FWIW, Python *does* compile the code it executes, and saves it as *.pyc files. True, it's only compiled for the Python virtual machine, but it's still compiled...and difficult to read.

How about replace income tax with a gasoline tax that costs about as much on average?

If a vehicle is on the road in poor repair, there's a decent chance it's because the owner can't afford to fix it and needs to get to work.

A lot of this really just boils down to 60s ideas of environmentalism and reducing pollution. It's just that the modern spin ads an extra level of extreme hysterics to the situation that are likely to alienate people and trigger skepticism.

Although you are probably right. If you ask all of the apathetic types just going along or even the true blue tree huggers to really sacrifice, you will probably get a much different answer.

That's probably why you have this whole subject wrapped in hysteria to begin with. Someone thinks they need to generate a sense of urgency by any means necessary.

Keep in mind that the better insurance gets at assessing risk, the less value it has.At some point they get the risk pinned down with sufficient accuracy that you come out better by putting the premiums into a savings account until needed.

Of course the root problem is mistaking insurance for a solution to outrageously overpriced healthcare.

The is slashdot. Science has no place in speculation!

is there an unknown benefit of having a blood-borne disease vector?

Yes, and he just told you, but you weren't listening. Having a blood-bourne disease vector has the benefit of staying the wrathful hand of Gaea.

Are you trying to persuade us that this disease is somehow important enough to be a bad thing, or are you making your argument to a god?

If you're so intimately familiar with a values and agendas of the gods, then on humanity's behalf I request that you also please explain to Cthulhu that the stars aren't right.

VMware has better USB and SATA device support. It requires less resources to run multiple VMs (compared to virtualbox) and more readily supports virtual clusters.

Although I could certainly see how most other desktop VM users would be perfectly satisfied with Virtualbox.

Actually, whenever they agree to not charge the customer, the bank charges it back. I know small merchants that have had it happen in spite of following all of the procedures as required.

There are so many layers of stupid in this story, it's hard to address one of them without the embarrassing feeling that someone might read a rebuke of one stupidity, and take it as an implicit acceptable of the rest of the stupidity that you didn't address. If you argue too hard that Yog-Sothoth made a mistake in designing camels, somebody might think you're a creationist.

From the point of view of a malevolent user who intends to use the device to harm someone, why would they want your malware?

From the point of view of a benevolent user, why would they want your malware?

What will happen in the marketplace, if a benevolent user is persuaded to run your malware and then has a problem and finds out that it was due to the malware?

What's so special about the security needs of people in a capital, compared to people everywhere else? And is this special need, really a function of where they happen to be at a moment, or is it based on what their powers and responsibilities (and presumably, replacement cost) are?

I am leaving a few dozen obvious things out because it's tiring to enumerate. That my original point: don't think that just because I missed a totally-obvious way that the idea is stupid, as meaning I would debate one of these points from the premise of accepting a lot of other stupidity. It's not even something I disagree with or think is a bad strategy or an us-vs-them thing. It's just a totally dumb idea, a loser no matter how you look at it and no matter what your agenda is.

You call them worthless but then in the very same sentence you admit that they are all-powerful.

George Carlin had a great routine on this subject. He correctly surmised that we were all guinea pigs. His particular example was birth control pills but this could apply equally to any new chemical or product. We usually really don't know the full implications of something until it's been tested by the end user. There usually isn't sufficient "science" done beforehand to really trust a new drug or product. So we are ultimately all guinea pigs and we have to just see what happens.

Unfortunately by that point it's hard to isolate all the variables.

If cancers and allergies go up, who do you blame? There are so many possible culprits.

Also, science is much harder and much less certain than the talking heads will admit.

There is no health benefit to taking a perfectly useful plant and adding more poisons to it. It doesn't matter if it's what occurs in the planet naturally or some other product that someone wants to sell to your local farmer (Roundup).

We already grow more than enough food. We have been letting food rot in order to prop up commodities prices since before you were born.

WE get a pretty UI... Yay!

Because those damn show stopper bugs in Calc are not important. nobody really wants to have an accurate spreadsheet over pretty icons and UI redesign!