You're typing and typing but you're not actually listening--typical behavior for someone doesn't want to actually think about the issue.

The whole point of having a privacy policy is that people can see that Delta is at least meeting their obligations to inform its customers. It's not about what Delta already has on them. It's about showing some basic, minimum level of responsibility--and they apparently can't even do that. It's NOT hard for them to do, and it IS the law.

And if you haven't noticed, the lack of a privacy policy does mean that Delta could technically store all your photos taken with your phone through their app, and potentially use them for marketing purposes--your consent having been implicitly given as part of your usage of the application. That isn't something that SkyMiles customers would or *should* be expected to know, nor is it information that Delta already has.

Silly? I don't think it's silly at all. It's a perfectly reasonable lawsuit, one that is likely to succeed.

Something that needs to be pointed out here is that the CA online privacy law is really NOT that onerous. It's not setting some insanely high bar for developers and companies to pass--as it applies to this case, it is simply requiring that users be notified upon installation of what information may be collected through the app and how it might be used. It's not as if that law even has any real teeth with respect to getting developers to protect the data they collect, as far too many people ignore privacy policies and just automatically click "Accept," because as sites like Facebook prove, most users are willing to sacrifice their privacy to a significant degree in order to obtain some entertainment or convenience.

So again, it's not that big a hurdle to simply ask for a privacy policy. The fact that Delta didn't even bother to do that makes me think twice about how conscientious they may be about protecting all that data they DO collect, and that is a much more serious concern.

Last time I checked, the educational process does not involve the presentation of scientific falsehoods as if they were truth, then expecting students to determine for themselves which is which. That would be fundamentally intellectually dishonest. "Teach the controversy/debate/both sides" is nothing more than a naked attempt at putting creationism on equal footing with science.

Maybe if they spent just as much effort to organize and protest against the Taliban and fundamentalist Islam, then it would be easier to dismiss such videos in the first place.

Anyone who has listened to or read Sam Harris knows that Islam has some very basic problems at the core of its doctrine that its present-day followers have overwhelmingly failed to address. To speak up about this is not to be Islamophobic. It's to state factual aspects of a religion that is not, despite claims from its moderate adherents, the "religion of peace." Because if it were peaceful, THESE PEOPLE WOULDN'T BE PROTESTING GOOGLE. They'd be doing everything in their power to excommunicate and weed out all the extremist mullahs and imams that call for death for apostasy, and violent jihad. The fact that we see protests against Western freedoms rather than Islamic oppression tells you everything you need to know. Moderates cannot just keep repeating "but we're peaceful and we're offended!" It's YOUR religion to claim, so CLAIM it. But don't go around to non-Muslims and pretend as if you're doing your duty, because the fight is not with us. It's with the extremists in your midst that threaten to pull your religion in THEIR direction. Unless, of course, you moderates agree with them, in which case you're not really moderate at all, and it's all just an act.

I'd like to make a rather pedantic point of clarification here: it is a "chromatic aberration" in the general sense that the system images spurious color, but it is not an aberration caused by dispersion (the variation of refractive index as a function of wavelength), nor is it a Seidel aberration.

If the purple hue comes from incomplete filtering of wavelengths outside the visible range, then it would be easy to test this theory by simply taking four kinds of photos: one that shows the flare with the unmodified camera, one of the same scene with a UV filter placed in front of the lens, a third with an IR filter placed in front of the lens, and finally, one with both UV + IR filters.

From the summary: "But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet,..."

Sorry, but Christian != "family-friendly." There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into a superstitious, fearful, dogmatic, and guilt-obsessed worldview. Conversely, there is nothing intrinsically "unfriendly" about being non-Christian--i.e., it is a fallacy to imply that Christians have some kind of exclusive claim on being more wholesome or moral than others, simply by being Christian.

Oh, and one more thing: this whole article is just a thinly-veiled slashvertisement.

It's their fault for not (1) randomizing the initial password, and (2) forcing new subscribers to immediately change their password after the first login, both of which are standard practices on properly secured systems.

Granted, you have a point in that people who test negative are unlikely to seek further confirmation that they are in fact HIV-negative, whereas designing a test with a high sensitivity but low specificity would result in many more follow-ups with more specific tests.

