Pretty much anyone who is calling Obama a "socialist" doesn't understand what Socialism means, doesn't understand just how skewed to the political right the US is politically, and doesn't understand that for a lot of us in the rest of the world, being at least a bit Socialist is a *good* thing. I am in Canada and we are sadly heading further to the right than we have been in the past and its proving to only be a bad thing for the country IMHO. As a Canadian, I view Obama as being pretty definitely Right-Wing in almost all regards. The Republicans qualify as "Batshit insane Right Wing" on the other hand :)

The only time I can recall doing TDD, we started out with unit tests for everything but as time went on the managers grew upset with how long things were taking to develop and the only choice was to abandon writing the tests and just plow on.

I cannot live without pads of graph paper. Anything written on regular blank paper or lined paper is just wrong. It must have the pale blue lines of a proper pad of graph paper or anything I write on it, is rubbish.

I periodically find myself writing something on the latest graph paper pad, only to realize that its not interactive and I cannot edit, so with a sigh I go rewrite the entire thing in a text editor.

Then I go back to the graph paper pad :P

I think there was a Magnum P.I./Simon & Simon cross over episode that was pretty good too.

I guess it gets trumped by corporate rights and power.

Because you know, its always just a choice between being a spineless pathetic guy or supporting stupidly expensive military hardware purchases that the country probably cannot afford but which get the PM some political cred in the US. Its black or white, there can't possibly be a different solution right? /sarcasm off

What a fucking moron

Yes, Snowden would return to the US for a trial in a secret court, with nothing released to the public for "security reasons" and be placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. He would not get a fair trial. It would not and could not happen.

So yes, it would be interesting and beneficial for the US public if Snowden received a fair trial and was granted all his rights. It would be a chance to test the legality of various laws etc - but since it would have to be conducted in secret by a military tribunal, it would never reach the light of day, and thus no benefit would be had.

Snowden should stay where he is until the US changes its laws to make it safe for him to return. That will take some major changes I don't see ever happening.

In essence, Amazon is letting the authors write the books, the publishers and writers edit the books, and the publishers produce the books as well as promote them, then sidling in as the cheapest distributor with the greatest access to the customer and ensuring the prices are so low that no one makes a real profit except Amazon.

I don't buy from Amazon, I would if I had no other access to the book I need, but by and large I get my books from physical bookstores. I *like* authors I read and I want to see them continue to write.

for this guy who was willing to shut down his business rather than betray his principles and his customers. Note that the government doesn't appear to have wanted the passwords and encryption keys for specific individuals, they wanted the whole fucking lot.

I guess "Don't Tread on Me!" has been transformed to "Go Ahead and Trample Me!" :P

This. I saw Star Wars Ep IV when it came out. I was blown away by the movie. It had its faults but by and large was a good film and deserved the cult status. Ep V was also enjoyable, Ep VI was okay but the Ewoks ruined it for me as I didn't find them believable. Had they used Chewbaccas people as they originally planned it would have worked for me I suspect.

The prequels were badly acted, badly plotted, filled with unnecessary elements that destroyed the feel of the movies for me and Jar Jar Binks. They also wasted some great actors in those films feeding them really lousy lines. The immediate impression I got was "this was written to sell toys" and it was plotted accordingly.

My annoyance is primarily that the first films were (to me) aimed primarily at adults and I enjoyed them as such. The prequels were aimed at 8 year olds and I try very hard to enjoy them but usually can't. If your introduction to Star Wars was via the prequels, then you probably enjoy the whole set, if it was via Eps IV-VI then you probably don't.

You missed the stages where the customer changes their mind (and thus the requirements) half way through the project because "they read an article" - but has no idea what the consequences would be, or the stage where the lead developer decides he *hates* one environment and decides the whole project has to be reimplemented in a different environment (with no cogent reasons to support it), or the testing phase for the program is abandoned because there isn't time. Been there with all 3 of these.

Ah this "no-value-added middleman" is the guy who created the show, researched it, wrote it, his wife is one of the main characters and he acts in it as well. He is by no stretch a "middleman". I am not saying I agree with him - haven't read the article yet even - but he definitely on the creator side of things.

I agree, although I also think there is a strong element of "not on my watch" covering of the ass. No one in the West wants to be held responsible for the next 9/11, so gathering *all* the information on everyone seems a prudent exercise to prevent being blamed because *you* didn't do something to prevent it, no matter how flagrant a breach of the public trust, laws, etc.

Yes you are. Sure makes sense in that light doesn't it? :P

Rights holders won't have to worry about the effects of piracy when they offer a means of consuming media that is as userfriendly as torrenting that media is, or better. The technology exists, all they need to do is sell it to us at a reasonable rate.

Netflix is the wave of the future. Cable TV and all the other rental services that want to sell me media for consumption at 10x the rate of Netflix are doomed to failure, unless they can jury rig the laws to close Netflix down.

Which is why the fact that they are building a parallel case should be relevant and should be revealed to the Defense. In essence the use of these parallel cases means the government has the motive to "find" evidence to create a chain of evidence that can be used against the defendant. That is an encouragement to create evidence if it can't be found by other means. That's just wrong, period.

This also provides and incentive for the prosecution to rely on evidence acquired illegally, and only encourages the surveillance state mentality.