Let's see the hackers arrange for Bill Gates to get 100% of the votes; maximum embarrassment all round...

HELP HELP WHO CAN I TRUST...

We're from the government and we're here to help you...

'The most terrifying words you can hear' Ronald Reagan

The UK probably achieves a good compromise; after 2 years of service a person can't be sacked without cause, and if made redundant is eligible for a relatively small amount (1 week's pay per year of service). As to being deceived by your employer - that's just nasty...

My argument is that the reality of such experiences makes France less attractive to future start ups, regardless of whether this specific firm is a start up or not.

The fear of this sort of fiasco makes establishing the company in London instead far more attractive. So the French are ever more stripped of talent. As a Brit I am grateful to the French for sending us so many talented people, but for the folk in France this is BAD NEWS. And this sort of story will discourage risk taking there even more.

And then can avoid it if it doesn't appeal...

People want to work from home and companies recognise that this is desirable, so I think you're hoping for too much in trying to ban it. However making it safer - and getting insurance companies to impose the right constraints - may be the best way forward. 'If your system is hacked because an unauthorised laptop was attached to it, we don't pay out' should be a standard insurance clause. Similarly trying to separate the email system from the rest of system to sandbox spear fishing attacks should be required.

The point of course is that risks always exist; the challenge is to identify them and manage them. At the moment those risks are not being recognised, and the insurance companies are beginning to take exception to taking the fall for things going wrong.

This may offer a useful weapon in such debates; doctors - having been sued for everything - have developed a respect for the impact of law suits. Beyond that: making sure that your concerns are logged in an email to your supervisor gives you significant protection - and looking for another job may be the only answer after that...

If a company cuts corners on security, then in the same way that if I leave my door unlocked and get burgled, I can't make a claim. There's going to be a good living for lawyers establishing what is the required level of security. But if this incentivises senior managers to ask the right questions, then it's probably a good development.

After a serious grounding in statistics, you throw the class at a load of scientific articles - by the barrow load - and get them to spot the howlers for the term paper. Then submit the results to the publishing journals...

Much of the problem comes from studies being published whose data is not robust because the sample size is too small to be meaningfully significant. This needs to be headlined in the abstract if it is published at all; the best magazines should refuse anything without a decent sample size, whilst the ones further down the food chain should have statisticans on hand to ask hard questions.

Discovering an apparent effect should result in more research - not a rush to believe...

The MMR vaccine fiasco is of course the classic example of this; there are still people acting on the assumption that the lies were true, and that's getting people killed.

There seems to be absolutely no need for Europe to get involved in this issue, and the fact that there are some wanting it to do so is a sign that there's no real commitment to subsidiarity (why does the decision need to be taken an EU level given that ISP are inevitably local?). It also suggests there are Eurocrats with too little to do with their time...

Of course the whole area is product of the ignorance of our lords and masters at how easy it is to get past such barriers...

There isn't an agreement yet - there couldn't be because Congress hadn't agreed the fast track power. WHEN the agreement exists, it will be presented to congress as a treaty and will then be public. It's unfortunate when people misunderstand what is going on, because it increases the mistrust of congress, but wrongly. When they are criticised wrongly, it merely bounces off and makes them less willing to hear right criticism.