It kind of depends on the goal of the program. If you are aiming to turn out academics and truly excellent researchers and thought-leaders in industry, then yes, you should know how the computer works. If you are aiming to turn out decent programmers, you might not need to know, for example, how to do VLSI design.

(Although it's fun.)

There's plenty of evidence, but not a lot of rigorously analyzed data.

(1) Editing error. English requires an indefinite article between "at" and "much."

(2) Palatable to some. $700 isn't much to spend on a computer by the standards of the upper middle class, but it's still a pretty big chunk of change.

It is, although a lot of the vested interests and poor incentives problem is not arising at that level. Almost everyone working in the system is trying to do a good job with too few resources, but incentives shape behavior and cause problems even when people are trying to do that.

A basic problem with democracies is that they overcriminalize because elected people want to look like they are doing something about crime. We've known this for centuries, going back to Jeremy Bentham, but there is still very little effort done against it.

The Smarter Sentencing Act, which is something both democrats and republicans on the Judiciary Committee have agreed would be a good thing, and would save probably thousands or tens-of-thousands of man-years of prison time, has been approved by the committee for years and still languishes without getting a vote on the floor.

What can technology do? The first thing is that it can help people petition Congress, for one thing--email your Congressman and (Where your voice can do more good) your state legislatures. America leads the developed world in criminals--ask them to make it a real priority to change that, and provide concrete steps such as funding more alternatives to imprisonment, supporting the Smarter Sentencing Act and other reasonable sentencing reductions, and asking them to put together a plan to reduce recidivism and the collateral civil consequences of conviction such as lack of employability.

The second thing is technology--more accurately, science--can inform the jury. No jury should sit without learning about the reliability and lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony.

What happens to you once you get there, on the other hand...

Well, I think when they start posting on slashdot asking about the possibility of detection, that's a pretty good first sign.

It depends on the objectives. If the objective is to obliterate us and there are no rules of engagement, that's a hell of a lot easier than trying to subjugate us or change our government to a functioning democracy while trying not to kill many civilians.

This. There is also an element of randomness, but the quality of the lawyers matters a lot.

If there was no language or contract saying otherwise, then the school's offer created a power of acceptance among the students at the least, and anyone who told the school they would go in that time now has a contract with the school.

If there were early decision applicants, then the school's acceptance likewise created the contract.

Finally, if there were students who materially changed their position in reasonable reliance on the acceptance, they likely also have a contract.

No, it doesn't.

We are more concerned about the NSA doing it because it has a bigger budget and because, for a lot of slashdotters, it's our government that's doing it. It's still a subject for humor, but nevertheless a real social policy concern. I've met a lot of great guys who work in law enforcement whom I would generally trust not to abuse the powers created by massive surveillance, but the problem arises when too much trust is given and there isn't enough oversight of how it is used. As it is, the public is not given any believable claim to even the existence of meaningful oversight.

That means bad actors within the system can use it to spy on people they know, on their own ex-wives, for example. And while they might get severely disciplined if they're caught, the public hasn't been told how likely it is that they're caught.

It also means the system can be used to blackmail VIPs, power-brokers, reporters, and legislators. While most of the people involved would not use it for that, it only takes one or two people to be willing to do that and a lack of *perfect* oversight and reporting for a system like this to utterly threaten and destroy any notion of representative government.

Imagine you have a database of every Congressman's phone calls, or even every third or fourth phone call that happens to be to someone within a three-hop warrant of a terrorist.

I vilify Marijuana because it smells really awful.

So long as you smoke it where that scent doesn't regularly affect your neighbors, though, let's just look at studies--like this one--to decide whether and where it's acceptable to use.

My $0.02

Throughout history, it has been the use of power which has undermined empires, and the threat of the use of power which makes them most effective. Wars are costly and can be unpredictable; they have almost always much more expensive than planned and almost always much less useful, except at certain very defined tasks. (Giving someone a temporary boost to poll numbers, uniting a country against a perceived threat, acting as a salve to respond to demand for war that leaders are afraid to turn down).

There are also other risks inherent in war. You train a large number of soldiers and give them weapons and training, which means that every day, your nation is fundamentally dependent upon their loyalty to survive--sometimes to defend it, but ALWAYS to not change the government or take over the government or turn on the country.

They may just be trying to sue her as a negotiating tactic, in the hope of forcing a settlement over the rights, or something.

If she has tucked away the money the series made over the years, she should have at least a couple of million available and be able to cover the 50-200K in lawyer fees.

First, that's not *entirely* true--there are rules on how the lawyer is allowed to defend the client.

Shouldn't the same be true of the DA?

From the Summary: "This conviction is a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in US history," said assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell."

Okay. We'd better fix this mortality thing.

Because they signed a nondisclosure agreement, and because people are afraid of defamation lawsuits.

It is worth noting that Bank of America just had a five-day IT outage/upgrade/etc... during which their credit card interfaces had limited data, etc... It may be unrelated, but... it was for *five days*.

It may well be unrelated--credit cards v. bank accounts and all that--but it may not be. That's a *really* long time to do the public part of upgrading a system.

Anyway, it's all insured (don't read the stuff about losing your online banking password too closely), and you can always sue if they tried not to cover you, so it's not worth a run on any banks unless they start losing a lot more. At least they're paying attention.