban
13 foreign nationals arrested in S. Afghanistan
Police Claim Arresting Taliban Commander in Ghazni
Pakistanis Arrest 90 Afghans at Border
Saudi detains 139 suspected militants
Security forces scrambled to disrupt Asian summit terror plots
Court freezes Islamic group's bank account
Top aide of Qaeda chief in Iraq killed
Morocco jails 14 Islamists
Eight French Islamists Returned To France
4 Dutch Muslims Convicted of Terror Plan
and another trial: Denmark: Muslim terror trial begins
Terrorist plot targeting Illinois mall foiled
Man accused in Taliban arrest ordered held without bail
And reaching back just a little further just to inc

I don't think Whorley or his ilk are the best arguments for the importance and necessity of free speech, but Whorley's plight is of particular concern because the material he has been convicted of downloading was concocted from imagination. They were cartoons. In other words, Whorley has been jailed for what can only be seen as pure speech. Whether the current administration really is interested in protecting society from child pornographers is irrelevant. Whorley's successful conviction and extraordinary sentencing set the precedent that pure expression (which may have harmed no one) can be found illegal.

We live in dangerous times and I worry that it won't be long before critics of the US government and/or political opponents of the powerful find themselves in straits similar to Whorley's.

Should the police no longer respond when 911 is dialed unless it's absolutely certain a crime is being committed?

See how bad you get treated then.

Heaven forbid they act like Montgomery County, MD and they start a sex ed class where the syllabus gets rejected by the School Board's email porn filter.

See how you get labelled a "right-wing extremist" for not wanting your kids taught at public expense crap like fisting.

Here are a few links to muddy your perception of events:


http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID= 16141&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEAS E

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0604/152311.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/25/sprj.irq .centrifuge/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,894550 ,00.html


It's all a matter of how deep you're willing to dig for the information. You won't see this stuff repeated on the news... because it might just make the War in Iraq justified. Can't have that now, can we?

But since these stories don't fit the party line that's been coming from the press... I guess they're lies. I'm not saying this is definitive evidence, but these stories show at least a plausible explanation for invasion, not to mention shooting holes in the "cut and dried" we shouldn't have gone to war, camp. And it has CERTAINLY shot down the "full compliance with UN resolutions" camp that has popped up lately. Compliance? If you mean kicking out inspectors so he can hide his banned equipment, then... yes. :)

Not to mention Jan. 27th 2003, Hans "I never said that" Blix told the UN that Iraq had shown "NO EVIDENCE of FULL compliance" with disarmament. (And we all know, the Security council authorization for retaliation as a result of non-compliance was not more sanctions... but then again, who listens to the UN?)

He later recanted, denied, claimed he was misquoted, when it was impacting his book sales.... but that's another story.

That's really hard to do. Let me take 15 seconds to find some...
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Source 6
Source 7
Source 8
Source 9

clickable links one, two, three, four, five

Your wording reminds me of an incident that hit the media here a few days ago. A woman (a minority and scientist for the government) was arrested for eating a candy bar in the subway. She allegedly said what you said - that the officer should go and work on some crime that mattered. An article on the incident.

If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority.

Like...? I don't recall this ever being the sole purpose in going to Iraq.

If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now.

(1) There is a lot of sand in Iraq, which means a lot of hiding places. If you have ever lost anything in something as small as a beach, imagine the scale involved with a "beach" that is 167,924 square miles. (2) Saddam was not above "hiding" weapons (of any sort) in cemetaries and hospitals, so the number of places that one could expect to find anything pretty-much jumped to every square inch of the region. (3) Fox News and an ABC affiliate report on the fact that the United Nations found missile engines and other parts that were suited for the purpose of making WMDs in a scrap heap in Jordan. The source of all this metal? IRAQ.

If the war in Iraq was about "ties to al-qaeda", then we should've hit the Saudis first, 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9-11 were Saudis.

That's flawed reasoning. One should not condemn a nation based on the nationality of a criminal. Acting on a nation based on the actions of its Head of State is something quite different.

If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now...

No, we'd be doing something to shut the mouths of people against drilling in the protected lands within the US. I agree that we should protect the land, so that environmental damage is minimized as much as possible, so don't think for a second that I'm in favor of drilling. By the same token, when the entire world is quite capable of watching the corporate goings-on (especially with regard to oil), I would hope that companies (like Haliburton) have the smarts to avoid doing something so blatently stupid. We all know, however, that not everyone thinks things through before acting...

Having said all this, I think that Moore has every right to think what he wants to think, and to make films based on these if that's how he wants to spend his time, even if it means people paying him for his extremist views. HOWEVER, for a pompous self-rightous man like him to put something like "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the same realm as a documentary when it offers absolutely no counter point is foolish and irrisponsible.

At least one person who should know agrees(*). If Moore was really so anxious about telling the truth (as he wants us to believe), I would like to see his take on the military prowress of Kerry, especially as it relates to Iraq.

* Link to http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ doesn't seem to work through the preview...

Here, in Virginia there are good results from a DNA database.

However, I have neither faith nor trust in politicians and the police. If there is a possible way to abuse this information, they will.

I think the point of this interface is that the data is more easily interpreted, allowing the human-user to notice patterns that automated scripts would miss. This could be done either in real time, or as a visualization tool for historical files. The latter usage seems like it would be of interest if you're trying to determine the source of a break-in.

For real-time monitoring, your point about mutliple systems is very valid, but what if this approach could be scaled up to allow you to visually inspect the whole system for a number of problems? Perhaps an entire array of cubes, each for a subnet or an individual system, focusing on those that pique your interest.

This idea may be able to mesh with the glanceable objects idea (just the idea, not their chicken egg specifically). If it is informative enough, it could allow you to periodically check some aspects of your whole system for things that you either can't write scripts to do, or don't have time to write scripts for.

-Zipwow

Being a florist is dangerous work, sadly. I'm not surprised they're not all "very happy".

--RJ