The NSA hasn't been cancelled, or even had a major budget cut. Ergo clearly bad government programs and agencies continue. Has even one person responsible for that mess been fired?

Why would they be? The NSA "gets the job done". The job it's doing is dirty, but the fault for that lies on the feet of the people who gave it its mandate - ultimately American people.

Besides, even if the NSA was destroyed, the problem that gave it birth would still exist: taking national security to be a concern overriding all other considerations, including rights of individuals. As long as America is more important than Americans, something like the NSA will always exist.

If the federal bureau of whatever doesn't get the job done ... nothing, they'll still be there next year.

Because, as we all know, nations are eternal, can never collapse or experience hardship, and don't compete with each other.

However, the article's author throws around massive and mass as if they are also measuring the mass of the star "50% more massive than heavyweight Betelgeuse" - I don't think the actual astronomers are talking about mass...

Astronomers almost always measure stars by mass, both because it's more informative - mass determines things like fusion rate and lifespan - and because volume of a star is both hard to measure from distance and not really well defined, since stars are made of gas and thus don't have a well-defined surface.

That said, this particular article specifically says "1300 times the diameter of the Sun", which gives it about 7 million times the volume of the Sun.

for some reason it's seldom thought that we could just remove the bad policies that prevent price elasticity (which is a very important component to the free market).

Economy exists to fulfil people's needs. Price elasticity endagers this by putting people out of work. Some elasticity is necessary, since it acts as a control signal for production chains, but too much takes the system out of its operational parameters. This could be prevented by guaranteeing an unconditional sufficient minimum income to live on, but that conflicts with the prevailing mythology of justification through hard work, and would likely create its own problems. Not that there's much choice as automation proceeds to shift limiting factor of industrial output away from manpower to energy and raw materials.

It is irrational - but sadly common - to place maximum effectiveness of a system over the very end the system exists to achieve.

Man's hubris is large enough to obscure vision and good judgement.
When we were little more than barely civilized, our insecurities probably collectively led us to this massive overcompensation that skewed our judgement of the other mammals' intelligence.

No, the truth is nastier: if elephants are not intelligent, it's okay to shoot them for ivory. If pigs are not intelligent, it's okay to slaughter them for delicious bacon. And so forth.

This is, of course, the exact same way humans treat each other too. In the past, suitable victims were determined on the basis of race or religion; in this more civilized time, the prime factor seems to be socioeconomic status.

It's not hubris that's at the core of human evil, it's the willingness to lie to ourselves whenever it's convenient.

I do not mean to be insincere, but why would the government or anyone else for that matter directly pay the victims of a natural disaster $500,000?

I can understand a large amount of money being diverted by the government or charities to help the victims recover, either physically with homes or psychologically with mental health services.

Power. The disaster had a human component of insufficient preparation, with Fukushima being the most famous part of it. Letting the government maintain control over relief funds can very easily turn into extortion: "I have this nice house. You could have it... If you told all these nice journalists there was nothing more we could had done."

It doesn't necessarily have to be the intention of the government. A badly traumatised person is hypersensitive to danger, and will perceive everything in terms of possible threats. But also, Japanese culture does seem to put a lot of value in saving face and loyalty to the superior, so a bureaucrat might experience a conflict of interests and misjudge, perceiving his duties to include things they don't.

Also, having money lets people to reintegrate to the economy, while having access to aid services doesn't. Poverty and trauma are a bad starter combo for rebuilding your life.

It takes time and effort to heal, not necessarily money.

It takes time and security to heal, and that includes financial security. As long as you have to divert all your energy into ensuring basic necessities, you will at most cover over the scars. And untreated trauma is a nasty thing: it twists your perspective and leads to irrational behaviour. Apart from this leading to personal tragedy, having hundreds of thousands of irrational people in a stressful situation is a recipe for trouble.

Arab oil-producing companies have been found backing environmental groups, to fight the introduction of new supply into their markets, which would depress prices.

Of course, the actual effect of this is to ensure North America gets to keep its reserves until later, when both the need and price will be even higher. At the same time, higher oil prices encourage investment into alternative means of energy, possibly allowing the entire supply to be exported at that time - and thus used as a geopolitical bargaining chip.

It's best to swallow the pill of peak oil while there's still reserves to use in an emergency.

Sorry, but wind and solar won't get the oranges from the groves in Florida to markets in Maine.

A solar-powered zeppelin might. Automate it, and it might even be economical; let drones hitch rides for a small fee, attaching and detaching (and charging) en-route, and it might be profitable enough to launch a new industry. And didn't Amazon plan to start delivering books by drones?

The whole reason America (and the rest of the world) relies so heavily on trucking is that airplanes use a lot of fuel, while railroads require a lot of maintenance. There's a clear business opportunity for a mode of transport that is fuel-efficient (=cheap), reasonable fast and doesn't depend on infrastructure or land between the endpoints.

