How many emails do you think they are getting from HQ today? And doesn't the HQ have a history of executing people who do the wrong thing?

If somebody had a bone to pick with a group that operated in China, might they not target that group in China as well? Perhaps it flies under the radar because the scope isn't as large or easily detectable.

Letters have traveled through various postal systems for hundreds of years now. By giving your letter to a postal carrier, you are relinquishing control of it and letting it be processed by a centralized system. Therefore, anyone who sends a private correspondance through a postal system, should have no expectation of privacy. ?

Are network packets really that different? Because technology makes it easier to look at the content of the packet without breaking any wax seals, or having to steam the glue, that makes it ok to look? The 4th amendment protects paper packets, why not electronic packets? The US was founded with personal privacy enshrined as a core principal, so a lot of thick numbskulls like myself carry that expectation across different spectrums.

(Note: In this particular case, I'm not surprised that Uber employees can access Uber data, especially in this example where the reporter called out being late to a meeting with Uber executives while seated in an Uber car)

Hitchiking is actually illegal in many states. Most of them only reference soliciting a ride on the street itself, but some outlaw the whole concept.

None of the hotel regulations apply to taking $20 for someone crashing in a spare bedroom for a night.

Thats not actually true. Lots of states Attornery Generals have filed legal paperwork again Airbnb and couchsurfing homes to class them as hotels, subject to normal hotel / bed&breakfast regulations.

Every single person on this earth is motivated to get food, and have food, and if possible, have even more food. It is genetically programmed to the infinite degree. Particular farming practices, and particular strains of crops may work better in different regions of the world, but every farmer wants more food. The ONLY farmers who may not care about increased yields are suburbanites who have plenty of money and food, and farm as a fun hobby. ALL commercial farmers want more. ALL subsistence farmers want more.

A lot of schools, maybe the vast majority(?), already have video surveillance systems.
Where do you think that video footage of the Columbine shooters walking around inside the school came from??
That was 15 years ago, and cameras have gotten much cheaper and more widespread since then.

I wish them the best of luck in sales to the good people of Luxembourg, Ireland, and small carribean islands. I'm sure their total revenues after dropping the costly US market will improve tremendously.

People who watch no news of any kind, are more informed about current events than viewers of Fox News. For sure you can expect certain kinds of distortion for left and right wing biases from every station, but Fox News takes viewers several steps beyond political slant, to full on fabrications that suit their storyline.

Nobody is stealing 500 euro bills, because normal people don't carry them. If you stole them from a bank, any attempt to spend those bills would get way too much attention. It also follows then that any attempt to pass off counterfeit bills that are huge values, will also get a lot of extra scrutiny, which is not productive. There are more $20 counterfeit bills in active circulation than $100 bills.

That leaves criminals with really only one reason to use the extra large bills, laundering & transferring money. Now, where does the money that needs to be laundered come from? This conversation is entirely about cracking down on drugs, gambling & prostitution.

IT companies like Microsoft? You've just described the exact password policy that the largest software company in the world uses to enforce a "strong password", under the guises of best practices. I don't know why you blame the end user, when the manufacturer is the one perpetuating this system through documentation, training certifications, and the operating system itself.

But all that aside, those passwords are plenty good enough. Any system that allows an attacker to brute force passwords, especially online, has a design problem. It would take an idiot to build a system that allows 1000 password guesses per second without a timeout. Guess wrong 5 times, and you get locked out for 10 minutes, and a warning email sent. Suddenly you've increased the brute force time to thousands of years, and the target is aware. This is basic stuff, and just about any dictionary word is safe.

Ever increasing complexity is an unnecessary solution. Password breaches are not being done through brute force, there's no real reason to make brute force harder.

It must be some magical coincidence that civilizations with better mineral resources, better weather patterns and better access to domesticated animals & crops for centuries of development time, are now in a better position globally. Or you could falsely attribute it to "cultural superiority", and assume that you are by extension, racially superior. However, please note that a lot of people will call you a racist. You are essentially saying there are no geographic differences between different places in the world, that thousands of years of history are meaningless, and that everything boils down to the type of music you listen to. I suspect you've been called racist many many times.

Exactly. Who would ever think that Russia is seizing a warm water port but is ok with having zero access to it? Surely no world leader is surprised.

Would Russia invade if Ukraine still had their nukes? Will any other nuclear country disarm in the future given this scenario?
In the end, a treaty is just words on paper. Russia clearly isn't honoring the treaty so it goes to line 6:

"The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments."

[citation needed]

Here you go: http://media.wix.com/ugd/80ea2... - Academic journal with the title "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior"

This shows some of the other social experiments conducted on the topic of wealth and entitlement: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...

It appears to be using rigorous methodology along with peer review to reach what could be considered the scientific conclusion: in a capitalist society, the rich are more likely to cheat.

Do you think waitstaff have great credit scores? Most don't even have bank accounts, much less any way to get credit cards. That's not exactly the most lucrative job to target for identity theft.

Another way of looking at it, is to use aggregate outcomes, rather than a raw species count. We have one planet with life, and have thus far evolved one lifeform capable of spaceflight. Our knowledge thus far is to say that 100% of planets with life on them have produced space travel. And of course you can't forget that humans are very aggressive. We've exterminated thousands of other species, why would you assume that we didn't eliminate intelligent competitors in pre-history? There is quite a bit of discussion over the idea of humans destroying neanderthals, a different intelligent species that even had a larger brain than humans, and perhaps could have evolved into space travel themselves.

Ultimately, life keeps evolving. We are fairly certain that dolphins & whales were originally born from the ocean... then they evolved to live on land... and then evolved back to living in the water. They evolved to filled a gap, a habitable environment in the ocean, while other species evolved to fill the gaps on the land, and use the available resources on land. Tool & fire use opens up more environments to live in. We have multiple examples of species that use tools to a lesser degree, such as chimpanzees. It seems inevitable, given the right environment, that eventually a species will branch off and master tools.

Life is life is life. It evolves. We won't get SETI signals from an ocean planet, almost certainly. But all the evidence shows that life will evolve into tool-makers given the right land-water ratio.

As for dolphin speech, pods use about 50 different whistles to communicate with each other identifying both their surroundings and themselves, and to coordinate pack hunting in some instances. There is definitely some level of content. Does that count as complex information, and intelligence? Thats why I said it's open to debate.