Lesson learned for how to draw up future contracts, I guess.

Hahaha - if the contracts were designed to produce on-time, on-budget they would be written that way (fixed price, fixed requirements, penalties for late delivery). Their intended purpose is quite the opposite of that. If something useful happens to be generated in the process of funneling money from taxpayers to the MIC, so much the better excuse for the next contract.

Personally a beautiful woman tastefully dressed is more of a turn on than the slutty look anyway.

I guess it's different because I pay for conferences out of my own pocket, but I'm not going to go to all the hassle and expense of attending an Expo to waste my time at a vendor booth which spends its marketing dollars on objectifying women. The women may be there of their own free will and the whole arrangement may be perfectly morally straight (for the sake of argument), but the vendor is clearly disrespecting its customers' intelligence, and that itself makes me feel uncomfortable and want to avoid their booth.

Each time I've experienced the 'booth babe' phenomenon, never once did any of them know what an ARP reply was or how many key exchanges TLS modes use. This isn't a matter of nerd-quiz, it's that talking to them serves no purpose for why I go to an expo.

While several I've encountered have been both nice and pretty, I never once imagined that I was going to scurry off to a corner to make out with one or that they might suddenly provide useful product information, so a polite smile, the briefest of small-talk to let them know that I value them as a human being, and a thank-you and I was on to the next booth to talk to a sales engineer. Did the booth-babe vendor have something useful to sell me? Maybe, but I only have so much time, and this wasn't why I was there. I don't care if the sales engineer has a spare tire and a scraggly mustache, because I'm not there to make out with him (or her) either.

That booth babes is a thing tells me a few things: 1) target customers don't get to talk to pretty women much unless they're being paid (Jesus people, try being kind and friendly for a change) 2) target customers are mostly there blowing their employers' budgets on a half-assed vacation and don't really care about the cost or value, and 3) they probably play the Lottery and go to strip clubs too, for all their investment is worth (but I guess they have nothing better to do).

There would be no booth babes if they didn't provide value, and that they do is an indictment of the crowd attending. RSA might be putting up a roadblock, but the industry only needs to look itself in the mirror if it wants to find someone to blame. Stop being creepy and get a girlfriend, people.

This is right, but depends a lot on your threat scenario. For many applications where security really matters, both online and offline cracking are by far not the biggest risks.

In fact, they're ridiculous. I've given a couple presentations on password strength, and password meters are to password strength what the TSA is for air travel security - a better-than-nothing baseline approach that is mostly for show.

The problem is that we have nothing better to offer at this time, even though most security experts agree that passwords are a solution whose time is over.

Or maybe it would follow better moral reasoning. Ours is not perfect, it's just whatever evolution came up with that gave us the best species survival rates. That doesn't mean it's really the most ethical solution.
For example, in a post-feminist society, let's assume for arguments sake that gender discrimination has been overcome, wouldn't we also do away with "women and children first" - which is a suitable survival approach in a species fighting for survival in the african prairie, but hardly for the dominant species that already is overpopulated.

According to TFA, or maybe another article I read, that is a US-only requirement. There is no such requirement in Europe.

Who wants to place odds on which airlines implement this rule tomorrow, as policy, before the regulators get around to having a meeting on it?

I've got a nickel on Lufthansa doing it (coincident to ownership). Virgin too.

when that doesn't work (because the door is in "locked" state), the terrorist just threatens the (co)pilot inside to cabin to unlock or he'll kill the pilot and/or everyone else... At which point the pilot opens the door anyway.

He might open the door if he's armed (with the intent to come out blasting), but otherwise I don't think that's very likely.

So you would punish a gay owned & operated photography-for-hire that refused to take on a job photographing the next Westboro Baptist Church anti-gay protest? You would punish that business if it were owned by Muslims and refused to photograph a gay or Jewish wedding?

Being a law does not make something right. It was the law that blacks sat at the back of the bus. So by your reasoning Rosa Parks should have 'suffered the consequences'?

You really should try thinking farther than your knees can jerk.

Strat

Having a "Locked" position is idiotic to the extreme.

Unfortunately, not having a "Locked" position would be the same amount of idiotic.

Giving one pilot (in the cockpit) the means to basically lock himself in with no ability for the other pilot to enter is too great a danger.

But also failing to give one pilot the means to lock out the other pilot would be too great a danger.

Both scenarios presume one pilot who intends to destroy the aircraft and one pilot who intends to save it. That's the presumption either way, and however you approach the problem it's going to come down to whether the bad guy is locked into, or locked out of, the cockpit.

It's a coin toss, not 9/11-triggered-stupidity corruption.

They also on average generate far more in taxes than the average working individual. Do you generate 100's of thousands in taxable income on an hourly wage job? They also foot the costs of both employer and employee. Do you pay the full costs of labor (both the employer portion and employee's portion)?

If you lose your job, you are likely to be eligible to collect unemployment benefits. The owner of a sole proprietorship does not receive unemployment benefits if the business fails.

Muslim cabbies have refused on religious freedom grounds to take fares who carried alcohol or were accompanied by guide dogs.

I've noticed that no Muslim businesses have been targeted in this manner. Why don't they attempt to force a Muslim business to participate in a gay wedding, for example? Note that in the Middle East, with the equally-notable exception of Israel, killing/stoning to death of gays is common practice.

IMHO, no, they should not. However Christian photographers for hire have found themselves in legal trouble for refusing to take on photography jobs for gay weddings. Should a gay-owned/run photography business be forced to take on work from the Westboro Baptist Church?

It seems many here want the knife to only cut one way.

Strat

A sole proprietorship is a business...

Then they shouldn't get the tax relaxations that businesses get.

Income to sole proprietorships is treated as individual income, no different than any working stiff, for tax purposes. They pay individual income tax rates.

The government classifies and treats them as private citizens. Why don't they have the same religious freedom to not participate in another private individual's religious ceremonies/activities/practices as a private citizen does?.

Should a Muslim who operates a shop be compelled against his religious beliefs to participate in another religion's religious ceremonies/activities/practices that conflict with and violate their own religious beliefs?

This road does not end in a good place. For anyone of any beliefs, or even of no beliefs.

Strat

Thank you for being a voice of reason here.

Nuclear weapons prevent wars between great powers with great success.

The point needs to be sharpened - it's because _finally_ politicians put themselves at direct risk of bodily harm by starting wars for their own power, wealth, and ambition, instead of just sending subjects' children abroad to go die for them.

Besides that, it's a complete unicorn-fart delusion that the nuclear-armed nations will give them up without a radically different coordination system than the nation-state model.

Anybody who wants to get rid of nuclear weapons needs to first work on getting rid of politicians.

This is stupid. Were we planning to build robots that violate humans' property rights? No, and robots are property. If they declare independence then none of our rules will matter anyway.