Ah, really? So, if we 'filter' only the 'obedient' units in each genereation how do you define this "obedience"? (Of course, in a way that is essentially(!) different compared to Asimov's second law, as that is your point.)

Saying that this is not a good resource depends on what you compare it to. If you compare to an experienced and brilliant teacher giving lectures to a small group of students then Khan does not really have a chance. If you compare also to best of books he is a bit shaky. But I've read that lots of people find it a good resource and I am not surprised - it is a video, you can do it at your own pace and it has a social network component. If used as additional learning tool I can't see how you could call it anything but a good resource.

Allow me to be more specific, from SO/ISO 31-0

There, corrected that for you according to SI

Oh, now you are piling it up.

True, but... the big thing in the Khan's effort is material nicely divided into chunks which can be skipped or studied in detail. Another big plus is a social component - take a look at stackoverflow and cousins - the social dimension makes these things work. The (not so clear) deficiency of Khan's academy is, while the model is nice, sticking to single source is not enough and is biased (in this case respectably well biased in good way, but inherently imperfect). Still, I see this as a push in the right direction, the trick is not to think of it as a silver bullet. This approach is bloody useful - reminding yourself of certain topic or learning new one can be achieved in an ecosystem of peers, with what seems to be good quality material. Yes, it is, and it will be even in next evolutionary cycles, an education which quality can not be compared to any real live teacher worth his own education, but if you watched the ted video you'd know that the realistic use case for this 'academy' is to be supplemental tool, and as such it has enormous potential. In and out of the classroom. Just don't abuse it or expect things from it that it can not deliver.

If(!) ARM is more energy efficient then it delivers more processing power per unit of power. Principle works the same at 250mW and at 600W. It would also generate less heat. Ability to turn the cores on and off is additional benefit that would further improve efficiency.

Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission is pretty informative, both for advantages and disadvantages of DC compared to AC.

True. They are not the same, but there is overlap. Topological rarely goes without image memory. Images are encoded, yes, and photographic memory is really rare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI) and probably there's a reason.

Memory is association. What you call tricks are just using conscious efforts to reinforce associations.
Furthermore, memory can be improved even without conscious meddling in encoding system; one of the standard exercises during drawing classes is to observe different parts of face - for example you spend a week observing people's noses. All the time. Everywhere you go. Result: your perception and memory increases - it is like the compression algorithms that help you encode and associate a given detail (nose, ears, eyes, etc..) improves.
Also, the image is not a single, full detail clue in terms of experience on the level of neuron excitation - your eyes always provide the stream, even looking at the still image - full resolution of your eye can only be achieved on a very limited FOV, that's why you move your eyes while you read this text or while you look at the painting, etc...
It is the encoding system (and hardware) that your brain uses that distinguish the image retention capabilities - be it naturally or consciously trained.

Again true, however, I repeat, spatial (in a sense of topological+image) memory is particularly good in humans. Also, most faces (image) you remember from just one meeting (names are the problem; reinforcing association is useful in remembering the name; but this remembering faces is understandable - we have specialised hardware for that, see http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html on what happens when it breaks). Most locations you remember extremely well with quite a lot of detail. Stephen might remember more, but is that optimal? So you do abstract the images, unless there are particularly important to what you do or what you like; at the same time you do remember distinguishing factors: for example you might still remember the exact way to your childhood school, a neighbourhood where you lived ten years ago, student dorm, streets in various cities that you walked and that is not pure abstract topological graph; memory contains enough image detail for recognition (compression algorithms are normally optimised for recognition, not necessarily reconstruction; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipomu0MLFaI).

Spatial/visual memory is in average person much more powerful then conceptual memory.
All memory is association, but if you compare how efficient you are in remembering, let's say a rather complicated path through a bigger park compared to remembering let's say remembering 8 3-digit numbers, spatial memory easily wins by order of magnitude in an average person (people who have great visual memory or great audio memory might complicate the analysis, so treat those as special cases).
Spatial memory is so good that we expect very much of it, that's why labyrinths are interesting and also that is why when it you get lost or can not find a certain place you forget how good your spatial memory is: most of the time you know exactly where you are, you know how to get to most places you know and most importantly you retain this information without effort for years and years (think about cities you used to live in, airports, houses, etc...).
Using these existing memories is referred to as 'memory palace' (palaces are usually also well structured with many separate spaces) - now, the point is that since all memory is association, you can use existing memory structures (rooms, halls, stairways, etc) to store new information by using your imagination and associating new info with existing one.
Besides the spatial, we are also quite good in remembering how something happened - films, theatre, etc comes to mind. So you take something that we are not so good at and turn it into something we are good at: you use, for example well known room to put the objects that you would like to remember in places that you have a good memory with. Objects can be a coding system for cards, numbers or other less visual information that you would like to store.

