Ireland either (1) Agrees to a new treaty extending US National Security Letter, wiretap, and subpoena privileges to cover resources hosted in Ireland, OR (2) Ireland gets added by the US to the state sponsors of terrorism list

Only because it's socially unacceptable to even joke about that / most people don't find that very funny / some people may not recognize it as a joke, and it can cause panic since the joke is too "believable", so even jokingly it's a terrorist threat.

On the other hand..... "Dropping O2 masks"; isn't the same.

Even if it's not a joke: how exactly is that life-threatening?

Dropping O2 masks falsely would be property damage for the airline, since now they would incur additional expenses after the flight to restore/reset safety systems, not a life-threatening event in itself.

The argument you made was that money woes are caused by people spending poorly

Not woes, BUT worries, and the argument I made is to counter the claim that he removed all money worries from his staff, AND spending poorly is just one of the examples of additional spending It doesn't matter necessarily if it's "poor" spending or not, only that it is more spending, as even people spending within their needs will spend more, and therefore, there will sometimes be money worries regardless. It looks like the dramatic generalizations here are coming from you....

But even I would be pleased if my CEO cut his pay by 93% and used the money to bump my salary up even a modest amount.

I never suggested any employees wouldn't be pleased by the bump up. Only that most of them will probably still have money worries occasionally, as their spending is likely to increase ----- a salary bump up does not make it so people no longer need to budget or think long and carefully about available choices, to avoid problems.

With a newborn, child daycare will cost me $1515 per month. An increase in my salary will help me be in the office 5 days a week vs. working from home

Your story is anecdotal and does not apply to the population in general. Your story also does not contradict my proposition.

There are intelligent or beneficial uses of additional $$$ and bad ones. There is well-planned budgeted constrained spending, and impulsive spending.

You chose to not spend money on childcare before, and work from home which can be career-limiting, why would you do that? What did you spend money on instead... was it well-planned, did you avoid waste, prioritize your purchasing plans, save as much as possible, and pay as little as you needed to on other things?

The way that you would even consider refraining before and then plan on spending the extra money on Daycare in advance, instead of splurging on 100 additional pairs of new shoes or $600 i-Toys you can buy just shows you probably aren't like most of the population.

What he just did was remove all money worries from his staff.

Not necessarily. When people earn more money, they tend to spend more less efficiently or for things they want more than need. If they have poor discipline, now they are eligible for more credit and can rack up bigger debts faster.

Often people spend more money than they should, Or they have a "spending disorder", such as Shopping Addiction OR Binge + Buyer's Remorse, and it ultimately results in money worries.

In other words: money worries are not exclusively caused by low salaries. Money worries can be caused by insufficient education/poor resource management, and psychological problems as well.

He wasn't charged with hacking. The charge was unauthorized access.

The student had authorized access to the computing system. The student logged into the system with higher privileges without permission than the student was intended to access the system with -- using the credentials to another user's account which the student learned using lawful means (There was no surreptitious spying, keylogging, deceptive/fraudulent activity, or attacking of the computer system required to get access to the login used).

No. This is the equivalent if locking the grade book away when the student knows where the key is. It's the changing of the grade that is wrong not the finding of the key.

Ok, sure... the teacher locked the grade book away, then in plain sight of the students set the key on the desk, or left the key in the lock. The point is there is no 'breaking and entering' involved here.

The teacher/staff of the school are totally complicit in any wrongdoing, due to inadequate supervision and improper precautions. If they expected to secure their accounts, they should have actually chosen a password for the Password field, instead of using their name: which all the students are told on 1st day of class, therefore the teacher actually indirectly disclosed her password on the 1st day of class, most likely.

Except, the student didn't look at or change the grades; although the student in theory could have. Even if the student did change the grade... a criminal charge would be ridiculous. Just give the student an academic penalty and a disciplinary charge --- fail the course, suspended pending review by a disciplinary committee and possible expulsion.

As long as you have a sub-basement below the frost line; you could carve a narrow transport tube, with a larger holding area at the other end, and deposit additional capsules.

Retrieval is a harder problem, and you better make sure you choose non-combustible non-thermally conductive materials and a nice long plug for your transport tube.

And for the really paranoid, two banks, located in different parts of the country (or a different continent).

