I conceed your point. Maybe the printers left off the second part of the slogan:

"Yes we CAN ... do exactly the same thing as the other guy"
"Yes we CAN ... keep the status quo"
"Yes we CAN ... screw up everything we touch"

I certainly didn't exact anything to change. I just enjoy poking the people who did. I have to admit, they aren't fighting as much as they used to. Now they just twitch a little, I guess the realization has finally set in, shame it took them this long.

We? Have a mouse in your pocket?

#1) By healthcare reform you mean forced to buy insurance? I don't see a lot of reform going on, so far it hasn't exactly been a stunning success (and major parts of it have been delayed repeatedly). More signs of awesome I am sure.

#2) So 'we' found Osama? Or years of work (started while Bush was in office) finally bared fruit? It's not like Obama was out there with a flashlight.

#3) 40% of Democratice Representative and 58% of Democratic Senators voted for the Iraq war. Both parties own that war. I realize that 'we' have a short memory.

I really hope you can come up with some bigger wins then that. Maybe the fact that Obama has added more debt then any other president in history? Go him!

How is that working out?

Thanks for the info about your setup!

Where to start.

First of all, using the term 'assault weapon' or 'assault rifle' is a red flag. This term has been miss-used so much it has lost any meaning. The military doesn't consider the AR-15 a 'assault rifle' because it is only semi auto (i.e. does not have select fire). Some people consider anything scary looking an "Military style assault rifle", use term at your own risk.

Fortunately for all of us, you don't get to dictate what somebody can 'reasonably' have in their house. An AR15 is no more of an 'accident waiting to happen' then any other firearm. The AR15 is a perfectly acceptable home defense weapon, some times more then one bad guy shows up. According to police statistics, one in every three too four rounds hit (here is one of many links discussing it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/nyregion/08nypd.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). Despite what the movies tell you, it typically takes several shots to disable/kill. So, assuming two hits to disable (low according to statistics) + three 'bad guys' = 18 to 24 rounds expended. And these are numbers for people who are required to train and qualify with their weapons. I will gladly take my 30 round standard capacity mags, thank you! Personally, I do prefer a pistol for home defense. I like my .45 "military style assault pistol" for this purpose. It also has "assault clips", FTW!

Lets also not forget that they are many sporting and competetion uses for an AR15.

It also gladdens my heart that the AR15 is currently (and has for quite some time now) been selling in record numbers, by far larger numbers then any other single firearm. Magpul, which makes 30 round (standard capacity) magazines, is well over a million magazines on back order. Last I heard they estimated 3+ million AR15s in the hands of US citizens.

"...one possibility is you expect to fight the military, in which case you are hopelessly outgunned anyway..."
Not really a fan of history are you? Wars have been fought and won by a bunch of out-gunned untrained peasants for centuries.

"The second amendment does not say you have a right to buy the biggest gun ever made just so you can imagine something else was that big, I'm sure if they knew what an effective killing tool firearms would turn into they would've been a bit more restrictive even then."
Our founding fathers were smart men, I am sure (some of them being inventors and tinkerers themselves) that they knew that better weapons would be invented in short order. They didn't put any restrictions on the state of the art in 1787, why would they put any restrictions on future weapons? I am sure glad they didn't.

"The Constitution was never intended to be unalterable, that's why they created a process to allow changes to be made to it, it's only supposed to need a majority vote. And unlike the first amendment, that could realistically happen with the second."
Of course it can be changed, it is very very hard to change the constitution (by design). The US Senate cannot even pass a bill (with few restrictions), how do you expect an amendment (with a much larger % of yes votes) to pass? Pure fantasy.

Bun and bullet registry is a poor idea, for so many reasons. Canada tried it, spend 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars on it, they are now the process of dismantling it. Their own words: “The Harper Government has always been clear; by eliminating the wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry, we can instead focus our efforts on measures that actually tackle crime and make our streets and communities safe,”. It sounds like they still have a registry for handguns, I am curious how long that lasts.

Good day.

There is tax free diesel for construction and agricultural use, it is dyed red so use in on road can be detected. There is a serious fine for having red diesel in the wrong vehicle.

Actually, 'Change we can believe in' was Obama's campaign slogan and something they pushed very hard, not 'Republican propaganda'. Remember the 'first 100 days' feeding frenzy, where all the changes Obama was supposed to be making was discussed at great length? The only problem is the geniuses that believe him and voted him into office.

Petabytes? Are you serious? WTF where they storing? If you have 256 sites, each logging 100MB a day of climate data (a ridiculous amount of data), that's a bit more then 108 years of storage per petabyte.

I would also point out that its not as simple as getting the data from the original source.
1) First of all, there are a lot of original sources, which ones exactly did they get data from?
2) The data was on magnetic tape and paper form, who knows what is still readable or available
3) Data gets skipped, overlooked, entered in error, etc.
4) Often times there are several steps involved in post processing the data.

This is why you keep your raw data every step along the way. Do you really think a person now, 20+ years after the fact, can go through the process ( accumulating, organizing, ingesting, analyzing, and processing data from disparate data sets) and come up with the same data set? Really?

I would seriously doubt UEA would be able to reconstruct 90% of the original data set with a high degree of certainty

I agree, your methods and results should be reproducible. However in this case they destroyed the original temperature data for a bunch of stations for many years. This data is not reproducible (unless you have a time machine). You can’t rerun this simulation.

In their own words: "We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenized) data." Thus, all anybody has access too is their post processed data after it has been cleaned up and who knows what (if anything) removed. Even if you trust them to not massage the data in any way (suspect given their recent history) there is still no way to verify the assumptions, method, validity and correctness of the post processing.

This is at best catastrophic and unbelievably sloppy scientific work.

Thank you!

I have never understood why some IT people have to be dicks. Yes, sometimes you will have to deal with morons, the clueless, the malicious, and everywhere in-between. Welcome to the real world, put on your big boy pants and deal with it! The vast majority of people are just trying to do their job and made a honest mistake. I think it's time IT realizes that their job depends on 'DFUs'. Do you know what you call a IT guy without any user? Unemployed.