As Sen. Sanders say, gun laws for rural New Hampshire, where they often hunt for food, *must* be very different from Chicago or LA, where the hunting is for members of some opposition social group of *people*.

Oh, and then there's all the cowards who are TERRIFIED of anyone not just like them, and needs GUNS to protect themselves....

              mark, who lived in inner cities half his life, and has never felt the need for one,
                                              and who's only known a few people with one

I wouldn't want to try one. For one, standing still for long hours isn't that good for you, either. For another, that's a *great* idea, now management can make your working/living space even smaller (Dilbert's old Velcro on your back, and hang you on the wall coming, soon).

Then there's those of us with other issues, like my arthritis.

I'm waiting for the introduction of not only treadmills under the desk, but have them generate electricity, so you produce ROI doubly.....

And ergonomics? I sit with my keyboard in my lap, several feet from my monitors. The way my cube's aligned, I can't really put my feet on the desk, but that meets all those ergonomic criteria, y'know, with wrists supported, monitors straight ahead....

                mark

In '58, the famous essayist CP Snow published an essay entitled, "On the Two Cultures". In it, he was talking about the cultures of the sciences vs. the liberal arts. He noted, for example, that he knew plenty of scientists who could quote Shakespeare chapter and verse, but not one liberal arts person who even knew the simplified three laws of thermodynamics.

It's gotten much worse, and spread, thanks to the GOP's explicit building a reliable base of yellow dog Republicans out of the extreme right, the conspiracyists, the group that wants their RIGHTS (but aren't interested in their responsibilities) andthe funnymentalists who think the world's only 6000 years old. Then the media whose owners want that legal and tax and spending agenda treat them as "equally valid", and dumb down the science in school, and this is what you get: the party adherents whose mind is made up, don't confuse them with facts.

                mark "the RW trumps your opinion"

Brian,

      You might consider they wouldn't talk about cyber gangs with big money who live in the same metro area might be a matter of literal self-preservation.

                  mark "that's a nice life you got dere, be a shame if sometin' were to happen' to it"

First of all, Iran COULD NOT USE the bomb if it had one.

Why?
1. They can't bomb Jerusalem, which is as holy to them as to jews and Christians. Their own
              people would slaughter them. AND they'd kill most of the Palestinians in the Occupied
              Territories of the West Bank.
2. Israel is smaller than the US state of New Jersey. At one point, I believe it's a total
                of ->17mi- wide. What this means is using the bomb *anywhere* in Israel means
                fallout on Jerusalem.
3. Following 2, it *also* means fallout on the Palestinians.
4. Oh, yes - the winds would mean that fallout would COME BACK TO IRAN.

Therefore, the ONE and ONLY purpose that Iran would want the bomb is MAD with Israel (who has a bunch of bombs, and would cheerfully use it on Iran, if they didn't think there'd be no Israel left afterwards.

Oh, yes, and with all the climate-change deniers here, *no* *one* could imagine that maybe Iran's worried about when their oil fields are played out, and planning to do things with the money while they have it to prepare for the future, no, no, that's *way* more than next quarter....

                        mark

I see on wikpedia that the cost of an F-35a is $115M USD. Cancel the production of two of those pointless, massively overpriced and underperforming POS, and you've got a more than $50M to spare....

                  mark

In general, yes, we can. If we see it passing, and compute the orbit to be next time or so around the sun, there's a lot we can do. If we see it enough time in advance, NO, BRUCE WILLIS IS AN IDIOT. You want to hit it so that it *doesn't* break up, but nudge it faster or slower in its orbit, and it misses by a lot (and I'm considering beyond the moon's orbit plenty).

If, on the other hand, you're in the US, and think the Invisible Hand of the Market (tm) will create a company with zero possibility of return, other than perhaps one shot to try to knock one out of collision course, you might as well be figuring on the FSM moving it.

                  mark

Now just one minute: us superannuated hippies understand global warming being human-caused. It's the antihippie, fascist Christian/petrochemical industry folks who are paying for it to be denied....

                    mark

As another commenter put it, trading one currency they can't control with another? And somebody decides to use some large clusters, or large cloud, to generate money and devalue it, or another what-was-it that just collapsed, with a hundred million or so Bitcoin money *missing"?

Fiat money that is *completely* under the control of the elected government seems to work for most nations.

            mark "oh, and how many fiat USD is that Bitcoin worth?"

That's absurd, that people "aren't bothered by ads". They take bathroom breaks, they get food or drinks, but... the top poster of this thread is absolutely correct. As someone older than you, let me tell you that in the sixties and seventies, the FCC-mandated limit was, I believe, 6 minutes an hour, and that *included* station breaks.

Then came cable, and the biggest thing they promised you - ALL of them - was "no more commercials, ever".

When we started taping in the nineties, it was about 18 min of commercials per hour on cable. The last time we regularly taped, maybe 10 years or so ago, it was ->22 minutes of commercials- per hour.

So tv is weaning itself from commercials? They'd *have* to, because a "one hour show" that was 50% commercials will have the number of viewers approaching zero as a limit.

                    mark

You have finally realized that your touchscreen controller actually provides a pressure strength and are able to hype it up like it's revolutionary.

Right now, Apple haven't said a word on the matter, let alone "hyped it up like it's revolutionary". There is zero confirmation from Apple, this is just a blog article based on a rumour.

Background checks. SKILLS CHECKS - isn't that what the hiring manager is supposed to ascertain via the a) resume, b) phone interview, c) personal interview?

This, actually, points directly to where the problem is: HR, who DO NOT KNOW what they company does or what they're hiring someone to do, AND DON'T CARE TO LEARN. To paraphrase the old line from SN, they're ignorant sluts, Jane".

Here's another point: it takes 35 days (is that business days, or calendar?). Then, in a lot of cases, they'll be there 3 years (oh, unless they're contractors, and so many big companies, like AT&T, say two years), and they're out the door, let go, or off to a new job.

HR: a waste of space and money.

                mark

You fail to understand the difference between a legal principle, such as the First Amendment, and a moral principle, such as Free Speech.

I understand it just fine. The parent commenter does not. He was talking about outlawing the flag.

The First Amendment is a legal enactment of the moral principle.

No, if the First Amendment were a legal enactment of the moral principle you describe, it wouldn't stop at restricting the government's right to curtail speech. It would compel Apple to publish this material. It does not. Ergo, the First Amendment is not a legal enactment of the principle you describe. It doesn't go anywhere near as far.

Apple's suppression of Confederate flag, and Civil War video games, and silly TV shows set in the South, is evil.

Nobody has the right to force Apple to use their resources to publish material that they don't want to publish. And Apple choosing not to publish something is not the same thing as them suppressing it. You want the confederate flag, you can get it from other places. Free speech is not about forcing somebody else to publish your crap.

This is a country founded on the idea of Free Speech.

Your country was founded on the principle that the government should not stop anybody from speaking. It wasn't founded on the principle that corporations must be compelled to distribute other people's material regardless of content. Apple are not obligated to publish this material.

Much better than outlawing their vile ideas

Nobody is outlawing anything. This is an example of a business choosing not to publish something.

So many people in the US South, whose cooking and tastes are high on both, keep voting against their own self-interest....

              mark, wondering what the average diet of a libertarian is