Um, this is a fallacy. Just because there are two choices does not make them equally probable. You might get hit by lightning tomorrow. You might not. Are the odds 50:50? (No)

I see this as sane. The risk of terrorism has always been overblown. But there are literally tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands or millions) of black hats out there totally willing to steal your identity or crack your voicemail, like the Murdoch family did to anybody they wanted to investigate or intimidate.

Microsoft's stock price - while fairly high - has remained constant for ten years, while many of its competitors have seen enormous growth

It has dropped, in real terms. You forgot about inflation. 100$ was worth more 10 years ago than today.

about RNGs: "because it is impossible (in general) that it is not biased in some way"

Impossible to prove it's not biased.

"Require an amazing conspiracy" is closer to what trust means in terms of security than "trust but verify". But it is still too weak for a security context. And in some ways, it is the polar opposite of what "trust" means in context.

In security (of the mathematical, physical, or professional kind), a "trusted source" is a source that you are compelled to believe, because without their input, the security model would be impossible. Indeed, you want to have as few trusted sources as possible. For example, you rely on random numbers to seed a cryptographic system. Then you must trust your random number generator, because it is impossible (in general) that it is not biased in some way. You must trust your algorithm, because it is impossible to verify that it is unbreakable.

The fewer things in your security you have to take the word of, the more secure your model is, all things being equal. So "trust, but verify" runs counter to professional usage of the word "trust", because trusted things are unverifiable by definition (in context).

In security, everything that is not trusted is untrusted. And untrusted sources get all the scrutiny that is economically efficient.

I don't want to be excessively harsh but the summary was seriously a bunch of drivel. In silico either means it's data on the computer, or that you are simulating a biological process computationally. But as other posters have mentioned, unless you are purposely simulating evolution, mycoplasma sequences in your human databases isn't going to cause any "arms race." Yes, it seriously screws with validity, but that's a completely different issue.

You're still missing the point.

Methods to screen out junk contamination will all miss something. The data representation of a genome is reproduced, as a cost (and time) saving measure. In other words, the contamination that survives the screening process will "survive" as a silicon representation.

This is a problem in the long term, since we will presumably be using the genomic data to eradicate diseases. So our use of contaminated data will select for diseases which cannot be screened.

9/11 was an unexpected attack.

Google "Project Bojinka".

Although overly-broad laws are a serious problem, the real problem has little to do with them.

The police are not trained in the law. They are trained to a 350 page handbook, and are trained that if they have any doubt that an action is legal, to arrest or fine, and let the Courts sort it out. They are trained to hide behind their badge when they are wrong.

This is a classic economic externality. It costs a policeman or woman nothing to arrest or fine someone they will probably never see again. But doing so imposes enormous costs on all of us, through the direct costs of defense, and the social costs of operating courts beyond their capacity.

I heard Microsoft sends guys in black suits to provide free beer, so as to lower code quality at hackathons.

Why is compensation for penis size the canonical example? It doesn't take an idiot to not upgrade your own ram. If your time is worth more than a certain amount, it isn't even worth looking up how to do it. It is cheaper to just click the little "Upgrade RAM" button on the HP or Dell website and have them do it for you.

A lot of Americans are that rich. Many more think they are, but are uninformed. This has nothing to do with "compensation" for "deficiencies".

Similarly, here's a market for red sports cars for 50 year olds because they have wanted them since they were in their 20s, and can suddenly afford them as middle aged Boomers. The world isn't fair. Throwing stereotypes out there isn't making it any more fair.

Pay for what you want, not what you don't want.

Am I the only one who took Economics 100? Actually, my "corrected" summary is wrong. You should pay so that the marginal costs and benefits of the things you want are all equal. It doesn't take an infinite budget to do that.

You should learn how to use "abstract interpretation". "6 months ago" is a terrible excuse not to use a language. If you can express a complex idea quickly, by using "weird" operators, interpreting the idea is easy, specifically by ignoring the "weird" operators and focusing on the types/semantics of the things they combine. There are only so many sensible ways to combine values, so there are exactly that many possible semantics for the combinators that combine them.

"6 months ago" is the best reason to use a strongly typed programming language, so that you can be absolutely sure that abstract interpretation will work on parametric operators.

Perl5 is a lovely, expressive language, with a variety of strong abstraction operators. Perl6 brings all of Perl5 in, and extends the language with a built-in object system (using what experience with Perl5 hacking has shown to be the most useful)

I thought his point was that 5 minutes was unrealistically long.

Exactly. The telcos have no business snooping around in what I do on the web.

That is their business, full stop. If they are to optimize their network for real-life traffic patterns, they must "snoop".

Imagine if they did this to voice. Calling work is premium, immediate relatives sort of premium but distant relatives we'll give you at the base rate. You can call our business partners for a reduced rate, calling our competitors will cost triple.

Ever heard of "long distance"? "Calling our competitors" cost a lot more than triple, not too long ago.

A sovereign state is supposed to be able to defend its borders. If a state is not able to defend its borders, it is not sovereign. Yes, the argument was lost when other states invaded.