You've clearly never seen Leela of the Seva Team (aka Survey Team).

http://www.shadowlocked.com/images/stories/whoreviews/baker/leela.jpg

The United States is not signatory to all of the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions (a number of them at any rate) extend generally to uniformed combatants in the armed services of a government, not non-uniformed combatants working for an NGO or nobody (except in a very diffuse way).

However, for them to be criminals, there would have to be jurisdiction for legal process to occur. I'm fairly certain that the there is no law enforcement jurisdiction belonging the US in some of the places these combatants have been detained and removed from.

All of that said, these foes are best described as insurgents or terrorists. They are willing to engage both military and civilian targets, to impersonate members of any local police or military, and are not themselves signatory to the Geneva Conventions and thus denied their protections. Their tactics involve terrorism and generally involve destabilization of a region which would basically be an insurgency against the existing power structure.

With comments like that, your sig line may need some work.

The Republicans aren't responsible for Gitmo, nor are the Democrats. The US electorate and America is. It is an American prison. Governments placed by American electors created it and maintained it.

That's who is responsible.

As one of my USAian friends, a veteran of 18 years US SF and 7 or 8 more in 82nd Abn before that likes to point out:

When Obama was elected, everything was going to be different. Warrantless wiretaps would be going away, Gitmo would be going away, extraordinary rendition would stop, and so on.

Then the new President got his first National Security Briefing. Then nothing changed and the surveillance powers extended, drone strikes intensified, Gitmo is still there, and so on.

His opinion was that once anyone understood the full nature of the varied threats and their agency leaders explained that the tools were very useful in threat management, this would inevitably happen no matter who was in the White House.

I was hoping for the technology that would give them a short, sharp jolt of electricity to the testicles.

Play nice or play sore, your call, griefer punks!

Have you ever ridden in a cab?<br><br>Routinely, I've seen: speeding, lane changes without signals, driving with one hand (at best) on the wheel in traffic, following too close, driving in cars whose brakes and general state of maintenance I have doubts about, talking on the cell phone and sometimes also radio at the same time while driving, cutting people off, etc.<br><br>I'm sure the cab driver profession is the first thing we can replace with automated cars to have greater road safety.

I can't find a place in Beta to change my default posting mode and obviously the post above is pooched - &lt;br&gt; inserted but not correctly parsed.<br><br>How do I fix this within Beta?<br><br>I didn't insert these HTML codes, something in the submission interface must have but I can't see any preferences under profile or account in the Beta that will let me amend this.

That's not a 'safety requirement' as such.<br><br>Even if what you mention is the case, why is it safe to drive other places and not to the airport?<br><br>Methinks city revenues and cab driver unhappiness are behind this. The Taxi Guild is a powerful lobby because it pumps money into CIty Hall's coffers. Neat new disruptive technology is all well and good until it threatens the city's bottom line....

Want to backup your Notes? Oh wait, that's a hidden db and you need a @me.com email address...<br><br>It isn't a permission per se but Apple has a lot of their own lock-in in how they do things.

And they'll stop geeks, some of the potentially most heavy users of their technology, from leveraging them, recommending them, or wanting to develop for them.<br><br>I don't see that the current permission system was preventing anyone developing anything. Have you noticed how many apps are on Google Play? This seems like trying to pursue business that is already being done....

I'd agree entirely with that.<br><br>I'm already not sanguine about the permissions apps ask for (and in fact, several security research firms have pointed out the risks). Often times, a well meaning dev will explain that he has to have X permission because google has buried one particular function (not always obviously related) into that permission and that function makes sense for the app. You almost get the feeling the dev is apologetic in many cases and would like to just have a single finer grained permission.<br><br>It's okay to HAVE permission groups, but you should also have very finely grained permissions. Good companies and devs would only use the fine grained ones that did the MINIMUM they needed to do. And one would then not install overly broad permission groups.<br><br>Why is Google putting the work of vetting permission groups and understanding the implications onto end users versus onto themselves and the devs for apps? This smacks of something for lazy devs versus something for consumers.<br><br>And one more thing: How about installation require the minimum number of permissions to make the basic app functions work and additional permissions queried and granted/denied if optional features are enabled?<br><br>I have a lot of apps that want permissions for social media integration and I'm not on that boat and will never use that part of their app. Why do I need to open that security door to install since the rest of their app functions fine without it?<br><br>Mobile development seems to be about as poorly thought out (API wise and design wise) as PC software was in the early days of GUIs.

Given his opinions, I wouldn't give him $0.01, let alone 13 million. And as far as demanding to be paid in bitcoins, ROFLCopter!

If you voluntarily associate yourself with the murderers of innocent people, it says a lot about you. His own judgment is obviously very suspect (both for choosing associates and for assessing his worth). He comes off as a narcissist and a troubled soul who is projecting his rage at the outside world, rather than accepting responsibility and dealing with his own issues.

He is neither hero, patriot, nor poor soul. He has made his own choices and has no ability (as far as I can see) to accept the consequences of his own decisions and their consequences. If this pattern repeats, he'll end up back in jail again.

If he was smart, he'd take his freedom and run with it and spend some time fixing up his own problems.

A friend of mine who works for NASA (or at least in the downstream distribution of NASA satellite data) and is an amateur astronomer and photographer sent me this information: (Thanks Indy!) - Maybe it'll be useful to some....

So, this coming weekend, specifically Friday night/Saturday morning, there is to be a brand spanky new meteor shower happening. So brand spanky new it hasn't been observed before, because the dust from the associated comet has not intersected with Earth's path until now. And because of all the uncertainty with the debris stream, there are heavy caveats to "this MAY happen" - but if it does...brand new event never before seen!

