You forget that the USA is a capitalist state. You have the cheapest government that money can buy, not the best.

I think a few brain cells just exploded. What can possibly be fair about an extortion permit?

Indeed. Guns are not unknown.

And the financial sector, please. Among with the lawyers.

Not that I am aware of. From the summary:

It appears that they tested it on a really slow computer. On my computer, the start menu appears just after I have clicked the button...

I think it will become an action series: the Six Million Dollar Yeast.

You can even get higher if you use staged balloons. At some point, the cable gets too heavy to support its own weight. If you use multiple stages in the cable, you can make it much longer and therefore catch more wind. I don't know what the optimum altitude for such a balloon is (at some point the reduced air density would make the efficiency decrease with altitude). This principle was already demonstrated with staged sailplanes.

So there's your attack vector. Note that you may heavily encrypt the output of all the input devices, but with your own device drivers or added hardware there is little you can do about replaying the input signals themselves. Or from "swallowing" the cards and transmitting all the PIN codes.

They don't survive the mail sorting machines. I tried. So when you use a wax seal, you will have to deliver the letter yourself. I admit, that is a good way to prevent the interception of mail as well.

Actually, they do surf the web (or did. I sure hope they fixed it). That is one of the problems with ATMs. The connection with the bank may be secured, but the devices are still attached to the big bad internet. So if you replace a device driver (or add your own piece of hardware), all communication channels are just waiting for you to be abused.

You wish. It was long ago chopped because the wood could be sold for a precious number in a computer (erroneously referred to as "money").

It is merely a branch of L-space. If you encounter an ape, please pass him my greetings and give him a banana.

Years ago (10 years or more)? There was a study about the arms race in agricultural pest control. The subject of this study was a genetically engineered crop that made its own poison, but that was not really relevant to the outcome of the study. Traditional spraying would have the same effect.

It was discovered that poison did not only fight pests, it also helps pests. The non-resistant pest bugs were killed, but the resistant pest bugs were given a predator-free environment. This was important, because the poison resistance often comes with lower chances of survival in non-poisoned environments. For example, one poison had an impact on the nerve system, paralysing non-resistant bugs. Resistant bugs had a nerve system that worked much slower, so they would be a "sitting duck" in a natural environment.

the study showed that if a certain portion of the land (recommended was 15% to 20%, which sound like a lot, but is peanuts compared to the 60% loss often found due to resistant pests) was planted with non-poisoned crops, the whole arms race could actually be stopped. The bugs would move between plants, and if they came on a poisoned plant they would be attacked by the poison, and if they came on a natural plant, they would be attacked by their natural predators.

Sure, you don't have to become a murderer to catch murderers.

You can test almost any software with mock data. In fact, such data may be a by far better test as it is composed of things that are on the edge of being problematic..

Well, it's true. You should have at least some Russian intelligence to speak or write Russian...