From the summary..., I figured it was a bunch of ASIMO robots programmed to trundle around the warehouses screaming in the voice of Sgt. R. Lee Ermey's voice "MOVE IT! Move it, MAGGOTS! Work FASTER!"...

You mean the non-standard APNG format that was invented by Mozilla and is pretty much only supported by them?

How exactly is it tainted? Mpeg LA agreed you can use it and not worry about their patents. How is THAT a problem?

Fyi, no, they can't change the license in a way that creates problems for using the codec. It's called "promissory estoppel". Basically, it means that once they promise to let you use it freely, that stops them from suing anyone.

Computer science is a poor substitute for teaching logical argument and mathematical logic. But if they're going to teach computer science, I hope that doesn't mean "how to use Excel."

And there was no boring memorization/regurgitation/essay BS like history, English, or a ton of other subjectively marked courses where the prof's favorites got the best marks.

That's minus two points. I could mark off a few more for poor style, but you seem like a nice kid so I'll let it slide.

But wouldn't it be more useful to have a course that emphasizes critical thinking about all types of problems rather than focusing on one specific application of critical thinking?

Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea.

There is a place and time for shoveling as much information into a child's head as it can possibly hold without exploding. This is when we teach multiplication tables, drill grammar into their thick skulls, teach them basic math up through algebra, spelling, penmanship, history, and so on.

As soon as you teach critical thinking skills, it's like setting the write protect bit: it enables them to make a value judgement on the validity of the information they are being given by the teachers (and other adults), and as soon as you have that, you begin to build distrust of information sources - even ones with good information to impart.

Generally some critical thinking skills form on their own; creative writing, physics, chemistry, debate, and other classes tend to foster their development, regardless of whether or not you are done shoveling the basic stuff into their heads. As soon as that bit is set, you might as well give up trying to program them, you've lost: they're teenagers.

Logic classes belong in the first quarter/semester of your first year of college, and not before.

My current employer told me, years after the fact, that I got an interview specifically because my cover letter seemed so literate. Quality writing is the level-zero evaluation (quick and accessible) for anyone's level of education and attention to detail.

More specifically, the idea of programming a computer and being simultaneously sloppy on syntax is pretty mind-boggling -- and from experience the code turned out by people like that, not caring about how they communicate with other people (if it compiles, it's committed), is pretty hellish.

The most important part of any crypto communication system is key exchange. Looks like this protocol uses automated SMS key exchange, and implementations should store keys similar to SSH. It's trivial to MITM, but it's a high risk attack because people can simply meet in person to compare keys.

Even before the buyout, the CM team refused patches to basically integrate pdroid into the mod, for fear of "angering developers." So even if something like this works, all the bad guys have to do is hit up the app market for the data it's sucking up anyway.

Seriously, why are The People trying to play Spy vs Spy with their own government? The government owns the internet. It's as silly to encrypt your license plate as it is your text messages. You have no way to do so. If you're able to send a text, then you're using a carrier of some kind. That carrier has no control over the government's ability to get the data if the government wants to.

Isn't that the whole point of this project? It allows you to encrypt your data, so unless you think the government has a secret back door into every encryption algorithm, when you encrypt your data, the government can't see it. They may still be able to see who you're talking to (a TOR-like extension might help), but they won't know what you're saying unless they compromise your phone (or happened to compromise the key exchange).

Remember, it's metadata that we're talking about. "Who talked to who - and what time(s)". Linking people together is what it's all about. They don't need to know what you're talking about, so long as they know who you're talking to.

Despite what the NSA wants you to think, it's not just "Metadata" -- any analyst who believes that a conversation is with a foreign correspondent can retrieve the entire contents of the conversation -- text, email, etc with nothing more than a slightly better than 50% belief that one party in the conversation is foreign. No warrants or other oversight required.

Do you think the government should be able to retrieve your private conversations on an analyst's "hunch"?

It's trivial to MITM, but it's a high risk attack because people can simply meet in person to compare keys.

Avoiding MITM has been successfully solved using the Socialist Milionaire problem.
At most, 2 contacts need to call (voice) each other and compare a bunch of keywords. From that point onward, their communication can be trusted.

