No, it wasn't premeditated. He premeditated changing his grade on the computer but failed. The fire thing was a spur of the moment act of frustration and fear for the consequences of a bad grade. He was acting exactly like a kid.

Let's say we treat him like an adult as you suggest and he gets 2 years. So, there he is, 17 years old and out, sentence served. Naturally, he should be served alcohol on request since he is an adult, right? Naturally, he'll be able to vote, being an adult and all.

Here's a question for you, what should happen if an adult acts like a kid? Do we try them as a minor?

I'm guessing it was his amygdala.

There was a 4.2 earthquake in western Michigan yesterday. An earthquake that size isn't news particularly in California. It was barely news in Michigan and they don't get earthquakes that size.

Doesn't work, not at scale anyway. The notion that location doesn't matter is a myth. Silicon Valley is what it is precisely because the people that make it what it is are located there. Move them somewhere else and Silicon Valley doesn't exist - not as we know it. Detroit is the automotive capital of the world because of the people and companies that are located there. You cannot skype that into existence. It doesn't work. You have to have the people actually living and working there.

Keep in mind the problem species mentioned are mostly native to Africa, and it's problematic in more ways than one. Africa is the world's poorest and least developed continent, and that leads to two problems: First, their birth rate is skill sky high, unlike nearly every first-world country where populations are now largely stable or even falling. Second, the poverty and unstable political climate means there's a lot of poaching going on. Third, when you're dirt poor, you're a little less likely to worry about "big picture" issues like species viability, and more likely to do what you can to simply survive and put food on the table.

Essentially, we need Africa to become more economically developed as soon as possible, and when that happens, it's almost certain that they'll follow the same trends that we've seen in happen in other developed countries: stabilizing populations and more serious efforts to protect their natural resources and environment. Unfortunately, we can only encourage these countries to protect their natural assets, but there's really nothing we can do short of that. We just have to hope that the populations don't become nonviable before that happens.

There actually is a point to that. Very wealthy people like to perpetuate the myth that they did everything with their own two hands from nothing but dirt, but there is no truth to it. Behind each and every one stand a rather large number of people who did a lot more for a lot less reward.

As they say, born on 3rd base.

Interestingly, even his history with Altair BASIC is a but checkered. Since he developed it using an emulator running on his school's mainframe, technically they owned the code, not him. I think that's a raw deal, but they would have been perfectly justified in billing him for the expensive computer time he burned up without authorization, at least. Even still, he had accepted a fair number of pre-orders and was over a year late delivering when someone pilfered a tape roll from him, fixed the remaining bugs in short order and began distributing fixed copies. That's what inspired Gates' somewhat infamous open letter about copying (never mind that the guy that pilfered it did so because he had paid and gotten nothing in return).

To me, that more or less set the tone for MS a few years later.

1782 shortly after defeating the british, unquestionably the most powerful nation at the time.

It was a much bigger world then but the US was certainly the most powerful force in the new world.

So, there was no billing error here. The guy actually had his modem making long-distance calls for inordinate amounts of time. Doesn't seem like an AT&T error. Though it definitely sucks for the old man/woman!

No billing error? The entire billing system sucks balls at the largest possible frame.

There should be a legislative directive that all such usage-based billing plans provide an option for the end user to set hard spending caps, which are automatically enforced by the service provider.

Show me a corporation that doesn't—at least attempt—to enact hard spending caps enforced by automatic systems wherever and whenever possible. Heads roll in the gutters when a corporation loses $100 million because some trading desk manages to go rogue with respect to set trading limits. (By the Finnish system of traffic fines, a $100 million loss for AT&T is about on par with some old geezer tabbed for $25,000.)

End users are, of course, purposefully disadvantaged to have to police their own usage by manual vigilance, because everyone knows this is a lucrative fail mode for AT&T's revenue piracy service.

That this whole thing sucks balls right down to the bag root is the least possible diagnosis.

"citation?"

Citation? You aren't likely to find that as government PR spin but actions speak louder than words. So review native american treaties, the acquisition of Texas, the rest of the southwest, and California.

