Logic (at least up to first-order logic), set theory (some is covered, but not its connection to logic), game theory (essential to so many things, not covered at school at all), and graph theory (the basis for pretty much anything involving computers) would be at the top of my list. Anything where proofs dominate, rather than rote application of rules (we have machines for that now!) would be nice to see. Probability is already well covered in the UK, not sure about the USA. Statistics would be helpful to pretty much anyone.

Don't drop the calculus, but you can teach people to understand calculus in a couple of months. Having them spend a couple of years going from being a thousand times slower than a computer at solving differential equations to being 500 times slower isn't worth it. It's not like simple arithmetic, where getting a calculator out and typing the problem in can be a bottleneck.

They just released the first sub-$100 Windows Phone, so it seems that someone agrees with you. Surface is aimed more at the corporate market, so the price doesn't matter as much. Spending $1000 on a computer that lasts a couple of years and makes an employee more productive is usually a good investment.

Huh? DLLs are shared libraries. They've been shared between all applications that use them since 16-bit versions of Windows. The only time that wasn't the case was when you couldn't locate them at the same virtual address (win32 dlls are not position-independent code, because PIC is slower, so are statically relocated for a particular address), but in 64-bit apps DLLs are PIC and so that's not an issue.

The first does not necessarily follow from the first. They've encountered lots of species with cloning technology. It's never stated on-screen that they don't make use of this. The Borg nursery scene could easily be interpreted as showing newly cloned Borg with their first cybernetic implants (disregarding the Voyager stuff, where they changed the premise of the Borg beyond all recognition). In particular, they claim that 'We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own' - given that most species become extinct after encountering the Borg, this would be a very short-term strategy if they were not preserving genetic samples for cloning - you get a few decades of life out of the new intake and then you no longer have their biological distinctiveness.

Even if they didn't normally reproduce in this way, they seem good at adapting. I doubt that it would take long before they adapted in response to the threat of a lack of new species to assimilate.

So, what you're saying is, the SNES controller is good for games where a gamepad controller is the best UI, but an analogue pad is better for games where a keyboard and mouse is the best UI?

Should be? Sure. Is? Absolutely not, in any shipping design.

It's sad how few votes they've got. Advanced technology, realistic motivations (although not explained early on), plausible explanation for the Fermi paradox. What's not to like.

Anyone who didn't vote for them because they've not read the Revelation Space series should go away and read it now.

Why? In the first episode showing the Borg, they found a creche with Borg children, so they were still able to reproduce their biological components. Given how quickly they adapted without assimilating their enemies (and repaired damage), they also seemed more than capable of improving their technological abilities. You could argue that they couldn't survive without external stimulus, but that's pretty common for most lifeforms.

That's not entirely clear from the canon. Some of the dialog indicates that, within the collective, there are individual viewpoints, but that the whole acts based on the consensus view. With direct neural interfaces, there's a lot of time to debate possible courses of action before any decision has to be made.

Macrovision worked by setting the brightness to maximum during the flyback period when the beam is turned off. What kind of device were your friends using where this interfered with the signal? It was a problem for (some) VHS recorders, because they averaged the brightness over the entire frame and didn't ignore the flyback interval, so you ended up with a very dark copy.

Just to clarify, your question is:

A device can run arbitrary malicious code and is connected to a physical link to your car, to a system that has physical links to your engine management system, and was not written with security in mind, what's the worst that can happen?

Because calculus is a massively overrated part of mathematics. It is emphasised in the British education system because, when it was introduced, having accurate artillery tables was seen as important. It is emphasised in the US education system because, when it was introduced, being able to put a satellite into orbit with incredibly primitive computers (that might fail) was considered important.

Anything that involves pouring loads of money into blue-sky R&D tends to have big pay-offs. The question is whether one is a better investment than the other.

More to the point, Android is an open source and freely redistributable platform.

Even that's a stupid idea. A one-time pad is trivial to construct, can be used without any special software, and can not be cracked unless you manage to steal the key. If all you need to communicate is something short (e.g. time and location of target) then you can just post the encrypted thing in the middle of some random spam on a site like Slashdot that doesn't delete spam posts, just hides them.

Then there are techniques like linguistic steganography, that hide messages in things like misplaced apostrophes and misspelled words. Automatic detection of them is basically impossible, because they look exactly like the random permutations people use to get past spam filters. You can permute the 'BSD is dying' copypasta troll, for example, in such a way that it hides a message but doesn't perturb the readability of the text and no one will notice (most people won't read it at all), but it will make it pass through Slashdot's simple spam filters. How do you ban that?

When was the last time the USA had a president (i.e. commander in chief of the armed forces) who was not a Christian? Let's broaden that: when was the last time the USA had a President who did not feel the need to use the fact that he was a Christian in the election to be elected. JFK made the news just by being a different kind of Christian to the other Presidents!