Peter Bright argues that the ban should persist. Not because of interference with aircraft control systems, a self-evidently silly fear (if there were any quantifiable danger, we'd be strip-searched and relieved of our gadgets at the gate) but because it would keep our attention safely on the plane during the more dangerous take-off and and landing phases. In addition, he argues, the ban gives us a spiritually refreshing period during which we must part ways with our gadgets and smell the metaphorical flowers. I dunno. If a sudden gut-wrenching roll or nose-down doesn't make you look up from your iphone, I'm not sure banning them during those times will make you more attentive. As far as spiritual refreshment is concerned, listening to the fuss and noise of my fellow passengers, most of whom I'm forced to sit closer to (and certainly for longer) than most sex partners, does not encourage spiritual cleansing. Playing Air Attack on my Galaxy and doing my best to pretend no one else is there is way more relaxing.

The flip side of this is what I got in Ontario (Canada), whose curriculum 25 years ago required the teaching of creationism as well as evolution. After spending a week or so looking at all the evidence for the theory of evolution, our grade 13 biology teacher announced "I am also required to teach an alternate theory known as creationism. You've seen all the evidence for evolutionary theory (he went on to list it). But there are some who believe that this is all false and that god did it. It is up to you to decide which theory you find more plausible." And on to the next topic. When I read about teachers having to "teach the controversy", etc., I'm not too worried. I suspect that, even in Tennessee, a majority of science teachers have the same severe doubts about creationism as the rest of us.

Given the amount of discussion, this is obviously not a silly question. I worked at a company in Palo Alto for a while, and one of the things that appealed to me was that they let users name their own workstations. You got a completely random mishmash. They didn't reflect the machine's purpose (more secure, if that worries you); they're easier to remember (betty, veronica, larch, elm, etc are way easier than random alpha strings); you don't have to change them if someone moves; and when someone quits you reimage anyway, so let the new owner choose a new name, or stick with the old name if you prefer. It's also more empowering than some faceless (and finite) naming convention imposed by the trolls.

As far as I can tell, there are three reasons people don't vote: they don't care; it's too hard; and it's not cool. Voting looks to some teens like picking up trash on the street: something only the Martin Princes of the world do. It's too hard because it requires going to a physical place with physical pieces of paper, and making a conscious decision who to vote for. And, of course, many voters feel that politicians are all clowns and liars, so it doesn't matter who you vote for. Online voting - presuming that it's implemented securely, if that's possible - would make it easy and, if not cool, at least not overtly dorky either. The third issue, the feeling that one bunch of clowns in parliament is pretty much like another - doesn't have a technical solution. But two out of three's not bad.

To all of you who replied to my initial post, thank you. I've read all the responses carefully, even the trolls: they too have their story. There's a wealth of excellent advice here and a high signal-to-noise ratio. Thanks in particular to those of you who took the time to provide thoughtful and well-rounded answers. Will this idea fly? Beats me. But I hope to have a lot of fun finding out.

This judgement has no effect on free speech in any case, merely on the right to anonymity, a different question entirely. On the topic of free speech, Oliver Wendell Holmes (an American Supreme Court Judge) put it very well. "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater". Not even in the United States is the right to free speech absolute - nor would any sane person want it to be.

Two important issues: 1. There is nothing illegal about pornography in general. It doesn't matter whether he had two or two million pix of naked women. Their discovery is as irrelevant as wedding photos. 2. Nowadays there are so many ways to carry files around - SD chips, CDs/DVDs, on your iPod, on an encrypted HD partition, not to mention just downloading them later - that this sort of search is largely pointless. Any serious importer of child pornography wouldn't even be inconvenienced by them. This is not to downplay the legitimacy of the child porn issue - but measures like this waste time and effort that could have been used elsewhere. In Bruce Schneier's phrase, security theater.