Can't imagine what makes you think I am British.

You presume I have no personal experience, you believe that because you have been in prison that your experience speaks to the behavior of the average convict, yet you even admit that they behave better inside than outside and yet it is the out side we talk about.

As for giving a mother advice on child birth without being female, You do know that the vast majority of OBGYN doctors are male right? So the vast majority of women who give birth do so with the advice of men.

I thank you for a wonderful post demonstrating the danger of observational bias in forming peoples belief systems.

This is daft, the hardened prison inmate is almost 100% certain to view you as prey and to happily exploit your trust. Your understanding of people is simply backward, the convict *will* fuck with you if he wants to, you need not "give him a reason to". Your average church goer on the other hand almost certainly needs to be given a reason to care about you. You may not find acceptable the things that would cause the church goer to take an interest in you. But if you believe that as long as you do nothing to attract their attention you are safe from the average convict you are dangerously deluded.

Just happened to be staying in the same hotel and I don't recall what started us off but some how we struck up a conversation and he wound up telling me some great stories.

The story about the guy in the FexEx box is even better than the article makes out. Since they couldn't actually ship a person via FedEx for many reasons, the box had to seem to come from the right location which would have meant putting it on a plane, and what not. So to make it all look right Steve got himself a real FedEx uniform and put FexEx stickers on the side of a van and even had one of those scanner guns the delivery people used and pretended to be a FedEx delivery person in order to drop off their "package". As I recall he even picked up all their out going FexEx packages and dropped them off at the local FedEx center to fully make the deception work.

It was one of my more interesting random conversations, at some point they should write a book about this stuff, he had lots more stories than just this one. But yeah basically if someone really wants to get inside your building and steal your stuff badly enough they will.

Yes you need physical security, to prevent the guy in the FedEx box replacing your keyboard with one with a hardware key logger. And planting a transmitter inside your machine to send out the data wirelessly once it has your encryption passwords.

If history teaches anything it is that just because an insecure protocol should not be used does not mean it will not be used.

If anything since "insecure ~= simpler than a secure protocol" it almost insures it will be used.

To further show what a terrible idea pushing videos ads is, I had not bothered to get F.B. Purity until now, but just the thought of having vid ads with sound pushed at me was enough to make me go and get everything blocked.

However visions of the Aesculaptor Mark 3 from Logan's Run may make me conclude that the good old fashioned Mark I Eye Ball is still up to the task.

I think after years of surviving being stuck in the arm by humans I can decline to avail myself of this one particular advancement without feeling I've suddenly gone Luddite

The article author seems to assume that patented technology just falls from the sky and comes for free to the lucky patent holder who then exploits the rest of the world, when they say;

"But the patents had devastating real-world implications, because they kept the prices for the diagnostics artificially high."

they are arguing from false premises. Now in this case I happen to agree with not allowing patents on unmodified genes however it is still the case that the prices are only artificially high if the diagnostics would have existed had it not been possible to acquire patents on them in the first place,

According to the article it would have been ok if they had gotten the patents if they were motivated to save lives rather than make money. This is not an article which rationally discussed the problems of the patent system, and those problems are legion, it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad. Not really very interesting.

You expect local legislatures and police to respect SCOTUS rulings? How quaint a notion. Well after they arrest you and convict you perhaps on appeal they will see the error of their ways.

Oh the wonders of the internet if someone says anything we don't like they are in a fantasy land? Seriously? You clearly can't read or make any judgements for yourself that you need me to specify that the first two are obvious endangerments, the next is malicious falsehood which may lead to reputational injury which is a damage to business property, which happens to be a crime in NY called.....

Reckless endangerment of property.
    A person is guilty of reckless endangerment of property when he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of damage to the property of another person in an amount exceeding two hundred fifty dollars.

So it would be pretty easy to cause a lost of business exceeding $250, thus endangerment.

The last one is what we who can separate reality from fantasy like to call sarcasm, but since you seem to have trouble I'll admit that I don't think it would represent endangerment of the reputation of the City of Chicago since they don't have any reputation left to endanger.

What world do you live in sir? Clearly not the same one the rest of us do.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap
http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/cops-kill-dog-handcuff-kids-in-wrong-house-raid/
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55875924-78/lake-salt-landvatter-police.html.csp
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/26/nyregion/raids-and-complaints-rise-as-city-draws-on-drug-tips.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
http://www.wave3.com/story/1495631/false-tip-leads-police-to-raid-house-of-sleeping-family?clienttype=printable

and just because you are wearing a badge and say you are the police doesn't mean that you are

http://www.khou.com/news/local/HPD-Police-impersonators-using-fake-raids-to-rob-illegal-game-rooms-135144963.html

And your suggestion that the police do not read online sources or respond to tips that might come from them is also quite absurd

http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/25/the-saga-of-travis-corcoran

The app lists 13 "Marking Categories" that the app user can select from, of those, depending on the jurisdiction, as many as 5 are items which should be reported directly to law enforcement as they are not "issues of concern" but "violations of law", these include;

“Possible unlocked/loaded/unsafe storage”
“Possible insufficient training”
“Documented/frequent unlawful discharge”
“Possible illegal weapons on premises”
“Possible prohibited persons”

So using the app to tag these locations rather than properly report them will decrease local safety not increase it. Of course how the tagger is supposed to know of some of the "possibles" without actually knowing one way or the other is another question entirely. Either you have seen guns left around the house unlocked/loaded or you haven't, or you are tagging based on not having direct information in which case you are very likely opening yourself up to a libel suit.

Its worse than Libel, its endangerment.

Someone tags as dangerous an address (incorrectly) where there is no registered gun owner, police raid house looking for illegal guns, shoot family dog in the process.

Someone tags as dangerous an address (maliciously) where there is a registered gun owner, police raid house. shoot gun owner who pulls gun on intruders breaking down their door at 3am.

Someone tags as dangerous a business (incorrectly), which loses business due to customers (incorrectly) avoiding it, people loose jobs.

Someone tags (correctly) the whole of the South side of the City of Chicago, city sues everyone who tagged any location for harming the reputation of such a fine city.

Using someone else's login to access a computer...... so I am a felon each time I buy something with my wife's amazon account.

There needs to be a serious effort made to roll these laws back, or complaints about Google+ requiring real names on account will soon be the least of the concerns of anyone who ever tries to go on line for any reason.

Said the Earth.