GiraffeNecktie

People in the first world don't appreciate what a huge diverse place is Africa. Things are getting better in some places, worse in others but there is lots of reason for optimism overall. Unfortunately, the bad news tends to get all the attention, so people here get the idea that development money doesn't do any good, period.

Makes me wonder if Google shouldn't require apps that access user information to provide an explanation of why the data is being accessed, how it is used, and how long it is kept. Then allow users to click through the notifications to get more information.

Faced with a choice of 6 months or 30 years, the six months would be the pragmatic choice, but it is tantamount to extortion.

No it isn't. The sworn duty of the prosecutor is not to get a conviction, it's to get the truth. Trying to force someone to confess to a crime they didn't commit by threatening to lock them away for most of their adult life, is only a very small step away from torturing someone or threatening them with execution to obtain a confession.

$25 million is pretty cheap for a government system. In the late 90's the Canadian government spent about a billion dollars (probably ~900 million US$) building a database of gun owners.

Last year they ditched the database for ideological reasons (over the protests of the public security sector who were finding it critical for officer safety).

That's government IT. Spend absurd amounts of money building something that you could assemble for next to nothing using off the shelf parts, underfund the maintenance, and then throw it away.

For myself, in my late fifties, I'd say that it's too late to do all the things that I'm interested in, that I'd like to do, but that don't really hold my attention enough to get going in.

Learning to program is one of those things. Always been fascinated by it, always wanted to do it, but every time I've made a stab at it, it doesn't hold my interest.

But for the last five years I've been learning Chinese. Something that I NEVER had the slightest interest in doing (until I started) and never would have believed that I could do. But for some stupid reason, I work at it every day, 365 days of the year and I like it, even though my progress has been painfully slow.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Maybe just that you might as well do what you love, no matter what age. And also, that you might not know what exactly you really love until you try it.

I think you'd have to narrow it further than WWII. France was involved in colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria (the latter involved lots and lots of torture). England has participated in most of the US adventures and a few of their own (Suez, Northern Ireland, Falklands). Japan and Germany have kept their noses clean since WWII but that's partly a side effect of the complete asskicking they received in the war, rather than some innate cultural appreciation of peace and human rights. Up until recently France was conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific and their agents were apparently involved in the sinking of a protest ship in New Zealand.

England and Germany have much greater limitations on free speech than does the United States.

Seriously? Do you actually believe that France, Germany, England and Japan have not tortured people, imprisoned people without charge, or (gasp) started senseless wars?

ROTFL

I also got mine from Newark and it arrived even faster. They even phoned me to follow up which I thought was a bit over the top for a $40 item (although I think they were just checking to see whether I might be a potential volume purchaser)

You're setting a very, very, low bar for "doing their jobs". The reason we employ human beings at border points is so that they will, theoretically, use good judgement to allow the free flow of legitimate goods and travelers (i.e. not create massive delays without a clear reason).

He hasn't been part of Mcafee Associates for almost twenty years.

Now HN is carrying stories from World Nut Daily? Gimme a frickin break.

HUM.com

Putting it up for auction next month on Moniker.

Or just do like they do in Quebec where women never take their husband's last name. In fact, it's the law.

"Diversity is valuable when it represents diversity of life experience and problem-solving methods, not when it represents some external characteristic like skin color or gender."

First of all, gender is not exactly an "external characteristic". Secondly the life experiences of men and women are inherently diverse.

Hopefully, someday the colour of your skin won't influence your life experience, but that is not the case in any human society that I am aware of.

You want to see intel and analysis? The submitted link has a 112 page FBI intelligence report (complete with an FBI customer satisfaction survey on page 6). What more do you want?

Seems like the hysteria and fearmongering (treating OWS as terrorists) was coming from the Bureau.

Sure, society must change, but government is a fundamental part of both the problem and the solution. The United States was a "democracy" for nearly 200 years before black people received equal treatment before the law. The change was sparked by demonstrations and civil unrest during the 1950s and 60s but attitudes didn't begin to change until the government enacted new laws, enforced existing statutes, assigned resources and accepted responsibility.

The analogy with enforced birth control is a poor one. This issue is about creating a civil society where laws are enacted and enforced for the protection and well-being of all citizens regardless of gender, caste, sexual orientation, economic status etc.

In a modern society, the state has a duty to protect innocent persons from harm. So far, India has been stunningly inept in this area.

I totally disagree. The quote marks around the words "World's Ugliest Woman" indicate that this was an actual opinion that someone expressed but that it isn't necessarily a fact. That's really the point of the story, how she dealt with the hurtful comments of others.

Actually, all the text across the site needs a thorough edit (by a human). Here are just a few examples of what the tool likely passed but that would have been flagged by a competent human editor:

"Nitpicker was written by Niels Lohmann during the final stages of this thesis." > ... his thesis

"At that time, every second page looked like the one on the left when it came back from his supervisor. " > ... on the right.

The article claims that hibernation files are vulnerable when using Truecrypt, but according to the release notes from version 7, July 19 2010:

"As Windows XP and Windows 2003 do not provide any API for encryption of hibernation files, TrueCrypt has to modify undocumented components of Windows XP/2003 in order to allow users to encrypt hibernation files. Therefore, TrueCrypt cannot guarantee that Windows XP/2003 hibernation files will always be encrypted. Therefore, if you use Windows XP/2003 and want the hibernation file to be safely encrypted, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to Windows Vista or later and to TrueCrypt 7.0 or later. For more information, see the section Hibernation File. "

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=version-history

If it takes a discussion with people taking opposing viewpoints, let's get started. Now.

If fixing the problem that caused their deaths is "political" I don't think the murdered would mind.

Not exactly exactly but yeah, the same idea.

Perhaps a little misleading but it is a standard measure of productivity.

A pretty good article overall but he seems to go off the rails when he starts talking about construction costs and assumes that a thorium reactor would cost the same as a uranium reactor. My understanding is that a thorium reactor should be dramatically cheaper for a variety of reasons (no need for a big containment bubble for one thing).

The iPad mini is "disruptive" only if you live in an alternative and exclusively Apple universe. The smaller Android tablets and large phones (like the Galaxy Tab), which have been out for a long time, disrupted the iPad and forced the introduction of the mini.

He was a pioneer in the sense that he extended the classical Indian music genre in many ways (i.e. through innovative compositions and film scores that added many non-traditional elements)

What would Jesus do? https://twitter.com/jesus

Except that wrapping someone in wet bedsheets has nothing whatsoever to do with homeopathy. Homeopathy might be a crock but this article is ridiculous.

The first step is to establish a shared understanding of what is acceptable (i.e. code of conduct). Without that code of conduct, there's nothing to enforce.

Actually, I'm not even sure that "enforcement" is all that relevant. It's more about articulating the norms of behavior so that people can learn from them and grow.