And the New Zealand government is a lamb with it's hind legs stuck in the gum boots of the US government getting the ride off it's life in order to gain the questionable benefits of access to US markets (getting paid with what is becoming funny money might not really be all that beneficial after all and likely not pay for all that pain and humiliation). So all of it corrupt from go and still to get there whoa.

However government agencies using inside knowledge of source code to create these attack tools and then being stupid enough to use them ie release them into the wild where organised crime can get hold of them, is not so new. It fact it is totally and utterly mind bogglingly stupid thing to do, how fucking myopically short sighted can those fuckwits be. Government need to bloody wake up to what is going on and create a huge level of separation between attack and defence elements of cyber security. In fact the defence elements of cyber security should actively seek to prosecute the morons on the offence side when they stupidly release destructive code into the wild which goes on to attack what everyone else in the country is trying to protect. Some of those idiots need some rest time behind bars, some levels of stupidity should be punished, OK, rehabilitated in correctional facilities.

Problem with your theory is, when you are rich enough people soon learn to tell you what you want to hear, otherwise you stop paying them and the more they agree with you, the more you pay them. Just the way it happens, ego and the subconscious tearing apart anything socially constructive because it is not done for the community but to feed the ego, to be the very public philanthropist.

That of course is of limited benefit as humanity has a predilection to crafting civilisations on the coast at river mouths. Not much visible ancient history of that but of course end of a twenty odd thousand year long ice age and a rather substantial couple of hundred metre odd rise in sea level. Perhaps sonar mapping will expose far more than aerial or satellite images. Watching you civilisation die beneath the waves will likely have a major impact upon where you choose to rebuild it, keeping in mind the real destructive impact of societies attempting to relocate to more primitive already inhabited areas.

If I was going to invest all that time and effort to program a new language, I would focus on the big end of the market. A computer programming language for non-computer programmers and start with linguistic and teaching experts, so as to construct the core elements of the language to be most accessible to the majority. Then and only then would I let computer programmers touch it and actually program the language. Any functions missing would be passed from the computer programmers back to the linguistic and teaching experts to establish a more logical and teachable structure, which the programmers would then code.

Likely a language of variable verbosity, more explanatory and clear versus more compact, both capable of coexisting with the same algorithms. I honestly do not think computer programmers are the best people to come up with a programming language, to specialised and the language ends up far to focused on the speciality, with some really distorted language and logic, compared to more generalised uses of language, mathematical and physics formulas.

Shit programmers have still failed to switch from qwerty back to far more logical alphabetic, so how far off will programmers be from demanding we switch from our ABCs to QWEs in language.

Which makes the tattoo removal cream interesting in application. Will it lead to more people walking around as billboards for other people's art work or less. So the ability to easily remove other people's art work, will that lack of commitment to other people's art lead to more people willing to make themselves billboards or will it lead to less people ie no commitment to other peoples art so why bother. You can guess why I never, I just didn't get why I would display someone else's art, when I could not really see it, I mean if you tattoo yourself sure, display you talents to other people but when someone else turns you into their billboard what are you really achieving.

Wise person say, want to teach the students, then teach the teachers first. Thinking there is some magical mystical route to knowledge by giving children gadgets to play with is just plain silly. All the majority will do is learn to play with the gadgets, be endlessly distracted by those gadgets and basically never learn to do.

Creativity and crafting must be taught by skilled caring professionals with low ratios of students to teacher. Things that are useful, like the simple stuff, care and maintenance of a home, cooking and diet, self care, functions of society, a desire as well as of course the ability to research and learn. It is important that children learn how to do things manually and then latter learn how to apply the knowledge digitally. Social norms and cooperative team work also need to be taught.

Having a very narrow point of view computer nerd billionaire, totally disconnected from the realities of life, coming up with methods of education, all solely focused upon his personal preferences and extremely limited experiences is truly foolish.

