which brings an interesting question... can astronauts really spend long times in space (months or maybe over a year) without any sexual thinking at all? i mean... at some point, if you do.. you have to unload... uhm.. are they allowed to?

Was there something about being a woman that made it problematic being in space

you mean besides the monthly "make no sense, freak everyone out" day? no, i don't think there's any difference.

when i boot my Windows 7 system, i either run firefox, or play one of the installed games... i dont touch IE, any of the MS games installed, hell, i never touched anything else in that system except the first day i installed it, to setup few things... but i doubt this means "windows" is irrelevant, and firefox is more important...

GNU is still the very heart of a Linux system. you might not see them, but all these cron jobs running silently in the background are bash scripts, all programs require GLibC to run, as they're linked against it, the list is quite long of programs from GNU you're not even aware of their existence, all necessary to get the system to tick, but if you're really interested, i advise you to give a scan read of the "Linux From Scratch" book, to get an idea of how deeply interconnected is GNU's relationship to Linux, and how the two are inseparable.

completely defeating the purpose of the entire system, as no one will use tor again.... who are you going to trust with the keys to that backdoor?

indeed, one way i can think of, requires some cooperation from ISPs. create some heavy load on the tor website, heavy enough to be noticeable, making the ISPs aware of the exact time this bandwidth surge is going to happen at, and they can report which users had their bandwidth soar at that period... few of them are just innocent tor relays (i'm aware some relays will be from other parts of the world), and one is the actual server, won't be hard figuring things out after that.

the same argument could have been made about many other services, including the internet itself.... some people still believe the web is just a porn service, and refuse to use it, well... their problem. everything can be used for good and bad, but i get your point, tor DOES seem to be attracting more illicit usage than what it was initially intended for, what it actually needs, is more legal users to out-shadow the bad ones, most people don't even bother with tor, leaving mostly the criminals to use it.

.. funded by the government... the government should be punished, someone needs to be held accountable, how could we have let this comedy run for so lo long??

i understand your point of view on this, but RMS still has to do it. take a good look around the FOSS world, almost everyone disagrees with RMS, and allow/encourage/provide non-free software, that can range from drivers, to games, to highly useful programs that don't have a FOSS alternative. and the linux world keeps thriving, and getting better, and of course, has not lost its spirit of freedom. non-free software, in little amounts with the vast free stuff available, perfects the ecosystem, not harm it. but with all this intermixing, people sometimes tend to forget initial goals, forget why linux was created, and might get dragged into a sea of non-free software, that might invade it all, hence why we need someone like RMS to remind us of what our priorities should be, and by taking this extremist stance, he can be sure to make the best effect. you don't have to agree with him 100%, but he serves as a good reminder. think of it as pulling a spring 20 cm, when you want it to be 15 cm long, because you know it'll shrink back a little once released...

very... same... experience... completely...

no one is saying you can't be paid for your work. I write free software as well, and i make money selling support and warranties. my code comes with absolutely no warranty, and anyone can use it, but seeing as it's aimed at schools (i design school administration systems), you can bet they want some guarantee the system will function, support availability if something malfunctions, bug fixes when released, and for the "pro" package they get to suggest custom features that i'll happily implement.

some choose to be charged by hours of actual support, others buy annual support packages. and then, some might want to just use the system themselves, without my support, it's their choice, i really don't mind.

oh, and i make some profit selling hardware, almost all schools here don't have a proper server, and some have horrible networking that requires some changing, to which i charge money as well...

it just works :)

The government wouldn't waste time doing a background check just because you flew to modern-day Democratic Russia

no, they would now do it if you flew to yemen or china

we spend years in university, paying thousands of dollars, to study networking and communication, not to sit at home and watch... but to answer those questions for you. hire a network engineer, and he'll be well worth it for you.

*you* wouldn't... the majority of the world's sheeple would be drooling at its sight, though...

they sure do make it a lot easier, with some downsides as well. i use keepassx on *nix, and keep a portable keepass on my USB thumb drive for windows computer. all my passwords are store in it, all are 25 characters, with around 200 bits of entropy each. the only thing to worry about, is the master password, which was created using keepassx's password generator as well. as long as i remember to exit it before leaving, or at least locking the computer, there's not much to worry about. all passwords different, all strong, and auto-type makes things very easy. the downside is... you dont really know any of your passwords, and become reliant on the program. that's why i keep at least 2 complex passwords committed to memory and use them for common stuff, like my email. it's quite embarrassing to sit by your university project partner, be asked to login to the university website, put hand in pocket, realize you forgot the thumbdrive home, and exclaim "i don't know my uni password at the moment".

oh you'll be surprised... don't be alarmed if one day you discover someone inside your own house is ad-clicking, or worse, can't tell the difference between a real button, and a flash-drawn ad button... and here i thought, my people would know better after all these years of obviously useless rants from my side....