My understanding was that part of it is to study the effects of life in space on people. You can't really do that remotely. I'd say it's rather important, too, but I'm also one of those crazies that thinks the earth is getting crowded and expanding would be a fantastic idea.

FTFY. There is a difference between being able to use something and understanding something. To continue the car analogy you're enjoying, nobody's trying to force people to learn to rebuild their engine, but you shouldn't need to call someone to change a tire.

Programming or not, they should be required to learn more of computers than they do. Having spent a good amount of my early life showing up to fix minor problems and getting paid a silly amount of money for how easy it is, I can tell you a little education would go a long way towards saving time, money, and effort. To be honest, most people could figure out everything they need to on their own with a little persistence, but most aren't willing to try without being forced. That's what school does, it forces you to learn things that will be useful even if you don't like it. Given how much more prominent a role computers play in our daily lives now versus a decade ago, it's easy to imagine why some education might be necessary by the time today's elementary school children grow up.

As for attempting programming being torture if your mind doesn't work the right way, this is utter nonsense. The same argument could be made for nearly any subject in school. "My boy isn't wired for english, he's acing math though! What's he need english for? Take him out!" It's just as wrong no matter what you're talking about. I'm a little shocked you don't think your daughter should have to learn something because it's difficult, I'd think as a parent you'd see the value in both exposing children to more options at an early age and teaching them to overcome challenges.

Let's face it, most children today will be required to take a multitude of courses we don't really think are necessary to get through life but offer exposure to other things. We teach cooking, sewing, art, music, and more subjects because they expose our children to things they might not otherwise explore, things they might fall in love with when they try it or they might move on without thinking much of it. Just giving them the option is enough to convince us these things are still necessary, yet you would argue that a basic course in programming is too much and should be reserved for children who are lucky enough to discover it on their own and will go out of their way to find out more? Why are you so afraid of programming?

Programming doesn't have to be the big scarey monster people make it out to be, children can learn to write simple programs with ease. I wasn't given the option to take a programming course until high school, the course was offered for one year only and almost didn't happen because we didn't have the required number of students. We were taught by a teacher who'd never taken a programming course herself, and by the end of the first week we'd all written a couple of programs using Visual C++, including her. By the end of the year, everyone in the course knew some basics and we all felt much more comfortable with computers. That class was an elective, and several students had signed up not knowing what C++ was or even much about the basics of computer usage, but nobody failed and everyone came out with a better understanding of something they've likely had to use nearly every day. I know, that's high school and C++ isn't necessarily what elementary school children would learn, but in that class were several fine examples of people who learned programming that don't fit your narrow criteria.

Not everyone will come out ahead, mind you, students can fail a programming course just as easily as math, science, and English. That doesn't mean the subject failed, that means the student failed. It happens, and programming won't be easy for everyone, but everyone would benefit from being exposed to it.

This is a huge problem for me in exactly those types of levels. I do want to open every door, every single one, and I very rarely can. Admittedly, my favorite games are open world games which shouldn't have many areas inaccessible to the player, but I also play shooters and want the same thing. Battlefield 4 is full of elevators that only go from the lobby to the top floor or roof, I want to get out on the 32nd floor and kick the door in to the corner suite and set up my rifle where I won't immediately be spotted, taking that option away never makes sense from an immersion point of view. It only makes sense from a technological point of view. Does it create the possibility that 64 players will be roaming room to room with silencers in a hotel while ignoring the rest of a large map? Yes, and that's perfect. The previous post is entirely correct, while doors are important these questions are easy to answer.

Don't get me wrong, I believe game design to be rather difficult, but this is a poor attempt at explaining why. "The Door Problem" is not nearly as difficult as budget problems, working within technological limitations, or keeping a coherent storyline while letting the player make meaningful decisions. I speak from years of experience, in unrelated fields but experience none the less!

