Ah, no. Something far more controlling over almost every aspect of our lives..

Corporations.

I wish it was merely ignorantly rich rappers posing as a secret clan. Alas, no illuminati...There is no need to dig for conspiracy when this Administration anyway. They wear plenty right on their sleeve, and wear it with an air of prideful arrogance.

People are amazed by this new discovery and yet legality was the first thought here.

I know you were somewhat joking here, but this is exactly why we can't have nice things. Too many damn laws stand in the way of true innovation anymore. It will be our demise.

#1. By the numbers, you are right. Hope that makes you feel better.

#2. The numbers are irrelevant. The reasons we incarcerate people, especially when they should have been protected by half a dozen Amendments our Government ignores daily, is the real issue.

Hope that makes you feel better.

If you literally cannot find anyone fitting for a particular position of power, then perhaps it's time to stop looking for candidates and start asking why is that position so difficult to fill.

Besides, that position is a mere puppet today. The President has no real power to do a damn thing. He's told what to do. By those who put him there.

And now we start to see why...

Sure, if you believe history and the warmongering way of removing corruption.

I'd prefer the peaceful approach by simply making them irrelevant again, in much the same way our founders simply removed ourselves from the island of Great Britain a couple hundred years ago. Perhaps not completely peaceful, but the bottom line is British rule and law became irrelevant.

It's easy to remove power when it no longer matters. You simply ignore it. Our Government is well on it's way to creating this mentality. US citizens break dozens of laws every single day, and a lot of them knowingly (drinking and driving, speeding, illicit drug use, etc.), so we already have a casual approach to law adherence. Make them even more draconian, and you'll simply make the masses ignore you even more. Forced incarceration? Yes, that is likely a possible side effect, but again, our Government will quickly find out that when you've even put the brilliant people behind bars, your country quickly becomes rather fucked.

Of course the larger concern is whether or not "fucked" is actually an end goal at this point. At the rate we're going, sure seems that way.

And yet the part you should be even more concerned about is reaching the point where they have the guts (read arrogance) to stand there and tell you the truth to your face, knowing there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

(and yes, they have already reached that point.)

And yet they are repeatedly voted into office.

When trying to figure out who should wear the dunce cap, perhaps we should start with the ones putting crooks in positions of power.

Uh, given that many of the most powerful positions within our government are still elected positions, I'd say you're only half right.

It says a hell of a lot more about the apathy and ignorance of the voters who helped create it.

And yes, of course it's too late to effect real change. This didn't happen overnight, didn't start with some guy named "Bush", and won't end with some guy named "Obama". That said, it seems that finger pointing creates headlines and generates click revenue these days, so back to our regular two-party mudslinging system we go, ironically in the name of capitalism.

I'm all for keeping things confidential to avoid disclosing vulnerabilities due to more traditional attacks, but this barely makes any sense whatsoever.

Why would you not want to advertise you have a data center with these capabilities, smack in the middle of tornado alley...

I think that was the point of the query here, exactly what fields remain today that require the level of math that is (rather arcanely) still infused within a CS degree?

I fell into this same trap when initially pursuing my degree. Avoiding all the advance math requirements due to my own hatred of it, I was facing three separate tracks of nothing but I/II/III math courses, which were obviously best taken in succession. It was going to take me way too long to accomplish this (while going stir-crazy on nothing but math), so I ended up switching to the MIS path, which didn't have the absurd math requirement.

Yes, and I'm also failing to understand why any of this shit is truly necessary, since it would appear for the most part (99.9999999% statistically?), over the last 50+ years of busing students to/from school, this hasn't been a justified necessity until now, in an era where taxpayers can be bent over at will to pay for greased palm programs.

And we're stupid and apathetic enough to re-elect them.

Plenty of homeless people in the US too, including Veterans of many wars.

Don't make it sound like any other country anywhere is justified in even stockpiling these damn things, let alone developing them to make them more "effective" at total annihilation.

End result: Every single team purposely throws a "cheater" into the drug testing mix, resulting in losses for every single team. Happens twice, and the entire franchise is dinged 25% on merchandising, causing the merchandisers to be punished, creating a 30% markup to account for losses. Fans are the ones ultimately punished.

C'mon man, you gotta do better than that. I promise you that is what would happen when billions are at stake. They would band together quicker than oil companies fixing gas prices just to break that system in half and go back to the "good ol' days".

And I'm also pretty sure that the concept of oneupmanship still exists (says the design engineer who thinks parachutes are "boring")

Also, Felix's goal was not to soar like a bird in a wingsuit. He was going for several world records that had more to do with height and free-fall that had been set decades earlier, by the very man who mentored him for this challenge.

So, should we charge hand chalk companies with manslaughter because some thrillseeker decides to free climb a mountain in Yosemite park instead of also purchasing and using at least 2 ropes, 4 carabiners, and 17 points of connection on the mountain face?

Do you step on a commercial airline with a parachute strapped to your back? Should we sue the airlines for not providing one?

It's also odd that you would question the backup safety system while many would question the concept of jumping from space in the first place, which most would consider "insane" regardless of the safety system(s) involved.