In The Netherlands, everyone bikes without a helmet, from young to old. I always find it interesting to see other countries, US included, to take the 'helmet' so serious when it comes to safety. Instead, we learned a long time ago that separate bike lanes and proper rules (biker from right ? -> right of way, always) come first.

I guess until the time comes that cars are no longer the 'holy cow' (as we call it) of transportation, you better not use bikes at all: a helmet will not save you.

...I sometimes encounter data breaches from companies I do business with, simply because I use a unique e-mail address for each business. (name_businessname@domain). As soon as I start receiving spam on the e-mail, I have pretty much irrefutable proof that a leak exists at that company; the only condition being that I must make sure that that e-mail address is never communicated to anyone else.
Of course, "proof" for a court of law could require a bit more, but I think that needs to be established as jurisprudence, and this could be an example of how it could be established.

[DarkHelmet] "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."
[Lone Star] "So what does that make us?"
[Dark Helmet] "Absolutely nothing!"

on having good stable API's of core libraries that are backwards compatible up to an extent, rather than continuously fighting dependency hell when it comes to updating packages ?
This proposal seems basically like "we statically link every binary", and we all know that is not wanted because of disk usage and more importantly: memory usage. Especially in constrained embedded systems statically that could be a concern if you start having a lot of running applications.

Barman: Did you say the world is coming to an end? Shouldn't we all lie on the floor or put paper bags over our heads?
Ford: If you like.
Barman: Will it help?
Ford: Not at all.
[Ford runs out of the pub]
Barman: Last orders, please!
(THGTTG - DNA)

... we only have a few hours left before they will delete everything !
(grabs 3.5" floppy drive and starts downloading...)

..the justice department (yes, you read that right) actually had a login to the same database as it was found following the news on this particular case. One has to wonder if the official story (needed because of certain convicts that have their records in the same medical DB) is even a valid reason, and why they would even be allowed within 10 meters of such a sensitive and secret (medical wise) collection of data.
While Henk Krol is not a 'true hacker' perhaps, this does raise a lot of questions with regards to the security of any person's data in such a medical database; questions that "Diagnostiek voor U" may want to keep secret, so a "wag the dog" (or more popular "Chewbecca") tactic is followed...

reply to the positive or 'constructive' remarks or also to the more negative ones ? I will be watching this topic, my finger on the Resign button.

Finally, get ready for... [rant mode on]
I am sick of having the message "would you like to try beta or classic" every time when I browse Slashdot on my Chrome browser under my Nexus. I want the *regular* site, or something as close to it as possible. I even cannot click on the "classic" button... First lesson for new designs: if someone says *not for me* then leave them alone or they will leave your site alone.
Why should I have to press "request desktop site" each time I simply want to read an article ? This is not a PALM III where I zoom in with the Plus and Minus keys: my browser is more powerful than a Windows IE6 browser (feature wise), faster than many regular old Pentium IV's and pinching is good enough to get around the site.

[rant mode off]

And erm, how is that bad exactly ? I see this thread and read more about people being "concerned" that this is somehow bad, but in reality they all want the same privileges. I guess in Europe it is a matter of culture and progress - we had many struggles about these rights, and now get these well deserved benefits. That does not mean all is simple here, as it does come at a price: we pay 52% tax. So one should net that out and it will probably be a much similar equation : you simply pay for your holidays with the extra income we pay as tax.
Additionally, although GP indicated in NL you can be sick as long as you like, after 6 weeks they will start nagging and you will eventually (after a year or so) become unemployed to a level of income that could be 70% of the minimum wage (which is about 9 euros/hour), depending on your illness. Next to that more and more people in The Netherlands are so called 'flexible workers', that get paid a little bit more but lose all these benefits (no paid leave, no sick leave) - that is becoming a real issue in e.g. the labour intensive jobs like construction and healthcare. So maybe we are not as well of as an average American may think :)

These guns found in the McAfee place and this Luger 9mm do have similarities to the untrained eye.