> "We have no words to express the shame we feel for having acted the way we did."

Ooh, I think several politicians are going to love that apology, seeing how as even "none" iimplies a non-negative quantity.

I would argue against the incompetence - they made very competent decisions that prioritized profits over all other concerns - and the slap on the wrist they received as punishment is proof that they made the "competent" decision.

>They wear glasses without any lenses, for crying out loud. No sane person would do something that fucking dumb.
In fairness a large percentage of the male population wears ties - an utterly useless accessory that's every bit as stupid as lensless glasses.

As for Ferguson - personaly I've heard almost none but the obvious trolls claim the thug's actions were excusable. What they mostly said was that it was utterly unnaceptable for a police officer to shoot a man who didn't pose a comparably severe immediate threat, especially not eight times. It seems extremely unlikely that the man still posed a serious threat after the first several shots hit him, making the later shots bald-faced murder. And that the official response was such an obviously biased travesty that the justice department may as well have just hung up a giant "Fuck You All" sign.

Unfortunately there is a common trend in the commercial world where a once-quality brand decides to cash in on it's reputation and sell low-quality crap and "We're a quality brand" prices. No doubt it boosts profit margins dramatically, for a while, but means the world loses another quality brand, and a lot of customers get screwed over. And sometimes it's a graduated process where the high end enterprise/boutique products continue to maintain their quality to prop up the brand, while the quality of the normal products falls off a cliff.

I haven't been following hard drives closely enough to be able to comment on Seagate's case, but I've seen it happen to far to many once-great brands to be even remotely surprised.

Little cognitive dissonance there - the upper middle class are among those who have the least difficulty in getting their children into private, chartered, or home-schooling systems. And those schools which accept unvaccinated children can focus resources on outbreak prevention - why should the public system have to waste all those resources when the most effective solution (vaccination) is also the cheapest?

Titanium printing has been around for years (someone above even claims a couple of decades) - we're talking the high-end laser sintering machines and related technology, not the johnny-come-lately cheap plastic extrusion crap. Those are essentially just toy versions of a concept pioneered much earlier.

Among the things that can now be 3D printed:
Various resins - I think these were actually the first to the party, and they've gotten rather advanced in a variety of different configurations.
Titanium
High temperature ceramics
Living cells (and assorted artificial intercellular matrices) - various medical researchers are working on being able to print viable replacement organs and body parts, as I recall they've already had fairly decent success with relatively simple things like bladders and ears

Are you sure?

My opinion is that the women's olympics should return to it's roots and be performed in the nude. Heck, the men's too, wouldn't want the female spectators to feel left out.

You could probably avoid that by sintering in an inert atmosphere, or in vacuum. In fact I would suspect high-end metal printers would do that anyway, in order to avoid the incorporation of oxides into the final product. After all virtually all metals "burn", lithium, etc. are just more volatile than most.

...there has been this enormous struggle to find a qualifying plaintiff, there cant be that many who really give a damn, can there?

It really seems like this is a class action by lawyers, for lawyers.

A good idea, as a complementary strategy. Though influenza is a poor example - it's a highly unstable virus family for which the vaccine is rarely more than moderately effective, and often not even that - this year for example it's looking like the dominant strain is going to be only distantly related to the vaccine that was bred - meaning the vaccine will provide at best a minor advantage against an infection that's mostly harmless to begin with. And that limited benefit must be weighed against the fact that visiting the doctor's office to receive the vaccine will expose you to a smorgasborg of virulent pathogens that you might otherwise have avoided.

In short, to paraphrase a common anecdote: "I stopped getting the flu vaccine, because I got sick every time I did."

But they're not forcefully imposing anything - they're just suggesting that if you voluntarily abstain from training you shouldn't be allowed on the battlefield (i.e. allowed in public schools - probably the single most infection-laden area anyone is exposed to.), because you're jeopardizing the safety of everyone else for no good reason.

As for those who *can't* take the vaccine - herd immunity doesn't require 100% compliance to be effective, just as even 100% compliance doesn't render it 100% effective. An there's serious civil considerations to be weighed when banning people from aspects of civic life for things they have no control over.

No.

Vaccines boost your resistance against diseases, they do *not* grant immunity. Think of it like letting a military (immune system) train against captured enemy war machines (weakened or deactivated viruses) - it grants a decided advantage in later battles, but there's still no guarantee of victory. And not everybody's military will train as quickly or effectively, nor are they all the same strength to begin with. With a good vaccine most people will be able to fight off a later infection easily enough that might not even realize they were infected, for others it will only give them a fighting chance, which may reduce the amount of permanent damage done if they survive. And for still others it just won't be enough, and will only let them die more slowly.

And that doesn't even consider the percentage of the population that legitimately can't take the vaccine, most commonly because they are allergic to certain components, or have a weakened immune system that may be overwhelmed even by the vaccine.

Oh please, cars mostly stay where they're told to, and average far less than one kill in a lifetime. Let's replace 1% of them with saber-tooth tigers, dire wolves, cave bears, and other large predators. Then tell me cars are "predators"

I get the unsettling feeling that you're not laughing nearly as hard as you should be...

Hey, who said anything about *my* ass? That's totally the title on the cover! And when has the number of disciples ever been an indicator of the validity of a religion? How well armed they are perhaps...

You know what, hold on a minute - I need to go hack a few dozen nuclear silos, then we can continue this discussion of whose religion is legitimate. :-D