Probably worth pointing out that they charged 5,790 customers $75-$150 for this, at the low end that puts their profits around half a million dollars. At the high end, over $800k. The fine is entirely insufficient, which I'm still alright with because fining them enough would mean they're treated worse than corporations, and that's never fun to see.

I believe the $2.4 million number, it does say that 5,790 customers saved an average of $414 which puts it around $2.4 million, and savings like that wouldn't be difficult to achieve over maybe six months time without Comcast noticing the difference. As to the excuse, yeah it's nothing but. They have about 21 million customers, so this cost them a little over a dime per customer. I'm for fining the guys who did it, but jail time is completely ridiculous for how little this affected Comcast, as is suggesting they'd have to charge the rest of us more to make up for it.

Except it was the post he responded to that suggested to stop using one in favor of the other. Yeah, he's on Slashdot, saying please stop using Slashdot. As opposed to the post you responded to, where he doesn't even suggest you can't go to one if you go to the other but instead asks why the guy who's telling us to stop using Slashdot is commenting here instead of there.

Who looks stupid now, dumbass?

I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Russia has a seriously limited press, yes, but how does that lead to believing he shouldn't have asked the question at all. Wasn't this broadcast live? Even if many Russians couldn't watch it, many could and did. When a country has such a restricted press, the solution is not to stop trying to get the truth out. Sure, there are bigger issues, in Russia and elsewhere. But Snowden is now famous for revealing his home country's mass surveillance program, wouldn't it make sense for him to try and continue down that path? Would it have made more sense to you if he went to Russia and then started fighting for freedom for homosexuals and forgot all about mass surveillance?

Even in the US, we haven't done much about what he exposed, we haven't thrown anyone in jail for lying through their teeth about the program, instead we (and you, right now) have been focusing on discrediting the person who gave up everything in order to tell the truth. How can you sit there and say he should stop trying to expose corruption because the corrupt are too corrupt to care? Why don't we tell everyone under an oppressive government they should just give up and live with it?

Maybe instead of complaining that Snowden should've known better than to ask, you should be complaining that Putin is lying yet again, considering that's the actual problem. I can't understand why people think he should've just not bothered asking when he had the opportunity.

After watching a man sacrifice his chances of living a normal life, fleeing the country he grew up in after doing what he felt was right, why did so many readily believe he was willing to give up his principals so easily? Obviously Putin wasn't going to give a straight answer, whether in the US or Russia or anywhere else politicians lie when it suits them. How often do we go after reporters, attacking them for asking questions they don't receive truthful answers to? The entire incident seemed a clear attempt at discrediting Snowden, something that should have been exceedingly obvious to everyone. I applaud him for having the courage to put his own safety on the line and ask Putin about mass surveillance. I'm sure he fully expected the dodgy answer he got, he may have even expected further consequences from Putin and his lackeys, but I doubt he expected people to turn around and say he shouldn't have asked the question to begin with. He shows more courage still coming out and challenging Putin's answer in this article. We owe him our gratitude, respect, and an apology.

In that case, they deserve as much credit for supporting every other organization that doesn't agree with this view. Google's program would be just as helpful to a non-profit that advocates for psychiatrists, should we run a story about that and act like it makes them heroes to the community? How about we dig up a list of everyone they support so we can all blame them for supporting and opposing every controversial subject there is?

For that matter, why don't why all take the blame for allowing these organizations to exist? After all, we aren't stopping them, and we're funding a government that gives them tax breaks and benefits just for being non profits.

A commenter on the linked blog sums up how, even if this is true, it's not news in the way the headline makes it seem.

I know Slashdot editors like to sleep on the job, but where does this story even come from? Is it really all based on a blog some supposed letter with no explanation behind it? Is this even true? Searching for it turns up some other articles (blogs) from sources I've never heard of, and nothing seems to point to this being real. Can somebody help me out here? Is the future of Slashdot fictional stories and Bennett's Blog?

