Lucky. I've lived in a few places in IL, so I'm assuming it's a state-wide thing (correct me if I'm wrong, here), but everywhere in IL I've lived, it's always 10am on the first Tuesday of every month. So you're at work, coding away, or in class, trying to hear a lecture? Siren test! Game off, everybody, until this stupid siren finishes its thing. Very annoying. Saturday at noon would be way better.

Oh, shit. Sorry, I didn't see your response until just now. Yes, I forgot about the subs. Obviously, they have some nukes, too. And yes, you are correct, that the chain of command is pretty short. But as far as the people involved in the physical launching of the nukes, they are all actual military personnel. They weren't (and won't be) people appointed by Trump, they will be people who come up through the ranks, just like any other soldier.

I'm former Army, and I've talked to many of my friends about this, who are former military of various branches, and we all seemed to be on the same page about this. We find Trump horrifying, but the one thing none of us are/were worried about was him having control over the nukes, because we all thought there's no way the military would go along with it. He might order it, but surely the military wouldn't comply, unless there was a damned good reason for it.

Then I just now decided to look a bit deeper into this topic, just to make sure I wasn't just talking out of my ass. It turns out Trump being in control of our nukes is a bit scarier than I (or my other military friends) had thought. https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

As much as I agree with everything you said there, let me alleviate one of your concerns. Trump does not actually have the power to launch a nuke on his own. He has the *authority* to launch nukes, in the form of nuclear access codes which *authorize* the launch of a nuke, but he alone does not have the *power* to launch them. Now, that might sound like a semantic difference, but it really isn't. The USAF is in charge of our nukes, and *they* are the ones who actually push the launch button, and more importantly, they must *approve* of the president's decision to launch nukes. While I totally agree with you that Trump wouldn't hesitate to launch nukes at a country, I don't think the Air Force would allow it unless they felt it was warranted. Maybe it's because I'm former Army, but I have a lot more faith in the Air Force's ability to judge whether or not a situation merits a nuclear strike, but I think we'll be okay in that regard. But once again, you're absolutely right about his words being a window into his mind, and every time we get one of these quick glances inside, it's a terrifying sight.

It doesn't work like that. If I steal your phone, and bring it back to MY house, the cops can't search it just because YOUR phone is in it. They need to get a warrant to search my house, because under the 4th amendment, I have the right to refuse to allow my house to be searched unless they have probable cause that illegal activity is/has taken place in my house. So yes, a warrant is still necessary, even with GPS data. It just makes the warrant easier to obtain (hypothetically) if you show them GPS data.

I keep seeing people talking about revenge-style columbine-like school shootings. Has no one here heard that wasn't the case with columbine? The shooters were not bullied into revenge. It was not a mission to take out a specific few people who bullied them too much. They were psychopaths, plain and simple. The truth came out years after the shooting, and a quick Google search will reveal this.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

According to this and several other articles and books later written about the subject, the main kid was well liked by everyone, a common trait of sociopaths. The whole bullying narrative was assumed by the media, who had only the smallest snippets of data from which to draw conclusions, and of course, they did. Wait around and report the facts? Nope. Let's give everyone a narrative that makes sense, and get it out there first! Once they'd reported this motivation, they couldn't go back and correct themselves, they'd lose face. So everyone stuck with the story, and since then, we've always attributed what happened to bullying.

I think the problem with this is you're missing the bigger picture. Sure, unemployment is low, but the statistic which tells the story is job growth. If you look at the BLS website concerning electrical and electronics engineers, which should be a rapidly growing job prospect, given the times we live in, where every damn thing you own has a chip in it, wifi connectivity and a twitter feed, the number of jobs are growing at a much slower rate than normal.

Efficient because I care about my time a hell of a lot more than I care about gas.

Ever been stuck in the mud or snow? TCS, ASC, and whatever other "aids" they use to stop your car from doing anything fun will immediately negate any chances you have of getting your car unstuck from mud or snow. And yes, your natural answer would be, "well, give me a button that turns it off." But all new cars must have un-defeatable TCS and ASC as of a couple years ago. Insurance companies lobbied hard for it, and now it's law. The only cars that get away with not having it are the really exotic cars like Lambo, Ferrari, and Porsche. Which makes sense, because those cars get stuck in the mud and snow all the time, right?

Okay, I'll see your wikipedia page and raise you another that challenges the validity of their claims http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language They're not as human as their caretakers would have you think.

The driver in this case was a truck driver, he probably worked for a trucking company. Now, suppose his boss had the habit of texting him 'urgent' information, and that continued employment depending on responding to/acting on those texts.

If that were the case, then he could easily blame his employer for encouraging him, if not mandating him to break the law, and his employer should be held accountable in court. There is still no excusable reason for him to be checking his phone while driving a +20 ton vehicle in traffic, and if his employer is telling him to do so, then let them hang for it.

I agree that for the average consumer, tablets are useless when you take into consideration most people need a PC and a smartphone. The average tablet using the most popular apps doesn't do anything that either of them can't do. The only real advantage is readability (think kindle, or if you use a calendar program because your schedule is actually that busy that it warrants it).

However, there is one use that I never hear people talk about, and it's one that has made a tablet absolutely worth every penny I spent on mine (a Dell Latitude ST, running Win7). MS OneNote. It is the only product MS ever made that I think is not only damn good software, but I feel like I actually got my money's worth out of it! I use it for school (currently pursuing EE degree). For math, it is simply awesome! No running out of paper space for that really long calculus equation, or needing to write microscopically small to fit it all before you run out of space. The stylus comes with two programmable buttons, so to erase, you just hold a button to make your stylus an eraser! It can record audio and video (helpful for recording lectures for later reference).

And since it's running an Intel processor, granted, it's the Atom :/ but it's still an Intel processor, meaning you can dual-boot it with your favorite distro of Linux. Honestly, if they could have just made it with a faster processor and a different graphics card (they used the same one as what's in the iPad, and Apple made sure to retain the rights to the drivers, so the one you get in your Dell is totally neutered), it would be the perfect tablet, and it would serve an actual purpose. Not just an expensive toy.

/rant

Um... bullshit. A friend of mine got fired for that exact reason. He didn't want to write tickets for frivolous infractions of the law, and his superiors told him if he didn't start writing more tickets, he would be fired. He started writing a few more tickets, but not enough, according to his supervisors, and he was fired. He tried getting work in other precincts, but he was unable. To this day, he still hasn't worked as a police officer since.

Complicated bombs are complicated, but simple ones are not. It really depends on the goal of the bomb. If the goal is to kill as many people as possible, or wreak as much havoc as possible, those are so simple, and the components are so easy to get a hold of, there's no (reasonable) way to eliminate them.

And as far as being able to do it without the FBI catching wind of your plot, if you don't tell anyone you're going to bomb a place, they'll never find out, either. The amount of planning and gathering needed supplies to carry out a bombing is as simple as a single visit to a few stores, and a few hours of putting it all together. Not much longer (if at all) than it is to purchase weapons & ammo, clean those weapons, and load rounds into magazines.

Care to share a source on that? I've been searching high and low for an Android OS that will run on my Dell Latitude ST Tablet (runs on an Intel Atom), and I came up dry. I've been wanting to dual-boot win7 and Android on it, but so far I can't find an Android OS that will run on it.

If you used Linux, you could disable the trackpad, and you wouldn't even have to open a console to do it, if you used Ubuntu. It's right there in system settings. Proprietary Windows software stopping you from using linux? Run windows on a VM inside Ubuntu. It's incredibly easy.