Allowing employers to dip into MPF accounts at will like this is madness. It negates the whole point of having a pension fund, which is supposed to be to provide for workers' old age.

Americans are historically a tough lot. But the policies and rhetoric of the Bush-Cheney years, which set the tone for the current GOP attacks, are infantilizing: be very afraid, we're told, and let the government take care of you. The tough-guy bluster has led to a permanent state of anxiety—and a slew of counterproductive policies, from harsh visa restrictions to waterboarding. Our politicians rail about apocalyptic threats while TSA officers pat down toddlers at the airport. The irony is that many potentially lethal terror attacks—from United Flight 93 to Richard Reid to the underwear bomber—have been foiled by regular citizens. The aim of terrorists is to make people feel powerless and afraid. Un-fortunately, not every plot will be foiled. But if that's the standard we and our leaders set for ourselves, we are doomed to perpetuate dumb policies that flow from irrational fears. Just what the terrorists want.

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire. More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

I was trying to update the BIOS of an old ECS K7SOM+, a 1 Ghz-era AMD Athlon motherboard. The problem is that I don't use Windows/DOS nor do I use floppies. Fortunately, there's UNetbootin, a tool design specifically to make bootable USB flash drives from Linux. Here are the general instructions:

4000 AD is a unique game of strategy set two thousand years in the future, when men have spread to the planets of other stars hundreds of light-years from the earth. An interstellar conflict between worlds is its subject. The concept of star travel by hyper-space is the basis of its unique playing character. 4000 AD is pure strategy of movement, with no chance element. Two to four players may play independently or in alliance with others.

4000 AD is a science fiction game set 2000 years into the future. Players maneuver fleets of ships in an attempt to conquer the known galaxy.

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Madam, – As an Irish citizen who travels extensively in the course of my work, I am very concerned about the fraudulent use of Irish passports. I have long experience of the ready welcome that an Irish passport receives in many corners of the world. This welcome is now being threatened by the use of fraudulent Irish passports by those suspected of murdering Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. There is a strong prima facie case against Israel: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was seen as an enemy by Israel; Israel has engaged in foreign assassinations before; Israel has used forged third-country passports in other such operations; and no forged passports from Israel’s closest ally (the United States) were used. Clearly, the perpetrators think that they can treat Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia with contempt.

This tool provides a somewhat simplified overview of the USPSTF-recommended health options available, prioritized for the individual.

How is it even possible that a Minister who slandered a political opponent and then swore a false statement in an affidavit before the High Court that he had not done so, could still remain in office? Because, in post-Ahern Irish politics, anything goes. No wonder the public have grown increasingly sick and tired of politics and politicians. It is apparent to me that, with the playing out of the O’Dea affair, we have arrived at a point that the 20th-century American writer Jean Toomer described most aptly. He said that acceptance of prevailing standards often means that we have no standards of our own. The prevailing standards the Government is operating off in Irish politics are those of Bertie Ahern. The result is that the current Fianna Fáil party has no standards. They do have one guiding principle remaining: blind loyalty to party colleague, come what may.

What feeds his winter crop of lettuce is recirculating water from the 150-gallon fish tank and the waste generated by his 20 jumbo goldfish. Wastewater is what fertilizes the 27 strawberry plants from last summer, too. They occupy little cubbies in a seven-foot-tall PVC pipe. When the temperature begins to climb in the spring, he will plant the rest of the gravel containers with beans, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers — all the things many other gardeners grow outside.

Ubisoft's New PC DRM Really Requires Net Access, Ends Game If Disconnected by Chris Faylor Feb 17, 2010 3:20pm CST Ubisoft wasn't kidding when it said that its new digital rights management technique mandates "an active Internet connection to play the game, for all game modes." Advance copies of the first two games to embrace the new solution--Assassin's Creed II PC and The Settlers 7 PC--recently arrived at PC Gamer, leading to the discovery that the games automatically shut down if temporarily disconnected from the Internet. In the case of Assassin's Creed II PC, a single-player game, players will lose any progress since the last checkpoint in the event that they briefly lose their connection to Ubisoft's master servers, be it because of client-side or server-side issues.

To those familiar with the science and the IPCC’s work, the current media discussion is in large part simply absurd and surreal. Journalists who have never even peeked into the IPCC report are now outraged that one wrong number appears on page 493 of Vol.2. We’ve met TV teams coming to film a report on the IPCC reports’ errors, who were astonished when they held one of the heavy volumes in hand, having never even seen it. They told us frankly that they had no way to make their own judgment; they could only report what they were being told about it. And there are well-organized lobby forces with proper PR skills that make sure these journalists are being told the “right” story. That explains why some media stories about what is supposedly said in the IPCC reports can easily be falsified simply by opening the report and reading. Unfortunately, as a broad-based volunteer effort with only minimal organizational structure the IPCC is not in a good position to rapidly counter misinformation.

1989 should have been the best year ever for Rock Sugar, the big haired heavy metal band that had just broken the top 41 on the rock radio charts with their solid brass debut album “Bang You Like A Drum”. But instead of headlining concerts, Rock Sugar made the headlines when they were presumed lost forever after playing an extremely ill advised gig celebrating the bat mitzvah of 13-year-old Lisa Rosenberg.

E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists. And Google, so recently a hero to many people for threatening to leave China after hacking attempts against the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, now finds itself being pilloried as a clumsy violator of privacy. As Evgeny Morozov wrote in a blog post for Foreign Policy, “If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government."

The problem is how. Google has taken a couple of services that had basically clear privacy expectations — specifically, Gmail (private) and Google Profiles (public) — and combined them in a way that discloses previously private information that many people consider confidential.

Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.