ROTFLOL.

Who has audited the current version of Truecrypt? Why do you trust them?

It's better for different people to use different approaches, so that no one compromise will take down everyone. But this makes communication difficult.

I don't have a real answer, this side of one time pads.

Not when it's done to suit someone else's agenda.

IIRC, the agreement only allows them to sell the works within Antigua. So it would be hard for Antigua to get much profit. OTOH, I don't know of anything forbidding them from allowing resale...so there may be a way.

You are GROSSLY oversimplifying the actual event. At the time of the US revolution in 1776, about 1/3 of the population wanted independence (more than joinder with Britain), 1/3 were supportive of Britain, and 1/3 just wanted eveyone to shut up and leave them alone. And we would have lost quickly and thoroughly if we hadn't had significant aid from France (much of which was in the European theater, but not all, by any means).

The GP who said it was about corporate profits was closer to being correct than are the high school history books. He should have said company profits, as corporations weren't anywhere near as dominant then, and much of the support came from relatively smaller companies. Especially smugglers. (Why, I'm not sure. Maybe they hadn't realized that you make more money outside the law, or maybe they wanted to reduce their danger. The reason probably actually varied.)

P.S.: It's worth remembering that the most successful pirates of the era, and probably any era, depend for their success on close contacts with the "legitimate" financial companies.

If they'd meant tourist advertising, they could have said tourist advertising. If they want to say things that can be interpreted in any way one wants, then they need to accept that others may have different interpretations.

How would they feel if some other country decided that selling religious books was against social policy? And wrote a law that also forbid selling DVDs, CDs, and MP3s, etc. that might contain religious themes? (Not against providing them, O no, just against selling them.) Doing it for entertainment is allowed, but not as a profitable activity. I could come up with an interpretation of that treaty that would easily justify such a law.

You are accepting what the accomplices say was the reason as if it were fact. Maybe it is...but is it reasonable to believe them?

I think that maps out of date. Remember you need to include the area around every "international airport". I would guess that this means closer to 2/3 of US citizens live in such areas. And that may well be an underestimate already. But they can expand it ad lib by granting an airport the right to have, say, an Canadian carrier land there. (It doesn't need to actually land there, just have the right to.)

You don't understand the problem at all. Liberal and Conservative are camoflage suits worn by politicians.

Yes, Obama is breaking the law (mainly as an accessory before the fact). But he's able to do this because of the precedents set by Bush. That's what the cycle has been for (at least) decades. The Republicans extend the power of the government, but don't dare use that power because of the opposition (at least apparently). While the Republicans are in power the Democrats vilify their mad power grabs. Then the Democrats take power, and rather then repealing the extension of power, they use the powers that have been granted to them by their predecessors.

In this case, however, it sounds like the actual criminal actions were performed by the Maryland police. (With various TSA personnel accessories before the fact.) I expect that Obama is only an accessory after the fact...and even that hasn't yet been proven. He may decline to support this action.

I'm not sure where you are drawing the line. This sounds like "police state" to me. Not the worst of the breed yet, by any means, but headed in that direction. The government is ignoring any pretense of obeying it's own laws.

It's not a "person to person" conversation if you do it in a crowd. Then it's being a loud and noisy nuisance.

Well, if it's true, then one of the problems with the site is that there's too many lines of code. (Even if, as someone suggested, you are counting every line between two html tags as a line of code.)

You can call it "sweat of the brow" if you want to, but that's not a reasonable description of, say, drug testing. First you need to invent a possible new drug. Then you need to test it on a large number of people. etc. This involves very significant up-front costs. It isn't that it's more inventive, it's that it's a lot more expensive to get it to the working stage.

OTOH, by this criterion no drug should actually be granted a patent until after it has FDA approval. I agree that if you are allowed to patent a drug before getting FDA approval, then you don't meet the target. But note that I still would reject many drug patents on "obviousness" ground. E.g., if selling a pill with a drug mixed with asprin to achieve the effects of taking the two pills separately, then you don't meet the "obviousness" criteria, even though you still need to fulfill all the drug testing requirements.

"Maybe it's time for the US to take the hint and stop this barbaric and medieval practice?"

Maybe it's time for the US to take the hint and start manufacturing their own propofol and other drugs of major importance.