If after several years holding seat and having a lucrative political career, you tell your congressmen that you're going to replace them because they no longer represent you, they'll keep doing the same and ignore you.

If, just after a new congressman got elected, you tell him how the last one was voted off of his seat because he stopped representing his people, that'll stick to him for his whole term of service. Congratulate him and tell him you look forward to his servitude.

Let's suppose you're the fund manager and you want to maximize impact of your dollars. But there are too many researchers applying for grant. What do you do? You divest rather than invest, and hope that one of the projects will churn out useful outcome.

If you want to focus your money for deeper impact, people will definitely accuse you of favoritism. It is hard to prove innocent because research is, intrinsically, a very specialized craft, and only very specialized people understand the qualifications. Sometimes experts don't agree on the qualifications either. Once you are accused and unable to prove yourself innocent, your career as a fund manager would be ruined due to academic misconduct allegations. If you distribute your funds fairly and squarely, people can still accuse you of favoritism, but at least you have plausible deniability.

From a researcher's point of view, research is really about begging money to do things you want to do. Or if you end up not doing what you want to do, simply begging money. Historically only the nobles have the time and money to do research. This is what I always tell my friends:

• If you have no money and no time, make time.
• Now you have time but still no money. Make money with your time.
• Now you have money but no time. Make money smarter so you save time.
• Now you have both time and money, do whatever you want.

That may be why there is a propensity to build luxury four year resorts with fancy dorms and gyms at the universities. It may be the marketing that keeps students around.

It's complicated. The universities reap what they sow, attracting the wrong kind of students. And then after exhausting funds on fancy buildings, the universities are unable to provide education to the students who actually enrolled to study. I can't blame the students if you're fostering an environment not for learning but for distractions.

Back on to the subject of MOOC, I think it could be useful as a deterrent to curb the squandering of resources. But universities have in the past found ways to provide affordable education, so something else must have gone wrong other than the manner the courses are taught.

This is how the Oxford Dictionary defines wonder: "a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable." Pink Floyd can fulfill this definition of wonder.

But I think ultimately, I disagree with your idea how the notion of wonder relates to theoretical CS or physics. In a pure mathematical sense, a theoretical study is the exploration of what logical consequences can be shown to follow from a set of well defined axioms. Theoretical CS uses a given computational model as the axioms and seeks to derive logical consequences that concern the complexity and computability of algorithms or problems under that computational model. Theoretical physics is concerned with coming up with the well defined axioms that have logical consequences which explain real-world, observable phenomenon. Maybe to some people that is wonderful, but wonder is neither sufficient nor required if you want to be a theoretician. If you do find wonder in theory and formal methods, kudos to you. :-)

I'm not saying I don't find wonder in theoretical studies, but both Discovery Channel and National Geographic have the scale to fund many educational programs beyond what most universities can afford. And broadcast media have developed a narrative style and format that makes conveying knowledge effective and attractive, with the purpose to induce a feeling of wonder. Otherwise it depends on the individual to find wonder themselves. As another way to look at it, some professors are very good at inducing a feeling of wonder in their students, but I wouldn't count on it if your goal is to study a subject matter and become an expert. There are ways to relate to a professor and his/her work even if the professor turns out to be an extremely boring person. If you go to a university just to find wonder, that's a waste of time and money.

If you just want wonder and culture and insight, Discovery Channel and National Geographic can easily outdo accredited universities while at the same time be more effective at conveying knowledge. I wish more broadcast media outlet would fulfill their educational responsibility. In the ideal sense, good news reporting can also fill you in a lot of context that leads to the current event. Only a few news outlets that I know of practice that kind of perspective news reporting, which is sad because I wish there is more. In the same vein, you can also find universities forfeiting their educational responsibilities, preferring to build luxury four year resorts with fancy dorms and gyms.

What universities should be providing is: (1) access to and relationship with experts of some subject matter, who can guide you for your own studies, and (2) a good research library or online publication subscription so you can study a subject in depth yourself and become an expert. Going to college just to enroll in some courses really is a waste of time and money. Next time you get the chance, ask your professor (current or former) what he/she works on for research, why the work is important, and how did the professor end up doing it.

That's assuming you are actually interested in studying. If you just want a good paying job, and depending on what that job is, education may be neither sufficient nor required.

The reason why Microsoft got their lunch ate is because they've gotten complacent, after securing monopoly of desktop operating systems and office productivity suite. But they could still get away with it for at least another decade precisely because they delivered exceptional value in what they did in that market. Past performance is no guarantee if they will continue to deliver exceptional value.

Microsoft's problem with mobile and gaming console is that they didn't deliver exceptional value, but they still decided to enter the market anyway. Even so, it would have been a fruitful experiment if they could have applied their experience in mobile and gaming to motivate for a real-time resource-constrained operating system that could help making their main flagship OS more nimble and responsive, but we've seen no progress in that regard because their departments apparently don't talk to each other.