Education is meant to fulfil a role from an IQ of 60 to one of 160. As such the role of education needs to be hugely varied from a more physical point of view as expressed in trades, to a more cerebral point of view as expressed in higher education (teaching rather than learning). Those of lower capability should not be actively punished and disadvantaged by those of higher capability post formal education (often as revenge for the exact opposite occurring whilst in school).

Not to forget, if we are not having fun and are just slaves to society and an exploitative abusive minority, then who is fooling who and what are we really trying to achieve. It is stupid for a few rich fools of extremely limited experience to decide to play games with billions of peoples lives because based upon their success with greed, somehow it makes them better than hundreds of thousands of skilled and qualified people whose focus was not greed and who instead had far higher motivations than grubbing about for the most money.

'BUT' the Mafia wanted their casinos back and guess who had a significant role in running the US government.

The problem here is infrastructure design and it's vulnerability to inclement weather. Perhaps they should consider revising infrastructure design and start putting buildings over major routes. Not only will this protect access routes, private and public (private vehicles, trucks and trains) but also energy and communications built into those structure. By distributing accommodation, residential, commercial, retail and light industrial along and above major access route leading from points of major value to points of major value (mining, farming, leisure and manufacturing) you reduce constriction points by distributing demand along its length and at distributed focal points.

Of course in the US nothing at all will be done, as it is all tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts and collapsing infrastructure with dreams of bankrupting government and privatising the assets for cents on the dollar and then, gees, the idiots haven't really thought beyond that point, perhaps fighting like rabid dogs over the scraps of a once was empire.

A proven addiction to nicotine is proven. What most likely is occurring is those people who can not break the habit regardless of the consequences are also most likely indulging in other bad and addictive habits like alcohol and of course junk food (keep in mind the nicotine distributors when their product of addiction and compulsory use was threatened, they jumped in boots first into the junk food market and went hog wild with a range of very destructive and addictive additives, can't stop at just one can you suckers).

In this case the parasites are psychopathic corporate executives and they should be treated with the same disdain as other parasitic life forms. What really needs to be challenged is advertising and what companies are allowed to say or imply, want to inform, than just the facts and keep the PR=B$ sex sells to yourselves.

You both missed the bit where they very cunningly would make carrying you phone around compulsory and Stingray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.... No need to carry away you phone, you have now been bugged 24/7/365, welcome to the Panopticon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P....

I see it as something far more dangerous than that. A corporate back door into government and you. It's a partnership and Uncle Tom Obama the Choom Gang coward is reading off a corporate controlled teleprompter. So direct corporate involvement in cyber security operations against the poor and middle class to keep them down and under control.

Far more accurately you get the government that you allow the corporations to buy and you are the one that ends up stuck with the bill.

The best scaled reviews, generally require at least a 10 x 10 scale. Ten categories of value graded out of ten and the score totalled. In is very important that some categories be contradictory so that a 100 score is impossible to be true and say 80 is the most realistic for exceptional value. Realistic evaluations a never done with a straight flat score, the answer is totally meaningless and of little value beyond public relations bull shit marketing.

It still does not tackle the real problem, the request for the donation is at the wrong end of the transaction. People are getting 'free' stuff, and 'free' stuff is often of questionable value ie it 's 'free'. So the real trick is how to trigger the generosity from the end user once they appreciate the value of the product.

Software purchases run into a huge problem versus hardware purchases. Buy hardware and once it it bough it is yours. Buy software and you inevitable learn the lesson M$ teaches, you have not yet finished buying it and you will have to buy it, again and again and again and again and again and again and again, gees how many versions where there of windows.

So things to consider free software with the purchase of merchandise. Something humorous or unusual, say like small custom sets of lego, the more you buy, the more you can make and you generate a profit from selling the lego to pay for the software. What is good about that solution is many different players in the open source software market can join in and buyers can accumulate pieces and different styles of pieces from many different 'sources' ;D.