Presuming that you are serious rather and trying for funny...

I know that *I've* made errors in proofs. I know that at various times articles have been recalled from mathematical journals because of errors in the proof. IIRC there was a proof recalled 6 mo.s after it had been published just a year or two ago.

Math is a lot more secure at it's foundations than any other physical science, basically because the foundations are of the form "If we assume...". This doesn't mean any proofs derived from those foundations are unassailable. Errors in reasoning happen, and can be quite difficult to detect.

More, any particular god is a hypothesis. It doesn't rise to the level of a theory until you can use it to make verifiable predictions that are then tested.

FWIW, there are several gods that I have tested, some of them gave weakly positive results. None of them matched the gods of any standard religion, which religions have so defined their gods that emperical tests are impossible.
N.B.: This does not prove that they are incorrect, it proves that there is no reasonable way to chose between them, and the null hypothesis is a member of every set.

Many people have an emotional need for the presumed eternal correctness of "a law of science", even though no such thing can exist. And they are incompetent to rate the relative stability of various different theories.

Well, everyone is incompetent to rate the relative stability of various different theories except, perhaps, in their own small area of expertise. That's why we are forced to depend on experts. Then we need to decide how much to trust each expert. It's not a simple problem, and it's probably intrinsicly insoluble if you have a NEED for correctness. (Making a best-guess choice is fairly easy, though, but figuring what your error bars are can be difficult.)

It's not basically a problem with the educational system, though that clearly makes things worse than they need to be, largely by instilling a belief in "correct answers" rather than in "probably correct answers"...which is the best that one can ever do.

I don't think he's doing anything dangerous, just expensive.

And you could sue you State Authorized and controlled ISP in the US. It wouldn't be dangerous, just expensive.

You can also use the government in the US, and probably in China. The government may tell you to piss off in either country, but as long as you follow legal channels I don't expect it to be anything more than expensive.

N.B.: *IF* he were trying to initiate a mass action, then I expect that he would be in significant trouble in China. Moreso than in the US. China has shown itself to be quite touchy about that kind of thing. (The US has shown itself to be quite touchy in other areas.)

OTOH, it's quite likely that your closing line is correct. But that's also not certain. My real expectation is that robotics will develop fast enough that there won't BE any corporate serfs. What there will be instead is anybody's guess, and it depends on decisions not yet made.

This is probably (my guess) a safe thing for him to do. The result of the suit, however, will probably not be to his liking.

I expect that the court will decide that the ISP was acting in the interests of the country, and they he is not entitled to any refund. He may well pay court costs and his ISP's attorneys fees.

The current evidence seems to indicate that criticizing individual officials or agencies is accepted within China, what is forbidden is anything that calls for group action, even in support of the government. (I've got my suspicions about how safe it is to criticize top government officials, but no evidence.)

I meant the 5, and actually I'm only considering a copycat for after the papers had started sensationalizing. Say after #3. (You clearly know more about it than I do.) I *expect* that there was only one perpetrator, but if someone is going to claim to have a proven solution, then one of the things that needs proving is that there was only one perpetrator.

FWIW, I'm surprized that there were only five. ISTM that some more-recent serial killers have had a larger number of victims, and yet "Jack" lingers as the exemplar of the type.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you are talking about one incident. I'm proposing that several indepent individuals separately perpetrated the crimes that were attribted to one single individual rather than to one individual and a few copycats.

FWIW, the current notes seem to say that systemd is still optional in Debain Jessie (currently testing), though I think it gets installed by default, and I'm not sure how to avoid it.

I understand your reasoning, but statistics seem to show that rural areas experience as much violent crime as large cities. (My memory actually says more, but I can't believe that, and can't remember the original source to check.)

FWIW, I do remember specifically that violence that results in injuries is higher among the Kalahari bushmen than among the slums of Detroit. Of course, that was a couple of decades ago.

Sorry, but you're wrong. In rural areas anyone new is foreign. I went to 5th grade in a rural area...and we weren't even actual outsiders, my mother had lived there as a young adult. Her father lived there much of the time.

It was the most miserable year of my life. I was regularly chased around the school yard by gangs, and "hid out" at the top of the jungle gyn until recess was over. My "crime" was that I hadn't gone to school with the the previous four years.

Not really. But there's a serious question in my mind as to why it is assumed that "Jack the Ripper" was a individual person (though it's reasonable to assume that this was true before the papers picked up the story).

It's more complex than that. There are optimal densities, but they differ depending on things like speed of transportation and communication. Still, the safest cities will usually be smaller cities, and possibly villages. Rural isn't particularly safe, because of poor enforcement (for fairly obvious reasons). Similarly dense cities are poor because of ease of get-away (among other things).

As for degree of violence (i.e. emotionality) it tends to be higher among those who grow up not being exposed to "foreign ideas". They tend to form a ridgid mind-set that's especially favorable to us-vs-them thinking, and to not caring about what happens to "them". And note that "them" can be based on any believably identifiable characteristic, and people can believe some pretty strange things. For this reason cities tend to be less violent than smaller places given otherwise similar environmental features. People who grow up in cities tend to be exposed to people living and believing in lots of different ways. They may not like it, but they're used to it.

You need a bit of history. The death rate among slaves being transported in the triangle trade (1700's) was over 1/4. In some times and places slaves were more valuable, or shipping less expensive, or travel times less, and so conditions were better...but not in all times and places.

The point you really were making is that sometime the people in power are sociopaths with a dictator complex. And the time to stop them from doing something is before they decide that it's desirable.

He did suffer. He suffered loss of face and power. He clearly deserved worse, at the time I was in favor of crucifying him in a public square, but to say he didn't suffer is incorrect.