“I lived in California for four years and this one made me go for the doorway
Thus, an earthquake of the same magnitude in southern British Columbia or California would cause more devastation because of the population density, but would be felt over a far smaller distance.
calling his opposition a bunch of losers
I'll explain this one a little more fully. Not long ago, the Liberal, NDP and Bloc parties proposed forming a coalition against Harper's Conservative party (which currently had the most seats, ie. had won the last election). Harper stopped this from happening by suspending Parliament for a while.
As you might know, just recently in England the party that won the election formed a coalition with one of the other parties. During Harper's recent visit to England, he was asked what he thought of England's coalition situation compared to the one he faced in Canada. To this question he replied (don't quote me on this, I'm paraphrasing) something along the lines of "The difference is that your coalition was formed by winners, and that's why it works. In Canada, only losers try to make coalitions, and they fail."
How does this make Canada look in the eyes of the rest of the world? A country led by a presumably responsible and mature adult capable of solving problems by talking through them with the opposition, and compromising so that the highest percentage of the Canadian population is represented? No! By calling his opponents a bunch of losers, it makes him look like a 5-year-old kid on the playground whose argument is that he wins because the other kids are all thumb-and-index-to-the-forehead losers.
I'm glad that the world at least had the recent Olympics to judge Canada by, instead of this leader with the maturity of a spoiled brat.
No, they would seem safer, but be less safe.
No, they actually would be safer because now that the exploit has been publicly disclosed, a much more vast audience of malicous hackers knows about and can use the exploit. If you assume someone knew about the exploit before (which is a safe assumption), it was probably only a small number of people because I'm sure some hacker isn't going to share something he thinks he's the only one sitting on. While security through obscurity is definitely a bad thing, it's at least somewhat better than having the hole posted for the world to see, getting even more publicity because of the surrounding debate on the subject.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. -- Jerome Klapka Jerome