This does not stop the UK from allowing private backups and copies -- many EU states* do. This is a violation of EU regulations, where, if such copying is allowed, there must be compensation from government.

This typically takes the form of an extra blank CD or DVD tax, or tax proportional to the memory size of the device (bigger can hold more copying.) Presumably direct payments taxed some other way are also acceptable.

But sorry, welcome to...

* The United States of Europe! All mere States shall be broken to the saddle of the Federal Government. Muahahahahaha

When you have 0/0, you hit two "obvious" but contradictory rules in basic algebra:

Rule one: anything multiplied by zero is zero
Rule two: anything divided by itself is one

Mathematicians don't know which rule has precedence for 0/0, so there's no way a dumb machine can figure it out, which is why most programing languages just throw an exception if zero is the denominator.

Those of us who wrote for PowerPC may recall the architecture returned 0 for integer division by 0. It's been done before and, in my opinion, was a good trade off between mathematical purity and pragmatism. The vast majority of the code I write follows the pattern result = (denominator != 0) ? (numerator / denominator) : 0.

Zero doesn't make a lot of sense if for instance you are dividing something by a dynamically changing denominator that hits zero at some point... the result would change from a very large number suddenly to 0.

Divide by zero is infinity so using the largest supported number type seems reasonable for the calculation of real numbers.

The reciprocal of x increases as x decreases.You want infinity, not zero, for x=0.

Pretty sure that anything divided by zero is an uncountable infinity. You may want it to be 0, but it mathematically isn't.

Division by zero if anything would be +infinity or -infinity depending on signs, not zero.

A while ago I wrote an autopilot that handled division by zero by looking at the signs and setting the result to (maxpos) or (maxneg), the zero's sign being derived from the variable's last value scavenged from the PID function.

No, it does not equal infinity.

The Limit as x aproaches 0+ of a/x = infinity.

But the Limit as x approaches 0- of a/x = negative infinity.

because this represents a jump-discontinuity, the value of a/0 is just plain undefined.

This is like week-1 of high school precalc shit. Come on.

First issue, x/0 mathematically is infinity, not zero. Plus, you want the same exact result across all applications ever? There are certainly times where zero is appropriate, there are also many times when one would want to have some representation of infinity; yet others where this simply indicates an error of some other sort and zero is a valid result.

MI5 work inside Britain (think FBI/secret service), and MI6 (actually called 'SIS') works outside of Britain (think CIA).

Stop growing almonds.

Stop wasting water. Recycle your waste into your water treatment plant and back to you.

Stop being so gay. Number 1 job! Frivolity breeds waste.

Stop using half the states water to raise crops for cattle and there will be plenty of water for people. Every time you eat a pound of beef you waste 1800 gallons of water.