The sentences are computer generated, but where did you think the actual syllables came from?

I live near one of the entrances to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We have several facilities in the park (stables, nature centers, bookstores) which are run by private groups and nonprofits with permission from the NPS. When the shutdown took effect, all of them were required to close up shop and leave the park. What's even better, we have areas which are typically seldom if ever patrolled (such as backcountry and wilderness areas) which are being monitored with as many federal law enforcement personnel as possible in order to keep out visitors. At one particular park entrance, which normally patrolled by a single park ranger, TWO rangers with vehicles were stationed just to turn people away at the boundary.

Source: I know many people who work (er... worked) in the park, I have worked within the park myself, and I do volunteer work there. Interestingly, during the shutdown volunteers are *specifically* prohibited from performing any work that a paid employee would normally do.

Also, the numerous spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors peppered throughout the emails are pretty hard to miss.

If I've built up excellent karma through a series of insightful, informative, on-topic posts, I shouldn't have all of that negated by a single post that happens not to please the mods that day. It is designed that way to prevent abuses of the system... for example, so that someone's karma doesn't get obliterated by a few abusive mods who happen to disagree with my opinion on one single post. Yeah, I know that meta-moderation is supposed to reduce this possibility, but really, I know better than that...

Now, if I choose to continuously spout off with a series of flamebait or off topic posts, I deserve the karma hit that will inevitably result.

If you read TFA, you'll see that 1) they did sequence DNA, 2) they found many, many species which are not the usual ones associated with contamination due to methodology, and 3) they found organisms that can theoretically survive in the extreme and varied environments believed to be present in the lake (thermophiles near suspected geothermal areas, halophiles in brackish/salty water, etc). As a microbiologist, I find it fascinating that the authors not only provide a list of species, but go so far as to paint a complete picture of how each could possibly exist in a completely functioning ecosystem. For example, they found organisms responsible for carbon and nitrogen fixation, and hypothesize that these same species will also be found throughout the lake water in their various niches.

No, that's, "horizontal breakfast bar"

There are two problems with your approach: one, the near vacuum of space does not allow for effective cooling via convection. Two, compressors only displace heat, and in doing so they actually generate more heat overall. A good example of this is the coils on the back of your refrigerator, which get quite warm during operation. Your kitchen warms up slightly while the interior of the fridge cools. In space, this heat does not dissipate readily and would build up until the system overheats.

This is why a college education should not be intended for everyone. Let's face it: not everybody is cut out for higher education and a society of nothing but service employees, managers, and middlemen with bachelor's degrees or MBA's is not sustainable. Increasingly, people are being forced to spend years in school and take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt learning things that they don't need to know just because employers like to use "degree required" as a way to filter out applicants to entry-level service jobs that pay minimum wage and which don't actually require any of the skills picked up in school.

You mean to tell me that there's a Radio Shack somewhere that still has individual parts in drawers?

Yes, I know that technically all jailbreaks rely on security flaws, but the way that current jailbreaks are installed makes it very obvious that you are doing something not officially sanctioned by Apple. Some of the earliest jailbreaks were of the "visit this website and click this button to jailbreak" style, and I'm glad that these were patched... there was too much potential for driveby attacks on unsuspecting users. However, evasi0n requires the user to download a binary to their computer, boot the phone in DFU mode through a series of button presses, and wait through several restarts. Not only is it obvious that you are jailbreaking, but the process is just complicated enough to discourage many casual users from attempting it.

I've heard that argument phrased as "if you can afford several hundred dollars for an iPhone, you can afford $99 a year for a developer account." It's not just about the money, it's about me objecting to a company that acts as a gatekeeper to a device that I own, and that expects me to pay a yearly toll to access some of the functionality of that device... access that could be revoked for any number of reasons with no recourse.

While I found the actual paper to be interesting (the researchers basically describe how they used a packet sniffer to capture data being sent to Google, then examined and reverse engineered the data to figure out exactly what was in the packets and what they could do with it), the idea of actually influencing real world trafic conditions using this method is a bit silly. First, only a very small percentage of drivers actually use live traffic data to make navigation decisions on the fly. Of those, some percentage either won't have an alternate route to choose from, or will simply stick to their route and tough it out. At best, you'd only trick a small percentage of drivers into avoiding a stretch of highway. As for "creating traffic jams", you'd have much better luck if you simply dropped a couple panes of glass off of the back of a truck or did something equally nefarious to cause an accident.

I know that was supposed to be the "CowboyNeal" poll option, but I understood it to also include US citizens who don't have to pay income tax due to unemployment, or retirement, or some other reason.

This. If a collector has what they feel is a legitimate claim, they'll be willing to work through the proper channels. If they're afraid to put anything in writing or accept certified mail at a physical address, that should be a huge red flag.

We've had the misfortune of dealing with the lowest of the low: debt collectors who go after estate settlements. They know that if they put in a claim with the court, they may only be awarded a small fraction of the money they're owed (especially if the deceased had quite a bit of debt and very few assets), so they hassle the executor (usually a surviving relative who is still in mourning) with an offer along the lines of "just send us a check for N% and we'll call it even, or we'll go after you later for the full amount". Of course, they know that what they'll actually get from the court will be much less than their settlement offer, but they make it sound like they're cutting you a deal.

Our response was always the same: submit your claim properly and the judge will consider it alongside the rest. Some did so, some didn't bother. Some were obviously scammers with no legitimate claim. Others even continued to contact us after the estate was closed rather then file with the court, but since the judge had certified that we had done everything correctly (posted public notice, etc), the debt collectors had missed the boat and no longer had any right to pursue the debt. Eventually they all left us alone.

What state?

I tried that once; it didn't work but I must have accidentally made the hourglass flip over, and I had to wait even longer!