This particular cable merger would be bad. With that out of the way:

Tons of mom-and-pop shops with a good product but terrible process get bought by companies like Proctor & Gamble who have far better and more efficient processes. They then produce the same great product with more reliable quality at a much lower cost.

    My own company may well become an example- we make terrible products, and have bad process, leading to very slow customer service, etc. That's because I'm very good at designing innovative new software systems, and very bad at running a business. I can think of a dozen well-run software shops that would make us better by taking us over. Their process, their customer service, billing department, etc and our products would be a huge improvement.

Aside from small companies who just never developed good processes, there have been many famous brands that have been bankrupt or on the way to bankruptcy before being aquired by a better company with a clearer vision or better execution. Given that these companies were going bankrupt, or already bankrupt, for them to survive at all (as a division of a larger company) is better.

One big, big name is Youtube, who was burning through other people's money faster than a drunk Kennedy and getting rightfully sued every 5 minutes for copyright infringement. They had a cool idea, and a completely non-sustainable business model that was guaranteed to put them belly-up within 36 months until Google bought them. Google brought to bear their expertise in funding a free service in a way that keeps customers happy (aka the best targeted advertising available) , allowing YouTube to survive and thrive rather than burning away investors' money until investors got sick of it and'the whole thing imploded.

Operation on 2.5Ghz is authorized by part 15 of the FCC rules. Within part 15, there are a number of subparts, including subpart 5:

        If a Part 15 transmitter does cause interference to authorized radio communications,
even if the transmitter complies with all of the technical standards and equipment
authorization requirements in the FCC rules, then its operator will will be required to cease
operation, at least until the interference problem is corrected.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Bure...

Though it can be disabled, the folks at Apple seem to have been VERY conservative about which updates they mark as "automatic" - only this one update in two years. All other updates have been released as needing user approval first.

So by having it on, you are NOT subjecting yourself to the same level of crap as Windows users who automatically install all sorts of random updates every single month. You're only getting the most critical updates, one small update every couple of years.

I came in to work this morning, my last (half) day of work before leaving for a two week vacation, to find that my Mac had automatically handled done this update. I very nearly skipped this last half-day of work. Had I done that, and had "allow automatic updates" turned off, my machine would have been been vulnerable for two weeks until I came back. I'm glad this one was automatically installed, while al of the other lower-priority updates have always awaited my approval.

Aside from the question of standing, Snowden probably would have taken this oath before taking the NSA secrecy oath:

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

His prior oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, takes precedence in my mind.

The odds of a significant asteroid impact any time soon seem quite remote, but I think the exercise of having many agencies practice their coordination for a major event might come in handy. Here in Texas we drill all sorts of unlikely scenarios. We probably never drilled a major' fertilizer plant explosion in West, but we were prepared to mobilize anywhere, for any reason.

I very much expected that the vast majority of Slashdot commenters would take Uber's side, just because their marketing shtick is anti-establishment making them the darlings of the Slashdot crowd. I'm glad to see, and slightly impressed, to see that the Uber fans here are apparently capable of seeing when the Uber execs are being dicks.

At least ten patents so obvious they got kicked by USPTO already? If Uber is turning into a patent trolling company there might be some seriously conflicted people here on Slashdot.

An airliner isn't going to depressurize from something like a bullet hole either. Now if a large bomb blows a 3 meter hole in the fuselage, that'll depressurize and people's ears will pop painfully. The pressurization air is the same compressed air that provides 85% of the forward thrust of provided by it's two 54,000 lb thrust engines.

Here's how much air is available:
http://code7700.com/videos/top...

If the airliner is at maximum altitude when the large chunk of fuselage is removed and the cabin loses pressure, the pilot should descend to 8,000 feet or below because the passengers will get dizzy after a few minutes and may pass out.

That's interesting information, and useful for anyone serving hundreds of thousands of requests per second.

For the 99.9% of sites that serve single to hundreds of requests per second, it might pay to keep in mind that your sedan is not designed to run on jet fuel. What someone going a thousand times as fast does isn't necessarily relevant.

> The cop knowingly signed the document. Isn't this more important than the beliefs of the thief?