I see another problem:
The best (and nearest-to-perfect) secure solution requires end-to-end encryption. (the absolute first and last application on the chain to the encryption / decryption. Encryption is done on the first ever software getting the message, decryption is done on the last software drawin the message on the screen)

But CyanogenMod's implementation isn't end-to-end. They instead have integrated crypto in the SMS messaging service of the OS.
The intention is noble: You're not forced to use CyanogenMod's SMS App. You could use Skype or Facebook chat app (as long as the app supports handling SMS in addition to other communication)...
The main problem is easy to spot: ... These 3rd party app could actually be spying.

Subjectively that second would have been like billions of years to them. And could they have left traces, like manipulating the fabric of space to encourage life to form in atomic matter? Like the universe for them would have been the size of a watermelon and they'd have had energy at scales to make quasars look like a cheap eBay LED flashlight?

Don't be silly. At that point in time there were no planets at all -- hydrogen was about the only thing in the universe, until stars started burning hot and fast to put heavier elements into the universe.

This article is pointless conjecture. Conditions for life as we know it could not have possibly existed, due to a lack of pressure, gravity and a planet to live on, materials required to put anything together, etc. The only thing that this shows is that it was warm enough for life, while utterly disregarding the rest; it's like saying that you have an oven that's heated up to 350 degrees, so there should be a cake in there, without putting any of the ingredients into the oven. Including a pan for the cake.

We can probably ignore the sun's background radiation: if an alien civilisation is advanced enough to see our planet next to the sun in visible light (reflection from the sun's rays) they can probably focus enough to pick up our radio signals (the sun's radio frequency waves will not be deflected by the Earth much if at all). The fact that there are radio signals coming from our planet should be the giveaway. No other planet in our solar system is producing such signals. And that's of course assuming this alien entity is using radio waves themselves for communication, and as such thinks it's a good idea to look for radio waves as a sign of the presence of intelligent life.

Same for this SETI, I don't think we'll ever be able to understand alien signals beyond the mere fact that they are out there.

what is a burnout

An IT worker over 30.

Burnouts may be showy. But you get better acceleration from a standing start if you DON'T break traction.

What I'd find more useful is a "button" for automatic maximum-traction acceleration (to a presetable speed or until you let off the gas). Think "anti-lock brakes" but in acceleration.

(Though what I'd find FAR more useful is integrating "tow-haul" mode with the speed control.)

Try driving away on a slippery surface on a slight inclination with a car with traction control. You'll never get anywhere, unless you can disable it.

Where did you get that idea? Watch this video, starting 34 seconds in.

BMW has that. It's called launch control.

When you're dimwitted
Feeling dumb
When circuits in your brain
Make your mind go numb

I'm in your head
When dendrites are dead
And neurons can't be found
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound

When your motor nerves
Trip you on your feet
When your amygdala fails
And can't comfort you

I'll cure your rats
Who can't get fat
When pellets are all around
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound

The Ten Commandments in some degree agrees with that, and definitely does not come into opposition to that. To the contrary, Satanism directly and proudly promotes evil, damage, and chaos; Satanism conflicts with the constitutions.

That's an obviously dangerous statement, and you should notice that (by the way, you forgot to hit the "Post Anonymously" checkbox in your replies to people replying about your gay marriage screed). How about these statements:

Islam directly and proudly promotes evil, damage, and chaos.
Judaism directly and proudly promotes evil, damage, and chaos.
Scientology directly and proudly promotes evil, damage, and chaos.

See the problem? Now all of a sudden it becomes a subjective decision on which religions promote evil, and which promote virtue. That means that the government would have to prefer one religion over another, which goes directly contrary to the federal constitution which you say justifies your viewpoint. To say nothing that people are still trying to use Iron Age era guidelines intended for nomadic desert tribes to decide on modern public policy.