But where I think your argument treads on somewhat shaky ground is that (1) HIV is not the only STD out there, and there are lots of other very things you could catch through unprotected sex, such as hepatitis (which may lead to liver cancer); and HSV, which often leads to becoming a lifelong carrier. (2) Most everyone knows that there is a window in which one could be HIV-positive but the concentration of antibodies is below the detection threshold. (3) People who are responsible enough to bother getting tested AT ALL are also generally responsible enough to know better than to consider a potentially unreliable test as definitive justification for unprotected sex--that is, the ones who never get tested because of avoidant coping are the real high-risk group.

Basically, I'm not entirely convinced that the people who would go and purchase OraQuick OTC are the kind of people who would see a negative result as an excuse to subsequently engage in high-risk behavior. In any population, yes, you'll have some idiots. But to be able to test them at all is far more preferable than no test. The benefit of being able to reach those 11 out of 12 who do correctly test positive far outweighs missing the extremely small proportion of the population who might get a false negative, and the even smaller proportion of those who think a negative result is a license to become reckless.

Ultimately, frequent, widespread, and regular testing is the single best approach to HIV detection, even if the test has low sensitivity, because the more often you can test, the better chance you have at catching infection early enough to limit further transmission. And the easiest and safest test to administer at present is the oral swab--drawing blood through the arm is difficult, time-consuming, and carries risk of injury. Combined with prevention through education, widespread testing is the ONLY way we are going to reduce infection rates. Vaccines and cures are just too far off; we've been battling HIV for nearly 30 years now, and despite all the drug advances, all we have managed to do is to turn HIV into a chronic condition with lifelong complications, with the potential for multidrug resistance.

Anonymous HIV testing has long been available in the US. And approving OraQuick for OTC sale will make it even easier to be tested without your health insurer, or anyone else, knowing. But yes, in a single-payer system, we wouldn't have to be so guarded about pre-existing conditions, and one would be able to get the treatment(s) they need for preventing and transmitting disease without having to wonder if they could be blacklisted.

To review, sensitivity is the probability of a positive result given that the tested individual is actually positive; specificity is the probability of a negative result given that the tested individual is actually negative. The OraQuick swab test has a rather low sensitivity, meaning that there is a roughly 1 in 12 chance that an HIV-positive individual incorrectly tests negative (type II error). But it has a relatively good specificity, meaning that there is a roughly 1 in 5000 chance that an HIV-negative individual incorrectly tests positive (type I error).

The value in granting FDA approval for OTC sales of OraQuick, then, is to address the need for the vast majority of the population, which is HIV-negative, to feel reassured that they are in fact negative. Historically, one of the biggest challenges in HIV education has been overcoming the fear and stigma of testing. Making testing available OTC greatly improves the likelihood of getting regularly tested.

But what of those pesky type II errors? Yes, given that an individual is actually HIV-positive, the chance that the test fails to detect is is 1 in 12. But that is NOT the same thing as saying that given a negative test result, the chance the person is actually HIV-positive is 1 in 12. For the general population, that probability is much smaller. In fact, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the negative predictive value (which would require the prevalence of HIV in the US population). Now, if we were talking about using OraQuick on a very high-risk group, we would expect many more false negatives, so a more appropriate test would be the standard ELISA blood test, followed by a confirmatory Western Blot. But remember, FDA approval of OTC OraQuick is targeted at the general population. If you know you're in a high-risk group, you presumably would be getting regularly tested at a public health clinic, and OraQuick isn't necessarily your best choice. But it's still better than not getting tested at all.

Finally, remember that any reasonable person who tests positive with OraQuick would want a follow-up test to be sure. (Someone who tests negative, however, is much more unlikely to want a follow-up test.) So we don't really need to worry about type I errors, except for the panic and anxiety such a rare outcome might cause.

That is, do the things you would normally do to secure your own machine from malware, intrusive advertising, and vulnerabilities.

Use the hosts file to block certain domains from being accessible.
Install ad-blocking extensions for your web browser.
Install NoScript or some other JavaScript blocking extension.
Don't give the kids account administrative privileges.
If possible, run an operating system that doesn't permit them to install their own software.
Turn on whatever parental controls are available in the OS.
Keep it patched and up-to-date.

