Error 451: This site is unavailable . . . despite the server running perfectly fine, the domain being properly paid for, and all content being legal under standard interpretations of fair use and fair dealing, yet is mysteriously not coming up for reasons we cannot tell people about . . .

You do the math.

Yes - the teenager acted irresponsibly. He *probably* thought he was being manly and heroic. One wonders where in our gun-toting, Stand your ground, Castle Doctrine culture a teenager could get get the message that it was somehow heroic and manly to intercept a creepy man following them before they got to their house where anything might happen, but who knows where kids come up with these ideas.

But you're right - It's almost as if I was holding the heavily armed adult neighborhood watch volunteer to some higher standard than the teenager, expecting him to have actively done something to avoid a confrontation that could rapidly escalate out of control. Terribly biased of me.

Pug

I had the good fortune to run across Bayes Theorem (Not by name) in an article about misdiagnosing problems in Discover magazine back in the 80's, and for some reason filed the factoid away as 'Oh, this is *important* and is going to apply to a lot of things' and have never forgotten it.

The fundamental takeaway for me is "It doesn't *matter* how accurate your test is - what matters is how accurate it is compared to how rare the condition you're looking for is.". Random drug tests, random highway stops, the instant you are doing anything that force a 99% accurate test on a population that might only be 1% guilty, you should be fined for a violation of Bayesian logic.

It is one of those universally applicable truths, and we need to hammer it into the brain of every teenager before the get out of High school.

Pug

What an amazing set of rationalizing "What If's".

At some point if you decide to ignore the advice of a 911 operator and follow someone, you are taking responsibility for the consequences of those actions. Maybe Trayvon Martin did something anyone would have done at the time, and maybe he was stupid, and maybe both . . . but he didn't create these circumstances, Zimmerman did.

That you can follow someone on the street, kill them, and not even be found guilty of manslaughter beggars the imagination.

Pug

As a 6'2" 300 pound Man, I have the luxury of going "I will never draw a weapon unless I intend to kill someone".

Assuming that is true of everyone in every situation is the most amazing egotism.

In testing the Mi-Go Phone did have some sound problems, occasional whispering effects, and a small percentage of violent madness. Also a somewhat larger percentage of non-violent madness, whimpering, screaming in the dark, fetal position, and hallucinations.

On the good side, unlimited data plan, and discounted rates for Miskatonic University students and faculty.

Pug

I was aware of a couple of those but - they really aren't consistent.

Now, it's feasible we have a 'Blind Man describing an Elephant' Scenario here - these are all different perspectives on the same underlying issue. But my judgement call is really that it doesn't feel like that. This feel far more like replication of work (and yes, lack of respect of constitutional limits) than an overarching plan.

There should be elephant sized footprints here - and I'm just not seeing them.

Pug

We can't 'know' this is false, but . . . we can look at what the implications would be if this were true.

This would require vast storage, incredible database crossreferencing, would imply certain kinds of information be available not only without warrants, but without ever needing to pull the original data. Not only would warrants be redundant, so would National Security Letters.

All without a single patriot in the government going public and blowing the lid off this, yet simultaneously putting this information in the hands of someone willing to shoot their mouth off on CNN.

Can, in theory, all this be true? Sure. It could happen. *Practically* can all this be true? No - too many conspirators have to work invisibly, never tipping their hands, never making a mistake. Just don't buy it.

Pug

Actually, I worked with a company with a bunch of legacy software, and after testing it turned out . . . everything worked fine on Wine (or under a dos emulator).

Literally everything. I won't say there wasn't a learning curve going to Kubuntu but it worked on their old PC's, eliminated a lot of security overhead, and their legacy software worked pretty much better than before.

They were shocked at how much better things ran.

Pug

Ubuntu is in my opinion the best learning system, if you need further stability I'd recommend the stable version of Debian.

The 'stable' version is Glacial in it's upgrade approach for anything except security. That can *also* be frustrating, but it does give an utterly consistent environment to learn in.

Pug

Yes - and the law says that information created in the government isn't covered by copyright.
Note that none of the charges against Aaron Swartz include infringement of copyright, but "Computer Fraud and Abuse" and "Wire Fraud".
They didn't have a case for copyright infringement, and they knew it. This was about defending a monopoly of information that was *not* constitutionally protected, but under the auspices of contractual relationships that Aaron Swartz had not signed to protect access to information that as a citizen he was legally entitled too.

Aaron Swartz was right. And this was about destroying him for that.

Pug

Prior Art

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/subscription
subscription (sb-skrpshn)
n.
1. a. A purchase made by signed order, as for a periodical for a specified period of time or for a series of performances.

Sorry, but for anything beyond the trivial *all* that requires licenses in the current legal paradigm. Sure, I may just file off the serial numbers and resell it, and if it's trivial or common knowledge I may well be able to do so legally and even ethically, but anything beyond that means I have put anyone buying the software off of me at risk.

You may not care if I use your work, but *I* can't ethically put others at risk by using your work.

Pug

As I understand it, 'Veins' of material don't occur naturally in an asteroid.

On Earth at least (with the exception of Iron), veins are created because hot water/steam under great pressure dissolves minerals, then as it goes up through the crust, the various metals precipitate out as the water becomes less superheated - the veins result because the exact temperature at which Silver starts being deposited along the fissure is different from Gold, Nickel, or Lead etcetera.

Iron on the other hand precipitated out of the oceans during the oxygen catastrophe when oxygen bound with iron and fell to the seafloor.

Neither of these processes is going to happen on an asteroid?

Pug