... and then there are those of us who yell when ANYBODY does it.

GP's comment was valid. While it may not have been quite what you meant, your comment gave the impression of an apologia for Obama on the basis that Bush did it too.

But the vast majority of the carbon in corn comes from the air, not the soil! It might surprise you to learn that most of the bulk of a huge tree, for example, was produced from the air, not the ground. The ground supplies trace minerals and water, and little else.

Another real problem with ethanol is that it is a low energy density fuel, compared to gasoline. So beyond a certain small percentage, it actually reduces the efficiency of your vehicle and causes it to burn MORE gasoline per mile, rather than less, which negates the advantages of using ethanol in the first place.

In the U.S. this is not a viable model. SCOTUS has ruled, more than once, that a practice may not be outlawed simply because it can be abused, as long as it also has legitimate uses. Anything else is a form of "prior restraint".

People may argue: yes, but automobiles are licensed. While that is true, if you look at similar laws you will find that automobiles are very much the exception, and in fact State ability to "license" their use is still an open Constitutional question. Not only are other machines not licensed as vehicles are, it is generally accepted that they are not legally licensable the way vehicles are.

It might be illegal for me to make and sell a rifle with my milling machine. That does not mean that my milling machine is illegal. (And, in fact, making a rifle for my own use is not illegal. Selling it across state lines is. In some states I could probably even legally sell it, as long as it remained within the state.)

In practice, 3D printing is unregulatable.

Practically unenforceable laws are worse than no law at all, because people get prosecuted at the whim of politicians.

I'm not trying to get a security-related job anyway, but even so: I won't be applying to companies who want to take my fingerprints or my photograph.

I don't do piss tests or credit checks. Why should I do fingerprints of photographs?

Not very damned many people need a particular job that badly; there is usually other work to be had.

Why?

People tend to forget: they're already paying for that bandwidth. What Comcast has done is start charging Netflix to send you video over bandwidth you're already paying for. And now Netflix's costs are higher, which they will likely pass onto you, so you will end up paying twice for the same ISP service.

No, that's not good.

Also keep in mind that this involves a long, very serious, well-engineered attack.

The developer who first won the challenge made literally millions of requests to the server, in order to gather and piece together the chunks of memory slurped up.

Considering that the FAA recently lost a Federal lawsuit over this very thing, I would think they would be the ones backing down. The judge ruled that it was legal.

I think you missed the whole point. The bill wouldn't stop them from doing the research. It would simply stop them from SELLING the results to other government agencies.

I mean come on, think about how ridiculous that is. The research was done with taxpayer dollars. Then they sell that research to other government agencies for more taxpayer dollars?

I do think it's a good idea to account for which government agencies use the service, and how much. But selling? Too far.

Amazing. All I did was post a comment about OP that, to the best of my knowledge, is impersonal, factual, and true.

While all you've done is track me down in order to be personal, rude and insulting. But then you were before, too.

And somehow *I* am supposed to be the psychopath? How do you figure?

I've had to put up with lots of people before who couldn't stand being shown they were wrong. But this comment I think is the best yet.

Listen up, man. If you are the same Anonymous Coward I think you are, the very first comment you made to me was rude, personal, and insulting (saying a comment of mine you took out of context was "dumb", as I recall), and it only got worse from there.

I do my best to stay impersonal and simply discuss the subject at hand. But you weren't satisfied with that, and kept trying to make it personal. Well, too bad. This being the internet, your words don't have any weight to throw around. When someone is rude to me first, I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for putting them in their place.

I haven't done anything wrong, so you can take your rudeness and bullying elsewhere. Maybe if you try to be polite and refrain from insulting others, they will respond in kind. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. Evidence so far says I'd be waiting or a very long time.

Since you apparently flunked logic 101: no, it isn't.

"Appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy when someones says an argument is true because an authority said it. That is a flawed argument. The whole point is that it doesn't matter what an authority says, they have to prove it just like everybody else.

Example: You say "Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) says it is so; therefore it is so." That is an example of the Appeal to Authority fallacy. Plait is a noted authority on some subjects. But that does not automatically make him correct if evidence says otherwise.

Counterexample: "Phil Plait demonstrated it in an experiment, and the results were published in June 2012." That is not "appeal to authority", because it relies on the evidence of the experiment that was performed, not Phil Plait's word.

Third example: "Bob Jones performed an experiment that demonstrated X. But Phil Plait, Bad Astronomer, says it's not so, so I believe Phil Plait."

Again this is the "appeal to authority" fallacy, because the actual evidence indicates X, while the counterargument merely relies on the word of the supposed "authority".

Pardon me. In those particular instances,, I was wrong. Those are not firmware. BUT... and here is the main thing... that is completely irrelevant to the discussion that was taking place.

There are 2 points that are relevant here:

First, you took my comment out of context, and then called it dumb. Well, guess what? Lots of things are dumb when taken out of context. The context was: GP said "back doors" in cell phone conversations (that is the context) are in hardware (GP's comment). I said no, it isn't. If you want to argue about something else, you're going to have to argue with yourself.

The second point, related to the first, is: you didn't make any specific arguments against what I said, instead you just called it dumb. That's called an "ad-hominem", and in any kind of logical debate not only does it carry no weight, it can get you kicked out.

It might have been appropriate to ask me how I knew the back doors (if any) are not in hardware. But you didn't do that.

I have news for you: you aren't always the smartest person in the room. But more to the point: even if you are the smartest person in the room, there might be somebody there who knows something you don't.

So be careful about calling people stupid, lest you end up looking stupid.

I would have explained to you how I knew that back doors in cell phones aren't in hardware, if you had only asked politely. But since you didn't, I'm not going to bother.

Haselton is describing experiments with controls.

This is very far from a new or original idea. Even if he seems to think it is.

That's not "a fine and wavering line", at all. That's firmware, a third category.

That's moving the goalposts. It's a different subject from the one under discussion.

Since it is in the general field in which I make my living, I think I had the general qualifications to reply to GP.

The point here, which you seem to have missed, is: properly written software can make hardware (or even firmware) "back doors" irrelevant, unless your hardware has a complete second voice channel connected to the microphone that it's sending its data through. And I think it's pretty damned obvious that cell phone carriers aren't assigning 2 separate voice channels in realtime to U.S. cell phones.

Look up RedPhone. Go ahead, look it up.

Your own comment proves that it's software, not hardware. If it was correctable via a software update, then it isn't the hardware's fault.