It is not a strawman. dead bats is a problem (not birds.) It is difficult to calculate many problems the coal causes, plus we don't seem to get a great deal of information on the many government subsidies the coal industry has - it is more than solar or wind receive; might even be up there next to OIL in the gov welfare scale? The hypnotic wind turbines have been proven to NOT cause real medical issues. COAL on the other hand is why I can't eat much fish from my local lakes, I'm better off with the less healthy farmed fish because they don't have mercury pollution the coal plants gave us. Plus we get more radiation exposure from coal than nuclear. There are other health issues. Global Warming shouldn't even need to be required to motivate change.

The good part of COAL is that it contributes to global dimming which reduces the impact of global warming (which it also contributes to greatly... I found it comical for that short period where the self branded "skeptics" cited global dimming as if it was a kind of rebuttal. Now they say humans didn't do it and the hypocrites totally forgot their previous dimming propaganda. ) Another plus is that coal seems to help increase the wind energy ;-)

1) Wind power doesn't kill birds. If you want to get picky, they kill less than a long list of things people don't think kill birds, like houses or office buildings which kill MORE birds. It is a non issue. Getting that picky you may as well start complaining about meat eaters since the chicken and duck numbers are really high. How about pet cats?? Wind power does kill a lot of BATS which are unable to avoid them like the birds largely do. Work is being done, it is a real and legitimate problem especially given that most bats are at risk or endangered. Wind's medical complaints have been disproved.

2) An actually smart grid (the non scam kind) or simply a modernized grid where the existing techniques we've had for generations of switching power sources (since coal power has a fair amount of down time) and make the grid capable of similar but more dynamic power allocation. The sun may not shine here today but it was one state away which BTW, is where some of our power comes from when our local sources are not up to the task. A high voltage DC grid needs to be developed... you step down anyhow so we have little reason to continue century old tech...eventually it needs repair anyway. COST: power is cheap during the day, expensive at night... the inverse of today. this is starting to show up in Germany's power market.

3) Nothing is perfect but coal really sucks! If I was for nuke I'd be against it on economic grounds. Nuke power costs more than solar power and takes a decade to build a plant! By the time those two new plants in the USA get built (if they don't end up way behind) you could have built 100s of solar plants of comparable size and output significantly more power for the price years ago! in 10 years solar and battery storage will be even cheaper and better!!! Spend 50% now and in 9 years spend the other 50% plus a battery and probably get twice the output plus the 10 years of partial output. (ignoring all the hidden costs of regulating nuclear and insuring it which government pays for.) All the uranium the USA had (#1 in world) is all dug up and now the USA imports the stuff, rising costs and demands will not lower prices unless you can find quicker, faster, cheaper nuke power.... and those are all STILL 5 years away... Fusion will probably come 1st!

4) Base load demands are not a simple problem. Coal plants on idle are still burning way more than they need just to be READY for baseload. They run way over capacity even if only 1% load is required and they can't switch to meet demand quickly. That adds cost to coal, nuke, and gas power. The overhead cost is mitigated using many techniques that ALSO would apply to other kinds of power, which solar and wind would benefit greatly from (and are in need of advances.) I read about a German town putting in an industrial sized battery to buffer power needs which eliminated their need to build a coal plant-- I couldn't find the link but it was something like 10x LESS power demand because it's a battery, not an idling coal plant which lacks an ability to spike to reach momentary high demand. You build a 50MW coal plant to handle 50MW spikes; but you really only need maybe 10MW or 5MW plus a grid connection to the next city. Again, a better grid helps. Plus putting the bulk of power close and distributed you cut down on that base load demand as well as the huge 10+% losses you get from the old grid. Even maintaining old power as a backup, using battery tech greatly minimizes the need for those. Higher costs also will drive demand for a power storage market. Biogas turbines are supposed to kick up better than coal... peoples with hydro shouldn't need any backup.

Well, you might also be enough of a freak to be immune to advertizing and propaganda but most people are not. One doesn't need to fool everybody all the time, just a portion and in politics just 51% of the voters or revolutionaries.

I might seem like I'm making absolute statements to which your anecdotal evidence is sufficient enough of a rebuttal, but I am not and therefore your counter statement is not enough.

Furthermore, working control is not absolute control. When I said control I was being vague but not incorrect. Plenty of people feel free while they choose which item on the Star Bucks menu unable to break free of the cycle; which they could... but do not. Potential doesn't matter if it is never utilized, just as free will doesn't exist if it is not used (and even then there are plenty of unresolved debates on the existence of free will in the world of philosophy.)

I'm in a midwest city. Just about everybody here agrees community is dead or doesn't even really know what it means... I didn't, it took conversations with old people to get a grasp on it. In your small town you might still have it, but most people live in cities today. A church community or similar niche community formed around a common topic are about all that is left but those are not full communities (as defined by the elderly who educated me on the topic, who also had membership in sub-communities. Which is all I had for a reference because like I said, community is dead here.)

Most people I know and many here on /. block out advertizing using software and the bit that remains they easily can ignore. I hadn't realized how bad /. was until last week when I went to the site on a newly installed browser before adding ad protection. It's really obnoxious and hard to ignore plus quite upsetting at the amount of bandwidth being used for video ads.

