A legal insanity defense means that he was so out of touch with reality that he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong.

It does not actually have any relation to whether he was behaving in a reasonable manner.

There's nothing wrong with people rocking the boat. That's the claim politicians make to get elected, and it's what they try for to get reelected.

What scares the government is when someone tries to capsize the boat. If your anti-religion rants are a means to radicalize people against a supposedly-religious government in an effort to spark a civil war, then yes, the FBI should be watching. That's a large part of its job.

I've been involved with a particular group of people who like to build rather energetic exothermic chemical devices, and set them off (legally and safely). We had the FBI come out and watch us for a while, and a few folks had some probing questions, but they've left us alone ever since it was clear that we're a bunch of nerds with no political ambitions whatsoever.

The reason we don't want to make another nation look like a petulant child is that it wouldn't help us at all. We want to trade with them. We get an economic boon from the trade as well, but insulting/embarrassing other nations will either accomplish nothing or, as you've noted, give them an opportunity to do the same to us. The only way we come out ahead is if we play the game so everyone wins.

America might think they're good reasons, but another party might disagree. Politics is far more complicated than "we like these guys now".

There was a time when China (the communist mainland) wouldn't deal with any organization that recognized the government of China (the government in exile on Taiwan). If they had to interact with such organizations, the PRC would make sure they got a better deal than the ROC did.

Your simple solution doesn't work so well in the real world.

Actually, I very intentionally did not refer to any particular country. Frankly, I'm not a fan of courtesy, period. I'd much prefer honest communication between all parties in discussions, with everyone being mature enough to ignore offenses until it's their turn to voice concerns, and everyone being mature enough to make sure everyone gets their turn.

This is politics, though. Maturity is seldom a politician's strongest trait. In that case, courtesy is often a good-enough mechanism to keep the system moving.

You shouldn't have to pay it, because the stolen card was used fraudulently.

If you give me blanket permission to use your card, and I use it for medical expenses, you may not (under HIPAA) have the legal right to ask what those charges are, but you still authorized use of your credit, so you are required to pay.

In a case like this, an itemized bill is a bit of a muddy subject. A clear bill should be itemized, but the risk of information leaks is pretty high, so using codes is considered a reasonable attempt to stop casual observers from knowing anything about the patient's treatment.

I was speaking generally, but yes, that's wrong. A few months, I could understand, as a courtesy to the less-transparent governments in the group... but years irritates me.

It's not just percentages. We could be waiving whole conditions for particular countries, or requiring extra terms for others.

Not quite. According to HIPAA, third parties are anyone other than the patient or the doctor currently treating the patient. A husband may not want his wife to know about his vasectomy. A teenage girl may not want her parents to know about her abortion. A patient may not want their old doctor to know about the second opinion he got while perparing his malpractice lawsuit.

Sure, the third parties can get the information through fraudulent means, but it must not be handed directly to them if they aren't trying to find it.

The final laws aren't secret, but during some parts of the lawmaking process, their details may be kept secret, for exactly the reason in TFS. People tend to react poorly when they think they're being offended, regardless of whether the offensive terms ever make it into a final version of the bill. It could be Vietnam being offended that they're not America's best friend like Japan, or it could be that the initial drafts of a particular law could be read to discriminate against a particular group, before that group's representative gets a chance to weigh in.

In either case, the result is often the same. The offended people get to complain, everybody gets mad, the bill is changed much the same as it would be without the outrage, and life goes on, only with a bit more resentment for the media-fueled mud-slinging.

It's not a rollover bug; It's a rollover feature!

And similarly, it doesn't stop the anti-fracking protesters from launching the usual counter-attacks.

I guess the logic goes that the fracking folks are evil, and since they're complaining about the report, it must be good. Enemy of my enemy, right?

That's precisely the problem.

...and considers it unacceptable when a system requires tinkering.

On a recent trip through the IKEA labyrinth, I noticed a few RGB LED strips. They have a controller that lets you pick any color for the lights. The tinkerer in me thinks that's great, but the practical user wonders why I'd ever change it from my favorite. I'd rather have two separate controllers to suit the two ideals.

For a development team, that translates into two very different design paradigms. On the tinkerer side, the end product is much like Linux - very configurable, open, and able to do anything the user wants. A "digital native", on the other hand, would design a product more like OS X, where all of the functionality is configured from the start as the designers want it, with more emphasis on immediate usability right out of the box.

I think the philosophical differences are valid hiring criteria. If I'm building an application that needs configurability, I don't want a developer that thinks his preference will be suitable for everyone else. If I'm building an application that I expect my mother to use, I don't want a developer who thinks every aspect of the system is within the user's domain.

However, I'm quite certain it's possible to get both approaches from developers of any age. Stereotyping a particular demographic as having a particular attitude is just as discriminatory as any other criterion.