This is exactly the issue I'm concerned about. "Second amendment solutions" are not a solution in a working society. It means that something is seriously wrong.

This is something I am troubled by on a regular basis. It is increasingly clear that our government and legal system are stacked against common citizens.

At some point, it will occur to those being prosecuted for sharing some songs on the internet and being fined for more than they'll ever make in their lifetime, that the U.S. is a dictionary definition of a fascist state where government is intertwined with corporations and industry. The real problems are the corporate executives that can do this crap with no repercussions. There needs to be repercussions. If the legal system doesn't provide a way to bring the fight to the door of the powerful, then I fear that the our society will break down to the point where citizens must be vigilantes to get any sort of justice over the prosecutors, politicians, and the people who run the corporations.

Law enforcement has no interest in verifiable accurate technology, those things only provide "proof." What they really want is plausible "probable cause," which allows them get around all those pesky rights that citizens seem to think they want.

Believe me, I understand encryption. The problem is that if you know how the encryption key was made, which random number generator is used. How the seed was generated and any potential salt, you can limit the universe of potential keys. There are a lot of ways to reduce the "real" range of possibilities based on application weakness and user stupidity.

I doubt very much the the NSA does a dumb attack on crypto, they can guess based on the application being used, when, and from other information a MUCH smaller range of keys.

The math of encryption makes it seem almost impossible to break, the reality is user stupidity. Passwords are stupid simple and that will get you every time. Now, iMessage, where they have randomly generated keys, I could see those as being far more difficult to break, even for a massive super computer, but still, not impossible -- if the code breaking software is excluded from the initial brokerage of the shared secret. However, in many ssl type encryptions they re-negotiate the secret periodically. It is possible to insert yourself or monitor the exchange and calculate it.

Who knows? Encryption is based on the assumption that it would take a very very long time to break. When you virtually infinite resources to crack it, all bets are off.

The "Home of the Brave" is a joke at MIT, and U.S. universities across America. Once the wussy administrators take hold, all is lost without a fight. Wussy administrators will use security and safety as they cudgels, They will hide behind their desks and enact policy that eliminates any freedom that may challenge the status quo.

This is, in fact, what America deserves unless and until we ALL have the courage to fight it everywhere it is. I would say "Shame On You" to MIT, but I would be decades late.

I don't know who started thus rumor, but it is not true. If you say something publicly, that is damaging, but true, then truth is the absolute defense against slander or libel.

The 1st amendment trumps many laws. We have the right to speak. These guys should absolutely file a civil rights law suit against Richards, SendGrid, and PyCon. If they are responsible to their employer for their remarks on the premise that their employer is responsible for their representation, then SendGrid is responsible for Richard's actions and is therefor a legitimate target.

Of course it doesn't, what you describe is battery. If you threaten me, that's assault. If you threaten me, then hit me, that's assault and battery. Making a dongle joke is neither.

We are all at risk here. Even though we have freedom of speech, we run the risk of losing our livelihoods if we say something that might offend someone somewhere. Richards was being a real "bitch." I say "bitch" because it is a disparaging name for a female. Not because I wish to be sexist. If the perpetrator of this nonsense was a guy, I'd call him a real "bastard." Calling a woman a "bastard" doesn't seem to be the correct usage in the English language. If someone can come up with a disparaging name to call a female that is not sexist, please suggest one, but if it is not sexists to call a guy a bastard, I refuse to accept that there is no non-sexist name we can call a woman when we are condemning her and her actions, but I digress.

Seriously, I've been in the situation where I have been pulled aside by management for saying something offensive, but they won't say what, to someone, but they won't say who, and that I should stop it, but they don't say how. The whole harassment mentality is very kafka-esque. The REAL hostile work environment is created by zero-tolerance crap, which, by definition, means "intolerant."

Human beings are imperfect. "Appropriate" behavior is a myth of the modern workplace police. Human beings build relationships and we communicate. We are not robots. Humor is part of humanity, and sometimes humor is off color. There is a difference between saying, "Hey, my dongle is bigger than yours" and "Have sex with me or your fired."

Also, lets be honest here, if ms Richard heard these jokes from her friends at that conference, she would not have complained. She should try to understand and take to heart Voltaire's quote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." An evangelist should stand for something besides her own notoriety. Gatherings of human beings are generally improved when we all try to be tolerant of one another.

I need to preface that by saying I think Linus is 100% correct on the technical matter. As a "boss" he's appalling. He's absolutely right in his assessment as well. You don't pass the buck.

That being said, when something is this big, you do it privately. .

The spirit of the law is to protect users. The people creating sites don't care, and are, in fact, hostile to any such consideration.

In all reality, cookies enable some pretty good behavior on web sites, but more often than not, are designed to track user behavior against their own interests.

Your behaviors are those of a spammer. 420,000 addresses? You are surprised that you were blocked? There does not need to be any conspiracy, it only means that there is similarity in their algorithms.

Anyone that wishes to deliver 420K k-emails in a batch SHOULD be shut off. That volume of email can not contain any valuable information. Its nothing but the crap we have to endlessly delete. You are the type of email abuser that makes spam filters nessesary.

This ship has sailed, the government already knows your net-worth. That is a different argument, of course, and I probably agree with you.

It sounds like a daunting task, but it isn't really. Most people make this accounting for insurance and tax purposes already. If you owe more than you own, then you pay no tax.

I'm pretty sure that a study would find that some number, say $30,000 single and $50,000 married, covers most people in the united states when it comes to non-accounted assets. Everything else generally is on a ledger somewhere that is already reported to the IRS. You have NO IDEA how much privacy people have lost since Nixon's "Drug War."

The real problem is *what* is taxed. Income is bogus. I don't see why, when I go to work, the money I earn is taxed at a higher rate than the income derived by a rich person's trust fund. No, "income" is a bad tax. What we need is a "net worth" tax. 2 or 3 percent should do it for everyone, including companies, because, companies are people too. They have 1st amendment rights according to SCOTUS, let them pay up as well.

Everyone calculate their net worth and pay 2-3% no exemptions.

I'll ignore the obvious implied ad-hominem (accusing anyone of pedophilia is an attack) and talk about the quote. It is important to be able to discuss sensitive and emotional matters in an unemotional and controversial way. The sub-quote about pedophilia was part of a much larger abstract treatment of social morals and laws around sex and, in fact, did not make any direct claims one way or another. It merely cited a lack of evidence that un-coerced acts caused harm and that it is likely that the coercion, itself, does. Which, given research and a common feeling of "violation" amongst victims isn't all that unreasonable. Also, given the context of the quote, I believe that it was aimed toward maturing adolescents and obviously not about little children, which you seem to want to imply.

Controversial people say controversial things. Things are controversial because they challenge perception. Stupid people react to controversy with hysterics and hatred, intellectual people respond to controversy with reason.

RMS Lives in this world and has an almost perfect record of seeing the problems before everybody else.

Seriously, do you work for a company getting crushed by Linux? Insulting a man, not on his character but by your subjective view of his appearence is almost a text book example of insecurity and ignorance.

To the intellects that will listen, he is quite impressive. You, well, lets leave it at that.