Flying is a necessary part of a normal life.

I've always wondered how pre-medieval people managed to live a normal life without flying around. Or even Colonial America when England/France were sending people there for the unexploited natural resources.

A relevant question with regard to science is why it is that breakthroughs often comes from young scientists.

That's not guaranteed: Article Breakthrough Discoveries Mostly by Older Scientists, Study Finds says that it used to be the case earlier, but now scientists need more time to finish their work.

I also have a personal opinion, where such young people were in a better position to make breakthroughs - supported by family, no worry about children, in an environment where research and experiment was much easier, etc.

35 USC 101 - whoever invents a new and useful process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor. So, the question isn't "does that Lodsys patent include PPP references or discuss physical modem components", but "is it claiming an improvement on existing PPP modem technology?"

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Basically, patents only need to be an improvement over a process.

Concerning the car engine patent - the summary does give information on the benefits of the patent (even if they are not binding). In particular, there's fuel efficiency savings, or provides improvements to the design, etc. As such, I have no objection to that patent.

But the patent I referenced - I have significant difficulty tracking down what's novel. A quick glance over the claims, and summary - I haven't found anything that would be inventive in ~1996. I'd perhaps even say ~1994, considering that Winsock Trumpet provided Internet connectivity even earlier.

As for their demand letter... they say that 802.11 is a violation of the patent, being a bidirectional communication path, and information is sent to the modem. This is incorrect - 802.11 wireless is actually omnidirectional, due to the ease of listening in to the conversaion (e.g. FireSheep, Aircrack-ng). Further, their patent is more specific to physical connections rather than wireless.

A quick check on that site, and the patent with the most letters (https://trollingeffects.org/patent/6587473) is a patent on dial-up internet. Proven by looking into the patent and seeing all those PPP references, and seeing all physical modem components being stuffed in the patent.

So, ISPs (from all over) unknowingly violate a patent for behaving normally.

With Firefox, there's the option of adding a master password.

It's still substandard - Firefox bleeds login information across sites (e.g. It places 3+ potential usernames, some of which are unique to a specific site), gives sudden "enter master password" prompt when not focusing on a password field, etc.

Only if you have an algorithm to the solution (as is the case with arithmetic, algebra, calculus, etc.). If you have to construct a solution yourself without relying on prior information, then math and science become hard.

of course w had no idea how it could have been done well on 8mhz 640kb ega crapper.

And even for those who did have an idea on how it was made... you needed commercially sold compilers that weren't available to the average user, and also needed to know how to use them.

That problem is solved, but replaced by a new one - you still need to have commercially sold 3D Modelling applications (freeware is available, but I still find it hard to use), have to have a 3D rendering engine that works with your modelling app (or have advanced math to construct one), and have other people to help you.

1) Religion in schools need to be cut. Replace Religion with math and science, math and science promote logic, God promotes making up stories because we want to.

False dichotomy - there's no reason why you can't have Religion, Math and Science in the same school, all in separate courses. Since you mentioned Ontario, I can easily bring a counter example where removing religion would have no effect. As for removing religion itself - you have to replace it with something. It either ends up being a random elective that you'll forget, or a close variation of a course that you're already taking.

In fact, I noticed that your list won't handle major problems with the education system - namely, the factory-system of churning out graduates. Everyone is forced into groups (sometimes with sociopaths), everyone is taught at the same rate (either forcing lowest common denominator, or causing a skill gap to form), and everyone is given false information on their future (being told a path leads to a job, but not giving them a useful network.)

If you have the malware that can detect a "winning block" being sent from a computer, then you can also extract the private key from said miner (and pull the coin out from under the worker.)

Get a cheap computer (i.e. used/refurb), and keep installation media on-hand.

You can optionally install Linux to make it more resistant to stuff.

And put the homepage to something that discourages them from visiting naughty sites.

The built-in ROT13 feature was causing the author of Leet Key to complain about Mozilla choking his source of fame. Therefore, they had to remove it.

The traditional trick of these publicity stunts is to post a challenge, and claim there was no response otherwise and therefore it is true. The claim is made while plugging fingers in the ears and pretending there's no contradictions.

Look back to the Kent Hovind challenge, where he posted $250,000 to prove evolution. He gradually shifted the challenge from "provide any evidence of evolution" to "demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that God couldn't cause the big bang" - and each step at asking for clarification was given non-answers (if any).

Even if someone did manage to complete his challenge, Kent Hovind couldn't pay the amount - he's a NINJA - No Income, Job or Asset, by his own bankruptcy claim. Both a scientific and financial fraud.

This challenge is archived, with the current page saying you followed an imaginary link. "If you can't win, burn the evidence of losing."

This challenge may be "possible", but don't waste time on it. You have better luck compleing the James Randi challenge instead.

When dollars can not be used to pay for things, they will be as worthless as bitcoins.

Dollars made of paper or metal can still be used as toilet paper or scrap metal if necessary. As such, they're still worth more than any non-physical currency once money is no longer used for trade.

Not only that, but interrupt based controllers (as opposed to polling the controller) that meant minimal lag between pressing a button and something happening on the screen.

The only interrupt-based controller is the keyboard. For games, you want to convert that into a fixed state to ensure that the player doesn't do funny things when the input changes mid-frame. (Which you have to - keyboards trivially allow you to move up and down at the same time.)

Gamepads, joysticks, and the like, are all polling-based controllers - especially the analog ones which would otherwise fling incessant interrupts.

Games like Street Fighter can't really even be properly experienced on an emulator with a USB controller.

Sure they can. The late-game AIs are as impossible to defeat on an emulator as they are on an actual console.

That is true, although most cases of unsafe computing I'm aware of involve being actively unsafe. These are on par with the "ILOVEYOU" virus, which is easily avoided by not running the virus (i.e. driving into a tree).

The form of safe computing that slows down users is different. Those are annoying even for me, especially when they demand my randomly generated password must contain a capital letter, a number, and punctuation (or can't contain those - depending on the system). While blocking the world's most common passwords is fine, crazy "safe computing" stuff should be nuked from orbit.