Moreover, if you're going to try and have an intelligent debate about Christianity vs. Satanism, you should really do some research into Satanists. For one, individual and not group practice is encouraged - there is not a single dogma that is followed by all Satanists. Some are theistic, some are atheistic. They are also a recent phenomenon. If there is a single most widely-followed dogma, it is that given in La Vey's Satanic Bible. La Vey's philosophy is atheistic and is centered around the individual and personal responsibility, not about the promotion of evil, damage, and chaos (you ignorant turd). In short, he says that people should be free to do what they want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and if your enemy should hit you on the cheek, then you should smash him on the other (as opposed to the pacifism encouraged by Christianity but rarely seen by Christians).

Frankly, I think that more people in America today live according to La Vey's philosophy than anything considered to be truly Christian. I've never met someone who refuses to wear clothes made of mixed fabric on principle, but I've met plenty of people who self-identify as Christians who are more than happy to seek revenge for a perceived wrongdoing. I've also met plenty of people who determine that if their child is being bullied by another kid at school, the correct response is to "stand up" to that bully and push them back, not just turn the other cheek. I've also never heard anyone suggest that someone guilty of adultery should be stoned to death. I'm not married, but I have sex with unmarried women. I don't really think that we deserve to die, do you?

I just wish that people would be more up-front about their theological motives, rather than waving their hands or making things up.

Most people aren't that deep. The vast majority of self-proclaimed "Christians" that I've had any sort of discussion with can't separate what is in the Bible from Christmas Carols or greeting cards. They have absolutely no real knowledge of what they believe. They go to church for the music, business contacts and fellowship. Theology has NOTHING to do with it.

I once thought ill of the Catholic Church for making it a capital crime for lay persons reading the Bible on their own. After attending a couple of Non-Denominational Evangelical church services, and their "Bible study" afterward where parishioners "interpreted" a couple of verses on their own... I feel the need to apologize to the Catholics. Those people came up with some seriously off-the-wall bullshit that frequently was 180 degrees opposite of what a verse literally said. Worse was two people would interpret the same verse in exactly opposite ways and they'd all nod sagaciously and agree they were both correct. Hands in the air and Praise Jesus!

... the purpose of the government is the furtherance of public good, rule of law, etc. The Ten Commandments in some degree agrees with that, and definitely does not come into opposition to that.

Have you read the ten commandments?

The first three have nothing to do with being good and everything about excluding other religions. If anything they point to a God that is somewhat insecure.

The last one defines a thought crime. Why can't I covert if I want to?

I fail to understand why we give any credence to the two thousand year old garbled and inconsistent myths of a bunch of middle eastern nomadic goat fuckers.

To add , truly equal treatment under the law means marriage shouldn't even be regulated

Marriage is, was, and will always be governed by societal and cultural modalities, and strongly influenced by religion.

What people cannot accept apparently is that there is no Grand Unification Theory type law that covers all possible religions and cultures. One religion is always going to be favored over another, or even the lack of one.

Considering that the law cannot regulate marriage to the satisfaction of all cultures and religions, and is comprised of concepts entirely belonging to faith and not of science, it follows that you regulate it for nobody.

The only laws that should be created are the "common sense" laws. No you can't murder that man for any reason. No you can't steal from your neighbors house. No you can't grab your neighbor's wife and sodomize her in front of the dog.

Is there some sort of "can't feed them past midnight" law of nature that magically turns gay guys into demons terrorizing the countryside the moment they adopt a kid or get married? Is it just a law to keep on the good side of some mythical man in the sky?

Obviously not, so there is no logical reason to deny the behavior, only religious ones.

Religion cannot coexist with government. Law is logically precluded by separation of church and state requirement superseding all laws.

Problem solved.

This American Slashdotter thinks it's good. Companies and people should be regulated in proportion to the harm they are capable of doing. Monsanto, a corporation that has literally created PCBs that cover the entire planet, should be regulated to hell. The corner small businessperson shouldn't. I don't see how that is unreasonable.

"but warned that 'if Nokia were to take illegal advantage of its patents in the future, we will open an antitrust case.' 'I sincerely hope we will not have to,' said Almunia."

This behavior by government officials is, or should be, illegal. Patent trolls are bad, but officials threatening to withhold licensing or "review" it for legal behaviors that have nothing to do with the issue in question is a gross, kingly abuse of power.

