From the age of 5, I had already built a home telegraph. I had bell wire (house wire for doorbells), I got doorbell push buttons, lights, and made a partyline circuit. I learned morse code, at a very few words per minute.

By age 8 or 9, I was fixing tube radios. Usually it was a dead tube, or a bad electrolytic capacitor.
By 11, I was building kits from Heath and Eico. My preferred were from the latter.
By 15, I was fixing all appliances, changing tap washers, and finding out about watch and clock mechanisms.
By 17, I was Mr watch repair for Sears, I was charging bargain prices. And I did all the other stuff too. I was into hi-fi, Vinyl longplay records and the finest of turntables (rec-o-cut, Garrad), I had my vtvm, my sweep generator, and Heath Oscilloscope.
By 19, I was a carburator expert. I had all the tools for changing spark plugs, rotating tires, and knew the V8 engine design by heart.
We were learning sponges in those days.

Today, kids are whiz kids an smartphone apps. They know not about epicycloidal gearing, "angles and draw" for watch anchors and escape wheels, "watch beating" incabloc, jeweling, carburators, plug-changing, welding, and so much more.

I left that for a masters degree in math, but I have never stopped playing and loving it. My thoughts were always impressed with the watch mechanism engineers who could work with near microscopic sized parts and movements.

Ahh them were the fun days. It was an enjoyment to do all that I did as a hobby. Today, I maintain my home and garden, and look at my grandkids. I am disappointed at how little they know.

How do you define bad code? I define it as producing erroneous results. But if your in a compute bound application, and the cost to upgrade hardware looks formidable, then you look at optimization. In my world, I look at optimization first, and hardware upgrades as second choice.

There are sure hours and hours of test cases for the work was done for optimization. The author looked at employing math factoring, not in designing new hardware. Great!!!

Well done!

I promise to not store and count with my integer fields in display format.

Today, disk space is very cheap. Memory is very cheap, and I think nothing of having 32gigs of ram. My point-- do away with dynamic linking for your application. Do static linking, except possibly for display libraries. If a flaw is found, its going to require many recompiles, but that is offset by the non-reliance of multiple dynamically linked libraries. As was mentioned, get a flaw or security issue with that library, or create a "man in the middle" attack with one dynamically linked library, and voila, your security is compromised. With static linking, your application is more secure and is known to work with more versions of the operating systems

Its not a bad idea. Our kids start at 8:15 to Noon, and 12:45 to 3:30. They are in public school, and half the day is taught in French, and the other half in English. The kids learn maths, science, and all the social studies that go along with multiculturalism. What does suffer somewhat is spelling, because of the doubling up and not dubling up. example department and département. We pay for extra curricular activities (1 hr twice a week). Its alloted for extra sports, a third language, or religious studies. (The extra hour is not in the school cirreculum, but the school board makes the classroom available. )

If these hackers get into government sites, I would consider it an act of treason or warfare. Result should be death penalty or lifetime in prison.

If is a bank, then at least 50 years and a day in prison as a dishwasher.

What if you substituted the presidents name for that of NK? Would that go well with Americans? I bet it will go very very well with Arab countries and in those countries where American Companies (United Fruit, et. al) exploited those countries for their wealth. I bet the foreign country gets only 2% of the benefit and the Corp and bribes get the rest.

From what I read, and what I am led to believe, probably every water treatment plant, every electrical generating system, including the interconnects, has been identified and an attack prepared. The USA electrical grid needs only a core state to fail, and the entire country would fail.

And if you include airports in their attack catalogues then the North Korean protections are complete. Attack them and most probably, the USA part of the internet, and possibly the entire world would be downed.

So, its ok to joke about the NKs capabilities, , Its ok to believe that the commercial anti-viruses give you a false sense of protection, but... there is no protection. Stuxnet was a perfect example. Perhaps the NKs virus software is already installed and laying dormant, just in case....

I don't consider algorithms to be patentable. But I consider a process to be patentable. What is the difference? An algorthim is an application of a set of defined rules that presents a proof, a set of steps to follow to a solution. An algorithm may be copyrighted. A process is a application of a set of rules to define the control or manufacture of a product. (Driver for hardware, agricultural process, or manufacturing process, fabrication process). If we deem an algorithm a process, then the writing of a book has to be patented.

Can the algorithm be the product? I am not a lawyer, and I leave that to others to interpret that interpretation.

Software patents are utter bullshit from word one.

So, as ddr3 gets more dense, and space between the cells has decreased, we should be standardizing on ECC memory for all desktops and servers. The second thought I have is "What minimal cpu clockspeed would enable this activity to occur with standard hardware? " It this problem likely to occur with off the self hardware motherboards and cpus?

For the past two years, my Visa provider intercepts the authorizations that are made via the internet, and electronically asks me to respond to questions that only I know the answer (mothers name, graduation year, etc). If I fail, the transaction authorization fails. So, just because someone knows the 3 digit code on the back of the card means zero.
And our credit cards have had the chip version since 2011. That technology is just coming into force in the USA, after 4 years of fraud.

Perhaps they could solve the ISIS problem

As robots take over, and liberate man from tasks, it also implies that man is liberated from an income. Should there be a have and have not society? Can the have society sustain the infrastructures we hold dear, such as roads, schools, desire to be productive?

If robots take over, we will require a guaranteed wage. That will allow money to circulate, and society to be vibrant and alive.

If that does not occur, look for malaise and crime to grow out of proportion to today's level.

Intel, like GM will gradually leave the USA for permenancy in China. Population 1.2 billion vs 350 million, Single party government vs democracy, better labour cost controls, lower overheads and government (universal) medicare.

New entrepreneurs are always optimistic. They haven't dealt with irresponsible organizations or organizations that think out loud but then choose decisions other than what they let people believe. In a way one could say Apple was bullshitting their plans to confuse the competitors.

I fully concur with your statements. As corporations outsource jobs, the local net net discretionary income disappears. Only essentials are purchased. It's sad, as the American society has become a for profit everything, from public education to medicine. Even the military is a for profit institution. MacDonalds has become the location of "lets go out for an evening's supper"