It doesn't "beg the question". It "raises the question". Try harder to sound smart.

Your example of a rare outlier does not invalidate the general rule: These positions tend to not be positions you work your way into--they tend to be positions you are born into.

C[whatever]O, VP of [whatever]. But these types of positions are almost always reserved for those with a certain pedigree, certainly not for people working their way up from the factory floor. The idea that you just might go from the mail room to the board room is a fantasy designed to motivate unprivileged people into staying on the treadmill.

Go ahead and list the astronomically rare outliers that prove me wrong. For every outlier, I'd be able to point to 100 executives who had the right last name, or went to the right prep school, Ivy League undergrad, prestigious business school, etc.

Get ready to have no free (gratis) software, as it would be ridiculous to donate one's time to write code for free if you could be held liable for mistakes. Get ready for your paid software to cost 10X more to cover the extra development "hardening" time it would all require to be less penetrable, and to cover the insurance policies software companies would have to take out to shield themselves.

You know, we blame civil engineers when their buildings collapse, maybe it's time to start blaming computer "engineers" when their systems do.

But we don't blame civil engineers when their buildings collapse after they get blown up by dynamite. It's not like these computer systems are just falling over from nature. They're under malicious attack.

If all you were doing was getting in line, then leaving when asked or when you got to the counter, any monkey with a law degree could keep you out of jail, since you clearly did not violate any law.

I didn't say anything about refusing to leave when asked, so you're doing what's called "putting words into my mouth".

I'm standing in line at Chick-fil-a. Am I trespassing or just thinking about getting a chicken sandwich?

I get to the register and change my mind, then walk out. Was I trespassing?

Well, that escalated quickly.

But, taking the example of 100 people getting in line at Chick-fil-a, how can you (as the store's management) tell the difference between a hungry customer and one who is participating in this coordinated attack, without waiting for them to get to the register and not order? Do you make it illegal to not order food? How would you even write a law to make such practice illegal?

I would go to great lengths to not provoke someone into or motivate someone to organizing such an attack. People don't just wake up in the morning and say, "Gee, I think I'm going to try to take down Joe's Auto Parts web site today!!" for no reason.

Then accurately describe the phenomenon: "Information tends to spread despite attempts to contain it" rather than inaccurately attributing a human emotion such as "want" to something incapable of such an emotion.

Their culture must really be a great fit with Microsoft's.

Skype Guy: "You know, there are already open protocols for doing all of this. But I'm just going to ignore the existing standards, create my own proprietary ones, and try to lock customers in!"

The result? Today the world of VOIP is set back years, a fragmented mess of incompatibility, with the leading vendor having a closed, proprietary solution.

Right out of Microsoft's playbook. It's almost as if Bill Gates himself was one of the Skype founders.

Why focus on changing people's minds (difficult) when you can simply focus on voter count (easy). Democrats tend to win when voter turnout is high, and Republicans tend to win when voter turnout is low. So, depending on your party, it's more effective to invest your efforts into Get Out To Vote or into Voter Suppression, than it is to try to change peoples' minds.

Say what you will about Comcast, their support for native IPV6 has been impressive

You should ask for all the money back that you paid them to host your video. Oh, wait...

Oh, I agree.. Not saying it wouldn't suck. Just disputing the claim that the stock market (in general) serves a "societal good". Certainly the initial stock sale (and subsequent stock issues) benefit society by allowing companies to be financed, and if you really stretch you can say that the ability for someone to invest and receive interest and dividends is good for society. But taken as a whole, including high-frequency trading, derivatives, futures, securitization of all sorts of crazy assets etc. the stock market serves no more of a societal good than a giant roulette wheel.