This organization has proven that they have no regard at all for the law. One of the fuckers actually told a reporter a few days ago that he thinks the first amendment should be "revised" to make the NSA's job easier.

NSA apparatchiki have committed billions of felonies, and continue to do so as we speak. The only remedy that will make them stop is to disband them altogether.

-jcr

Well, that's enough information to confirm that DNA is not involved. While the methodology may be intrusive and problematic from an informed consent point of view, it's not as alarming as the police randomly stopping motorists to add their DNA to a surveillance database.

You know, there are other detectable substances in saliva and serum besides DNA.

If this is in linux, this might have something to do with ACPI. The firmware has a table called the DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) which basically tells the operating system how to turn integrated peripherals like network cards off and on when going to sleep or waking up.

One peculiarity of the DSDT is that the ACPI specification allows it to include different instructions to different operating systems, and this is a common source of problems in linux installs. Some manufacturers (Toshiba) deliberately sabotage non-Windows operating systems in their DSDTs. Others simply deliver DSDTs that are untested and potentially buggy in non-windows operating systems.

Anyhow, an OS can switch devices off an on itself using ACPI, so I think ACPI may trump BIOS settings. One way to test this is to boot with ACPI turned off. If this fixes the problem of the mic being available even when disabled in BIOS, then you have and ACPI/DSDT problem. If not, then it is a design flaw in the machine's design (e.g. turning the mic off in BIOS simply turns the gain to 0) and you wasted your time reading this post.

Look on the bright side. This might be what finally spurs support for your phone from an alternative operating system.

Doesn't Asus have Transformers with 10" and expandable storage? ... yep, memo pad, transformer, slate... As for your last point, MS is completely willing to drop a platform that turns out to be more trouble than it's worth. We'll see.

The F-450 is sufficiently ungainly to where most people will not drive one for vanity. I do know of one F-450 pickup truck conversion, which has a shortened frame and a custom bed, but even it is regularly used for towing.

I'd imagine that the range will be somewhat decreased, but if most Leafs which haven't been piloted into a tree (etc) aren't still operating in 12 years, I will be shocked. Hopefully not literally.

I believe the assumption here is that it's not difficult for TPTB to get their firmware onto your computer. In an enterprise it's slightly tricky to do it without risk of being caught. Where individual users are concerned there is little risk in leaning on the OS vendor to deliver to you and you alone an additional payload right in a signed patch package.

How many people here (a) have read the Divine Comedy and (b) worked as a programmer? I'm sure I'm not the only one, but we've got to be a pretty small audience.

Who do you think is the analog of Beatrice? Or Francesca da Rimini from Canto V?

Awesome! I didn't know that the Science Patrol made music videos.

Twenty or thirty years ago there used to be people called "journalists" whose job it was to (a) collect enough data so you could figure out what happened, and (b) write it up in an intelligible story.

Look at the linked story *critically*. How does the "reporter" know DNA was being taken? What is his source for this, or is he just guessing?

This story is basically rumor -- passing along what's on the grapevine. There's no actual reporting here. If there were, that would answer the questions a reasonable person might have. For example: are the researchers collecting DNA or not? And who *are* these researchers? Can we get a name please? Or an institution?

Back in the day a reporter would have identified the researchers and called them up for an interview, or at least a statement from the research institution's public affairs office. He'd look up the grant in the federal records and find out whether or not the researchers had been granted money to collect DNA and what they are being paid to do with it (yes, you can do that!). He'd may even have interviewed people on the institutional review board (required by US law) that approved the project.

But the "reporter" in this case did none of this. She appears not to have done *any* verification or independent research. A story like this would take a real reporter two or three days to nail down, not two or three phone calls.

I'm not saying some horrendous violation of civil liberties could not have taken place, I'm saying the writer of the article didn't do enough work for anyone to decide what did or did not happen. This is not reporting, it's *blogging* under a byline.

Has that agency you work for quit pulling this kind of shit?

-jcr

because of epa your air and water is cleaner,

Bullshit. Our air and water are cleaner because the public started to care about it. Giving Nixon's second biggest mistake credit for that is like giving a flea credit for the dog.

-jcr

Only in the US would someone compare government funding of higher education to the Soviet Union.

Both empires made academia serve their rulers. Are you seriously claiming otherwise?

-jcr