The question isn't how easy it is for a user to do something bad; the question is how easy is it for a user to inadvertently do something bad. If the application is properly designed, all tasks should not only be easy to perform, but easy to perform accurately. Presumably, this deleterious task is something that does potentially need to be done, so it should be easy to do. But it should only be easy to do if the end user actually wants to do it, and not easy to do if the intention of the end user is to do something else. Your problem as a designer is to figure out how to accurately assess the user's intent.

"Grounds"? So, after allowing the facts to percolate, there'd bean no chance of convection?

You got a tank-style water heater in your basement? How often do you check the safety valve to make sure it's not going to explode? How often does the government come in and mandate that you do so?

Oh, I see, that's different because people don't get all hysterical over hot water heater explosions. http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/08/14/20080814kpnx-waterheater.html Never forget Thunderbird Road! Ban water heaters! Publish a list of everyone who doesn't have a modern energy-efficient tankless water heater!

It's perfectly legitimate to charge less to someone who's less likely to make a claim, and more to someone who's more likely to make a claim. The "higher risk" person might not have an accident, and the "lower risk" person might have an accident. Say an accident costs $100, and there are two people insured. The company might gamble that only one will have an accident. So, they charge both people $50. But maybe one person never leaves home; they could charge him $40 and the other person - who drives a car with underinflated tires and has an auto accident every 2 years - $70. Both people still save money over paying for their own accident, and the company makes money either way.

The key here is that a company who can get a bunch of low-risk people in at a substantially lower rate than what those people would need to set aside, they will probably not have to pay out more than they took in. And that allows lower rates for low risks, which increases the number of low-risk people who may actually pay into the system without taking anything out. This is a self-feeding cycle. It doesn't take a genius to see that, with a large enough risk pool and reasonably accurate risk-assessment processes, everyone pays in less than they take out while the central organization still ends up making money.

But fine, if you, AC, think that saving $100 back every 6 months will provide me with the 250,000 I carry in coverage for someone else's medical costs for car insurance, you go right ahead and think that. Never mind the 100,000 I carry in coverage to me for uninsured motorist damage. Lemme know when you need a place to stay after someone who has state-minimum 25,000 coverage (if anything) hits you and makes you get physical therapy for a few months; I'm sure their insurance and the money you "set aside" will cover all your medical bills and personal car replacement just fine. Have fun putting aside money for your house insurance, too, since everyone is just fine putting aside more than the full amount of their mortgage (to pay for "stuff" too) into a savings account *while* paying off the mortgage and buying stuff.

As part of the demonstration, Cui inserted and removed a small external circuit board from the phone's Ethernet port

Seems like it'd be easier to just slap a traditional bug under the filing cabinet if you're going to need physical access anyway. And maybe leave behind a hardware keylogger while you're at it. Possibly also an annoyatron. :)

Uh-huh. You're going to index the internet with a Raspberry Pi. Good luck with that.

If I was one of those people who put amusing quotes from the same message board in his signature, this would be my new .sig.

Damn it, that takes away my plausible deniability. :)

They've got robot soda machines at the drive-through already. Those things are neat.

How crude. Clearly, you should be doing it with shell builtins directly instead of spending all that time opening a new filehandle and forking a child process. ;)

while c=([0]=/ [1]=\\); do echo -n ${c[$((RANDOM%2))]}; done

(actually, I really like the tr version)

Or, you could use fewer characters and make it faster by not creating an array reference every iteration. ;)

print while $_=qw{\ /}[rand 2];

Someone can inherit a salary where you live? Neat! I'm leaving my current job to my 6 year old nephew.

Thank heavens I wasn't the only one who read it that way. I was wondering if there was some roundup of older women named Sandy, and thought "that name can't be *that* popular"...

I'm still trying to figure out how an "idiot" and "turkey" was retained for long enough to have any significant impact. Usually an "idiot" becomes pretty obvious as soon as he tries to do anything complicated enough to justify asking this question.

Next they'll tell me that it doesn't actually cost $84 to activate a replacement cell phone on my existing cell phone plan.

As I understand it, if you voluntarily disclose information, the Miranda Rights are irrelevant. So, public postings would definitely be admissible. Never mind that Treyvon's not on trial, and you don't usually Mirandize the prosecution. :)