Given that it's so new, that nothing is *known* about it, anything could happen. It could fizzle. Or it could become the most spectacular thing to happen since the Leonid meteor storm of 2002 (it is unlikely, however great this meteor shower gets, that it'll get THAT good!).

So, first, the nuts and bolts for this weekend. The meteor shower is *predicted* to reach it's peak between the hours of 2am and 4am Eastern Daylight Time on the morning of May 24th (adjust your times accordingly with respect to your time zones; example, midnight to 2am Mountain Time). BUT, because there are uncertainties in exactly where the dust ball is that we will be passing by, it could peak upwards of a few hours on either side of that. However, the meteor folk who have been tracking this stuff are reasonably confident on their predict times.

Further to this, it's not known how distributed the debris cloud is. It could be pretty compact, in which case the peak may last only a few minutes. Or it could be fairly distributed, in which case the peak could last for hours. Or it could be clumpy, in which case there may be more than one peak! Again, new brand spanky new meteor shower, we have no idea yet! :-D

Second, the meteor shower will appear to be coming out of the *very* obscure constellation of Camelopardalis, which is situated to the right of the Big Dipper, left of Cassiopeia, and below the Little Dipper (see attached image). It's a pretty sparse area of sky. The constellation is so obscure that in the decades of my looking at the sky, I've never tried tracing it out. Maybe this weekend I finally will. :-D

So, given the above radiant, your best option to face during the shower is to the north (and if you're not sure where that is - and not everyone does, especially if they are directionally challenged - remember where the sun went down, then stand so that direction is off to your left :-) ). But don't *focus* on staring to the north! Look around. Face east a bit. West. Look overhead! Meteors can fall all around. It's just that you will likely see more (albeit shorter, quicker) meteors coming out of the north than you will to the west, east, or overhead (which will be longer, and slower, but relatively fewer). But don't restrict yourself to only northward-looking.

Darkness. If at all possible, you want to find the darkest location you can to see this. That means, getting out of and AWAY from the cities. Light pollution will utterly swamp the sky, and you won't see ANYthing. :-( The further away from lights you can get, the better. And get to a location where you have open skies, a view to the north, and can see as much of the sky as possible (being in the middle of the woods - dark or not - won't do you a bit of good in viewing the sky much)

Dressing for the Weather. Assuming it'll be clear where you are, check the forecasted temperature lows, and dress as if it will be 10-15 degrees cooler/colder than that. Hats are good. :-) Meteor watching - heck, night sky watching in general - is not among the more heat-inducing activities. ;-) Also, lawn chairs or blankets, and sleeping bags, are nice to have. Be comfortable!

What you MIGHT expect to see? Really, nobody *knows* for certain, but I've seen some healthy numbers tossed out that you COULD MAYBE see upwards of 100-400 meteors/hour (comes out to 1.5 to almost 7 meteors/minute). That's a healthy number, but it is not a storm (you need 1000+ meteors/hour to make it a meteor storm; don't let any popular media fool you on this). The vast majority of meteor showers that occur during the year only yield 10-20 or so meteors/hour. The most popular meteor showers - the Perseids and the Geminids - have usual runs going from 50-120 meteors/hour (they are popular because the meteors are plentiful - averaging 1-2 meteors/minute - and bright). This new meteor shower...it could fizzle to be something on the order of 5-10 meteors/hour, or it could meet the predicts and be a pretty spectacular show! We won't know until Saturday morning.

Note: if you see meteors moving across the sky from directions other than the general vicinity of Camelopardalis, those would probably be sporadics, random meteors that burn through our skies all the time (but fairly infrequently), not associated with any specific meteor shower. They often have characteristics different from those of a meteor shower (faster, slower, different color, brightness/dimness, etc). Just an fyi, in case you see any and they aren't "behaving" like the Camelopardalids (assuming this new meteor shower kicks off as is hoped).

Unfortunately for a vast majority of the people in the world, they won't get to see this show. Because it's coming out of the north, and from the nominal circumpolar constellations, folks in the southern hemisphere are unlikely to see anything. And for those in the northern hemisphere, the further south one is in the hemisphere, the less one will see. Also, due to the predicted timing of the peak, the majority of the meteors are supposed to occur in the wee hours for the eastern United States and Canada. But because the radiant is so high in the north, even western US/Canada will get their opportunity to see it in their hours earlier than the Eastern folks (remember, adjust for the time zones; consider the peak time to be the benchmark and adjust your views accordingly).

Also, those folks in Europe/Asia will be in daylight during the peak of the shower. :-( (well, the Europeans did get to see 1000+ meteors/hour during the great Leonid Meteor Storm of 2002; I "only" got to witness a rate around 600-800/hour by the time this part of the world rotated into the stream).

Finally, just because the peak is slated for 2-4am Saturday morning does not mean there won't be meteors falling earlier or later. We don't know how broad or sharp the peak is, so there could be a good show going on a couple hours before or after the peak time. We Just Don't Know. But we will find out! :-)

Some links for you:
Earth-Sky:
http://earthsky.org/space/comet-209p-linear-meteor-shower-storm-may-2014

Universe Today:
http://www.universetoday.com/111474/may-meteor-storm-alert-all-eyes-on-the-sky/

Bad Astronomy Blog:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/20/camelopardalids_a_new_meteor_shower_from_comet_209p_linear.html

Astro Bob's Blog:
http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2014/05/19/the-sky-is-falling-surprise-meteor-shower-may-strike-saturday-morning/

If it's cloudy where you are, or you are in a part of the world where you'll be unable to view the show, you can view it life here:
http://events.slooh.com/

If you want to try your hand at photographing the shower, tons of sites out there with good base 'how to' info:
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+photograph+meteor+showers

Perhaps -- but right now, it looks like the treatment may work best on people who have not been vaccinated.

In other words, the anti-vac population may have yet anotther reason to tell people not to get their vaccination.