640 qubits ought to be enough for anybody.

This legislation accomplishes three things:

1. 1. It sets a standard for handling private data, so that when it leaks the leaking agency can point to their policy that meets the standard. This protects them from lawsuits by people who are harmed but can get no restitution or help repairing the damage done them.
2. 2. Meanwhile, some government agency can claim jurisdiction and collect a large payment that disappears into the tax coffers.
3. 3. Meanwhile, I don't see any hint that this legislation would apply to government agencies, such as police departments and tax offices, who are, at best, no better at protecting data than any corporation. Indeed, it will almost certainly specifically protect all government entities from being sued by the people they harm.

Altogether, this helps no one but government, and effectively lowers the protection of data, not raises it.

I think Jim Fixx said this, right before he dropped dead at age 52, while he was running.

It didn't give you anything to work with because it refuted your thesis. The example of a weapon in the article is the Stuxnet worm which, wait for it, destroyed the machinery in the factory that produced the nuclear material needed for Iran's nuclear program. Something that destroys a factory is a weapon, whether it's a F-117, a B-52, a truckload of fertilizer, or a fancy bit of code. Whichever way the strike comes, the result is the same - broken machine, no production.

It wasn't Enron that caused the electricity shortage in California, it was ignorant legislators, or perhaps it was ignorant constituents they worked for, who deregulated wholesale prices but not retail prices, compounded by Luddite greenies killing every proposal to build the new plants required to meet rising demand. People wanted to produce more electricity, but weren't allowed to. More demand for the same amount of the commodity meant higher prices for the producers, but the frozen consumer prices meant distributers were forced to sell for less than they were paying. That business model doesn't work for very long. And then consumers, the people who caused the problem, blame it on the victims (the distributers) of their (the consumers) greed.

Look at what happened in Texas for contrast. Here, prices were truly deregulated, at all levels. As demand went up, prices went up, prompting more investment in new natural-gas powered plants, more investment wind- and water-powered production (yes, really), and more investers entering the field. Supply kept up with demand, and now, despite the rise in gas prices, Texans now pay less for deregulated electricity than we did when prices were controlled. And guess where your fall-guy, Enron, was during all this? Hint: it starts with H- and ends with -ouston.

Uh, you do know that you don’t have to log in as an administrator to run Software Update, right? It’ll ask you for the administrator account name and password when it needs them - even if you are running from the admin account. There are a few companies that use stupid proprietary installers that require administrators to run them, but they are few and far between.

I hope that means they don’t have Administrator accounts on those magic boxes.

Don't cry for me, Anonymous Coward. You really don't need to run anti-virus software on Macs. Just don't automatically install any applications that unexpectedly download from strange websites, and don't panic. I'll be fine.

Meanwhile, you can't ever forget your daily update of the malware signatures database. Doesn't that get to be a pain? At least you catches the day one exploits. Too bad about Day Zero.

Her screenshot shows that she does have an infection. Those two application icons in her dock to the right of the System Preferences indicate the most common infection seen on Mac OS. They are far from harmless and tend to be very difficult to remove.

Isn't telling people what's good why Facebook was invented?

No, you missed the point. The guy who invented the sprocket and got the patent on it in the UK but not the US. US Widgets Inc sees the UK patent and files it in the US -- even though they didn't invent it. Now the UK inventor wants to expand his sales into the US. Bam! He gets hit with a patent suit because US Widgets owns the patent here. The judge decides that the inventor has to pay to sell his own invention, because he was not the first to file, merely the first to invent.

Besides that, by selling the engines to China, they know how to assemble those engines, but they don't necessarily have to understand the physics that goes into designing them. Thus, they can turn out plenty of copies, but what are they going to do when GE moves on to the next generation of design? They're going to have to buy those designs too.

But if GE doesn't sell them the engines, then China has to invest in learning to design them, which I don't think is a problem for them if they have the will, and then we’re sucking hind tit. It’s a bit of a paradox, selling technology to keep from losing it.

Tthe point of having less human labor in work that machines can do is that you have more human labor involved in work that machines can't do, things that make the world better. It gives us the luxury of worrying about kids in Africa getting bitten by mosquitos and being able to do something about it.

Look at your “end game”. Barely any labor needed at all. I do not think it means what you think it means. If there is barely any human labor needed at all, then you have realized the Star Trek economy of plenty for everyone. Can you tell me how that could possibly be a bad thing? Nothing to go to war over, no starving kids in, uh, anywhere, no need for anyone to steal. We’d still need doctors and astronauts and teachers. Hell, we might not even need lawyers.

I agree, there is no fix, but there is a way to reduce the advantage of foreign competitors: the Fair Tax. It would eliminate all corporate income taxes and replaces them, and all other taxes, with a tax on consumption. This erases the advantage foreign companies gain from US companies paying what even the President admitted in his speech are among the highest corporate taxes in the world, and it reduces many other costs, eg, money wasted in record keeping for tax purposes.

Fair Tax doesn't fix everything, but it sure would help a lot.