Was that before the People's Congres, or after?

It is well-known that the government is still very unwilling to touch the heavy industries that pollute the most, especially in cities where there is just one employer. They're also very hesitant to bring polluters to justice, even if they pour poison freely into the river that supplies the city next door with drinking water.

It's high time Chinese folks understood that pollution is not a natural occurrence that cannot be prevented, but occurs because the cost of doing business is paid out of their health.

True - which is why Gamemaker is installed often in classrooms. Gives you a running game in basically an hour. After that, you get to add stuff and then you start programming.

In The Netherlands the standard installation in classrooms nowadays is "Gamemaker". You can teach kids a lot about the first steps of programming while they get a game up and running. Takes them at most an hour for a basic tutorial, and then they can add stuff.

Now that's amazing. They actually read facebook in other countries? Who'd have thought that posting something on a public website would be read by people you work with? Especially when you do that on a site that sends them a mail when you post something?

Yes, the laws in the UAE are very harsh and oppressive. But it's really hard not to notice that when you work there, so it's not a surprise, I hope, that they use it against foreigners that get uppity.

Is it a disgrace the UAE has these laws? Yes. And putting someone 5 years in jail for an outburst is way overboard. But you get paid good wages in the UAE precisely because not a whole lot of people want to work under those conditions. It's like soldiers complaining about danger: what did you think the pay was for?

No, I just envisage what will happen when this is introduced on Windows, with its huge established software pool that doesnt understand that metadata.

Personally, I'm still rather fond of a capability based OS, instead of a rights based one. And the idea that executables can access ANYTHING outside their own directory without explicit permission was stupid from day one. I can imagine quite a view changes that would make an OS much safer.

But adding metadata to files that is not "in your face" is not the best suggestion I've seen for that. And yes, the Explorer could be changed to show status. And a gazillion older programs would not. Because it could have been done already, and it hasn't.

True. I really long for the day we have that, and AnnaKournikova.jpg is actually an executable file because of some meta-information that's probably hidden by default.

I wonder what could possibly go wrong there.

Given the way insurance works psychologically (people are risk-averse more than they are profit-oriented), you'd be surprised how many takers you'd find at a slightly lower price.

Actually, kickstarter is not allowed to give out equity under US law *yet*, but that may change soon. ANd if they want to stay relevant, they should, because the kickstarter model is starting to show cracks.

A company called Symbid (symbid.nl) has been doing this for quite some time now because they're not in the US and under Dutch law they can already do this. You can invest small sums of money (20 euro and upwards) and in exchange you get equity. That sounds simpler than it is, but it seems to be working for them. They take over all the hassle of the process of issuing shares, the lawyer part of it etc. and make things cheap and easy enough to work for small sums.

If I ever invest money, it will be through something similar. But not through kickstarter. Kickstarter is where you give donations. Investors go elsewhere.

I think they - reasonably - expect you to do the math before you enter the market with a solution using their software.

Sad but true. The patent system works so much against the original idea behind it, it needs to be taken behind the barn and shot.

On another note, I find it even more offensive that the best way to write the most patents the quickest is to sit on standardization committees. That's a well-known abuse that's completely ignored by ISO and other organizations. Because getting the big organizations onboard means a viable standard, and they won't come on-board unless they can kill off the competitors who weren't in the room.

It's pretty obvious nobody uses Nim then - perhaps the language should take the hint :)

I have rethought them, in that light. I know of at least one government agency and one very large company whose core systems would not have been vulnerable to those attacks, because they expect zero-day vulnerabilities to exist in all of their software, as well as bugs planted by state actors, and deal with security accordingly.

It's bloody expensive if you have to implement that later on, but if you build your IT infrastructure from the ground up it can be done quite effectively.

I bought an HP 8510W (Business workstation) Laptop. It came with a DVD with Windows 7, full install. When I re-installed it (bought the Samsung EVO850 SSD - teehee :) ), it was a clean install, with much less hassle. My previous HP gave you the option to burn a Windows Image to DVD.

I'm pretty happy with HP in this area, and for the last 6 years my laptops have been HP's.

On the other hand I've worked for several agencies that were protected quite adequately. And some companies too. But I agree that the majority was leaking like a sieve.

But you get what you pay for. Sony has always been horrible when it comes to IT, so I was not surprised there. Especially as they made themselves big targets for hackers worldwide. Apple and Microsoft are more surprising.