If patent troll behavior of the remnant is illegal, you deal with that directly as a criminal issue.

The C65 should have been what made it to market, not the weird 128 with its obsolete the day it left the factory CP/M mode running at half the speed of its competitors.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the two machines is irrelevant; the C128 came out in 1985, whereas the C65 wasn't developed circa 1990-91.

C64 diehards have an obsession with the C65 and Commodore's perceived mistake in abandoning it, but despite the latter's numerous crap decisions, I'm sorry to say that in this case they were absolutely right.

The C64 was still selling as a budget option circa 1991 (*) viable due to sheer momentum. The 16/32-bit Amiga was not only established as the successor, it had already taken over (in Europe, at least) and was already nearing *its* own commercial peak(!)

Trying to release a (sort of) new 8-bit format by that point, even a very good one, would have made absolutely no sense, flopped horribly and stood on the low-end Amiga models' toes, mudding the waters pointlessly.

They could have sold it as cheaply as the C64 (i.e. the high manufacturing costs of a new machine selling at the same price as a "wringing the last profit from established cash cow model"), but what would the point of that have been?

The C128 at least came to market when there was still *possibly* a gap in the market for a high-end 8-bit machine between the C64 and the new (but still very expensive) Amiga.

(*) Apparently C= were still making them when they went bankrupt circa mid-1994(!)

This is such a Slashdot story :)

"A girl invited me to her house on several occasions. Each time, I spent more and more time being impressed with the Commodore 64"

Well, you know, there was other stuff going on, as her father and step mother were out of town that winter, but this is Slashdot, not Penthouse forum, so...

Hey, I eventually married the girl. ;-)

sorry it should be SYS64767
Getting old here.

I called it "Commode-odor". I was an Atari fan, but most of my friends had C=64s. A few years later, though, I got an Amiga.

Assuming you mean the 8-bit Atari 400 and 800 (and its compatible redesigns, the XL and XE series), I did pretty much the same thing- was an Atari fanboy, but ended up with an Amiga. When one knows a little more about the "Commodore" Amiga and "Atari", it all seems a bit silly.

The major irony is that the Amiga developers included a number of ex-Atari staff- most significantly Jay Miner- who had worked on the 400/800 and the VCS/2600 before that. It represented (some have argued) a continued thread of architectural design that the 400/800 had significantly improved upon from the VCS, and had the same state-of-the-art custom chipset approach as its predecessors. (Indeed, just as happened with the 400 and 800, the Amiga was originally meant to be a console, before it evolved into a computer).

Also worth noting that "Amiga" was originally an independent company and it was only later bought by Commodore (after some legal wrangling with Atari, who'd had some involvement with them).

Meanwhile, Jack Tramiel had left Commodore (after falling out with the management), bought Atari Inc's computer and console division (i.e. the one that brought us the VCS and 400/800), which formed his new Atari Corp. The latter was a very different company to Atari Inc. (very obviously a much more shoestring operation). The Atari ST was designed by a different team after Tramiel had sacked most of the old Atari Inc. engineers, and very much reflected the "new" Atari; affordable, but much more off-the-shelf parts.

Atari Corp continued selling the XL and XE (cost-reduced versions of the 400 and 800), but they didn't design it; they merely milked the profits from a design they'd inherited while they focused on *their* Atari ST.

So... which was really the "true" successor to the Atari 400 and 800? By any measure, it was the "Commodore" Amiga. Who cares who made it? I briefly owned an ST because I couldn't afford an Amiga, but I ended up selling it and buying the latter a year later.

I suppose the assumption is that, if there was one habitable environment that persisted for tens or hundreds of kiloyears, there were probably others. I also suppose that life would be more likely to maintain its foothold in an environment where lakes tended to persist for many years, as opposed to appearing and disappearing with the seasons.

Mars had an atmosphere before it's core cooled and it lost it's magnetic field, so it would have been significantly more hospitable way back in the day. It wasn't always a "dried up" "reddish rock".