New mexico for instance was invaded, ownership by claim of might equals right was recognized by the US, the US purchased it for a song then didn't actually pay the bill to Mexico because the US was strong enough to get away with it.

"Natives as a group have the lowest standard of living in the state."

Like he said... "They are better off than anyone else in Polynesia, and have one of the highest standards of living in the world."

Just because it's a low standard by Hawaiian standards doesn't mean its a low standard with any reasonable perspective.

You may be mis-remembering Stacker. Stacker did compression at the block level back in the days when 30MB was a big hard drive. Gzip is a file level user program.

"The reason why these whackjobs's opinions matter is the US is an invading and occupying colonial power who has given the vote to illegal settlers and who has appropriated this Hawaiian land, manifest destiny and all. I get that all of the native American treaties are void and most of the US should be legally reverted to native control and the illegal settlers expelled; but natives don't have nukes or numbers only casinos at the whim of the occupying power."

Oh please. No human beings are the genuine natives of a single square inch of the planet and all of it has passed in possession from hand to hand. There isn't a single person within Hawaii who was there when it wasn't part of the US and they are all born US citizens. Along with all the other native americans. The treaties were nothing more than kindness to people with leaders too stupid to surrender before getting everyone they were responsible for protecting slaughtered.

A treaty is no different than any other contract, you break it when the benefits outweigh the consequences. It's no different than breaking a cell phone contract when the new offer outweighs the cancellation fee. I have native blood (Blackfoot, not Hawaiian) and I have friends who are full blooded and some of them refuse to take the money from those casinos. They don't feel they are entitled to any special treatment just because of the accident of birth.

I have no issue with Assange being on this. His goal was ALWAYS about getting knowledge out there. Now, he may be a rapists, but that is a different issue.
However, I take issues with both Manning and Snowden.
Manning's goal was NOT to release information because he opposed what was going on. His reason was because he was mad at the US because he was gay and was about to be booted out. With that said, the information that he release was about some of our illegal doings. As such, he should not be punished for this, but, he is no hero.

Snowden is a whole other creature from these two. He worked on a number of NSA systems. He was aware of what was going on. Cool. I worked on some of these, BUT, it was all low-level stuff, not the high levels that he had. I was aware that it was POSSIBLE to do the things that we have done. When he spoke about the spying on Americans, I was actually good with that. NSA had congressional oversight that was removed by the GOP back in 2005. I was against that because I knew that they did that so that their friends could go to work and do much more than what they were allowed to. That is why Congressman Udall kept hinting at what was going on.
BUT, when he told how NSA spies on the outside world, he became a traitor. America set up NSA to spy on what other nations, terrorists and foreign elements do. We need to know what is going on out there. It is the same thing that ALL NATIONS DO. Yes, EVERY NATION HAS THIS GOING ON. Now, NSA has greater capabilities because we have top ppl in there. In addition, we have worked with many nations to not only spy for us, but also to give them the information. Everyone that we work with, which includes all of the west, KNOWS what we are up to. In addition, we, and UK, have tought others how to do this counting on sharing of information. That is why AQ has not been successful in attacking the west for over 10 years. France happened because all of these nations hold back from spying everywhere, and once terrorists became aware of how we do things, then they could evaded the net. All they had to do was simply avoid certain comm channels that went between nations. By doing that, the evaded the net.
France's attack success can be blamed partially on Snowden. He made it possible for those terrorists to evade the net. In fact, a big reason why so many are going from Europe to ISIS is because ISIS now knows how to avoid detection and instead focuses their recruiting efforts throughout europe and other locations in which they are not going to be interrupted.
How many of you have kids? Do you have a 15-16 y.o. in which the girls want to go marry a terrorists and 'fight for freedom'? Of course, when those girls marry, they are not just property, but ISIS killed a number of them, and their infant kids, so that they were not a burden when they moved from one location to another.
Of course, your boy was not murdered. Just put on the front line with little to no training and told to take on western trained troops. IOW, they were cannon fodder.

Sorry, but this is not what I would want for my kids. And sadly, Snowden makes it possible.