When I go to the voting booth, the only options I seem to have are "status quo" and "status quo". Corporate profits are at record highs, yet wages are getting lower. Unless the country forms one union, there's nothing stopping Corps and CEOs from bleeding the 99% dry. Right now, the only way I could "fight" this is to do a one-person strike. You can guess far that would go.

Several years ago, I was called by the company providing the extended warranty on my appliances. The were offering me a renewal of the warranty. I said I'd only renew on the dishwasher. They responded that it was the only appliance they wouldn't cover. When I declined the extension, they reminded me that things are more likely to break the older they get.

I didn't feel like pointing out the reason they were declining coverage on the one appliance was probably because it was the only one that needed to be repaired, and twice at that. As such, it would be the most likely to fail again. And it did.

Still don't make it right though.

The parents of all three girls failed in my opinion.

One set of parents did not teach their daughter how to deal with bullying, nor did they monitor her social life. Words *do* hurt, if one doesn't know how to handle bullying. We are not born with this ability.

Two sets of parents did not monitor their daughters. Not only could this protect the daughters from abuse/predators, it should've stopped the girls from abusing the victim.

Now Tootsie can sell a bunch of new lengths: halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, etc. Schools would just need to go out and buy a few bags.

For adults learning fractions, they could use alcohol instead, but they'd just have one fraction: fifths.

Was "Certainty" their 3 sigma error band on an estimate? Or was "Certainty" their confidence that they know everything about this massive system? It is a black box after all. They can't just open it up and read the source code. They have to allow for the fact that they don't know everything, but are still giving their best model.

Any estimator can be off high or low for a long period of time. "Long" is relative. If for a significant number of samples, more than half the estimates were high and the rest were spot on, then yes, the estimator is probably wrong. The charts from climate audit show the estimates being high for a run as long as 1/7th of the data. The charts also show the estimates being low for other portions of the data. I don't see how that can be used as convincing proof that the estimator is horribly wrong.

Especially since the climate audit chart itself shows a rise in temperature over 110 years.

Rabbit Season!

Doctors and Lawyers shouldn't be searching for you on social media. Doctor-Patient Confidentiality and Attorney-Client Privilege should take priority, no?

I think your metaphor may be a little off. With Syria, it feels more like I'm walking down the street and happen upon two adults duking it out. I call the police. Then, one of the combatants pulls out a gun. I also have a gun. Do I let the armed fighter shoot the opponent? Do I shoot the armed fighter? Either way, I do not know who the "good guy" is. If I shoot the armed combatant, the unarmed guy (who might be the real bad guy) might pick up the loose weapon and shoot me. If I leave them alone, the armed fighter could shoot his opponent and then me.

I think I would be happy with Syria giving up its chemical weapons to international control.

The top tier Cool Shot is what the author is saying was pay-to-win. I never used one. I built my mechs to not overheat and thus take advantage of opponents who did.

I've been playing the game for 6 months. It's been fun, but I've just been finding it too repetitive lately. I'd still recommend it to anyone who likes the MechWarrior concept. Just be prepared to spend time on the forums learning how to play, as no tutorial is provided by the developer.

Since this is happening in the city, instead of some huge open field, if Assad uses chemical weapons, he'll greatly increase the number of casualties of civilians who are loyal to him.

When an explosive detonates, those civilians who aren't supporting the rebels have some protection from the shrapnel because they're hiding indoors.

When a chemical is released, it can spread for blocks, seeping into the buildings through existing cracks or new holes made by shrapnel made by conventional ordnance and increasing the number of casualties in those people who aren't supporting the rebels.

If this were happening in an open field where only the two sides of the fight were present, I can't see any difference between explosive and chemical attacks. Here's a guess: Maybe the explosive attacks are more likely to be immediately lethal or have a higher chance of being healed, as opposed to chemicals which may be more likely to burn enough of a person's body that they can't enjoy life again ever, yet don't kill the victim outright.

bah! "33% change to one variable in this massive system".

And then there's the question of how long the environment would take to reach its next steady state. Even if all of humanity went carbon-neutral today, the climate still has to catch up with the 33% change we've made to this massive system.

While I suspect it's fairly easy to determine if a chemical weapon was deployed, I'd love to know how the UN is going to distinguish between who deployed it:

1. The ruling party. (I don't know these people: they might be that murderous and think they won't get accused for the reasons stated by geekymachoman and others.)
2. The rebels used them on themselves to get the UN/US into the conflict.
3. A third party used something known to be in the Syrian arsenal to drag the UN/US into the conflict. (Or just because said third party is a murderous SOB.)

If the UN/US does take action, I hope it is only to destroy chemical weapons stores. Nothing else seems like it might be productive.

Something akin to the following:

"Hello, President Assad. This is $SOMEONE_IMPORTANT. In ten minutes, UN security forces will be dropping ordnance on your chemical weapons storage facilities. Please have these sites evacuated immediately, as we only want to remove your weapons from the world, not your people. We'll pay $N million to restore the buildings. Your ten minutes starts now." Click.

Might even be able to use surveillance to figure out which sites have chemical weapons by watching for evacuations.

The Comcast quote says "public services". If I have a mail server that only has accounts for my family living at this residence, I'm not providing "services to anyone outside of [my] Premises local area network". Wouldn't that be an allowed server?

Of course, Comcast could change the contract without me having any say in the matter.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

That was the Slashdot footer quote earlier today. It would seem to apply to technology as complicated as a lead slug as well.