The defendant is on trial, not the cop. So what matters is whether the defendant knowingly committed the crime. (Some crimes have a standard such as "recklessly" rather than "knowingly"). When determining whether Joe is guilty, courts look at Joe's actions and Joe's intent.

If the cop violated Constitutional rights to get evidence, one penalty for the cop is that they can't use the evidence. There happens to be a side benefit to the defendant in some cases, but the goal is to discourage the cops from performing unlawful searches. In the scenario at hand, I don't see any Constitutional right being violated, so a motion to suppress would be without grounds. Unless you can articulate some _Constitutional_ grounds to suppress that I'm not thinking of.

I'll try explaining it the other way around, with a real-life case. There have been several cases that fit this pattern.

A cop wants to bust a bad guy. That cop gets his wife, a teacher, to pretend to be the DA and tell the bad guy he's authorized to do $crime. Cop busts the bad guy.

In court, bad guy says "the DA said I could ... at least, I thought she was the DA. The real DA replies "I never said a word to the guy. Some teacher said it was authorized, but she has no authority to authorize anything."

In such case, the courts have consistently held that the defendant is not guilty, because they THOUGHT that their actions were authorized and therefore lawful.*

So you see it doesn't matter if the person "authorizing" it is really a cop, a teacher, or a DA. What matters is what the defendant BELIEVES - whether they are trying to commit an act that is criminal or they are trying to aid law enforcement. The legal term is "mens rea", which means "guilty mind",'also known as "criminal intent ".

You are free to think that the courts should have done the opposite and found the person guilty when the "DA" actually isn't a DA. You can think it's wrong or right, but what actually sends people to prison or not in such cases is their actual belief - did they believe their act was authorized or not. The actual identity of the authorizing party does not matter under law.

* This mention of mistaken belief reminds some people of the phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Ignorance of the LAW generally isn't an excuse, but mistake of FACT IS an excuse. "I didn't know poisoning my husband counts as murder" is no good. "The bottle said 'blueberry syrup', so I thought it really was blueberry syrup that I put on his food" is a valid defense. Here we're talking about mistake of fact - the defendant thought the person was (or was not) a proper authority.

What matters is whether the defendant has a "reasonable belief " that their conduct is authorized and lawful. The question isn't whether or not the statement is TRUE, not for the sham "cops" or the real cop. The defendant doesn't THINK that it's true in either case. They think they're perpetrating a burgalry, not executing a search warrant. Since they don't know of any actual search warrant, they've committed burgalry- even if there actually was a cop, and a search warrant. The warrant they didn't know about, didn't think existed, is not an excuse to commit burgalry.

Another example - officers are allowed to possess certain substances for law enforcement purposes. A drug dealer signs agreements with their associated dealers claiming that they are all cops, and all busting each other. They do not believe that. They are actually possessing them for the purpose of drug dealing, not for law enforcement purposes (intent to distribute) . It turns out that one guy is actually a cop, and he photographs the drug dealing possessing drugs with the intent to distribute. What matters is the actual possession with actual intent to distribute. Making marks on paper claiming that you're trying to bust each other doesn't matter a whit. The crime is a) possessing drugs with b) intent to distribute. If you actually possess the drugs and actually intend to distribute , you're actually guilty and actually going to actual prison.

While in prison, you can write a letter saying that you're not really a prisoner, you're an undercover agent spying on the prisoners.

Just in case you actually believe that, here's a little information about what was actually going on, with an example.

In 2014, I did some work for the state of Texas and the state promised that they'd pay for that work 30-50 years from now, when I'm retired. Just as all public corporations are legally required too, Texas follows Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) , and therefore recognized that expense in 2014. They got the benefit in 2014, so they needed to pay the cost in 2014. That's why Texas has set aside $130 billion dollars, managed by disinterested third parties, to cover the future retirement costs it has already incurred by having us work for them. See http://www.trs.state.tx.us/inf... for details. The key point is that the state already got the benefit of my work, so they already paid it's cost, the retirement they promised I'll get later.

