Winner..... China

The actions of the EPA are unilateral and do not address the
global issue set. Worse they make it harder for US companies to
react even at the glacial slow rated that global climate change
implies. Because they are regulatory and not legislative the entire
foundation of the EPA must be demolished, both good and bad, to
address problems. The EPA has no constituency to be accountable
to. The EPA could well be infiltrated by foreign agents.... we
are learning abut the subtle NSA plans that corrupted some of
the encryption standards... foreign agents which include corporate
agents cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The corporate agents like some international terrorist organizations
are dispersed, work against a global plan and have no national
allegiance. Some are concerned about the reach of Chinese companies
into Africa and to many it appears that the wealth of African resources
is highly coveted by many. The agents from China seem to be much
better organized toward the economic goals of China than the Peace Core
and 100 other US funded plans.

Perhaps this is a good thing.... especially in the light of Walmart's reach.
So who is watching Walmart....?

The previous registration is a strong starting place to defend it going forward.

A winning season -- where does that play?

Why?.... the DHS and friends have increased the information disclosure for cell phones as well as banking records....

Companies are more and more compelled to dig into you life and keep and make available to "enforcement"
on demands more and more information.

We do have rather well structured standards for the management of credit card info (PCI Compliance Security Standards) but
do not have equivalent standards for the information that others must gather. The good(ish) laws on disclosure are making it
evident that personal data retention and access standards are needed.

Time to write my state and federal legislature.

They sell a service based on my power bill and my real property....
They do not compensate me...
They do not ask me....
      They would owe me $$$$$

The technology is OK with me modulo the remote access into a smart device
inside my home. i.e. guest networks and other isolation tricks including
bandwidth management is a solved problem.

However I elect to not play and have my own firewall hardware that I control....

There are global differences:
"Instructors in the U.S. should probably take this into account when reading papers submitted by students who have gone to school in other parts of the globe." stolen from:
        http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu...

But that would never be the cause for termination.
Tardy, dress code, poor student test scores, relentless audits in class
to include remote surveillance both audio and video today.

Too many trouble makers assigned in to the class... becomes inability
to manage the class. Slow duplication services... no supplies...
followed by diverting of supplies without authorization from other
class rooms. Meetings always at the wrong time... Slow authorization
of continuing education to miss deadlines for required continuing
education points...

The inverse of the slack given to winning coaches...

One historic reason for tenure had to do with "radical/educated opinions". Mostly
this was the world of higher education where the teacher was the teacher and
perhaps an authority. Some cases of tenure they do batten down the hatches and
lock out new ideas -- i.e. tenure was and is the power base in higher education.

Today the teacher must teach to a syllabus and has little or no flexibility on content
or approach. Today we are seeing an astounding administrative and legislative pressures
to conform. There are external symptoms but it is rare or impossible for a parent
to invade the information and policy bubble that is K-12 education in Amerika...

One symptom is evident in the execution of zero tolerance policies. We see arrests
at public forums where a parent takes more than his permitted two minutes. We see
expulsion and arrest when a child draws a picture of a weapon or just points.
Hidden in all this is the reality that deviating from the prescribed plan is grounds for
termination despite what tenure implies. Contracts between the union and school
systems are extensive... one account on CNN noted a contract that was +1000 pages.

Note that in some parts of 'merica zero tolerance is code for intolerance in
how it is enforced by narrow arrogant minds. Try and converse with educators
and you get ignored or shut out.... it is perhaps the worst example of an
information bubble.... It is fueled by the likes of STEM and national standardized
tests. From time to time we hear of legislators defining Pi to be some silly
number.

The size and budget of the national education budget is astounding and
has almost no external audit control. Pay attention....

There must be one word that tells me you told
me and I no longer have to guess. Since I no longer
have to guess I cannot guess.

I guess I should finish reading this: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/lo...

Yes worthy of attention....
The interesting bit is they are built with OLD micro-controllers and designed with OLD economics.

It is clear that modern hobby and educational devices like the Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black
shatter the old cost models. Same with the little Chromecast bug with a smaller yet footprint.

