Yes, but just because AES uses the xor operation doesn't mean that it is XOR encryption. By that argument if an encryption system uses some kind of rotation operation then it's no more secure than ROT13.

is that it doesn't matter how weak your keys are!

But does the cyclodextrin plus paper packet weigh less than a nalgene bottle? I doubt it.

I really don't understand why "powdered alcohol" is a better solution than carrying grain alcohol. "Powdered alcohol" isn't alcohol somehow transformed into a powder, but ordinary liquid alcohol absorbed/encapsulated in a carrier powder. So you don't save weight over the equivalent amount of Everclear, you add it.

If the programmer in question was at least as good as average at meeting his targets, and the Easter Egg was suitably hidden, I probably wouldn't say anything. And I speak as someone who's actually managed programmers successfully.

Play and humor are essential feature of learning and advanced human cognition. We're more creative and effective when we give a our brains a little stimulation. When you treat programers as code generating machines you get less out of them than if you treat them as code generating animals.

I agree with you. From what I can see the normal prison term for aggravated identity theft is five years and for extortion of $30,000 is about 2 years or a bit more depending on prior criminal record, so a five to seven year sentence would be normal and actually feels reasonable to me. There's no question that this guy's behavior was abominable and deserving of punishment, but the novelty of the offense is not an aggravating factor. It just triggers revulsion more powerfully than heinous acts we're more habituated to. It's natural when confronted with a novel offense to want to stamp it out, but it can't be done this way.

We'll probably never get past the notion that outrageous punishments deter crime, even though we see that proposition disproven every time we see people speeding through a section of highway posted for $500 construction zone fines. The fact that the sight of a car that looks like it might be a police cruiser makes people tap their brakes even in an ordinary speeding fine zone should tell us something. It's the likelihood of punishment that modifies people's behavior, not the magnitude. A $50 fine you think you'll probably get is more powerful than a $500 fine you believe you probably won't get.

What keeps this kind of futile draconian sentencing going is accepting the "well at least we're doing something" standard as good enough. If you think about it, that's a very low standard of performance. In fact it's not a standard of performance at all. Nothing could be simpler than passing a law mandating extremely harsh sentences or inflating sentences by gaming the sentencing guidelines in unusual ways but those actions aren't going to work and are arguably unconstitutional.

I don't think you quite understand what that word means. A stereotype is a simplistic model that is held as if it were true of *all* members of some group. So if I say, "blacks are poorer than whites in the US," that's not a stereotype, it's a statistical assertion about differences in economic attainment between groups in aggregate. But if I say "Blacks are poorer because blacks are lazy," that's using a stereotype because it attributes something inherent to blackness. Likewise if I say "Bob can't own that Mercedes because he's black," I'm implicitly stating that all blacks are too poor to own a Mercedes so that's a stereotype. If I were to say "the rate of Mercedes ownership is lower among blacks than whites" that is not a stereotype but a (made-up) statistical assertion.

So now I'm ready to tackle your question. Hitherto, men have not requires as much protection from sexual harassment as a group, because they have as a group dominated positions of authority and indeed all jobs except in a few professions like teaching and nursing. There have been cultural attitudes that give preference to men in hiring and salary, all other things being equal.

However that's a far cry from saying no man hitherto has ever needed legal protection for sexual discrimination or harassment. For example, it is legally possible to be harass or discriminate against people of the same sex. If your boss pressures you for homosexual sex, that's still sexual harassment.

If you own a picture, or video, or recording, including the copyright - you can do whatever the hell you want with it.

I'm glad you're not a lawyer because that is untrue in many, many situations. You can't take a picture of a celebrity and use it in advertising for example, even though you can publish that very same picture in a tabloid newspaper article full of unflattering insinuations. Sure you own the copyright but that doesn't grant you the right to use the information in that picture any way you want.

Here's a close parallel. Suppose you're an insurance adjuster and you get permission to photograph earthquake damage inside someone's house. You own the copyright to those photos, but no right to use them other than for documenting damage for the claim. You can't put them up on your public website.

