Don't just easily obfuscate foul play with the way it's supposed to be.

Oh, no mistake - It works exactly the way they intend it.

Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate what ethical behavior is in such a way as to justify and reenforce their own values and behavior at the expense of other classes

Did you seriously mean to say that we've outlawed murder as a mere point of fashion?

Proportional fines are not a means of revenue, where did you get that stupid idea from? Fines are punishments.

Bullshit. All fines generate revenue, and traffic enforcement counts as one of the worst offenders.

"Gee, why does the speed suddenly drop from 45 to 25 for a tenth of a mile riiight at that otherwise-uninteresting spot where cops can easily hide?"
"Safety."

Get rid of artificially low speed limits.

I know, I know, crazy talk. Won't someone think of the revenue?

For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?

I don't worry about it because I don't buy into the bullshit idea that anyone can do anything if they just have the opportunity and apply themselves.

Many of the same attributes that make someone a good programmer act in directly opposition to those shortcomings that make someone a criminal (the capriciousness of the US legal system aside) - Problem solving, impulse control, ability to sit motionless for hours, ability to attend to a task despite external distractions, solid math background, early exposure to technology and the luxury of spending time learning it, etc.

I honestly don't believe that everyone can learn to code; and of those who can, a large majority would hate it. When I describe what I do to most (educated and intelligent) people, they involuntarily cringe.

Yes, this program will probable find a few gems who fell through the cracks early in life (at the expense of millions of taxpayer dollars, of course). I feel comfortable that I can withstand a few dozen subsidized competitors entering my profession per year.

They only banned the practice for females(in practice)

"In practice", they haven't done anything, for two simple reasons:

1) The victim needs to complain, and most will never even notice, and
2) It takes 15 seconds to make a throwaway account, and hours or even days for someone to notice, complain, and get a response; then, 15 seconds later...


I fully expect Twitter to have the same level of success.

all other communication has been through Q and A via his attorneys

They have offered from the beginning to allow Ny to either question him in London, or to do it via teleconference, both of which Swedish law allows. Even the Swedish press and non-NyD MPs have started ridiculing Ny for her stubborn refusal to do so.


Heck, one of Assange's attorneys (Emerson) all but admitted that he did it.

Why wouldn't they? Anna Ardin never accused him of rape, just wanted to force him to get tested for STDs. She has even tweeted since then that he never raped her. Why would Assange or his lawyers bother denying facts that no one disputes?


before he fled

Slight correction there - After the first prosecutor cleared him, and Ny stalled for weeks, Assange asked permission to go to London, which Ny granted (and then immediately issued an international arrest warrant to generate as much worldwide publicity as possible).


The claim that Assange was "free to go" as promulgated by BjÃrn Hurtig, a former attorney of Assange's.

The chief magistrate of Assange's extradition hearing (who originally voted to extradite) has publicly stated that he incorrectly applied a law that effectively tied his hands into approving the extradition, and would have voted against it otherwise. Unfortunately for Assange, that really doesn't matter, because the UK has chosen to interpret him seeking asylum as breach of bail - Though in some sort of alice-in-wonderland loop of logic, amusingly enough, that doesn't count as a criminal offense in the UK, it just allows forfeiture of the bail itself and taking the accused into custody pending trial. Except, he doesn't face trial because Sweden hasn't actually charged him because (as you point out) they can't charge him without interviewing him, which Ny has refused to do until now.

If he didn't legitimately fear the

Neither Assange nor his accuser deny that they had sex. They just disagree over how consensually they had sex.

What, exactly, do they hope to prove from a DNA test?

Now, I suppose it would certainly put quite an interesting spin on all this if it turns out Assange didn't have sex with her, but other than that totally-out-there possibility, what other use could they have for his DNA?

Ah, that last, mostly rhetorical question brings out the paranoid anti-government side of me. What other use could they have? "Hey, check it out, we "found" his DNA in hundreds of previously-unprocessed-for-decades rape kits from the US!" And just like that, the US would have direct standing to extradite him.

But the important question - Do they work?

...Because a sub-$100 knock-off counts as the only way I'll ever try one.

To me, the preponderance of multi-book series highlights the loss of ability.

You have mistaken "revenue generation" for "ability".

That said, don't view the past through too rosy glasses. Harry Potter consisted of seven books, but so did LotR (if you include The Hobbit), and so did the Chronicles of Narnia. HHGttG has five books by DNA. Dune has six (and a half) by Herbert. Clarke's Space Odyssey has four. And to address the FP topic, Asimov's Foundation has seven.

Now, if you want to tackle "series" that have no fixed length - Keep in mind that the past had plenty of those, too. We have the luxury of picking the cream of the crop in hindsight, and tend to forget about the amazing volume of mostly-aptly-named "pulp fiction" pumped out in first half of the 1900s.

/ Grabs popcorn
// Dons asbestos armor

It goes without saying that, as a member of the non-inbred 99%, I will not buy a $10k watch. But I also won't buy the $350 model either, for one simple reason: I have no use for a watch. Who the hell even wears watches anymore, aside from hipsters trying to boost their retro cred with a crappy 20 year old Casio?

And for some real irony, what killed the watch? Ubiquitous cell phones. My phone has a clock. My phone has a calculator. My phone has a fitness tracker (dozens of them, potentially). My phone can play MP3s. My phone can make phone calls. My phone can issue reminders. My phone can wake me up. My phone can also take pictures and help me navigate by GPS and check my email (really check it, not just show me the subject line) and watch Youtube videos and play cheesy games and a whole host of other features that a watch cannot.

Now... If the Apple watch could do all of those things (except that last sentence) by itself, hey, I might consider that a more convenient form-factor than a 2.5x5" rectangular slab. Really, 90% of the time, I just need a clock/phone/tracker, and a watch has the advantage of not requiring pockets or a purse. But the Apple Watch doesn't even work without slaving it to an iPhone! So you gain... nothing!

Apple has made a huge mistake with this one. As in, "time to short AAPL" huge.

Okay, I admit it, I don't get the punchline. I even added one to the cart expecting that as the price per stick (even then, unbelievably low, but maybe for tested pulls), but no, $79 for the whole bulk pack, new???

You can't even get no-name sticks of non-ECC labelled in Chinese for that. That can't count as a real price, can it?

I bought one myself and was astonished that it was cost effective to deliberately engineer defective machines.

16GB (as 2x8GB) of ECC will cost you at least $160 for the absolute bottom of the barrel. The same 16GB of non-ECC goes for just about $100. That gives you a 60% markup for only 12% more chips. Really, it surprises me we don't see more fraud like that.

FTA: The 2013 mass surveillance disclosures included a slide from a classified NSA presentation that made explicit reference to Wikipedia, using our global trademark. Because these disclosures revealed that the government specifically targeted Wikipedia and its users, we believe we have more than sufficient evidence to establish standing.

The slide they reference contains a random collection of corporate logos (which bizarrely includes MySpace, CNN, and Google Earth). It doesn't say anything about actually targeting them, just a vague mention of why the NSA has an interest in capturing HTTP traffic.

I fully support Wiki in this effort, and would like to see them beat the pants off the NSA. I just don't see that as happening - This will get dismissed again for lack of standing. Even if a judge accepts that slide as proof that the NSA spied on Wiki specifically, where does any form of "damage" to Wiki come into the picture? Hell, I consider myself pretty high on the government distrust scale, and even I can't honestly say that I've stopped using Wikipedia just because the NSA might see what I look up.