The first half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against fascism. The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against communism. We are now engaged in a third great war: where governments try to gain total monitoring capabilities—where everything everyone does and says is monitored.

The goal will be to have everything tracked and recorded. The technology will certainly exist, and governments will certainly try to deploy it. And most people will acquiesce. Because the governments are doing it "to protect the children", or "to stop terrorism". Or maybe it will be done just for convenience (e.g. portions of the Internet now require a Google account—and having a Google account now requires giving Google your phone number). Just remember, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".

This war will last decades, like the first two. The outcome is anyone's guess.

Quoting the grandparent:

"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "

Yes indeed. And anyone who claims otherwise--such as the parent--is either ignorant or dishonest. Here are some sources, but it feels unfair to only list these few.

The Hockey Stick Illusion (book about the "hockey stick")
The Delinquent Teenager (book about IPCC being infiltrated by extreme advocates)
"Understanding Climategate's hidden decline" (article about "hide the decline")
Watts Up With That? (leading blog)
Letter to the Science and Technology Committee (on fraud)

Etc. Etc.

Thanks for this!

Lubo Motl has some additional, supportive, thoughts on his blog:
Once more: gravity is not an entropic force

Linus should have waited until 2.6.42.

Even Google knows that 42 is the "answer to life, the universe, and everything"

Libre office, Open office. They are both excellent and SUFFICIENT.

For me, the lack of a good grammar checker is a serious issue.

Wrong. E.g. Warren Buffett.

An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit

The earthquake was 8.9 on the Richter magnitude scale. The nuclear power plant was built to withstand a quake of magnitude 8.2. The energy of a quake grows as 10^(1.5*x). Thus the quake was 10^(1.5*(8.9-8.2)) = 11 times more destructive than the plant's design specification.

The actual research paper is at

http://www.dfrws.org/2008/proceedings/p42-iqbal.pdf

Note that it was published in 2008. So Slashdot is reporting relatively quickly here.

An AK needs no maintenance; you can leave it lying in mud for months, take it out, rinse and let dry--and it will work. That is the beauty of AKs. They are not accurate beyond 100 m, but they are highly reliable.

I agree with most of what you say. One small thing to note though is that the MBP has an IPS screen, whereas the T420s has only a TN screen. The color accuracy is thus much better on a MBP.

(On the other hand, the 13" MBP has a glare screen; the 15" MBP has an expensive optional upgrade to non-glare; and the T420s has non-glare as standard.)

The MBP also allows for much larger hard disk. Curiously, the MBP and the T420s also share a shortcoming: no Blu-ray.

Please mod up! This seems like a great explanation.