...that the patent system is fubar.

You might want to find out whether you can tilt them by 90.

I always thought it's odd that monitors are wider than they are tall. Isn't it far more convenient to use them, well, like we used to use paper?

What can I say, I'm a product of my time and upbringing.

Hey, we're all right with making a distinct discrimination between two near identical problems, demonizing one while accepting the other. From various diseases (just think about the insane difference made between swine flu and common flu, despite not really being THAT different in impact... ok, actually your chance to die of the former was by some margin lower than the latter despite the general panic).

We're great at making mountains out of molehills that we don't really know that well while we're quite ok with volcanos in our garden as long as they grew slowly enough that we could watch them get large.

We're consumers enough already. We should maybe show people who to become citizens, aware of their duties and rights and able and willing to heed and exercise them, instead of just being mindless consumer drones.

Well, a reason why my tuition was great is that my university doesn't have to sink to such lows. Their money comes from my taxes. Which in turn means that pretty much anyone can start to study, and that in turn means that FAR, FAR more people start studying the more interesting subjects than there is a market for. Their solution is simple: Raising the bar. Further and further. Current dropout quota is about 98%. In other words, 2% of those that start finish.

In other words, what gets through that gauntlet IS good. You don't get past second semester if you're not. Nobody is holding your hand, nobody is your "tutor", you find your way around, you get organized, you know how to get what you need or you perish.

One might imagine that the industry is VERY interested in such people who are very capable of self-organization, self-motivation and who had to work independently and without micro management to get their degree.

Just in case you missed the capitalist dog-eat-dog mentality in our socialist wonderland. ;)

In that case the choice should be to either shock someone and get money for it or refuse to do it and let the other person get the money instead (while nobody gets a shock). THAT would be a test of altruism vs. selfishness. What's easier for you, cause someone pain to get money or letting the money go, knowing that the person you didn't put into pain gets it instead.

Also an interesting tidbit that isn't quite clear is whether the person had only the choice to give himself or the other person the shocks, or to refuse it altogether.

This. Hand the man an insightful, because that's basically the problem.

I, too, was sitting here, knowing that MS is going to do something "out of schedule" and reading an update coming "out of band". For a moment I was worried that I might have missed something critical, then I said to myself "Wait. You read it on /., better check whether it's so or whether someone just wanted to use jargon to sound cool without knowing what the fuck they write about".

OTOH, if one of your dufus users clicks on some crap and infests the network with the latest and greatest threat since ILY you get whacked as well, after all there WAS a patch out and why the hell didn't you install it?

The problem with GG here is that by definition it is always visible. And it will never be as much a status symbol as the cellphone was in its early days when it was a mark of someone being important 'cause he has to be reachable all the time.

Cellphones went through a rather lengthy development phase, and only recently they have become the surveillance tools they are today. GG was this right from the start. Do you think cells would have such an acceptance in business circles today if they had been a security problem right from the start?

Yes! Promote these duds! Just don't put them in some manager position where they can't do any damage anymore, please. But as project managers they are a gold mine. Because they NEED security advice and since they get whacked if their systems get hacked but may spend liberally on security, they WANT to hire you.

Security is becoming a booming field now that laws are being passed that make the C-Levels personally liable for gross negligence. Use it to your advantage.

Worked well for me. Doesn't work on me, though. Yes, that means I get to read an awful lot of applications since HR can't screen them sensibly. But looking around me, it was well worth the effort.

There are people who do not have that option for one reason or another...

If my alternative is just to see my money being "squandered" on making the life of a few old people worth living or a CEO buying another golden backscratcher, I think the choice is an obvious one. For the simple reason that one day I might be an old person, but there is no chance that I'll ever be that CEO. Pure self interest, I admit, I'm selfish.

Also I tend to consider fairness important. And somehow I don't consider it fair that being allowed to live like a human being depends on something as negligible as the amount of money you have.

Shot them yourself 'cause they weren't worth it?

Right now I'm torn between hoping you don't propagate and hoping you do have kids and they inherited the attitude...