Mugen Power Batteries, great batteries, excellent price. They make extended batteries, some that fit in stock battery compartments, some that use extended battery covers. I've used them on several phones, and am about to buy one for my new LG G3 (only an extra 100ma, but when you're on call, it helps).

This is interesting. I was just discussing this with my friend last night, and proposed this exact solution. However, it's still a reactive solution. It will detect that you may be the victim of a stingray attack, but it won't stop your phone from connecting in the first place. But there is another potential solution, I just don't have enough experience developing android roms to say how it would have to be implemented. The idea is this: maintain a database of all know cell towers (your link to OpenCellID would do nicely, they offer their DB for download). Using a rooted or fully custom ROM, such as cyanogenmod, have the phone compare any new tower to the database prior to connecting. If it doesn't exist in the database, red flag it and don't connect.

The question is, can this be done on the OS level, or does it have to happen on the driver level? If it can be done at the OS level, easy peasy, just modify the code to establish tower connections to include this check. If it has to happen on a driver level, it gets trickier. Most phones use proprietary binary drivers for their cell radios, so they couldn't be readily modified. However, it may be possible to load an intermediate driver, which in turn loads the proprietary driver. If it could be determined which driver calls involved connecting to a new tower, you could just pass through everything else, and only pass through calls to the tower connect function if they passed your database lookup. Trickier, but doable. Because really, you want to avoid connecting to these things at all. Nice though it is to see you're being attacked, it's better to stop the attack before it starts.

A government's just a body of people. Usually, notably ungoverned.

Episodes I through III are only on here so our wise poll overlords can track down anyone who clicks on them, freeze them in carbonite, and ship them off to re-education camps.

I'll stick with my Sirius Cybernetics Happy Vertical People Mover, thank you very much. It may be a bit unhinged, but damnit, it gets me where I need to go (well, when it's not sulking in the basement, anyway).

Wow, I actually didn't notice that until I saw your post. Total deal breaker, which is tragic, I was all about this phone up until the moment of realization. I constantly walk around with at least 2 64GB cards in my wallet, Get a phone with large internal storage, keep all my apps on the internal, have bulk data and media on the cards. Without a slot, my entire mobile storage strategy goes right out the window. This seems like an incredibly foolish design decision, and one that will turn away a large part of the phone's potential market, namely people like me who actually store lots of data (video, mostly, people always trip when you connect your phone to their TV and start playing quality HD movies instead of the trifling low-bitrate shit they're used to from Netflix and the like). The ones most likely to miss this feature are probably the same kind of folks who've been playing with Cyanogenmod for years, too (again, me). And seriously, what would a slot have done to the price of the phone? I'd happily pay the extra to have an SD slot.

Meh. Even without the real money auctions, and reasonable loot drops that don't force you to go to the auction house, and even if the story wasn't the weakest of the three, and even if the gameplay was fun, and even if the skill and player stats system wasn't geared towards noobs, and, hell, even if they allowed LAN play and offline single-player, I still wouldn't care. Torchlight II. Had all the desireables from day one, none of the corporate crap that encumbered D3, and it was made by some of the same folks who made D1 and D2. So D3 is largely irrelevant to me anyway. Of course, I still don't play Torchlight nearly as much as I did D2, but I'm long out of school, I have a job, and a nascent business, and I live walking distance from crazy fun beaches and trails, so this is to be expected. Now, I WISH there were more hours in the day, so I could do all this and still have time to game. Considering relocating to Venus, but that seems like too many hours in the day.

Oh, they still have civics classes. Took one in high school. Basically, you're taught "this is how the government works, this is how it has always worked, and it always works correctly, and it's the best government in the world." Critiques from students such as "well, here's a real world example that shows it doesn't work that way" or "well, that doesn't strike me as best, particularly in a place that bills itself as the land of the free" are met with hostility because it disrupts the all-important curriculum plan, and you'll be dismissed without discussion. The class was essentially state-sponsored indoctrination, coaching kids to uncritically accept the government as ideal and immutable. Critical thinkers need not apply.

Significantly less. I don't play Diablo II anymore, and Diablo III sucked. Nuff said.

Although we are technically in New Jersey...

