the news in the US no longer has to present a balanced viewpoint.

I don't think you have a very good grasp of American history, and the form newspapers and tabloids have taken, over the past 200+ years.

. In other words, nobody is monitoring journalistic integrity.

Are you saying you wish there was a governmental department in charge of arbitrating truth, which would have the power to censor or re-write the news as it saw fit? That sounds like a much more terrifying option to me.

Hmmm, interesting to puzzle out the references:
Samarkand is a city in Uzbekistan.
Levodopa is a psychiatric drug
Corinth city in Greece.

His previous postings are not quite as good, and this gem sheds some light on his... condition...

And in a move of supreme irony, he is glady leaving to support Chinese Hackerspaces:

Tomorrow I'm leaving for China. I organized a Hacker Trip To China. 10 of us visiting all hackerspaces!

Here's a clue, kiddo - try to find anything of significance in China that doesnt have involvement from the People's Liberation Army. But you got no problem supporting that?

These laws are not stand your ground and shoot a black guy, they are stand your ground and protect yourself from severe injury or death. They exist because liberal whack-jobs were (successfully) arguing that if you had an opportunity to run (even with no guarantee of success) and didn't, then you were not practicing self-defense when using a gun to protect yourself. That if you could run but your wife/child/friend could not, you were supposed to leave them behind rather than protect them

Absolutely correct. One of the best examples of a need for this type of law was ROBERTA E. SHAFFER, who shot her ex-husband in self-defense after he threatened to kill her and her kids, but the DA claimed she had a duty to retreat, and she was convicted of manslaughter.

The summary link just goes to a (slow loading) blog post, the actual article being discussed is at:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/mastered-for-itunes-cd-comparison/
And more specifically, the 11 minute youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGlQs9xM_zI

In case anyone thinks parent is exagerating, this is what happened to the mayor of a Baltimore town:

http://reason.com/blog/2008/08/08/berwyn-heights-drug-raid-the-p

Most of the comments on the linked site are pretty critical, here's a typical post:

rfordwm - Feb 21, 2012:

I don't understand what the point of this piece was. All I heard on the recordings were cool headed honest assessments of what information they had on Japan.

Yet Ryssdal says such things as "Wow. Scary when nuclear guys start using phrases like alarming language,' betraying a predisposition to distrust in these "nuclear guys." But for those listeners who don't share that predisposition what is it exactly we were to be scared of?

Perhaps Mr. Chadwick will enlighten us:
  "this is the NRC -- they'e watching YouTube and CNN."

Huh... So there is a breakdown in information I should perhaps be concerned about?

Again Chadwick gives us the answer:

"Because this area is so devastated by the tsunami. So many people are lost, 20,000. The infrastructure is all blown away."

Well that seems like a good reason for information being sparse. Not to mention the NRC is a national agency, concerned with domestic nuclear safety.

Again, what was the point of this? Why were Mr. Ryssdal and Mr. Chadwick using words and tones that denote alarm and concern? Perhaps they could clarify?

Anybody else remember .HTA HTML Applications? Sounds like that idea, resurrected.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496(v=vs.85).aspx

The problem in Microsoft's case is that they seem incapable of dumping what they have and doing a complete rewrite.

It's really tempting to think that way, but actually doing a clean re-write is usually a complete mistake. I'd say Mac OSX is one of the only successfull examples of this (and that largely because their previous versions were so horribly outdated it was unbelievable).

Joel has a great article on this from a while back:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Are you kidding? Thanks to muslim hypocrasy, you get things like subjecting females to "virginity checks" (a cop actually penetrates you with his finger to feel if the hymen is present).

I have never seen a US city consider making public services free on a holiday

Maybe you should look harder?

http://totaltrafficla.com/2011/12/31/free-bus-train-rides-for-new-years-eve/21231

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/malerts/SFMuniNewYearsEve.htm

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+new+years+taxi

Maybe you should think about it some more.

That clause is designed to prevent situations like what recently happened in the Ukraine, where leaders of opposition factions in the government are arrested:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/europe/09ukraine.html

The overwhelming thought that comes to my mind is that this poor engineer has actual bought the company line. All that kool-aid drinking thats so common at giant tech companies actually works on some people. He's a naive young engineer, who truly believes what he is saying. And that means that Management has done their job.

Listen up, kiddo... You think you know [b]why[/b] Google is building Chrome? LOL. What you think the "corporate strategy" is, is actually just the part they tell you to motivate you. Someday, hopefully, you will peek behind the curtain and see whats actually going on (hint- it ain't pretty)

Perfect! If you can wait for your hard drives, by all means please do! Since there is now limited supply, you are leaving them for those who need them now (and are willing to pay for the priviledge).