That's called the "matching principle " and is a basic part of GAAP. When corporations fail to follow GAAP, the executives can go to prison. You might wonder why. That's because they've acquired my services by promising that I'll get paid later; if they make no preparations to ensure that I'll actually get paid later that's fraud. Fraud in the billions is felony fraud and sends suits to prison.

What USPS was doing was having people work now, and promising to pay them 30-50 years later, but making no provision to make it possible to actually pay them. They were having employees work in 2000 and HOPING that in 2040 they'd have revenue to pay the promised retirement pay and benefits. Of course USPS might not be making any significant revenue in 2040, so there might not be any way to pay retirement in 2040 for workers who worked in 2000. The workers would be shit of luck, screwed out of the retirement they were promised. That's often considered felony fraud, but it's how the USPS was operating.

Congress figured that felony fraud on the postal workers'was a bad idea, and ordered USPS to do two things. First, they had to start setting aside _some_ money to pay the retirement benefits they had already promised to people who had already done the work. Second, they had to WRITE DOWN A PLAN for the fund to become sound within ~50 years.

    They didn't have to follow generally accepted accounting principles yet, but they had to have a plan on how they'd get their shit together within the next 50 years. That's where the "not even born yet" silliness comes from - the idea that USPS has to at least come up with a written plan as to how they won't still be committing the same fraud on their employees 50 years from now, if the USPS still exists in 50 years.

I know it it's fun to pretend that stuff. Just like some people enjoy pretending that Obama was born in Kenya. It kind of makes you look silly, though.

When a private corporation, or any state agency in any of the 50 states hires you to work THIS YEAR, while promising you'll get paid retirement from 2035-2055, they pay out that money to a 401k or other retirement fund THIS YEAR. Work done in 2014 gets paid for in 2014, with revenues generated in 2014.
Failing to set that money aside , normally in the care of a disinterested third party, is fraud and can send you to prison. That's a significant chunk of the white collar guys in prison- they didn't actually set aside funds in the appropriate accounts for various things, they only pretended to.

The matching principle is a fundamental principle of accounting that you learn in the first few weeks of Accounting 101. You have to match expenses (employee pay) with the revenues they generate (postage collected) . You don't get to collect the benefit now and just say "we'll pay the expenses in 30 or 40 years, long after the current board is gone". You have to recognize the expense in the same period as the revenue it generates. Again, disregarding Generally Accepted Accounting Principles is how suits end up in _prison_.

The US Postal Service is actually very unusual in that they had workers working in 2010, but promised to pay for that work in 2030-2050, using revenue they HOPED to generate in 2030-2050. The problem here is obvious - USPS might not be generating any significant revenue in 2040, so how are they going to pay all of those retired workers they promised to pay? With no money set aside, they won't get paid. That's fraud, and that's why private company officers who try that crap can end up in prison.

So you're basically advocating that USPS should commit felony fraud upon it's workers, by promising to pay them a handsome retirement but making no arrangements to see that they are actually paid.

That's an interesting thought. It occurs to me that there are only a few acts which would normally be criminal, but have exceptions for law enforcement purposes. As one obvious example, a cop can't authorize murder, and everyone pretty much knows that. A cop can't authorize robbery.

For those things a court can authorize via a warrant, such as a search that would otherwise be trespassing, the defendant would need to have a "reasonable belief " that the conduct was in fact lawful. Having your buddy sign a document saying he's a cop doesn't get you anywhere since you don't actually believe he's a cop. Having a habit of asking all of your criminal buddies to sign such a statement, and signing it yourself claiming that you are a cop, would tend to show that you know it's a sham. You know that you're not actually a cop, so you probably realize that the other guys aren't cops either. Without a reasonable belief that it's true, the statement is worthless.

I see you forgot to read the title , much less the summary or article. This is about how the MEDIA portrays people in debates over POLITICAL proposals. Most such "science" simply isn't science.

Unfortunately, politics is process of apportioning money and power, so the department head of Climate Science at UC Berkeley, whose job is to maintain their funding, is essentially a POLITICAL position. When the continued existence of your department is contingent on you acquiring a $20 million federal grant paid by taxpayers, that's a political job, not a scientific one, regardless of what the title "tenured professor " might imply.