Well, your right; most of the population will settle for nothing less than little green men with anal probes, flying saucers and prescient, liberal advice for our species (Venusians would be all about the greenhouse effect).

I for one, would be fascinated to find Venus teaming with wacky crystal structures that display just the right amount of entropic dissipation to give physicists hardons.

Unless someone can prove how intelligent life arises inevitably (and given Earth's long history without anything most of us would find intelligent) I suspect we'll never find anything worth communicating with, which I think is what I think most layman actually mean when they say "life."

I think your trying to be sarcastic, but I'm really liking your ideas here.

Well, you asked:

1) The people scared by this stuff live in a world where God and Satan are omniscient, they pay especial attention to your words and thoughts. So talking about, thinking about, or having art about demons is like saying, "Voldemort." Also remember that all pagan dieties (all good gods in D&D) are masks of Satan just might answer to his name. Better just not to do it, and especially important not to let your kids do it, who might not know what to do when Satan literally shows up to answer some innocent statement a kid said.

2) Many religious rituals, involve talking to spirits who aren't there or re-enacting old events. Christianity talks to God & Jesus, occasionally angels and in most faiths no one pretends to be them, but in pagan (remember to these people this means satanist) religions rituals are almost indistinguishable from live action RPG games. I'd say it's coincidence, but you also have to remember that to a very religious there is no such thing; there are forces of God and forces of the Devil and God only commissioned one book.

3) Violence. Even in the modern, I thought we were done with this kind of BS, age, DnD got blamed for either instilling or showing the violence in the Columbine shooters, and had even my otherwise very progressive mother was a little worried about this aspect.

Of course, the fear mongers go waaay farther than the points I made above into ludicrous territory. "What is the difference between saying 'I cast a fireball' and learning real magic?" Or just completely making up satanist bullshit instead of actuallt looking into what the games are actually about.

Since this is probably the only post I'll make in this thread, let me throw in this real anecdote from my court interpreter stepmom: A prosecutor is telling the court how the defendant has a propensity for violence which you can see because he likes DnD, like the Columbine shooters, and continues to describe the horrible violence in this game. The judge shushes the prosecutor and announces "I know quite a bit about this game, I'm a fifth level elven mage in my gamer group."

BitCoin? There's a whole channel for that linked right from the home page:

http://trove.com/me/channels/1...

Oh no, they'll go read all the junk emails I'm probably getting at Junk123@google.com! And then they'll know every free software website that has username:Junk123 password:Websight123 Then they'll be able to download all the free trial software they want without having to make a new account! The horror!

That's cool, just thought I'd point out some reasons others are still using theaters:

First, either the movie theater in your area is way overpriced or you get components for your home theater really cheap. I don't think I could beat even the fancy theater price for the discount theater experience.

Second, though these points might be lost on slashdotters, often you are either: out with friends, some of whom your not ready (or never will) let run amuck about your house, or in my younger days, you're out on a date and you don't think she's ready to come back to your place for a romantic movie (wink, wink). Or even through my college days, my parents would be home in both of the above cases.

Third, not everyone wants a home theater in their house. I move house quite a bit, and usually end up watching movies while on travel, anyway. I also have a girlfriend who doesn't tolerate anything reminiscent of television around the house.

And of course, if you want to watch new releases without pirating them (let's pretend we do) then you'll have to see them in theater.

Holy-moly, that's alot more reasons than I planned to write; and those are only mine...I guess movie theaters will be sticking around for some time to come. Live theater would be preferable to many in the above points, but I don't think there are any adult troupes left in my area.

You assume everyone has a secure car to put things in.

Some times you don't, because you took a bus, you ride a bike (motorized ones too) or the theater is halfway between your house and work, so you happen to have a bag with a laptop in while you decide to stop in. This is a common thing to do, and it doesn't mean your going to be trying to do work while the movie is playing.

Have you ever tried to change Google-Chrome anything?

I've got a CS degree and 5years development experience with a variety of poorly designed 4th-gen tools and figuring out how to do anything not listed in that minimalist menu is still beyond me.

The majority of users are equally as capable at changing google-chrome's settings: they type into the search bar: "google chrome " follow whatever directions get returned.

Though you have to check how recent those instructions are, it seems every couple days the Google's menus rearrange themselves.

Actually, people need compatible donors: for the most part only Chinese can buy their organs from China. For the same reason, a black market in African American organs (haha get it?), isn't much use to me as a Caucasian.

Luckily for me, despite decades of equal employment pushes, white business men will still be the race paying top dollars for my kidneys. Or maybe not so luckily for me considering GP-post.

What other security researchers have accepted $10,000,000?

No one is "without sin," but there are some boundaries at which you stop being a normal person who has to bend his principles for the real world and become a complete dick who doesn't deserve to be a respected member of the white hat community.

Anyway, got my W2, so I have to go get back to making my yearly donation to the government; I sure hope they won't blow it on multimillion dollar bribes.

I read TFA, and you didn't miss much. The reporter dumbed the idea too far down or didn't understand it himself. https://github.com/bramcohen/DissidentX [github.com] has a little more explanation especially if you want to read the code.

Anyway, you can't tell how many messages are encoded, in fact you shouldn't be able to see if a single message is encoded at all, hence the purpose of the tool and stenography in general. Though, if you have the undoctered original file and you know that this tool is the only thing that might have messed with the file, then you can tell that at least one message has been encoded.

However, you can tell how many messages could be encoded and therefore keep water-boarding until you get that many messages, but likely no one put that many messages into the file in the first place so your just doing the extra torture for fun.

Of course not, no one has written a best selling book on it yet.

I for one, don't buy any scientific theories until I read a bestselling, true-adventure book that dumbs it down for me and admits no counterpoints.

I am trying to take up swimming though, so I could use a "Born to Swim" if it's out there somewhere. Christopher McDougall do your thing; Make me excited about my evolutionary drive to learn the backstroke.

Seriously, Anonymous Coward wants to know if this account has enough klout to deserve an opinion? If you think that people's insights are only worthwhile because of their notoriety, your using the wrong account.

Maybe some of us care what he says because he has some good points?

Hmm, have the stolen credit cards used or are they just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Maybe the NSA is relevant to the current story?

I'm just asking questions!

Tech: Will you be a success?
Watson: What is 42?
Tech: ???
Watson: What is the beings who asked the question did not understand the question and therefore the answer is meaningless?