For the less paranoid.... Make sure the data is encrypted. get yourself a piece of sewer pipe.. stick the media in with some baggies of Silica gel.. cap off the ends of the tube with airtight/watertight seal, so nothing is getting in Use a post hole digger to create a hole in the backyard 3 to 4 feet deep, and bury the piece of tubing so the top is at least 36 inches down.

It's still stupid for the teacher to do so, but the kids are also still trespassing on the teacher's property.

No... your new analogy is not a good one. The kids are not trespassing on the teacher's real property, only on portable belongings which are located on the school grounds.

Invading someone's house is a serious crime. Although the teacher informing the kids there's a key under the doormat would be tacit permission to enter , since telling someone how to get into your house is a way of granting implicit permission -- thus making it a non-crime to use the key.

In fact.... the students' have permission to use the computer. The problem is not going somewhere they shouldn't; it's doing something with the property they have not been granted permission to do with that property, even if they weren't explicitly told they cannot do it.

So they're discriminating against the student and choosing to file criminal charges because of his sexual orientation, whereas a heterosexual posting a cat picture as wallpaper would not have been charged?

The law is screwed up. This isn't hacking. Hacking is when someone intrudes into a properly secured computer system containing high-valued data and conducts ransom, espionage, theft, damage in a large amount, such as stealing SSNs, identity theft, or intellectual property on which a business is based.

This is the equivalent of the teacher leaving the grade book unattended on his table instead of locking it in the desk and exits the room for a moment, and a student sneaks over to it and pencils in a lewd picture on the cover.

The kid is deserving of detention, and possibly suspension for petty vandalism, especially if there's an ongoing discipline issue.

No friggin' jail time or criminal charges for ordinary childish behavior.

If there's a crime; it should be misdemeanor for disorderly conduct in posting sexually explicit photos.

If you know you're "negotiating," you ask for more than you want based on the expectation that you'll meet in the middle, somewhere close to what you actually want.

Not necessarily.... That's called deceptive negotiating, which is a specific kind of very aggressive negotiation strategy. Which can also backfire through sticker shock or insulting the other party. A more respectful form of negotiation is to first know what you really want, and ask for what you think is fair, as close to what you expect to get as possible --- but overestimate slightly towards your favor never underestimate...

All negotiation is: is knowing that you want; asking for more, and attempting to persuade the counterparty to agree to more; and being willing and prepared to walk away from a deal and make no agreement, instead opting for a next best option ---- since you need some form of leverage to effectively persuade the other party.

Sometimes you do your research, you decide on what you want in exchange for X. You offer what you want, Y.

If the other party tries to counter with Y - 5%, then you say no; I want Y.

And you get Y, or you leave the discussion and make no deal, or go to think about it.

Depending on the position you are in.... just because you are prepared negotiate, does not necessarily mean you are willing to allow the other party to talk down your demands. Sometimes you can accept a 1%, 2%, or 5% decrease to meet the other party...... sometimes, the circumstances are very much in your favor, so you don't bend at all..

If I did negotiate and get a much larger salary than someone with the same skills as me, isn't that unfair and selfish?

No... what's unfair and selfish is that the employer is taking unfair advantage of the other person by accepting their work and not paying nearly as much as they are willing to pay for that kind of work.

In other words, the company is exploiting them for more than the company's fair share of the profit from their work.

And you with your negotiation stood up to them and avoided that level of injustice.

It's selfishness and unfairness; sure, but not on your part... on the employer's part.

The "outdated business model" I speak of is having gaming as a gated resource.

Gated gaming is coming back..... welcome to in-app purchases. I saw a game the other day, where you run out of lives, you can pay $1 for an extra 3 lives, or start over... Free App, but you gotta pay if you want to win.

I think what they also missed was that Nintendo enabled this model in the first place. The Coin OP model was viable, so long as consumers could not or would not buy the systems themselves, and not after. Once the model was no longer profitable for Nintendo compared to other options, then Nintendo no longer had any reason to incur the costs to support the coin op model, as they could make more $$$ selling large numbers of copies of software for home systems, instead of selling a few games to niche players operating games in select venues.

I don't see where Nintendo would incur an obligation to write exclusive software to help promote the old Coin Op model, when doing so would just hurt Nintendo's bottom line, and they didn't really owe anything to the businesspeople who were buying their systems in the hope of reselling 1000x+ uses of Nintendo's their software.

Is it just me.... or has Xkcd gotten a cartoon for everything [on Slashdot] now, much like the Simpsons have done everything?