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Comment Re:taxes (Score 1) 776

Silly you. This is America. The tobacco companies will pay for your mistakes. After all, they're the ones that provided the product that caused the cancer. They even told you it could cause cancer -- therefore it's their fault!!

Comment Re:containment theory... (Score 4, Insightful) 1032

Optimus Prime?

Seriously, right now the US is fighting wars in 2 theaters and is limited by the will of the politicians in power. If American soil were occupied or under imminent threat of occupation, I don't think the politicians would 1) worry about popularity of the upcoming war poll numbers 2) need to worry about said poll numbers. Americans would band together, at least for a while, to expel and destroy with prejudice an occupying force just so we could get back down to the business of our own politics without outside influence.

--Mike

Comment Re:US laws are not the best (Score 1) 582

Someone doesn't like you -- you got mod'd down.

I agree that we can't have real reform until you control the costs associated with being in health care (malpractice insurance which is expensive due to malpractice suits; 50 separate insurance markets due to individual State mandates...why can't we have a single market????)

Insurance should be for catastrophic events (the Big C, major car accident) -- routine health care should be out of pocket which would be cheaper if the market weren't so skewed already.

--Mike

Comment Re:typical of this generation... (Score 1) 1251

I am GenX as well...

Never did I think that I would be the "Get Off My Lawn" guy at age 37 -- kids these days have such an incredible sense of entitlement it is sickening. I graduated from a top State school with a BS in Chemistry in 1994 -- not the world's best job market. After working a number of temp jobs -- including one at ETS as a customer service rep -- I decided to move to Boston to live with my brother. Been here ever since, never had a job in Chemistry. College is about learning how to think critically which is a skill that is widely applicable. A number of our interns in my department are all "MIS Majors" at a local private university -- I don't even know what that means. It's not a Liberal Arts curriculum; it might be a business tract.

--Mike

Image

iPhone App Tracks Sex Offenders 358

The Narrative Fallacy writes "All 50 states in the US require the 50,000 people convicted of sexual offenses to sign a register so that their whereabouts can be tracked and monitored. The Telegraph reports that now users of the iPhone Offender Locator application can search for sex offenders living nearby a friend or colleague whose address is stored in their Apple iPhone address book, or they can type in a street address to generate a list of convicted sex offenders in the local area. 'Offender Locator gives everyone the ability to find out if registered sex offenders live in their area,' says the application developer, ThinAir Wireless, on its iTunes page. 'Knowledge equals safety. They know where you and your family are...now it's time to turn the tables so that you know where they live and can make better decisions about where to allow your kids to play.' Offender Locator uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to pinpoint the user's location, and then provide a map listing sex offenders in the local area. Tapping on one of the 'pins' dropped on to the map brings up a photograph of the offender, as well as their address, date of birth and list of convictions."
Operating Systems

Submission + - A Linux desktop for non-techies? 2

karstux writes: I'm sure this is a problem that many of the slashdot crowd have run into, and I'd like to hear your solutions. I'm tasked with providing a notebook to a completely non-technical friend, for exclusively mundane activities such as web browsing, e-mail correspondence and composing the odd letter. The recipient is of course indoctrinated to Windows ways.

I'd like the solution to be as maintenance-free, secure and easy to use as possible. I don't want to have to "teach" the usage of the system, and I won't be around to fix things if anything breaks. Under these circumstances, is Linux a good idea? If so, which flavor? Are there alternatives? (OS X won't run on the hardware.)
Government

Submission + - Utah's 4 day/40hr week appears to work (scientificamerican.com)

SpuriousLogic writes: As government agencies and corporations scramble to cut expenses, one idea gaining widespread attention involves cutting something most employees wouldn't mind losing: work on Fridays. Regular three-day weekends, without a decrease in the actual hours worked per week, could not only save money, but also ease pressures on the environment and public health, advocates say. In fact, several states, cities and companies across the country are considering, or have already implemented on a trial basis, the condensed schedule for their employees.Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. For those workplaces, there's no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays--nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday's midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million.
Moon

Submission + - Lost Moon landing data not so lost after all

rarel writes: "Ars Technica reports that using data that NASA thought it had lost, a lone scientist, Brian O'Brien, has determined why lunar dust sticks to various surfaces. His work was accomplished using his personal copy of the 173 "lost" tapes. Lunar dust is one of the main issues future evil moonbase builders will be facing as it is very sticky and extremely abrasive.

The full results will be published soon at Geophysical Reseach Letters but is not available yet."
The Courts

Looking Back At Copyright Predictions 148

Techdirt has an interesting look back at some of the more interesting predictions on copyright. The article looks at two different pre-DMCA papers and compares them to what has happened in the world of copyright. "The second paper is by Pamela Samuelson, and it discusses (again, quite accurately) the coming power grab by "copyright maximalists" via the DMCA, entitled The Copyright Grab. It clearly saw the intention of the DMCA to remove user rights, and grant highly questionable additional rights and powers to copyright holders in an online world. Samuelson lays out many concerns about where this is headed -- including how these proposals appear to trample certain fair use rights -- and in retrospect, her fears seem to have been backed up by history. Samuelson, by the way, has just written a new paper that is also worth reading pointing out how ridiculous current copyright statutory rates are -- an issue of key importance in the ongoing Tenebaum lawsuit, which (thankfully) the judge in the case is going to consider."

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