Now I'm not saying incompetence isn't plausible, or even likely. But I also wonder if this wouldn't be somewhat intentional on the part of a few people as a political maneuver, whether via who the contracts went too, artificial delays, etc etc, in order to make the project become politically embarrassing. Sabotaging a co-workers project is not unheard of in the corporate world to get ahead or inhibit their credibility, so why would the government be any different...

The russians did it, to bad most research along this vein cannot be pursued due to ethics boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=739DPi7dAOM

You do realize the difference between low frequency and high frequency RFID right?
Allow me to answer in Haiku:

What you found yells loud,
while this new device can hear,
barely a whisper

Did you even read the quote you posted?

"The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry," Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. "But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change. Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. What we cant do is let the protection get in the way of us enjoying our freedoms. You still want to let people practice their religion, no matter what that religion is. And I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That's not true ... That would let the terrorists win. That's what they want us to do."

Emphasis mine. That quote states that our interpretation will change to PROTECT our freedoms against the fear-mongering people trying to increase security at the cost of it. I'm all for lambasting people for taking away one of the few documents that got this country on the right track, but at least pick quotes that backup the statement you're trying to make...

Actually, if you were a user of the sites, you'd notice there is strong evidence that points to a coordinated DDOS. The spurts of traffic aren't continuous, and they "break" at suspicious timings. For example, at the bottom of the curves, the sites work fine, most of the market/chart sites get their feeds, etc. It's only during the drops/raises start, when it would be fortuitous for people to put in trades, and then freak out when they can't, that the connection issues occur.

I'm not entirely ruling out it being sheer volume of people, but if it was it wouldn't "Come and go" as drastically as it's doing. We're talking sites entirely unusable one minute, and suddenly perfectly fine the next, then unusable 30 min later.

Relevant xkcd to rant below: http://xkcd.com/932/

So please, explain to us how a third party's online wallet service is now a fundamental flaw in bitcoin itself? They made a server that did data management for the user, and thought they had security in place such that their data was unacessible without the proper password. They then were proven wrong. So now they need a new method of storing it (architecture) that is secure.

For the obligatory car analogy, this is like you saying a certain car brand sucks at security because an aftermarket mechanic installs hidden compartments in it, and then the compartment gets broken into because it has a shitty lock. Now the mechanic is out of the compartment installing business until he finds a better lock to put in.

Do employees have to trek across campus to get the vending machine they like that stocks their particular favored model of headset, mouse or keyboard?(Model M preferably)
Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?

Inquiring minds want to know!

IANAEE, but we don't have perfect electromagnetic shielding yet, and more and more of our warefare is relying on technology. Is it not unreasonable to assume that the countermeasures for remote drones would be just blasting as my em radiation into the spectrum as possible to jam their control signals, or short them outright with a focused EMP if they had autonomous capabilities?

Especially since the blast radius of an EMP weapon doesn't have to be particualrly large to be effective and travels through air quite well.

You mean just the BSA?

I mean maybe it's just me, but why is it ok for one entity to object multiple times to the same case and have it count as a a widespread rejection just because they've created several shell companies to espouse their ideas? i mean how many times have we seen "numerous" organizations write into a court case only to later find out they're all being paid by a single entity with a vested interest?

Legal Reform Idea: Any objection to a case must be done by individual companies, not group membership, and must declare conflict of interest

Actually, DMCA notices are sent under penalty of perjury. So in effect, they ARE under oath. Whoever marked the above as informative needs to read the laws they cower from.

A patent troll is one who files or buys overly broad patents, expressly for the purpose of not pursuing active development or marketing of their patents. A patent troll's business plan is to wait for a company to make big on something that might infringe, or buy portfolios that might be infringed on, and keep them in obscurity, till such time they can be used to sue(read: extort) a company such that proper legal defense is purposefully less than the cost to comply with their licensing agreements.

In short, a patent troll would prefer you not learn about their patent till it's too late, while a proper patent holder wants you to know of their patent so that you will license it from them for your technology.

Relevant xkcd
But seriously, how many times have you seen minimum (ok, can see a point here) or maximum (WTF) limits on a password length? Or requirements of what it can or cannot contain.

Is there any reasonable excuse for why a password must not contain certain characters, besides breaking poorly made scripts? I mean password security 101 says they'll hash it anyway, so why should it matter?

whoops, the above is me, just to put my reputation a bit on the line so it's not thinking the above anon is a paid shill.

I can shed some insight here.
Minecraft and The Sims are not "hard" in the sense that you will fail a lot.
Merely that they are hard meaning you start the game with very little understanding in how it works, and then have to master those systems to do what you want.
As you are placing blocks, you have to deal with resource management, your own life, etc.
A game does not have to be hard to be challenging. Nor does being hard make a game challenging.

My favorite example from recent games is one called Demon Souls. Many people say it is hard, and challenging, yet It has one aspect that I love because it perfectly demonstrates the difference between the two, because it is a perfect example of something that is hard, but not a challenge.
It has what used called an arcade coin-trick. A piece of gameplay put in purely to eat your quarters and lengthen time playing, without adding an equivalent value of fun or different playstyle.

The challenging part of the game is learning each individual enemy, how they fight, how you can react, etc. You develop actual skills as the game goes on and your proficiency goes up.
The coin trick is the death and respawn limit. While you can argue it adds a sense of urgency and being careful to the game, one could have done this without such a harsh penalty (loss of all exp, plus time wasted attempting to regain it only to fail at the end). This is an example of a piece of a game that is hard, but not challenging. It is hard because it punishes failure, without adding much extra fun.

So with this in mind, you can see why minecraft and the sims can be considered challenging in that they engage the mind and thought, without being hard.