How about we focus on those things that actually gets people hurt, like banksters taking chances with the economy and politicians using the army to play chicken-race.

Both a red herring AND a false dichotomy. Impressive!

In the case of smallpox what would happen is that the scientist screwing up might get infected and placed in quarantine.

What if he's immune, and, becoming a carrier, boards a plane?

No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon

Islamic extremists.

What's a "cis"? Sounds like a codeword of the intolerant to me.

You're part of the problem.

The "ghost cities" you talk about are actually gradually filling up as more population moves from rural settings into the cities - this has been a long term goal of the Chinese government, but their "long terms" are a fair longer than the "around next election time" terms that westerners tend to think in.

True, running a government is so much easier without that pesky democracy to get in the way.

Well, considering the ruling party SED had the name "socialist" in it, I'd say he was correct.

You're European, aren't you?

Well covered by, "Engage!"

I'll be in my ready room. Tea, Earl Grey, hot.

Similar to the suckiness of the Stratosphere and Stratosphere 2 that I was subjected to before this one, the phone's shortcomings actually raise more interesting questions â€" about why the free-market system rewards companies for pulling off miracles at the hardware level, but not for fixing software bugs that should be easy to catch.

The free market is working. You paid for a cheap phone, and you got one.
If you want a good phone, don't buy a cheap one. This doesn't mean, "don't buy a low-feature phone"-- it means, don't buy a smart phone for a dumb-phone price and expect it to work well.

You aren't accredited to be following PCI because nobody is. There is no certificate. There is no special seal of approval. You provided security information to your acquiring bank(s) and you were allowed to process credit card transactions. There's no such thing as certification or accreditation for PCI.

What you have said implies that people can just declare they are PCI DSS compliant. This is not quite the case, except perhaps for very small vendors who self-assess (I am not one of these, and therefore have no experience). A QSA must be employed for the audit, and the QSA indeed must undergo approved training and certification. They sign off on the Report of Compliance (ROC).