The stable jobs will be IT and not CS. Why would somebody bound for IT take the CS AP certification?

The AP system is almost pure BS. What a joke. Their metric for measuring the number of majors is by how many high school children ignorant enough to take the AP for it? If it were offered to me when I was in school I would not have taken it and I knew far more than it covered... I still learned something in taking CS courses in things I already knew; not as much as I paid for, but it was still useful information that filled the gaps.

I attack the AP BS system because I did it for calculus. Tested out of 2 semesters but I took them anyway and saw first hand just how incredibly poor the AP system was and my math high school teacher's negligence by only teaching to the AP exam-- no wonder we did well on the exam, we had only been preparing for it instead of actually learning the subject.

This is what happens in a meritocracy! The metrics and systems are gamed by the superior human brain which can always out smart a static system lacking active intelligence. (the only solution is to be evaluated by another human brain who can adapt as quickly as you can.. and who knows the topic better than you do. They are only somewhat susceptible to politics, blackmail, bigotry, hypnosis, etc. on an individual level. )

The CDC and respective officials around the world train and plan for this stuff. Sure, some political idiocy always exists and sometimes makes problems worse (or blows them out of proportion) but overall the experts are making informed reasonable decisions. Naturally, propagandists twist anything to their own ends and the armchair critics who have way more confidence then competence (which BTW, is a big problem in the USA...go find the studies which prove it.)

Europe isn't banning relations with whole nations. If there was an easier way to screen for it, don't you think they would be doing that already?

You can't realistically quarantine whole nations as if that would actually work. It only takes 1 person sneaking bye -- and instead of thinking of that man who brought it to the USA as a massive failure, you should realize the obvious: they identified the man who brought it in rather quickly... he could have gone around spreading it until his death on some sidewalk somewhere.

It's not highly contagious and we have more deadly diseases in the USA already which don't get this kind of attention; no media reporting on those. Some are born right here as a result of industrial farming... (which is part of the reason it won't be hyped until more than a million die per year... or 1 celebrity.)

Since when did the prohibitions on government only apply to citizens? Free Press etc does not mean only in the USA. It doesn't say that those limits on government to infringe upon inherent "inalienable" human rights are not for other humans.

The daily telegraph? you need to cite something better than that.

That is AMAZING! Solar keyboard! I have to make... nah, I will never replace the unicomp... I suppose the next one I try out will be brain implants.

Now I think of it, solar wouldn't work. I'm in a cave. I block out most the sun when I get a window. oh well.

Perhaps I can rig up something that sucks all that electromagnetic radiation bombarding me every day and power it that way? (and risk the $200000 FCC fine...hmm... with a switch that goes to cell phone Hz for use in meetings... I also would never power solar lights using talk radio...)

Also, I found way too many people are impressed with an all black painted keyboard. (it was the 2nd painting that ruined it.) Unicomp will give you any key setup you want for $5-10 ! naturally, mine is all black with gray home keys - no labels. I liked the unintended results from the previous blank keyboard so much I spent $5.

When talking about culture in TV Nation where community has died and all that comes close is TV/Movies. We talk using movie metaphors, adopt phrases and new metaphors from the medium which sadly doesn't even come close to the past sources they supplanted.

Advertizing controls people and they don't spend all that $$$ doing product placement, infotainment, endorsements, and advertizing if it didn't have a big impact. People only SAY they don't vote based upon the advertizing that goes on-- but they are lying because most the billions that goes into elections is TV related. Since the biz is all about buying attention-- it's a mix of giving people what they want to see while making them see stuff they don't want to. It actively tries to influence while it actively tries to reflect-- in addition to the other aspects! It can be hard to discern which but it's probably one of the two.

If you want to take a disjointed culture without any community and characterize it, using the most common thread which binds them (I'm avoiding making a LOTR ref) you use TV/Movies. Referencing that either gives the promoted impressions being pushed by a few (since a minority has working control) or you are seeing what people expect to see. Usually the medium doesn't upset people by going too far outside their cultural expectations. That's bad for business unless you are targeting the intellectual minority... A little makes it interesting but too much and it's a niche market.

Canada looks big but they have fewer people and less area to produce $$$ for funding. Plus they probably can't ever have high productivity because that is something that doesn't go with being the #1 or #2 nation to live in.

The global economy and banking system which control everything are not pro-science. For their population and GDP, Canada probably beats the USA. It doesn't help that Canadians easily cross over to the USA college system and end up staying here despite the lower quality lifestyle. Guess buying more junk and the dream of getting more junk is just too compelling... Once that fades away, can't see why anybody would stay-- we've got nothing else to offer that compensates for being at the bottom of the 1st world nations (except expensive military tech.)

Hope I offended fellow citizens. #1 problem in the USA is we are full of shit; I'm only here (for now) because my science job is here...and all my relatives.

get the model M and THEY STILL MAKE THEM IN THE USA-- http://www.unicomp.com/

I had apple extended since the early 90s up to around 2008 when it was just getting too dirty and I cleaned it then used the wrong sort of paint... (I just painted it to make it look newer; I don't need to see what the keys are.) So I looked for old keyboards and always remembered a fondness of the old noisy model M.

