To be technical, the text of the 2nd Amendment is:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Many people focus on the last two phrases in that sentence. Not so much attention is focused on the first two phrases, but IMO they're just as important as the last two. Keeping and bearing Arms is a right ... but it's a right, a power that comes with a hefty dose of responsibility (to be "well regulated") as well. Most of you probably know the quote "With great power comes great responsibility." If you can't handle the great responsibility, well, responsibly then perhaps it's better you hold off wielding the great power until you can.

For instance, the person quoted in the summary as issuing a death threat directed at the employee? Yeah, IMO they're not handling the responsibility very well at all. I wouldn't have a problem with that person's gun or guns being placed out of their reach while they learn how to play well with others.

In addition to considering the risks, consider the limitations and the probabilities. If Boston Children's Hospital had an unlimited IT budget, they could buy the best hardware and security staff money could buy. Similarly, if they were a front for an organized crime operation, they'd want full control over their IT because it's likely they'd be attacked (by law enforcement.) Finally, if this was Kabul Children's Hospital in Afghanistan, they'd want to spend more on security (both physical and virtual) due to the higher likelihood of being attacked (both physically and probably virtually.)

But I suspect BCH doesn't have a security staff armed with machine guns because they estimated the probability of a group of armed individuals attacking the facility at "extremely small." Similarly, they opted for the hosting they did rather than something more secure and expensive because they estimated the probability of an electronic attack as extremely small because who would attack the network of a HOSPITAL for CHILDREN in Boston?

In my opinion, there's a right way to fight this fight -- as the family is doing, through the courts. I think Anonymous is fighting the wrong way and it's going to come around to bite Anonymous in the ass sooner or later. If anyone is caught and prosecuted for this, you bet the prosecution is going to paint them as someone who endangered the lives of sick children and that would resonate strongly in jurors' minds. The defense would have a tough time counteracting that characterization. That characterization is likely to leak into the media's depiction and characterization of Anonymous.

So let's say for sake of argument that you're playing a first-person shooter set in a warehouse. Which is preferable:

1) Having a door to the outside world that is locked and never opens, because the game designers didn't want to model the entire planet or introduce a "You can't go that way" arbitrary boundary.
2) Having a warehouse with no doors to the outside world, because the game designers didn't want to model the entire planet or introduce a "You can't go that way" arbitrary boundary.

I suppose if your setting is either magical enough or science-fiction enough to have some form of teleportation, you can say "A wizard/Scotty gets people in and out of the warehouse." Between those extremes, unless your game's backstory is that the warehouse was built around the current occupants (or their ancestors) and that it's big enough to support the needs of those occupants (food, water, sanitation, breathable air, etc.) there needs to be some way to get in or out.

Why reinvent the wheel? If you opt-into this system, the IRS could autogenerate a filled-in PDF copy of the form you select (they already have the PDFs available, and they're editable) and ask "Is this correct?" If it is, you click yes. If you're due a refund, you enter your account information (to have it directly deposited) or indicate you want it mailed to you. If you owe, you enter your account information or you indicate you'll send in a check, at which point you get a form to print with all the relevant details. If there's an error, or you want to add in additional information that the IRS didn't take into account, you download the filled-in PDF and use it as a starting point.

Once could be an accident. Twice starts a pattern.

Assault and battery, probably. And then you'd be the defendant in a civil law suit, which even if you win will require time and legal fees.

A different solution: unless your child has a medical reason (allergy to one of the ingredients in the vaccine, compromised immune system, or the like -- "I don't want it" doesn't count) not to have the vaccine, the child won't be permitted in public school. This includes the classroom, extracurricular activities, etc. The parents will have to arrange (and pay) for alternate schooling, to protect the general school population. The principals, superintendents, and school boards can even describe it as "We're thinking of the children."

Don't lock the door to the room. Lock the doors to the cabinets that contain the equipment, like mailboxes at the post office, in such a way that the person unlocking the door is logged (badges or PIN or something similar.) If someone wants a piece of equipment they unlock the cabinet door, extract the equipment, use it, and put it back. Or they get the equipment out, close the door, and unlock the door again to return it.

Put a small window in the doors so you can easily see if the equipment is present and if it's not the last person to unlock the door either has the equipment or is responsible for explaining where it is or what happened to it.

... or until someone develops an app that exploits insecurities in the phone's software to remotely brick specific/all phones nearby and sells the app or gives it away. Then anyone could brick anyone else's phone for fun or use the threat of bricking to extort money from the phone's owner.

Agreed. In 2013, NASA's budget of 17.8 billion dollars made up one half of one percent of the total US budget of about 3.8 trillion dollars. Rounding to the nearest integer, the largest chunk of the budget pie (the Department of Health and Human Services) had a budget 53 times as large as NASA. The Social Security Administration? 50 times. The Department of Defense? 38 times.

To put it another way, we pay 14 NASAs in interest on the national debt!

It's not going to be presented as a matter of trust. If the proxy bothers to ask the user to opt in, they will ask "Do you want us to use the SuperMegaFast approach to get this page or the normal way that's likely to be somewhat to much slower?" When phrased like that, I think most non-technical users (and even some technically-savvy users) would choose the fast MITM approach.

Hmm ... Hasbro owns Candy Land, and they also published through Wizards of the Coast a little role-playing game called Star Wars: Saga Edition. And we know Hasbro has more than a few lawyers ... how do we bring this to their attention so they can kill two attempted trademarks with one lawsuit or legal nastygram?

It may be worthy of study. Just not in a SCIENCE class.

Sure, we can't observe the early Earth (at least not until or unless we discover time travel.) But we can simulate conditions on the early Earth and see what happens. In fact, the Miller-Urey experiments and others have done and are doing this, and they've found some very interesting results. It'll be interesting to see what would or will happen if such an experiment were done on a larger scale and left undisturbed for a longer period of time.

I think that whatever kill switch mechanisms they put in place will be compromised to let attackers remotely trigger them to brick phones at a distance in a week and a half.

On the down side, script kiddies able to permanently disable phones from dozens or hundreds of feet away is a scary thought.

On the up side, interrupting people who are paying more attention to their phone conversation with their friends than to controlling the several ton hunk of metal and plastic they're driving at 60/80/90+ miles per hour down the road may not be all bad.