I agree this is stupid. Sometimes, though, I like to think of the best arguments I can for the other side's position. In other words, come up with reasons I might be wrong.

In this case, I'd have to admit that ANY time I send an encrypted message, it should always have a way for the good guy to read the message. For example, suppose I use https to send a secure request to bank.com. That must have a way for the good guy, bank.com, to read the message. There's no technical reason it can't be encrypted such that TWO good guys have keys, bank.com and the Good Guy Bureau.

In fact, standard encryption as used by tls does almost that - two people ALREADY have the key which is used to encrypt the message. The sender has the key and so does the receiver. The shared key is then encrypted by another key generated such that two parties can know it, without either ever transmitting it. Mathematically, one could certainly add the GGB key to the algorithm.

  It could be just as unbreakable as the current encryption standards, though those do depend on keys being kept secret. The Good Guy Key probably wouldn't actually be kept secret for long. That's the huge failing that makes it a non-starter from a purely technical perspective- that we'd all be screwed if the FBI's key were ever revealed or cracked. Various attempts at DRM show that widely-used keys are always cracked.

> Supercomputing? HAH!

Of the top 100 supercomputers in the world, 99 run Linux.

I can appreciate what you're saying. I went the opposite way. I use Android, which means I use Google for maps, search, etc. Therefore, I've decided since Google has a good profile of me, I'll try to limit it to ONLY Google, rather than being thoroughly profiled by several different companies.

As a side benefit, Google Now does some pretty cool stuff as their database begins to have good data about my interests and such.

A _design_ flaw that effects all cars of a particular make is likely to result in a class action. A _manufacturing_ defect that effects only your car, or just a few cars, would be an individual suit, not a class action. Also, a class action is often initiated after an individual suit - a plaintiff shows that the defendant owes them, then lawyers put together class action to represent all similarly affected individuals.

Even when there is a class action first, an individually who has been greatly harmed is unlikely to join the class. I just received a check from a class action against Toyota. The check is for $29. Someone severely injured by the flaw wouldn't have joined the class, they sue individually (and maybe settle after filing suit) to get a more appropriate remedy for their specific situation.

The appeals courts generally rule on the LAW, not on the FACTS. So when they overturn a decision they frequently remand it with an instruction (not a request) to decide it in accordance with a specific understanding of the law.

Why send it back rather than just deciding the outcome of the case? Because the appellant ruling on the law may or may not change the outcome of a case. Imagine someone confessed to a murder, and there were also witnesses. The appellant court might rule that as a matter of law the confession is not admissible. They'd remand the case to be tried without the confession. The murderer might well still be convicted based on witness testimony and other evidence. The appeals court doesn't hear from witnesses, they just rule on points of law. The trial court would need to judge guilt or innocence, while following the appellant court's instruction to not play the confession for the jury.

Suppose you bought a car which had a significant safety defect. You sue the car company. After a spending a million dollars on lawyers and experts, the company's lawyers convince the judge that you filed suit in the wrong court, so you lose. Now you owe the car company a million bucks. That type of outcome would happen often enough that it would be very, very rare for anyone to sue someone with more money than they have.

    Instead, the fees are based on fairness- if you file a frivolous suit, you can plan on being ordered to pay the defendant's costs. Also, if you clearly CAUSE a suit, you can be ordered to pay the other party's costs. As an example, suppose you write to the car company asking them to fix the defect, at a cost of $350. They give you the run around for two years, promising to fix it but they never fix it. They admit it's a problem, they admit they caused the problem, but they just won't fix it without being sued. In such a case, you'd probably be awarded costs (and possibly treble damages).

Considering how ridiculous the notion is that copyright should last approximately forever, you came up with a pretty good argument. Not a PERSUASIVE argument, of course, but pretty good. Reminds of OJ Simpson's lawyers - there was a ton of evidence against him, so anyone who felt like taking the time to learn about the evidence knew he was guilty; yet his lawyers made arguments good enough to sway some jurors.

Responsible Disclosure is a term of art which means informing the company confidentially and allowing them sufficient time to fix it before making it public.

In the decades since Roe v Wade, we've had a number of liberal presidents and a number of conservative presidents. None have moved the needle on abortion because it's not their decision to make. The Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade and other cases that limit what states can do. Individual states then make laws within the parameters laid down by SCOTUS. The president really has little to nothing to do with it.