I like it better than the old apple one; despite it having some minor flaws due to it's PC bias (the function key for example.)

If you take apart the Apple Extended II keyboard it's amazing it lasts so long since everything I've owned that used membranes wore out over time. They did something with theirs because mine lasted until I ruined it. I was sick of having an adapter which needed a driver so I tried something "new" by getting a unicomp instead of finding another ADB keyboard.

I can't stand the laptop style touch keyboards, even the nice apple ones -- I don't want membranes and I like to push down or even rest my fingers on the keys without having them get pressed. I do realize technically that I'm having to work harder and move slower-- but I'm not playing games like I used to and my age lowers my response time anyhow so the difference of pressing a spring switch or a membrane is basically pointless... except the old NES controllers, I guess for that I would reject springs... I suppose my muscle memory is set for membranes with my thumbs and springs for my fingers?

Wireless? stupid. If you can't put in AA it is a disposable waste of money and takes up landfill space. Planned Obsolescence is the religion today so we won't see comparable standardized lithium batteries for such devices

Why are we so arrogant to assume we must do everything to save our species survival?

If we do ourselves in, then we do not deserve to exist and should not spread as far out in the galaxy like some kind of plague until some aliens cure the problem. Going to mars is an exercise that might motivate people but it has ZERO merit. Send robots... and figure out a new economy that saves us, nature, and lets us live in peace with the advanced robots that replace nearly every human profession (which will come sooner if you just invested in robotics for Mars instead of wasting effort infecting another planet with humans.)

Pigeons can send messages!

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-Orwell.

Depends upon the times, but revolutionaries are also terrorists.

I wouldn't want to be the guy who had to spend days probing bird anuses.

Billions of lines of code for decades and some security holes make you think that you have PROOF open source does not work? Foolish.

The discovery of this is proof that many eyes DO find problems--- Apple could have done it themselves and it could have gone forever not being discovered. Apple has hardly ANY code that old and don't think that newer code is somehow automatically better than old code.

How can you possibly think that something that wasn't noticed by all those people for decades is somehow the fault of all those people NOT seeing it for two decades?

Furthermore, this was a feature it wasn't entirely a security bug so it wasn't going completely unnoticed - people knew about the thing and some scripts are going to break that depended upon it when it has been completely fixed. With more people aware of this new attack vector, bash is going to get more attention--- MORE eyes again.

Just like a compromised computer system, once you are infected you can't repair the system reliably unless you know everything possible about the infection. In a government system, once you have been compromised enough you pass the point of no return where the system is unable to repair itself reliably. This is the point we've been at since JFK, probably since FDR.

You can't rewrite or amend or even just pass laws to address smaller issues like corporations===people or bribery of officials; things with 90%+ public support can't even come up for debate let alone pass a vote. Filibusters are the norm and we can't even discuss how literally unconstitutional they are because of lawyer speak that denies common sense (it says specifically in the constitution what voting thresholds are and just because they can make their own rules doesn't mean that those rules can contradict the constitution-- and they can't, but we allowed it. We allow them to ignore a whole lot, a great deal more every decade. 30 years later it becomes enshrined tradition. We all love tradition sooo much it's an argument in itself... despite it being a classic fallacy. )

Starting over again would be a huge problem in choosing WHO writes it. It is rare that the people in position and power would not think selfishly and with too great a bias; which is why the US constitution was quite unusual... The enlightenment period, respect for learning and wisdom, Ben Franklin, idealists, proven revolutionaries (not false heroes,) etc. We don't value wisdom, knowledge, or intelligence at even HALF the levels of that time period - the people with power and influence are the wrong sort of people (from celebrity to leaders.) The few good ones are easily drowned out. The public doesn't read and is easily swayed with propaganda like FOX NEWS -- just think back to the "death panels" and the healthcare mess with all the morons who made huge contributions to the mess of a system we have (and the near anarchy we've had for generations before 2014.) We'd have Foxtards out with their guns fighting over "death panel" like fabrications who'd shoot first rather than actually READ the thing they are up in arms against.

The religious fanatics we have birthed in great numbers are so close to the religious terrorists of other regions of the world that only poverty and desperation keep them from similar methods. (Even still we have a tiny number who'll bomb and assassinate in the name of abortion.)

Apple wouldn't have known about this little known old feature turned security hole if it wasn't for open source. Windows having similar holes, wouldn't benefit from other operating systems discovering common flaws in their code base!

Diversity of the many systems that use BASH also provides increased security. People on linux are going to think twice about risky things involving bash for a while now, while Apple had no such security issues because they jail and limit their DHCP client like freeBSD also does.

The idea that you'd run bash commands as root from a DHCP server is crazy unless you were running servers on a private network (along with NFS) and perhaps this is why linux people didn't have any troubles with their implementation given their needs at the time. What we could use is more linux desktop developers because they'd have freaked out at the proper time and prevented this decades ago.