Besides, who doesn't like a language which has the entire unicode character set available for variable names, including the symbols? Can make for some colorful code.
Actually, you can create completely invisible variable names. Shame that superscript 2 and superscript 3 are not valid for custom operators.
I can't believe that it takes over a gallon of water to grow a single almond. Maybe they should look at ways of improving that.
If they don't, terrorists will start buying almonds to destroy California.
Basically, Germany has refused to recognize Scientology as a religion,
To clarify: Nobody in Germany claims officially that Scientology isn't a religion, but it isn't a "religious organisation" that gives it any legal or tax advantages.
You can declare anything you want to be a religion. But for tax advantages, you need more. You need an organisation that tries to be beneficial to society. And that is where Scientology fails quite badly. A religion that said "I believe X, Y and Z and don't give a shit about anybody" wouldn't be a religious organisation the way German laws require it. And a religion that says "I believe X, Y and Z, I exploit people where I can, and I do what I can to hurt my perceived enemies" has no chance.
Yes, lottery is a tax on mathematically challenged.
My more generous interpretation is that a lottery sells you one week of hope that you might get rich for very little money. That's why the USA have these ridiculously high lottery winnings.
Imagine you were put in a room with 19 others. And they tell you "one of you has won the $200 million lottery. We'll give you a choice: You can all 20 each walk out with $10 million, or one walks out with $200 million and the rest with nothing". What would you pick?
I doubt it's actually possible to enforce encryption backdoors beyond a few major vendors. The result would be similar to exiting attempts to prohibit reverse engineering. It's impossible to outlaw debuggers, disassemblers, logic analyzers, and similar tools. It's like outlawing radios that can tune in to any station. It's been done, but it's not all that effective.
It's not a backdoor that they want, it's a key to the front door
Here's what they can do: Download an open source package. Send an encrypted email to themselves. Check that they can decrypt it with keys supplied by the software. If not, use all the force that the US police can muster to stamp the supplier out of existence.
This exactly. Even IF somehow open source projects were "forced" to include a back door...then knowledgeable people could easily just remove the back door from their copy. And explain to others how to easily do it on some forum hosted outside the US.
It's quite obvious that if major companies had to give their keys to the NSA, then owning or distributing software that doesn't do this would be in itself made a serious crime.
It is time to adopt a system similar to Finland, where fines for infractions such as speeding is proportional to income and ability to pay. For AT&T to pay $25 million for this kind of ridiculous breach in security is outrageous. Exactly what economic incentive does AT&T have to change their ways or improve security? If you answered "None. Zero. zip. Zilch.", you win the prize
You read an article on Slashdot and didn't understand it.
Bill Gates has tenthousand times more money than I have. That doesn't mean he eats tenthousand times more, drinks tenthousand times more, and will speed tenthousand times more often than I do. To influence his individual behaviour, you'd have to give him a bigger fine for one violation.
A big company might have a fleet of 10,000 cars. If their drivers behave exactly as good or as bad as I do, they will get 10,000 times as many speeding tickets than I do. So they spend 10,000 times as much on speeding tickets than I do, quite automatically.
In civilized countries, you don't get 18 years in prison for extortion of $30,000. In Scandinavia you'd get one or two.
So what is the punishment in Scandinavia to breaking the kneecaps of an extortionist in such a way that he will never, ever be able to walk again? I think a $30,000 fine would be an appropriate punishment. I think that should actually be turned into a law, that physical violence against an extortionist will not get a punishment other than a fine.
It appears the long sentence is because they brought 21 counts of identity theft against him, which are served consecutively. In many countries multiple crimes are served concurrently.
Which I find incomprehensible.
18 years... wow. Yes, that he did was morally reprehensible... but he got a sentence longer than many rapists. Obviously the $30K he supposedly pulled in didn't afford good legal assistance.
He had more victims than the average rapist.
Parking problems go away. Parking is a problem because of proximity of the parking to the places that people want to be. With autonomous cars your car can park 10 mins away and what do you care? As you want to leave you trigger the pickup app and the car drives to your designated pickup point. Also since you don't have to depend on the skills of the driver, just capabilities of the car you can design car parks that cram vehicles in shorter areas and with no space to open doors and have a centralized drop off/pick up point at the garage.
Parking today also requires that you find a space where the car can stay for a while without obstruction. So on my road, you can't park your car in front of my garage and disappear for an hour, because I would be angry if I wanted to get into my garage. With a self driving car, no problem. It can park where it likes (within reason) and move to a different place if needed. That self driving car in front of my garage is no problem, because it disappears when I need to get in.
3. What happens when every pedestrian, cyclist, etc., knows that pretty much every car on the road, being automated, will run itself into a tree rather than hit you? How far is the urge to ride down the street on a skateboard and whack cars with sticks or newspapers as a prank to set off car alarms from the urge to jump in front of a car knowing you can force it to stop?
Driverless cars will by necessity have tons of cameras. A "prank" like that will be visible on multiple cameras, and you can bet that you are going to pay dearly for that bit of fun.
The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin
