Clearly a 6K Earth is a very stupid concept.

Everyone knows that a 640K Earth should be enough for everyone...

Hmmm... I am ...curious... about this thing you describe.
I would like to order one on a 2 year plan.

...(missed adding this)...

The original guy would typically then be denounced, trialled and executed (often using the very same system he had set up).

Great Purges? Almost certainly all driven by Stalin himself (via the system he set up). A very, very nasty man.

It was driven by Stalin - who wanted to destabilise the leadership to cement his position. Several times he would get people to do his dirty work for him (such as run denouncements, trials and executions), then turn on the person doing the work by appointing a new person to take over the very same role.

I guess you are putting out the welcome mat so they can move in with you then?

Head you win, tails I lose hey?

With that sort of attitude, I think I'll stick with my original premise.

Um, I spent 21 years as a CS lecturer

News flash : The employment process and skills required for professors works to screen out most crazy humans, leading to a difference in overall craziness profile.

We do understand how to maintain balance on a bike.

People steer into the continual tiny falls that happen all the time, actively steering the bike upright.

If I was in his position I would say that I was showing someone how secure First State Superannuation's service is - "Look you can even change any of these digits and nothing will happen!...Hmmm.... that's strange!". I would mention looking at many of them.

Faster than C I guess

"Once you build the checking into the language no one will want to use the slower executables it produces."

Except they do. Languages such as Ada, and really any language that allows compilers to understand what is happening in the code, can optimise out many of the bounds checking. The cost of bounds checking isn't as great as you may think it is, and if it eliminates -all- buffer overflows wouldn't you choose it?

Even worse than a safe haven are all those unsafe havens! Never put your data there!

Never ascribe to malice that which can attributed to stupidity.

I re-read your post (more carefully this time!) and agree with you...

Saddam Hussein didn't like Al Quidea - it's very, very unlikely that he would have had anything to do with them at all. AQ moved into Iraq filling the power vacuum when the government fell.