You joke, but still - what's worse between the two? Blowing up abortion clinics or blowing up whole city blocks?

Even if it was -actual- rape, and not just a technicality of the terms, this would still be way out of line. There's got to be more going on than just questioning over rape charges.

We all see the elephant in the room, but the elephant seems to think he's invisible.

Not with the bios-enforced bootloader lockdown, you won't.

Best. Comment. Ever.

I would have been glad to have one... if not for the bootloader lockdown bullshit.

Foot, meet bullet.

... and that's why I have a TI-84 Silver, 10 years later? That I actually use?

For what it's worth, I managed to get everything done without being forced to use Office to do it. My teachers didn't necessarily love me for it (more work for them), but they supported it by not tossing my work in the trash...

We had Apple ][ computers in elementary school. When I became a consumer, we had whitebox PCs and iMacs.

There's a significant time lag in there that you don't seem to have accounted for. The Apple ][ didn't do the damage, the iMac and lockdown did.

I think you are confusing "not possible" for "not permitted."

I think you'll find the two are not equivalent out here in the Real World.

How exactly is that enforcable? You let the user run code, and they get to run code. How exactly can you prevent them from doing things when they aren't calling system APIs to do it? You can't exactly distinguish between computing the derivative of some engineering problem and compiling bytecode...

It would be interesting to see that done to an entire company (that happens to be fairly well known both domestically and internationally)

You must not be paying attention. They are practically required to these days.

Alright. Maybe I'll give it a try, because you're right - the expression of my viewpoint was certainly lacking and doesn't really deserve respect.

What I am expecting however, is more of the same shit I hear from people who mouth off or walk around practically broadcasting their drug habits that I'm hardly surprised they attract trouble.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've yet to meet someone who's had these sorts of problems who hasn't done something stupid to bring it on themselves, first. I'm not trying to say that it never happens. Getting struck by lightning also happens. Doesn't mean it will happen to you every time you go outside.

Interestingly, I would expect just dumping the data into a database and using algorithms to figure things out would make more sense.

The name doesn't help either.

In my case yes, I sacrificed chemistry to get a full dose of physics instead. I don't really regret it, though sometimes I do feel the lack. I would expect to see more use out of a database + algorithms rather than a convenient tabular arrangement.