The problem with this "right", is that another way of stating it is "the right to reach into every computer in the planet and delete anything about you".

Not only is that right a violation of other people's property rights, it's pragmatically impossible to actually implement.

It's not "spreadsheets shouldn't be used for important work", it's "spreadsheets should not be used for work that's not suitable for spreadsheets". Tools for the job, and all that.

Australia exports large amounts of uranium. If they managed to get it out, getting it in should pose no greater problem.

In that case, they've got nothing to worry about - their superior service at a competitive cost (I notice you didn't mention that - their prices are competitive, aren't they?) will result in them out-competing Uber's inferior service. Of course, their actions demonstrate that they are afraid - presumably, they're afraid that Uber will give consumers the choice to pay less, even if it means the car's a bit dirtier, and the driver a bit more ignorant. After all, the consumers can't actually be allowed any choice - it means they might not choose the right thing, designated as such by their betters.

Of course, paying money for closed source software is no guarantee that it's going to be adequately resourced either. Compare the two most recent, high-profile flaws, both very similar, in that they deal with memory allocation issues:
- Heartbleed on SSL has a team of 2, was extant for 2 years, was patched in 6 days, and the patch was available to anyone who used the software
- CVE-2014-1776 on Internet Explorer. Don't know how many people the team, was extant for 13 years, was patched in 6 days, and the patch was originally going to be denied to users who hadn't upgraded recently.

This does not seem to be an issue with closed vs open source development models - both have had major vulnerabilities extand for far too long, and both can turn around fairly rapid patches when needed. Doling out cash to Microsoft is no more effective at securing your applications than using free open source products.

Because there is demand for a thing, business are forced to deliver it. Quick, someone stop it!

And for $n/year, the Mafia will not burn down your business.

Paying for people to not perform a "service" you don't want performed to begin with is called extortion.

Whiting still goes for about $55/kg around here.

The fact that you don't is entirely the purists' point.

Ironically, the reason for this is precisely because the English language evolved dynamically. English is basically a language full of loan-words, and when you import a word, you import it's pronunciation, too. If it evolved less, it'd be more consistent. Evolution produces function, not necessarily elegence.

You realise that when someone is making a claim about the aggregate, throwing specific examples out there is a totally meaningless argument? Nothing the OP said in any way implies that there are no intelligent, skilled, black teachers, chemists, lawyers or doctors. What it does imply is that there are less of those per capita than there are the white (or Asian, or Jewish, or whatever other racial demographic you like) equivalents.

Immediately after your little rant, you actually acknowledge the GPs point when you say "the reason black people did so badly". Saying "black people are doing poorly" in education doesn't imply that there are no educated black people, nor does it imply that the reasons they are doing poorly are necessarily associated with race (correlation/causation).

Additionally, when speaking, you (generally) have a real-time situation going on, where you can query the speaker and get them to clarify if their language is imprecise. Exceptions to this (recorded sound), significantly post-date the phonetic evolution of the English language, in the same way the written word does. And of course, you don't have the additional communication channels (inflection, tone, body language, etc) that generally accompany the spoken word.

English is pretty robust, really. Make a couple of mistakes, and you can still usually determine the meaning. But, despite what people frequently seem to think, making lots of grammatical errors does obscure your meaning, especially if you're trying to communicate technical or complex thoughts. Without knowledge of grammar, you're limited to general, simple sentences.

Spy agency's job is to spy. It'd be remiss of them not to use such a security hole.

The question is, would he allow the NSA to exploit a similar vulnerability against Americans. And I think we already know the answer to that one too.

No, he's suggesting the summary doesn't reproduce every *crucial* detail of the thing it's summarizing, making it a poor summary.

Not really. Here in Australia, all those things aren't determined by an official marriage, but whether the law considers you partners. Marriage makes your partners, but so does sexual cohabitation, and the rules are applied equally to homo and heterosexual couples. The marriage rules were changed a while back to deal with the increase in cohabitation without marriage.

But even so, there's still a big push for allowing homosexual marriage, despite it not offering any legal or technical advantages.

Sooner or later, you develop institutional memory, and every hospital in Britain refuses to buy any medical device that implements DRM, so you never get into that situation again.

Or at least, that's what would happen in a sane world, where technical decisions were made by technical people.