It is time to demand updates... and it is also important to know that a little card for very low
budget can do a fine job as a firewall protection resource.... on one side of an inexpensive switch.
Sadly rack hardware is much more expensive than it should be but computer hardware and software
economics are so changed that "Yes worthy of attention".

We need backbone resources or other tricks...
Mostly we need legal legislative backbone.

The last mile is owned by local monopolies.
That is the sad reality. These local monopolies are
also content service providers and do what they to
do feather their own nest.

The congestion is the backbone owners and providers.
Multiple issues dominate the congestion problems.
Access, distance, hops and hubs.

The likes of Netflix need to embrace one or more
flavors of p2p networking. A local neighborhood
can cache and redeliver most video frames from a
modest cache with modern crypto tools to contain
theft of service.

I think the likes of Netflix would do well do develop
an enhanced DOCSIS 3.x modem that also contains
a p2p client/service that can recast content to other
like service devices a hop or two away. It can also
begin caching the top two products on a wish list.

Proxy and p2p services are underused or vastly abused.

No ballistic evidence would not go away.
A printed barrel or receiver would still have unique "tool marks".
Same for the firing pin.

Matching a weapon to a spent round would be the same
with the interesting bit that the weapon is so fragile that
the ballistics experts would want a much longer string
to fire the device for a reference projectile.

Not exactly... One has to study and apply some brain power but if you have
a copy of the manual for a Motorola MC14500B you have all you need to
get started and you do not need the Motorola MC14500B if you have an
extra 3"x4" on your board.

Starting with a 6502 or a Z80 you have a serious leg up on building
a working machine.

Today $50 gets a working machine to brag on ... Raspberry-Pi or Beaglebone Black
are my favorites this year. Two years back it was the pandaboard. My personal web server
local name server, local NTP master (level 2-3) all run on these inexpensive credit card
computers. One has a 1TB USB disk for photo backups with better economics
than most cloud services.

These new 3D printers are astounding and seriously change the economics
of 3D modeling... The physical strength of the plastics they use limits the results
but does change things.. Some are using a spool of steel wire and a spark-arc
welding process to build up very hard and strong parts.

If you look at the technology associated with steel and guns you will see the same evolution
from crappy to modern sophistication.... and who knows what future sophisticated making
technology might make. We are seeing modern weapons with new targeting technology
that permits snipers to be effective to astounding ranges by near novices. Once the target is
identified the weapon fires itself after compensation for range and other variables.

Any modern NC milling machine or lathe can build a serious weapon.

Cutting knives are still constrained by the ability to heat treat steel more
than shaping the steel.

News at 11:00 but my money is on protectionist motives and generic FUD.
3d printing is just fine with me.

And a library card is cheaper yet. Libraries are one investment
that pays great rewards to local towns.

Seriously in rural Kentucky and Tennessee (USA) a study was
made and a mobile home with a printer+binder machine was
found to be sufficiently inexpensive that the books could be
given away. Apparently authors of pK-12 books were happy to work out
terms but publishers were not.

The nice thing is books would get traded between neighbors
and would wear out.. No need for expensive library binding
services. No need to house and store... If I recall this was
classic black and white typeset books not glossy color books.

The inability to share books is one of the true evils of Kindles.
A child struggling to learn will not finish a book in the standard
Kindle loan it time frame and the need for a reader and internet
connectivity in places where cell and internet connectivity stink
all conspire to further isolate the isolated.

If this bothers ya it is more important to know that
many providers will not update software on their hardware
and more troubling they lock them out so I cannot
purchase a third party software update.

I have had my "Two Updates" and no more are to be had.
The AT&T path locks Samsung out of the game to a degree
that I cannot tell if Samsung has something behind door
number three.

The structure of Android as it is today does not
make it easy to update small things. There is
a requirement to do a big thump update.

I now have two boxed and inactive android
devices that I cannot update to anything
at all.

It may be worth the effort to try again....

The only good news is the harder it is to root
a phone the harder it is to hack and abuse
many layers of security (But not all).