The problem is that there a lot more SS7 systems out there now and not all under the control of competent/secure telcos but for various reasons (including mobile roaming) there is implicit level of trust between telcos. You might be filtered out in the US, but perhaps not somewhere else. There is already a problem of being able to pull locator info including cell-id for a cell phone from any other SS7 mobile switch. The trick is to get in at that level which isn't hard given the appetite of some regimes for foreign currency.

People spend a lot of time communicating with co-workers and generally become friends of some kind, it's pretty natural that they'd make jokes. And if your primary form of communication is over email it's natural you'll joke over email as well, it's not stupid as much as human nature.

And I don't see what makes the jokes offensive. Sure in the wrong context they're racist, but there's no reason to think they were using a bad context. This just feels like one of those incidents where a politician says something dumb and everyone wastes a newscycle trying to be offended by it.

So will a million other factors, most of which can't be foreseen or predicted. Would your Grandparents have foreseen the day that you could access the entirety of human knowledge on a device that fits into the palm of your hand?

The Earth and humanity have never been and never will be static entities. The climate has changed a great deal during the geologically insignificant amount of time that humans have been around. Most of those changes occurred before we started digging carbon out of the ground. Changes will continue long after we've moved past carbon based energy supplies. The notion that the climate was "ideal" during some specific period would be laughable if there wasn't a serious movement trying to use it to make public policy.

When you outsource your services to a data center provider you are trusting there security, there hiring practices, and there employees.

And you are trusting the NSA and any law enforcement agency with a subpena or national security letter and whoever they trust. At least if you host in house, you will have legal notification when they seize your data.

We've personally dealt with long-time academics who have no real world experience. They'll spew theoretical crap all day long, and those of us who have worked in industry see it for what it is: crap.

In CompSci, I would tend to agree with you; and the humanities do count as complete bullshit, so nothing for them to really get objectively "wrong". :)

But in Quantum Physics? In that domain, the academics overlap 100% with "industry". Sure, you could argue that virtually the entirety of the semiconductor industry depends on quantum physics, but IMO, that field evolved incrementally from the "Cat's whisker" (which may as well have worked by magic for all its users understood about it), not from any sort of first-principles breakthrough as verification of the theory.

How would you bring them back to earth if they said they wanted to be a racing driver, pop-star, footballer, celebrity, etc.

As a parent it is your job to set realistic goals and expectations not pander to childish nonsense.

Sorry dude, but it's already been sold.

Wow, loving all the ACs calling this obvious, who clearly didn't even make it to the abstract! "Such wave-particle duality relations (WPDRs) are often thought to be conceptually inequivalent to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, although this has been debated."

Clearly, all you armchair physicists need to set those ivory-tower morons straight!

No, actually it's not. This is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that makes it so hard to take the alarmist crowd seriously. It also gives ammunition to the deniers/skeptics/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. Project the worst case scenario for climate change and the human race survives. People in developing countries don't do so well and even the developed world takes a hit (higher food prices, greater frequency of natural disasters, and so on) but the human race isn't going anywhere. Homo sapiens quite probably survived a super-volcanic eruption, without the benefit of modern technology and scientific understanding. You think you can kill them off with melting ice caps, stronger hurricanes, and rising sea levels? Best of luck with that.

I'm in the crowd that believes the climate is changing and that homo sapiens are a contributory factor to that change. I get off the bus when the green crowd starts talking about pie in the sky solutions that sound great on paper but invariably result in a lower standard of living and greater Governmental control over our lives. Unless you're willing wholly embrace nuclear power (to their credit a few greens actually are) there's no way you can generate enough energy to maintain our current standard of living without sourcing some of that energy from carbon based sources.

That would quite probably be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause....

It started with FDR (*), the New Deal, and a little known SCOTUS case involving wheat....

Thanks Democrats!

(*) Actually the progressive philosophy really got started with Wilson but that asshat didn't have FDR's cojones. I guess FDR did save Western Civilization as we know it; that probably should count for something....

I hate to break it to you but THC is a drug by any definition.....

Mind you, so is caffeine, and I'm not passing judgment on you for using THC, been there done that. You just can't claim that you have stayed away from all drugs while simultaneously admitting that you use marijuana on a regular basis....

What they have been telling me is that since Colorado legalized pot, they have seen a huge increase in people bringing pot into the state. That is the difference from a dry to wet county.

I wouldn't really call that a "difference" - The exact same thing happens in "dry" counties/town. Maybe somewhere in the deep, dark South you can find a town or two that really believe in all that "dry" bullshit, but in practice, prohibitions against alcohol work just as well as prohibitions against pot - ie, not at all.


they all agree that if you're caught with it, they can't just let you go.

I realize you said that as a paraphrased quote, not a personal stance, but... Of course they can! Did you ever get pulled over for speeding or an expired inspection, and the cop let you off with a warning?

Ironically enough, the idea of "police discretion" applies all the way up the food chain - Colorado can "get away" with its legalization precisely because the federal government has decided that, for now at least, it will turn a blind eye to marijuana use in states that legalize it.