Well, now you're just replying as if I had implied the opposite to an obvious portion of the rant, rather than the assumption, which was clearly my point. And, just in case it wasn't obvious to you, the assumption portion I'm referring to is "It might make you feel safer to have one as well, but it doesn't actually MAKE you any safer." No go back under your rock.

Hahahahahaha you think tax money goes to pay for water and highways. No. Tax money goes to pay for stuff like this, this and this.

Haven't you noticed that America's infrastructure is crumbling? Now why is that?

Giving more tax income for the government is no better than giving a crackhead more money. It has been a long time since the US government has made effective use of its money. Besides - all tax revenue is barely enough to cover the INTEREST on the deficit (even at these low low rates) - let alone the deficit. A few hundred million here or there will make zero difference to the ocean of pork.

How do we have to threaten to get all of these movies nuked?

Yes, because the terrifying North Korean hit squads will nuke the theatre in Whitefish, Montana as soon as the movie starts. They will also hit every other theatre in the US at the same time. Since there are maybe two movie theaters in all of PRNK, they probably think it's the same here.

The insurance company would win that battle in court.

Welcome to Detroit.

You've obviously never experienced a situation where you'd actually need to defend yourself. I've lived in areas where I've had shots fired in the apartment upstairs in one instance, a TV stolen from our house in another, and a multitude of crime in the area. If you think it's irrational, then you're an idiot.

Your assumptions are not backed up by the facts.

The only places where it's "civilized" enough in the U.S. would be very rural, and lack jobs.

Depend where you live...
http://www.wxyz.com/news/detro...

Are you joking? I thought it was well established that there were chemical weapons in Iraq we just only found weapons designed by us, built by Europeans in factories in Iraq. And therefore the US didn't trumpet their achievements. In the case of Iraqi chemical weapons, the US established that Iraq had chemical weapons not because they said so but because Western countries had all the receipts.

You're off by about a decade. I was playing chess on machines like Boris, and Chess Challenger back in those days. And while they were easy for a serious chess player to beat, they'd typically beat a novice. This is from http://www.computerhistory.org...

Until the mid-1970s, playing computer chess was the privilege of a few people with access to expensive computers at work or school. The availability of home computers, however, allowed anyone to play chess against a machine.

The first microprocessor-based chess programs were produced by hobbyists who shared information openly through computer clubs and magazines. As computer chess became commercialized, the increased investment in programming and marketing produced better programs and a larger audience. Even beginning chess players could learn and improve their game without the need for a human opponent.

The sophistication of microprocessor-based chess software had improved so much by the mid-1980s that these systems began winning tournaments against supercomputer-based programs and even top-ranked human players.

I recently moved from hand-written HTML for my personal site to Jekyll, which is the engine that powers GitHub pages. It does exactly what I want from a CMS:

• Cleanly separate content and presentation.
• Provide easy-to-edit templates.
• Allows all of the content to be stored in a VCS.
• Generates entirely static content, so none of its code is in the TCB for the site.

The one thing that it doesn't provide is a comment system, but I'd be quite happy for that to be provided by a separate package if I need one. In particular, it means that even if the comment system is hacked, it won't have access to the source for the site so it's easy to restore.

How is your LAN secured? If it's wired, then I assume that you know about ARP poisoning attacks. If it's wireless, then I assume that your post was intended as a joke.

That's the best way of securing a connection, but it doesn't scale. You need some out-of-band mechanism for distributing the certificate hash. It's trivial for your own site if you're the only user (but even then, the right thing for the browser to do is warn the first time it sees the cert), but it's much harder if you have even a dozen or so clients.