I've pointed out how traitors from Ames to Snowden all passed the Polygraph with flying colors.

I wouldn't regard someone as a traitor for drawing attention to previously unreported violations of constitutionally guaranteed protections against unreasonable search and siezure.

There are certain users for whom Windows (7) will provide all the functionality they need without ever needing an additional driver

I can guarantee you that any random desktop or server is likely to need far more drivers downloaded and installed to fully function under Windows than any reasonable Linux distribution. Troll begone.

scrypt aims to defeat highly parallel cracking systems.

The scrypt function is specifically designed to hinder such attempts by raising the resource demands of the algorithm. Specifically, the algorithm is designed to use a large amount of memory compared to other password-based KDFs, making the size and the cost of a hardware implementation much more expensive, and therefore limiting the amount of parallelism an attacker can use (for a given amount of financial resources).

As an aside, the people with "password" and "123456" as their passwords clearly weren't taking security seriously and should expect to be the first ones compromised.

The notion that intelligence will continue to be meat-based (and thus subject to aging and death) for the indefinite future is quaint.

It seems unfortunate that the most common version numbering scheme bears such a strong resemblance to floating point numbers (but doesn't work like floating point numbers).

You're lucky I don't have mod points today.

This is an old canard that gets trotted out in an attempt to encourage more women to enter computer science and related fields. The ends may be noble but the means are fraudulent.

Babbage wrote the first programs for his engine, which is a point even Lovelace's defenders acknowledge.

Even if your sourceless assertion is accurate, there's nothing stopping Valve from implementing that functionality in the driver.

Did you not see this exact mechanic in the Civ 5 demo?

Take another look at the "swipe" on the right thumbpad at 2:23 and again at 2:27. It seems to work like a smartphone. If you lift your thumb while it's moving then the cursor has inertia.

Heh, and then you can summon it with your smartphone kinda like KITT.

Automated driving is one thing, unmanned vehicles is another... I hadn't considered those possibilities. Would cars be programmed to respond in some way to attempted carjackings while operating unmanned? I can imagine a 2 person team where one acts like a slow pedestrian and stands in front of the car at a crosswalk then their partner walks up to the driver side door and slimjims it...

I can't understand why someone would put up with so much garbage when perfectly viable alternatives exist. Do DEs really have brand loyalty?

You didn't switch them to Xubuntu? Now you'll have to deal with their retraining woes all over again the next time Shuttleworth gets a wild hare up his ass.

"Now if you're playing the movie on a telephone..."