DDT has a long history and nowhere in it is actual proof of causation of any of the aforementioned ailments. The best anti-DDT activists could prove is correlation and linking to diseases, never causation, in spite of decades of trying. So much of this "scientific research" was done trying to affirm the positive idea that DDT caused disease. Weak inductive logic has no place in actual scientific research! "Affirming the positive" is a huge problem with so much of science. You don't create "scientific facts". You only create theories that hold up to repeated attempts to falsify them. This is never the case with the anti-DDT research. It's always about affirming the "scientific fact" that DDT is evil. In the 50's and 60s people virtually bathed in this stuff. Big trucks would billow out DDT into parks to kill off mosquitoes, and all this time no ill effects were ever proven to be caused by DDT. And thanks to DDT the US is free of malaria.

Because of anti-DDT activists and the pseudo-scientific FUD created by them 3rd world countries have had to deal with the scourge of malaria that kills over a million every year, and tens of millions over decades. If you want funding from the US you had better not use DDT, oh sure we did and eliminated the threat of malaria in our country, but we learned the errors of our ways by great pseudoscientists like Rachel Carson that using DDT can have unclear and unknown effects to the thickness of egg shells in some avian species, so you know, let everyone die from malaria, this egg shell stuff is pretty serious.

People using weak inductive logic claming harm to the environment to prevent the use of life saving procedures make me sick. Rachel Carson and people like her have blood on their hands and will never feel guilty for the tens of millions of deaths caused and the hundreds of millions of lives forever changed. If there was justice in this world (and there never was) Rachel Carson would be made to live in a country where DDT has never been used. Let her sleep under a mosquito net forever afraid of a malaria infected bite. No, she slept in great comfort in a place where DDT had already wiped out the scourge of malaria.

Only as recently as 2007 has this anti-DDT hysteria subsided and the use of DDT has begun again. If it is so damn harmful why is it OK now? Of course it's a good thing they're using it again, but it's far too late to save the lives of the millions of people who could have been saved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Criticism_of_restrictions_on_DDT_use

Wikipedia is a funny place. You can see the fights between editors that occur right in the article. In the section "Criticism of restrictions on DDT use" the same over zealous anti-DDT editors just couldn't help themselves. By god they weren't going to let these criticisms of the restriction of DDT go unchallenged! They'll insert quotes of someone's opinion to refute the critical assertions in the same paragraph as the criticisms. That'll show the critics what's up! And, no, nobody will ever venture to think that there is any sort of unfair bias in the article!

Chemists who create chemicals to save people's lives are not mad scientists and these anti-DDT activists are not all knowing supermen come to save the planet. So many of these activists just know, without need for proof, that DDT is bad. Why? Why, because it's a chemical, and chemicals are bad! And look at these ignorant people spraying chemicals without knowing what us activists know.

Everything is a chemical. You can die from cyanide poising from eating too many almonds or apple seeds, but you'll never die from DDT.

And the freakin updates that FORCES me to reboot.

Annoying as hell, but you can disable that behavior.

I use CentOS/Gnome, OSX and Win 7 and 8 and hands down 8 beat them all. The minimalist UI looks fantastic, task manager is mind blowingly awesome, but the one that took me over the top was the new copy/move dialogs. MS really nailed it with this new feature. Shows a graph of move activity, current speed, etc. but even better when it sees that you're trying to copy another file to a location that you're already trying to copy to, it cues it up rather than try and make two simultaneous transfers. On top of that you can pause/resume transfers. No longer will people say “wtf why does it say x seconds left” because they’ll clearly see that the transfer speed ebbs and flows. When you try and move files to a location where the file name already exists it gives you a very nice grouped choice dialog so you don’t have to click through prompts, this actually removes the need for “yes to all”, hard to explain without seeing it. I would say that this copy/move dialog like this would sell me on any system, it’s that good.

And of course it plays windows games, which is the primary reason for consideration in the first place. Hard to beat win 8 with all that.

Oh yeah, before I forget, fuck metro and whoever made it they should get some terrible STD. Fuck the start menu, I never liked the old one, the new one just makes me want to rip my eyes out with a spoon, but at least they removed the damn useless start button.

I've never been a fan of Stardock, but ModernMix actually seems like a good idea (for once). It allows you to run metro apps in a window. And they also have a start menu replacement for people who actually liked the old start menu, but I am not one, so you can find that link on your own if you're interested.

