Unfortunately, there is also a disincentive to take a chance on a new employee because it is so onerous to get rid of them. France's under-24 unemployment is astronomical (Over 24%, compared to 14% in the US).

I stand corrected. Thank you.

That is one of the xkcd comics that really bugs me. Yes, if you treat every character as an independent element and try to calculate it's complexity, those passwords look really complex. Unfortunately, most password crackers aren't brute force crackers that try every character combination. They try combinations of well known words, phrases, and number/symbol combinations. So, you're mathematically complex password is exactly what crackers are looking for.

To be fair, as long as you're the only one in your company doing it, it's reasonably secure, as soon as it becomes company policy, all your passwords fall within regular cracking procedures, and are likely easier to crack.

For those who just can't help writing condescending opening lines... Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? This sounds darned convenient. I suspect location services are to ensure you're within range.

The single biggest risk for data loss, and the single best vector for hacking a network is employees either nefarious or technically un-inclined. There's a good reason management wants exposure to traffic, it's to ensure that sensitive data isn't leaving.

That's because they need to stop trying to make a Netflix clone and do something new. Apple pay isn't better or all that different from Google's NFC pay, the difference is that they've done the legwork to build a network of vendors. Similarly, whoever can build a model where their service has live streams of TV shows and channels that people want, or something similar, will be fantastically successful. It's not clear, but this may very well do that.

No, it's about encouraging the correct behaviors, not the correct results. Most people fail several times while studying/practicing STEM subjects (or most subjects worth studying, for that matter). If we insist on telling little Johnny how gosh darned smart he is all the time, he may not be any good at handling that failure. Or he may assume that "he isn't a math person" because he's always been told how smart he is, and he just isn't getting it. Instead, we ought to be encouraging him to try harder, fail better, and reward him for persistence, and good study habits.

Society rewards results. Definitely. So getting excellent results is important. But, parents and teachers aren't necessarily there to evaluate results. They're there to teach Johnny how to get them. Rewarding hard work, and continued effort is one important way to get those results, and it hasn't been focused on. Instead, we tell him that it's alright that he didn't get the right answer, and he should stop trying so hard and come have a cookie so he doesn't lower his self-esteem. This has the opposite effect, he doesn't get the results, and he fails to learn about work ethic.

Ah, the classic, "I don't like the peers, so now we get to fall back to no data whatsoever and argue from gut feelings" gambit. Good one gweihir, good one. Fortunately, that's not how science works, or we'd all be screwed. "Your peer group way over-represents geologists, and is therefore skewed toward round-earthism, therefore we can now discuss my ideas of flat-earthism as equal and valid."

It won't ever hit the news, because it will be ordered by a FISA court and it will have a clause stating Apple can't disclose that this was a government mandated opening.

Or you forced departments to pay back double or triple plus court costs for improper seizures.They'd suddenly be much more careful.

It doesn't cost more than the phone. It's perceived to cost more than the phone because they've hidden the cost of the phone from you. The base model iPhone 6 (16GB) costs $650.

My kicker with the Pebble is that it can only do one thing at a time. I want a time watch-face up, and I want a fitness tracker in the background, for example.

It's no more clunky than carrying a bag full of spare batteries to swap out.

They can bask in their pure capitalist sunshine as soon as they buy right of way access for every mile of line they use, instead of leveraging the government sponsored right of way access they've been given. They can also pay a requisite sum for the monopoly access they were granted. Then they can setup any internet they want. Until then, they need to deal with regulations.