If only commit hashes were ordered

I did not say that individuals involved should not be punished, i said that the consequences for a government agency (in it's entirety) should not be the same as they are for an individual, and this ruling is for the GCHQ's actions not "higher up at [spy agency] and his obedient minions"... I don't think individual punishment alone solves issues that span an entire organisation either.

It would make sense that individual trials result from this ruling to determine individual liability.

Makes it sound like what determines a version bump is somewhat arbitrary, are kernels just too complex for them to fit into a simple versioning convention?

1. There are statistical differences of interest between the genders, some subjects more than others, this leads to different proportions of gender in various subjects.

2. Given a strong enough natural bias of proportion (not individual ability), over time stereotypes will emerge that magnify those biases.

3. Inevitably, teachers (being human and all), will subconsciously be affected by these stereotypes.

It's important that in a subject where women are a small minority that people in teaching positions make a concerted effort to be unbiased and try to remove stereotypes from their judgement. However "reversing the bias" will do as much harm as good, it's almost as misguided as trying to create a perfectly equally diverse workforce in a region where the diversity of the population is not equal. While determining the natural bias in cases like this may be near impossible, people in positions of influence can at least try to be unbiased to reduce the impact of stereotypes on minorities.

Yes but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to because it's pure opinion. People should also be able to disagree with you because they think you "should not" but that doesn't mean anyone should have absolute authority over what you are and are not allowed to say - that's why it's a freedom of speech issue.

Out of interest (I'm primarily a web dev) what sites / content do you use that demands flash? I browse with plugins enabled on a click to play basis but i'm finding very few places these days where i ever need or want to enable flash content, especially with video content being fairly quickly replaced by h.264 and so forth.

The source is open, but i read about how chromium's way of packaging dependencies with itself has had it rejected from official software repositories on various linux distros. Perhaps this also reduces it's portability.

On an unrelated note, you shouldn't judge a browser on it's ability to support java and flash, that's really not how the web should work or will work in the future. (for the record i'm fairly browser agnostic, except when talking about IE of course :P).

Consequences to a government agency are not and should not be the same as they are for an individual... When a great wrong has been done by an individual, punishment is arguably useful and usually satisfying from other individuals perspective, but retribution for an organisation (esp government) it's not very useful to anyone.

Also the legality of this ruling should not determine punishment or justification, it should determine change. If the ruling was "lawful", then clearly the laws involved are not comprehensive enough or are poorly defined.

Whatever the ruling, it's clear that the GCHQ overreached. Inadequate oversight, bad policy and fallible laws could be the cause. The ruling and findings along the way can provide insight into how much of each is to blame.

Regardless of their meaning that's a ridiculous things to say, obtaining evidence to show the flaws haven't been exploited is infeasible. It's like saying there is no evidence proving that god does not exist.

Actually this experiment is not how you know that. You know communication helps as a priori knowledge which is also why it's obvious (see below if you need an explanation). You missed the point entirely which is not if it helps but how much it helps... the larger debate is when humans first started communicating, it's helpful to know how much communication helps developing stone tools because that period in time could be a candidate if it's significant.

It's obvious that communication will help because it's also logically true: communication is required to share knowledge, sharing knowledge will help an individual to know more than they would separately. These things are true by definition and logic, you can know that communication helps as priori knowledge in the same way that you know up is the opposite to down without measuring it.

The debate seems to wander into the territory of considering persistence separately from "intelligence", and essentially suggesting that persistence can also amplify stupidity. In which case perhaps a more useful question is:

Does possessing persistence significantly contribute to process of improving an individuals intelligence?

If true then an individual possessing this character is likely to ether be or become more intelligent given the right conditions, regardless of a particular combination of traits.

Yes it could be done and made cheaply... if it's something that consumers actually want, beyond a gimmicky "My phone has it" selling point.

Maybe i'm just not consumer enough, but i don't really want my photos or video to be 3D, in the same way that film looks better at 24FPS and games look better at >60FPS.

I think high frame rates and depth perception are along the same lines as far as application goes, they bring ultra realism. For things like games, simulations etc that's great. But for many forms of media it seems that lack of realism and it's artistic capacity are somehow entwined, adding ultra realism seems to destroy that. Granted - selfies are tenuously artistic so perhaps this will make it into phones.

Creating a charge will solve one problem and cause another... You would still need other repercussions when the claim is false, because taking down the site of a companies competitor for a few days, or a disruptive but not illegal site can be well worth $1000. In fact it will make things worse, because your putting that power in the hands of the wealthy and taking it from the poor (or to the large corporation and away from the individual).

Yes but within reason... how stupid are you required to be to not see the blatantly obvious. This isn't something easily quantifiable, more likely something a judge with have to defer to "common sense".

Not a straw man honest... just highlighting what should be obvious responsibility.

1. You get a gun for your "art project"...

2. You program a robot to randomly fire 100 bullets per week in random directions.

3. Your deploy your robot in an area KNOWN to contain humans.

4. Inevitably... a human is eventually killed given enough time.

Q: Are you responsible for being a fucking moron?

A: yes