It's a form of seizure, but the supreme court hasn't found it an unreasonable one. And it's been used for a very long time. Basically, the issue was that without forfeiture they had a hard time catching the owners of smuggling ships. As long as you can't establish them as an accessory to the crime or you have jurisdiction problems, they can legally provide the supplies while the criminals operate on an asset-less basis. So the solution was to declare the assets - in this case the ship - used in illegal acts forfeit, making it a risk and a cost to be used in crime. This goes all the way back to the British.

I've been reading some of the court cases and it seems the minority has been trying really hard to find tortured ways of getting out of their own past precedents as the cases become more and more unreasonable but the majority falls down on "we've approved of civil forfeiture for 200 years, we can't overturn that now". They really, really, really don't like interpreting an old law in a new way. So without acts of Congress saying this is not okay, I don't think anything will change.

P.S. Civil asset forfeiture puts the US way ahead of the UK as fascist country in my opinion, I'm not really even sure if it should qualify as an "innocent until proven guilty" system anymore since you can be robbed blind and need to prove your innocence to the court. It stinks to high heaven.

I was thinking everywhere, not just the U.S., but I have to admit I did not remember only the FAA could regulate local airspace, and I have no idea what other countries do in that regard.

It seems like communities could address this to some extent not just trough airspace, but using zoning to disallow facilities where the drones could take off and land.

If the drone confines its flight path to mostly over the road systems it will make a lot less noise than a passing car.

I thought about that too, but the problem is road nose is well contained to buildings on the side of the street, while drone noise is elevated and thus can reach out a lot more.

Perhaps drone noise at 200+ feet would not be as bad as I'm thinking of, but it seems like these would be pretty large drones at 55lbs, thus quite a bit noisier than many of the drones we are used to hearing.

Or not, either way is fine.
a) You're leaving for another company but during the notice period while it is our paycheck we expect you to be professional and loyal to your current employer. That means continuing to carry out your job duties to the best of your ability and help transition them to other employees. I'm sure they'll appreciate someone with working knowledge of the system guiding them.
or
b) I'm sure you know it's company policy to immediately terminate all access for leaving staff members, regardless of reason so don't take it personally. Think of it as two weeks paid vacation. Have you got everything in order? I can pretend I haven't seen this for another hour, but if you're ready I'll call the honor guard to escort you out. The check will be in the mail.

I mean you have to screw up pretty bad to make the last seem like a bad thing for an employee that's leaving voluntarily. You're getting two weeks pay for doing nothing. Pretty much the worst you can do is make them stay, but act like you don't trust them anymore.

And if they care a bit too much about their coworkers and start talking about transitioning, it should be pretty easy to to talk them out of it. Sure it'll be tough on the remaining staff, but it'll be like a "what if he was hit by a bus" exercise and we'll find out how much documentation and routines we're missing. They'll cope somehow and besides, it's company policy so I can't really make those kinds of exceptions.

The main problem (well, perhaps not the MAIN problem) I see is that no-one signed up to have drone flights right over their houses. You can buy and plan for where airports are going to be, but the "drone corridors" will just appear overhead one day. Drone sounds are (I think) especially obnoxious buzzing...

It'll be interesting to see if communities try to ban this.

You mean like browsers and Javascript? In that case 99% of the population has lost already. The pwn2own competition results are rather miserable. The part that /. probably doesn't want to hear is that the primary effect is centralization and gatekeepers.

Take Usenet for example, it got overrun by spammers and trolls because there was no real way to block them and the few moderated groups basically meant a few people were in control of the discussion. Instead we moved to forums, where you could use CAPTCHAs and various other tricks to block mass sign-ups, moderation, flagging of abusive users and so on. They're not perfect, but they work okay.

Why do so many people use Facebook instead of email? Same thing, much less SPAM. For the longest time, Linux users hailed the repository model over the Windows "download random exe from the Internet" model. Then Apple took it to the extreme with the "one store to rule them all" and suddenly it was a problem. Even on Android you have to pass by huge warning lights to enable third party repositories and Windows Phone has as far as I know joined Apple in the "one store" model.

My guess is that they'll push it to the cloud so all the application code runs on a server and they just need to lock down the browser, more per user&app sandboxes, more difficult time running unsigned software and more users with computers that need Apple's, Microsoft's or Google's sign-off to run an application. The average user simply doesn't understand the micromanagement involved, same way users won't use NoScript when browsing the web. They'll "outsource" it.

That depends on how much of peer pressure/boycott there is from your local church congregation and extended to their members to not shop at "gay friendly" stores and buy at stores that refuse gays service. From what I've understood the most successful such peer pressure in the US has been to make mainstream outlets "family friendly". Despite there obviously being a big market for adult material, they've managed to force adult stores out of malls, keep mainstream cinemas showing adult-only movies, video game stores from selling adult only-titles and so on simply by refusing to shop in any business that would touch it with a ten foot pole. You don't think the same can happen to a cake shop? I do.

Of course leaving out the small detail that basically every managed Windows desktop uses AD and Windows admins either know it or they don't. If I search for tools to centralized manage Linux machines, I get dozens of alternatives in the top 50 hits. Like with everything else on Linux, there is no single standard.

If I find that particular paper again I'll let you know. And depression as a consequence of subclinical hypothyroidism is very well established, but no longer generally acted upon. It used to be routinely treated as such, but when the TSH test came to prominence, most doctors started treating to make nice test results rather than treating the patients' symptoms.... despite that all the evidence is against using TSH as anything but a crude marker that something is wrong. False negatives are extremely common.

Here's a starter kit:
http://hormonerestoration.com/...

I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and I've had to take up reading the Journal of Endocrinology in sheer self-defense. It's quite shocking how much well-established endocrine research has never filtered down to GPs, never mind other specialty fields, despite that a malfunctioning endocrine system can fuck up just about anything else. I've concluded it should be the first line of inquiry (since fixing the thyroid will commonly cure a whole raft of apparently-unrelated physical and mental symptoms), but most doctors act like it's the last resort.

"one psychiatrist" is not a valid citation. Point me to a name, a study, and some literature to explain why this discovery hasn't taken the medical world by storm, I'm always happy to expand my knowledge.

I traded in a previous gen iPhone, I got enough to pay for AppleCare for two new phones. That happened on the spot, I don't see how that is any kind of "disadvantage".

You can get more selling a device yourself for sure. But that's a lot of hassle, ant not everyone has eBay accounts.

You can also get a little more selling to other companies that will give you cash for older phones. But not much more, and it takes a little longer than simply getting credit for Apple when your goal is to buy something new from Apple anyway...

There's nothing better for turning you into a nervous wreck than knowing that your every word and motion are going to be dissected with the goal of disqualifying you...

How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions.
  Just pick "A" or "B" for each question.

  My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

If you answered "A" to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law.

If you answered "B" to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others.

Probably the most common cause of depression is subclinical hypothyroidism, specifically with low T3. One psychiatrist found that he could cure 90% of his patients by prescribing T3 to bring their active thyroid hormone level up to normal. (Prescribing T4 alone didn't work, probably because poor T4-to-T3 conversion is part of the problem here.)