I don't believe that's true. To quote Findlaw.com

You have the right to shut up at any point but I don't believe you can shut up and then start talking and then shut up again. This was the point of debate in the IRS congressional hearing where the manager made a statement and then plead the 5th.

Well... seeing as the NSA has said that they've only looked at the meta-data of 300 people that's not exactly a vast government conspiracy.

And considering that the corrected news article accurately states that the NSA still requires a wiretap to listen to a phone call... I don't see where this is illegal.

The government has tapped phones since the 1800s. As long as they get a search warrant this isn't any new invasion of privacy. What this is, is a bunch of tech blogs freaking out over misreading transcripts. Not less than 1 sentence away from this supposed "admission" the director says "We need a warrant to listen to calls".

Ahhh gotcha that sucks. So your driver's license will perpetually remain M even if you are now F and result in constant conflicts of "that doesn't match your driver's license".

I was envisioning a system similar to changing your legal name. How many states don't allow gender/sex changes on their official IDs?

Forgive my ignorance but is it really any more embarrassing to correct that information in a database than any other? I would imagine vast amounts of data are inaccurate on everybody. I've called and changed my birthday, I've accidentally listed 'male' for my girlfriend when filling out forms online (out of habit). If you're embarrassed just say you erroneously filled out the form or say you were reviewing your records and noticed a big inaccuracy.

I've heard a number of transgender people ask for options which are more inclusive and specific--but that would go against your complaint since it would make your transgender status front and center and 'parade around it around in front for others'.

I agree though on the point that tracking gender is pretty pointless for almost all forms.

You don't have to wait and see. Sony's presentation was largely a really brilliant piece of deception. Watch the Playstation 4 "lifestyle" video that Sony showed. They have people: downloading games from their phone, streaming games to start playing immediately and playing online co-op. No-where in their 'lifestyle' video do any of the gamers go to a store, buy a disc, put it in and play by themselves.

If you buy a digital game from Sony you already have less flexibility than the Xbox One's digital downloads. Sony is going to do everything in their power to push digital downloads, and for good reason, they're better. No scratched discs, no swapping a hardware dongle (inserting a disc) in order to play, you can get every game on day one without pre-order, you can play your entire library of games at work, or a friends house, or home etc. Digital downloads already make up a majority of PC game sales. They accomplished that feat in 2010. Consoles will get there in no-time. When was the last time you bought a PC game at a store? Exactly.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20016943-235.html

Also digital downloads are cheaper. No middleman, no distribution, no printing just straight download. Again, that was in 2010. By the end of 2014 everybody will be downloading on both consoles and while "theoretically" the PS4 will have used games and sharing--that's only for disc based games.

Similarly look at every single launch title that's being promoted, they're MMOs, they're quasi-mmos with drop-in PVP or co-op or they're multiplayer games like Modern Warfare (which kind of has a single player). So yeah you don't *need* an internet connection but it's like buying Team Fortress 2 and not having an internet connection, it's going to be a fraction of the designed game. Multiplayer is no longer an afterthought it's integral to most games. So sure on the PS4 you don't need an online check-in but it will be the shell of the game you purchased.

I would ask though whether that's useful or just technological masturbation.

When RAM is plentiful and cheap and even your average smartphone has more than 1GB of RAM are you sacrificing anything by only using a few MB of RAM instead of GBs?

There clearly is purely wasteful uses of RAM but there is also fully utilizing your available resources. RAM is cheap and plentiful. I would rather a system be responsive and fully featured than tick off some statistic on how few resources it uses. A 486 uses less power than an intel core i7. But you'll get a lot more per watt out of the i7.

Ultimately the metric I care about most is productivity.

Fuck you and your juvenile defeatism. Voting will help. Look at the Tea Party. They completely changed the composition of the Republican party and its platform in less than 3 years. The only reason voting doesn't help is because those who care want these policies. We get the government we ask for. This isn't some Illuminati bullshit--these are the people we voted for. What happens is instead of getting involved, participating in primaries or caucuses to choose the candidates who actually oppose these things people complain... or they vote for some mascot of a third party candidate who has no chance of winning or they beat some hippie drums in the woods somewhere or they sit on web forums and complain. You know what works? VOTING. Get out there, campaign, go door to door for candidates who you believe in and also have a chance of winning. If you look at the primary field of candidates from Dennis Kucinich to Ron Paul and say both parties are exactly the same then you're a moron. There are as liberal liberals in the democratic primary field as there are conservative conservatives in the republican field. But don't be shocked when the winner is a centrist who actually reflects most people's opinions because that's how democracy works.

And if they truly are breaking the constitution we have a judicial system to review the government's actions on behalf of the ACLU, EFF etc.

Hahaha a Communist. What are you 12? Name one single communist policy that Obama has advocated. One. I challenge you to just that little task.

1/100th as damaging as under Bush? Ummm... no. There is a big difference between kidnapping someone, throwing them in a secret prison and denying them access to a lawyer and looking at badly anonymized metadata. Of the two I would rather someone look at my anonymized call logs than to haul me off to a secret prison and a secret military tribunal.

As far as I'm aware Obama also hasn't manufactured evidence to send hundreds of thousands of troops into harms way resulting in a war that's killed tens of thousands of civilians and thousands of Americans and costing trillions of dollars.

As far as I'm aware tens of billions of dollars wasn't put into shipping containers and 'disappeared' into companies Obama or Biden used to be board members of.

Where is the news recently 100x more damaging than Bush?

Solyandra? A Republican CEO who gave money to both sides (like every CEO) gets some money along with hundreds of other companies in an effort to reduce the price of solar power and increase US solar manufacturing. They go bankrupt but mostly because the price of solar panels has plummeted... wasn't that the stated goal?

A diplomat is attacked and killed. There were dozens of embassy attacks and dozens of people killed under Bush. Nobody complained because even during the height of Bush blaming people were at least sensible enough to recognize that we can't keep everyone in the world safe all the time.

The only thing that's ratcheted up 100x is Fox News' bluster.

It's funny that people fight tooth and nail for people to give them DRM free content. And when someone actually does effectively give away content DRM free but uses what amounts to the "honor" system--they call the people who actually ask nicely for the license fee fascist stormtroopers.

Says 5% of the population. Me? I love it.

I don't know. I was worried about that with the Surface but my Surface and Surface Pro almost always get more than the advertised use time. I've generally found laptop manufacturers to be generally pretty accurate.

Apple presumably will continue manufacturing them and paying Samsung for the parts. And after a $1B payout to Apple I imagine that Samsung just wants vengeance a this point. Both of them are already going to lose when the scorecard gets rung up but I doubt Samsung wants Apple to come out ahead.

I was thinking the same thing. I don't know that this is actually illegal or even unethical. We implicitly agree to watch ads etc when we visit a website. This could be a source of revenue far greater than advertising.

Windows RT might not run x86 apps but it does do everything Windows does out of hte box. Which I've found incredibly useful when traveling. E.g. I can remote desktop into my computer without any additional software. I can use the command line. I can just copy paste things to a USB stick or print directly. I couldn't do any of that with my galaxy Tab.