"babyproof"

"stupid is as stupid does"

"politically correct"

"nanny state"

Any more tropes you'd like to offer up...?

Lemme guess, still sore that Obama won?

We can have a scoring system where they ask questions about the lectures afterwards and award a lettered badge...

we should call them ...

EXAMS! /facepalm

I only had one boring lecturer in my 4 year BS/EE, I -loved- lecture, especially physics, thermo, AI, and mechanics.

Whine whine whine.

Too bad you're an AC, i'd like to continue this discussion.

One server: sure, I see your point.

100,000 servers? : Yes, the SUSE support contracts cost, but nowhere near as much as AIX or Sparc licenses, it would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars to go back to pre-LINUX. So I think that qualifies as "married to the free software movement", no?

That means by 2043 the free software movement will be ... what exactly?

i think it's gone farther than half way: heck, every one of the 100,000+ compute server at my company runs suse linux.

i'd say the free software movement is suffering from a "last mile" problem.

but i guess that depends on what the intent of the movement is, exactly? dominate every compute platform?

hmmmm.....

my gym had a tactical training session for the local FBI office. 17 agents showed up, they were all ex military non-officers.

small sample size, yes, but something to consider.

FBI agents AND a computer repair shop couldn't wipe a disk?

Not buying it.

y'all got punk'd by mz seksual personnae...

Yeah, you're right. You should be guaranteed a lifetime career without any market dynamics affecting your career choice, especially when you are betting on technology not improving. Everything should just stay the same so as not to impact you.

Sound business plan there, buddy.

Even if all you have to trade is soft bread, the attacker can stick a knife into you and take all you have.

Mmmm... soft bread.

5.56 green tip LC is now going for about US$0.47 per round in 1,000 round purchase (assuming online dealers haven't sold out). Fortunately 7.62x39 is 75% cheaper, and them true 'Mericans sure hate AKs.

I'd say ammo's a damn fine investment, although moseying into town to after the apocalypse to trade it for food is likely to end with you facing a bigger gun. The nice thing about using non-ammunition for currency is that it can't be turned around and used on you almost immediately.

Doh, I was thinking Mac and typed 68000, I meant PowerPC.

But apparently I'm getting the sh*t modded down by ARM fanboys/bois because I'm trying to be objective.

Whatevs.

Same arguments from the 1990's... again. Remember when the 68000 was lower power than Pentium60 because it was RISC?

Yup, that all over again.

Even the magnitude of the design wins are the same today as they were in the early 90's.

Let's see who wins this round! Can the heavyweight (Intel) slim down to welterweight and defeat ARM?

Or will the both live together spurring on the same innovation (and crazy, low low prices!) we got from the AMD v. Intel race to 1GHz?

Tune in next week for more...

TALES!
OF!
INTEREEEEEEEESSSSTTTT!

The OP reached a "conclusion" without even attempting to reason an argument. There were some vast generalizations and slippery-slope thinking, but not much in the way of thought. You did not so much "articulate" as you did "bloviate". From what I can tell, to OP worried that people want to make a profit at the expense of others. That's nothing new at all. Especially when he/she focuses rage on technology due to anecdotal evidence.

Did we suddenly forget Twitter's role in the middle-east protests? Conveniently overlook the use of the internet in CHINA of all places to organize middle class protests against pollution? I'm delighted to keep in touch with old friends on Facebook, it strengthens enduring relationships because I don't always have the time or money to visit them.

Are we ignoring the fact that no one is putting a gun to your head forcing you to use search engines or social media or free email?

Yes, there have been cases of people accidentally "outed" because of technical glitches on Facebook, but the nightmare scenarios you describe aren't even close to happening because we can simply choose to unplug. ISP records used by the RIAA to police people for illegal sharing records matters mostly to people under 15. If we want to talk about property rights for electronic doodads and files, here's a solution: don't buy them. It's like you never heard of the word "lease." If you don't like the terms of service, DON'T PATRONIZE IT. Quite simple. I blame that ignorance on greedy youth who think everything should be free because they want it, like music. Which is just the nascent greed that drives wall street.

Wake me up when the government tries to pass a law forcing us to sign up for Google+ with our real names and installs cameras in our houses.

Did you see how fucking fast the courts smacked down laws that tried to make it illegal to video record police? Bam! The system works.

Sure, we can slippery-slope all day about Google becoming oppressive Orwellian force that will crush freedom. You know what, "Iran is four years from a nuclear bomb." Been hearing that trope for ~30 years. How about we focus on the positives.

So instead of panicking about people trying to make money, which will never go away, how about we focus on making sure we can watch the watchers. Read the book "The Transparent Society" by Brinn, and "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" by Lessig. Those are two great starting points that actually address the concern of the OP.

Both of you need some serious facts in your arguments.

The fact there is not a single argument in favor of TSA, or even re-working TSA policy, promoted to +5 pretty much tells me that (a) it is majority abhorrent (like racism), or (b) no one is really thinking about the issue and just having a knee-jerk reaction.

Even if the hypothetical pro-TSA opinion was irrational but still a reason (e.g. racist logic) I would expect at least ONE +5 for making an attempt, but since there are none, I find it proof that slashdot is not a particularly useful forum for meaningful discussion.

And for my strawman: this may sound like equivalency bias/fallacy in stating all positions are equal. I'm not saying that: I'm saying there isn't even an ATTEMPT to understand the benefits of TSA, and every argument against sounds like an awful Rage Against the Machine song (which is a redundant statement).

To be fair, MIT undergrads are by-and-large fucking brilliant, like top of the human race brilliant. Grad students, not so much.

RPI 1990 grad here. MIT laughed at my application (well, I imagine they did).