> a) don't catch the disease, we don't know if that was genetic or
> luck, likely no influence on 'breeding'

> The plague is under control because of much much better
> sanitation, not because humans suddenly became 'immune' to it.

European Jewish communities had lower infection rates for Black Death, Bubonic Plague, etc. Back then, society knew nothing about bacteria, viruses, or sanitation. Jews followed their religious laws regard washing of dishes before meals, and washing their hands before meals. Non-Jews didn't. The resulting lower Jewish death rate contributed to anti-semitism, claims of Jews being in league with the devil, and pogroms. Nowadays it's considered standard to wash your dishes and your hands.

> Your ass

Paying with your ass... would that be "butt-coin"?

> a) not have the right to be "disgruntled" unless

Note that the part of the post you quoted talks about posting "angry statements". E.g. don't publically claim you're gonna make them sorry. Stay off social media.

BTW, this is not exclusive to cyberspace. In meatspace, if you go around badmouthing someone, talking about how you're "gonna make him pay", and that someone is soon found murdered, you're a potential suspect.

> According to this judge,

The judge turned down a motion to throw out the lawsuit, rather than letting it proceed. This is not a final ruling on the case. You need extremely strong evidence in your favour to throw out a lawsuit at this early stage. The judge merely ruled that the lawsuit was not entirely without merit. The judge (and jury) that hears the actual case will decide who did what to whom, and if compensation is called for.

> On the other hand faraday cages tend to block more frequencies
> than you'd like, ex. you probably also would block cell reception.

So? Put up a cell low power cell tower inside the building... and charge users roaming fees while you're at it. Get em coming and going.

...which is what they should be called.

Definition of "conflicted"... trying to figure out which side to support when the French ad agencies sue APK.

Get somebody's SSN, birthdate, name, sex, employer, home address, etc, and identity theft becomes much easier.

> It's a separate app. If you don't like it, don't use it...

That's what Lennart said about systemd.

> No, don't tell him that - I'd like to see how he thinks a species can
> evolve against an external threat within one generation and without
> exposing more than a significant minority of its population to that threat.

You are mis-understanding Darwinism. The premise behind Darwinism is that...
* random shit happens during the reproductive process, resulting in random mutations within a species (e.g. Homo Sapiens)
* random shit happens when the environment throws different survival problems at the species (e.g. AIDS)
* the individuals with beneficial differences (i.e. stronger immune systems against AIDS) are more likely to survive, and procreate, passing their AIDS-resistance mutation to their children

This, in a nutshell is "survival of the fittest". The problem quantifying "fittest" is that it depends on the external environment. E.g. Sickle Cell anemia gene carriers (usually African origin) have higher resistance to malaria, which is a net survival plus in African jungles, notwithstanding some anemia. In the African jungles that meant they survived better, and had more children.

Then some were taken as slaves to the US. 200+ years later, the superior malaria-resistance is not helpful, but the anemia side-effects remain, so it's a net minus.

> WTF, overwrites the MBR? What half assed OS does this attack? Windows?

I'm a linux user, not a Microsoft fanboi, but... have you ever heard of fdisk? Or for that matter...

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

to wipe the MBR. If you want to take out the entire hard drive, it's

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Any OS that can be installed from USB key or a CD can do the equivalant of this.

> (We wound up taking down our trees for unrelated reasons - one was
> dead and the second dropped berries all over our lawn rendering our
> back yard unusable and attracting flies.)

Just be thankful you don't live in Toronto. See http://www.toronto.ca/311/know... Even removing a *DEAD* tree will cost you several hundred dollars for the paperwork+approval alone...

> Private tree permit exemptions
>
> A tree that is dead, terminally diseased or imminently hazardous does
> not require a permit, however the applicant must send a detailed Arborist report
> and receive approval from Urban Forestry before proceeding with any tree work.

The cost of a contractor to cut down+remove the tree+stump is additional. An "Arborist" is a licenced professional "tree doctor" with an applicable university degree. Their reports are equivalant to an MD's "medical opinion", and their fees are equivalant to having a medical specialist examine you without medical insurance. And in case you're wondering...

> Fines for illegal tree removal
>
> A person convicted of an offence under City of Toronto Municipal
> Code Chapter 813, Article III is subject to a minimum fine of $500.00
> and a maximum fine of $100,000.00 per tree involved in an offense;
> a special supplementary fine of $100,000.00 is also possible.

> Exactly. Caller ID should not be allowed to be spoofed, ever. Make it
> really illegal and start to crack down on any provider that allows it to happen.

Caller ID is too simple. You really need to use ANI (Automatic Number Identification), which is a much more robust protocol. It is accurate because it's used for billing on telephone landlines. Only problem is that it costs money, and I don't know if you can get it on a residential account. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Note that I said it's used for telephone landlines. It can be defeated by using an outbound-only VOIP line.

Only dumb criminals/terrorists would use social networks to plan crimes. Remember how Osama Bin Laden dropped out of sight after 9/11? No cellphones, no landlines, no email, etc. Just communicating via messangers. It took the best intelligence services on the planet years to find him. After the first few splashy cases hit the news, criminals/terrorists will go back to "sneakernet", and the social-network monitoring infrastructure will go to waste.