It's a good question. All I see in this paper is fresh discovery of the same facts that were well known among skeptics like the Perth group back in 1990s. Is it really such a bizarre virus that acts like no other virus, kills like no other virus, and manages to hide the way it works so well that decades of research still leave us guessing? Or is it just a weak virus that cannot survive inside an uncompromised immune system and thus serves as a great diagnostic for immune problems that it does not actually cause?

There is often a bigger disconnect between contractors and internal staff due to a different reporting structure etc.
When you've got a revolving door of contractors it's harder to give them the same amount of attention that you can to permanent staff.

I recall a few years ago participating with a lot of others in a crowd source effort to categorize fuzzy pictures of possible galaxies. I think it was galaxy zoo.

So is this the result of our effort? Would be nice to know...

I agree. Someone once told me I should not go out at night, walk naked (except for a hundred dollar bill pasted to each of my nipples) to the highest-crime district in my city, and start yelling "Some of my best friends are you people!" They said I would be safer if I behaved differently, stayed home instead, and STFU-ed up with my crazy rants.

I explained that even if I behaved differently, that doesn't stop the Russians from launching a nuclear ICBM strike, killing us all, including me. Safe is safe, unsafe is unsafe, there are no degrees in between, and all of us face one single adversary who has one simple agenda.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Hopefully they weren't stupid enough to roll their own key format, and instead, they use standard OpenPGP keys. That way, people can have MitM-proof verified-identity conversations if they want that (and can tune the degree of MitM-proofing that is needed) but also have MitM-vulnerable pseudonymous conversations if they don't (for cases where you'd prefer to be anonymous).

When you're talking to your wife, it's ok for her to know who you are, and you to know you're talking to her, so you'd use the keys that you've exchanged out-of-band and that each of you have signed. When you're talking to your pirate buddies, you just to have the keyid that has in the past, been associated with uber-31337ness, but has never been signed by anyone. And when you're talking to another person in the company, you know who each other is and have at least some company CA as your introducer, any maybe signed yourselves too if it's a small enough company where everyone eventually meets each other in person.

Whatever your case, OpenPGP fits perfectly. The only thing it doesn't handle well, is tricking users into thinking they have a secure connection but really letting a third party listen in. For some reason, PGP isn't well-suited for that. Whenever I see someone not use PGP, I assume that's the reason they chose to use weaker tech.

I know I'm not the first one to point this out here, but seriously, let me repeat this:

HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?

How have we - collectively - come to the point where this sort of things is acceptable? This is completely indecent, and someone in power should be shot over this.

What niche brands might those be? I'm looking for a new phone to replace failing hardware (the touchscreen on my Evo 4G has started acting wonky with the on-screen keyboard)

RUN!

Dear gods, run for your soul! Run like the devil himself is at your heels.

"If I were to walk into Wal-Mart and start shouting out racist epithets or other inflammatory language, I can expect them to throw me out of their store. They have that right as the owners of private property, just as I could throw someone out of my own home if they said such a thing or otherwise offended me."

Sure, if you are shouting and creating a disturbance that would make sense, regardless of what exactly you were shouting. And if you were in MY store being aggressive/insulting to other customers or employees you would certainly be asked to desist and then quickly after to leave, if you did not.

But I dont believe that is the sort of situation we have here. Was he assaulting anyone? Or was he just rambling on about what he believes? It was my impression it's the latter. And it was on a show that normally spends a lot of time with him rambling about whatever comes to mind, was my impression, is that not correct?

" One could make an argument that the notion of

You dont know who to educate, or just who to avoid.

Will just bring people to suspect gulags, re-education camps, and the like."

Huh? Sorry I do not follow you at all here. I was just saying I would rather the racists have and exercise their first amendment rights, let them speak, and rebut them, than to have them driven underground and have no idea who around me is in that group. And if you have the empathy to imagine yourself as a racist for a moment, consider this as well. If the views you hold, for whatever reason, are forbidden from expression, then you will never see those views laid out and analyzed and rebutted clearly. There is a natural assumption that if the other side of the argument will not even debate the issue, their position is weak and likely wrong. This will make you much less likely to ever change your mind on the subject.

But if you are free to argue your views and people, instead of screaming you down, calling you names, calling the cops, getting you fired from your job, etc... if people instead of doing that simply pointed out, calmly and politely, the reasons they disagree, your chances of re-examining the subject and changing your mind will be much higher.

And I think it's really, really key here to focus on eliminating rac*ism* rather than rac*ists*. We dont want to get rid of the people. We just want them to learn better, right?

"However, being as there is "Duck Dynasty" merchandise being sold everywhere now, and plenty of like-minded people who support his homophobic stance, there is a fair chance that this will produce more, not less, revenue for the family."

There is also the Streisand affect, as well as the natural resistance to being told what to think and what thoughts you are allowed to say or not.

I think this is a real danger with all political correctness, whether private or public. And I am afraid I cannot agree that A&E is a fully private entity. Unfortunately we live in a world where my pocket is constantly being picked in order to broadcast 'public service announcements' to preach stuff at me that I disagree with and find offensive. A world where television broadcasters are certainly regulated, directly and indirectly, by the government. It's by no means obvious whether or not A&E would have taken the same step, were it a fully private entity acting in a free market.

I agree that the comments quoted here are ignorant and wrong, by the way. But I do not think that pillorying people for making such statements is helpful. What do you accomplish? You build up walls, you make people afraid to *speak* such things perhaps, but they continue to think them. So now you dont know who it is thinking these thoughts, since their expression is forbidden. You dont know who to educate, or just who to avoid. And they (rightly) resent the coercion and will look for chances to strike back. It's a completely counterproductive way to deal with it, it weakens and divides civil society.

The cure for bad speech is more speech, not less.

I look forward to buying the first 3D-printed AK47 for $15k. I mean, who the hell would want a normal $30 one: they're so last century...

Well first off the Pi is not only short on horsepower, it's also hardly open. The GPU is the real heart and brain of the system and it's quite opaque.

As to the motherboards, look for a board that supports ECC. It's totally absurd with RAM as cheap (and dense) as it is today that anyone is manufacturing anything else. You'll have to pay more but you should get a board that performs to specs rather than a typical consumer board where you expect as you say 'subtle defects.'

So either CM goes to shit, full of advertising and scumware, like pretty much every other commercial OS, or they don't, founder, and fade away.

Either way, it was nice while it lasted, I suppose.

"And it strikes me as really disturbing when a machine with all free software is more expensive than the same machine without free software."

Then you got the value equation backwards, my friend.

You pay for Free Software. (It is something of value to the user, who has to pay in one way or another to put it in place.)

Proprietary Software pays for YOU! (The makers of blobs literally pay the manufacturers to "preload" their stuff onto computers in the factory, so that users who do not have the time, knowledge, and inclination to format and rebuild will be stuck with them. The software is valued primarily by the maker, not the user - the user is typically the commodity being sold in one way or another here. )