"Computer nerds lack creativity, empathy, sense of beauty ... They are socially defective."

You are talking about people ... and it's not very sociable or empathetic of you to use such negative stereotypes in this forum. I was talking about the value of programming as part of an educational curriculum. A kid isn't going to become a "socially defective" computer nerd just by taking a few courses about computers & programming. With the pervasiveness of these things in our society, it's important that people have a rudimentary understanding of how they work.

"Art and Literature are culture. They stimulate creativity and intelligence"

Forcing kids to read Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare does not stimulate creativity and intelligence. It just makes sure that there is perennial demand for Cliff Notes & work for people who write book reports for a price. Art is an even more worthless subject in education because any assessment of the student is entirely subjective. How many writers and artists who excelled in their fields learned creativity through some form of structured education?

I'm actually an engineer, but I'll take "computer nerd" as a compliment. Save your sympathy for the art & literature majors trying to convince potential employers about how smart & creative they are.

Gimme a f***ing break! The kids are inside studying Art, Literature and other mostly useless subjects and you're arguing that coding is a waste of their time? They'd be better off on the playground than learning about computers? Idiot. Why would kids think this particular subject is their future any more than they would think accounting or any other subject is their future?

Obsolescence? So what? Every single programming language you'll ever encounter is going to use fundamental concepts like sequences, selections, loops & data structures. Learning these concepts is valuable even if they forget the syntax of the language they're learning on. Algorithms is another inherently valuable concept. Kids these days will encounter 1000s of devices that use some form of code to function. Learning the basics of how these things work is an invaluable part of their education.

Are you sure you're not in a shitty mood that's clouding your thinking?

Good job OP. Keep up the good work.

I think the hackers need to hire some ... I don't know ... would it be "actuaries" that could make a good estimate for the ransom amount that would yield the highest total payout? Perhaps they do and I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think $300 per machine must be way above optimal.

Remember supply & demand curves from econ 101? The lower the price, the greater the demand for your "decryption service". And in this case, the supplier's cost is negligible so the demand curve is all that matters. Demand goes infinite as the price approaches $0, and disappears as the price goes too high. Seem like the sweet spot on that curve would be considerably lower than $300.

There are roughly 1.8 Billion Muslims in the world. This ban affects six countries.

Country|Population in millions
Iran 79.11
Syria 18.5
Somalia 10.79
Iraq 36.42
Yemen 26.83
Libya 6.278
Total 177.93

Yes, Trump talked about a "Muslim ban" when he was candidate Trump, but how can any reasonable person interpret this order as a "Muslim ban" when it affects 10% of Muslims worldwide?

Countries affected by the travel ban:
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iran

Countries being bombed by the previous administration:
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan

People are claiming that the current president does not have the legal authority to ban people from these countries from entering the U.S., but nobody questioned the previous president's legal authority to kill them?

The circuit courts used a wild stretch of the imagination to conflate a ban based on national origin with a ban based on religion. Trump said something during his campaign and the courts used that to infer that this ban was somehow based on religious background? This, despite the fact that there are more than a billion Muslims from dozens of countries all over the world who were unaffected and there was no exception for non-Muslims?

They are supposed to rule on the law itself. The President has the power or he doesn't. Guessing what he might be thinking as the basis for a court ruling is ridiculous.

I'm sorry about your personal predicament, but I don't think the decision of whether you live or die should be in the hands of a government.
We didn't always have welfare programs. We've lived with them for so long however, that we don't know anything different. People have made their decisions based on a particular institutional environment. Who knows what would have evolved if government had not taken this mission upon itself or what will evolve if we scale back their activity?

What if we all sat around and did nothing and demanded that our most basic needs be met? I don't think The Constitution gives you the "right" to food, clothing, shelter or anything else that requires the labor of other people.

"Why not just take money out of the equation and provide universal healthcare?"

With a magic wand? Do you expect doctors, nurses, medical device manufacturers, drug developers, etc. etc. to all work without compensation? No, you expect everyone else in society to spend part of their time working without compensation to pay for medical services. You cannot take money/wealth out of the equation.

"So want to privatize the police and firefighter protection too?"

It's worth considering, but it's not really feasible. I definitely want government out of the business of healthcare, except for enforcing the types of laws that apply to all other businesses.

Why shouldn't you have to "earn" what you get?

I don't think we have a pervasive lack of compassion and empathy in our society. I think we've been brainwashed into believing that caring about others should be a mission left to government. A mission at which they fail in the most catastrophic manner.
We're already paying for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, housing subsidies, heating subsidies, etc. etc. People see the fraud & abuse of these programs and naturally recoil at the thought of funding more of the same.
Advocating for higher taxes and more or bigger government programs doesn't demonstrate how much you care. We should get government OUT of the charity business and adopt the attitude that these problems are our collective responsibility, but not through the wasteful and inefficient institution of government.

If you file a report, is the FBI under any obligation to keep it confidential? I wouldn't trust them to stay quiet even if that was their official policy. Those guys who leaked the "Orange is the New Black" episodes somehow learned that the studio had called the FBI, after being warned not to, and punished them for doing it, even though they paid the ransom.

I read one paper by a security expert and he said that big banks in Europe and N. America have been doing this for years. Eat the losses from computer crime as a cost of doing business rather than risk damage to their reputation by reporting that someone had broken into their customer's accounts.

I'm sure a lot of other companies would rather pay up than endure the bad publicity which would come from word getting out that "Company X was hacked".

If you really need full sized lumber, you're probably going to have to go directly to a sawmill. My family was in the wood products business when I was growing up. We had a sawmill, but it was mostly to supply our own needs for other products. We were willing to sell rough cut, full sized lumber to people however.
It's going to have to be small business though. A big sawmill operation, like the types who would be supplying Home Depot aren't going to pull half a dozen pieces out of their operation for you, but there are still small operations around serving niche markets.
As far back as I can remember, the advertised dimensions have meant the cut size. You lose 1/4" on each side by planing. I'm not sure when they started planing everything headed to the retail market. Probably in the late '60's or sometime in the '70s. I've seen houses built in the 1960s which had rough wall studs, but in 30+ years, except for our own small business, I don't think I've ever seen rough lumber for retail sale.

"I'd rather see a robot get destroyed in an accident than a person killed."

That's one way of looking at it. Another perspective is to consider the 1000s of people struggling financially & working long hours at restaurants and Wal Mart with low pay & no benefits. Think of how much sickness, misery and death is caused by financial stress and poverty? Would you rather see that, or a bunch of well paid people with benefits working jobs with a higher risk of workplace accidents? There are tens of millions of people in the U.S. who would gladly trade their nice safe Starbucks job for a steel mill job.

Besides, automation didn't kill the U.S. steel industry. Idiotic "free trade" deals did. I wonder how the risks in Chinese steel mills compare to the dangerous steel mill jobs we used to have in the U.S.? It would be nice if U.S. based companies & workers at least had the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. i.e. with companies who had the same safety and environmental standards.