The first one. The behavior of the right shift operator is unspecified (implementation defined) when operating on a signed negative value.

What this tells me is that the mental capacity for informed decision-making is overrated, and that claims about minors' inability to make informed decisions are likely to be post-hoc justifications for some predetermined end (e.g. "I'm uncomfortable with the idea of my kids having sex, so I'll grab onto whatever reason I can find to substitute my decisions for theirs").

Another example is voting: the voting age is commonly justified by claims that minors don't have the knowledge or long-term planning capacity to make an informed decision, but we all know adults often vote based on superficial, short-term considerations as well. For instance, proponents of the voting age might say "but kids will just vote for whoever promises less homework!" while ignoring the number of adults who just vote for whoever promises lower taxes. Again, I have to suspect that the real motivation has less to do with minors' mental capacity and more to do with a preexisting desire to prevent their interests from being represented.

"Apple has filed comments to the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking committee complaining about jailbreaking and asking that it be deemed illegal."

Not active enough for you?

So for Americans, it's now "twenty ten" as for the rest of the world, it's now "two thousand and ten" - admitedly the American method is far more effecient, it's the only place I've ever heard people say this before. but I'm sure most of the American readers could care less,...

Active brain cells? Your family? Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

No. Your family is not data. Your family is an anecdote. And I don't know WTF you mean by "active brain cells." I think you just made that up.

I agree with you, in that freedom to do what you will with what you own should be a right.

This is why I, and many others, jailbreak my iPhone. Unix shell and root privileges? Why, thank you, iPwn!

Yes, it would be a much nicer world if Apple let us have more freedom from the start, but it's Apple's right, I guess, to do what they want with the product they make. I take it as a good gesture, though, that Apple is not actively discouraging jailbreaking. Now, unlocking, on the other hand...

I see it as the same as the content locks on the Xbox 360, or the Wii. They'll only play approved content, before you hack them open. Which I do, and love. But you never hear of people whining that the Wii won't let you run arbitrary content. Is the iPhone very much different?

There are a couple serious problems with this approach.

1. Not everyone "stops growing" at the same age. How do you determine whether or not someone has reached that point yet, using nothing but pure logic?

If you have a good answer that can be practically implemented, then I'd honestly love to hear it. I personally oppose age-based laws as a matter of principle, because I believe discriminating against someone because of the specific number of times they've orbited the sun is every bit as unfair as discriminating based on the color of their skin. But the alternatives I've heard are far from perfect. I think they'd still be better than age-based laws, but I accept that they'd involve a lot more false positives, which is fine with me - that's a matter of priorities (I think giving young people freedom is more valuable than protecting them from the consequences of their own choices), not logic.

2. "Children cannot consent. Adults can" is an awfully simplistic and glib way to talk about it. Children can and do consent to things every day: for example, no one seriously argues that a 10 year old can't make an informed decision between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. What people claim is that children lack the capacity to make informed decisions about some things which have particularly dangerous or permanent consequences, or which require some (vaguely defined) sort of life experience or "emotional maturity" to be truly informed.

There is no "consent" section of the brain that suddenly comes online on a person's 16th or 18th birthday. There is no bright line between "child" and "adult" at a biological level. There is no scientific consensus, let alone logical proof, as to what physical capacity a person needs to make informed decisions, or how to measure that capacity, or even at what age that capacity tends to arise (see the variation in ages of consent across the US and around the world). Setting a policy here requires more than just logic.

While I agree with the sentiment behind your post, a retroactive copyright extension is not an ex post facto law.

An ex post facto law is one that retroactively outlaws a past act, punishing someone for doing something that was legal at the time. Retroactive copyright extension doesn't do that: if I legally copy a public domain work today, and then the copyright term is extended tomorrow (taking that work out of the public domain), I'm in the clear. Only future copying is illegal.

Well, the truth sometimes hurts. If one cannot logically explain himself/herself, one has no business being an "opponent" in any logical discussions, be it with myself or anybody else. I guess you could call it "poisoning of the well" from the point of view of peddlers of all kinds of illogical woo-woo.

Then sir, I respectfully submit that it is time for you to remove yourself from the discussion. As so far your attempts at logic have mostly been blatantly illogical.

Cheap, fast, good. Pick any two.

Humbug. Advancing technology can give us all three at once. I'll take a $200 digital camera today over any camera that existed 10 years ago at any price.

And yes, I still have a Canon SLR from the 70s, and a Canon S100 Digital Elph (released May 2000), and they both still work, but it's a moot point because I haven't bothered with either in years.

Of course I mean 5¼" floppies. The Champagne of New Years Eve is taking its toll.

Right. Specifically, "CDMA" as in "the main alternative to GSM".

I believe it does - it's a feature of the radio interface. Code Division Multiple Access requires you to know the codes in use before you have any hope of picking out a signal.

I don't know how easy UMTS makes it to discover or guess those codes, though. (Or, to be honest, how easy it is to do the same in cdmaOne/CDMA2000.)

The G1 and Droid both have QWERTY and directional controllers too: trackball on the G1, D-pad on the droid. But just like the Sidekick, they both have the directional controller on the wrong side!

What was so special about Duke Nukem 3D compared to Doom, Quake, or 3D Realms' own Rise of the Triad?

Halo was essentially a greatest hits album of FPSes. What set it apart was its popularity. As far as I can tell, that's what set Duke Nukem 3D apart from its peers, too.