the cpu and radio on a drone are both tracable by cell towers. they probably scanned your id, at the store that sold it. this is not as simple as you are claiming it is.

For me, "performance," is where the act meets the audience as much as where the act is carried-out...

Well, then. We should all adopt your definition of the term. There's a reason art is subjective - as long as the consumer and the producer agree that it's a performance, it doesn't matter what you or the dictionary call it.

I see a lot of people getting very passionate when they're probably not terribly knowledgeable about the situation.

Evidently, that includes you.

I don't know what the man's warrants are for, though given the culture surrounding rap and hip-hop I'm guessing that they're not for the same kinds of things that Edward Snowden is wanted for.

His warrants are for missing child support payments. And btw, that's the whole idea behind free speech -- all speech, good, bad, and ugly, is worth protecting.

You are now conflating freedom with intent and quality, which is a slippery slope.

back in the day didn't they just use fisheye lenses to get the desired effect? http://realvision.ae/blog/2014/08/part-2-graduated-stereo-falloff-in-360-the-language-of-visual-storytelling-in-vr/

pictures support != modern
support for modern http is 'modern browser'

vacuum cleaners range from 3000 watts to a good workout with a straw broom. are you suggesting that a 0 watt stick broom cleaner is somehow not saving power compared to using a 3000 watt vacuum? is burning 'better' than a old standby cleaner like a broom. carpet may feel nice but it uses more resource than throw rugs that are good for beating out when they get dusty. I know some people who used to collect used t-shirts and make rugs from them. too lazy to do the math but http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/question481.htm roughly if you have a 3000 watt vacuum and it takes an hour a week to clean with it, it uses about 1/7th a ton of coal a year to not get a good mostly anaerobic work out. that isn't including the energy savings of recycled rugs over carpets. or the savings in using a broom instead of a big bulky vacuum.

"I guess that it would be fine if you used it for word processing with an old version of Word, but it simply cannot handle a modern web browser."

your guess fails. here is a 'modern' browser that will run on this old hardware without bringing it to it's knees.
http://lynx.browser.org/

He's a Thiel Fellow, and clearly, that model is working for kids like him who are super gifted for whom the current college education model would be absurd.

This 17-Year-Old Dropped Out Of High School For Peter Thiel And Built A Game-Changing New Kind Of Computer

Pretty awesome, if you ask me!

What world are you living in? Women working in technology are so rare that tech companies bend over backwards to find and hire qualified women. In fact, given the choice of an equally qualified man or woman, tech companies will damn near always choose the woman.

Of course women can do the work. The argument is that they generally don't want to do the work. There's about a million other jobs that women find more interesting. Hence, discussions like this talking about the lack of women in technology.

Pay attention. Women aren't interested in engineering work in modern, egalitarian societies. They'd rather take other options such as teaching or nursing or other professions where they can help care for kids, adults, animals, plants, the environment, etc. When women have options, they move away from topics like engineering which they generally find boring. You see that in multiple cultures across the world. In fact, it's such a universal preference that researchers attribute the cause at least partially due to a biological difference between the sexes.

To get women to accept jobs in engineering, you'd need to take away their other options. You need to make society less equal. That's why we see so many female engineers from places like India. Women from countries like that don't have the same options as women in the US. They study engineering because they don't feel they have any other viable options.

"In 1847, Ebelmen made white synthetic sapphires by fusing alumina in boric acid." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corundum

if only 1847 hadn't invented sapphire by using alumina and boric acid... it is a shame that 'slightly blue(or other hues)' and 'totally transparent' are the only difference between science fiction and science fact.