Anyone who puts a credit card, much less a debit card, in a vending machine is a fucking idiot. Those things are so incredibly easy to tamper with it's not even remotely funny. And the way they are built you would never have any idea it was tampered with, most legit ones already look like they could hold a skimmer (since many vending machines that do have them are conversion jobs to begin with). Not to mention the more and more skimmers are placed inside at this point - and some vending machine delivery guy probably being paid minimum wage has the key. Cash will never be replaced. Reduced, well, it already has, but replaced - not for a very long time.

I dunno. Has Obama come out in favor of it yet?

These are documents that he personally worked with, rather than a cache of documents acquired for the purpose of copying and releasing them.

Nope, guess again. They're releasing edited versions, not the originals or even direct copies or direct typed copies.

"In accordance with the deposit agreement, the Churchill Archives Centre is opening Mitrokhinâ(TM)s edited Russian-language versions of his original notes.The original manuscript notes and notebooks will remain closed under the terms of the deposit agreement, subject to review."

Also, you have to be a researcher, provide multiple forms of ID, etc.

Oh, and two sections are closed, for undisclosed reasons.

God made humans rational beings.

Telling people who collect stamps they're idiots could be a hobby.

Ha! I knew the denialists would come swarming out of the woodwork on this one.

Consider the stem cell paper that we're talking about here. It was published in January and immediately started going down in flames. Here we are six months later, watching scientists gleefully kick the cold corpse of the authors' reputations. And you're still wondering who keeps the reviewers and editors of a scientific journal honest?

Peer review isn't some kind of certification of a paper's truth. It can't reliably weed out misconduct, experimental error, or statistical bad luck. It's just supposed to reduce the frequency of fiascos like this one by examining the reasoning and methods as described in the paper. It doesn't have to be perfect; in fact it's preferable for it to let the occasional clunker through onto the slaughterhouse floor than to squelch dissenting views or innovation.

That's why climate change denialists still get published today, even the ones who disbelieve climate change because it contravenes their view of the Bible. Peer review allows them to keep tugging at the loose threads of the AGW consensus while preventing them from publishing papers making embarrassingly broad claims for which they don't have evidence that has any chance of convincing someone familiar with the past fifty years of furious scientific debate.

Here's what I think is the confounding factor (there always is one): I'd be wondering, "Does that button REALLY deliver a shock, or is it some kind of sham social psychology experiment prop? I bet it's a prop. If it isn't, it won't deliver THAT bad a shock. If it is, I wonder what the researchers will do when I push it?"

The confounding factor is curiosity. They'd have to do *two* sessions with the overly curious.

Precisely.

If you don't pay your bills on the Internet, you are a fool. Why? Because your bills are being paid online anyway, even if you are idiot enough to send a check, which is the most dangerous thing you can do with your financial info.

You write a check, with all the info needed on it to completely wipe out your checking account (and savings, too, if you have overdraft "protection") on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope that couldn't more clearly scream "THERE IS A CHECK IN HERE" unless you literally wrote that on the outside, and it goes through many hands before getting to its destination which isn't even the company you are paying. If you look at most national account bills (credit cards, cell companies, cable providers, etc.) they all go to the same few places (usually somewhere in the middle of the country like IL) called "lock boxes" where a minimum wage worker opens your envelope, scans your check digitally, transmits the info to the respective banks, and completes the transaction electronically anyway. Oh, and they are supposed to shred it afterwards. You hope.

The real problem is attacks on back end systems, or assault on terminals, like what happened to Target. Most of the time (almost all) fraud that happens on indivdual online accounts is by someone they know - usually a spouse or child. So if you don't trust them, or can't outwit them with passwords on your system, you have a much larger personal issue than lack of security on the Internet.

you need to learn how to read BADLY.

Wouldn't it be better to learn to read well, than to learn how to read badly?

And it would be good also to learn to write well. Your prior post is utterly incomprehensible.

Part of my understanding is that a 501(c)3 is a public, mutual benefit corporation where all assets are actually owned by the public, should push come to shove.

I'm sorry, but you're confused -- that's not correct at all. The assets of a 501(c)3 have to be transferred to another exempt organization if the organization shuts down, but they are in no way owned by the public. We had that baked into our articles of incorporation but I'm not sure if that's a requirement.

501(c)3s can include religious corporations and public-benefit nonprofit corporations. A public corporation is something completely different, a corporation set up by a government; for example, some state universities are set up this way. A mutual-benefit corporation, which includes some co-ops, insurance companies, and other groups set up to benefit their members, cannot be a 501(c)3.

but the IRS's definition of a charity requires that you be serving a distinct, disadvantaged group of people.

No. 501(c)3 organizations can include churches in rich neighborhoods, symphony orchestras, museums, and plenty of other groups which do not serve "disadvantaged" groups.

PHP is the language for web programming, just as C/C++ is the language for system programming.

People have been hating on C since at least the 1980s. It's still here. People have been hating on PHP since 2000 or so. It's still here.

Except that if you read the majority opinion they actually open up any provision of the law to challenge on the same grounds. They warn that the ruling should not be taken as covering anything covered by insurance, but presumably any such thing could in principle be challenged on the same basis, and depending on the circumstances might likewise be exempted. The majority has opened the door to challenging the application of any provision of this law to a closely held corporation -- indeed any provision of any law. They just don't know how the challenge will turn out.

It's interesting to note that the court broke down almost exactly on religious lines when dealing with contraception. Five of the six Roman Catholic justices voted with the majority, and all three Jews joined by one dissenting Catholic. I think this is significant because the majority opinion, written exclusively by Catholics, seems to treat concerns over contraception as sui generis; and the possibility of objections to the law based on issues important to other religious groups to be remote.

Another big deal in the majority opinion is that it takes another step towards raising for-profit corporations to the same status as natural persons. The quibbling involved is astonishing:

Which may be true, but it's irrelevant. The question is whether compelling a for-profit corporation to do something impacts the religious liberties of natural persons in exactly the same way as compelling a church to do that same thing. If there is any difference whatsoever, then then the regulations imposed on the church *must* be less restrictive than the regulations imposed on a business. Logically, this is equivalent to saying the regulations imposed on a business *may* be more restrictive than the regulations imposed on a church.

The feds threat was six months, not 10+ years.

Bullshit. Threatening "50 years if you make us go to trial, but if you confess we'll recommend six months but the court can still give you 50 years" is still threatening 50 years. The threat of heavy sentences to get people to waive the right to a trail is an egregious violation of due process and the the guarantee against cruel and unusual punishments.

I suggest that you e-mail the 784,000 web pages that say Aaron Swartz snuck into the closet, and inform them they're using the English language wrong:

They're not using the English language wrong, they're reporting the facts wrong. Just as the mainstream media did for decades in the War on (Some) Drugs, just as they did in the run-up to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the media is lying and/or negligently passing on the government's story.