I know he isn't, that's one of the reasons I was asking, his opinion on everything is about as worthwhile to hear as my own, and I know very little about the topic.
Given these answers, even though they're not from Bennett, it seems his argument is an impossible one to make, as it supposes money spent on research won't turn up multiple bugs (or the benefits of research can't be measured by any individual bug), that vulnerabilities are the only bugs worth fixing (otherwise black market value would have no effect on whether they continue looking for bugs) and that people are motivated only by the money. Your answers are roughly what I expected, and I'd imagine Bennett's answer for #3 would be the same which is what I was really aiming for. So what I gather is that people will spend time finding flaws in software because it's something to do, what the bug bounty program does is provide motivation to hand it over to the people who can fix it for everyone. That being the case, it's a safe bet the value of the efforts that go toward finding these flaws varies widely, some folks will get lucky and stumble across bugs quickly and some may not find anything for years. One major benefit of a bug bounty program is that, since there's no guarantee any given approach will yield worthwhile results, the company gets more results without a much larger investment. By paying out based on the severity of the bug and not the effort that goes into finding it, they're ensuring they never go over budget in finding any of those bugs, where as investigating themselves there is no guarantee they'll find anything after spending any amount of money.

How about some straight answers now, Bennett? What's your affiliation with Slashdot and why are you able to blog on their front page?

Okay, I'm obviously missing some important details not being a security expert. Clear a couple things up for me.
1. Do security researchers spend their efforts actively searching for one particular bug using one particular method, or do they try a lot of different things and expect to find a lot of different bugs of varying levels of importance?
2. Do companies looking at their own code for bugs only concern themselves with bugs that would be worth selling on the black market, or is every bug a concern for them?
3. Bit of an opinion question, how much would you consider spending to find a bug to sell for $100k considering the potential failure of the endeavor?
4. Do you think bug bounties are the primary motivation for white hats to research bugs, and if not what effect do they have?

How about I just call you numbnuts instead?

Alright firstly, your posts are not to a news aggregate what chicken burgers are to McDonalds, especially considering McD's has never been a "beef hamburger joint" or anything so limited. Your posts are not some small deviation from the usual, they're not even always particularly "nerdy" in nature. A more apt comparison would be if McDonalds started selling coffee tables, it's completely unrelated and not what anyone goes to McDonalds for. In fact, it's like Slashdot selling coffee tables, except I bet they'd gain more visitors than they drive away with that one. As for this being the direction Slashdot wants to go in, are you affiliated with Slashdot and can you speak officially to this? Otherwise, I think even you need to admit it's very far out of place from everything else Slashdot consists of and arguably does not belong.

I think it's clear from the responses you receive here that the worth of your posts is debated about as much as the topics themselves. You'd get as much interesting discussion were the topic, "Should Numbnuts be allowed to blog on Slashdot's front page?" Beyond that, you may find your individual reasoning steps hard to argue against, but the rest of us don't. That's not to say you're not smart enough, but you probably already know that it's far easier to pick apart an argument coming from someone else than see the holes in your own. I still don't see why your opinion deserves to be on Slashdot any more than any other fool's opinion.

Now here's an easy question to give me a straight answer to: What's the process you follow for submitting these? Are you just filling out the submission form like anyone else and for some mysterious reason the editors post it?

Firstly, not infinite, stop using that word, nothing in this BS argument is infinite. There is a limited number of bugs, and a limited amount of time for anyone to find them. Second, you can not act as if the optimum black market price of an exploit is how much someone will spend to find it, nobody smart enough to find anything is dumb enough to ignore the high potential for failure. It's possible that someone else will have found it first, they might go over budget, there's even a chance they'll never find anything. You're also ignoring the possibility that many people don't care about the black market value because they have morals, but knowing there's a legitimate bug bounty program is enough motivation to keep chipping away in their spare time because it's more interesting than television and has the potential to yield a cash bonus sometimes. You make too many assumptions, your entire argument is based on them.