This was true when the financial system was focused on directly investing in real businesses and better financial systems meant a better and less costly allocation of capital to those who could use it.

Increasingly however, the talent is being wasted on what are at best zero sum games against other similar players, such as high frequency trading. At worst these activities are actually harmful, and parasitical, on those that benefit the wider economy by profiting traders at the cost of investors (OK those groups are not well defined, you we both know what I mean well enough).

There is also the problem that even on the most optimistic "markets are always right" take on this, there is too much investment in the financial activity because the socialised risk together with privatised profit means that the level of investment no longer reflects the level of risk/

Theocracy is a natural extension of a feudal society where individual freedom is very restricted. Even now the most theocratic societies are feudal, middle Eastern Ones: only the gulf Arab states compel all their citizens to follow a single religion.

The thinking of people who want a theocracy follows the usual pattern of thought of politicians and terrorists: "I know what is best for everyone so I should force them to do it".

The most busy body societies have been run by atheists (think of the Soviet Union or Communist China).

But you do not want them to:

A free market system does not pay what is deserved, it pays for what there is demand.

At the moment there demand is falling as consumers switch to free alternatives.

People are quite happy to pay if the product is worth it: the Financial Times, The Economist, The New Scientist etc. have no problem getting people to pay because they have content that does not have a suitable free alternative, because they actually have a high quality product that is hard replace.

Most newspapers do little investigative journalism, and largely reproduce press releases, government announcements, and whatever else they are fed. The net lets us bypass them and read the original.

TO put it another way, the REAL problem is not whether this or any other particular app is "acceptable", its that if you buy an Apple product that is tied to their app store then Apple decide what software it is acceptable for you to use, not you.

If its WIndows using FF's own update mechanism, probably yes.

If its Linux from a repo, probably not.

The fact that I got the update before Firefox reported it tells me all I want to know about:

1) How fast the PCLinuxOS packagers get stuff done.
2) How long it takes Slashdot editors to get a paragraph on to a website,

The unmanageable regulations stay in place because the people most able to lobby against them are quire happy knowing they can bribe their way around them, while rivals with less access are hobbled.

I think consequence no 6 "Make pot loads of money for ICANN and registrars everywhere. " is what they are after.

I cannot see effective criminalisation of porn on non-XXX domains: too many free speech issues, and there will be well funded push-back from established sites that use other TLDs.

You are going to see all the porn sites on .xxx in the same way that all businesses use .biz or all airlines use .aero

This is Slashdot, it is automatically assumed that anything can be blamed on Christianity, and the hive mind does not welcome rational discussion of the issue.

Nudity has a lot of implications:

1) Cod-pieces in the (very Christian) middle-ages in Europe, and similar penis casing in other cultures are probably some form of status display other societies suppress.
2) Monkey's display errect penises as a sign of aggression: http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/proboscis_monkey/behav
3) A visible erect penis may reveal information its owner wishes to conceal.
4) Periods, as you implied, need some clothing to deal with.
5) Breasts. Once you start concealing organs with sexual significance they are the next step.
6) Once you start wearing clothes for other reasons (e.g. protection in a cold or very hot climate) not wearing the usual level of clothing becomes sexually provocative.

Its also bad theology. If I wanted to study theology I would not go anywhere near a faculty that included a creationist.

Except that the statistical technique would not work if the source of the interference was omnipotent and eternal. The interference could take place in the starting conditions of the Big Bang (eternal means God sees everything from the start of time to the end of time in His "now"), or within the normal random fluctuations.

Of course you can teach Norse Mythology creationism. The wording says ID "or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms" With a bit of luck someone doing just that will get hired and:

1) Students will get some exposure to mythology that has had huge literary influence.
2) The legislature will look stupid.

I thought home education was legal in the US.

It goes much deeper than that.

Why are American employers who have no stake in any of that test employees - and Americans are far more likely to test that Europeans.

This even applies to jobs where cocaine is likely to improve performance, so the employer would benefit from employees taking it.

Just like the rest of the world!