The major source of security issues is the bloated, complex software that we use. So as a first step how about a new standard "Secure HTML". It would look a lot like HTML 4.0 but with many things removed. Of course no JavaScript, IFrames or CSS. Very simple formatting. Content on a page would need to come form the same domain (no request forging). Links of page would always show the off page address, in plain ASCII. Etc.

Just enough to provide functional web pages without glitz. The goal being to make the entire browser code no bigger than the original Mosaic code. So that it can be thoroughly reviewed and made really bug free.

Normal users would not touch it. But for anyone with access to a SCADA system, for example, it could be mandatory. That cuts down one major source of infection.

Here in Australia (and I think the UK) a taxi driver license is cheap. But you also need a taxi CAR license costs several hundred thousand dollars. Nobody wealthy enough to own a taxi license actually drives a taxi. So taxi drivers are dirt poor, usually Indians on dubious visas. But the taxi owners love their right to tax fairs. Currently about 55% of a fair goes to the owner.

Uber is great if it breaks up that nonsense.

Surely Google already knows where it is best for you to go. It knows everything else about you...

Well, the Australian system is pretty fraud proof. Ballots are put into sealed boxes. Scrutineers appointed by the candidates supervise the count. I've been a scrutineer, and it is all pretty efficient and friendly in practice. Count is made on election night. And it is much, much cheaper than the computer systems.

The bigger problem is all that the MBAs in charge do is twiddle with the tinsel, and do not address the deeper problems in semantics that people have asked for. Such as being able to break up mangled conversations. Or add notes to an important conversation to summarize it. Or to add a meaningful heading. There are several others.

GMail used to be innovative. Hard core slash dotters will know that all sent mail belongs in one place only, namely a folder called Sent Mail. GMail introduced conversations to emails, producing threads (just like Usenet...). They also introduced the idea that the same email could be put in more than one folder (label) at the same time. So it could go in Sent Mail, CustomerX, ScalingIssues, and Outsanding all at the same time. Way beyond traditional IMAP.

These things were not done as the result of some market research survey. They were done because the engineers involved thought it would be cool. It would be the way that they personally would like to use email.

But that was before the MBA and user interface experts took over. Just change the window dressing, dumb things down, target the idiot user.

I am actually looking to move to Zoho mail.

As to slash dot, how about just recognizing blank lines as paragraph breaks. That would be enough.

I would suggest that being ingested by an engine would be pretty catastrophic for the drone.

I suppose I can live without a key, although I always use a mechanical one.

But I hear that the next model will not have a steering wheel. You just tell it where to go and it goes there in the best way possible. No controls at all.

The model after that knows where it is best for you to go, no need to tell it anything.

+1 I think all common email clients do this and it is awful.

Microsoft still hides folder path names which makes many dialogs hard to follow.

Hiding is evil. It comes from those UI Experts that watch how users interact with machines behind silver mirrors. It dumbs down rather than enlighens. And many of those UI experts do not actually know what a URL is anyway.

Contrary to what all journalists think, the first major internet search indexer was not Google but AltaVista, circa 1995. It was written by just three people at DEC. The goal was not to sell advertising, nor even to make money. The goal was to show off their new Alpha servers that were so powerful that they could index the entire web (which was tiny at the time).

In the early days the web was small, there were no spamers, and things like Meta tags could be depended on. PageRank only became useful when the web grew. It is sensible, but is exactly what academics have used to rank papers for centuries -- citation citations citations... It is also an old idea from the hypertext community.

So the question is, how did Google succeed as a start up several years later? I would have written off their business plan as hopless. Internet search is an obvious thing to do, it has already been done, and if anyone will compete with AltaVista it will be the big boys throwing money at it. Yahoo, Microsoft etc.

But I would obviously have been wrong. Partly the reason is that Google back then was not run by MBAs. They did not try to extract as much advertising out of the search engine as possible. Nor full of flashing banner ads. Main search results relatively untainted by advertising. But it is still weird.

Weirder is the success of Android. There were giants like Nokia with decades of experience and bucket loads of cash. How could Apple and then a nothing company like Android blow them away?!!!

It was running malware written by the NSA that was accidentally released into the wild...

The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to pilots. They are by far the weakest link in the chain. Whether they do something extremely stupid such as hold back the stick in a stall (Air France) or malicious (Malasian Air) the result is the same. Perfectly good aircraft destroyed.

So engineering them out of the cockpit is the next step. Computers have been able to fly entire flights for decades. Expert systems already out perform people at diagnostics. The pilot is just a redundant point of failure.

If you know any pilots put this to them and watch the response ;)

The amazing thing is that the IRS today is no more efficient then it was in the 1950s before any computerization.

Certainly in 2007 the Australian tax office's internal budget was AU$11.4 billion, or 1.23% of GDP. In 1955 it performed essentially the same task without automation for A£66.7 million which was 1.33% of the 1955 GDP. The difference is not statistically significant. (Normalizing by GDP (essentially the sum of everyone's earnings) accounts for the growing population and inflation.) US figures will show a similar effect.

The only effect of computerization has been to enable the rules and regulations that govern us to become an order of magnitude more complex.

See below for the sad details. http://berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantThatSoftwareFails.html

+1. Non-competes are good for big established companies (like EMC) but bad for the state's economy. Innovation comes from people leaving heavy bureaucratic companies and exploiting opportunities. And of course they continue to work in the same field.

There is no way that any US government will do something that big established companies would not like. So what happens is that more and more successful start ups happen in places like California, and the industry moves.

Those types of heavy non-compete clauses are, of course, generally unenforceable outside the USA. Certainly unenforceable in Australia.

Why would we ever need to ever send humans anywhere in space? Not for science, humans are already obsolete technology for space travel. Just for the feel good movie.

Think about how much real science could have been done if the international space station had been abandoned like is should be. White elephant. I want the Webb to go up. But that does not look as good on the movies.

Eventually humans will become obsolete technology here on earth. Then the point will be mute.