Tens of thousands of years just ain't gonna cut it. Water may be necessary for life, but it is not sufficient.

Tell that to the iron respirating microbes of Blood Falls that were in their transient little pool breathing oxygen normally until one sudden winter the surface froze and never receded. All they "needed" was a pool of water and some chemically active elements, like iron and sulphur -- both present on Mars.

Transient lakes are not a good environment - anything that gets started gets nipped in the bud when the lake dries up.

...And then blows around and winds up in another ideal environment, eh? Or just wait for the water to return. Are you purposefully unaware that we're reviving ancient bacteria that were trapped in salt formations by just adding some nutrient rich water?

You need a STABLE environment for hundreds of millions of years, and probably oceans, not lakes. Find some banded iron formations and we'll talk.

You're in luck! We found a formation right next to Mars! You're living on it! And we even have rocks from Mars on Earth -- ejecta from impacts -- and estimate that tons of Earth has been spread about the solar system, possibly seeding live just about anywhere that could support it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just as sceptical as the next person. I'll rightly dismiss any claim without evidence, but I refuse to have a closed mind to possibilities for the very same reason: Every time we've declared places on Earth devoid of life, we've found it thriving there. Used to think life couldn't exist at the bottom of the ocean, wrong. Used to think no life could survive subduction into the crust, wrong. We've had to re-define what life "needs" to survive so many times it's more truthful to say, "we're not really sure where life can't survive." So, if you make an unevidenced claim like, "You need a STABLE environment for hundreds of millions of years" -- I'll give you the same sceptical middle finger: Fucking Prove it, or you're full of bullshit.

Not really true, at least in terms of conditions for life being better than on Mars. The Late Heavy Bombardment probably ended about 3.8 Ma ago, and even the more conservative estimates have life leaving identifiable marks by 3.6 Ma, and there are arguments for rocks even earlier than that -- and we don't have many of those. Life seems to have appeared on Earth not long after the crust cooled enough for such to survive.

Her Commodore/Admiral rank was only honorary.

No, it was not merely honorary. However, 40 of her degrees were (see same link).

The realm of women is whatever they want it to be. There is substantial cultural inertia, especially in places like the Southeast US, that impedes young women from trying to "do computers and tech stuff", and so the lampshading of legitimate achievements made by folks like Hopper is no bad thing. Yes, were she male she wouldn't get quite as many accolades, but so? She was a pioneer, and there is no shame in pointing out to today's young women "want to become a computer scientist? You're in good company."

I have as much distaste for postmodern cultural wankery as you, but informing women that they are welcome in the scientific community ain't that.

I taught computational physics for a couple of years as a grad student. Of the students that I considered absolutely top-notch, about 60% were women (where the difference from 50% is statistical noise). As far as physics went, they were basically the same as the men.

Chips Ahoy: Do you think the current popularity of micros is just a fad?

Hopper: No, the big mainframes are going to disappear. In fact, I intend to scuttle them. They have to go. They’ll be too slow. We’ll build systems of computers. It will be a whole bunch of micros, and they’ll all call each other up and talk. If you use a big mainframe, first you have to do inventory and then you do payroll and so on. You might just as well have a micro doing each of those jobs all working in parallel. That’s the way you get the speed. The big pressure is going to be on faster answers. There never was a good reason for putting inventory and payroll on the same machine. The only reason you did it was because you could only afford to own one computer. That’s no longer true. The micros are as big [in terms of processing capacity] as mainframes were only 10 or 12 years ago. Back then a big mainframe had 64K. That’s smaller than today’s micros by a long shot.

Chips Ahoy: Is there a limit of what micros can do for us?

Hopper: They’ll only be limited if our imaginations are limited. It’s all up to us. Remember, there were people who said the airplane couldn’t fly.

http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm#limits

You may scoff at COBOL, but she pioneered the idea of using a more human-friendly notation instead of machine language and its cousin, assembler. Her experiments were the precursor to Algol, which shaped all the imperative block-oriented languages we use today, including C, Java, VB, Pascal, etc.

And it made software more vendor-independent as the languages were not tied to a specific machine architecture, unlike machine code and assembler.