On the other hand, if you're a newspaper photographer and you get permission to photo the earthquake damage inside someone's home you *can* put them up on your website. What's different is what a reasonable person would expect he's giving permission for you to do.

Bingo. It's not a copyright issue at all. Sure, the person taking the photo or video "owns the copyright". All that grants him the right to limit copying activity by others. But if a photo happens to contain confidential or private information, owning the copyright doesn't automatically grant you any additional rights to do things with that confidential information. You can well own copyright to photos that you have no right to redistribute for any number of reasons.

All genders (and indeed all gender self-identifications) are entitled to equal protection, but not all genders *require as much*. As women move into representative numbers in jobs and supervisory positions, that situation is changing.

My wife once worked in a division of a state agency where the division and departmental management happen by chance to be women; a few years earlier the leadership had been entirely men but they'd moved on and the agency promoted from within. One day she was recounting how she and another scientist coworker had good-naturedly teased one of their male colleagues for having a habit of "man-splaining" (something which in my experience female geeks do as well). "Wait a minute," I said. "You can't do that anymore. It's called 'creating a hostile work environment'."

Now some men are still not willing to be seen complaining about higher ranking women taking the piss out of them, but the number of sexual harassment suits filed by men has been on the rise, doubling from 8% of all cases in 1990 to 16.4% in 2010. If that guy who'd been teased for "man-splaining" had complained the women could well been disciplined. Telling somebody their long-winded explanations sound condescending is being assertive and it's a good thing. Attributing their behavior to their *gender identity* is harassment.

What is the non-evil choice?

We have copper land line POTS from Verizon. I got a phone call from a Verizon operator who told me that they would be in my neighborhood next week doing "network upgrades", and could I please schedule an appointment for when a technician could be onsite. I said, "sure," and thought nothing of it until I got the "Welcome to FiOS" letter in the mail a few days later. When the technician called me to tell me he was on the way I told him not to bother. He said, "Yeah, I get that a lot," so apparently I'm not the only one who was pissed off by the trick.

The thing is I wouldn't mind switching to FiOS; we don't watch broadcast or cable TV, and Comcast's Internet service is pretty unreliable, so there's no reason not to. But Verizon was so sleazy about trying to trick me into a service upgrade I refuse to give them any more business.

Well, it's an interesting analogy, because as you push performance with any technology, the less practical that feat becomes.

For example the Veryon can go 252 MPH, but only for about 12 minutes before it runs out of gas. Then you have to stop to put another 100 liters of gas in the tank. You'll also have to replace the $42,000 tire set because they've only got three minutes of life left in them.

I actually find the Formula-e races fun to watch, even though the speeds aren't that impressive the driving skill required is. Fan boost, however, is a total crock.

I've never had anyone working for me who I'd call lazy. I'd go further and say that I've never met anyone who'd rather spend all day accomplishing nothing rather than to accomplish something. I *have* met people who are in a position where futility leads to a kind of learned helplessness but in that case wasting time is a defense mechanism; people don't do it because they prefer wasting time to accomplishing stuff. And since people are social animals when we're accomplishing stuff it's more rewarding to accomplish it with other people around.

Now I've done the telecommuting thing, and it's great once or occasionally twice a day, but after we sold our company I was telecommuting five days a week as a consultant, and it sucked. I missed seeing my colleagues, who were also my friends. And I'm pretty extreme on the introversion scale. I'm perfectly happy to spend two or three weeks working alone, but as the weeks stretched into months it was too much for even me.

I can't help but think that for most people who want to commute 100% of the time, that'd run a distant second from having a different job altogether. Ideally a job is something you look forward to going to. Granted there are some jobs that are more interesting than others, but when you dream of not going to an *interesting* job like programming, something is wrong with the organization.

I have several teapots in my cupboard, which I am fairly certain is currently orbiting the sun.

Russell made more stipulations than that of course.

That's only true if you see education's function as solely to prepare you for a specific vocation.