Iran's actions with regards Yemen are purely regional politics, nothing to do with any threats they may pose towards the West. Funny as it may seem, people and nations sometimes have multiple motivations to act.

In case of Yemen, it is a matter of Saudi-Arabia, Iran's most prominent opponent in the region, flexing its muscles against mostly Shia militias in Yemen. Iran seeing itself as the voice of the Shia minority in the ME, it is no surprise it should intervene.

You mean that part of the world that exclusively programs in C-derivatives?

As a service provider, I am not sure how to handle this because, technically, it's "their server".

On the other hand 'their' server has to share a network with other servers. If they refuse to use best current security practices, their server will start interfering with other servers.

So the answer is: don't sell them unsecured VMs. If they can't take the above argument and insist, at least charge them more based on the fact that you will have to clean up the mess eventually. And if you have many such customers, invest in some monitoring solution that can detect hacked boxen.

The other possibility is of course that Microsoft was very much in bed with the Blair government, so in the good old UK tradition of "do the exact opposite of the other guys" the Cameron government is deciding to put the thumbscrews to 'em.

I do not see a citation anywhere in that post. Sorry, try again.

Trust the basement-dwelling "whaaaah gubmint baaaad!" conspiracy nuts on Slashdot to bring up 'evidence' completely unrelated to the point they are struggling to make.

'Fruit of the poisonous tree' deals with how the evidence is obtained. If, after obtaining the evidence in a legal way, an officer commits a crime by then stealing out of the evidence gathered, that still makes the evidence admissible in court. Absent any cases cited to the contrary, of course.

What, you expect that Little England will stop paying the license fee en masse?

The BBC is not dependent on stars to bring in money. It is publicly funded.

Since you are reduced to quibbling over the semantics of a metaphor, I think I can safely conclude you concede the rest of my points.

Then don't write in the present tense if you don't want people to compare your points to the present state of Lisp. It's as easy as that.

Here's a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a decent education.

California's debt at the state level is many times larger. Even Gov. Brown estimated it at $354b last year, and that's likely far too low.

Still a trifle on a 2.2 trillion GDP. And I noticed you glossed over the fact that static debt numbers are meaningless, it's the debt service that counts.

You have to add to that even larger local debts.

Nope, you don't get to do that. Local debts are the responsibility of the local authorities, you don't get to add them to the state debt. And If they have enough tax base to carry the debt service, the debt the local authorities run up is again, irrelevant.

And who, pray tell, "shackles" California's tax raising powers anyway? The state is entirely in the hands of Democrats.

Here's who and what:

1. The Republicans, because California requires a two-thirds Assembly majority to pass a budget, and they won't budge on tax increases.
2. Proposition 13.

Seriously, if I know this from an ocean and a continent away, then it is rather obvious who the illiterate is, now isn't it?

I was not arguing that Lisp has taken off or should have taken off, so you can take that strawman and stick it up your arse.

Secondly, since all but one of your points are factually untrue, that can't be why Lisp hasn't taken off. You are making points that do not support your argument, leading credence to the conclusion that you are merely trying to rationalise a personal dislike of Lisp. Nothing wrong with not liking a language, but at least do your audience the courtesy of being honest about it.

Lastly, it is the height of stupidity to double down on a position when you have already proven that you do not know what you are talking about. No amount of impressive sounding words is going to hide your basic lack of knowledge of the development of Lisp since McCarthy's time.

It has nothing to do with it being unconstitutional. Dutch judges are expressly forbidden to judge on that subject, see my other post on this thread for details.

It is in fact a rather surprising decisions, since Dutch judges have no tradition of ruling in 'contra legem' procedures; they are in fact forbidden by the Constitution to do so (article 120 says judges shall not judge the constitutionality of laws and treaties).

Now, the loophole here is that treaties are considered higher law than the Constitution, so judges can rule local laws in violation of a treaty[1]. They don't tend to do that in mere district court though.

Apparently the case made by complainant was compelling enough, and the governments argument weak enough, that a mere district judge felt they could safely make that ruling.

[1] On the gripping hand, the principle of subsidiarity means that if a case is covered by the Constitution as well as a treaty, judges are supposed to use the Constitution as the basis for their decision, once again invoking art. 120. But of course if the Constitution and the treaty align enough, appealing to treaty law wouldn't work anyway.

I'm sorry, but a debt of 130 billion on a Gross State Product of 2 trillion hardly counts as 'deeply in debt'.

As most economic illiterates, you confuse debt with interest. Debt is irrelevant. What is relevant is being able to service that debt; California has had its troubles in that area, but mostly because idiots like you managed to shackle the government's tax-raising powers.

And yet all 4 of these have a GDP per capita higher than the US average. Apparently the facts say that this tax burden isn't so crippling after all.