Decades ago, before SA became dumbed down, Philip and Phylis Morrison reviewed books for them. They'd (IIRC) do three or four each month, and with one exception they never got below a very good rating. I always assumed that was because there were way too many good books to make it worth while wasting ink on mediocre or bad ones. The reviews themselves were usually worth reading for their own sake—I learned a lot from them.

I guarantee you they were in no sense cheerleaders or shills. They just knew how to make good use of their time.

The one book with a bad review? The Bell Curve , a pseudo-scientific screed trying to justify racism. The Morrisons devoted that month to the single review, showing why it was such a disaster. (For detailed coverage of what's wrong with it, see Steven Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man .)

Except he says send that emphatically unmemorable password to someone you trust. Really trust. Preferably with a privileged relationship (spouse, lawyer, priest, ...)

In that case, you can honestly say you can't decrypt the drive.

We should still be able to see it. You don't like what it says, rebut it. And who knows, even a blind chicken sometimes finds a piece of corn.

The saddest thing is how cheap it is to buy a congresscritter.

Seriously---check out Pro Publica and follow a couple of links to see how much money the supporters got from the movie and recording industries.

I'd like to think that if I were to sell out the Constitution, it would take at least $5M. :-/

I usually run Firefox, but when I want to do something that might pollute my cookies/tracking info/black helicopters I switch to Arora. It works OK, and then I can nuke all the bits associated with it and not lose anything I care about.

Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.
[...]
"It really saddens Future Shop that people stoop to be this opportunistic and make money in this kind of organized way."

Kinda tough to make money by buying the product first, then substituting the clay. If it's done that way, it must be a prank. This doesn't add up. Who spends $7k (ten bricks) for a prank.

The only way this makes money is if the substitution is made before the box hits the checkout. Methinks me smells a rat.

"Despite confusing "piracy" and "privacy"....

I dunno, seems to me SOPA was doing quite a bit to combat online privacy.

Seriously, this is an excellent article and deserves promotion to the front page of a site offering ``News for Nerds''.

. I don't have an Iphone, so I only know what I've read online, but Siri's needing the network to be up creeps me out. This means in some sense Apple has access to your queries, and could do anything they want with the information. And how long before the gummint notices this and starts generating search warrants for it? Or just asks, and Apple instantly folds and turns it over?

. This is why I like my phones dumb.

Anyone notice that in the précis the guy specifically says he has not received death threats?

Any employer who needs to read past the nick ``Cmdr Taco'' is probably someone you'd not want to work for anyway.

Check the second screen. While it says “This head shop is a little ways from you”, closer examination shows it to be recommending Head Hunters Barber Shop.

Funny you should ask that.
Check out
MetricT's comment above.

The ``evacuation'' plans have always been a joke. Just look at NYC's roads and bridges at the start of a 3-day weekend. Now imagine it was everyone, not just those with disposable income and wanderlust.

We installed solar panels a couple of years ago, and they've been a Good Deal. (Like, zero electricity bills four months a year. In New England. :-) But my jaw dropped when they explained that they won't work during power outages(!).

The base problem is you have to avoid putting juice on the grid when a lineman's up there thinking everything's dead. Not good. There are ways to avoid this (ask anyone who has a gasoline generator hooked to their breaker box), but presumably the vendors want to keep the cost down so far as is possible.

So there are two aspects that may come to bear. First, the inverter (takes DC from solar panels and converts it to AC for the grid) is rigged to shut down immediately if there's no grid power (and wait five minutes after it comes back to resume operations). Second, it must synchronize its AC waveform to accurately match what's coming in. (Things get wasteful if it's a little out of phase, and dangerous if it's a lot out.)

So what I'm going to ask the inverter manufacturer come Monday is whether the incoming waveform is used to decide whether we've got kosher grid power. If so, will these experiments cause the frequency to depart from 60.00 Hz enough to cause the inverter to turn itself off? If so, there'll be a lot of people with solar panels who'll be very upset with these changes.