Why is it that worms and viruses have better security than legitimate programs?

Oh dang, you're right. Still, despite not being able to think of any real examples off the top of my head, the point stands.

While I disagree on the reason I do think it reflects badly on Ellison. He needed to compromise more than he was willing to (he was willing to make quite a lot of changes, just not enough).

Unfortunately the producers, while maybe willing to compromise, were already annoyed that Ellison took so long to finish the script so they rewrote it a second time without his input (the first rewrite was by Ellison, IIRC).

So yeah, Ellison's an uncompromising jerk, but Roddenberry and the rest of the ST peoples were unappreciative of genius (understandable, when you consider the package it comes in).

The great thing is that Ellison really is a genius*, the problem is that he knows it.

* Go read his article on Superman, Lois Lane, and Kryptonite condoms if you don't believe me.

s/midsummer's/midsummer

Why now? It's not now, it's just continued from when he turned in the first draft. It really got heated after the first rewrite. I believe Ellison threw the first verbal punch but Roddenberry didn't hold back either.

Why this episode? Had you actually read the original you would not ask this question. When compared to the original script the aired version is like a bazooka bubble-gum comic version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream.

Military-issued surface-to-air missiles can't reach that height, what makes you think your home-made rocket can?

Even if it could, a plastic nose is unlikely to penetrate the radar-absorbent paint, let alone the super-light, super-strong skin that encloses the balloons, which, themselves aren't just your standard party balloon. Can you also carry some explosive payload?

It takes about two seconds per finger. So, assuming they want all ten fingers it takes 20 seconds per-person. Add the time to explain how it all works let's say it takes a minute per-person. Lets say that 857,191 international travelers come through a busy airport in a given month. Since it's December that's an average of 27,651.32 per-day which is 460.85 man-hours, just for finger-printing.

Do the same calculation for the year (11,486,547/60=191442.45). Then multiply that by the cost of each employee (wages, payroll taxes, benefits, worker's comp, insurance (for stuff other than worker's benefits), etc), it's a HUGE amount of money just for finger printing every year at one busy airport (granted it is the busiest airport, but I doubt it's the busiest in terms of international travelers). If a $100,000 computer system can automate that it's a bargain (pays for itself in less than a month, not counting running costs, which can't be much).

How do you mod something "sarcastic"? And then there's the problem of good sarcasm (funny) and bad sarcasm (you're an idiot and shouldn't procreate).

In any case I rate this Good Sarcastic(tm).

Ok, first off, republicans are still in office, my governor is one. A good portion of congress is still republican.

Secondly, what thing are you referring to that Democrats are doing? I was talking about trickle-down economics which is the idea that giving money and tax breaks to the wealthy and businesses that somehow that money magically makes it into the pockets of the rest of us. Neat theory, however it's been tried several times, all unsuccessfully.

Now I haven't seen any trickle-down economic plans from either the white house or congress, though I guess I can see how the stimulus package might be mistaken for it. The idea behind the stimulus is to artificially create jobs (something that isn't needed when the economy is healthy). While this is not a good long-term plan, this is the correct approach to an economic downturn. Governments should go into debt when the economy is bad and should pay off the debt when the economy is good.

In addition I wasn't talking about all republicans as there are some that actually have logical reasons behind their beliefs (I haven't met many, but they exist). I was talking about the GOP's main economic policy, trickle-down economics, and how it seems to be the only kind of economics republican politicians (the republitards in question) understand.

Log off, go home, log in there.

If you want the absolute safest way: never log in, ever.

Just build a faraday cage around your house.

It's not as hard as you might think, stucco is plaster on chicken wire wrapped around the house...

Except that if you use TFT screens they can be detected and decoded wirelessly...

No, I'm implying that everyone involved with those bad loans is stupid. The people who thought it would be a good idea to reward brokers based on the dollar amount of the loan, the brokers who tried to push larger mortgages than the customers were asking for, the people who took the loans they couldn't afford and the polititians who made it all possible.

I'm also implying that people who think trickle-down economics works are stupid. Anyone who's seen things fail as often as trickle-down policies have and yet still believe in it is an idiot. Here's an idea let's give a few billion dollars to a bunch of corporate banks, provide no incentives or oversight and see what happens. Yo republitards: wake up and smell the obvious.

You're right, only small-scale ones.

Woah, woah, woah. You're saying that lending enormous amounts of money with extremely high interest rates to people who can't possibly afford to pay it back is a bad idea? Since when? Next you're going to tell me that trickle-down economics doesn't work and that two plus two doesn't equal five (even for very large values of two)! You obviously aren't an economics major.