The irony here is the timing. As poor taste as the comment was if you fast forward a year and let a comedian say the same thing or let Eminem rap about it and it'll be just fine. I guess I'm glad freedom of speech is still protected here in the States... unless you want to assault someone while also making rude comments in which case then its called a hate crime.

OM f'ing G... I remember being like 8 years old driving from LA to Victorville and hearing that song and asking my mom why they'd sing about a "bathroom on the right". She just laughed and told me it was "bad moon on the rise" and kept laughing and laughing and laughin. All these years I thought I was the only one. Thank god for this article. Now I know I'm not alone or weird. I don't have to kill myself now as all my reasons for being depressed stemmed from this one incident and now that I know others heard it too I feel so much better. Guess I can take the suicide hotline off my favorites list now...

Granted I'm in the backasswards, hick part of the country, not NYC, but I was taught the appropriate response to the "this is how we're gonna do it, boy" scenario thanks to my father driving home drunk from the bars all the time. Thankfully I was smarter than him (or at least smart enough) to realize that this was a lesson best learned by watching how he responded and then doing the opposite. To this day I've never had an issue... I just willingly accept that as long as the popo are present I have no rights or any expectations of civil liberties. Once gone, I re-evaluate things and determine if its worth my time to complain to someone

If we send the Beeb's in Zuck's place I think we could make everyone happy. Iran gets a white boy they can prosecute or just hold without cause for a really long time and the US no longer has to put up with his illegal actions or that noise he purports to call music. Considering there's a petition before the White House to have him deported back to the Canada anyway, I vote we offer this as an alternative.

On the flip side of the coin, jamming cellphone signals would eliminate some texting and driving so presumably it could have also saved some lives.

Interesting you say that... because for various medical reasons many parents don't want they're kids to have particular vaccines. Funny how we want to tar and feather them for refusing a vaccine over fears of a complication down the road that may or may not have evidence to back it up... yet its okay for them to skip the vaccines for other reasons.

So... the "anti-vax'ers" the article mentions... they're only a small subset of the population, right? Last I checked, according to the CDC they only account for less than .2 percent of the population. I understand the numbers are growing, but they're still a small subset. So if the other 99.8% of people are getting their vaccinations then this really only affects the non-vax'ers, right? In other words, they're getting exactly what they understand they'll get by not being vaccinated. So how is this a huge problem again? I'm confused. Granted, no one wants to see anyone, especially children, die unnecessarily when a vaccination could have kept them alive. But those who reject the vax's over fears of autism, etc understand that if they do get it, they're facing a different risk and they're basically playing the odds. In most cases, whether its measles or chicken pox, they get it, they get over it, and they'll never get it again and their immune systems are the better for it. In rare cases, they or their children will die. But they believe the odds of them dying from measles or pox is less than the odds of having a bad outcome from the vax and getting something like autism. Its all about risks the anti vax'ers are willing to take (and to take for their children). But being such a small subset of the population.. I'm not sure how this is a problem for the rest of us that are already vaccinated and can't get it anyway...

I've never had this problem. And since data is data is bits is bits... if this was an issue, you would think BR movies would have the same issue? I've been backing up to BR for about 3 years now and have had to go back to older media for restores and never had an issue. Like all media, your environment can affect them. I wouldn't let them get too hot or too cold, no direct sunlight, etc...

Oh, and for what its worth... yes, you can do rsync on Windows. I'm not assuming he has Mac, Linux, or UNIX. I've been doing rsync on the PC for years with cygwin... these days there are many more options and ports of rsync for Windows... even 64bit versions, etc. But my scripts are written around cygwin and expected variables and such, so I still do it the *old school* way. :) Just wanted to point this out though as inevitably someone will cry about rsync and Windows...

You could always just call up the NSA and ask them to restore the data. Odds are good they have a copy of it...

As you noted, Bluray holds a lot of data, but would take some time. Since its audio/video media, odds are most of it is pretty stagnant. I'd do an initial rsync job to write out to Bluray... then once a month or so repeat the job but now rsync will only get what's changed. Depending on the media type and age, you could also look at dedup'ing it and if the dedup'd copy is significantly smaller than the source you might be able to put that onto say one or two 3-4Tb drives.

I'm not endangering anyone. The idiot with the laser pointer is. I'm simply taking advantage of his stupidity to make a quick buck. :P

or better... if a majority of them do more poorly than their peers in other states, should they be allowed to form a class action suit against the education peeps or even the state?

I honestly don't see the issue with presenting all sides of an issue. I think going all evolution and excluding creationism is as bad as forcing only creationism to the exclusion of evolution. That said, I can only hope they use the Darwin Awards as the best proof we have of natural selection.

If they take "dare" you're $1000 richer. Just make sure you videotape them for proof so it can lead to an arrest. I see a potential to make a lot of money and to widdle down the stupid pool all in one shot here...