Uh, what about this: https://torrentfreak.com/dvd-r...

Cinavia's not really important anyway because it only blocks you if you use a Blu-Ray player for playback. All you have to do is play the the files on a computer with a FLOSS video player like mplayer or vlc and the Cinavia will be ignored.

I agree that programming languages are not real languages. There are similarities, which are useful when teaching the subject, but they are definitely different disciplines.

I'd like to relate an anecdote, here. I majored in CS. I declared a major in Economics as well. However, the College of Liberal Arts (offering Economics) required foreign language, while the College of Natural Sciences (offering CS) did not. I had taken foreign language in high school, but more was required. I ended up dropping Economics as a major, because I wasn't going to waste time taking more foreign language just to get a second undergraduate degree. Though I generally support breadth requirements in undergraduate study, I consider this an unfortunate result of the requirement.

Ah, I misunderstood you.

You allude to one of the most disgusting loopholes in the US justice system, which is that double jeopardy does not apply across the federal/state boundary. So, yes, the feds can try you, you can be found innocent, and then the state gets another bite at the apple.

This is VERY uncommon, though, because both federal and state prosecutors typically will, as agency policy, NOT exercise this right, because it's so unfair to do that and so out-of-keeping with the spirit of the constitution. But there have been instances where they have done this. And it's disgusting.

I tried to mod you up, but apparently my points just expired. Your description of the joy of math was among the most eloquent I've read. Thank you.

You've just described a highly dysfunctional work environment, except for the hot coworker part and the "I-sometimes-need-to-do-boring-stuff" part. The boring stuff part becomes dysfunctional if it gets too much, though. I can say from experience that not everywhere is like you describe. Long term, you might want to changing jobs.

As mentioned elsewhere, a number of factors correlate to create a highly artificial and dysfunctional social environment in lower education. A company where you're dealing with high-school social problems is a dysfunctional company. Hell, due mainly to honors classes keeping the bored clowns out of my way, my actual high school experience had few high-school social problems. The lower education dysfunctional environment was mostly middle school and lower.

You're dead wrong: http://patentlyo.com/patent/20...

Also, since shark fins on a vehicle would be purely decorative and nonfunctional, their presence or absence would be irrelevant in either construction.

Perhaps you're underestimating technical people. For example, I will very rarely, if ever, include a period in quotation marks, unless that period is part of the text I'm quoting. I will write things like

That example right there should tell you why I do it: if I include the period, it's ambiguous. Moreover, if I do need to quote a period at the end of a sentence, I will sometimes do this:

Because if I didn't include the period, it would be ambiguous. I know so-called "standard English" doesn't like that. However, for all I care, anyone who would like to criticize my using quotation marks in this manner can go fuck himself in the ass with a retractable baton. I'm going to use language to communicate precise ideas, and I will rewrite any rules that inhibit doing so. Mangling quotations by including unrelated punctuation is stupid and idiotic and wrong, and I won't do it.

Why would you think this? Scientists and engineers communicate precise ideas with each other routinely as part of their employment. Sloppy thinking and sloppy communication is tolerated less in those disciplines than any others, probably including even law.

My experience has been that technical people communicate clearly and efficiently about most topics and are less prone to falling for the cheap debating trick linguistic slights-of-hand that fool others. I assure you that if a competent technical person is talking to you in a way you find "incorrect", it is intentional. Perhaps you should be more tolerant.

Finally, to close: I have nothing against patent attorneys as individuals, though I'm glad software patents are dying. I'm also sure there are many competent patent attorneys out there. However, it's poor taste to diss one profession ("some of the absolute worst butchers of language and grammar") and then praise your own ("you need to be well-rounded to do the job"). It comes across as arrogant and condescending.

HAND.

That's a little overly cynical, I think. I have lawyers in my family. From what they tell me, lawyers are pretty hard on each other as far as professional ethics goes.

Similar to what you are saying would be doctors campaigning against vaccines because contagious diseases are good for business. Instead, we have doctors shouting till they're blue in the face that vaccines don't cause autism.

Most people aren't sociopathic bastards, and a sociopathic bastard wouldn't care about helping other sociopathic bastards anyway, so the creature you're describing is probably pretty rare.

What a fucking stupid thing to say.

Well, stuff like that is just memorization. We memorize different (and hopefully fewer) things these days. Memorization is the lowest form of learning.

Replace CS with English literature:

Why would you make such a worthless class a requirement? Just to make sure boys take it? And yes, most English majors are women.

The reason to make CS a required class would be to expose more people to it so that they understand the concepts that underlie the machines playing such an important role in our world today. Also so that, when they choose what to specialize in, they have some understanding of what choosing to specialize in CS would entail.

I am not going to defend English literature. But there are are some sensible arguments for requiring people to have an understanding of how to communicate ideas, understand literary archetypes from ancient mythologies that come up frequently, etc. This is not to say modern English classes accomplish any of that. The curtains are fucking blue.

Uh ... those seemed to be about on the level of eighth grade at the middle school I went to.

First, I'd like to point out we're hearing a third-hand rendition of what happened in each case. The kid told his parents told the media why he got suspended.

Black isn't a racial slur. The name of the race on the US Census is "Black or African American". The only way it could possibly be okay to suspend him is if he repeatedly and with intent to harass called someone who didn't like being called black, black. Did this happen, or is some teacher using her power to engage in a personal vendetta against a word she doesn't like but is generally considered acceptable? I don't know. Like I said, we know one side of the story.

Maybe, in this most recent case, the kid actually, for fun, tormented a superstitious classmate into thinking he was really in danger of being exiled from existence due to black magic.

TLDR: Many kids are assholes. Many teachers are assholes. Parents will never admit, due to myopia, that their kids are assholes. Schools will never admit, for legal and union reasons, that their teachers are assholes. Who was an asshole here? We'll never know. But I do assure, someone was.

LavaBit didn't "fold" in the sense you intend. LavaBit complied with the letter of the court order, then raised a giant middle finger to the government by shutting down the entire email service with just enough information to tell everyone what was going on without violating the gag order. By shutting down the service, they ensured that handing over the private key, necessary to comply with the court order, gave them exactly zilch. LavaBit's only mistake was not using PFS, but there's no evidence the FBI was competent enough to take advantage of that oversight.*

Of course, LavaBit was doing something stupid to begin with. If you want secure email, USE PGP not some random company that may or may not be run by the ballsiest technologist this side of the Russian border.

*LavaBit was in the US, so theoretically the NSA shouldn't have been logging all the ciphertext as a matter of course. But maybe the NSA did and the FBI shared the key with them. We'll never know. My speculation: Snowden (the almost-certain target) would have been indicted on even more stuff after the LavaBit raid if that had happened as the FBI would have demanded access to the NSA's data on Snowden so it could complete its investigation and "do something" about this evil dude who hated freedom so much. Remember, it was the FBI going after the key and Snowden, not the NSA. Why would the FBI have helped the NSA without getting Snowden's emails in return, and why would the FBI not have charged Snowden afterwards to rack up political points? I think Occam's Razor points to the FBI having failed. YMMV.

No idea what you're saying, so I can't critique it.

But I really want to know why so many people interested in time travel apparently hate their grandfathers so much.