Every year or so I make a forensic copy of my Windows machine's HDD and use F-prot to scan it on an air-gapped clean scratch system. It always comes up clean. It is possible to use Windows without any active AV and still not get infected. It'll be a sad day if ever universal active antivirus becomes mandatory as suggested by GP.
Humans aren't designed to have full recall
Humans aren't designed at all. Our bodies are a hodge-podge of randomly accumulated survival traits, all very sub-optimal for much of modern civilized life. That's why we have machines and other technology to help us.
Maybe the next experimental technology will lead to mass psychotic breakdown, or maybe we'll adapt and it will become another routine part of our unnatural lives.
The Internet is
... outside your jurisdiction.
FTFY.
Learn the file format and write a program to strip out any executable script elements.
With regards to security: Either you trust the input device or you don't. Assuming you trust it,
...
Why would you trust a public terminal, with unknown hardware behind the screen, running unknown firmware with unknown custom mods? Just because it says "Security Certified by ${TRUSTED_VENDOR}" doesn't mean that's actually true.
Even if everything behind the screen is legit, there could still be a recording filter in front of the touch screen. This isn't some implausibly far-fetched theoretical concept -- it's a well-known attack commonly used on ATMs.
I believe the channel between the public terminal and the user is expected to be unencrypted. TLS only works between trusted endpoints, and public terminals are inherently untrustworthy. So unless you're running TLS in your wetware it won't provide any real security. Or I suppose you could access the public terminal through your own private trusted device -- then the terminal is more like an open wifi AP than a tablet, and we're back to everyone carrying their own computer.
Never type anything into a public terminal that you wouldn't feel comfortable broadcasting to the world.
What about paying high ranking members of companies in stock options to avoid taxes?
Stock options do not avoid taxes. When you exercise them you pay income tax on their value (sell price minus strike price). It's exactly the same as if the company paid a cash bonus.
Of course, huge stock option grants do give perverse incentives to transient CEOs, but that's a whole other story.
the 1.21 GW of power that each person will eventually need.
You think (or don't) that global is a problem now? Imagine dumping an extra 16 suns worth of power into the atmosphere. Total insolation of Earth's atmosphere is about 500 quadrillion watts. 1.21 GW per person is over 8 quintillion watts at the current population level.
Feminists do not want equality. They want power.
Back when the NSA was still steadfastly pretending that it couldn't and wouldn't ever spy on American citizens, the wink-and-nod agreement between America and its allies was to spy on each others' citizens and share the results.
We all know that airport security and border security failed before 9/11.
What failed on 9/11 was the traditional policy of airline crew and passengers meekly submitting to the demands of hijackers. By 9/12 that policy was corrected, with no government intervention necessary.
Letting multiple armed men most of whom had passport and visa violations into airplanes was a colossal intelligence failure.
Letting "armed" men (with small knives) onto airplanes was not a failure of anything. There is no reasonable way to discriminate at boarding time between homicidal maniacs (an infinitesimal minority) and ordinary people. Trying to make that determination is unreasonable, as is preventing everybody from carrying anything that could possibly be used as a weapon.
Having a passport or visa violation does not make one a deadly threat. Plenty of harmless people with visa irregularities have managed to squeak past the TSA with no repeat of 9/11. A giant state security apparatus to ensure that everybody has all their papers and documents in order before they can travel
Yeah, you could do that, or you could change to a non-standard port. In my ten years of running sshd on a non-standard port on several public servers I've been hit by exactly 0 (zero) probes on that port.
Obscurity for the security win!
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
