You're absolutely right. If you have a coal plant and a nuclear plant running under normal operating conditions side by side, yes, the coal plant will put out OMFG 100 TIMES THE RADDDS OF A NUKE PLANT!!!!11one , that is correct. Considering a nuclear plant should effectively put as close to zero radiation into the environment under normal, safe conditions, the 100x number still probably isn't that large. But should there be a major malfunction at both plants, a catastrophic failure of their safety or backup systems, the worst you have at the coal plant is a big, nasty fire to burn itself out. If the nuke plant fails catastrophically, well, see Chernobyl. The problem isn't when a nuclear plant is running properly, it's when it fails.

What the hell has happened to the Slashdot that I once knew and loved? Someone posts something which is common sense and it gets modded down to -1, Troll? Of course, we SHOULD be able to leave a pile of cash sitting around unguarded, but everyone knows you can't. Just like everyone knows if something is on the Internet, unsecured, someone is going to access it.

So, when someone accesses some private information by changing a URL or some other trivial means, it's OK to blame the victim, as everyone on here does. But someone steals from the loving, mother government, they should be hanged from the highest tree in town, correct?

Interesting, I didn't know that. I knew certain countries overseas had similar requirements, but I didn't know any US states were so restrictive.

I'm a cell phone geek (or junkie if you ask my friends), and I've purchased countless cheap Androids and such just to toy around with at Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers here in the midwest and have never once had to produce ID. Then you can just phone up customer service, which is a free call on the new phone, and activate it before you leave the parking lot.

Right, in this case I doubt it would matter. However, obtaining an anonymous "burner" is honestly no harder than walking into a gas station or convenience store that you've never been in before and buying a prepaid with cash.

Exactly. I don't have any rose-colored glasses, nor do I harken back to any halcyon days where the government was just completely honest, free from corruption, and always did what was in the best interest of the people. The United States government has never done that.
 
However, I do firmly believe that 9/11 had to happen before they could "come out" with what they had been doing for years. Of course, there were terrorist attacks before 9/11, but those were mostly small time acts perpetrated by Americans. The people in charge know that we won't give up our liberties (again, knowingly) because one of our own did something crazy. We know other Americans, and we know that the majority of them aren't up to any no good.
 
No, to give up our rights, we needed someone who didn't have any constitutional protections. A foreign enemy, but one that could be living right here amongst us. They could be using our email systems our cellular networks, our internet service providers!!!
 
You see, the terrorists hated our freedoms. And they were using them against us! So of course, the only obvious solution is to get rid of the freedom. With freedom, comes risk. Once the average citizen had become stupid, fat, and lazy enough to care more for their own comfort and perceived safety than being free, it was time to drop the hammer on us. Now that the precedent has been set, any legal victory or victory over the minds of people that can be attained by the minority who treasure their freedom and can actually see and understand what is happening can be countered simply by giving some relatively small incident wall-to-wall media coverage for a few weeks, then letting the "pundits" sit and tell everyone how anti-American it is to not want to do "x". (x being reading everyone's emails, listening to everyone's phone calls, banning guns, placing a large urban area under martial law, or warrantless this or national security letter that...the list goes on and on.)
 
So, essentially, any time the people on the side of good win back one step of freedom or due process, we take 5 more steps down the road to slavery. This is why it's so egregious now. Someone essentially disabled the firewall (the public caring and fighting for freedom), then used a root exploit (a perceived massive threat to safety sold to us by the media) on the constitution.
 
The only way to fix it is to remove the offending exploit (stop caring about every little incident that occurs) and put the firewall back up (make people care about freedom again). Unfortunately, given how we are all asleep at the wheel, there's a snowball's chance in hell of that actually happening. As long as the average citizen has food, booze, sex, and "Ow, My Balls!" on the TV, why would they want anything more?

I don't know why people seem to think typing "make" and/or "make install" somehow protects them from malware. Unless you've examined the code, line by line, and actually have the skills to understand it, you're just as vulnerable as someone running a random binary on a Windows machine.

Honestly, why would they really care if someone save a local copy of some cat video, rant against the DMV, or a homemade version of "Ow My Balls!"?

I agree for the most part, except for the fact that they weren't breaking the law!

From the following link, the IRS investigator Lerner had to say: "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked..."

They "apologized". Well isn't that sweet?

This should most definitely be modded informative, not funny.

Reddit gets their panties in a bunch over a bus driver in BumfuckEgypt, IL who unsurprisingly is a lukewarm bigot. Why doesn't Reddit ever use their hivemind to affect change for any of the real, substantial problems we have in this world?

Hmmm, very interesting point. Let's say, however, that I wanted to frame a particular group of people or a subculture, such as Waco sympathizers, anti-government or anti-tax groups, pro-gun folks, you know the types. If I wanted to make it look like that group of people were unstable, or needed to be "rounded-up", or were a danger to society at-large, you mean to tell me I could simply wreak havoc on a certain day or period of days and that group would take all the blame or at least be the prime suspect? Wow, I'm surprised the people who want all those things to happen to that particular group hasn't decided to blow some things up on or near the dates of those events you listed..........

OK, big shot. Why don't you go ahead and tell me what rampant crime is running through our neighborhoods that isn't being reported on. Because I can tell you, with an extremely high level of confidence, that every single act of violence or criminality is taken by the media to be sensationalized and spun as a talking point for whatever agenda they are being paid to promote this week. Unless of course those acts of violence or criminality are being perpetuated by the people paying them the money, in which case yes, you won't hear a thing about it.

But the kinds of crimes that those people are perpetuating aren't the kind that make you batten down the hatches and dive under your bed. As a matter of fact, as far as real, violent crime is concerned, it's at it's lowest level in decades. But turn on the local ActionNews, and you'd think we're living in some post-apocalyptic Mad Max world, where just going outside is going to get you robbed and killed.

Funny, really. Because when I go outside, I still see the birds and the bees and the trees and things seem to be just like they've always been. It's all a matter of perspective.

Of course, all this means is that the Honey Industry Association of America just needs to lobby Congress to ensure farmer's market honey is labeled "dangerous to public health" because of all that pollen, while noting that their product only has 1/4 of the pollen.

Tactical teams, of course, would need to be used on any of the dangerous terrorist farmers that continue to produce the "poisonous" honey, and maybe they could even get Monsanto to engineer some bees to let loose near their farms so we can save the SWAT money and just sue them out of existence in court.

It was actually a great idea. It wasn't executed very well, and people didn't realize, yet, why it should work that way. Nowadays, it makes a whole lot more sense.

They were, again, ahead of their time.