Poor word choice in TFS. Chips don't make it harder to use stolen cards, they make it harder to use cloned cards.

Probably because this is a technology site, and not a fashion site. Fashion love change for change's sake - that's why they parade around on catwalks with ridiculously impractical things like dresses made of cutlery, and someone who wears a side of beef to an event is the centre of attention.

Technology isn't about change, it's about progress. Progress involves change, but just because it's change doesn't make it progress. Change for change's sake is inane. Tell us how the change makes things *better* and we'll be all for it.

Agree. This might come across as heresy, but I even dislike HHGTG as a book - it's really a series of loosely-connected jokes strung together by an absurdist plot. The funniest things in HHGTG are the asides and internal monologues - and that's pretty much impossible to reproduce in a movie (unless you do the whole thing in voice-overs, at which point it becomes less a movie and more, well, a radio play).

My favourite Douglas Adams book was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: funny, with a coherent (albeit, somewhat wild) plot.

Irrelevant. Your personal definition of adulthood has no bearing on whether or not children should be granted autonomy, nor how much. Nor does it have any bearing on outcomes. What really matters is what type of adults are produced by the two societies - one that treats people as children until their mid-twenties, and one that gives them personal responsibilities from a young age.

A decent return even after factoring in 20 years of inflation?

Does this convey any actual meaning to anyone?

I think the problem was that the world didn't migrate from Perl CGI to a better CGI language; it went from CGI to PHP/Coldfusion/ASP, and python wasn't really relevant there. It wasn't until the flaws in those sort of systems became apparent, and OO, MVC frameworks like Django, Web2py, Pylons, etc, came into their own that python started appealing to the masses.

Most aren't, but sounds like the OP is.

Here's the relevant bit from the DMCA:

Note that the penalty of perjury doesn't apply to the statement that the information provided is accurate, but only to the specific claim that the complaining party is the authorized agent of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly being infringed.

It's got nothing to do with GitHub, or nothing to do with porn, it's all to do with the fact that the DMCA is a bad law, and specifically allows people to make as many fraudulent takedown notices they want, as long as they don't claim to represent an IP owner when they in fact don't. If they do represent an IP owner, then they have carte blanche to be as fraudulent as they want. Sure, they have to state that the information they provide is correct, but there's no penalty if it isn't.

Nope. The bit in the DMCA that is protected by perjury is the bit where you say you are the holder of the copyright that is allegedly being infringed, or an authorised agent. There is no protection at all against lodging takedowns against material that does not infringe - at least not in the DMCA.

It's because the only punishments for false takedown requests in the DMCA is for misrepresenting yourself as the owner of the alleged infringing material. There is no punishment for making a take down request against materials that do not infringe. It's one of the stupider bits of the law.

Which is all true - and utterly irrelevant.

This is an article about writers. You demonstrate why ordinary people should fear government surveillance, but writers - that is, people who are deliberately putting pen to paper in order to publish the results - are no more affected than anyone else. They publish their material - the government doesn't need surveillance to snoop on writers (at least, as far as their writing goes), they just need basic literacy.

All this is clearly elucidated by the GP. But clearly, you didn't bother reading what he wrote before launching into full snark mode.

A fine example of moving the goalposts. He starts with the thesis:

He ends with the conclusion:

Congratulations. You've just proved yourself wrong. Maybe next time start out with a more reasonable premise like "We're not going to see point-to-point sub-orbital passenger services in the forseeable future", instead of whatever sounds dramatic.

Not to mention, his primary objection seems to be screeching about 9/11 security theatre. Maybe that's a good reason why they won't be seen in the US, but the rest of the world isn't afflicted by that particular form of paranoid dementia, and we still hold out vague hopes the US will snap out of it sometime soon.

Not to mention, why would a society based around the oppression of the populace, regularly and deliberately raise one of the oppressed to the status of popular hero, through a game designed to teach guerilla warfare?

Well, churning your own butter is easy. Just accidentally forget about the cream you were beating in your mixer. Done that before.