I remember that story, it's not that bad at first but it soon devolves into Utopian wishful thinking. I like to think that the dude overdosed on something while in the concrete block and the flight into the paradise-Australia that looks and sound communist but is totally not communist and people surrender their very brains to computers that are totally never going to go rampant or be subverted and where he marries the totally-hot chick who he just met and is the first female he ever talked to in the story is just an hallucination.

So your point is that you have no point? How lame. But honestly that's bullshit. You ARE advocating for apathy here.

However, if you are a social conformist living an entirely unthreatening life, you really have nothing to hide in the first place. People have had good reasons to hide something for as long as there have been governments. Maybe it's something as simple as enjoying a beer (once an illegal practice), or maybe it's something as heroic as protecting a Jew family from extermination, with a lot of grey areas in between, like marring a person that desperately needs to obtain citizenship or helping a girl get an abortion from a dangerous pregnancy in a state that doesn't allow.

The government is not perfect, so it should have perfect reach. Through out history we have benefited from the inability of governments to enforce the law with absolute efficacy. The US wouldn't even exist today if England had the ability to know everything that was being discussed in their territories. And yes, sometimes social progress needs heroes. People who are upfront about their beliefs in open disobedience. Sometimes we need martyrs. But social progress doesn't actually happen there. It happens at home, at the homes of the low profile individual.

Morality is flexible and nuanced but the law is rigid, short-minded and often manipulated by special interests. Between activism and suppression there is a valley of unenforceability. I'll dare to say that valley was the reason the US flourished while Europe fell into totalitarianism.

You need this environment. Even if none of your current opinions are controversial. Because one day yours, or your childrens' opinion won't won't be welcomed by government.

slice left-to-right? You are not making this easier...

Firstly, the original Ruby example isn't a a real map but a side effects iteration so the construct you are looking for is
for dude in users:
        welcome(dude)

And yes, it makes more sense than
users.each do |dude|
        welcome(dude)
end

So much so that even Ruby has a better way to do it with
for dude in users
        welcome(dude)
end

which is the one Zuckerberg should have used.

Explain me again why hidden variables are ruled out.

I've never understood why they rule out hidden variables. Hidden variables are *hidden* how can you rule them out? I'm not a particle physicist but I'm sure there is no such thing as entanglement, it must be just an illusion.

I don't blame you, Ruby syntax can be rather arcane.
facebook_user.each do |user| ... end

Can be translated as:
facebook_user.map(function(user){ ... })

Basically "each" is an array method and "do |var| ... end" is a "block"/closure/anonymous function. "|var|" can be omitted if there are no arguments, I don't know the syntax for multipel arguments. I do know that "do ... end" can be written as "{|var| ... }". I really don't know which version is considered syntactic sugar of the other. BTW Ruby blocks aren't *really* anonymous functions. You cannot save them to a variable as:
foo = do |bar| ... end

Blocks can only be passed to methods, but, not as arguments as so "facebook_user.each" is actually being called with no arguments like "facebook_user.each()" the method is passed the block through another channel that sets a flag inside the method which then calls the block as a closure using the "yield" keyword. Of course you can only pass 1 block this way. If a method needs two callbacks it must return some sort of delegate object that has a method that can accept the next callback as another block.

Oh and almost forgot to mention that there is an implicit "return" at the end of all ruby blocks. This is Ruby's idea of simple. But at least the syntax for map is really compact!

To say that "security" does not exist in Nature is to BLIND oneself to the real nature!

It was Helen Keller "speaking" though...

50% of people are below average. No more, no less.

Don't be so sure. after all 90% of all people have a higher number of legs than the average.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player)

Skinned media players were awesome in the Windows 98 era. Nowadays OSs look fine enough that skins are a nuisance.

The BBC is reporting that Dell's Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks have an interesting characteristic you won't find in any Macbook Air

You won't find it in a Macbook! You also won't find it in a Toshiba, Acer or an HP. But that's not the cock we are trying to suck.

...and tumors.

As a rather assholish user already noted the thing Linux/Free software needs the most are standarization and small detail polishing. busted-shitter he called it. Unglamorous thankless tasks like translations and documentation.

The thing is Ubuntu was way ahead on the way of becomeing The standard Linux distro, it had an army of loyal contributors eager to translate, debug and package things for Ubuntu.

Then Mark decided to be an asshole, hired a team of Cuppertino rejects and started going his way against any input from Ubuntu's comunity. The famous "Ubuntu is not a democracy" line was uttered, and destroyed any pretence of community the project once had.

From the begining people accepted "Canonical as the commercial consultant on all matters Ubuntu", not "Ubuntu as product of Canonical". Shuttleworth became the CEO of a company of unpaid employers that had no say in its direction. And the comunity moved on elsewhere, mostly to Mint.

And now Shuttleworth acts shocked, shocked that nobody loves him. The man that decided he didn't have to listen to anybody complains that nobody listens to him.

I still like propaganda more.

By my own definitions. If you are writing/producing/pushing a message to promote something you like for yourself and want to share with others, it's propaganda. If you are promoting it because you are getting paid for doing so, it's not something you necessarily want for yourself and don't really care if it hurts other people, it's advertising.