Among other things, "other people" are not running for President of the United States of America.

With Hillary, yeah, you could say "so what if she's corrupt as shit and lies through her teeth? Don't all politicians do that?" And I think most politicians today are at least somewhat like that, but I feel that she's worse than average, at least worse than average among Democrats. But still, if nobody better were running, sure, she might be the least of all evils and many people would overlook that, well, cause she's a Democrat with a capital D (it worked for Bill). And she's a Woman, too, and don't we all want to elect the first female president, regardless of who she is?

But actually, all of her scandals and the awkward things she says (to put it very politely, I really mean the incessant stream of bald-faced lies) are sort of never-ending, with another scandal or mis-statement right around the corner seemingly daily, and are signs of a much deeper problem. And that problem is the whole reason why so many people are so thoroughly disgusted with politics and the entire American political system in the first place. Therefore, since they're trying to change that oligarchic, plutocratic, corporatistic, corrupt, war-oriented system of power and money that's taken away our democracy and ignored the voters (aside from lying to them to try to get votes), and since she's the shining example of everything that is wrong with that system, why would they want to vote for her? Why would they refrain from calling out her corruption and lies every time they see them?

Way to stick it to them, FCC! THAT's how you show these companies who's the boss! Gooooooooo Guv!!!!!

AKA "What's the least fine we can 'demand' you pay that would look like we did something? We wouldn't want it to be any hindrance to your business, share prices, bonuses, etc. of course, or more than you already paid your attorneys to fight this, but it shouldn't be TOO much less than a penny per customer or people might catch on."

That's why I, as a web developer, have always avoided the usual social sharing Javascript embeds (which all load iFrames which contain even more Javascript), or similar plug-ins from ShareThis etc. It's sufficient to use a basic link to the sharer URLs for each service (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) with the right parameters, and optionally use JS to have the links open in a little window. So it only tracks or loads when someone actually clicks on it. Easy, lightweight, fast-loading, more control over appearance, more private, what's not to love? I think it's lazy and irresponsible and uncaring about your customers to do anything else.

"Will this get me fired from my job?"
"We're talking to a fucking machine. There shouldn't be any sexual harassment when talking to a machine."
"The damn thing better be subservient"
"Cortana isn't a woman. It's a piece of software, and it damn well better be subservient."
"It's a machine. If it doesn't do what I tell it (within its design parameters), it's broken."
"This is how social justice warrior feminists destroy companies, by imposing their own sense of self-hatred on their customers."
"When abuse becomes a personal challenge. Cortana, you ignorant slut."
"Cortana is the one guilty of sexual assault!" (this one is worth quoting in full but I'll refrain from doing it here)
"If you are going to give a machine a sex you are implying things about that sex and one of those things is that the sex is an object rather than a person with a mind" (I know your post was trying to be more nuanced that this, but.. whoa what??)
"Challenge Accepted. Millions of teenage boys just said "Ha, I'll prove you wrong"."

Anyone concerned about endemic sexism and harassment in the software industry need only reference these initial comments to make their case for them. Really, nothing more needs to be said. If I ever wondered how much adolescent, out of control sexism there really is in the industry, well now I know. And it's not just the statements themselves, but the apparent vehement anger with which these males are reacting to something that I thought might be rather sensible and probably necessary. (I wasn't sure before, but now I KNOW this kind of programming is necessary...)

This makes a pretty convincing case for why so few women have any interest in joining the software development "club".

And yeah, I know you all probably think "you're a moron, you missed the part where I feel this way about MACHINES not WOMEN." But you know what? I see through you and I can tell it's not just that.

George forgot that the whole point was to produce great entertainment (and maybe commentary, life lessons, who knows), and that the creativity to do that usually requires the collaboration of a lot of people and all their good ideas, that one person's ideas are seldom enough. He also seemed to forget that not all idea are good (not even his!), and most ideas should end up being discarded (but not too soon). He had a great idea for ONE movie and its continuation in Empire, but CONSISTENTLY creating great movies takes a team effort and a system for creativity and innovation. He stopped trusting or listening to other people's ideas, and stopped soliciting feedback on whether his were any good.

In other words, he seems to have bought into the myth that he created all the ideas that went into Star Wars and that all his ideas are good, and that since he's the creator of it, only his ideas and opinions matter or are correct. (Apparently people at Lucasfilm/ILM were fired for not being team players when they complained about Jar Jar and other atrocities being put in the film.) Unfortunately, all of those notions are total stinking crap. For instance, visually, Ralph McQuarrie was far more responsible for the look and feel of Star Wars than George Lucas was. And his then-wife Marcia, as well as the other writers and editors involved, had a ton to do with making it into an actually good story with good characters and enjoyable dialogue. But of course he wrote her out of the history of the making of Star Wars after the divorce, apparently jealous that she might have contributed anything. (Duh, Geroge! SHE won an oscar for Star Wars, YOU didn't!)

As part of this self-deception, the story somehow became canonicalized in his head as if it were received wisdom, an actual history that actually happened in a certain way and it HAD to be brought to the screen in a manner that accurately reflected that history. Which is idiocy if he really wanted to make great movies, but even "historical" films are usually made to be entertaining and with details altered as needed to make the characters and their interactions interesting. He seems to have forgotten about that as a goal too.

