This is the same reasoning I read in Roger Highfield's The Physics of Christmas. Good book, I read it every year around this time.

I would have loved to have this in my district when I was summoned for the second time. Hopefully this system checks if a potential juror is exempt because they previously served within the last two years or whatever and doesn't even send a notice out. I was so angry when they mailed me that second summons and I had to tell them I'm exempt, something that they should already know. I'm sure they had to verify my exemption by easily looking it up, but no, they had to waste my tax dollars and money.

To all saying you should serve as a juror especially if you are logical and would make good choices - part of the juror selection process (at least what I went through) is the judge asks you some questions about what you do, your job, and some other things to make you comfortable and at ease. Then the counsel for both sides takes turns saying which jurors they don't want to server. And guess what. They selected the scientists and engineers to not be their jurors. I was still on there because I think they reached their limit of who to throw off (I'd like to think I'm one of those smart people they'd throw off since I'm a mathematician/computer scientist that studies philosophy of science on the side.) Why throw off the smart ones? My guess is they think they're less moved by emotion and listen more to reason.

So, you can't trust software from malware vendors?

TrueCrypt has something where you can set up an encrypted virtual disk that you first put some files you don't care about on there with a password you wouldn't mind divulging. Then you make another virtual drive on that one that will store the files and a password you do care about. When asked for your password, you give the one you don't care about and it only shows files you don't care about. Plausible deniability.

Damn. From the title of this story, I thought there was a Firefox extension for the ACM's Transaction on Architecture and Code Optimization.

The reasoning is to stop identity fraud, so why outlaw anonymous commenting?

Even if that is the intent, are Australians really that easily swayed by comments on a blog?

But the fact that the law lapses at 6PM on polling day suggests that isn't really the intent of the law. Might as well pass something that says, "You are not allowed to say bad stuff about me until I'm elected again."

If you are afraid to speak when you can be identified, then your speech isn't free.

That better be a dry erase marker. Using a permanent magic marker would be stupid.

I totally had the same image in my head. "There. Now no one can read it. Let's put it on the internets!"

So, it is basically about cognitive dissonance?

Ignoring the fact that they are punishing people before it is even proven they did anything wrong, why are they taking away internet access?

For most crimes that I know of, you pay a fine or spend some time in jail. Are they taking away internet access because that is what was used to commit their "crime"?

If that's the case, they should chop off your legs the third time you illegally cross a street.

There's a notice on the site - here or as a featured link on there home page - that says fee exempt customers are prohibited from releasing documents to the public. It didn't say anything about releasing them if you did pay for them.

Aside from the silly idea of saying you can't make public documents public, are they saying you can only release these documents if you payed for them?

I see VHDL mostly used. I only ever see Verilog in third party libraries or autogenerated code.

I think language is an individual choice, but whatever you choose, make sure the students actually synthesize something on a chip and try to meet some timing requirements. Everything works in simulation.

Also, have them take at least one programming course. Firmware engineers try to write software as if it were firmware. Think variables and function names in all caps and absolutely no code reuse. I'm still fixing this guys terrible code.