So I basically agree, the writer is responsible. That said, in this PARTICULAR case, I think its an excellent example of when prosecutorial discretion should apply, as they notified the police immediately etc.

To some extent. But the claims on ancient indian technology are religious-based as well, in most respects. And what an indian government official says is not necessarily a shared opinion of the actual academics. As a side note, my recollection is that the pythagorean theorem being first discovered in India actually has some credibility, the rest of the examples are utter garbage of course.

The reason the government hates thumb drives is because they are very small, and can store LOTS of data. Even in unclassified areas, the government tends not to want them around anything even the slightest bit sensitive. I would be surprised if they're permitted anywhere near the white house, and wouldn't be surprised if most of the computers in the white house are configured to disallow them. A floppy is harder to smuggle, and carries less per disk. Enough floppies to store a gigabyte of data is nearly impossible to hide from the secret service (well, so one would hope, but then . . . )

Probably you're right. On the other hand, I had lunch the day before yesterday with a man who built a circuit board that helped a man take back off from the moon after landing on it. And it certainly wasn't something he expected to happen when he started his career working on the first hi-fi speakers. Striving for better computers isn't a bad thing. We just shouldn't hold our breaths.

So the thing is... this isn't really new. I can remember back long before there even WAS a TSA, back when laptops were the hot new portable device . . . And security would often ask you to power it on. And if its battery was dead, you could plug it in first. I agree it can be a bit of a problem because batteries often get used up in the course of travel, and I'd be interested to see how security actually handles it. I traveled just a few days ago, and they certainly weren't requiring EVERY passenger to demonstrate their devices. Also: When first going through security, I very rarely have a problem with my phone being dead because, you know, I'm just STARTING to travel, not after a long day of it. (Although I won't say never. It has happened)

Actually, that's pretty normal for the IRS. The IRS is not, actually, much in the habit of giving warnings. It takes them a while to get around to things, and once they do, its pay-up-or-else (or revocation or whatever). They aren't well enough funded to bother with warning notices, or hearings, etc. If you disagree with their finding, there are things one can do and an appeals process, but generally they don't initiate such things except in certain categories of audit issues.

More likely, its just that people don't know who you are. Game Development shops have a bit more cult of personality about them, as they tend to have credit screens like movies, not like office products. I can assure you that if you, say, work on exchange, you have had many people wish you dead, just most people don't know how to inform you of their desire ;)

and for some things, its very hard to set up an ethical and moral controlled scientific study. In a case like this the best you can do is try to study people who have already elected for various treatments. And the 'anonymous' part of AA (and various other programs) just complicates it all. "Unequivocally demonstrated" is a difficult bar to meet when its not actually legal to set up a properly controlled experiment. Don't get me wrong, I haven't reviewed the literature either way, and don't have an opinion on the effectiveness of AA. Just want to point out that actually achieving a clean methodology and such to study things that screw with people's lives is quite difficult.

So something to bear in mind about this is that apple was still putting IIe computers in schools through the END of the 80s. While I agree that in the early 80s they were awesome computers, at the end of the 80s, it was pretty much just dumping.

So, every company I've ever worked at, the employee had to be a successful employee for (usually) about 6 months before you got your bonus. That means both a.) the employee will likely stick around, and b.) they have time to decide if your judgement was worth crap.

Because many organizations have weird and bizarre rules for passwords that are not based on actual truth of what makes a secure password. My current favorite is 16! Characters, no words, at least 2 each of special characters, numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters. i.e. so long that NO ONE can remember the things if they're truly randomized. Although they're supposedly switching that particular circumstance over to token-based.

So, I can't speak for your state, but in maryland it states in black and white that you CANNOT be paid for your time, and that legal fees are only a maybe. And the official website on the subject goes to some effort to basically point out that for small amounts, it may not be worth the time to pursue the court option. Small claims is not really an option to resolve this except as a matter of principle.

Ummm. Just for the record, the US has one of the best records in the world for obeying the treaties THAT IT SIGNS AND RATIFIES. Better, in fact (though I can't remember the citation) than most other western nations. Granted, we also sign far fewer of them than, say, the average european nation. But I am not aware of a single treaty we are a signatory to that we can be said to ignore (even the torture thing, we carefully crafted the 'enemy combatant' legal justification within the treaty for our actions. It could, I grant, be argued as thin -- although probably not, the geneva convention is a lot narrower than people make out, especially if you view it in its proper historical context -- but we expended a lot of effort on it.) Most of the treaties we HAVE ignored (Kyoto protocol, world court, etc. etc.) we are not parties to, even though, admittedly, in many cases we had a great deal to do with their construction.

It depends on whether the cisco salesman was being just a vendor (in which case, its the fault of the idiot buying from him) or was offering a 'free consult to your router needs' in which case, he's theoretically obliged to be honest...

This is true, except one key point: USD investments pay interest, bitcoins are just like stuffing gold (but way more volatile) in a high-tech mattress. So a USD investment may not necessarily go down, and is generally likely to hold about par, whereas a Bitcoin can go up or down.