Trying to be the monopoly of the everything store is very difficult. Jeff Bezos likes to play the predatory strategy where price is lowered to a loss in order to drive competitor out of market. But you can't do that to every market simultaneously all the times, and given enough incentive, someone will always figure out how to enter the market by adding more value. Amazon will eventually crumble under its own weight if it continues down that strategy.

A good strategy is to deliver exceptional value in a market, but you can only do that if you focus on only a few things.

For the sake of argument, put our personal opinion on whether a given law is just or unjust aside, and also put aside our personal feelings on the tactics used by law enforcement. If you want to argue logically, you cannot appeal to feelings.

Obviously, If you were the plaintiff, you are clearly not in the position to decide whether the law you are charged with is just or unjust. The jury can exercise their judgment, and that could result in jury nullification. But you cannot persuade the jury by talking to the prosecutor.

In your fictional Bob robbing the liquor store scenario, he did not have to talk to the police as long as he's apprehended in his act. Even if that is not enough to build a strong case to prosecute him (which is very unlikely), the fact you cannot rob a liquor store without being apprehended is enough of a deterrent. On the other hand, if you cannot apprehend Bob, then he will do it again even if he knows he might one day be caught. And he will do it again even if he has been caught before and served his sentence. If you believe that serving a sentence is the just way to repay for one's crime, then to Bob, the state transition between committing a crime and serving his sentence is merely a lifestyle choice. Maybe the cycle will end when he grows tired of it. In the mean time, I still don't think you would want to live in the same neighborhood as Bob. I am less concerned about whether Bob gets convicted after a robbery. I'm more concerned about being able to stop him in his act, ensuring that liquor store robbery will never happen.

I've actually been mugged once, but after filing the police report, they never asked for my testimony. This has really puzzled me for a long time. I finally understood that, because the thief had attempted to use both my credit and debit cards, he left an electronic trail with enough evidence to prosecute him of a greater crime. If the police did not need my testimony, what makes you think they needed the suspect's?

Your main argument is how talking to the police benefits the society as a whole rather than the individual. Let's take a look at two recent high profile examples which contradict your point.

On the one hand we have Ross Ulbricht who was caught running Silk Road. The evidence that lead to his arrest is pretty solid as you can read in the criminal complaint. If he had cooperated with the investigation, he gets a reduced sentence. How is that fair to the society as a whole?

On the other hand we have Aaron Swartz. He clearly understood not talking to the police, but his girlfriend Quinn didn't, as a result subjected herself and Aaron to unnecessary harassment by the prosecutor. It costed their relationship, and eventually, Aaron caved under the pressure and took his own life. In Aaron's case, it wasn't clear what is the maximum extent he could be charged for what he did, but cooperating definitely made it worse. It's like the prosecution ripped him off by charging him 10x for his crime, and then generously offered a 10% discount as leniency.

If you believe what Aaron did was good for the society, you would have advised Aaron and Quinn not to talk to the investigators.

Make it legally required for mugshot sites to display a prominent warning along with the image, stating that a mugshot does not necessarily imply charges or conviction or criminal record. Google can also voluntarily display a statement to that effect if the image algorithm can tell it's a mugshot.

The main problem is when people mistake mugshots for what they really are. Just fix this problem. It doesn't impinge journalist right to publish.

If you look at it this way, the mugshot sites are obviously up to no good. Since criminal records are also public record, the responsible way to disclose mugshot is by making the actual criminal record or the absence of the record available. And if you've seen their ads, they clearly insinuate that mugshots represent a person's criminal history but that is a lie. Not all lying is illegal, but the law could indeed enforce truthful disclosure without running afoul of the First Amendment.

A defendant could only be tried for the highest charge stated or implied.

To work around that, the prosecutor would simply break the charges down to multiple suits. Even though the Fifth Amendment prohibits a single offense to be tried twice, the same act typically involves multiple offenses and multiple counts and can be tried separately.

It simply has to become more common knowledge that prosecutors can use any intimidation tactic, including pressing charges that are way out of the ballpark, but it is the final court ruling that holds. It also must become common knowledge that appealing is the legal remedy to fight unfavorable court rulings. As an extension of Miranda Rights, there should be law restricting the interaction between the defendant and the prosecutor. In addition to the right to remain silent, the defendant has the right to dismiss any contact with the prosecutor, maybe even going as far as allowing the defendant to file restraining order for himself and on behalf of his family and friends to be free from harassment from the prosecution. The right would openly state that cooperating with the prosecutor will not result in leniency.

It makes perfect sense in the context of this article. In general no algorithm faster than Pollard's rho algorithm is known, but if you choose bad constants for EC, then NSA might have already found a way to heuristically crack it quickly. In practice, people might be using a key size that is way too small and way too easy for NSA to crack.

If that made no sense to you, go brush up on your number theory. If you don't want to learn number theory, then accept that you are incapable of having an informed opinion on asymmetrical cryptography standards. (Which is okay, we can't all have an informed opinion on every issue; your brain can only hold so much stuff, right?)

Seriously, you can brush up on your manners. Stop being anonymous and start being responsible for your statements.