That is totally dependent on where you are...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority

Oddly enough that Wikipedia Article shows only 6 countries that have age of adulthood at less than 18, and none of them are 16. In the US it is 18 except for Alabama (19), Nebraska (19), Mississippi (21), and Puerto Rico (21). Canada is about 50/50 between 18 and 19. The UK is 18. Most of Africa is 21. Japan 20.

So your point is flatly incorrect.

I doubt it. I mean, I asm certain that most people value their privacy. They just don't value it all that highly. The first time frozen pizzas go on sale 5/$10, most people will conclude that it's worth the price.

You're on to something, but I think it's simply a case of chronological proximity bias. The problems we face today always *feel* like the most severe problems ever faced, but that is probably often just because they are the most prominent in our minds. I mean, look how many writers from the last century predicted widespread famine, because when you ran the numbers it just didn't seem possible. They thought it was the biggest problem humanity ever faced. Eventually we managed to overcome it and now it feels like a big nothing. Instead we have our own, new, biggest problems humanity has ever faced. Except they're not, not really. They just seem that way because we know that the other ones got solved, and we don't know yet how to solve the unsolved ones. And those writers, in turn, were probably overestimating the relative severity of that problem compared to other historical problems.

It's the same perspective problem that causes doomsdayism.

FTFY.

The point is that there is nothing that will be preventing you from doing whatever you want to the hardware you bought: hack it, wipe it, blend it, nobody will stop you. What you are actually complaining about is that the hardware you bought isn't exactly the hardware you want. But, it's a lot harder to blame other people for the poor purchasing decision you made.

Honest to god, real-life spit-take. Keyboard's okay, though, it's a Model M.

There's already an entire website specifically for that purpose.

Thank you, Dr. Science.

It's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. However, by reversing the polarity of the entangled particles and running them through the matrix field of a Heisenberg compensator, you get a controlled tachyon burst that counteracts entropy. At least, that's what I gathered from this write-up.

No, no, you want to say "serious business." Mirrored shades, porn 'stache, aloha shirt, silk sport coat, and a concealed smartphone holster.

That would be great! Get them with the cursive name patches, too. And might as well strap on elbow pads by default for working under the desks!

You know, I'm not sure if there was an explicit dress code beyond "shirt and tie," or if it was simply a case of everybody following Kranz's lead. I'm fairly certain that engineers were originally expected to wear suits, but somewhere along the line that rule was relaxed and short sleeves permitted due to the heat generated by all the equipment.

Mission control, 1960's, shall forever be the exemplar of true nerd fashion. However, in a bow to modernity, the pocket slide rule could probably be replaced with a smartphone.

The difference is how much rendering is done by vertex and pixel shaders, and how much is pre-rendered by the CPU and blitted to the GPU as a texture. Ideally you want as much of the former as you can.

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