Before that, many scoffed at the idea of "dumbing down" programming with English-like syntax, fearing it would waste resources and invite poorly educated riff-raff into the field. (Well, maybe it did :-)

Perhaps Grace didn't get it quite right on the first try, but she helped spark a computer language revolution that led to better tools down the road. She tested waters others feared.

Automation like this only benefits two groups, factory owners and the consumers of the product. Owners want more profit and consumers want cheaper goods. The big loser is the worker who is left without a job. Most workers are also consumers, so more automation is required to keep prices at their level given that they are shifted into lower paying "service" jobs. It's a vicious cycle that's been going on for a century and we now have unheard of disparity between rich and poor. I love the idea of robots doing our bidding and appreciate this tech, but the reality of it sucks.

I am not a Luddite, but we need to think about how tech affect society. I think most engineers would agree that there are certain technologies that are unethical to work in. To me, this is one of them.

"Automation like this only benefits two groups, factory owners and the consumers of the product."

Make that three groups, as those deploying, servicing and repairing the robots will remain in demand for many years. Industrial equipment gets used hard and doesn't fix itself yet.

The skills needed for that are a combination not natural or intuitive to many people. The world has plenty of computer geeks, plenty of mechanics, and plenty of electricians. It has fewer who are all of those.

Automation like this only benefits two groups, factory owners and the consumers of the product.

What about the engineers who program the device? The tooling makers who build the automation and fixtures? The more skilled (higher paid) workers needed to operate the machines? The workers who remain employed because their company remains competitive? The maintenance workers who service the machine? The bank which finances the equipment purchase? The workers who get hired on the next project because the company is more competitive? All these groups and more benefit from automation. You have an overly simplistic, short sighted and incorrect view of this issue.

It's a vicious cycle that's been going on for a century and we now have unheard of disparity between rich and poor.

Demonstrably nonsense. Income inequality fell until around the 1970s-80s. The disparities we are seeing recently are a recent phenomena and are due to a complicated mixture of the falling power of unions, globalization, and financial manipulation.

The big loser is the worker who is left without a job.

Sigh... I run a small manufacturing company and I'm a certified accountant as well as an industrial engineer. Automation does not mean fewer jobs, it means different jobs and in the long run it means more jobs. Automation happens when a product needs to be produced in sufficient volume or with quality and/or safety requirements such that employing humans to do the job is not economical. The "lost" jobs you are bemoaning would never exist in the first place or if they did they would exist in the location with the lowest labor costs. My company purchased automation for lead making (we make wire harnesses) that allowed us to produce subassemblies faster. This allowed us to hire MORE people than we would have without the automation. In fact without the automation we would have been bankrupt. There is NO possible way for anyone to produce 500,000 wire leads with good quality by hand for a competitive price even with Chinese labor rates.

I'll give you another example. We use automation to process a six conductor cable for a jumper harness. We make about 1000 of these each day. While it is technically possible to automate this with some very expensive robotics and vision systems, the volume requirements would have to be ten times what we are producing to even consider doing that. The automation would cost well over US$2 million (yes I've looked). So we have unskilled workers who don't get paid much doing the work. Because of the cost of this automation (we can't afford it) we have to charge higher prices for our services which means we lose out on bids for work and cannot hire as many people. Lack of automation actually hinders our ability to hire more people because it limits our competitiveness.

I am not a Luddite, but we need to think about how tech affect society. I think most engineers would agree that there are certain technologies that are unethical to work in. To me, this is one of them.

Factory automation is not in any way unethical. People are the most flexible and useful asset companies have. Why would you limit your people to doing boring, repetitive tasks when they are capable of so much more? I'm guessing you have never worked an assembly line. It is mostly dull, soul crushing work that pays badly and grossly underutilizes what people can do. Come work on our assembly line for a few days and you'll be whistling a different tune. Factory automation lets us get more work and hire more people and the people we hire can be paid more and do more. It's a positive cycle.

How is an ostensibly tech-oriented site such a hotbed of Luddism?