About the only thing POTUS does to affect the abortion debate is that a liberal potus will nominate a liberal justice or two, who must be confirmed by the Senate, while a conservative potus will nominate a conservative- who also has to be confirmed by the same Senate. So yeah they'll be a little difference in which justice they ask the Senate to approve, but that's about it on the abortion issue. Other than that, abortion is a state issue, with all of the significant legislation occurring in the states.

Ideally you try to make specific actions illegal. However, crooks are clever, and there are far more possible combinations of circumstance than the law can spell out.

Consider this. Should it be legal to swing a bat? Right now, it is legal to swing a bat with the intention of hitting a ball; it is illegal to swing a bat with the intention of hitting a person. I don't think there is any way around that.

That CAN be done under certain conditions, but unfortunately the political discourse of the time makes that politically expensive. For example, vice president Al Gore gave an award to one particular company and presented them as a case study of efficient and effective government contracting. He was right, they did a good job.

  A few years later, when the Bush administration needed to have infrastructure rebuilt in Iraq, they turned to the same company. Since they were known to be good and they were one of only two or three companies who could quickly accomplish projects of that type, they got an efficient deal - here's what needs to be done, and here's what we'll pay, now get started. (As opposed to 4 1/2 years for just the bid process). For the next ten years, those who voted for Gore vilified Bush for hiring the company Gore presented an example of excellence, Halliburton. It doesn't matter how good and how efficient they are, people will vilify you if you don't waste half the money on a thousands of pages of bid documents over several years, followed by tens of thousands of pages of oversight and compliance.

"in my opinion this guy is like Jenny McCarthy"

When Jenny McCarthy found out that what she was saying was wrong and harmful, she largely retracted her entire position. Oz knows what he's saying is wrong and harmful, but he keeps doing it, for the money.

"and not micromanage it". That's the rub. The micromanaging, the reporting and compliance costs, can be over 50% of the cost for some federal contracts, but most of the time that's required by thousands upon thousands of pages of federal law. When you have a comoany that knows how to do a certain thing , aka one of those evil corporations, getting hired by the federal government, some people want to do a lot of paperwork and stuff to keep track of what's going on, and other people go crazy with it. The organization I work for used to do a lot of federal contracts. We quit and now just do state contracts for states that are reasonable.

    Still other people added a bunch of requirements for federal contracting that aren't really relevant to the project. For example, how many black women work for each of your major suppliers? How much do your interns make? Are all of the web pages and documentation you've ever made fully accessible to people who are both blind and deaf?

We quit dealing with the feds and certain states because it's just not worth it. It would cost SPACEX five times as much to build a federally-contracted rocket than it costs to build their own.

> HE claimed he was able to hack the plane. That would be a potentially very serious public safety issue. It is only right that they question him and search his equipment to see if that is true.

I hereby claim that I have hands, therefore I am able to stab someone. Should I be detained and my property seized because I am ABLE to commit a crime? 50/50 chance you have the skills and equipment to be a hooker. Therefore you should be treated as a hooker?

Rather than vague statements that say nothing other than what our biases are, let us look at the specific facts of the case.

We can start with one issue mentioned in TFS. Microsoft complains that they aren't able to index Youtube as well as the site can index itself, with direct access to the database. Instead, Microsoft / Bing needs to either a) spider the site like every search engine does on every other site in the world, or b) use the APIs that Google has made publicly available at no charge . Microsoft complains that those APIs are insufficient. Let's consider that, by comparing them to the norms in the industry. How good are the Youtube APIs compared to the APIs that Microsoft provides for MSDN? Well, Google provides an API an Microsoft does not.

It iseasier for Bing to index Youtube than it is for Google to index MSDN.

One can imagine that it might be fair for someone say "you should give us just as good as we give you." Here Microsoft is saying "you give us an API, but we want you to provide a better one, while we provide none at all." A basic concept of fairness is that the expectations are the same for everyone- that one should not demand from others something you are not willing to do yourself. Until Microsoft makes an indexing API available for their own properties, it seems rather strange for them to demand others provide even better APIs to them.

Youtube supports HTML5 video, aka modern browsers. Microsoft complains that they are having trouble pulling YouTube's videos out of the web pages (where the ads to pay for it and track views are) and display them in their own app. Does Microsoft provide their content for free, to be pulled out of their web siye and served up separately? Can Google rip the MSDN content and display it in an app, rather than on Microsoft's web page? Microsoft doesn't allow that, so how can they insist that Google not only allow it, but make it essier for them?