Bird shot from 12 feet away isn't going to penetrate through more than one wall, and what comes out the other side of that one wall is not lethal. If you use a beanbag shot it won't go through any walls. A .223 JHP will certainly go through a wall, but it will fragment and the fragments will not be as lethal as a .45 FMJ shot through the same wall. The .223 JHP probably won't go through two walls if shot at an angle, and by that time it will for sure not be lethal, although it might still take an eye out or give you a seriously bad headache.

For home defense I personally have a cheap Norinco side by side 12 gauge, and I keep it at next to the front door, it's easy for my wife to use. I have a Remington 870 pump under the bed. I'm not personally worried about penetration, so they're loaded with 00 buck.

Why on Earth would I try to warn someone that I've got a gun?

Mostly because even bad guys don't want to die. Telling someone you've got a way to defend yourself is a great way to stop them from attacking you. Even if they do have a gun, most likely they don't want to get into a shootout. Ejecting a single shell isn't going to make you run out of ammo, and it's all the proof anyone needs. I keep one in the chamber, but it's not a bad idea to warn someone that the next move they make might be their last. Shooting someone is going to make a pretty big mess in a lot of ways, physical, moral, emotional, legal etc., it's a good idea to try and avoid it if at all possible.

Why on Earth would I try to shoot someone through a wall, even if they are shooting "at" me?

Maybe a wall is a bad example of why you might want penetration. A better one is if they've ducked behind a couch or a counter. Some place where you pretty much know exactly where they are at and they seem to think that concealment is cover. And like I said before, if you're shooting a round that can't penetrate, that little bit of concealment is cover. A beanbag shot isn't going to go through a couch.

I enjoy shooting, but my lazy habits always lead me to one discipline: sniping. For that I have a Savage .308 with a US Optics SN-3. Got that guy all bubba'd out with heavy fluted barrel and every wiz bang feature you can add to the scope. It's almost like cheating. I'm not that great of a shot but I'll hit a one foot target 8/10 times at 800 yards. It's single shot, so it keeps me from blowing through too much ammo. It's almost like playing chess. Now this is making me want to go shoot too.

Thanks for the friendly post! Have fun at the range!

Not all shotgun shells are the same, using bird shot at even a medium range will fail to penetrate more than one wall, don't even get me started on beanbag shots. AR-15 rounds will breakup faster than buckshot and JHPs will breakup even faster than FMJs. If you're worried about penetration you can hardly go wrong with a shotgun with bird shot or a beanbag, and that will stop a bad guy. Using an AR-15 is almost as "safe" as far as penetration goes, it might penetrate a wall but the rounds will break apart and while it might hurt someone on the other side of a wall or two it will not hurt them as bad as a .45 FMJ or a slug.

Different rounds have different results. I do shoot, and I shoot a lot, but I've never done any sort of penetration testing myself, but there are a lot of penetration testing videos on youtube that support what I'm saying here. Even the link you provided supports using bird shot, even though it says it won't kill a person, I promise it will cause them enough pain to not want to keep doing whatever it is they're doing, and it won't go through a wall unless you shoot it point blank.

Any competent person only needs 1 shot with a 20 gauge shotgun...

Competent? One shot? People miss, and miss a lot, for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes it's because they are not competent. Sometimes it's just because they are nervous and miss. Sometimes the bad guy is moving. Sometimes there is more than one bad guy. Sometimes the bad guy is shooting back and they have to return fire from cover. The number of reasons that more than one shot might be needed is very high.

On top of that, a wound from a single shot of a weapon like that is far worse than a couple of rounds from an AR-15.

Well, that's a very subjective statement. A single shot from a 20 gauge shot gun to the pinky finger is far less critical than an 5.56 between the eyes or through the heart. A shotgun, especially a lower powered one like a 20 gauge, is far less likely to kill someone than an AR-15 when shot from the same distance to the same area. Add any kind of ballistic armor and now the 20 gauge is almost useless. Not that bad guys rock bullet proof vests a lot. The point is, an AR-15 is actually a lot more deadly than a 20 gauge single shot shot gun. And if you're worried about shooting through the walls with an AR-15 you can always use hollow point bullets.