Beyond that, the question is really a matter of sitting down and having an honest discussion with your kids. You can supervise them if you want to come across as overbearing, but really, the single best thing you can do is to be someone they feel they can trust and share whatever questions they may have. The reality is that the world is full of weird and disturbing and dangerous shit. It's not possible, or even desirable, to try to protect them from being exposed to such things forever. Rather, teach them how to judge for themselves, and encourage them to come to you for advice. If you cannot build trust and respect, you have already lost. They will simply learn to hide things from you.

Finally, there's something to be said for simply not giving them unsupervised network access. When I was that age, I didn't play online video games. I didn't have the luxury of playing Minecraft or whatnot. And I was happy to have what I did. The more quality time you spend with your kids, the less they will feel a need for things like television, mobile phones, iPads, and the internet. It means bringing them up to read paper books. Going outside and getting exercise. Getting them interested in crafts or other creative pursuits that build fine motor control and dexterity. Teaching them how to use their imaginations and developing their critical thinking skills. Could you do these things with computers and modern technology? Sure. Is it easier? Not necessarily.

This should put things in context: "We Stopped Dreaming"

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b4_1337136397

And despite all the criticisms of the details of NDT's claims, I strongly believe that the underlying theme remains valid. Americans did in fact stop dreaming. The pursuit of science, engineering, and technology, the VALUATION of these things as a foundation for a competitive, progressive, and forward-looking society, is now almost entirely lost upon the American public, replaced by willful superstition, fear, and ignorance. Replaced by doubts about man-made climate change, irrational religious fervor for creationism and other Biblical dogmas, and indeed, an active distrust and suspicion of scientific and critical thinking.

This is not about what China is doing, folks. This is about what America once did on the belief that anything was possible, and about what America no longer does because that attitude has been replaced by a sense of complacency.

"Fascism" isn't really the most accurate term for what passes for government in the US. "Plutocracy" is much, much more appropriate, because at least in fascism, there is no pretense of a two-party system, in which dissent is superficially tolerated as a means to divert attention from those who are actually in control. Governance by the wealthy, for the wealthy is what we have had for quite some time now, and a true republic under the principles set forth in the Constitution that establishes equal representation, has really been a pretty fantasy repeated to the electorate in order to give them the illusion that they have any actual power. In the meantime, you have plenty of folks waving their flags and embracing their Bibles, calling out anyone who exhibits even the slightest criticism of their blind nationalism as a turban-wearing terrorist (or back in the McCarthy days, the term of art was "pinko/commie").

Money--and we're not talking a few dollars here or there, but mind-numbingly enormous sums--is an inherently corrupting force in any political system. Citizens United was only the latest example of how corporate power has so flagrantly rewritten the rules in their favor. It is the coordinated collusion of financial corporations, mainstream media, elected officials at the state and federal levels, local and federal law enforcement, and the military industrial complex that has successfully stripped citizens of their rightful and primal role in governing a just society.

In a sense, a fascist state may be preferable to what the United States has become--for at least a fascist state would be more likely to incite a revolution, rather than perpetuate this sickeningly cowed, brainwashed, and indentured so-called "American public," fattened on a steady diet of processed foods to make them weak, 'popular entertainment' that doesn't invigorate their passions, and propaganda designed to curtail critical thinking. In this context, then, a "digital Citizen's Bill of Rights" is about as absurd as demanding that the rights nominally codified in that thing we call the Constitution actually be respected in the first place.

"IT positions some of the toughest jobs to fill in the US...because employers can't get enough cheap H1B foreign labor." This is not about finding Americans with enough technical expertise, of which there are plenty--it's about employers who aren't willing to pay for it, and want to hire cheap labor from India/China visa holders.

So what it if it costs you money? It's your error, and your responsibility to fix it. We're not talking about a version that you stopped selling years and years ago. We're talking about a version that stopped selling only recently--in fact, more recently than when the security flaw was reported.

What are you doing with the several hundreds of dollars each licensee pays you for a copy of Photoshop? Or the $2000 that they pay for an edition of CS? Wiping your asses with it? Rolling it into a joint and letting your developers smoke it?

Adobe (like another tech company that starts with an "A") was once a stand-up company. Ironically, the CEO of that "other company" accused Adobe of being LAZY. And he was 100% correct. Lazy and bloated and coasting on their monopoly success. Again, the principle holds: the more trust and power the consumer gives to a corporation, the more they will abuse it.