Most fire safes are designed to keep the contents at less than 450F for a certain number of minutes. That's based on the temperature at which paper bursts into flames. Media such as tape and DVD will be ruined at 200F or less. So a 30-minute fire safe might last ten minutes with DVDs in it - your data will be gone before the fire department arrives.

A safety deposit box at the bank is cheap. You can also throw a USB drive into your office drawer if your office isn't at home.

> they can now stop you from launching/operating in the public location before you fly the drone into the private/secure location.

They didn't even SEE this guy operating it outside the White House fence, and he wasn't hiding. The terrorist would be hiding in his van, controlling the drone from there. Exactly how can they stop what they can't see?

If unicorns flew out of my butt, well that would hurt. Bad. :)

The fact is people DO disagree, and GROUPS of people disagree. Groups of people do have power, so power does need to be balanced.

In local elections, the police union or firefighters union can often swing an election by just saying "Smith for mayor will keep you safe" - without spending any money. If you DON'T think that your local elected officials should be indebted to the police department, you need a group to send a different message. That's just real life.

That makes sense, they recommended you have a connection advertised as 3Mbps for SD, 5Mbps for HD. Their HD stream actually USES 3 Mbps as your watching, leaving 2 Mbps of head room.

TFS says that they don't have a good way to stop a small drone or remote-control plane.
Therefore, we should make it illegal to fly a hobby toy _______. (Fill in the blank with your favorite regulation).

I guess they didn't notice that the bad guys don't CARE whether or not it's illegal to use this toy in the city / at night / near Washington / without permission / whatever. The vexing thing about terrorists is that they don't follow the rules, so hanging the rules doesn't effect them - it only effects us.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...

That happens to be the first Google result for "Hillary Clinton donors". I see there are many sources with the same information.

I'm not 100% clear on what you're suggesting. As I read it, you said one thing, then said the opposite. Maybe you can clear this up for me.

Consider the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who describes themselves thusly:
About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows.

Let's apply this sentence to the EFF and an example so I can understand you:

> Also any organization whose members seek to influence a political outcome cannot use the
> resources of that organization in any way to influence that outcome [list of possible ways to seek change]

The EFF is of course an organization "whose members seek to influence a political outcome". You propose that the people "must not use the resources of that organization in any way to influence that outcome". So you're proposing it should be illegal for the EFF seek to get rid of NSA dragnet spying, correct?

Dr. Martin Luther King's group was called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The purpose of the SCLC was to organize black churches to effect political change. That would be illegal under your proposal, because I might donate a car to SCLC, that car may not be used to drive MLK to a rally - that would be "to influence a political outcome" and therefore illegal. Do I understand you correctly?

Agreed, competent software engineering is more like mechanical engineering than it is like poetry. There's a reason the National Society of Professional Engineers has recently added a software engineering as one of the disciplines they certify in, along with mechanical, chemical, etc.

My analogy to poetry was only in the frame of the article talking about coding as LITERACY.

  Literacy is general purpose.
Writing software is a specific skill set few people need, with computer literacy as the prerequisite.
Writing poetry is a specific skill set few people need, with Englush literacy as a prerequisite.

That makes logical sense, and the law reflects that distinction. However, if during the 2014 election season you had encouraged people to vote for the guy speaking out against H1-B fraud, that's almost the same thing as contributing directly to his campaign. Any many places, police and firefighter unions run ads for local candidates saying "candidate X will keep you safe". That's virtually indistinguishable from from handing the money to the campaign to spend on making ads.

Similarly, if in 2012 you talked publicly about bad things Obama has done, that has virtually the same effect as contributing to his opponents campaign.

So it's largely a distinction without a difference. I haven't heard any proposals that really make that much difference without making it illegal to talk about politics - loudly. Are you going to make it illegal for Comedy Central to bash Boehner, because they spend millions of dollars doing so. If you allow that, it matters little whether they actually send money to to his opponent or not - they've done his opponent's bidding.

Hmm, I wonder who or what you found that made you think that. Maybe Robert Morris? Anyway:

1) I don't speak for God. It seems He gave us instructions and the ability to follow them, or not. Mostly the same instructions the state Health Department gives us - don't eat improperly slaughtered meat, shellfish can be dangerous, and don't sleep around.

2) Jesus instructed that if a brother is doing something stupid and dangerous like fucking his neighbor's wife, tell him so. If he doesn't listen, three friends together tell him, so he knows it's not just one person's opinion. If he still doesn't listen, you might not want to be around him when the shit hiys the fan.

Liberals strongly disagree on #2. They think you should legally PREVENT him from working at the ice cream shop if he's too lazy/stupid/stoned/young to show up on time and get a job making more than $15 / hour. Better for him to sit home playing video games than work for $9 / hour, and you should FORCE that upon him.

American liberals think that if a man has sex with a a lady who decides six months later that she doesn't feel like taking care of her baby, you should not allow him to take care of his child. You should force him to sit helplessly as his child is killed because after all, it's his fault they didn't use a condom.

I've always thought programming is more like writing POETRY than just being literate - not everyone needs to do it. Both involve writing down words, but knowing the vocabulary and grammar isn't the really the point.

If you wanted everyone to be a programmer, you wouldn't teach them code, you'd teach them skills of system design, troubleshooting, etc. But why would you want everyone to be a programmer? That's like teaching everyone to be a diesel mechanic or poet. Kind of a waste of time.

The money in politics is a problem, obviously.

Also, I think I should be able to write about why I think this merger is bad and distribute flyers. Copying those flyers costs money. Therefore, in order to make my voice heard, I have to spend money to influence politics. If we're not allowed to spend money on politics, that means I can't print a flyer, I can mention politics on my blog that costs $5/month for hosting. A MAJORITY of Slashdot users think it should be illegal to make a video criticizing the current goons. Citizen's United did so, and most Slashdot users think that should be illegal. Fine for Michael Moore to do it, though.

Many people have said the solution is that COMPANIES shouldn't be allowed to spend money commenting on political issues. So for example Tesla shouldn't be allowed to talk about franchise laws? SpaceX can't make a YouTube video criticising the administration's handling of space contracts? Uber and Lyft spend money on their web sites, so it should be illegal for their sites to mention the taxi cartels' relationship to incumbent politicians?

If you decide that Tesla, Uber, and SpaceX should be allowed to have their voice heard, but it should be illegal for Citizens United to have their voice heard, I guess the rule is "it's illegal to disagree with me"?

It's a hard problem, with no obvious solution.

Time Warner is the largest contributor to Hilary Clinton other than Wall Street firms, which make up her top six.

Cablevision is #10 on the list of top Clinton owners^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H contributors.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...

Not that I'm disagreeing with your point, but it should be noted that the Koch companies are somewhere around #15 on the list of top donors. The top 10 are names like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch who give millions to Hillary Clinton. The cable industry also spends more on Clinton than the Koch brothers spend opposing her.

Why? I wouldn't want to adopt Stalman's eating habits, by why such an effort to avoid Gnu software?

I suppose the new GPL version can be problematic, the way the wrote the anti-patent stuff. It REALLY should apply only to patents related to a company's contributions, in my opinion. The fact that it can kill a patent from some other division, based on code that the company has never seen, creates an unnecessary risk for companies, which discourages them contributing.