And even if zeppelins don't work, the fact is that oil is getting more and more expensive, so if oranges depend on oil for transport, so will they. An economy that depends on an exhaustible resource for a vital function is doomed to collapse. A better power source must be found.

Oil is a nice thing to have, but keeping China and Japan from going to war with each other is far more important because that conflict would fundamentally affect the US and Europe's economies.

Oil shortage would also fundamentally affect the US and Europe's economies by utterly annihilating them, followed by their populations. We're not talking about a bookkeeping problem like the current financial crisis, but an actual total end to almost all production. After all, even France, which runs on nuclear energy, still needs oil to transport goods, including food.

It's fun to live at the end of the era and see the abyss open wide and deep before us, eh? And nothing but windmills and a few failing old nukes to keep our technical civilization, just taking off now, afloat to cross it. And at the same time people like cayenne8 whine when anyone so much as mentions the controls.

Kinda makes one wonder if humanity's not currently encountering the Great Filter.

Government is NOT supposed to be there to try to define or guide my behaviors.

As long as your behaviours have consequences that extend beyond yourself, yes it is.

And as long as you brag about being lazy and irresponsible, it's useless to whine that the big bad government babysits you. Don't want a nanny state? Grow up and prove you don't need one to make you clean up after yourself.

It it NOT wrong to judge someone by their actions or their words.

If you truly believe that, "GameMaster", why don't you tell us your real name, address, and other personally identifying information? Or did you mean it's okay to judge someone else, but not you?

Your right not to be judged goes away when you "stand up and remove all doubt", as the saying goes.

And this is another thing: we aren't talking about being judged. We're talking about being punished. Anonymity lets people air their piece, whether it's a political view, a proposition for a new economic system, or speculation about your mother's sexual activities, without risking their life or livelihood. It's what lets freedom of speech to exist in reality, not just theory, and for everyone, not just those with nothing to lose.

This is, of course, terrible for those who would rather see anyone who disagrees with them made examples of. Authoritarianism is an illness we still can't cure. But anonymity allows us to limit its deadly effect on society.

The founder of bitcoin stopped having a right to be left alone by the media when he chose to design, release, and cultivate a digital currency.

You are the judge of who has what rights on what conditions, now?

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, there are consequences for actions.

Except for you. You get to publish your views on Slashdot without having to wonder who might hear and take offence. It's these other people who need to live in the Panopticon. Not you. Never you. Always someone else.

Given the influence and wealth it has given them I'm very interested to know who they are. I don't think that's unthical and I think the fact 'whoever they may be' has put effort into remaining anonymous means they must have known people would try to work out who they were when they designed it.

Interesting ethical question, indeed. The thing is, anonymity lets you act without threat of retaliation. That retaliation doesn't need to come in the form of secret police or even a crazy gunman; no, in our society simply having your employment prospects lowered creates an extremely effective chilling effect. And that means that exposing people who wish to remain anonymous is ethical if, and only if, you agree that everyone's actions should be judged by the rich and the powerful, and only independently wealthy people should have any real freedom of action or opinion.

So basically, anonymity would be illegal in a libertarian plutocracy or absolute monarchy and a guaranteed right in a free world, with real countries going somewhere in the middle.

A Bloat-A-Matic? Like this?

"Bloat" is unnecessary code that makes a program run slower. Your example is not bloated, just verbose. Given a suitable wire API, it'll likely run faster than parsing SQL requsts sent as text strings. Also, do note that dynamically building complex expressions is far more convenient when you can treat subtrees as objects. Building strings representing complex logic programmatically quickly becomes a complete mess.

However, if you really want to compile said text strings while serving user requests, do something like

compiled_sql = sql_compile("Select blah blah")

And have sql_compile throw an exception if the expression contains string literals. In other words, remove the ability to use anything but prepared statements and the ability to use string literals in said prepared statements, and SQL injection attacks go away.

Bloated:

Verbose, and ridiculously so. Do you think intentionally making up a convoluted interface refutes anything? Especially since you're applying an API meant for preventing SQL injection attacks to mathematical expressions, where it's presumably impossible to wreak havoc no matter what values of B, C or D you supply.

Well done, the man of straw is dead.

The process that removes problems induced by errors (stupidity) ought to be good enough catch the ones induced by malice as well.

But such process doesn't actually exist, since bugs exist so they must occasionally get through the validation.

I agree. Also, while many people have family and friends with the technical resources to handle any combination of the issues you mention, another cost point to include is software install and data transfer.

Not everyone has the skill, money, or connections to transfer all of this older data to a new system. Many posts suggest handling these upgrades on behalf of those not prepared to handle the upgrade, but say this in a condescending tone like Grandma merely has recipes, pictures of children and doilies and nothing of value on their system. I'm sure many know their system is old, but cannot fathom trusting others to handling their personal information. Having it professionally managed comes at great cost. It can take hours, and if they're not prepared to upgrade in the first place, what are the chances they'll spend money on transferring data? Also, many out there do not have trusting family or neighbours they would want handling their personal data either.