It's not. Pointing out that a certain technology has potential negative consequences is not the same thing as destroying technology out of fear and misunderstanding. The opposite, really.

Has noone considered how the quality of life goes UP as the number of people required for menial labor goes down?

Depends on how you measure quality of life, and who we're measuring it for.

Ask yourself this: What was the quality of life for black people in the US right after they were emancipated? You might be surprised by the facts, because it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

Has noone even looked in a history book, to see if concerns about vanishing workforces have EVER come true?

Has there ever been a time in history where the majority of the workforce could be replaced quickly and cheaply by a single technology? If not, then there's no comparison to make; we kind of jumped the shark in terms of employment when we came up with robotics.

Have all of these so-called geeks never considered how its BETTER to have a more educated workforce than to have one comprised primarily of factory workers?

A matter of opinion, and a bad one at that - what, so if a guy works in a factory he's automatically less intelligent, and worth less than the "educated" manager, who got an MBA but never learned what the word "work" actually means? Pardon me if I take offense to that concept.

Or on the flipside, perhaps one of you can explain why it is preferable that we (as a society / economy) spend money paying people to do non-creative work that can easily be done by an automaton, rather than spending it on art / design / innovation / work that cannot easily be done by a robot?

Because to sell products, you need customers, and for customers to buy products, they need money, and to acquire money, most people need a job, menial or otherwise. I think they call that the Law of Supply and Demand, or some such nonsense.

You offer scoffing and snark, not insight. Or is it just a failure of imagination?

It's correct to scoff at folks who are scared of Terrorists. You're insinuating that terrorists are nothing to sneeze at, but The Flu Kills Six Times more people EVERY YEAR than a 9/11 attack. Cars and Cheeseburgers kill FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more people than a 9/11 scale attack. You're OK with pissing away taxes to have government agents protect us from WOW playing terrorists? Come the fuck on, man. You sound fucking hysterical and moronic to boot. Do you want to ask permission from a TSA agent before you're allowed to dial the phone? Do you want a DHS employee riding with you in your car, and tossing out your French fries to "protect" you? No. It's been over a decade since 9/11... The cost of our freedom and privacy spent by the NSA is far too much just to "protect" us from something that's one 4000th of the threat encountered on a trip to McDonalds.

So fucking what if in-game currency is used to to channel funds. The threat is fucking pathetic compared to even the greater threat of falling down in the bathtub.

In North America, more people are killed every year by their own furniture falling on them than by terrorism. Terrorism the single most over-hyped thing I can remember hearing about in my lifetime.

Terrorists are cowardly criminals and even if they were blowing up a large government building every week they could not do any lasting and significant harm to an actual free and democratic society.

However, people are over-reacting to terrorism, and allowing the media and authoritarian types in government to fear-monger about it and use it as an excuse to help push petty tyrannies like the TSA and even serious threats to liberty like the NSA spying on all of us. AMERICANS ARE DAMAGING THEIR GREAT NATION by allowing this to happen. Your Constitution used to mean something, something incredible and empowering. It made you the envy of the developed world and created great opportunities for those who were clever and worked hard to make a better world for themselves and others. You need to wake up, reclaim your country and stop this downward slide into totalitarianism.

In North America, more people are killed every year by their own furniture falling on them than by terrorism. Terrorism the single most over-hyped thing I can remember hearing about in my lifetime.

Terrorists are cowardly criminals and even if they were blowing up a large government building every week they could not do any lasting and significant harm to an actual free and democratic society.

However, people are over-reacting to terrorism, and allowing the media and authoritarian types in government to fear-monger about it and use it as an excuse to help push petty tyrannies like the TSA and even serious threats to liberty like the NSA spying on all of us. AMERICANS ARE DAMAGING THEIR GREAT NATION by allowing this to happen. Your Constitution used to mean something, something incredible and empowering. It made you the envy of the developed world and created great opportunities for those who were clever and worked hard to make a better world for themselves and others. You need to wake up, reclaim your country and stop this downward slide into totalitarianism.

Yep. Osama bin Laden, for all that he's dead, basically won. And his biggest ally was the US security industry.