Teenagers are really really stupid.

Make it a misdemeanor criminal case. Download a movie and get the same first warning / week in jail plus a $100 or so fine that you would get for physically stealing the movie from Best Buy.

Of course, since in this country most crimes are defined at the state level, this wouldn't really work.

I'm starting to really think that we're making a mistake putting full-fledged computers in everything we build. They allow for an amazing array of features, but it makes fully understanding our machines much more difficult. Security problems like this one are inevitable.

A dumb analog xerox machine is pretty easy to understand, and one that runs on a microcontroller and a few KB of ram (if that) isn't much harder. But who but the most dedicated hacker has any real idea about what is going on inside a modern Xerox. It *might* not have any undocumented "features," but you have no way of knowing. Security has gone from being a matter of applied common sense to involving a large amount of blind trust in these manufacturers.

It's a symptom of a larger issue though. We're rapidly getting away from having a society where a well educated and technically minded person can understand the actual inner workings of the technology they interact with every day. The tradeoff might be worth it, I'm not a luddite. But we should remember that we are entering into a new kind of relationship with our machines,

Man, forget about emergency rescue. A launch to the moon isn't something you can just do in a few days. If you're going to the moon, just pray that everything goes according to plan.

As long as they don't change the naked-eye appearance of the moon (no Target or AT&T logo, please) then yes, absolutely.

I think everyone is missing the point as to why the space program has faltered.

In the late 50s, missile technology was very primitive compared to where it is now. Sputnik meant that Russia had good enough missiles to hit a somewhat precise location in the US. We had to respond.

Developing the first ICBMs was enormously complicated. Space research developed a lot of technology that would be used to wipe Moscow off the map.

Today, missiles are very well developed and the private aerospace industry can largely handle the research without the help of a government agency (though certainly not without government money). Nasa is no longer contributing (as much) technology to the military, and what it does is mainly things like GPS, which can be done with existing space technology or even private launches.

To a Senator, the space program serves no purpose and aside from being a sweet deal for some states' economies, benefits no voter directly. And while the space program still has some fans, they aren't numerous enough to swing any election.

Frankly, what NASA needs most is a consistent and predictable budget, a director who won't change jobs when the president leaves office, and hands off from Washington. If they could set a policy and stick to it, we wouldn't be in this mess.

That's not entirely true. There is no two party system in congressional elections, but there very much is a two party system for electing the president, unless you're fine with the senate choosing your presidents for you.

The fact that you need a majority and not a plurality of electoral votes to win the presidency means that a situation where there were 3 parties each getting roughly a third of the vote would result in presidents never being chosen by popular election.

Now, political precedent and tradition can be almost as important as written law. For over a century and a half, there were no term limits on the president, but because Washington had served only two terms, nobody else ran for a third term until FDR.

Similarly, a tradition could be established in the Senate that the Senate always goes with the plurality candidate, and that would effectively give us a multi-party system. Of course, I can't see modern senators voting across party lines to decide who sits in the White House, but it could be done.

Oh my God, this is sad.

Computers are really bad for a lot of people. Get outside and interact with actual people in the sunlight.

"There are plenty of companies out there that had a scary-cool product or technology, something transformational, but missed something along the way: misjudged the market, misjudged their capital needs, rushed a buggy product to market, etc. Don't hear much from those companies anymore."

No, I still read about Sony pretty often.

Move to a city with a lot of IT. Take ANY job, even if it's Geek Squad. Start networking like crazy, join a LUG, attend conferences and talks, put yourself out there. The vast majority of all jobs are not given to a resume on a stack. Meet people.

VRML was never used. For anything. How is this going to be different? What's the application? Javascript games?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6lzEhoXads

Maybe Tolkein isn't the intercultural reference point you think he is.

I'm sure there's plenty of German Wikipedia articles on German literature that have no corresponding articles in English.

Arbitrary... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

What do you mean? We make car analogies all the damn time.