That depends on where you were and what you consider damage. Irene was much worse here in Connecticut in terms of wind effects (downed trees on roads/houses/etc) than Sandy. Several hours later as the storm moved north, flooding in southern Vermont was horrible and the effects still being felt 2 years later.

The wind effects were exacerbated by the fact that Irene hit in August - late summer - when trees and plants had full foliage. Lots of trees came down as a result - if you were lucky they didn't fall on anything important (I just lost a section of fence). Even more crowns and major limbs came down as well. It was pretty bad in terms of the magnitude of the destruction over a wide area. It didn't make big news because we're not New York/New Jersey and the population density here is pretty low. For what it's worth, power was out for 5-7 days for most people, which wasn't much fun either.

Sandy, on the other hand, hit in late October when the leaves had fallen, so despite somewhat higher winds, there was nowhere near as much damage. A few twigs fell on my roof and that was about it. I was out on the deck grilling dinner during the peak winds (to use up some frozen food in anticipation of the inevitable week-long power loss) and it was nowhere near as scary or dangerous as Irene. A few trees came down here and there in the region, but not nearly as many as the previous year. As a storm to be caught outside in, Irene was much scarier.

The flooding caused by Sandy was much worse, though limited mostly to the coastal towns here. The fact that the storm was larger in area and impacted regions with higher population density and correspondingly greater economic devastation was what made it newsworthy. Irene was the more damaging storm in terms of broad effect on the countryside from my observation.

You might think so, but the FBI warning at the beginning of old VHS tapes disagrees. I'm willing to be the laws referenced therein are not repealed as of yet.

If we never bother to explore the question we just don't really know. There very well could be many biomarkers for violence. How we act on that knowledge is the real moral dilemma. I personally think they are too close to the subject and really if they want to help others they would just fund the research. However, we already have one linked biomarker, and that's lead exposure - but we can't just start rounding up everyone with higher blood-lead concentrations and force them into chelation therapy. Obviously the benign solution is to remove lead sources, such as paints and leaded gasoline. If the culprit turns out to be DNA, then obviously this becomes a much larger issue.

Well, when the alien YHWH created them, they had nanotechnological mechanisms to prevent the inbreeding from becoming a problem. They were passed down generationally until eventually there was a break in the process. This led to the tradition of consuming corpses, to gain their remaining nanobots...

BECAUSE... ALIENS. No, I don't believe any of this stuff, but it would make a cool story. It's more creative than nine tenths of what's coming out of hollywood anyway :p

I agree with you on all points, but a delay is not a reasonable concern because we're just talking about additional safeties at this point. Either the gun fires or it doesn't. That's not going to be a concern until we go to caseless, and even then the gun can still be designed in the same basic way, but with electronic safeties rather than mechanical ones. By the same token, though, I don't want to involve even electricity with anything on my gun except additional targeting systems or other tacticool gadgetry because it's not necessary. It doesn't make any sense until you need a battery in the gun just to fire it.

You have got it precisely. Indeed, there is in fact no need whatsoever for centralized control of anything save perhaps IP address allocation. Each nation ought to be solely responsible for the details of implementation within their borders, and each nation can decide whether it wants to accept traffic directly from each other nation, or whether their citizens will have to do some tunneling (and perhaps break some laws) in order to access those addresses. It's nobody else's business.

I'm not saying I support her specifically, just that I believe leaders in a representative government have a responsibility to listen to the will of the populace to some extent, and not just during elections with no intent of acting on it.

The CIA is and always has been an intelligence/espionage agency. Blurb is incorrect to call them law enforcement

Yup just like how no governor of a state would in his right mind talk about selling a senators seat to the highest bidder.

Ask Illinois about that.

Actually yes.

if you know of a NSA or Govt operation going on, get an operative to place a unit near them and start intercepting their cellphone traffic so you can spy on the guys spying.

Now imagine making hundreds of these things all placed at specific locations but with a backend system that lets you enable or disable at will. Now you have a cellular snoopnet covering a very wide area.

Alternately, those individuals could have patronized other content providers that are willing to provide entertainment on terms and at a price that is more agreeable. Rather than feeling entitled, that is.

Yes they do.

If you are running, or exerting more energy you will exhale more often than other people who may not be exerting the energy.

Not every person has the same C02 per action. Some people are more efficient and others are less.

When have you ever seen IP lawyers overreach their position in any "honest" way? Their methods are ham-handed shotgun approaches. Shoot randomly and hope it hits something.

If those facilities, offices, and data centers are owned by the American company, then perhaps Germany should be looking into laws which permit that instead of trying to make other nations' corporations behave by their laws. You can't even _do_ that in China, you have to partner with a Chinese firm to even have that kind of presence there. If Germany wants that level of control, perhaps they should institute it.

There's no inherent need to permit a foreign corporation to own land and an effective business; force them to incorporate in Germany, in which case they can be regulated. If they haven't already, in which case they can be regulated, and this whole conversation is stupid. But it's stupid anyway, because this is what corporations do, and it makes more sense to control them from that angle.

When you think about it, domains are only as valid as people's willingness to use the commonly accepted DNS system and servers. It would be no more difficult on a technical level to replace the standard DNS servers with alternates of your own choosing.