There's at least one US cellular provider which annoys the FBI by obeying the law. They have a contact point for interception requests. That phone is answered by their lawyers, who check the validity of the request before anything happens. If it's an "emergency" request prior to a court order, they insist that the requesting law enforcement agent sign a form.

The form requires full identification of the law enforcement officer, their contact information, and their supervisor's contact information. The officer must certify that a proper court order will be requested and provided to the telco within a specified number of days. The law enforcement officer has to agree that their agency will indemnify the telco in the event of any later legal dispute, and that should the agency fail to do so, the officer will be personally responsible for any penalties or legal expenses incurred by the telco.

That's what CALEA says a telco is supposed to do. The FBI hates being accountable like that.

There are now six systems with of known exoplanets within 10 light years. It's quite feasible to send messages in their direction on a regular basis. Should this be done?

You'd think they'd offer an upgrade path to Xbox One. But no. That's not the Microsoft way. They didn't migrate PlaysForSure to Zune. They sort of migrated Zune to Windows Phone and Xbox Music. They're not good at gracefully supporting their content buyers as the technology changes.

Ahh the joys of self-financing government departments. "We believe those assets were used in connection with a crime". Suddenly, they don't have to prove anything, they just have to seize it and it's theirs. Nice and convenient. Can they even prove where the bitcoins came from?

What does median mean. Well, it's the number where 50% of your sample is above, and 50% is below. So half the workers are over 29, and half are younger than 29. That's it. That's all it means.

You aren't married, I take it.

The tail broke off, not the wings. And the aircraft didn't "cartwheel". There are many good pictures of the wreckage. The wreckage is sitting on the ground alongside the runway, right side up, wings intact, on its belly. The tail assembly is completely detached from the plane. Much fire damage to the top of the fuselage, which is puzzling.

There are pictures of the passengers evacuating, including, inevitably, one of the passengers who just evacuated taking pictures of the plane.

Too early to discuss causes. Reports indicate the plane landed short in an nose-up attitude, but it's too early to say why.

Yes, the Egyptian military is unusual is that they are not an obvious kleptocracy like most other military juntas. I'm sure that there are senior military members, however, who are economically and politically benefiting from the status quo, but mostly they seem to want to hold on to their position as a mostly secular, stabilizing influence. It's not like they did such a great job before Mosari, however to be fair, it's not clear that anyone could do a whole lot better.

Even without the polarizing aspects of the current Islamic Mess, Egypt is in a tough position: A burgeoning population, poor resource base and the most screwed up political arena on the planet. You know your in trouble when your historical enemy (Israel) is the one country that is actively working to help stabilize day to day issues. Purely enlightened self interest, of course, but still....

From what I saw in the video it looks like it will. In fact it seems they couldn't even attach one of the panels properly (lower left side). Now if IKEA has trouble building their own product, imagine some illiterate 3rd world peasant. Also, why the hell would you want to make things more comfortable in a shelter? You do NOT want to give people a reason to stay longer.

The Xbox One recognizes your face. It knows if you're watching. They're in a position to insist that you watch the ads. Leave during an ad, and everything pauses until you get back to finish watching the ad.

"It sees you when you're sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows if you've been bad or good."

San Francisco has 8,000 homeless people. Those could help.

It's the human condition to make fun of the misfortunes of others, as well as make fun of ourselves. If you can't laugh about the world around you, you'll die an unhappy person.

There's an anime version of Welcome to the N.H.K. The first episode describes someone becoming hikikomori. Then it gets worse. It's so painful that when it ran on Japanese TV, a public service announcement of a help line for hikikomori ran with each episode.

I'd thought of doing that as part of one of my browser add-ons, but it has problems. The general idea is that you send your cookies to a central site which sends them out to others to confuse tracking. As the article says, "The Vortex system will build a database of cookies gathered by players." So you've traded multiple limited data collection systems for one central one. There are a number of obvious ways that can backfire.

Just turn off third party cookies. Or run Abine's Do Not Track Me.

True. A big problem with what passes for 3D movies rely on hitting you in the face with 3D effects. All "3D" movies seem to have to have a roller coaster scene or equivalent. It's not cool any more, just annoying.

Cameron did a nice job with "Avatar". He figured out how to use 3D with restraint. At no point in Avatar is anything placed in front of the screen plane. In everything in Disney Crap 3D, the 3D is in your face.

There are things that can still be done. Cameron wants higher frame rates, for those big slow pans over high-detail backgrounds he likes don't have any visible strobing effects. He also points out that going to 4K resolution is meaningless after the first few rows in the theater, where nobody sits anyway.