You are promoting the idea that there is safety in a situation for which you have no data.

Only a fool would follow you there.

No, I didn't claim anything of the sort. I only asked how you didn't know that was the case, which is something else entirely. You need new reading glasses. Or remedial reading classes. Or something.

Indiana will simply legislate that all superconductors are performance-invariant.

Problem solved. See how easy that is?

You don't know if they've solved (the last part of) Kryptos. You just know the public hasn't.

The difference between what you think you know, and what you actually know, is often quite significant.

As for the "magic" straw man, not worthy of a response.

For a falcon heavy having a fleet of these ships would allow them to recover all three first stage elements vastly reducing the cost to put really heavy things like all the elements for a mars transfer vehicle in space.

I agree plus it gives them flexibility. As much as Elon talks about having the first stage land back at the launch site, there's simply too much valuable infrastructure. Having a fleet of these autonomous ships gets Elon the reusability without endangering his personal and launch sites.

Oh yeah! I was migrating all my machines from 10Mbit Ethernet to 155Mbit ATM only to see it completely eclipsed by 1Gbit ethernet before I was even done with the project. Got burned on that one!

It seems it's centered around some perceived benefit (usually financial). Well meaning bean counters who don't see the whole picture and get befuddled by glossy brochures. Though in my experience once all the numbers are on the table and we really start talking turkey, suddenly they realize the math makes no sense.

If you're a start up and you have zero infrastructure, the cloud makes perfect sense, until you get to a certain size and then it suddenly stops making sense.

Hysteria, eh? Well, let's just drag a few facts out. Here we go:

o Straight-up misconduct

o Botched paramilitary police raid data

o Judge, jury and executioners in blue: The death penalty -- without a court

o Warrants "not required" data

o Seizure of property without warrants details

o $2.02 billion dollars in cash and property seizures for/in which no indictment was ever filed

o Other illegal horrors

Just a little information -- what we know -- showing our government at work, cavreader. Now, I don't know how you will characterize this information, but I know how I do: Directly and unequivocally indicative of a systemic breakdown of respect, regard, and understanding of liberty and justice that extends broadly across all areas of law enforcement.

Now, you want to talk nonsense about legal protections in a system where the vast majority of defendants are pressured into plea bargains against a completely uneven scale full of extra charges, almost certain financial ruin, threats of extended incarceration, and outright lies from the police and prosecutor, where the police don't have to defend anything in court -- and which can be, and at times have been, followed up by ex post facto laws increasing punishment after conviction -- fine. But don't expect me to take you seriously, because you obviously don't have even the slightest idea what you're talking about.

An English major is NOT getting into a STEM Ph.D. program, no matter what.

Even if they were, job prospects are worse for STEM Ph.D. holders than for MS/BS holders—there are far fewer jobs that require Ph.D. level qualifications outside of the professoriate and academics, and for Ph.D. holders in particular, employers are absolutely loathe to hire overqualified people.

Inside the professoriate and academics, the job market is historically bad right now. It's not "get a Ph.D., then become a lab head or professor," it's "get a Ph.D., then do a postdoc, then do another postdoc, then do another postdoc, then do another postdoc, really do at least 6-7 postdocs, moving around the world every year the entire time, and at the end of all of that if you've managed to stay employed at poverty wages using highly competitive postdocs that you may not even get, while not flying apart at the emotional seams, you may finally be competitive enough to be amongst the minority of 40-year-old Ph.D. holders that gets a lab or a tenure-track position, at which point the fun REALLY begins as you are forced onto the grantwriting treadmill and feel little job security, since universities increasingly require junior faculty to 'pay their own way' with external grants or be budgeted out."

And that's INSIDE STEM, which this person is almost certainly likely to be uncompetitive for as a B.A. holder trying to get into graduate programs.

Much more likely is that with great grades and GRE scores they'll be admitted to a humanities or social sciences Ph.D. program, with many of the same problems but with CATASTROPHICALLY worse job prospects due to the accelerating collapse of humanities budgets and support on most campuses.

Ph.D. is absolutely not the way to go unless you are independently wealthy and are looking for a way to "contribute to the world" since you don't actually have to draw a salary.

For anyone with student loans, it's a disastrous decision right now, and I wouldn't recommend it.

I say this as someone with a Ph.D. who is on a faculty and routinely is approached by starry-eyed top students looking to "make the world a better place" and "do research." Given the competition out there right now, only the superstars should even attempt it, and then only if they're not strapped for cash. Hint: If you don't know whether or not you're a superstar, you're not.

I think in a decade I've strongly recommended that someone enter a Ph.D. program once, and greeted the suggestion favorably maybe three times total, out of thousands of students, many of them with the classic "4.0 GPA" and tons of "books smarts."

In short, I disagree strongly with the suggestion. Unless you absolutely know that you're competitive already on the academic market, DO NOT GO. Don't listen to the marketing from the schools; it's designed to drive (a) your enrollment and tuition, and/or (b) your cheap labor as a teaching assistant/research assistant forever once you're in the program. It's a win for the institution, not for you.

The easiest sanity checks: Do you know exactly what your dissertation will be about and what you'll need to do, in broad strokes to conduct your research, as well as what resources you'll need? Do you already have personal contact with faculty on a well-matched campus in a well-matched department that are championing you and that want to bring you in as one of their own students/assistants?

If you answers to either one of these questions is "no," then while you may be offered a position somewhere, you will be on the losing end of the deal and would be naive to take it.

In this context a legitimate law enforcement reason means a warrant would indeed be needed.

Are you mad? They don't even insist on warrants when they can't meet the requirements of the 4th amendment, preferring to focus cluelessly upon the word "unreasonable" and ignoring the litany of probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation that were put there to explicitly define what "reasonable" is. They just break your door down, and shoot you -- and your pets.

And you think a law that doesn't even say a warrant is required will somehow stumble in its application on needing them?

I don't think you understand how the justice system works here. Or perhaps you're not from here.

What makes you think the government has a polynomial prime factoring algorithm?

What makes you think they don't? What makes you think they even need one? What makes you think they don't hire, and utilize, some of the most powerful math-heads out there? What makes you think that something that can't be broken today won't bring you to the vale of tears days, months, even years later, if that's what it takes? What makes you think they don't have, or won't have, some kind of quantum computing device that obviates encryption entirely? What makes you think they didn't log every keystroke you typed, thus making encryption a complete non-issue? Wait, what, your system is "pure"? You know they can tell what you're typing by the sound, right? Finally, what makes you think they won't come right to your home or place of business or your favorite club, hustle you into a dank basement somewhere, and waterboard you or pound your toes to mush with a hammer or actually, eventually, read your mind electronically and get what they want that way? Got any relatives you treasure? What about the recipient(s)? Now there are (at least) two points of human weakness.

And... you do know that "they" have access to quite a few technologies that "we" do not, right?

I would seriously bet on the idea that if you demonstrate you think you need to encrypt your stuff by simply doing so, all you've managed to accomplish is get on a list of "we'll get back to this suspicious character later."

Right now, if you've got something secret that you don't want the government to become aware of, just don't say it or otherwise communicate it. That's your very best chance of actually keeping it a secret. It may be your only chance.

Further, the presumption that because it falls under the umbrella of law, it is somehow made "ok", is utter nonsense from word one.

hey y'all, watch this... gimme my transcranial magnetic stimulator -- you can have my beer.

You want to be found dull-eyed, emaciated, sitting in a disheveled heap, squishing around on your own excrement? The three seashells ensure that you'll only be found dull-eyed, emaciated, sitting in a disheveled heap -- clean as a whistle. :)