Breaking content in a standard way, which can then be unbroken in a standard way (likely to be cross platform and supported by your browser); as opposed to only being unbroken by a dodgy Windows-only rootkit supplied by the content distributor.

Indeed. Encrypted Media Extensions, W3C First Public Working Draft 10 May 2013:

That rationale (as I've heard it explained) is that media (video/audio) content distributors are going to implement DRM, so the Hobson's choice is between giving them a standard interface (HTML EME) or having every distributor create their own proprietary media player (probably platform-specific with embedded rootkit).

If you believe that all media should be gratis, or you believe that all media should be open and consumers should be trusted to pay for non-gratis media absent any technological protection, then you will view EME as a bad thing.

If you believe that Copyright should be able to exist on media and that authors and/or distributors should be able to charge for the video/audio, and you believe that technological protection measures may have some impact to reduce non-paid use of such media, and you believe that it is in the interest of consumers to have standards for these sort of things, then you may view EME as a good thing.

Sounds more specifically like Role Based Access Control (RBAC). You can define RBAC with a Subject (identity-based access control with roles) or without a subject. In the latter case authentication is tied to authorising a role, rather than authenticating a subject who has (or can authorise) a role.

Certainly seems like a more promising idea than pupil dilation. Wikipedia has a comparison of BCI hardware.

It's not always "in your current time zone" - it depends on the "kind" of the DateTime. If you use DateTime.Now you will indeed get a value which is in your current system time zone. And I think you meant either DateTime.UtcNow or DateTimeOffset.UtcTicks rather than DateTime.UtcTicks...there's no such property as DateTime.UtcTicks.

When it comes to using the system time zone, It's not about "those iron age societies" using daylight saving - it's more about DateTime basically always representing some sort of "local" date, either in your local time zone, UTC, or an unspecified time zone. That's a very broken design, but not (IMO) in the way that you claim it to be.

Likewise it's entirely reasonable IMO to ignore "the" Julian/Gregorian shift in 1752, partly as it happened in different years depending on the place(and Sweden is particularly strange in this regard). All kinds of aspects of a date/time become weird if you swtch calendar system - and the DateTime type *only* represents the Gregorian calendar system. (If you give it a different one in the constructor, it effectively translates the value into the Gregorian calendar.) Again, I view that as a broken design - but not because of "the" 1752 shift.

So yes, there are plenty of valid criticisms of .NET's date/time handling, but yours didn't quite hit the mark for me.

The support for date and time handling in .NET is deplorable too, in my view. If it weren't, I wouldn't have bothered to create the Noda Time library (http://nodatime.org) which I'd like to think does a rather better job.

Having a single type (well, two with DateTimeOffset) to represent all kinds of different concepts is simply a bad idea. See my rant about this for more details:
http://noda-time.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/what-wrong-with-datetime-anyway.html

It's almost as if every country of note is running massive internet surveillance programs, is aware of everybody else's program, and is only using the leaks as an excuse to publicly complain about something everyone knows everyone else is doing.

Nah, that would just be paranoid.

They probably just descramble the firewall....

I'd say it's a big sign of a certain OSS developer's immaturity.

I have talked to VCs a number of times. Always wound up finding other funding in the end, but got a lot of perspective on what VCs are looking for and how they anticipate getting it.

Number one: a VC expects 5x-10x return on investment. That return is typically from selling to another company (which may itself be a VC). It may also be from revenue but VCs these days are less interested in active revenue. They want to sell the company and move on.
Number two: They don't care so much about the actual technology. It's important to have good demos etc, but it's kind of a tertiary concern. VCs are investing, first and foremost, in people who they think will get it done. Not just on the tech side, but on the business side.
Number three: The more you talk about the tech's details, the worse it gets. Focus on why this makes sense to consumers at a high level. Focus on why YOU are special. Not the algorithm. YOU.
Number four: It is enormously helpful to have important industry people to vouch for you. Find filmmakers or producers or somebody who are successful with recognized achievements, and have them write mini-recommendations for the tech.

As engineers, it is very tempting to try and explain to a VC why your algorithm is so much more clever than what's out there. Do not bother. That's not what capital is about.

I really hope people aren't taking that comment literally by the way..

Catching the people who injured 170 people and killed 3 in a terrorist attack.

I meant affected in a non-trivial way. My life has been "affected" by reading about it, and someone who was advised to stay indoors while they caught the suspects was "affected", but to say your life has been affected by it in a way that can be counted against someone who had a leg blown off is an insult.

Civil panic being "Please stay indoors while we finish chasing down the other person who did this to your loved ones" ? I guess in that situation you would probably have places you need to be though, and who cares if having everyone moving around while an armed chase plays out makes casualties/hostage taking/escape more likely?

170 marathon runners / spectators were wounded and children were killed in this attack intended to kill/maim as many innocent people as possible.

What does this have to do with neighborhood gun crime, or car crime, or whatever? If those gunmen had indiscriminately opened fire on a crowd of people, just because they wanted to maximize the damage, and 170 people were maimed and children were killed, I am sure you would get a similar response. (And presumably there would be people saying "that's nothing: in the neighborhood I live in people have got stabbed and mugged before and there was no lockdown then! this is becoming some kind of fascist state!"

It is so embarrassing seeing people in this discussion saying how few people were killed, what a terrible thing it is that Boston was locked down for a day, and how could the police do that.. I just cringe at the thought of someone who's life was affected reading some of the comments in this discussion.