Most offices need a "go to guy" for IT issues. If you can "be that guy" it makes you much more employable.

Also, in you social clubs, religious organizations, etc. if you are known as the "IT guy" people can call when the church computer goes on the fritz, it can help you with networking for your next paid job or your next freelance gig.

I expect the Tea Party and libertarian-leaning Democrats to be up in arms about this.

I expect "business Republicans" and non-libertarian Democrats to see this as A Good Thing or at least a "neutral thing, but serving a good purpose" thing.

Let the sparks fly.

... apart to see how they worked then try to put them back together.

They question should be: Why doesn't every curious kid grow up to be a hacker (in the good sense of the word)?

I would like to read up on this case. Links or citations of news, magazine, or journal articles about the the case would be useful. Contemporary references would be best. If those aren't available, court case information or the equivalent information if it was decided by the USPTO or then-equivalent agency would be helpful.

Thanks.

I don't have an answer to your technical question but know that my prayers are with you and your family.

... would be having the guy stand at the center of an explosion that would be big enough and quick enough to vaporize their brain or at least their brain-stem.

Short of that, a carefully-aimed sufficiently-large-caliber bullet is probably the quickest most humane death.

Unfortunately, the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" quotient of using explosives is way too high and the margin for error in aiming the gun for the "perfectly humane" shot is also much greater than zero.

In both cases, there is also the violation of the moral rights of the condemned person's family to give the person a burial looking as close to life-like as any other corpse. In other words, the state shouldn't unnecessarily disfigure the person's body.

--

By the way, for execution purposes I would consider "instant death" to be "perfectly humane" when it comes to executions. Yes, I know that some other forms of death last long enough for brain endorphins to be released, giving a supposedly-more-pleasant death. And yes, when I die I do hope it takes long enough to get that endorphin rush. But if we are to have executions, those being executed are entitled to a humane, as-painless-as-possible death. They are not necessarily entitled to go out on an endorphin high.

--

For the sake of argument let's assume that the person is guilty of a capital offense and according to applicable laws qualifies for the death penalty. I'm not going to get into the obvious inhumanity of executing someone who doesn't deserve to die nor am I going to get into the argument about whether capital punishment is inherently inhumane or not.

"License plate must say CWBYNEAL"

would have been funnier than the funny-hat option.

I think there's more to getting mod points than just karma. If you only log into /. every 2nd or 3rd day and only load stuff on "slashdot.org" a few dozen times each login, you'll probably get fewer moderation opportunities than if you pretty much stay logged in all the time, load slashdot.org hundreds or thousands of times a day, post dozens of comments a day with a fair amount of getting modded up, and 2-3 submissions a day with 1-2 accepted a week.

It probably makes a difference.

If "just anyone" can vote and there is no way to evaluate the quality of the voters, then the "wisdom of the crowd" may not be so wise and those who are "voted down" and whose goal is to maximize the number of voted-up posts may simply "route around it" by increasing the number of total posts, sacrificing quality along the way.

In the /. model, "votes" are scarce resources (5 moderation points every few weeks with a quick expiration), only usable for topics which you probably aren't "involved" in (if you comment while logged in, all of your related moderations are un-done), handed out only to those who have demonstrated some sustained level of "good conduct" (low karma = no mod points for you) and they are "watched over" by the community (meta-moderation). From the looks of things when I meta-moderate, Slashdot moderators are more likely to think before voting something up or down and as a result the "quality" of the "total vote" is likely to be higher.

As a result, if you take out the "inexperienced newcomers" and "immature commentators" whose first few posts happen to get down-voted and the trolls who don't care or who thrive on "-1 troll," most people will have the pleasure of seeing some of their posts "voted up" before the first or second time they see one get down-voted, and are therefore in a position to see what kinds of posts are likely to get them "good karma" and what kinds are likely to get "voted down." Since most "regulars" probably CARE about "good karma" for the perks it brings or at least they care about not being marked as "karma = -1," they will be motivated to not routinely post low-quality stuff.

Preparing to see my karma drop in 3...2...1...

I know some (less-well-known) writers who do everything longhand until it's time to send it to the publisher.

CBS news commentator Andy Rooney used a manual typewriter for much of his work until late in his career or maybe even until he died.

I personally know someone who keeps a very large production database using a commercial DOS-based program from the early- or mid-'90s. This isn't some military or other scenario where there is a good reason to use outdated software, it's just the personal preference of the person who is maintaining the database and its contents.

... the top 10 books/articles/whatever that every human being should read.

Now if only we could get some kind of agreement on what those "top 10" are.

Gack wrong title.

I wish I'd read Roger Kaufman's book before I started programming. It would've helped a lot.

Here's a few pages to get a taste of the style: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner...

By "offensive" do you mean "going on the offense" in the military/sports sense or do you mean "I am most offended by?"

I'm guessing the latter by the first sentence came across as the former.

Who is the worst offender here (excluding "reasonable/expected" things like employers monitoring employees, parents monitoring their own kids, K-12 schools monitoring their own networks, etc.)?
* The United States government (NSA, etc.)
* The United States corporations (ISPs etc)
* China's government
* China's corporations (we'll pretend these aren't the government)
* Russia's government
* Russia's corporations (ditto)
* North Korea's government (it's all government there!)
* CowboyNeal, er, I mean Unknown Lamer**

**Notice: if you click here, well, you've been warned :)