I think the Salem Hypothesis can be extended to computer science types. They, like other kinds of engineers, mistake their mechanistic approach to their fields for science, and thus feel they have some special capacity to make judgments on fields they have little or no knowledge of.

Great. So you come up with a solution to AGW...

But let me guess, you conveniently reject the science.

The Koch Brigade is out in force today.

So investigating a conflict of interest is now "going after citizens"?

I'm not clear as to what you are referring to. What "smells like fascism"?

Yes, governments.

Who is jackbooting anyone? Last time I checked, it was the psuedo-skeptics who were comparing scientists to child molesters.

I see, so pseudo-skeptics can be as shrill and hyperbolic as they please, and that's just fine, but the scientific community is just supposed to endlessly take it up the rear.

What are you afraid of? That it will turn out most of the shit people like you believe is bullcrap invented by the Koch Brothers?

I'd rather go to a "Autoplay site owners should be beaten into comas" model, myself.

Sigh.... I need the blinking "This Is Irony" sign.

Don't be a silly bastard. If you did that, you would get the actual answer to the question you're posing, and not the answer you want.

Jesus, what a unsophisticated provincial type you are.

I read at least two novels a month (sometimes more if I get the time) on my tablet and my phone. Most of my reading is on my tablet, because it's a 7" and a damned good size to read on, but when I'm on the road, I'll use my phone. The app syncs between the two so I can swap between the two. I generally use the Kobo app, and by and large it hides the status bar at the top so I'm not bothered by incoming emails. I've never had a problem.

Actually, the very first book I read on a portable device was a crappy little LG Keybo feature phone that I installed a nice little J2ME reader on. The font size was punched up a bit so I usually only got a paragraph of text per screen, but still didn't have any problem.

I'll be honest, I haven't bought a physical book in over a year. Even the technical books; a Powershell book and the OpenVPN official manual, are all eBooks.

If I'm encrypting my data with my own keys, how exactly, other than brute force, is the NSA going to get access to the data?

If I was to use an online service like, say, Dropbox or Google Drive, to story confidential data, it would be to use them simply as file storage. The files themselves would be locked down by my own keys, which would not be stored on these companies' servers.

Kirk interfered with lots of alien women, so why not alien cultures? The guy is as a walking talking monkey kicking fuck machine, and he knew that the Prime Directive was for sexless pinko pussies. "You are not of the body!" "Fuck you Landru. Once I'm done screwing your women and your culture, in that precise order, it's phasers on kill for your computer tape machine ass!"

Perhaps it has something to do with the difficulty, particularly in Western countries with as strong a set of protections of free expression as the First Amendment, of actively censoring anyone. I personally refuse to watch ISIS videos of people being beheaded or burned alive, and I have a dim view of those that do, but I'm not sure I like the idea of anything other than a voluntary take down of these awful videos.

Beyond that, of course, is the sheer impracticality of ever hoping to take down any more than a fraction of these kinds of videos. Sure, you can seize some sites, but there are so many ways that terrorists can get their torture porn on the web that it's literally a game of whack the mole, with thousands of moles.