Not quite any reason; but glassholes aren't a protected class.

Probably because (unless you are willing to accept high-school-chem levels of oversimplification, and probably even if you are) computational chemistry is not exactly a problem that has any difficulty consuming all the computational resources we could possibly throw at it (unless you count problems with scaling, which I suspect that it has in spades, just to make computing with cheap interconnect less practical).

Drugs have the virtue of being (relatively) simple compared to most naturally occurring materials and (ideally) are fairly narrowly targeted. Both are significant virtues if you want to keep the scope of your simulation within the scope of the remotely possible...

Unfortunately, Win7's dual-left-foot support was actually pretty good; but was removed because you can't operate the imaginary ipad-killing tablet that Balmer dreams about with two left feet...

That's the weird thing about Win8: Vista, while a failure, at least had the decency to founder largely because everything kept from XP was antique and everything scrapped and rebuilt was immature. Win8 started out as a product that people (at least the Windows-using ones) mostly liked, and then was systematically mutilated until the release date. That takes talent.

We could also adopt the truly revolutionary step of taking the theory that contracts actually reflect an 'agreement' between two contracting partners and applying it to the assorted contracts of adhesion that dominate the entire consumer side of the economy, with software simply one example among many, and hardly the most dangerous...

So long as you can 'consent' to mandatory binding arbitration in the kangaroo court of the company's choice, without further recourse, by clicking through some clickwrap, fighting over the details of what exactly one can and can't sneak into software is fighting a tiny skirmish in the middle of a war you've already lost.

That's "Legitimate" as in "Legitimate Businessmen".

I'd imagine that the fact that even GPU mining is a fairly dubious proposition at this point (I can't remember if the increases in price lately allow it to still be viable if the hardware costs are already sunk but you need to pay the electric bill; but the FPGAs and ASICs aren't getting any slower or less numerous), even donated or stolen CPU time would be close to worthless, even if doing it in Javascript doesn't impose much overhead...

Wrong strategy: Simply explain that you'd be happy to assist a fine fellow such as him with making the desired modifications to your laptop's security settings...

Seriously, if somebody is willing to chop your hand off to bypass the security system (even if they are on the wrong track technologically) probably has many ways of demonstrating the sort of attacks enabled by physical access. You'll need to have something good on that computer to make even trying to hold out worth it.

As far as I know, absolutely none; in particular, throwing out enough RF to get a usable signal back would probably do your battery life and relationship with the FCC no good at all; but the large, precise, and sensitive PCB antenna arrays in Wacom tablets would be my off-the-cuff candidate for 'component most likely to be able to do the sensing' (but not the illuminating, they only work with the passive pens because those pens are designed to behave usefully in response to the quite feeble field put out by the tablet PCB, and nature is unlikely to be nearly so helpful). Plus, they look cool.

Good thing that IR-band pigments aren't already commercially available (never mind the tedious-but-likely-cheaper process of just looking for random stuff at Staples that happens to have the right property despite being formulated for visible-band applications, you only need to get lucky once and you'll probably have something you can spit out at usefully high resolutions on some ghastly inkjet that costs less than the ink it takes). This might actually be easier than cloning fingerprints...

I think that the problem is mostly apathy. 'Enterprise' laptops offered smartcard support for years(as did/does windows) and you could get fairly cheap PCMCIA slot card readers(the just-slightly-larger size of the PCMCIA slot makes the physical design pretty easy, and implementing a low-voltage, low-speed serial bus isn't rocket surgery). Once 'contactless/RFID' became a Thing, laptops in the same bracket started to offer RFID as an option. It's mostly mired in cryptic alphabet soup (nothing reminds you exactly how many, mostly shitting and overlapping, some incompatible RFID 'standards' there are like trying to use something not purchased all in a lump and at a markup from a single vendor); but it's there. This document applies to select Dells; but others should be largely similar.

Broadcom's "BCM2079x Family" shows up at the party, usually with some amount of confusing vendor rebranding, fairly frequently.

Aside from the obvious untenability on a continued financial basis, have you seen any sign that the desire for education-as-signalling has changed?

If anything, the intensity of the arms race underway (while obviously as sustainable as any arms race never is, especially since it's a race between employers who ask, but dont' pay, for additional credentials, and students who sacrifice both money and time to obtain them) suggests the strength of demand for signalling functions. Once a given flavor of degree becomes ubiquitous, out comes the pressure to either get the next highest one, or make sure that you get that one from the most exclusive institution.

It is easy to posit that this cannot be maintained; the numbers just don't work; but the fact that nobody has a chance of talking this particular bubble down from the ledge before it jumps hardly suggests a situation where skepticism in the utility of signalling, rather than an untenably expensive arms race in signalling, is undermining the process.

Coming soon to a laptop near you: Newton recognition (fig model for initial release, apricot and whole grain planned with kickstarter funding, if whoever (now) holds the rights to Commodore's IP releases the rights to "kickstart" in time.)

While certain diplomatic and economic relations are under strain and protests go on all over, it's important to note that none of the surveillance and other civil rights and outright illegal activity has slowed or stopped at all. In some ways it seems to have increased.

Demanding that these activities cease is action #1.

You mean, your palms. No reason they can't take an interest in the *rest* of your hands.

You'll feel better if you get some tail.