Ac opting for transparency, tell me what is wrong with that picture. Or was it to cause laugh?

They tried real hard and 'succeeded' at Aral sea. They also tried but not so hard with lake Sevan so it still exists. Let us see how US env. engineering can fuck things up.
BTW Could this be that huge number of mad cows steaks have been consumed by Shatner along his service in Enterprise?

You assume then that there are no innocent people on death row in US? Hmm there are reports of some being released from time to time which surely tells us this is not true? What about badly done DNA checks as was reported lately? What about few other 'little' shortcomings of US justice systems where it is sometimes better to accept a 'deal' putting one in prison for life than fight an uphill battle with a chance of ending on death row.

Maybe US should do something about conditions in the prisons. Regular occurrence of rape and other forms of violence is indication of the cruel punishment that US constitution seems to dislike for some reason (not shared by most US citizens obviously).

there is at least one board full information game where you still can.

It seems US have no quarrels in sending drones to kill random people across the world and without a court ordering so. Why not extend the procedure to local death market? That goes over the need for all the gas chambers, restricted drugs etc and if you televise the proceedings you may just as well make some good buck on it - it is win-win!

Let us go all the way and cancel all tax exceptions. Simplify tax code and tax all activities including financial operations. Not sure if society will benefit from that but that would be consistent.

what would any /.er need a sex partner for?

If the groping and other sexually charged activities were not why TSA was brought into life for then I do not know why this agency exists in the first place. They should not discriminate against females tho.

There were times where even wiretapping was controversial and you make it sound like metadata is so innocent as well as easy to prevent by a single user. Surprise surprise - it is not - in modern times, in developed world not using modern communication devices has serious consequences to one's ability to live normal life. If you consider this and the fact that there is really no other way to use such devices as not to leave a trail in the hands of the operators of the infrastructure used for those communications that left the trail, then you realize that there is not much that a person can do if courts just ignore the fact that gathering such data is a massive violation of people's freedoms.
As for the second thing - I think DEA or alike agencies elsewhere may actually have a role to play in our societies - there are chemicals that are outright killers and even weed is not something that I would like to see in a schools and alike. This said the grown people can do whatever they want with themselves and the state has (should have) as little authority over this as over sex life that is - as long as all are informed and consenting adults then there is no crime.

You are right about general idiocy of security policy in that school. Yet that is hugely irrelevant to the case - the boy broke the law which may indicate that the pupils in that school were not taught about vital issues concerning security and privacy and how serious such offenses may be. If they did maybe the pwd would not be that easy to see, it would not be that easy to guess and possibly if such privacy importance courses were done in every school the criminals from NSA would be serving their time in prison. Well I guess I exaggerated about how far we could go still blaming the teacher or the school for bad security policies is just, as said, not the point.

The way I see it today is that most of people in (broadly meant) IT are not those geniuses that do get it but normal guys, working 8-16 5d/week who can hardly do basic stuff. This did not make the situation in projects better - it is just bad in different sort of ways but I actually do not give a fuck.
There is only one thing that I cannot stand and that is piss poor management. Maybe we should start investing in communication skills and philosophy? I mean when I look at average manager from the positions having budget decision authority upwards or a politician at above local level I see wankers, psychopaths and incompetent but arrogant asshats. Projects can take a bit longer if people of lesser statute will do the stuff so in principle there is no major lack of engineers but there is a major lack of intelligent well meaning people up in the regions where decisions are made. Nobody is talking about that so either it is deemed impossible to fix or they just urgently want everybody to look elsewhere for the reasons why things go wrong.

What does it mean to have a life? For some big part of it is to communicate with some friends and family over whatever means are available. There are also people that do not need constant updates. I actually prefer to go out with some and if nobody is available then I go alone. I reached the stage in my life where I understand well enough what was meant by shadows on the walls of the cave. I also understood that with most I can talk about 'normal' things as anything more complex will confuse them. Not because I am better it is just that I am too different (and I am not even that much different). Some appreciate it most not. I deleted my FB account long time ago and created a new one which is void of any data and dormant. I still did not fly an airplane into the mountain - the guy that did had FB account.
Most of us have some sort of media presence if not for social then for professional reasons. So be it. People that judge others (negatively?) on basis of not having FB account (or some other mildly useful shit) are just another proof that there is not much more parting humans from birds than feathers and nails.
We may scold FB users but we all are here on a social media site doing so. In any case a chieftain from HR tribe needing my FB account to judge if I am suitable for a cohding job? Really? Why not to axe his head off directly?

Depending on the model you chose this may differ but I am sure if you chose proper units (libraries of congress/Manhattans etc) you can arrive at 42.

Those technically ignorant are the ones having passive and active election rights and they are in majority, This means nothing has much changed except now NSA has to claim their programs are beneficial so that the colossal amount of money spent on them does not look like a incompetence or outright corruption.