If I didn't need that Windows boot to run Oracle and Sybase ASE, that box would have been reformatted and reinstalled with Debian or Ubuntu this afternoon.

FUCK Windows.

Recently I was having trouble with my Debian box, an old 3.8GHz single core creaker. So I shifted my emails, my personal data, and my development tasks over to run on my Windows 7 laptop.

That was two weeks ago to the *day*. Today I had to do a system restore because some drive by hit it (even with Adblock Plus running, as well as firewalls, anti-virus, and a hardware firewall.) My folk's Windows 8 system got hit twice, and the 8.1 upgrade has been hit once -- and they don't *do* surfing, other than a half dozen reputable websites, and their email and games. So they are *not* going to porn sites or anyplace else famous for infections.

Today I was so frosted over the drive-by forcing me to waste an hour recovering the machine that I took another stab at addressing the overheating CPU on my Linux creaker, and discovered I could unclip the fan from the CPU cooler so I could clean out the cooler fins *properly.* That box is over 10 years old now, and since I switched to Linux, it's been disabled exactly ONCE -- and that because Ubuntu's upgrade process couldn't deal with a running DB/2 UDB instance in the startup scripts and crapped out *horribly*, leaving the box corrupt (I've been on Debian since.)

Windows?

I don't give a rat's fat ass what version number MicroSquishy uses. Windows is CRAPWARE and there is no way on Earth I will EVER use a Windows box as a general surfing platform again. Running builds and compiles in a restricted environment? Playing music? Sure.

But let it loose on the Internet again? Never. Ever. EVER.

Note that the article and book discuss what educated theologians think, not what the followers think.

Philosophy and "what if" questioning are a big part of religious educations. The general public, not really.

So while the Pope and Dalai Llama might be willing to welcome ET with open arms, wingnuts like Westoboro Baptist are going to have apoplectic fits about "devils" and "demons."

Learn from my mistake, build the ceiling high enough for a lift, and put in better lighting. The lighting in my shop SUCKS, and at 8'6" tall, the ceiling is far too low for a lift.

Having read most if not all of Foundation, I find Asimov to be a little overrated, but I didn't find him to be intentionally malicious or with designs of intrusiveness.

peer to peer communication during extended blackouts? File transfer? gaming? video chat?

And probably still counting against one's data plan, even though it bypasses the cell-towers.

Kind of like now, how they want to deduct minutes from my cell plan when I'm using my home 802.11n wireless to make phone calls through my cell handset.

That's because in order to execute the laws, they have to exist in the first place. The governor needs the laws to reflect his ideology so that he may carry them out and further his ideology.

Because it's a lot easier to target specific individuals or a specific group of individuals to actually get something useful, and for it to work undetected for longer, than it is for something to be ubiquitously deployed where it actually provides specific, useful results and remains undetected.

If there are only a few thousand materials scientists working on processor tech that will advance microprocessor development, it's easier and cheaper to drop a few thousand trojan-horse USB memory FOBs with hacked USB subsystem controllers that will get what I want than it is to attempt to infect every device being sold new. These FOBs won't be quality-checked either, while batches of new devices for retail sale probably will get at least some checking.

Kind of like PATRIOT Act for laws allowing the government to spy on people?

It's all Orwellian doublespeak.

Wait, so we reject it because it provides more protections than the bare minimum required by law?

He is the head of the executive branch of government of his state, which means that ultimately he's in charge of the State's Attorneys General office, and since officers in California are deputized at a state level too (for arrests as criminals change jurisdictions) he has a stake there too.

The Executive branch's job is to represent the operations of the State. The Legislative branch's job is to represent the citizenry/populace. I hate to break it to you, but this is actually working in the way it's meant to. If the Legislature wants this law to pass then they need to come up with a supermajority to override the veto.

Or, let the situation reach a prosecution, and then appeal the grounds of evidence from the drones and wait for it to go through the State courts, possibly ending up in Federal courts.

I donno about you, but as the Start Menu got more and more cluttered since its debut with Windows 95 I've tended to put stuff in the quicklaunch area, or for commands with short names that have had the same name for many years, Window+R -> exename worked well too. Now that the Start Screen is so intrusive I've doubled-down on Win+R and on "pinning" things to the taskbar.

More like the Orwell system, or perhaps the Huxley system...

The thing is, search and rescue efforts, wildfire inspection, all make sense for this sort of exception; but you are right a blanket "emergency situation" may as well be no requirement at all because anything can be viewed as an emergency and anyone claiming emergency is almost always given the benefit of the doubt for anything short of an outright hoax.

This is what you want. :P

Doh! I was thinking Erlang, where the result of the last statement in the code is the result returned to the caller. *LOL*