So I really don't understand where he gets off criticizing a film that's, in my opinion, better and more interesting, entertaining, and likable than 2/3 of the Star Wars films he was actually involved with, and more true to the originals and what made them great, as well. At least JJ Abrams and Disney haven't forgotten what the entire point of making these movies is and why billions of people enjoyed watching them and wanted to see more.

I don't get why he's criticizing it at all, what possible benefit does that serve? We already know his ideas and opinions are crap and he doesn't listen to anyone (he got massive criticism for Phantom Menace, and somehow managed to make an even worse movie in Attack of the Clones), why would we care what he thinks about the new movie? Anything positive he says would just confirm what the fans already know,;anything negative makes him seem like a jealous, talentless douchebag.

That is probably true, but note that fat in the body is NOT the same thing as fat in the diet. (This is the fallacy that's led to decades of bad nutritional advice, leading to an increase in the very problems it was trying to solve.)

Stop talking sense and reading the actual article! Isn't it much more fun to wildly speculate and criticize anyone not in the "in" group?

I'm pretty sure Silicon Valley has better things to do than pander to ridiculous political shenanigans. They have businesses to run, products to build and ship, customers to keep happy, not go off on a wild goose chase after some irrelevant terrorists from the other side of the world, all in order to further political goals of spying on and controlling the domestic population. Hillary can go suck on an egg.

What I'm saying is that most of what programmers say about this is essentially "pride of craft" - we code things securely because we take pride in making a secure product. But not everyone takes pride in their work, and when combined with not everyone caring about customers or their privacy, you have the situation we're in.

Lots and lots of businesses just do the minimum they need to to sell crap to customers and make a buck. Even if they take pride in their products, their website is beyond their understanding, outside of their expertise, and in some cases at least partly out of their control. Most of them will at least try to comply with the letter of the law too, but there aren't any laws requiring "secure website coding".

I agree, but what negligence? What law or standard says that a business has to use encryption and protect passwords? Yes, there are rules surrounding finance, e-commerce (if paying by credit card at least) and healthcare, and maybe government contractors, but that's about it. There is no standard or rule or law that says they can't publish your usernames and passwords on their homepage for convenience if they feel like it...

You're preaching to the choir. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of web developers in existence do not read slashdot, barely know how to program, and have never even HEARD of SQL injection (or other common attacks), and if they have... they stopped working on that site 10 years ago and it's been running on autopilot ever since, with only minimal maintenance as needed since then (often by someone not very competent or up to date). This problem isn't going to be solved until it's illegal to run insecure sites like this. (Of course that won't solve the overall problem of hacking, even sites that are very careful and have taken all precautions have been hacked; I just mean the problem of completely retarded sites like this.)

The problem is 99% of the population has no idea, and will never have any idea. And neither do the websites' owners. Asking a handful of nerds not to use their site is not going to do any good, and sending them an email telling them their site sucks isn't going to help much either.

These sites will still be just as insecure in 15 years if there isn't a legal requirement to use encryption, hash passwords, and pass at least basic automated scans for SQL injection, XSS, and other common attacks. Seriously, outside of the dot.com/web services space, financial services and e-commerce where they have to pass PCI, this level of insecurity is extremely widespread, at all sizes of companies, and it's not changing any time soon.

All this shows is just how far out of touch police have become with the communities they're supposed to be serving. The problem isn't the videos, it's the police. They need to de-militarize and become community officers who not only get out of their patrol cars, but don't even patrol in a car in the first place, instead choosing to walk among and be friends with the people they're supposed to be a part of and protecting.

While St. Louis has a wonderful orchestra, it would be more accurate to say it's one of the top 50 in the world - there are a LOT of really good orchestras out there! Top 5 in the midwest United States, I'll grant you that, but there are a number of better orchestra in the US alone.

I would also say that $50 for a great orchestra ticket, to ANY top 50 orchestra, is a great bargain. Have people seen the prices of tickets for rock concerts or sporting events? Sure you can gt bleacher seats for a baseball game for cheap, or way up in the rafters, but they're all getting really expensive and $100+ for most seats is not at all unusual.

People don't realize that around 50% of the cost of running an orchestra comes from donations, so the tickets COULD be a lot more expensive than they are.

Regarding video game music? I say bring it on, especially if it's decently written music with a good orchestration. Same with movie and TV music - it's the music of our time, and a lot of it is not too bad. Even in the past a lot of symphonic music was adapted from ballet, incidental music for plays, or operas, and before that some of it was actually meant to be danced to, not just listened to. "All video game" nights with the video will bring in the video game crowd, but if the music is good, why not bring it into the regular repertory and play it at regular concerts alongside other pieces? They certainly play all kinds of other much less enjoyable music of our time on a regular basis...

This is exactly correct. Everywhere I've worked, anyone up to the CEO can be asking me or any other technical staff whether something is possible, what it would take, etc. Pretty much "the boss's" only function in this regard ends up being to ferry the message back and forth between the technical staff and the executives, so what's the point in not asking directly?