Ah, I remember. Atic Atac. Moon Buggy. The Hobbit. All great games. But of course the coolest thing was to program that sucker. I always liked the Basic dialect better than Commodore's (which was far more popular in my school), and even liked the weird tokenized entry method. But the real game changer for me was when I bought (yes, bought!) a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. It still is one of my favorite programming languages.

Funny enough, my father was really opposed to me getting one, so an (older) friend of mine had to buy one for me and "lend" it to me until my father finally gave up and let me outright own it. A Ph.D. in EE later I'd say it was a good investment...

Too bad at some point my brother ended up with it and rather than giving it back for proper conservation he discarded it. I miss it dearly.

It may or may not be relevant to this story (it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out). It is, however, very relevant to the argument I was commenting on, which tried to establish an analogy between an employer/employee relationship and a relationship between consenting adults.

I am very well aware of that. I just pointed out to you that, from your original post, you did not seem to be aware that the TSA belongs to a different branch of government than the judiciary and that this fact invalidates your original argument of the TSA being "unable to act as an impartial referee".

Since I am aware of existing whistleblower legislation, I did not advocate for any new or additional laws. In my original comment, I just argued against the assumption that legislation regulating the relationship between employers and employees is unnecessary because it equates to a relationship between consenting adults. And obviously, Congress agrees with me.

Excuse me for assuming the the USA had a system of checks and balances. The last time I checked, the TSA was part of the executive branch, and has to abide by laws that the legislative branch created. So we have two branches here, one making laws, one carrying them out. Wait, why don't we create a third branch as an arbiter, let's call it the judiciary?

Ah, nice. Latching on to the one thing I've neglected for the sake of argument, and for that sake only. Thanks for biting.

This is where the power differential kicks in. Your relationship with your employer is not symmetric. The potential impact on the employer is much lower than on the employee. That's why you need an impartial arbiter or a union (yeah, I know, good luck with that...)

And since you mention the word "friend" here, let me say that you'd be a pretty crappy friend who dumps someone you care about without trying to help him first, which is exactly what the agent tried to do in this case. Also, in this case, this is not only a matter between the employer and employee, because the safety of a third party is affected. As such, it becomes a matter of public safety and an ethical issue. Responsibility also means not just walking away from a bad situation.

Are nanny analogies now the new car analogies on Slashdot?

Anyways, here's what's wrong with that picture:

Let's ignore the massive differential in power between a corporation/employer and an employee for a second and accept for the sake of argument that your assumption of both parties being consenting adults is valid. Of both parties in this case, only one acted responsibly, and that is the employee. The TSA chose to throw a tantrum worthy of a five year old and go "Lalala, I can't hear you!". At that point, I'd like to have a mechanism in place to make both parties behave responsibly. And that, pretty much, is the definition of a law (to lay down what "responsible behavior" is) and this subsequently implies it must be enforced by an impartial entity (judge, jury, whatever is customary in your local law system).

Isn't that the way it's supposed to work even in the USA? Why is everybody so afraid of laws and regulations when time and time again experience shows that especially those with a lot of power act like 5-year-olds any time they can get away with it?

Yay! I've been waiting for a decent notification framework to become part of MacOS ever since Growl screwed up mightily after moving to the App Store. Also now I don't have to tweak Mail every single time a new version comes out just to have decent e-mail notification. Was about time...

I'm all for putting Maker's into schools, but wouldn't they have to lower the drinking age for that?

If people feel paranoid about this, something's wrong. Good parenting should enable your kids to handle "unreachable situations" (whatever that is). You should have trust in your kids' ability to grow into an independent person. Granted, a cell phone is a convenient thing to have and I accept that argument, but if you need it to ease your paranoia, then the issue is more with you rather than the kid.

GTD and Omnifocus works best for me. I often capture spontaneous thoughts immediately on my phone so I won't forget (and forget I'd otherwise do). Capturing literally everything is key here, and random notes are no exception.

I've tried a lot of GTD programs, but OmniFocus is the best one out there, not least for the fact that syncing via WebDAV allows me to not sell my soul (and potentially proprietary information) to Google or any other random website I don't trust.

Nope, the easiest one for that purpose would actually be MATLAB (or octave, for that matter). If you want decent O-O with that, you can also use PyLab. Anyone who needs FORTRAN for whatever reason down the road can easily pick it up having been exposed to any of the above, but it should not be taught as a first programming language.

OK, here's what's going to happen: initially, the publishers will charge low bulk rates to get everyone to switch over. After that, they'll introduce higher, per-student access fees. Oh, yeah, and don't even think about mixing and matching online books from different publishers. Fees for a single book will be so exorbitant, that the only way you'll be able to afford this is to buy the whole K-12 package. Just ask any university librarian about that business model...

Motors aren't the only reason for low power factors. Non-linear loads such as switched power supplies and, yes, CFLs, also decrease the power factor. If residential homes are doing this on a large scale (and transition to CFL or LED will accelerate this), the utilities will have to deal with it. It is likely that they will eventually start charging residential customers based on PF as well, once they have the infrastructure in place to reliably measure it. See here, for example: http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_perplexed_pq_issues_3/

Then why do utilities require power factor correction for large load customers? The higher currents required increase the stress on the distribution system due to ohmic losses, which the power company has to eat, among others. Maybe it's time to revisit your power textbook.