Hah! You know, I would never have associated that reference with something as stupid as politics, but you know the fuck of it is you're right! I mean, the state couldn't work if people saw it for what it was, so it would have to morph or evolve to survive that eventuality. You sir or madam have given me an interesting line of philosophical thought to pursue, and for that rarity I thank you.

OK, so I know I'm not supposed to read the fucking article. But for some reason I clicked. I don't know why, I just clicked, and I read it, and I'm sorry. I understand now. I understand why we must never, ever rtfa. Because it's just mindbogglingly retarded.

Seriously, though, did anyone else read that? I'm trying, I'm really trying to just type a well-reasoned response based on logic and rationality. But there's a big part of me that just wants to grab this blithering moron by the shoulders, shake her very hard, and scream loudly in her face.

OK, to briefly summarize her position, basically she says that anyone who cares enough about their own progeny to send them to private schools is a bad person because by doing so they deprive everyone else's children of what is apparently their fair share of the love and support these bad people shower upon their own kids, and are therefore impeding the development of her utopian vision of the public education system of the far future. To make up for their misdeeds, these bad people should immediately enroll their children in whatever public school exists in their area, where the children will receive a significantly worse education for generations to come (I shit you the fuck not, she actually says it's a good thing for current private schoolers to be given a shit education for generations to come, says the kid's grandchildren should expect a poor education, but it's all for the children of the distant future, which is a new tact: fuck the children, it's for the children). Her, ahem, logic for all this is that by shaming parents (she's explicit on that, she doesn't want to ban private schooling, we need a "morality adjustment" to make people look down on it) into dumping their kids into substandard schools, it will force parents to work to make public schools "better" (a term she doesn't qualify, but based on the overall piece one can assume better means everyone learns what she thinks is right. God help us all...).

Now, I don't think she could summarize her own point that articulately, because, as she mentions with an air of pride, she is poorly educated and doesn't read, and she clearly has no talent as a writer. But that is what she says. There's a lot of attempts on her part to show solidarity with people who are in genuinely horrific schools (the kind where you can fucking die) by pointing out her own hardships (apparently there was no soccer team).

OK, so as to a solid refutation, lets start with the core concept. She assumes that full participation, every parent sending their kid to the local pub school regardless of how shitty, and participating in booster clubs and bake sales and pta meetings, will, over what she estimates to be at least four or five generations, result in some miraculous, perfect public school systems for everyone. There are lots of stupid ideas here, so let's look at a few. First, whose idea of perfect? Has our dear author not noticed that the education of children is a somewhat contentious issue? That not everybody wants their children to be imbued with the same worldview as their neighbor's kids (like, for example, the notion that once upon a time there were people who sent their kids to private schools, and they were Bad People, or don't want their kids taking civics classes that teach them that everything is as it should be and America perfected government in 1776 and never looked back, or want a decent selection of language classes, or who care more about how effectively teachers use the technology at their disposal instead of just how much tech is at their disposal, or any of a million other conflicting one-or-the-other issues)? How does our dear author plan to resolve this contentious issue? If there are an endless array of opinions as to what and how to teach, how will the system eventually evolve into the perfect system that pleases everyone? Well, it won't and can't, but that's not an issue, because our dear author only wants it to teach how and what she and her chosen authority figures say it should. See, everyone who wants to teach children anything else in any other way is a Bad Person, so we must simply shame them until they repent and accept the One Truth (and probably send social services for their kids, although there I'm just extrapolating our dear author's probable view). So from the outset, this arguement is fucking stupid because it relies on pursuing the "ideal" of having everyone in the country agree on every aspect of how to educate their own fucking children. Good luck with that.

Then there's the actual entrenched institutions. School boards do not give a shit about parents. They fucking tag and track kids like cattle without even sending home a note, continue policies despite all protest, they do not care. And crappy teachers? What, just replace them? You ever tried to get a terrible teacher fired? Hell, you ever tried to get any union employee fired, much less a union member in a government job? Unless a teacher does something psychotic like rape a student in class, they NEVER get fired (and even then they could get off the hook if they said it was a "security search" or some shit).

