"When asked for advice you'll get the best recommendation scientists have at the time it's given".

That's a comforting thought, but I have never understood how it can possibly be true. As long as scientists hold conflicting opinions, how can anyone tell what is "the best" recommendation? (I also wonder how governments get "the best" scientific advice, although they always say they do).

It's a hackneyed example, but consider the situation in Vienna about the time of the American Civil War. Which was "the best" scientific advice: that of Dr Ignaz Semmelweiss (and Louis Pasteur), who said infectious diseases were caused by bacteria - or the huge majority of the medical and scientific professions, who still insisted that an imbalance of bodily humours was to blame? The majority certainly had the upper hand politically, as they had Semmeleweiss removed from his posts and eventually locked up in a lunatic asylum, where he died. It seems to me that any politician or other lay person who inquired about these matters in 1865 would have been given firmly to understand that the traditional theory was the correct one.

So really, to speak of "the best" scientific advice is to beg the question.

Further to that, I read in Gary Taubes' excellent book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (published in Britain as "The Diet Delusion") that a lot of work in nutrition had been done before WW2 by German scientists. After WW2, it became politically incorrect (as in "career destroying") to acknowledge any German work or influences, so everything started from scratch.

Add to that an observation from the sociology of science (and everything else): the younger generation (especially young males) are compelled to overthrow and despise whatever their fathers and grandfathers did. It's the equivalent of a young male confronting the patriarch/silverback, defeating him, and driving him out. I'm convinced this syndrome accounts for a great deal of the "myth-busting" that goes on - often, as in the case of the "myth" that fat is good for you and carbs make you fat, it is actually the truth.

Thirdly, modern science has degenerated to the point where almost all researchers are being paid by government or corporations to find specific results. However, as Einstein pointed out, "If you know what you're looking for, it's not research". All those eager beavers are under the gun to publish regularly and achieve striking results that are newsworthy. The easiest way of doing that is to assert that "Everything we believed is wrong!"

"If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats".

We stupid foreigners actually know a little about the American legal system, and not purely from watching old Perry Mason episodes. One of the glaringly obvious things we know is that it isn't so much the facts of the matter that count, but who has the most money and thus influence. If you have political clout - and anyone rich enough can get it - no prosecutor will even be found to indict you. ("Shucks, awful sorry, wish I could be more help, just too busy tracking down terrorists...").

US senators have an awful lot of power, but most of it lies under the surface. They know people who can get a surprising number of things done (or not done, as the case may be) and they are among the world's leading experts at trading favours for favours. The law is so immense and complex that almost anyone can be charged with crimes that would lead to extremely long prison sentences - the main thing that protects the normal, innocent citizen is that the police have no particular reason to want to frame them up. Try reading (for instance) Harvey Silverglate's book "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent".

"If he didn't want to be charged with a fairly serious CRIME, then don't commit the crime".

Have you ever heard of the "presumption of innocence"? It is morally and legally wrong to imply that Assange committed any crime, until he has been convicted in a court of law.

Thanks! Just as funny as I remembered... 8-)

See "The Shockwave Rider", passim. One of the classic definitions of life involves "irritability" (not quite what it might sound like). Brunner's worm demonstrates irritability in both senses; when the authorities try to wipe it out, it retaliates by destroying banking systems.

I guess the main difference is that the promises are being made by academics, in a formal paper. Not by salesmen and enthusiastic executives. Far from conclusive, I agree - but it's a step in the right direction. It's probably still a 1000-mile journey, but the first step has to be taken some time.

Er, did you realize that vaccination and other forms of inoculation consist of injecting a small sample of the bacterium, virus, etc. to give the immune system a smell of it? Then the immune system tools up and is ready for the full-scale infection if it occurs.

One of the many nice things about A3 is that (optionally) sysadmins could emulate inoculation by handing specific details of threats directly to A3 instead of waiting for it to detect them itself. That would eliminate delay and enable A3 to be lined up on the border with tank divisions, a howitzer every 2 yards, and millions of men when the invasion starts.

And I simply adore the idea of "stackable debuggers". (Anyone remember Gary Larson's "stackable livestock"?) 8-)

The analogy is a big stretch, as it would take a very long time and huge effort to approach the unbelievably complex sophistication of the immune system. But the outlines are there: software that detects previously unknown threats, quickly mobilizes to defeat them, and then stands guard against each (now known) threat in future.

'Its just another example of "we have to pass it before we can find out whats in it"'.

And that's just the Congress...

"He got rather angry for some reason..."

I can't imagine why - it was your own ignorance you were exposing. Fighter aircraft are too small to carry more than one (or, at most, two) crew. Otherwise they are big, slow, unmanoeuvrable, and shot down. The F-14 Tomcat featured in "Top Gun" is a 2-seater, mainly because it was designed for naval use and flying long distances over featureless ocean is difficult and dangerous for a lone pilot. WW2 demonstrated that 2-seater "heavy fighters" like the Me110 didn't fare at all well in combat with smaller, more responsive planes like the Spitfire. That conclusion has never changed since.

Tanks, by contrast, weigh many times more and function rather more slowly. Hence the tradeoff is different, and usually favours a crew of around 3-5. Again, at the start of WW2 some (otherwise very good) French tanks suffered badly because the commander also had to load and fire a main gun. While doing that, he generally lost track of the tactical situation with often disastrous results. The T-34/76, too, had only 2 men in its turret which left the commander to handle the gun - a failing which was remedied with the T-34/85.

Apart from anything else, in most tanks the driver sits in a compartment in the front of the hull, while other crew members are in the turret.

That's because Scout SV isn't a tank - as someone already pointed out, it's essentially an armed personnel carrier. (Otherwise known as a "tank target" - one shot from a real tank and it dissolves in a ball of fire).

I was surprised at first when I read TFA, then I quickly realised this is just the "facts don't matter" school of journalism - in which writers use technical terms in any way they fancy, and don't bother to do any research. As in the recurrent use of "battleship" to mean "warship", or "warplane" to mean "a fighter, bomber, or ground attack aircraft but I couldn't be bothered to find out which".

If anyone is old enough to remember the Falklands War, it was either hysterically amusing or very annoying (depending on your temperament) to see the media for months on end describing "Belgrano" as a battleship. (In fact, she was a war-surplus WW2 US light cruiser, similar to HMS Belfast which is parked in the River Thames near the Tower of London to this day).

And before the usual suspects start calling me a "pedant" - as if that were a bad thing - just remember that experts in any field have specialist terminology, and misusing it is a sure-fire way to create confusion and error. Imagine if it were software that was being discussed. "Sure, Mr Pedant - constant, variable, whatever".

Don't do critical things in hastily-written, poorly designed software. Instead, take sufficient time and make the design and implementation robust. Tried and tested methods exist for all of this. (Consider avionics, for example).

The word "architecture" is bandied around a lot, partly because it sounds so important. But if architecture means anything, it should include scoping out ALL limits embedded in the software or adjustable through a UI. At the very least the limits should be documented in such a way that those responsible for managing and maintaining the system are fully aware of them at all times. Because they are just as important as the speed at which your car will come off the road when you drive round a tight bend.

Ideally, resources permitting, a better solution should be systematically adopted. Such as having the software itself warn (in good time) that a built-in limit is being approached. Or simply allocating a type that can store numbers vastly greater than could ever conceivably arise. This, of course, is one of the useful aspects of strong typing: before using any variable, you MUST specify its type, and a good programmer will learn to stop at that point and find out what the requirement is.