The moral is to not use a Registrar that allows domain updates from any IP. easydns.com, for example, can be configured to allow DNS updates only from a list of known IPs. That would stop this kind of deviltry in its tracks.

There is no equivalent in the Windows world to the signed source repositories of Linux. Windows keeps itself updated through signed updates, but does nothing about the other thousands of applications and libraries that are installed. There's probably a good reason why this rogue FTP app isn't in a repository, those evil library files would have to be included in the dependency manifests for all to see. These things survive in Windows because users are forced to install everything from the untrusted web.

I cannot count the number of times I've read some book, article, or comment where the equivalent of a "then magic happens" explanation appears under the rubric of "evolution". Admittedly, not being a scientist, I am limited to popularized accounts, but I don't think it's too much to expect that if there is a clearly known mechanism that is easily reproducible, then authors should be able to describe it to an intelligent layman in a way that makes sense and is understandable.

Speaking off the top of my head, I would say that easily 80% of popular proofs for evolution are no proofs at all, but simply bald assertions: "See this lifeform here, it has this little knob on the end of its whatits. It evolved that way so it could feed better."

I don't know whether it's laziness or what, but if you want to prove something, you have to be able to show it -- ALL the steps, from here to there -- and reproduce it -- ALL of it, under controlled conditions. You can't just say, "because evolution".

Personally, I think there must be some form of self-organization at work. The problem with Darwinian evolution is that it is based on selection of attributes that randomly arise over time. As a theory to explain the system-of-systems we see all around us, that is an awfully thin basis. One has to presume that merely by chance some beneficial attribute arises that just happens to be useful in surviving some random environmental chance. You start adding up all the chances of chances, and pretty soon life looks literally impossible.

But what if there is some undiscovered mechanism of self-organization that is self-directing the adaptation of life? Something inherent in the nature of the structure of matter itself. Why DO plants all grow towards the sun? Maybe it's not because it has anything to do with reproduction, but because that's what the stuff that plants are made of self-organize to do, naturally.

Anyway, just a thought.

Though it deserves high marks as a toy, as something to learn how to really play on, it suffers from several sins, and I wouldn't recommend it as a way to learn.

- Focuses the attention on your hands, exactly the wrong place, as you point out. (For the non-guitar players: looking at your hands while you play is like looking at your fingers while you type. If you do that, you will never be able to type quickly. Or play proficiently.)

- Teaches TAB notation, which is an inferior way to model music (no markup for timing, keys, phrasing, or expression, and is usable only if the musician knows the song in advance, and is using a guitar.) TAB is very limiting, I'm exceedingly sorry to see it being so widely adopted. Musicians who learn how to read real music scores can reproduce any song, on sight, in real time, whether they've heard it before, or not. And yes, there is even a notation in traditional scores for showing guitar players which fingers to use.

- Teaches nothing about how to work with a stringed instrument, the strings are just for show. Pressing a button is not the same thing as holding down a string.

AMC is a de facto monopoly where I live, so I have little choice in the matter. There is still one independent movie theater operator, next to the local university, and that provides some relief.

But, you know, you do have a point. Why SHOULD I pay $12.00 for a ticket + $8.00 for $0.25 worth of popcorn, when the entertainment experience lasts only a couple of hours? I go to the movies about 2-3 times a week, which is $2,080 per year on the low side. That is a lot of money to be sure. I do love the movies, but I don't have to necessarily fund these guys.

Food for thought, food for thought.

According to the article, he was told it was a voluntary interrogation. At that point, he should have just taken down the names of all the officers and movie theater staff and left.

AMC is a terrible movie theater franchise. I carry my laptop in a backpack and get asked all the time to open my bag before going into an AMC theater. I always refuse, and they always bluster and threaten, but they still let me in. I don't mind having my bag searched as long as everybody's bag is being searched. I do mind being singled out for special handling. Other movie theater chains don't do this at all.

AMC, I hope you get a ton of well-deserved bad press from this latest episode.

See http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+8.01-407.1 for the Virginia law on unmasking anonymous users in a civil trial. I can't find anything objectionable in it at all, it seems very fair. If someone damages your reputation anonymously and it comes to court, the court must be able to find the actual persons involved if they are to make a judgment. Yelp tried to get the VA court to reject its own code and adopt the unmasking rules of other states, and they got turned down. If you read all the way to the end of the ruling, you'll see in fact that the dissenting judge dissented not on the fact that the code shouldn't have been followed, but that it wasn't followed _enough_ in his opinion.

As a basis for the knowledge factor component ("something only the user knows") of a multi-factor authentication scheme, this could be very useful, indeed, because it changes every time the user does something. Other forms of knowledge factors such as passwords are vulnerable to spying or code-breaking. The benefit here is it could seriously raise the bar for spoofing the user, since now the attacker would need access to the entire log of activity rather than just a single knowledge factor, and be able to infer the answer to a question rather than just crack an encryption scheme.

Of course, details matter, but I suspect there is a lot of value here. You want to try and eliminate entire categories of attack vectors, and this sounds pretty interesting in that regard.

In the spirit of "command-line tools I use all the time":

sed - search and replace within files
git - redistributable file system that tracks changes, often used for version control of text files
ssh - secure command-line connection to another machine
scp - secure copy between machines
diff - compare differences between files

Silly me, I thought the reason for NSA's existence was to make it HARDER for the bad guys to attack our infrastructure, not easier. Shows how little I know about how Washington "works" for us.

Hey, this is an easy one. Just move 9/10ths of those people out of the cities and force them to live in rural counties. Problem solved! No more "inequality"

Something must be done
This is something,
Therefore it must be done.

The reason why some poor people vote conservative is because they are still independent-minded. They believe that to be beholden to another is to be in their debt, which puts one in a lower social position. To be self-sufficient is to be proud and free.

However, there aren't actually that many poor people who vote conservative. Large cities attract poor people precisely because of more liberal government programs, and large cities are overwhelmingly liberal. Look at http://www.politico.com/2013-election/results/map/#/Governor/2013/VA as an example. Liberals live in big cities. Conservatives live in the country.

No, there are code samples. Here's my fav: https://bitbucket.org/FeministSoftwareFoundation/c-plus-equality/src/mistress/fizzbuzz.Xe

Faith does not have anything to do with logic or philosophic arguments.

Yet another example of how empiricism misses the forest for the trees. Faith has everything to do with logic and philosophic arguments; those are the reasons why one believes what one believes. Faith is simply a conclusion one reaches about things which are beyond empirical proof. Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.

"You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. "