> This has thankfully prevented it from becoming the language of choice in major outsourcing and offshoring destinations
> like India, Pakistan and Vietnam

A quick perusal of iPhone-related questions on Apple's discussion boards, or on stackoverflow.com, would quickly cure you of this belief. A lot of people at the "bang the rocks together" level of expertise are trying to develop iPhone apps. People (and companies) go where the opportunity is.

I've been approached by one India-based organization to act as a "Public face" for them here in the states, so I know there are shops full of inexperienced iPhone developers in India who are pitching US companies on developing their "mobile strategy" for them.
 

Extracting private keys from smart cards would be one application. That's a case where you have "physical access" to the key holder, but it's protected by physical security. The card will erase the key if you open the box, but it provides a digital signature service, which you can exploit via this method to extract the key without opening the case.

That's hilarious - you accuse me of hand waving, and link to a post that contains you doing exactly that - mentioning various factors that *you assume* might come into play, but nothing in the way of actual data or calculations. I see in another thread where you also ignored the test that Car & Driver did which showed that of 3 cars they tested (including one of Toyota's recalled models), all were able to stop from 100MPH with the engine at full throttle.

Since you claim in your other post that people are ignoring other factors (and provide a nice list of them) why not enlighten us with your knowledge? I'd be perfectly happy to post the spreadsheet I used for my calculations up on Google Docs, if you wanted to take a look at it.

>On many vehicles the brakes can not stop a vehicle in this situation

For a basic reality check - have you *ever* seen published performance specifications or test results for any vehicle where the stopping distance from 60mph(100km/h) was more than 200 feet(60m)? No? Me neither.

To stop a 2-ton vehicle from 60 mph in 200 feet takes about 400 horsepower. If the brakes can apply the equivalent of 400HP to the wheels (actually more, since the stopping distance has friction with the road as a limiting factor), then the car *will* slow down when you press on the brake, regardless of the power being output by the engine. The braking force varies with speed, but not enough to matter for this calculation.

Of course, if your engine is racing at full throttle putting out 200 horsepower, and you're already doing 60 mph, it'll take longer than usual to stop - on the order of 10 seconds, rather than 4 seconds. If you wait until you've reached 120 mph before you decide to stand on the brake, it'll take 40 seconds to stop, and a distance of over 1/2 mile. I could see that being a problem, particularly with a panicking driver...

> I have taught myself C++, Java, python, PHP, etc

Depending on how deeply you "know" each of those languages, you may be lacking experience in some very different ways of doing things. You ought to at least add one functional language (Scheme or Haskell), and do some really low-level programming (in assembly language, or C). If you haven't looked into C++ templates yet, that is another very different paradigm worth learning.

Complexity analysis sometimes evades the college-educated, too, but it's a particular weakness among the self-taught programmers I have known. It's a little sad to see someone trying to micro-optimize the heck out of a very inefficient algorithm, when f they just used a BST or a hash table instead of a list, they'd have vastly better performance.

A lot of toothpastes made for children are fruit-flavored, and Tom's of Maine (http://www.tomsofmaine.com) makes a few non-minty flavors. Also try your local natural foods store - they probably have some wacky flavors.

I just did a quick survey of all the computer equipment in easy reach from my office chair:
        Mac Pro computer - built in China
        Apple Keyboard: Made in China
        Wacom digitizer: Made in Japan
        Logitech Speaker: Made in China
        iSight Camera: Made in China
        Vakoss USB Hub: Made in China
        Apple Cinema Display: Made in China

Slightly skewed due to all the Apple equipment, but none of the top 4 PC manufacturers builds much of anything in the US or Europe anymore. This skips over the fact that there are components inside the computer from a number of different manufacturers. A lot of these sub-components contain firmware loaded in Chinese factories, as well.

I got a magna-doodle for my wife when she was recovering from some voice problems, and it worked pretty well. It didn't do very well with small writing. Since the boogie board uses a stylus, it might be better in that regard.

Your average high-speed chase participant is not a criminal mastermind. They're somebody who got caught doing something stupid, and panicked.

They won't "lose control", exactly. It'll just get a lot harder to steer, and the car will slow down rapidly

Not terribly accurate. The spread of the beam is determined by the antenna geometry and the frequency of the radiation. The range, of course, is subject to the power level. With a big antenna, and enough power, you could disable a car from miles away. Practically speaking, it'll probably need to be effective from 100 yards or so in order to be useful. I expect that the effective width of the "beam" would be several lanes wide at that range.

Not really. I mean, you *could do so*, but it'd be hard to make the car 100% shielded. It's probably 90% covered already, actually.

Well, the bulk of the radiation pattern will go forward, obviously. The backward-facing component can be made arbitrarily small.

Probable cause? The police can't just destroy property because they feel like it. Unless you're currently engaged in a crime, they wouldn't have a reason to try to kill your computer.

Automotive electronics are fairly tough, because of the noisy environment they operate in. I would bet that in the typical case, the voltage pulse just confuses the computer, and/or latches a few inputs, causing it to shut down. You could likely start it right back up afterward.

I get what you're going for here, but comparing a race engine with a mainstream engine is pointless. The race engine only needs to run for a short period between overhauls, while the V8 truck engine can get minimal maintenance and run problem-free for 200,000 miles. Yes, higher-tech engines can have much better efficiency, but at the cost of complexity. For some applications, the increased reliability of a larger, simpler engine is important.

As another irrelevant data point - Naturally-aspirated V8 engines in Formula 1 produce upwards of 700 horsepower - but those are tiny, 2.4l engines. In NHRA Pro Stock, big-block V8's like the ones referenced in this article commonly produce 1000-1500 horsepower. If you put twin-turbochargers on a race-car V8, you can get 2000-3000 horsepower.

The difference is that the other features you listed (3D, speed, administration) are features of the software, while the "freeness" is a characteristic of the folks producing the software. If I go to read a review of a bunch of new car models to try to determine what to buy, I wouldn't expect the characteristics of the car company to be included in the review scores, unless it's relevant to the job the car is supposed to be doing.