Now the police report does indicate that they were both probably drinking.. but one wonders if perhaps his meeting with this lady was not entirely happenstance.

She does bear a passing resemblance to Jenna Elfman.

FWIW, having worked for the man, I can say he is one of a few unquestionably brilliant people whom I've known. PLUS, he makes the trains run on time and has an appreciation for business realities. I'll leave it to the reader to consider how often that confluence occurs.

I realise that neither I nor many people on ./ suffer fools gladly, but I can only imagine what life must be like for him.

It seemed to me that in any given conversation he was usually seeing about 6 moves ahead.

If the Inevitable Breakdown(tm) is to ever be caused by an asteroid hitting Earth, I sincerely hope he's on the speed dial list.

I think that may be a good perspective. There's no reason you couldn't have a sort of enterprise policy enforcement that took time into account. Even /usr/games on older Unix systems had a timed access restriction mechanism.

I think that bright students will always find ways to use systems not oontemplated originally. Sometimes this results in wonderful creations. Sometimes it means that the best-laid policies may be difficult or impossible to enforce.

If they're to be part of a mission-critical enterprise process (such as learning at school), it's also important to make sure that there is a way to audit and/or enforce basic integrity and security.

Disclaimer: I work for a manufacturer of security and policy/configuration management products.