So the end justifies the means?

I guess then we may assume you'd be in favor of weekly raids of your house (and everyone else's)? That should pretty much ensure we can eliminate any and all drug cooking and growing happening nationwide.

The end justifies the means, after all.

So, NCIS it is?

So I guess the whole security theater that sprung up after 9/11 is ok? If it only saved the life and virtue of even one....

Child porn, terrorism, or in earlier days communism. I can only hope that one day we'll have some Welch again asking "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Disagreeing with one crime is no excuse for agreeing with another.

Yes, I do expect law enforcement to act within the law. For the very simple reason that if there's some way to rubber stamp a way around it with "serves to protect against child porn/terrorism/organized crime/money laundering/choose the horrible crime of the month", whenever it is convenient, any kind of check that serves to protect you from your law enforcement invading your privacy can as well be abolished. A law that only exists as long as the one limited by its existence allows it to be, if it can be ignored at will by the entity subject to it, is void by definition.

All kids require... what kind of socialist nanny state bull is that?

This is nowhere really news except where it takes a billion years to get anything done in the school system.

Agnostics that hold no belief are atheists.

Agnostics that entertain any measure of belief are theists.

Agnosticism is a position taken with regard to knowledge.

Theism and atheism are positions based upon belief, faith. The one does not replace the other.

Agnosticism is about knowledge. the Theism / Atheism poles are diametric opposites: belief and non-belief. There's no middle ground definable by knowledge, or lack thereof.

Agnosticism is not a third position. You're either a theist -- that is, you hold some measure of belief in a god or gods -- or you're not, and you don't. From there, you can, if you like, assert a state of knowledge to bolster your choice, or a lack of a state of knowledge to do the same thing. But your position is still either you believe, or you don't.

The whole point about belief, or not, is that it is contingent upon faith. Knowledge is not.

Hope that helped some.

...is a little monitor that hangs over your lips, showing a silent movie of your lips saying (in a loop) "I suspect I'm under surveillance" while underneath, you can be saying anything you like. :)

An interesting issue is, the photons that formed the image were not on their property at the time, nor do they have a legitimate claim to ownership of those photons just because they happened to bounce off their stuff. They probably bounced off a lot of other stuff, too. "My photon! MY PHOTON!" has more than a little bit of the ring of insanity about it. :)

If you don't want a photonic record of your actions, the sensible answer is to avoid photons that can form such a thing, i.e., stay inside your dwelling with opaque curtains drawn, erect a fence and a cover, etc.

Orwell was an Optimist

The big challenge for atheism is not God; it is that of providing an alternative to Spock-ism. We need an account of our place in the world that leaves room for value."

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or god. Nothing else. It's not about science, it's not about ethics, it's not about morals, it's not about values. When you say you're atheist, you're saying you do not hold any belief there is a god or gods. That's all. There's no dogma, no book, no set of "therefore we believe these here other thingamajigs", nothing.

If you want to know what an atheist thinks about something other than belief in a god or gods, you really must ask them, or you're simply letting your imagination paint a false picture of the world.

I can shed some light on this.

This course is an introductory course for non-majors. That's why it's not like "Intro to Computer Science."

The big deal with Harvard's CS50 course isn't that everyone wants to enroll in computer science, but that it is being taught in a very unorthodox way. Students have the option of attending lectures or watching video lectures online. There is a great deal of supplementary online material. They have all night coding sessions with food and games which are sponsored by businesses such as Microsoft and Google.

More info can be found here: https://cs50.harvard.edu/

Sorry, Dad, you don't know how digital cameras work. Pixels ARE 14 bits each in 14 bit RAW.