Exactly; homeopathy is quackery, but there are plenty of supplements in their aisles that have been shown to be effective.

Try reporting the theft of one of your MMORPG characters' best sword and see how much attention the police pay you.

"While nothing is 100% certain, I know I would feel a hell of a lot more secure with $100,000 in cash in a fireproof safe, or even at a bank, than I would with the same amount in BitCoins sitting in an exchange or even in "cold storage" that's based on untested (and obviously flawed) protocols and trust in a completely unregulated private company in another country (or even our own)."

The vast majority of bitcoin conspiracy theorists feel the same, they just won't admit it.

I have never heard of any residential mortgage agreement having an acceleration clause tied to a change in debt/equity ratio. Do you have any citations for this? By the way, even if such a clause existed, it was something you contracted for, so it's not like it was completely out of the blue.

"Trying to get more people educated in a field by saying "we need more people with STEM degrees!" is like saying I need more people who know how to run. I don't want someone who knows how to run, I want someone who loves running." And I want a billion dollars, a private island, and a private masseuse. I'm not going to complain when I don't get it, though. What you should reasonably expect when you hire is someone who will do the job you pay them reasonably well and be a net asset to your company; most people don't "want" to work, they work to live. Expecting them to find spiritual fulfillment in helping your company do whatever it is it does is unreasonable.

This is slashdot, where most posters don't believe nuclear waste can be harmful to anyone you commie pinko liberal terrorist.

Strong patent protection is a characteristic of the steepest technology jump in human history. The 20th century saw technological innovation increase exponentially, frequently driven by well-funded R&D departments at large corporations. They would not have developed these things without patent protection because it would put them out of business. I have never heard a plausible explanation of how a company that spends a billion dollars developing a technology can compete if their competitors can undersell them simply because they don't have to recoup the R&D budget.

And while the Constitution does not mandate copyright and patent laws, it does legitimize it, removing the argument that implementing them is violative of free speech.

There's no proof that they aren't. And legally they are enshrined in the Constitution.

That would be horrific to the parties involved; someone trying to recover under a contract in New York should have to go to Hawaii? Litigation is expensive enough without multiplying the cost like that.

"The point of the patent system (as I understand it at least) is to ensure that information doesn't get lost."

Nah, the purpose of the patent system is to encourage invention.

"Since we can't test for obviousness, both the patent office and the courts have decided to ignore obviousness, thus destroying any possible usefulness of a patent system."

That doesn't really compute there. You're assuming both that patents never work without things going to litigation, that when they are litigated that it's only about "obviousness," and that in every patent case (the vast majority of which I am sure you are unfamiliar with) the courts "ignore" obviousness.

Interesting! I had the opposite situation; read Neuromancer a couple of times but tried Cryptonomicon twice and just couldn't get through it. Just found it tedious.

I used to swing back and forth between Windows and Linux, but honestly the past few years it's been all Windows. Windows 7 and Windows 8 are actually decent OSes, plus they run the software I need and the games and media that I want.

I also blame sysadmins who frequently don't understand that security is contextual; you do not need the same level of password complexity for a gardening forum or slashdot that you need for your bank account. But you still see ridiculous requirements for low-security sites.

This should convince anyone that open source linux software can compete with windows, given 22 years.