Totally unable to suspend disbelief on this one.

That kid's response is based nowhere in reality. No kid in the middle of a game would just sort of shrug and do the frowny eyebrow-raise if it shut off. He would have been immediately screaming "WTF!" or some variant thereof.

And like @Zawash said, what stupidly unrealistic functioning of electronic devices. That I can live with, but the fraudulent human behavior is unforgivable.

"insanity and young men have serious heart failures" That's tosh. This gentleman has a congenital condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (or HCM pronounced 'HOCUM' in the trade). It's a rare condition of which one variant is inheritied dominantly. Undiagnosed people who do high intensity sports are more likely to die from sudden death younger than the sedentary population with this condition - it's nothing to do with the type of sport itself.

Hmm... I think you have, but I think it was a slightly different variant you linked last time.

The cyclists I spoke so fondly of are a small segment of the cycling population and my consternation is borne of the occasional variant described, who treat their mode of transportation like their sexuality or alternative lifestyle-choice.

MOST folks who use bikes as their sole mode of transportation are common-sense courteous and 'invisible' to motorists, this is due primarily to a properly-functioning survival circuit in the grey matter area.

It's the passionate geeks trying to serve as a shining example of conservative, earth-friendly superiors pushing that envelope between sucking-air or taking a dirt-nap. My pal who got killed during a Critical Mass ride in S.F. was not one of these, he was simply in the wrong group at the wrong time.

Oh-when I ride a bike, I ride against the flow of traffic as I do when I walk down a street-WHY? Because I want to optimize my chances of survival against the ever-growing number of lame-brains who compulsively and obsessively, text while driving. Heck, most folks can't carry-on a phone conversation, blue-tooth or not without forgetting they are charged with a 3000 lb death machine.

Erics' right when he says you are hyper-aware while riding on two wheels, be it motorized or not. You have to be if you want to live.

Take a picture-My rant here contained NO expletives or curses, I found Jesus yesterday and he told me to and I quote, "For fuck's sake, fucking cut that shit the fuck out or else!"

My statement isn't inaccurate. They are a democracy. They have a democratically elected leader. You not liking it does not make it not a democracy. By your logic I might as well say the USA is not a democracy since they are a representative democracy. Of course the USA like Iran is just a variant of democracy. There are 20 something variants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_democracy#Forms

Your use of the word dictator did not have the context to it you now ascribe.

If the Supreme Leader holds a higher position of power, why isn't he visibly controlling the nation? (genuine question)

The president doesn't always have the highest position though. Many republics have both a president and prime minister. The prime minister will run the nation. Or like in Australia where Queen Elizabeth the 2nd holds the highest position, but she is a figurehead only, the parliament runs the nation.

This isn't really new, except that Snowden's documents confirm what everybody strongly suspected.

All of the encrypted communications mentioned use SSL, or TLS, and although strong crypto is supported it's more likely that weaker variants will be used almost all the time. This is partly from wanting to support older browsers, partly from not upgrading server keys and config when older ciphers are broken.

There are additional problems protecting communication from the NSA if they are really after you and not just indiscriminately gathering your data.

I would point out that Usama bin Laden did a rather good job though.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/new-snowden-documents-say-nsa-can-break-common-internet-encrypt/4940138

What? No boobs or its many variants in the tags.

Interesting. I've got a semi-relevant story, but I get long winded so feel free to skip to the next comments if you like.

My wife (Thai) and I (American) had our first daughter this year. When she first got pregnant, one of the doc's first priorities was to get us both tested for "Thalassemia", which I had never heard of before. Apparently it is a blood disorder that affects hemoglobin production and therefore red blood cells -- if both parents carry the (rather rare) recessive gene, it can be a pretty bad deal.

It turned out that my wife is in the 1% or so of Thais that carry the gene (but she doesn't express / suffer from it, it is recessive and she has the dominant gene also). I had to get tested as well, but they said it would be incredibly unlikely that I'd be positive and I wasn't. So, our daughter has a 25% chance of being a carrier like my wife but zero chance of suffering from the effects of it.

Anyway, I was curious about the disease and asked the doc why it is a big deal here (every pregnant couple MUST get screened for it here when getting hospital/prenatal care) but I'd never even heard of it in the US. It turns out that the disease / genetic mutation arose only in places with high rates of malaria. As it happens, the genetic effect on your blood cells that the mutation has makes you more resistant to malaria -- full-on exhibitors of it (two recessive genes) are far less likely to die of malaria than people that don't have the gene. That is, assuming that you don't have the extreme variants of it that make it very unlikely to survive early childhood. Basically, if you have the disease and yet are healthy enough to survive to adulthood, you're close to malaria immune (that's overstating it, but ballpark). The malaria parasite can't survive and reproduce properly on your funky Thalassemia-affected red blood cells.

I thought that was a pretty interesting evolutionary response that must have arisen from some populations being pretty much decimated by malaria back in pre-recorded history. Current carriers like my wife are probably the descendants of lucky folks that survived a deadly outbreak in history by virtue of having a disease/mutation that is, under normal circumstances, slightly or even extremely bad in species survival / reproductive fitness terms. I thought that was kinda cool -- but I'm glad that neither my wife nor my daughter are/can be full-on expressors of the gene.

Whatever you guys, whenever I hear a cute chick say any variant of the word, "Fuck!," I get wood..
Sexy accent?? Touch myself.

*promote the wonder of variants in brain chemistry

Indeed, and any number of scenarios may play out that could render a future variant of a "terminator" paradigm far from unimaginable. The tech you see in a motion picture today (should you care to use the most obvious rule-of-thumb) has been tried and tested, implemented and reviewed...But we won't see the meat of it until the military or other similar proprietary goons have declared it "unclassified."

Uhhhh, fer instance: Nanobots removing plaque from arteries through a technician's commands??-A SOLID 30 years ago this was already being done. Is the same technology available to grunts, cunts, or the monetarily impaired??-HELLO?!!

M Malevolent
O Oligarchic
N Nazified
S Succubal
A Anti-Neutraceutical
N Nonvegetarian
T Treachetourial
O Organo-assassins

The following address should be on every death to eco-terroristists' organization's, "Raze This Motherfucker", hit list:

World Headquarters Monsanto Company 800 North Lindbergh Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63167. Phone: 314/694-1000

Everyone who works for this corporation should be considered complicit in the undoing of species-

Monsanto is the reason bees are disappearing worldwide-
Monsanto is the reason heath care is unaffordable-
Monsanto is the reason gasoline no longer lubricates rubber and composites in combustion engines-
Monsanto is responsible for the disappearance of heirloom variety seed banks the world over-(hybrids notwithstanding, their originating variants tucked-away in bunkers)
Monsanto is a poisonous cabal of eugenicists, working to help other cunts reduce the world population through systematic, experimental means, with the world's sentients as her guinea pigs.

Someone needs to mail them some anthrax powder mixed with ricin, to get that full effect.

cool. interesting...thanks.
one variant - chronic traumatic encephalopathy

Nice! These are so much easier to watch than the fail variants.