The police knew it was illegal.

I don't understand, why... They didn't enter his house — they recorded his front door — and front yard. That ought to be Ok — whatever can be legally seen, can be legally recorded is the general principle.

A camera is just an extension for a policeman's eyes. Would it have been illegal for the department to post an officer in front of the man's house? No. So the camera standing there instead should be just as legal...

Because technology changes much more quickly than real world analogs

And yet, the functionality is still more important than a fad in (almost) all walks of life — with the exception of clothing styles, perhaps — not just in Information Technology...

Beware of Fad Versus Functional

What's so IT-specific about this maxim, that it warrants being on Slashdot? A slow news day?

Imaginary reality to "prove" imaginary racism. How fitting...

Hint: it ain't the skin-color. If "whitey" really were racist, Asians would've suffered from it too. But they are doing rather well. So well, in fact, that schools and colleges alike deduct points from applicants, who identify themselves as "Asians".

The most likely explanation is single-parenthood rate: children growing up with only a mother (which is still the overwhelming majority of single-"parent" households) are much likelier to grow up with problems live sucky lives — all human civilizations knew this and frowned upon unwed mothers. Not because "sex is a sin", as is the common Illiberal's strawman, but because bringing a child into this world without a loving father is a sin... Heck, we know it too!

For some reason, currently 67% of Black kids grow up in such families — compared with merely 17% of Asians and 25% of Whites... But only the KKKonservative Libertarians connect the dots.

Many people say that they speak Ukrainian. Most of them speak either an ugly mongrel

The same can be said about English and Russian — the two other languages I'm fluent in. From that I'd extrapolate, that all languages have this problem.

It may (or even may not) be lamentable, but that's not, what I wanted to talk about.

might be a little bit biased

Whether it is biased against Obama is irrelevant to the point of whether or not we've had a record-low number of hurricanes. If you disputed that point, it could've made some sense for you to attack the site's credibility. But you conceded it instead. That you could not resist to attack the site anyway caused me to wonder...

not to mention how to interpret both graphs and what I wrote.

You claimed, we are now living through 40-year high of hurricanes world-wide. As evidence — sole evidence — you pointed at a chart, which ends not in 2014 or even 2013, but in 2005. Need I say more?

pre-packaged anecdote-based opinion

That there still people resorting to this sort of argument, nearly 200 years after a brilliant man made such fun of it, continues to amaze me...

But OK, so hurricane frequency is at a 30 year low in America.

If you don't dispute the message, why did you have to attack the messenger? Sigh...

World-wide, hurricanes, cyclones, & similar category 3+ storms are at a 40+ year high

The chart you linked to a) ends in 2005 (9 years ago!); b) does not suggest anything of the kind. The number of "named systems" peaked in the early 1930-ies, according to it, with spikes in 1968 and 1994 being below that of 80 years ago. Given the state of most of the world back then — and the quality of communications in particular — I am not at all surprised, we aren't even aware of some of the major storms hitting remote places in 1920-1950ies...

For example, according to Wikipedia Chavez High School in Houston is less than a quarter mile from chemical plants owned by Texas Petroleum, Denka Chemical, USS Chemical, and Goodyear Chemical. I'm going to say that's not a good outcome in my book.

Get a new book then. Because if the children live near those plants — such as because their parents work there and don't want too long a commute — they may as well study there.

That said, I think those decisions should be made at a local level

It is not any better at "local level" — the opportunities for graft and other abuses still exist, and the fundamental principle of the owner having full control of the property is still violated.

Seems like Houston has minimum parking requirements and minimum lot sizes, so no.

That's not zoning. You can still change your home into a business, if you wish.

Are you out of your mind? Listen to me, Charlie. Get out of L.A. Now. Cause if there's one thing I know, it's that you never mess with Mother Nature, mother-inlaws, or mother-fucking Ukrainians.

Hurricane INTENSITY is projected to increase

Touche!

That has nothing to do with hurricane FREQUENCY

Oh, it has quite a bit to do with frequency — if there are no hurricanes to begin with, for example, you can claim they have any intensity — such is one of the funkier properties of the empty set.

More seriously, here is a scientific write-up, which has the following to say about the 2004 study:

Furthermore, the idealized study of Knutson and Tuleya (2004) assumed the existence of hurricanes [emphasis mine] and then simulated how intense they would become. Thus, that study could not address the important question of the frequency of intense hurricanes.

If I assume the existence of unicorns, I too may be able to predict global warming's impact on the length of their horns...

The flower children of 1960-70-ies have all grown and are running the country. A feminist NY Times reporter agreed to show the Sony exec an article about her prior to publishing it — which is strictly against journalistic ethics. The article, of course, is quite adoring — the firm is praised for its "pro-women" movies (like "Frozen"). Journalistic integrity is secondary to the agenda — the Greater Good of promoting women justifies the means. Nobody will know, right?

Sony executive — Ms. Pascal — is quoted in the exchange as unable to properly spell "you are". Despite her correspondent — NYT's Dowd — gently correcting her several times, she kept writing "YOUR" (yes, in ALL CAPS) instead of "you're". How could such a moron become a major executive? Because it is good for a company's image to have a woman at the top, that's how... And, it being Hollywood, she had to be an Illiberal, of course.

And that's part of the bigger picture — our very President is who he is not (only) because of personal merits, but because of his race. Some mythical "haters" may have voted against him because of it, but he got more votes thanks to it, than he lost due to it.

Not only did it help him in 2008, it helped him all along before that. We don't know, how well he did in college, for example, but we know, he was elected President of Harvard Law Review — a feat, for which he thanked Black professors...

Among the first things he did in White House, was to appoint a fellow affirmative action "wise Latina" to Supreme Court. Again, not because she is the best qualified legal expert, but because she is a Latino.

No one with the functional organ will agree to a brain surgery done by a doctor, who got to do it because of his skin color or sex. Why, then, do we tolerate the governance of public and private institutions alike run by people, whose gender and race were taken into account, when they got the job?

They also cite a Nature editorial pointing out the same thing about extreme weather.

Extreme weather, huh? 10 years ago we were discussing right here, how continuing global warming will make hurricanes more frequent.

The usual suspects were writing "insightful" posts lamenting "deniers" and the sorry state of the uneducated populace preventing the sophisticated elite from saving the planet.

Today, 10 years since that discussion, we are living through a 30 year low hurricane-frequency — something, none of the "Global Warming" models predicted...

People should be able to do anything they want on/with their own property because, you know, fuck everyone else

Sigh... Statists gonna state...

I've been to countries that don't have zoning laws and frankly I wasn't impressed with the results

What countries were those, and how do we know, those "unimpressive" results were due to, rather than in spite of (or even regardless of) lack of zoning?

I'm open to alternate solutions

Well, you must've missed my link to article about Houston, so here it is again...