So by your logic I can legally promise to pay someone a few thousand dollars to kill you, because I'm just using words?

Luckily the law disagrees.

Because the game bought in Wal-Mart includes features such as "Access to community updates" and "play with your friends".

When a game forces you to use Steam if you want to play it, and requires Steam for specific features mentioned on the box, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to access those features through Steam with no further expenditure.

Polygraphs have no basis in reality. They're purely a psychological tool.

I find it confusing that one would be used during the federal hiring process. At least it tells me I wouldn't want to work there; anybody with recruitment processes that fucked up isn't someone I want to work for.

He's not on trial for what he said. He's on trial for what he tried to do : Fraudulently subvert federal security.

Fuck all to do with the first amendment.

Hmm. How about my name, my email address, the person that referred me to twitter, the people with whom I've exchanged private messages, the contents of those messages, the IP addresses that I connect from, the adverts shown to me and the ones on which I clicked.

I'm also sure my boss wont get fined if I disable his backdoor. But thanks for the gold star.

Your arguments are all "oh, Europe misbehaves too" as though that somehow means we shouldn't at least stop the fucking US "all your data are belong to us" bullshit.

We're working hard for privacy and security in Europe too, why should the US get a free ride.

If my direct boss - based in Texas - tells me to do something with the intent of breaking UK law, I say no. If I think he's going to use his access to a UK hosted system to break UK law, I'll get his access revoked.

He'll back me fully on that, and even if he doesn't, UK law prevents me being sacked for acting like that. Hell, the UK management team will thank me.

To subvert the security as you suggest, he'd need to do so without anybody in the UK finding out what he was planning to do, how he was doing it, or why. The moment we find out we're legally obliged to act to prevent him.

Maybe a US court wouldn't agree with that, but it's not hard to get a UK court order with which we'd comply.

Of course they do. First amendment and all that crap.

Whether they have the authority to do anything in response to you politely declining is possibly where you wanted to explore?

The problem is that the people whose job it is to prevent people taking down a flight are obliged to treat it as not a joke.

Of course, the correct behaviour is to investigate, confirm it was a joke and tell the idiot that they weren't funny and be glad they're getting off with being called an idiot. It's still correct to investigate.

I'd pity the man willing to pay actual money to have sex with me. Not enough to take his money, but I'd pity him.

To be fair, I find that any higher than that and dangly bits show.

You may enjoy http://menkampf.com/

(it's not technically NSFW but probably best avoided in the office)

I'm finding myself amused and almost proud that AmiMoJo has me on his/her 'foes' list.

That little yellow 'freak' warning light that Slashdot shows is a lovely indicator that I should just skip straight past.

There's evidence that boys perform better academically at male only schools too.

My issue isn't with single sex schools (although I'm glad I never attended one*) it's with providing gender segregated subject matter.

"Right, girls, you're all in Auto Shop 101. Boys, come this way for the crochet class." Sure.

* although I did once ask out a girl that had been the only female student at a boy's school

Male-centric? What, you mean they teach facts and test actual knowledge, unlike the more artistic courses where being female gets you a higher grade?

Forgive me for disagreeing that we should condemn half a generation for being born the wrong sex.