Yes, but why? It might lead to some insights about ourselves and the field itself.

Could it be something biological, as politically incorrect as that might be? Autism for example, is much more prevalent in males than females: "ASD is almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42) than among girls (1 in 189)." [3rd bullet point from top]

So it seems like there are brain differences between males and females, when viewed as a group. And the brain creates personality.

If the reason is purely sociological, we can fix that and open the field to women. If the reason is in fact biological, we can stop trying to hammer square pegs into round holes.

Anxiety energizes and motivates people. Too much will paralyze them. Gotta reach the optimal amount that energizes, but does not enervate. Along the lines of "eustress" not "distress."

Humans have rules for driving. For example:

-> If you see a traffic light, identify what color it is, then continue, slow down, or stop based on one of those 3 colors.

So the Google Car cannot identify a traffic light? Or if it does, it cannot identify its color? If so, is that a weakness in the computing power? Like, a supercomputer could do these things, but a reasonably sized onboard computer cannot? Or a weakness in "vision" sensors?

-> Paper versus rock in the road: This, I can understand. There are a myriad things in the road. The decision here is, can the car safely pass over it? Inability to determine this is due to vision sensors or limitations in computing power?

I saw an interesting problem the other day: a piece of wood baseboard trim (for a wall) blew off a truck. It seemingly hung suspended in air then came down. I hit my brakes but kept going straight, hoping for the best. It hit the ground, bounced and lay flat. I imagine that might legitimately freak out an autonomous car.

A moron can drive safely, through city traffic, if he's highly motivated, manages to keep his attention on the road and his speed down. I guess a moron is still more capable of navigating the world than a computer.

That's the problem. Maybe they have fields that are not available on any of the other sites. Maybe they want to run reports off the site. Let me tell you what I think their goal probably is: A few weeks before the event, they want to lock the registration, get a report of all registrants, when they get in, when they leave, if they have any dietary restrictions, who requests lodging. Then they give that to their office manager who starts contacting local hotels and caterers.

I wrote a web-based event management program a few years ago on a LAMP plus JavaScript. It's been rock-solid and has handled thousands of registrants. Having said that, here's the way to determine if their needs are truly specific (you're going to need a management module and a registrant facing module):

1) What fields do they want to display to registrants? To event planners? Problem here: clients don't know what they want till they start playing with the site.

2) What fields do they want registrants to fill in after they click on the invitation link and reach the registration page? Do registrants request lodging? Do they arrive on different days? Do they leave on different days? Do they have dietary restrictions?

3) How will registrants be allowed to edit their information until the "lock" date? Probably a combination of unique pin generated for them, plus their email address.

4) How do they want to contact the registrants and ask them to sign up? The site I created created a custom URL for each event, and they were mailed to the invitees for that event. So, you create the event, and you email all the registrants (in the BCC field) with the link.

5) You're getting PII - personally identifiable information. You need a secure server. You'll need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection.

Fortunately, your organization has a few years of experience with this. So they know what they want to do generally. That's a very big deal - a client who actually knows what he wants.

THEN - you can check out some of the available commercial options, or see if they really need something from scratch.

Brands are a big deal. They have value. Nokia had a storied history. Something like "Nokia (by Microsoft)" or just leaving "Microsoft" off entirely (like BMW does with Rolls Royce, or Tata does with Jaguar) would have allowed the brand value to be preserved.

Some years ago, Ford decided to get rid of the Taurus line and rename it the '500'. They quickly realized the error of their ways and brought the Taurus name back.

Imprecise laws give authorities a great deal of discretion about the threat of prosecution. And discretion here is another name for arbitrary power.

Do they mean targeted harassment or libel? Or theft or fraud? Or do they mean playing devil's advocate?

Conflating the harassment of the McCanns with "trolling", a broad term, is just a power grab by an opportunist. It might sound politically beneficial right now but curbs on basic freedoms have blowback. Consequences.

The article reads like satire. I'd expect it out of a backward or totalitarian regime, but not the UK.

  He talks about it in this video, a couple of minutes after the time selected (35:46 into the video).

There were few more provocative ways to lure us into a brutal and expensive war of attrition than to start beheading American hostages on film. After public resistance to putting heavy infantry on the ground in Syria and Iraq again, this seemed like an excellent way to change the public's mind. But then what you stated would once again be the outcome. Insightful.

If you want the Americans to leave you alone, and they want to leave you alone, you produce slick films showing you cuddling puppy dogs and planting flowers. Not beheading hostages. It seemed so obvious, and I thought, is ISIS that stupid? No, they're not.

More from the NYT:

"Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.
[...]
But nearly a decade of wartime experience showed that old Iraqi chemical munitions often remained dangerous when repurposed for local attacks in makeshift bombs, as insurgents did starting by 2004.
[...]
Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons [...]"

They benefit in at least three ways:

1) Direct contributions.

2) The Revolving Door

3) Trading on insider information.

There are many other ways I'm sure, smaller and more subtle. But these are the big ones AFAIK.

We empathize with that which we perceive to be like us. People who look and act like me from my tribe? The halest, heartiest of the bunch, worthy of respect and honor. People who don't look like me but act like me... still, hearty mates. Animals which have emotions like me? Puppies, dogs, cats? Can't hurt them. Chickens? Well... they seem to be pretty different. They're okay to eat. Cows. Wow they're dumb and utterly unlike me - they're okay to kill. Fish? Utterly unlike me. No question, okay to kill. Octopi... wait, you're telling me they're like me? Hmmm, let me consider this.

The financial collapse was a result of mistakes, not crimes.

Absolutely false.

-> In America there have been just a handful of criminal charges brought against senior executives of banks, and even fewer successful convictions. This is very different from the response of prosecutors in earlier banking crises, such as the meltdown of Savings & Loans institutions in America in the 1980s. In that case more than 1,000 bankers were convicted for their misdeeds.

-> William K. Black [senior regulator who pursued offenders during the savings and loan crisis] tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it. And while there is no law against liars' loans, Black points out that there are, "many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent. [...] They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud. "

-> Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010, The Inside Job chronicles the fraud behavior which led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession.

The key word is "control fraud."

Banning revolving door employment deals isn't a good solution either. The government already has enough trouble attracting good people. If you want people that know how the system works, you need to hire people that have worked in the system. After their stint in government is over, those people expect to continue in their profession.

This is a common misconception. The financial system is mathematical but nowhere near rocket science. The majors of Wall Street executives clearly indicate this (I knew a fellow who became a senior executive at GS. A hypercompetitive jock with average intelligence).

Another case in point: Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, and former Treasury Secretary who crafted the bailouts. His undergraduate major? English.

End the revolving door. And firewall regulators from politicians.

Banning revolving door employment deals isn't a good solution either. The government already has enough trouble attracting good people. If you want people that know how the system works, you need to hire people that have worked in the system. After their stint in government is over, those people expect to continue in their profession.

This is a common misconception. The financial system is mathematical but nowhere near rocket science. The majors of Wall Street executives clearly indicate this (I knew a fellow who became a senior executive at GS. A hypercompetitive jock with average intelligence). Obfuscation has been the shield behind which Wall Street hid for many years during the 2000s. There are plenty of sharp people who can work as regulators. It is a different mindset from the money-at-any-cost Wall Street executive and they don't understand it. But it's there.

End the revolving door. With it, regulation becomes ineffectual. A farce.

Additionally, regulators need to be firewalled against politicians' retribution. The big donors give big money to politicians. They don't complain to the regulator, they complain to the politicians who defund and reassign departments pursuing the donor.

Example attacks are listed on Red Hat's security blog.