Are we talking about Al Qaeda? Or Georgia Republicans? Because I know it ain't China.

And if you need an impact wrench or a valve spring compressor, you can't just download an open-source copy.

Remember in "The Right Stuff", when the nurse was telling the astronauts that they had to provide a sperm sample for testing? There was no sane reason why NASA needed that information. They were just collecting it because they could. Because someone said, "well, we've got just about everything on these boys... did we miss anything?"

I was reminded of that scene not too long ago, when applying for a job in the... how shall I put this politely... "financial sector". And again just now, when I read this thing.

Try again. Horizontal drilling and fracking are two completely different things. They're often used together, but not always.

Maybe building this monstrosity is a good idea, maybe it isn't. But if you do decide to build it, then now is the perfect time. Real estate prices are low (compared to NYC 12 years ago, at least). Interest rates are low. And there's thousands of construction workers looking for jobs.

And funny pictures of cats.

You have it exactly backwards. I can get a wide selection of good beer at several places in my neighborhood, including one brewery. As long as the good stuff's available, why should I care what the majority drinks?

North Carolina banned state officials from taking global warming into account for the purpose of predicting shoreline erosion. (NC has a flat, sandy shore with a lot of barrier islands, so they need to pay attention to that stuff.) So they're not outlawing global warming, just pretending that it doesn't exist - which is equally stupid, but not quite the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Fisheries

You know, reading the summary would have taken you less time than typing that.

A very long time ago, O'Rourke was a sharp, witty guy. Then he quit doing drugs, started hanging out with old Republicans, and his writing went to shit. It's pretty sad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKQdzDQqJ_U

They taxed the job creators.

What government regulations do we have right now that interfere with mobile delivery of voice and video data?

Exactly. Thanks for the summary. I'd tell people to read the damn article, but most of them can't read Polish, and the translation is gibberish.

The issue here is that the admins were keeping backups of the data, and the owner of the data wasn't aware of it. (We don't really know whose fault that is; maybe the guy just didn't read the memo from IT.) Are they encrypting the data so that only the owner can decode it? Is the backup process opt-in or opt-out? The article doesn't say.