In my experience of music festivals in the UK, the police tend to have relatively low profile and are there to stop any major problems rather than hassling the people who are just there to enjoy themselves. They've even been known to turn a blind eye to the occasional illegal intoxicant (but you'd better not rub it in their faces).

I'd prefer to have cops at music festivals as otherwise the criminal element get a bit gung-ho with stealing tents and stabbing rival drug gangs etc.

I'd be more concerned about facial recognition used at a political rally rather than an innocent music festival as there's not much blackmail material therein.

We generally refer to them as 'wankers'.

There's also the Coventry Blitz conspiracy.

Better yet, hack the fingers that type the keystrokes (i.e. rubber-hose cryptanalysis).

So, you're happy to believe that Russia/China can decrypt our strongest encryption (unless you think Snowden just ROT-13ed the files) and have chosen to go after Snowden's files (despite the fact that they could just use rubber-hose cryptanalysis instead) rather than infiltrate live systems?

If a foreign country can decrypt anything we've got then you'd expect them to be able to keep it reasonably secret and they'd especially try to keep it secret when Gov'ts are hunting round for reasons to snoop on everything.

It's far more likely to be a political ruse that's completely made up just for the purpose of rail-roading the public.

It amazes me that most places don't have organ donation as the default option when you die. That way, it increases the number of available donors as a lot of people don't particularly care about what happens after they're dead and haven't bothered to register/carry a donor card. It would mean that people who have strong feelings about it could register/carry a card to ensure that their body remains intact.

I'm not sure I agree with compensating families for donated organs as it equates their grief to a cash payout which strikes me as insulting. Maybe some kind of donation given for the funeral of the deceased would be more appropriate as a thankyou, but ideally the family would welcome a way for their loved one to live on in some fashion.

Ask your bank. I got a whole book of blank cheques from my bank.

Additionally, biometrics are subject to change (e.g. accidents, illnesses).

What? A terrorist once rode in a child-molester? What a time to be alive.

Why not? It's a great little hypervisor.

This could be interesting as VMWare are most likely going to have to rely on the GPL being valid as otherwise they are not allowed to distribute that code, only their own code. So, presumably they need to show that the GPL is valid and that they are complying with it (which will be subject to interpretation).

Users don't have to worry about the GPL as anyone is allowed to use GPL code however they like, but it's only when you distribute it that you come up against its restrictions.

There's a whole raft of issues with getting autonomous cars to work how we want them, but I don't think any of the problems are insurmountable. With regards to a blind corner, it would be neat if the first vehicles taking that corner would be cautious (20mph), but as they uploaded information about that particular corner to some kind of driving knowledge base, subsequent cars would be able to take that same corner quicker. Also, if the cars could share sensor information, then it would be possible for a car to "see" round the blind corner if there was another car already round there.

I'd much prefer to share roads with autonomous vehicles, especially when I'm walking or cycling. They have the potential to have much, much better collision avoidance than your average driver. With a decent array of sensors (e.g. infrared, radar, lidar) they should be able to detect humans (maybe other animals as well) and reduce speed to allow corrective actions if necessary.

I'd anticipate that autonomous vehicles would be able to react a lot quicker and of course they wouldn't be distracted (driver distraction being the number one cause of accidents). In the case of an emergency, I wouldn't want the vehicle to be relying on the human to wake up, figure out what was going on and then take appropriate action.

Why would you care if it was a binary or a script as long as it did what you wanted (assuming you know/expect what it's going to do)? When you use chmod +x, you're expecting the file to be executable and both binary files and scripts can be executable.

I don't like hidden file extensions as it hides from the user useful information about what type of file it is. If the OS is going to base decisions on what to do with files based on part of the filename, then the OS should show the extensions.