But how hard is it to get root on there? No doubt it is quite easy with A) Physical access to the machine and B) an owner who knows his machine. All you have to do is become root for a few seconds and delete whatever offending programs are on there and even that might not require root access.

I think you'll find that that particular issue got a good airing in Dawkins' (et al) last book - he even went so far as to describe it as child abuse.

> He isn't being a hero, defender of freedom or "whistle blower" he just did
> his job as he swore, in an oath, that he would...

Well, don't trivialize it. I know what you're saying, but aside from what he was theoretically doing, he was practically very much being a hero. He says he didn't think through all the ramifications, but he also admitted he was very nervous about calling the Times; he knew what it meant in general, if not yet in detail.

Wow, you are a pedantic little fuckwad aren't you?

Why? You won't find any child porn there. The article isn't all that detailed or informative (it would be better with more data), but you won't find anything illegal or offensive there.

The fact that you're either part of them or you're "indie" is what's wrong with this.

If the majority of artists have to jump through hoops to get a cut, maybe the RIAA should similarly have to jump through hoops to shake people down for their lunch money.

A large part of the security issues with Windows is that Windows users were trained in a world where viruses werent a big threat. Sure there was the occasional malware, but back in the days, people barely ever had the internet, nevermind downloading viruses for it.

I think that will be the downfall of Apple security eventually. Linux users tend to take security a bit more seriously. Windows users are starting to. Apple users? Nada. They stick their fingers in their ears and go "LALALA IM NOT USING WINDOWS LAlALALA". Once a new attack vector is discovered that can target OSX "by design" (think ActiveX, but more subtle), things are going to go downhill from there, and Apple users will be totally unprepared for it.

Comparing with other countries is valid though. The USA usually performs very poor for being the highest spender on education in the world.

Just wait a second here. I think that's pretty sexist to assume that it was women who kept track of the menstrual cycle. After all, the guy probably also kind of had an interest in knowing this bit of information.

The NRA works to defend the 2nd Amendment; the ACLU works to defend the other nine (in the Bill of Rights). I see nothing wrong with this, except that the ACLU ought to care about #2 too.

My former high school is a little different. Same status as one of the better public schools in the state back when I was there. Since I've left, dropouts have increased from 5% to near 20% and on time graduation rates are down from 87% to 72%. Classes have increased from 100-120 when I was there to about 150 now, so it's not quite the growth your school saw, but in response, the school has spent a buttload of money building extra classrooms (because, you see, each teacher has the right to have their own classroom, which sits empty half the day, so we need to build a new one for every teacher hired). We've spent about $10 million a year in bonded capital improvements over the last decade or so while we've averaged around $150k a year on books. And that's before we even talk about lighted lavish sports fields and buildings (and I'm someone that played high school football under the lights on a field that had its own field house)

The mis-spent money is one thing... where the real difference comes in, and it was noticeable between my "generation" (class of 95) and my sister's (who is 7 years younger than me), was the teachers. As I came up through school, most of my teachers retired within a year or two of my having them. I had the old school teachers who taught the 3 Rs, taught you to memorize things and instilled some measure of critical thinking ability. Some where better than others, some were worse, but we had a clear foundation to build on. My sister got their fresh faced replacements, fresh out of college with new ideas on how to teach. They focused more on self-esteem and using technology than understanding how things actually worked. As such, my sister didn't get that same foundation to build on that I did.

I managed a restaurant for 10 years and dealt with kids about my own age and with this next generation... Even the dimmer bulbs of my generation had a little drive and a desire to learn how to do things. The newer generation of kids expect everything to be handed to them, can't properly fill out an application (and their spelling is atrocious!), can't do simple arithmetic without a calculator and whenever you tell them they're doing something wrong, no matter how gently you try, they completely break down. I couldn't tell you the number of people, especially girls, I've had cry on me in recent years because they made a very minor mistake and had to be corrected on it (such as not charging for a 25 cent side).

Yeah, for a lot of kids, it's the parents that need to take a majority of the blame for their kids being spoiled, can-do-no-wrong, praise seeking idiots, but the education system is very flawed as well (given that such a dichotomy can exist within the same family... my sister was pushed by our parents the same way I was). We need to look at education theory and throw in a little practice; We need to start doing the things we know work again and stop placing the majority of our focus on things that should work because someone in an ivory tower said so.

But Wall*E has a place in my heart.

No, he just lives in Peru.

When you do space research, you don't get any utility added to the economy.

Who said anything about research? I'm all for exploitation of space.

Ignoring that, however, one must point out that in the 1940's hurricanes could make landfall without anyone being aware of their existence prior to landfall. Doesn't happen so much now.

Or there's that whole ozone hole thing. Which was discovered by a satellite. No benefit to society to knowing about (and thus being able to fix a problem)? I think not.

Or GPS systems. Or commsats. Or...

The space program has paid for itself many times over, if only by giving us enough information to prevent disasters. Consider Katrina, and the effect it would have had if there had been no evacuation from the Gulf Coast (evacuation of New Orleans requires 2.5 days, and can't be done at all in the 24 hours before a major storm hits), which is the situation that we'd have had before the space program.