Then there's jist the incredibly fucked up notion that people should intentionally sabatoge their own children's future by putting them in substandard shitholes not even for the nebulous benefit of the (other) children, but for the benefits to be reaped by unspecified chipdren at some unspecified time in the distant future, such benefits never to come to pass anyway, as precviously discussed. And... You know what, fuck it, I tried. The woman who wrote this claptrap is a fucking braindead, sanctimonious, condescending, borderline illiterate piece of shit sycophant who should be tossed into a raging inferno sufficient to destroy her genetic code lest someone ever get the idea to use it for anything.

Private schools offer huge advantages over public. They're not based on political bias, they're based on customer satisfaction and delivering on the promise of a quality education. Competition means different options in teaching philosophy and methodology, cirriculum choice, schedule options, etc. Instead of arguing endlessly about the "correct" way "we" should educated "our" children (I didn't fuck your wife, they're not my kids), the actual parents can make the decision. Basically, public schools are a politically motivated one-size-fits-none shitholes which occassionally teach by accident (and are the ultimate in statist propaganda, given the aforementioned political bias).

Private schools can suck, too, but if they do, you[ve got real options, and so do the other parents. You can move your kids to any other school you choose. If enough customers are unimpressed, the private school either improves or fails, so the incentive to improve is much stronger. Public schools can perform terribly year after year and keep getting funded, because I don't have the option to not pay taxes going to the school (at least without the armed thugs of the state coming for me). And since everyone already pays for pub schools via taxes, fewer can afford private schools, which reduces income for the private schools, some go under, some raise tuition, or scale back operations to stay afloat until they can reach an equilibrium, but not before private education has become much less accessible than it could be.

In closing, fuck you Allison. Eat a dick.

What is being seen in recent days, more openly than before, is not government "corruption". Corruption implies that the system is being manipulated to function other than intended. All talk of government corruption, or incompetence, or the inefficiency of the state, these views all spring from a misunderstanding of intent. If one assumes, for example, not that the state is an organization which exists to protect the members of society, both collectively and individually, from the actions of predatory, amoral people, but rather that the state exists as the enabler of the wildest dreams of the most predatory and amoral among us, then every action undertaken by every modern goverment makes perfect sense. It is not "corruption" we need fear from government, it is the possibility of government actually acheiving its true purpose which we should find deeply disturbing.

"And when I'm swept in to office, I'll sell our children's organs to zoos for meat. And I'll go in to people's houses at night, and wreck up the place! Mwahahaha!"

-Richard M. Nixon('s head)

It's nice that you have some all-encompasimg view of every violent situation as fitting a particular course of action, as well as being sure to point out that "civillians" are the ones with this limitation (using the common definition of civillian, this does 't apply to cops and the like then?), but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

A violent attacker can often be swayed to back down by the threat of physical harm used in self defense. If someone tries to beat you to death, they may be detered if you pull a gun. If not, they may be detered once they know it's loaded, and you are able and willing to pull the trigger. Sure, you could shoot them dead, and if they're still able and actively attempting to kill you, you should. But maybe you would prefer not to actually kill them. Are you trying to say it is somehow better to unhesitatingly kill someone when you could try to make them stop and reconsider? Of course, only if you're a "civilian", a mere mundane.

The same concept applies to any weapon. I have a machette. I use it to open coconuts (I live in a tropical paradise. Suck it.). But not long ago, a wired tweaker tried to break in to my truck in the middle of the night. While I was in it. That kind of wired speed freak that either doesn't see you sitting in the drivers seat, or just doesn't care, is dangerous. Potentially life threateningly so. By your logic, I should have kicked open the door, and slit him down the middle. Instead, I grabbed the machette and held it up in the window, and off he ran. Because the presence of a weapon can defuse the situation WITHOUT either party coming to harm.

In short, it's a bit more complicated than "perceive mortal threat, pull gun, shoot to kill." It's "perceive mortal threat, draw gun, determine if threat still imminent, if yes aim gun, determine if threat still imminent, if yes fire gun. If you can keep a cool head, you can stop when the threat ends. If you kill someone when you could have instead de-escalated the situation by simply demonstrati g your willingness to defend yourself, is it any better than if you haul off and kill someone who no longer represented a mortal threat?