Estonia has already weathered the brunt of a Russian cyberattack. They are recognized to be world leaders in cybersecurity at the government level, and host the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-poste...

So yes, I think their safeguards and failsafes extend beyond Windows Update and Norton. Open sourcing their code reduces the black-box vulnerabilities well beyond that level to begin with.

You Bastards! *punches sand futilely*

What have you not done?

Damn you! Damn you to hell!

Yeah, but those are just newer, less "legitimate" alternatives - like LiteJesus, NameJesus, PPJesus, etc.

You throw around a lot of ad hominem attacks, name-calling, and personal anecdotal evidence for someone supposedly science and philosophically oriented, Skippy the Anonymous Coward.

Geneva would be a cinch to snap up. It's in low-lying lands, and France can invade it from the northwest, south, west, east. All French territory.

Of course, they would have to contend with the fearsome Swiss Navy on Lake Geneva. I hear they have some fearsome, multipurpose cutlery they could bring to bear.

First, you make him drop the banana.

Then, you eat the banana!

You have now rendered him...'elpless!

(>6 hours and nobody delivered on this Monty Python setup. Sheesh.)

Don't worry about the Wars on <noun>.

Don't even worry about the Wars on <verb>.

Shit's gonna get real when they begin the Wars on <adverb>. And, worse, the Wars on <preposition>.

My nightmare would be the one programmer who writes one line of Perl code that could be done in hundreds of lines, if written correctly.

Don't call him suely!

I'd say it's a no-brainer that Ron Paul supports him:

http://www.ronpaul.com/2013-06-10/ron-paul-edward-snowden-and-glenn-greenwald-have-done-a-great-service-to-the-american-people/

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”

While I agree with much of your post, Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme, and certainly not it's 'very definition'. "Ponzi scheme" seems to be one of the most misused expressions in economics.

A Ponzi scheme is a specific type of fraud where a party pays people back their own capital rather than making legitimate returns. By definition, it is unsustainable. That's why it's a fraud.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is just a commodity/currency in a bubble. Period. There are no mathematical reasons that it couldn't be perceived to be at its fair value of $166 forever, so long as people perceive that value to be correct.

Just because unscrupulous speculators make money off the naive, doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme. It just makes it yet another average financial marketplace, which have been drawing in suckers since 4000 B.C.

I think you underestimate the size of the 'fly-over' parts of the United States of America. And the number of dying small towns that could use an influx of new people.

ps. Tom Geller - fyi, Toronto has all the sushi you could ever want, and is a hell of a lot cheaper to get to!

The Eagle Pub in Cambridge belongs to Corpus Christi College, and it is the place where Crick and Watson announced the helical DNA structure.

Corpus has the money; it could afford it. It's historically relevant, and I could think of nothing better than to hold a raise a pint in their honour.

And then maybe chase it bitterly with a bottle of Jack Daniels, in tribute to young Miss Rosalind Franklin from whom they stole so much.

Can you elaborate on this? How to deal with it? This isn't one of those vague political "yada yada yada" ideas, because dealing with a widely held religious belief usually involves war, discriminatory laws, or any other of a wide variety of excuses to stamp on personal rights and freedom of association.

The King's Cross area is not remotely distressed. It's been undergoing a revitalization project for pretty much a decade right now. The restored St Pancras station there ranks among the nicest buildings in London (and that's saying something).

So if Google would be a bit late to the party if this was their plan. But it's a great location. Central, on seven subway lines, and a 45 minute direct train to Cambridge.

Good strategic spot, I'd say.