I'm retired, so I have time to download and install any patches on my Fedora box while I'm making breakfast every morning. Generally speaking, there's a new kernel available every week or two, but recently there were two in the same week. I guess that the kernel devs don't think that a monthly patch schedule is adequate to keep Linux safe.

...nd I am equally sure that Google has been working on this for ages too just in case the need it. It's called getting ahead of the problem.

Considering that the type of censorship demanded calls for human-level intelligence, how do you expect Google or anybody else to solve that problem given the current state of the art?

[Citation needed]

Yes. I remember, years ago, writing a program where I reversed the standard meanings of TRUE and FALSE, not to obfuscate the code (although it did) but so that I could write the one test central to the program in the way that looked right to me. It's a tiny change from what you'd normally use, but most people reading over the code wouldn't even notice it at first and end up completely misunderstanding how it managed to work. To me, at least, that's what the judges should be looking for, rather than odd formatting and other typographical legerdemain.

I take it, then, that you're completely indifferent to the fact that the Islamic radical's publicly stated goal is to drive all Israelis into the sea?

Years ago, I was giving a physicist (who happened to be a friend of a friend) a lift home, and the conversation drifted to the problems of reconciling those two theories. I had a sudden inspiration and suggested that the main problem might be that relativity deals with point sources of gravity but at quantum distances Heisenberg raises its ugly head and what you get is "blob sources" that relativity can't handle. My acquaintance was quite impressed that I'd come up with the idea on my own and told me that this was, in fact, a major stumbling block. I'm not sure where the idea of knowing what happens inside a black hole came from, but under the circumstances, I doubt that it's as important as you were told. Of course, I'm a layman so ICBW.

Thank you. I was considering posting to make that point, but you beat me to it. I would like to point out, while I'm here, that the OP's argument boils down to, "We tried it about fifty years ago and it didn't work, therefor it will never work."

And how is this any more compelled speech than having to show proof of your age to buy tobacco or alcohol? In all cases you have a choice: prove your age to the seller's statisfaction or don't buy.

It sounds to me like the idea behind that law is to make it possible for parents to control what their children are able to use on the Internet while keeping enforcement for the most part up to the parents. That way, if the parents really want to prevent their children from seeing any adult content (Good luck with that!) they can keep their credit cards and other ID away from them and let them register at those sites if they have a more relaxed attitude about it.

To give you an idea where I'm coming from, I went through puberty and adolescence in the '60s well before there was a WWW that random people had access to. Dad had a subscription to Playboy, and didn't care if I read it. I didn't realize until later that the reason that all of the adult pictures had the model's pubic region concealed was to avoid censorship issues with some of the more restrictive jurisdictions.

I do. Of course, I've been retired for almost fifteen years and don't have to use IMAP for work or because it's the only protocol offered. IMAP can be great if you need to have all of your email available on multiple boxes in various locations but at this point I've got no use for that.

I wonder if Putin has decided yet which kindergarten or hospital he's planning to bomb in "retaliation"?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that he simply drew a location out of a hat and bombed it.

I can well remember the LA County Health Dept. offering to give any resident who had standing water on their property a breeding stock of some species of small fish (I don't remember them ever specifying which species.) that preys on mosquito larvae to keep them under control. Does anybody know if health departments are still doing that?

I take it, then, that you've never run across Destination Gobi, an early 50s movie about a Navy weather station in Inner Mongolia early in the Pacific War. It's based (loosely) on a true story, and may have been the inspiration for McHale's Navy. I don't know if it's available any more, but it was quite popular in the 50s when many TV stations used old movies to fill out their schedules.

I'll add the Arctic Convoys to that, with most of their actions taking place inside the Arctic Circle including several actions big enough to be named and at least one German battleship, the Scharnhorst, being sunk by the Duke of York. Also, some of the ports in the White Sea were near enough to Occupied Norway that the Germans were able to bomb them with short range bombers.

And as far as South America goes, the U-Boats were ordered to "punish" Brazil for cooperating with the USN, and did such a good job that Brazil declared War on Germany.

No. The main character's name is Ralph Kramden and he's a bus driver in New York.