He's just bludgeoning the Republicans with soundbite-worthy policy ideas that will whip up specific portions of his base in preparation for the next election.

And the sad part - the base is eating it up. They think he's serious. Neither side seems to have any idea of how adroitly they're being played.
 

I have to admit he surprised me on Cuba. Definitely didn't see THAT one coming.

Me too. But it only took about a minutes thought to figure out why... with Jeb Bush making noises about a Presidential run, President Obama is yielding Florida right out of the gate. Smart, very smart. He's no LBJ, but President Obama does have his moments.

I know loads of people who have anti-authoritarian spirit who take great care about where they say things, and try to clean up any record of what they've said.

Ah... the old "the .0000000001% of the population I know behave like x, therefore x is representative of the whole population" fallacy.

State governors can't exercise Federal Executive powers - such as commanding the Army, or supervising the Federal courts or the Postal Service, or... well, you get the picture.

The last I looked, the state of remote-sensing algorithms for limb profiling is something between bad and "are you kidding?".

But they are not doing much "remote sensing". All they are doing is recording when a GPS signal is received. That's it. That shouldn't be too hard. The delay between when the GPS should have been received, and was actually received, will tell them the index of refraction of the atmospheric cord it passed through, and from that, a ground computer can calculate the humidity, temperature, and pressure.

That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head. Limb profiling (what you describe) is a remote sensing technique, and it's not one that works really well.

The problem isn't receiving the signal (well, it's not a problem in this sense though it has challenges of it's own), the problem is analyzing the signal. You have three different variables (all of which vary with altitude to boot), with no way to significantly constrain any one of them - meaning arriving at an accurate value for one (let alone three) is a Very Hard and Poorly Understood problem.

This reads like an urban legend... Every field office got a copy, (seemingly) lots of employees were notified, but it's only public 30 years later? Hmm...

It was a classified document, even if it was widely circulated, so why wouldn't you expect it to not become publicly known for years if not decades? My Google-fu is weak ATM, but there have been authoritative accounts of President Eisenhower pre-designating significant power to various individuals in the event of a nuclear war and break down of communications circulating for at least a decade. (Essentially these individuals were to become 'regional czars' with broad Executive authority.) Other hints and allusions to this plan have been circulating in the [academic] strategic weapons and warfare community for years.

That was kinda my point... Anonymous and the OP have leapt off the deep end by assuming it should have gotten greater coverage and that since it didn't that meant there was some vast conspiracy protecting "those in power".

isn't it interesting how the media has looked the other way in the case of Michael Centanni

Not really. He's a fund raising hack, not someone of particular note or in any position of power.

It sounds more like you read "Republican" and went off the deep end with your assumptions than any indictment of the media.

And I suspect any lawyer worth his salt is going to advise you to just Stay The Fuck Away from the stuff.

If that's what your lawyer says, either follow his advice or get a 2nd opinion (and if they agree, follow the advice).

If you want to do something of such high risk so badly that you'll lawyer shop until you get the advice you want - why bother to ask a lawyer at all?
 

They know the law as written and as enforced (i.e. whether the local, state, and national prosecutors will be "friendly" or "hostile" to you regardless of the actual statute) better than I do.

They know the law as written, and case law, but they have fuck all way of knowing which prosecutor you'll be brought to the attention of or how he'll react.

If the news outlets seem to be participating in a cover up, notify other news outlets, but be careful: What looks like a "news outlet conspiracy of silence" may be because the FBI is in the middle of a sting and the feds have asked the news outlets to keep quiet until the trap is sprung.

Or the news outlets don't judge something that "links to what you think is child porn" to be newsworthy. (Which it isn't actually.) Or they lump you in with the dozens (or more) other tips from "crazies" they get on a daily basis. Or... any one of a dozen more perfectly sound reasons.
 

If you routinely do things in your fight against child-porn that put you at a higher risk of running across it, as some of these Anonymous guys likely are, take technical steps to reduce your risk (use a text-only browser, for instance), and have a lawyer on retainer.

See also "looks like a crazy because he claims to have found text that sounds like it might be associated with images he thinks are child porn".
 

Ask your lawyer what steps you need to take so when the police do come knocking it's painfully obvious to the police, the jury, and to everyone else that you are not intending to actually download or possess the stuff but sometimes it gets through your technical barriers.

And I suspect any lawyer worth his salt is going to advise you to just Stay The Fuck Away from the stuff. The only way to actually know it's there is to actually look at it - and the only way to do that is to actually download and possess it.

allowing an organisation that is answerable to none but the United States Supreme Court to regulate a virtual currency that is in direct competition with its own pet, the Almighty Dollar.

As I've said many times before - so long as you follow a few very simple rules and you pay your taxes in dollars, the US Goverment doesn't care if you conduct your daily business in dollars, Bitcoins, or jars of pickled hamster poop. They whole idea of "competition" has been created out of whole cloth by the Bitcoin Tinfoil Hat Society. It's an ego trip thing, if you're being persecuted, you're obviously Important and Sticking It To The Man. That The Man has pretty consistently ignored them is nothing short of infuriating to these small minded ignoramuses. (Going after criminals who use Bitcoin is *not* the same thing as going after Bitcoin, no matter what said Tinfoil Society tries to tell you.)

but most of the images are locked up for six months.

Seems a fair trade to me, given the scientists involved has spent anywhere from years to decades working on this project and aren't exactly getting rich in the process.
 
 

Maybe, but the approach is looking increasingly anachronistic. That's partly because of a new kind of real-time public engagement with science thanks to the Internet; but it's also to do with changes in the way raw scientific data is made available.

Um, no. The public avidly following the flavor-of-the-month in science isn't particularly new, with the internet and social media it's just become much more visible. (I can remember when three different popular magazines had Voyager's pictures of Jupiter on their cover in the same month.) Nor are there any notable changes in the way raw scientific data is becoming available - the Sentinel system is far and away the exception to the rule.

Seriously? So does Apple, and pretty much every other hardware manufacturer out there.

It isn't as easy to spot the "fakers" as you might imagine. Especially if you don't speak the same "language".

Thank you Captain Repeating Exactly What I Said.

I don't think the OP has ever met a real 1%, or maybe even a real 10%... because you're spot on, if you're in the 60%, they stand out almost immediately (as do the fakers).

They could have "gone back to their roots" by dumping all the common electronics that you can get anywhere and addressing the do-it-yourselfers by hopping on the robotics/Arduino bandwagons.

All that would accomplish is to move the date of bankruptcy closer.

Seriously, Slashdot does not seem to get that there's a reason why Radio Shack started moving away from catering to the maker/robotics/hacker/tinker communities back in the 1950's, and gave up trying to support them at all back in the 1990's. There's a reason why even Fry's got away from it when they started to get big and spread away from their original location and customer base. The maker/robotics/hacker/tinker communities are small and very thinly spread - *and* they're all very comfortable shopping online. There's no money to be made in trying to run a bricks-and-mortar store catering to them.