Where has Russia gone "looking for a fight" in the past ~50 years, you ask?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Ethiopia (twice), Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Central African Republic. And about a half-dozen places closer to home but internationally recognized as independent states for the last ~31 years (Georgia - twice, Abkhazia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Crimea, Ukraine).

Pot, kettle, etc.

Can confirm. Kurt Cobain is dead, while Kirk Cameron is alive and well.
Feel free to extend the analogy with the anticipated lifespan of MS Office versus LibreOffice.

...and be surveilled on CCTV while they walk to/from the park on public sidewalks, and be surveilled yet again by cameras installed at the park.

Ed's point stands.

This.

I grew up in similar circumstances, where the population of the *entire county* was under 2k people, with over 2600 square miles of land. Arid farmland with nary a tree in sight; people working said farmland making $35k/year on a good crop year in near-poverty levels, and crumbling telecom infrastructure 50-60 years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCone_County,_Montana)

"Move to the city" is fine and all, until you actually think of the ramifications -- 90% of the population were either farming wheat or raising cattle. Corn didn't grow well there, so no subsidies for that. If those folks move to the city, we've just lost hundreds of square miles of domestic wheat production, and who knows how many 10's of thousands of cattle. The county is already bleeding people (it's steadily been shrinking since the 1920s) because of the lack of opportunities there. Give them some actual telecommuting capability and suddenly the entire equation changes. Right now you're lucky to get a modem to link at higher than 24kbps with all the line noise out there. If you're in "town" (800 people), you can get 256k DSL riding on one of the town's 3 T1s ... nope, no oversubscription there!

I have a friend who sounds almost identical in his needs ... he was traveling (3 months in Japan) and wanted something he could throw in his backpack and work from (web, ssh) if needed, without having to lug around a laptop. He got the ASUS Transformer with keyboard, and loves it -- he still uses it every day, and this is almost a year after buying it. Plus the doubled battery life the keyboard provides is really nice.

I love it ... keep spreading those hick-stereotype memes, maybe it'll slow down the flood of California and Washington refugees that keep choosing to move to Boise. For the record, the last time I saw the silhouette mudflaps was in eastern Oregon farm country, about four years ago.
But since we're on stereotypes: Last time I saw a slammed Chrysler 300 with 21" chrome rims and limo tint? Yesterday. I'd take the person with the mudflaps any day.
So please -- carry on with anything you can do to convince the refugees to look elsewhere.

It's a broadly-known concept that one cannot correct a societal problem with a technological solution. The societal problem must be corrected first. In this case, it's personal responsibility, or rather lack thereof when it comes to dangerous/stupid driving behavior. No amount of technical gadgetry is going to help people take personal responsibility to drive better. This is all just attacking the symptoms, but not addressing the root of the problem.

Driving is not viewed as a privilege that is prestigious and/or highly valued, therefore people treat it as a low-valued commodity and have little incentive to take personal responsibility to retain their privileges. However, if you can make driving privileges more difficult to obtain, people will automatically assign more value to them, and consequently treat them as valued privileges instead of a commodity.

Some ideas to do this could include:
* Much more stringent and frequent driving tests before licenses are issued/renewed
* Massively-increased licens testing fees
* Mandatory driver-training courses for all drivers
* Limited number of licenses issued per year (like H1B visas, hunting licenses, etc already are)

All of these make the driver's license a valued item, not just a commodity that can be had for a $50 fee and a few minutes' wait at the DMV.

Well, this is what happens when the U.S. military starts to *not* act as the world's police force. What did people expect? Happy joy bubbles to break out between the various Iraqi factions?

I read the Guardian's overview article ... they focused quite a bit on the so-called "murders" as reported in the documents: cases where the Iraqi army or police tortured and killed prisoners. Apparently, the official military policy on this, according to the Guardian, is for the military to take any report and feed it back to the Iraqui army or police for investigation. The military will formally investigate if one of their soliders is reported as abusing a prisoner, but they push it back to the Iraqis if it's one of their soliders/police doing the abusing. Again, this is my summary of the Guardian's reporting.

I'm surprised so many people are so upset that the US (and UK) are turning a blind eye to this. I mean, really -- the meme that's been repeated incessantly these last nine years is "The U.S. shouldn't be the world's police" and "The U.S. should get their nose out of other people's business". So here we have documented evidence of the U.S. doing exactly that -- having the Iraqis police themselves and getting their nose out of the Iraqi's internal issues -- and people are now complaining because the U.S. is not doing enough? WTF people, make up your minds -- either you want the U.S. to be the world's police or you don't!

This is how the Iraqis police themselves, apparently. The interesting thing in this case is that there's a 3rd party on hand (the U.S. military) to document the abuse/butchering the Iraqis are inflicting on themselves. Is the U.S. innocent? No - and the U.S. military still hasn't pulled out completely. But everyone who said the U.S. should stop being the world's police should be applauding them now.

Yes I did, and I qualified it. Control your knee-jerk "OMG STFU!!11" reaction and finish reading my comment. Specifically, where I said:

...and the entire paragraph where that quote came from. Then, read up on the Juror's Handbook http://www.fija.org/docs/JG_Jurors_Handbook.pdf or any other document describing the rights and responsibilities of juries in the USA, paying attention to the portions about "voting your conscience"; or just google the phrase "jury vote your conscience" yourself. Hopefully this requires no further explanation.

I'm sorry, but this is where you failed in your role as a juror. The whole point of a trial by jury is that you, the juror, is the last line of defense against injustice in all its various forms. You are supposed to use not only your intelligence, but also your common sense and personal sense of morality to render a truly just verdict.

The jury is a speed bump, a safety device, to prevent runaway application of the "just the facts" letter-of-the-law approach, and put the human element back into the justice machine. That's how the system was designed.

In your comments, you state that you wish the case had been dismissed, that the city was really crucifying Childs just so they could save face, etc. Obviously, you felt that finding Childs guilty was not just -- but you found him guilty anyway. I'm sorry, but if you truly felt what you state in your comments, then you failed miserably as a juror in this case.

I personally didn't notice it -- I was more bothered by the left/right coloration artifacts from the Dolby3D setup. :) This surprised me, as Dolby3D is generally thought to provide a better picture than its main competitor, RealD, at least from the conversations I've seen.

Most likely you watched Avatar 3D in either Dolby3D or RealD, both of which alternate images between the left and right eyes. This occurs at a rate of 144 FPS (so each eye sees 72 FPS) for both systems. It has been said that the 24- or 48-fps input signal can cause stuttering during fast horizontal pans, which may be what you were seeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_Cinema
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1085037

This is a dangerous position to be in, since **** rolls downhill when someone calls the BSA. First thing to do at this point is get some documentation. Email the CEO with your same concerns, maybe add in some of your research, and get his response via email, then print it out & save it! Then, when the audit happens and he points the finger at you, you can defend yourself. Otherwise, your conversation with the CEO (and his response) is irrelevant. Remember: if it isn't written down, it never happened -- the CEO could say you were installing unlicensed software without his knowledge, and then its your neck on the line.

And as far as calling an audit goes, think VERY carefully before calling the BSA in. It's going to be pretty obvious to the CEO who called the BSA, especially after you've been coming to him with these concerns. They may not know 100% for sure, but that's not going to stop them from finding some way to get rid of you. More importantly, if your CEO is networked well within your local business community, he may be able to blackball you from getting another job. Based on the information you've given, I would personally go for a paper trail where the CEO tells you NOT to fix the licensing issues, save that, and look for employment elsewhere. If you're going to call the BSA, wait until ~6 months after you're happily employed elsewhere before burning those bridges by calling an audit.