> How do I get everyone to sign and encrypt their emails as a matter of course?

Make it work transparently, that's how. Looking for people's keys is a hassle. Entering yet another password is a hassle. The solution should be obvious:

1. The mail client should generate a keypair for each profile, usable without a password.
2. Attach this public key to every outgoing email
3. All outgoing email should be encrypted if the recepient has a known public key and is known to be using a client that supports encryption.

This way, most email traffic will get encrypted by default without the user having to know anything about it. Without a password on the keypair you will still be vulnerable to local attacks, but anybody who wants to read your mail will now need to break into your computer instead of just being able to sniff traffic in bulk.

Yes, we can do the experiment, but most of the time we don't. Nobody gets grant money for replicating stuff other people have already done. There's no glory in it; the citations, the namings, the prestige will all go to the original experimenter, and grants are very much about glory (to the host institution, of course, not so much for the researcher herself). Yes, the big, important stuff gets replicated, but a dreadfully mundane study of some palladium catalysed reaction is not in that category, and so is unlikely to be replicated. The allegation of "made up" data in this particular paper may prompt somebody to try it in this case, but there will be many more that will slip through.

Are we asking to be invaded?

If you wanted to subvert a processor in that way, it would be easiest to add a secret knock that would allow the attacker to run any code at all on it. And any CPU you buy can have such a secret knock built into it. I don't see any particular reason to trust one CPU manufacturer more than another. If you have some evidence that one is untrustworthy, please share it.

XKCD is relevant, as usual.

I think it *is* insightful. If they overstepped, why wouldn't the article just come out and say they did? So they use a loaded question, such as asking, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" That's why Betteride's law works, and is in fact insightful, if you only think about it...

Yeah, that's exactly how the world works. Nice observation. Fair is a temporary amusement park.

I hope so. Without that complex, we wouldn't be able to grow and distribute food and other necessities. I would certainly hope all world governments do their best to make sure the complex works even better, and then we can all enjoy a higher standard of living. Why is this "complex" the enemy? Where do you think you get all your nice stuff that our ancestors didn't have? Let me know when you no long purchase any products made from the evil "complex".

No. See, I can do it too. Do I get a medal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

"Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?"
No.

The companies that those billionaires own are what drive the economy and do things like grow and distribute our food. I don't know about you, but I would prefer to protect those companies so I can keep eating. And of course I like my gadgets, books, music, and so forth. Sure, I can read an open-source book or listen to open-source music, but typically I prefer the commercial products. Just because an idea works with software doesn't mean it will work with everything. In other words, if you give a man a hammer, all he will see are nails.

We need IP to protect the companies who are doing the research. But it can be difficult to know exactly where to draw the line between what can and cannot be patented. That's the real problem with our patent system -- too many obvious ideas being patented. As Jefferson himself said, "Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not."

Absolutely. And guess what would happen to any drug company that did not patent their drugs? How would they be able to compete with companies that did not have to pay the hundreds of millions in research to get the drug approved? The only reasonable alternative to patent systems that I can see are (a) trade secrets, which means that the discovery is not made available to all, or (b) go back to a patron system where a generous benefactor foots the bill for research, in which case the research that the scientists do is only what the benefactor wants, which may be the ultimate cure for baldness or a little dick. I think patents are better than the alternatives. That is, unless you can come up with a better idea. Just be sure to think it through...

"Of course, a hardware security system that is too complex to verify seems like a fatal flaw."

Why is that? We cannot verify that CPUs do not have "secret knock" codes. Is that a "fatal flaw"? All it really means is that you can't be sure that your CPU isn't performing any malicious activity. The best you can do is trust that it isn't. I suppose you could spend all your time looking for such evidence, but you still wouldn't be able to prove a CPU isn't performing malicious activity in exactly the same way you cannot prove a non-trivial program is correct simply by testing it on enough inputs.

Languages are not interpreted or compiled. Implementations are compilers or interpreters. These days Java is typically compiled at runtime, instead of ahead of time. Your comment is bogus.