In the meantime solid American born IT workers that I know all over the country struggle to find work. I guess it's cause they can't live on $25k a year, but the kids out of collage can.

I understand that civil court does not have the same strict rules about how clear cut the case must be, but I have yet to see a case where the evidence didn't just show that it might be that IP, which might have been used by this address, which is primarily used by X person but likely many others and then is most cases fail to show me that the files in question where actually the data they say it was. (IE just because the file is called meninblack.mkv does not mean it's the movie Men in Black) I admit I am not a lawyer and that i have not read all the cases, but of the ones I have, have yet to see it any real evidence at all (Mostly just very poor understanding of the technology used the the advantage of lawyers to extort money)

Good the next step would be for the judge to follow the rule of law and force them to prove that the movie was downloaded, and that the person they are suing is the one that downloaded it. I have yet to see a court case where they proved that well enough for me to ever have said guilty.

Then you should not be using the internet. Honestly if you think your data is so important that even after encrypting you are worried someone might get a hold of it, then you should be using a private network or good old sneaker net.

I know this place is full of geeks that don't like to be outside on the water or anything but sailing vessels have been doing this for thousands of years. Did we really need a Google grant to prove that sailboats really work?

There is a big difference between does the degree help you get jobs and does it do anything to make you a whole person. I don't have a degree and was lucky to be able to work my way up in a very large company so HR never got to look at my resume. However if you wanted my job today HR wouldn't let you past to get interviewed without a degree and a decade of experience. No one on my team that had a degree has one in Computer Science or anything like it, when we interview people with them they seem to lack all the real world knowledge that we need and end up just getting the guy with experience instead. My point here is that experience is far more important to your ability to do that job than any degree could ever be. So what degree's really do is get you past HR. If we as a people could come up with better ways to asses someones talents maybe we could get HR departments to stop sucking so bad.

It used to be that the co-pilot was there because it you needed to manhandle the plane in you needed all the strength you could get, then all the big planes started having hydraulic which meant it wasn't a matter of strength anymore but for redundancy of operators. Something happened to one they other one could fly the plane. Now from take off to landing a modern aircraft doesn't even need the pilot, they are just glorified equipment operators that require no more than a few days to lean how to setup and operate the computer. We keep a highly trained pilot as a redundant measure for the computers are board (Not a bad idea) but the co-pilot is not a redundant measure for a redundant measure. It's like having a spare gas tank for your spare gas tank.

I trust the computer to land the plane, They do it all the time now with the pilot and co-pilot just sitting there. What's the difference is there is one less dude sitting around collecting a paycheck. It used to be that the co-pilot was there because it you needed to manhandle the plane in you needed all the strength you could get, then all the big planes started having hydraulic which meant it wasn't a matter of strength anymore but for redundancy of operators. Something happened to one they other one could fly the plane. Now from take off to landing a modern aircraft doesn't even need the pilot, they are just glorified equipment operators that require no more than a few days to lean how to setup and operate the computer. We keep a highly trained pilot as a redundant measure for the computers are board (Not a bad idea) but the co-pilot is not a redundant measure for a redundant measure. It's like having a spare gas tank for your spare gas tank.