You are right as to what it indicates. And parent poster was right as to the implications of that indication. If you cannot control your physiological reactions to different stress inputs, you're probably not the type they are looking for. Source of the stress is irrelevant.

You mistake "effective" with "perfected". If polygraph were perfected, there would be no need to repeat. They aren't perfected.

What is the purpose of having a test if not to check whether applicants can "pass"?

Out in the real world, sometimes you have to sacrifice "ideal" and "perfect" and settle for "this works better than whatever else we have". You put a bunch of "this works" tools together, and hopefully you can draw an image of a candidate that is comprehensive enough to make an informed decision about their suitability for the job. Is a polygraph perfect? No. Does it operate in a vacuum? No.

Would SPAM be a problem if the machine requires that the sender's email address be on the whitelist and a passcode must be in the subject line?

Have 2 different passcodes - printer code for printing, admin code to remotely execute certain commands (like adding/removing other email addresses from the whitelist). Throw in a little logic to take itself offline temporarily (or some other response) if it's getting DOS'd. Should be fairly ok, no?

What do you consider acceptable political speech and what don't you? How do you make the distinction? If I have a means to promote a candidate (time, money, whatever), wouldn't restricting my means (in this context) constitute restricting my political speech?

Something else you seem to miss out on is that voting is bribery. You give something (a vote) in exchange for something (the candidate of your choice has a better chance of getting elected). Whether with short term or long term goals in mind, people do not naturally vote against their own perceived-best interest. Politicians know this and pander to their constituents, "bribing" citizens for their votes. Like it or hate it, it's how it the system is designed.

To quote George Will, "Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes."

And nobody does. If you're working on a true Ferrari, and you're a truly qualified Ferrari mechanic... you get paid Ferrari-level wages. Duh.

The problem here is all the people who think their Yugo is actually a Veyron, and should be paid like a NASCAR pit chief because they can plug a tire and change oil.

Again, not arguing that this is unlikely. I never said this is going to happen, just my little dream...

Or perhaps they would have been impelled to pump gas or flip burgers. Who knows?

Using your logic, an author with rights to Conan-Doyle's work has no incentive to create new unique works. Therefore, we don't want Conan-Doyle's work to become public domain because then the masses have access to his work and nobody has incentive to be creative.

The point is... nobody is being prevented from creating, and the only people with any ability to rest on their laurels are people with rights to the work. Wouldn't it then make sense to limit those rights to as few people as possible to encourage the masses to do more creative work of their own?

Perhaps you won't be hiring super creative types to make new properties, but your competitors will.

Creativity is not a zero-sum game...

I see this argument a lot on Slashdot and it's absurd on its face. For as long as the copyright is in effect, there may be less incentive for the owner to create other works, however, there is more incentive for other creators to produce creative works. Since others cannot personally benefit from a previously created work (unless they own it), they are encouraged to create new works of their own. Your argument seems to assume that there is only one creator out there and this individual stops making new creations then there will be no new works.

If copyright was short term or nonexistent and Tex Avery chose to copy Mickey Mouse instead of creating Bugs Bunny, would that have contributed to art or culture? Walt Disney owned Mickey Mouse, but he didn't sit around "milking" that property infinitely - he created a whole cast of additional characters. He was then able to use his ownership of those creative works to build up a company that provided jobs for thousands of animators, construction workers, designers, unskilled workers, etc.

Allowing people to control their creative works fosters creativity, it doesn't stifle it. Even if a creator chooses to stop creating and live off his/her existing properties, that doesn't prevent the rest of the world from producing new and unique works.

I'm guessing your event was in the US? FWIW, an event held in Asia is nothing like an event held in the US. In the land of karaoke bars and "anything goes", a stripper at an event is nothing of note.

I'm afraid that's wasted sentiment on this board. The same people that are quick to bash MS for rushing the hardware and experiencing massive failure rates are the same trolls claiming MS is just holding this up until they can milk it for every last penny. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

The people who aren't aware of Microsoft's behavior are probably even less likely to understand and respect the comments of the FSF. In other words, they're preaching to the choir.

Except when the market is saturated with competing handsets that have larger feature sets that aren't buggy or broken.

Agreed. I would really like to see a party that is truly fiscally conservative and socially/morally liberal. I don't care what the other 300mil Americans want to do with their free time, I just don't want them using my money to do it.

Yet people continually re-elect incumbents, despite their poor performance. "Public say" has been available since the birth of the republic, we don't need a bigger government so we can have more "public say".

People who truly want a "public say" should be conservative leaning - choosing what to do with their own money as opposed to paying ever increasing taxes that fund things the don't approve (ie., "oppressive world military", etc.)

Doesn't it bother you that 1-2 days of your work week are essentially solely for the purpose of paying for government programs (many of which you don't approve of)?

I find it kind of funny that, despite things like this, there are still people who think more government is the answer.