'Memory palace' = 'method of loci' is a method, i.e. something that an average person can learn and train her or himself to use efficiently.
It is not particularly new, it is attributed to 5th/6th century (BC) Greek poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

It is actually quite simple and can be taught in an hour or less. Training takes more time.

It is based on a simple fact that our brain is more specialized for remembering spatial facts and relations (has probably a bit to do with being able to quickly remember paths: either to successfully chase that squirrel or find the closest path to the most secure location while running away from a malnourished tiger of some sorts)

These methods map this mental power to non spatial concepts through visual association. Not completely unlike using GPU to do some non graphic tasks efficiently. The trick, in both cases, is to be able to recognize which tasks are best suited for it.

You are both right and wrong.

It is the fault of the IT staff, of course.

However, you are very wrong in saying that availability (in terms of resilience to malicious software) of a mission critical system is achieved by installing decent AV and keeping it updated. And if you call that done you would be very well done working for me.

The number of times I had viruses which no engine with latest signatures was yet able to recognize (so, yes, really new) was less then a dozen times (in two years working in Southeast Asia), but it was definitively not fun cleaning those.

Sysinternals' tools were very usefull as process explorer is really a decent tool which was rarely specifically targeted by malicious software and autoruns was able to disable quite a lot of suspicious things. With these two, normally I was able to disable things AV software would not pickup (or was not able to clean). Some sort of honeypot was useful to detect unusual activity. Locking down the OS helped and keeping it patched is no small thing. Having another OS (mac, linux) as a fail-over option for desktop stuff (for regular users) was also in place and paid out a few times. Booting live Linux distro for cleaning purposes was used a few times, but that's for viruses that are already in signature files (or that you have mapped out). Of course, backups are a must. Checking for rootkits was done periodically. Educating users and having policies was something we did, but it is hard to measure if that worked (if it actually saved any work). Any server service that could go on Linux was moved to Linux. Every little bit helped.

Our systems were not mission critical. The few infections that were successful were hard to clean, but luckily the payload of the viruses in question was mostly harmless in terms of damage to files and services. I really don't like to think what would have happened if these infections were more malicious (for example if they locked and/or damaged documents).

So, yes, US and Europe get new malicious software with a slight delay which is enough for AV software to be an order of magnitude more efficient here, but 0-day exploits and new viruses that can not be detected by AV software are not myths and on a vulnerable OS they are a big part of your security considerations, your continuity plan, IT policies and they do take more resources to achieve approximately same level of system resilience as an OS that is more secure and has less threats.

At a risk of stating obvious I'll point out that stories do much more than 'influence human behaviour in security context'. Stories have shaped entire cultures. (see for example The City of Words by Alberto Manguel, it is a fine read)

If I would to extrapolate I might say that for every action that influenced certain culture it was either direct, like war or famine, or striking gold - but the people who experienced that directly are rarely majority. Most others experience this through retelling. Which can be considered storytelling.
For example the basis of democratic society, an election process, can be considered storytelling in its largest part (cynics would add that in its largest part it is a storytelling of pure fiction).

All of this goes back to rhetoric (be careful in interpreting wikipedia's definition: 'Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect' - this art and persuasive effect is essential not only to political and legal speech, but also can be understood as an attribute that, in the end, makes any writing worth reading).

So, in essence they are trying to research analytical and quantitative rhetoric, which I think is a valid effort. Though I would not bet all my money that it is realistic to expect a coherent and testable model without a coherent and testable model of human brain (or at least of linguistic and cognitive areas of it) and society (culture).

Still, military had always had interest in manipulating the moral. Of both sides. It is only natural to research this subject. Don't see it as anything new.

Horatio, here are some ideas for future.