I think it is illegal because the cannabis you can smoke looks similar to the one used for fiber, which makes it harder to spot marijuana fields from the air because now you have to check each one more closely, as well as having to constantly inspect the (presumably) vast industrial fields to make sure they aren't hiding some drug plants in their fiber crop.

If the cost is not prohibitive, this could actually be great for textbooks.

You are complaining that now you don't have to hunt for the address through your notes, and instead can simply call something like System.getCurrentHour()? Or does it bother you that the same command works on hundreds of different systems?

Oh wait, you are complaining because you wasted time perfecting a task which should have been left to the software anyway, and now that software is doing it, your efforts have been rendered irrelevant.

I don't understand. Soldiers don't train with halberds, swords and crossbows. Officers don't train with cavalry formations, trebuchets and castle. Engineers don't start off recreating Stephenson's Rocket or the Wright Flier. Cooks don't start off rubbing wood to start a bonfire and roast mammoth meat. Architects do not stick to cathedrals until they "get their chops".

In fact, science is about the only profession that does anything remotely similar for training, and even then, if old experiments are recreated, the setup has as many non-crucial elements replaced with modern equivalents as possible. We didn't bother using 19th century batteries for the Ohm's Law experiment, because it didn't matter where the current came from. We didn't bother sucking up chemicals with our mouth through pasteur pipettes for cholesterol extraction when we had automatic pipetters. We didn't bother using Bunsen burners instead of hot plates for chemistry.

Low level programming for ICs and the like aside, I don't see what about high level programming is so difficult to teach with, say, Eclipse. Possibly linking up the libraries can seem confusing at first, since a default project has a bunch of them already (and generated code for the GUI) but it's not like it won't let you start basic command line app projects.

This class would definitely teach much history, but just because you love reminiscing about back in the day doesn't mean you should inflict it on everyone. Not only does it make the student's job unnecessarily difficult, but it also takes away the motivation that comes from going home, and being able to immediately apply the thing you learned in class on your computer.

Well, to be sure when you are biking on an empty road, the vroom vroom coming from behind can be a literal lifesaver. Even if you do have a rear view mirror, its visibility is not perfect and you don't stare into it every moment.

Though then again drivers in that situation should honk to alert the cyclist in the first place.

"Everyone" has been pirating for the past three decades, and the gaming industry is growing anyway. I think you're full of it.

It has the magic powers of abundant funding, trained personnel and very wide-reaching, legally sanctioned capabilities to conduct counter-intelligence (or whatever you'd call this), I think.

Bacteria do not just mutate into unrecognizable species over night. It took E. coli more than 20 years to accumulate just 100 point mutations, in a genome megabases long, and that is in an exceptionally favorable laboratory environment.

It would take many centuries for any bacteria from the 70s Mars landings to produce even one protein that wouldn't align with our databases. It would take hundreds of thousands of years, and a lot of luck, for a whole species to develop which is not trivial to phylogenetically trace back to Earth.

Piracy has been around since the beginning of PC gaming in the 80's. Hell, back in the day it was easier. By this silly "piracy killing PC" logic, PC gaming has been dead for literally decades.

Get over yourselves already.

Books, scientific articles, magazine columns, newspapers, movies, plays, music, painting, sculpture... In short, things which are not simple games. Why are you asking stupid questions?

Actually, isn't this the very reason why the right to own guns was conceived in the first place? The government is obviously too corrupt to effectively prevent ubiquitous surveillance, and even gleefully cooperates with the private sector to jointly effect it. Guns are a perfectly reasonably last-resort.

Because the warning screen is extremely unhelpful. Maybe things improved since 1.5, but I get a warning saying "data may be sent over the internet". What data, Android? Do you mean my highscore, or my Gmail password?

As much as I adore Portal, you are correct. It is only a novelty when you have been exposed to countless cookie-cutter shooters to the point of utter desperation. To the game-naive bystander, it's just a game where you follow arbitrary abstract rules to achieve certain goals; essentially a glorified puzzle.

In fact, this is what happens when you treat Portal as anything beyond that.

Except it wouldn't matter, because the Germany would have no naval presence left.

I don't think you have read the post you replied to. The point was, "if you neutralize every element of the enemy's fleet by cracking their codes, the enemy will indeed become aware that the code is compromised. This will not matter because they will not have left any elements in their fleet to act upon the knowledge with".

You know, like how if you siege and capture a castle, it will become apparent that your intent was to attack the castle. Except, who cares, because, you know. You already captured the castle.