The biggest problem with Joe's plan of shooting warning shots, and his problems are numerous, is that if you have a double barrel shot gun and you shoot two shots into the air you're left with an unloaded weapon. If the bad guy has a weapon you're now in a shootout with an unloaded gun. Not only will the bad guy now be shooting to kill, but you'll have to reload, While being shot at.

Using a shotgun is a double edge sword. The good part is that is doesn't shoot through walls so you're not going to hit anyone in other rooms. But that's also a bad part, if the bad guy has a gun and is shooting at you through the wall, you can't return fire with a shotgun. Shotguns are easy to aim, but they lack the ability to choose what you're shooting at. If someone you don't want to hit is near someone you do want to hit, you're kinda out of luck. A bad thing about a shotgun is that it's quite long, and turning around inside a narrow hallway can be a pain, but the same can be said for an AR-15.

Double barrel and single shot shotguns lack a pump, so there's no way to "warn" the bad guy that you might be sending a cloud of buckshot at him. As mentioned before, double barrel shotguns only have two shots, which is really not enough. If you miss twice, for whatever reason you're in trouble. Using the pump on a pump shotgun is probably enough to scare off even armed bad guys, after all, they want to live just as much as the next guy. However, when you're actually shooting at an armed bad guy, that's a whole other story, you leave the bad guy no choice but to return fire.

Why the fuck does Joe's wife need a god damn shotgun, or any gun? They live at the US Naval Observatory and have a full time contingent of heavily armed marines and secret service agents! All of which are armed with AR-15s, 9mm, G36's, Hand grenades etc.. If Joe's and his wife still have a need for guns, than certainly it can be argued that those of us without heavily armed guards need weapons.

And of course the grand overriding argument is that we don't maintain weapons to fend off crooks, that's just a useful benefit. The real reason we have gobs of high powered rifles with large magazine capacities is so we can stand a chance if ever a need rises to water the tree of liberty. Once you give up a freedom for "public safety" or any other reason, it's almost impossible to get it back. We do not need to overthrow the government we have today, but we are always only one generation from a complete Soviet style tyranny. I've heard the argument "what's an AR-15 going to do to a tank or an F-22". Well, the tank crew doesn't live in the tank, and the plane has to land sooner or later, then the AR-15 works a hell of a lot better than nothing - or a single shot 20 gauge shotgun.

One of the only things that stops many of our legislators from declaring tyrannical edicts is the fact that they know if they go too far they'll piss off too many people who own guns and are willing to lay down their lives for the cause of liberty. If you take guns away, there is nothing to stop the government from taking everything else away. What Thomas Jefferson said a long time ago still holds true today: When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.

...Apple sought an injunction...

Apple looking to add Samsung's Galaxy S3 to their injunction

No, Android is gaining market share faster than iOS

Yeah, that's another way of saying that Apple is losing market share. Those are customers that could have been Apple customers but for whatever reason they chose Android.

I don't like OS monoculture, but when the goal of one of the players is to make an OS monoculture I would like to see them fail or at the very least become marginalized out of significance.

Isn't that one of the many Samsung phones Apple sought an injunction for claiming that it infringed on their iPhone design patent because among other ambiguous design concepts it had rounded corners and was therefor indistinguishable from an iPhone? (yes)

No I didn't get that from the Android talking points, if such a thing exists, I closely followed the court cases on Groklaw as they happened.

theRunicBard was correct, and you're just parsing words like an Apple lawyer.

You don't understand. They don't like it when people rip them off . It's perfectly fine if they rip other people off. Their entire existence is based on ripping off other people's ideas and improving upon them, then trying to convince an ignorant public that they invented the concept in the first place.

Take the smart phone for example. The educated people here on slashdot know that smart phones were around for more than a decade before the first iPhone, but if you ask the average man-on-the-street you'll find they think the first smart phone was an iPhone. Same goes for iPod, same goes for iPad, same goes for just about every popular product Apple makes. There's no accident there. It's aggressive, manipulative and deceptive marketing that makes that happen. So much so that they have many times been successfully sued and or banned over their deceptive marketing tactics.

IMO, and I'll probably be modded down for this, there can be no greater irony than having the words "OS" in "OSX" when it's just a modified version of FreeBSD and unrelated to the previous versions of their OS line. If Apple had any intellectual honesty they would have called is MacBSD or something similar. Every time I see a Mac boot I feel sorry for The Regents of the University of California. Credit needs to go to the people who made the OS, not the people who shamelessly threw their window handler on top of it and re-branded it.