That fails to explain why the productivity of American workers has steadily increased for half a century while wages have remained stagnant. This fact is simple and easy to understand -- we are producing more and earning less. Somebody's getting screwed and it's us. Don't let this become obfuscated in all the phoney controversy.

Are there still security issues with having JS enabled?

There are security issues ANYTIME you let someone run code on your machine. Javascript is code. Therefore, yes, there are "still" (and always will be) security issues with having JS enabled.

Yes, sometimes -- very, very rarely, about 1-5% as often as clueless developers obsessed with shiny things think -- Javascript is needed for functionality. But if you can't make your site safe to access with JS turned off, you fail.

And of course this changes nothing. Folks don't turn off JS entirely these day, they use Noscript.

No. This is completely unacceptable. FireFox is my browser of choice, and I don't block JS, but there's no reason whatever I should have to go to a third party if I decide to.

What's next, I'll have to DL the HTML and strip the JS out of the source and run it locally?

Unless Mozilla changes these terrible plans, I'll have to use a different browser. There's no reason whatever to remove this feature.

My answer isn't no, it's HELL NO and fuck you, Mozilla. If you want me to continue using your products you'll grow a brain and think of your users, not your Google sugardaddy.

Indeed, and not just non-programmers. That's another beauty of open source; rather than having to write a custom module from scratch, find something that's almost and modify it to your needs.

Ten years ago or so when I was still programming, my boss' boss gave my boss a programming assignment. After working on it for almost a year without any success (wrong choice of language, I guess, she was more mainframe-oriented) she dumped it in my lap two days before the deadline. I hacked something together in time using mostly borrowed javascript.

I handed it to her boss, "Excellent!" he said. I humbly admitted that most of was stolen code I'd repurposed and hacked together. He grinned and pointed to a poster on his wall. "Plagiarism is when you steal a person's work. Research is when you steal a lot of people's work."

All Charlie wanted was a solution. I wound up with a promotion and a big raise.

If those programs didn't exist, people wouldn't even work at Wal-Mart because it wouldn't pay the bills, and when you don't have employees it's awfully hard to have a business.

Nope. If those programs didn't exist, people would still work at Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart destroyed other local employers, leaving them little alternative.

it all boils down to government being the problem, as usual.

Only if you understand that Wal-Mart, like all corporations (indeed, all "property", as we know it) is a creation of a government.

Years ago, I tried wearing a wristwatch, but I found it gets in the way. It makes typing uncomfortable for me

Agreed, wrist watches are uncomfortable. For everyday carry, I have a clip watch clipped to a beltloop. It's far easier to check the time there than to dig my phone out of a pocket, plus I have also clipped a keychain-style LED flashlight to it. It's occasionally useful just to have a light-duty carabiner at hand. And I'll take it running or biking, when I usually leave my bulkier cell phone home.

For fancy dress, have some real style and get a pocket watch.

You got it wrong - pretty girls dressed in their summer clothes are flora, not fauna.

I'm a furry, you insensitive clod!

How exactly do you propose the NSA determine who means us harm?

By that logic, we should all just line up to get our appendixes taken out.

Do you know about the paradox of false positives? Let's say there are 300 hard core terrorists in the US planning to bomb something. If the NSA were able to determine a terrorist from a non-terrorist 99% of the time (and they're not. it's more like 60% of the time), that means you'd have hundreds of thousands of people declared terrorists who are not. So instead of being 99% accurate, you end up being thousands of percent inaccurate. Plus, you've ruined hundreds of thousands of people's lives unnecessarily.

The question you are asking is very much the wrong one, since almost everyone means us no harm. If you're starting you investigation with "We suspect everyone" then the NSA is a completely worthless organization.

Nobody said law enforcement was easy, but christ, our Constitution made it that way on purpose. It's not supposed to be easy. I bet it was easy to find out who dealt it in Soviet-era East Germany, because the Stazi had their nose up everyone's ass. That's not supposed to be us.

[pardon me for not doing the math precisely. it's late and I drank a few beers while standing at the grill this afternoon. I'm sure there's someone here who has actually passed statistics who can give it to us with more specifics]

You know what else works just as well as a credit card that is way smaller and lighter than a cell phone, never needs recharging, works literally everywhere and already has proven, well-established limited liability for theft?

Cash.

Plus, you have the benefit of not having your purchases become part of a massive database to be misused by powerful and evil forces.

I'd like to see some innovations in payment methods that still leave the shopper with a little bit of privacy protection.

No. WA is always Washington state, DC is the District of Columbia; Washington, DC is not in any state. WA is a postal code, like IL is Illinois and FL is Florida.

It seems like the optimal situation, therefore, is to spy on everyone and don't tell anyone who you're spying on.

Mr President, does General Alexander know you're trolling from Starbucks again?

He wasn't modded down. Roman mir posts so much incoherent schitzophrenic babble that his karma is in the toilet. Look at the moderation (click on the number on a comment to see how it was modded). He's at +1 now with 100% insightful. Moderation worked.

OTOH you should be modded offtopic. Moderation failed on your comment. It wasn't informative, it was incorrect. Mods, please pay attention! If someone's sitting below 1, don't assume he'd been modded down.