Let's hold a hearing on scientifically driven politics, and don't invite the politicians!

Great, lets just look in on this group of scientists I found that are not funded by government money:

*crickets*

1) The app has to declare if it's going to be doing background processing, and you have to give a reason why they will accept. So not just any app can do that.

What we really need is the ability to turn on and off specific permissions by app. Perhaps with the ability to limit internet permission to certain IPs/URLs per app. That would solve most of the problem.

I thought Google added that ability in an early 4.0 or 5.0 version of Android, but then backed it out... Sadly I think because too many apps react badly when permissions are withdrawn it expects to run. The whole model creates a bad precedent I think where you assume you'll have all the app permissions you requested and so if any are withdrawn individually (which advanced users can do) the app is prone to break even though it could carry on just fine if it had been coded to detect that one permission was disabled. Google is going to have to bite that bullet at some point.

One of the things I was thinking the port was there for, was probably when developers could build native apps for the phone - since it would be a little pokey to ship debug builds and running debug info over wireless to the watch, a development cable would be a great idea.

It's probably also for Apple Store employees to run diagnostics (not sure if they have equipment for that yet).

The diagnostic port is hidden by a cover. I'd be interested to see if removing the cover adversely affect's the watch's water resistance.

It may somewhat, but given that the port itself is located under the round part of the band that slides into the watch, it seems like it would be sealed away fairly well (especially if you designed the strap with that in mind).

It seems pretty sure sweat would not be able to get in there, really only submersion would have a chance.

Excuse me sir, but I could not help heartily agreeing with the veracity of your statement and wondering just why it was your signature for at least that post is not "Ha Ha!".

I agree it would have been really illuminating to do the same test for a large range of free iOS apps.

However I think that you wouldn't see the most egregious of tracking stuff going on in iOS, for two reasons:

1) iOS reviews would I think alarm on something connecting to 810 different tracking sites. Definitely f you were trying to do anything like that in the background.

2) There's simply not as much data to gather. Most Android apps ask for all possible permissions, because why not? You're probably not going to read it anyway. With the iOS permissions as they are the user is going to think "why is this app which has nothing to do with contacts, asking for contacts" (or location, or photo library, or health data, etc).

That said I'm sure many free apps on iOS are doing everything they can possibly get away with, and I would love to see quantified just what that is.

Well, by that logic then this is relevant too:

http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com...

According to data published by the Social Security Administration, the name Hillary is the most severely poisoned baby name in history. Hillary had been steadily climbing the baby name charts since the 1960s, when it first graced the Top 1000, becoming the 136th most common name for baby girls in 1992. But the name sharply reversed course in 1993, smashing several longstanding records (Ebeneezer, Adolph) for name contamination in its plunge from the Top 1000 girl names last year.

I'd only add one point further: as much as Ike's prescient warning about the military-industrial complex is quoted ad nauseum, what is much less-often quoted is his comments immediately following that bit...

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

I'd beg to differ, as there was a long and fruitful conversation on quora about exactly this.
I read through at least the first 20 replies, and they're quite good.*

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-sc...

Not to mention that the idea that scientists are strongly liberal is supported by ample statistical evidence (one example at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c... - Paul Krugman is hardly the mouthpiece of the GOP).

*let me be clear, I love science and hard science fiction, I think creationism is mythological poppycock, and yet I am a *staunch* conservative. So go figure.

You know what motivates scientists? Science. And to a lesser extent, their ego.

It's amazing how all of these pure Beings of Science can exist without any sources of funding, or motivation deriving thereof...

Oh wait.

Science if hard work for little pay

Little > 0

$500k is also > 0

I'll let you have the last response. Just thought someone should, in the name of scientific accuracy, throw actual truth into the froth.

Oh, one last truth...

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that the phrase "liberal media" was a conservative talking point

Only 7% of reporters are Republicans.

I would say to draw your own conclusions from that glaring fact but you already have, and you got them wrong.

My read on the "IRS Scandal" is that conservative groups with iffy not for profit status are upset that laws still applied to them in ways that they hadn't under the Bush Administration. I don't believe the matter will be otherwise resolved while the current administration is in office and moreover, I'm not particularly surprised that executive agencies might have differing methods for enforcing their mandate from one executive to another, especially given the free pass given to some groups under a previous administration.

Actually, if you were of voting age during the 1992 Presidential elections, you might remember that Bill Clinton was open that he would be working very closely with his wife on the matter. That might have been overshadowed by the spectacle of Ross Perot being a general-purpose sideshow, but it definitely did come up at campaign events and the like.

With regard to scandal or the lack thereof, the closest thing the Obama administration in general has had to one is probably the standard of care for veterans and specifically at Walter Reed. Benghazi has just been an ongoing conservative circle jerk and the Snowden disclosures have really just highlighted the overreach available LEGALLY to the administration.

You might say that the State Department under Obama has allowed relations with Israel to sour in favor of greater ties to other states in the region, but it might also be said that Israel is a big-boy country now that doesn't need the USA to enforce its will. Putin's expansionist aims been an ongoing issue since before Obama took office and the case can certainly be made that the US did not need to intervene on the ground in Iran, Libya or Syria in spite of whatever amount of sabre-rattling conservatives have wanted to do to the contrary.

Bearing that in mind, where do you see scandal in the Obama administration or more specifically in its foreign policy?

She crafted and presented a workable health care bill that was torpedoed for political reasons and would have avoided the current clusterfuck the USA has now.

She also served successfully as secretary of state in an essentially scandal free administration, no matter how much republicans wish it were otherwise.

I'll probably vote green party regardless (that's as much throwing away my vote in Indiana as voting for a democrat), but I do recognize that she has foreign and domestic policy experience in government.

I fail to see how laying off Congress and shipping their jobs to India would result in any possible lower value than we have in that body today?

One might point out that makes 2 massively egotistical women on the campaign trail, then?