The feds threat was six months, not 10+ years.

Bullshit. Threatening "50 years if you make us go to trial, but if you confess we'll recommend six months but the court can still give you 50 years" is still threatening 50 years. The threat of heavy sentences to get people to waive the right to a trail is an egregious violation of due process and the the guarantee against cruel and unusual punishments.

I suggest that you e-mail the 784,000 web pages that say Aaron Swartz snuck into the closet, and inform them they're using the English language wrong:

They're not using the English language wrong, they're reporting the facts wrong. Just as the mainstream media did for decades in the War on (Some) Drugs, just as they did in the run-up to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the media is lying and/or negligently passing on the government's story.

No way they just Taser you for refusing to answer questions.

You can be tased or beaten by cops pretty much at their psychotic discretion.

Boy tased for refusing to wash cop car

Man tased for not giving up his phone

Man beaten to death for not providing ID

We live in a police state, and it's not going to stop until either 1) we raise standards and pay for cops, or 2) we liberalize CCW laws and recognize the right of self-defense against bad cops.

It seems that there's just far more white men in the US that are inclined to be software developers than there are females and minorities who are inclined to do so.

And part of the reason that there are fewer females and minorities who are inclined to do so, is because when a woman or a black guy shows up in a CS class they're an oddity, subject to (usually subtle and unconscious, but sometimes stupid and obvious) sexism and racism. So they're more likely to say "screw it" and go study something else, so there are fewer women and African-Americans in CS, so when a woman or a black guy shows up in a CS class they're an oddity...and the cycle continues.

There is no quick fix. But over time a little attention by folks who work in tech to the basic rule "don't be a dick" can cut it down.

we'll probably never see a 50/50 split because these inclinations are part nature as well as part nurture./

...and making unproven and unprovable claims about the natural abilities of various groups of people, would be a fine example of "being a dick". Cut it out.

Destruction of evidence is a separate crime

But since I have not committed a crime, the automated destruction of my private data to protect it from cyber-criminals in the event I lose control of it is not destruction of evidence.

An encrypted hard drive is little different from a locked safe

An encrypted hard drive is entirely unlike a locked safe. It is much more like a notebook kept in a private code: if I write "June 26: red green Q 17 x-ray romeo eagle" in my journal, the state has no rightful authority to compel me to tell them what that means to me.

"Some people somewhere are consensually doing something that offends my sensitive sensibilities, so it has to stop even though it's a private matter that I have no part in and no business sticking my nose into!"

The behavior of corporations -- artificial persons created by state fiat -- is not a "private matter".

So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do.

My ISP is Sprint/Clearwire. (Complicated corporate and branding relationship.) I got a nastygram from them about peer-to-peer downloads. They didn't care that I was downloads GNU/Linux distros, they didn't want me using PtP at all. (So I got a VPN account and flipped them the bird.)

What separates the left, especially the European version of left, from the American concept of left/liberal?

Left=pro-worker=socialist, though that word has been poisoned by a century of Red Scares here.

Right=pro-aristocrat=capitalist. (When you have a hereditary class of state-backed "owners" who control the economic resources, that's an aristocracy.)

Left/right has nothing to do with social issues like abortion rights, gay marriage, etc., nor does it have to do with the size of government. It's about who the economic system should benefit.

The Democratic party is thoroughly capitalist, with only a relatively minor disagreement with the Republican party as to what degree of exploitation of the proles by their feudal lords is best.

They ignore the letter because a letter from the NSA to someone outside the US has no legal significance.

A letter from the NSA to someone inside the US has no legal significance either. That doesn't stop the U.S. government from acting illegally.

...rent seeking - where somebody is able to shave some of the economic profit from an activity without doing much of anything.

I.e., the highest and most pure form of capitalism -- a system in which the state-backed "owner" of capital extracts profit from laborers (physically and intellectual) without actually creating anything themselves.

The number of men who actually carry out rapes is relatively small, so long as you only define rape as a violent act that occurs in dimly lit alleyways. Once you open it out it becomes substantially larger.

No, not really, as the research of people like David Lisak shows. Rape is the act of a small percentage of repeat predators.

The "rape culture" model is finally being laid by the wayside; as RAINN's recent memo to the White House task force notes, "Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime."

But that isn't the fault of the system, capitalism. That's the fault of corrupt "leaders".

If your system is vulnerable to attack by corrupt "leaders", that's the system's fault. It's the problem with Marxism and it's also the problem with capitalism: when people get power, via state-backed control of capital or via a "dictatorship of the proletariat", these use that power in their own interests.

Men, if you want something in life, whether that "something" is a job, a house or a relationship, you have to earn it.

Stop. A relationship is not something that you earn. You can argue to your boss that you've earned a promotion with your job performance, you can argue to the bank that you've earned a mortgage with your credit history, but if you argue to a woman that you've earned a relationship with her, that's sexist bullshit.

That said, if you want to have more friends, including the type of friends who go to bed with you, self-cultivation is a good idea. Clean yourself up, get some exercise and eat real food, practice social skills. Hack yourself. But you don't get to collect experience points and say "ok, now I've earned this sort of relationship with this person."

Not everything is about you. As a man, you should not be offended when those who do rape get called on it, just because they are also men.

Consider: African-American men are, statistically, far more likely to commit murder than Caucasian men are. Does an African-American man have a right to call racist bullshit if you tell him to stop murdering? Of course he does, and that in no way implies that he doesn't want those who do murder to get called on it.

In exactly the same way, men are, statistically, far more likely to commit rape than women are. Does a man have a right to call misandrist bullshit if you tell him to stop raping? Of course he does, and that in no way implies that he doesn't want those who do rape to get called on it.

I'm not saying you will, but it's possible you may surprise yourself one day.

You're just illustrated a huge part of the problem: a belief that ordinary men somehow, to their surprise, suddenly turn rapist someday. This myth is at odds with what we know about rapists: they are deliberate repeat predators with a pattern of offending from a young age and a high probably of cross-offending.

It's why the whole notion of "rape culture" around which so much of this discussion revolves is a distraction: rape is not the result of ordinary guys made confused by their culture about consent, it's the result of deliberate acts by violent assholes who know quite well what they are doing, and all the hashtags in the world won't change them.

If we actually want to stop rape, rather than have a feel-good self righteous flamewar, we need personal safety and bystander intervention training.