Demolishing the public school system and the stupid arrangement of local governments or authorities at the base of it would both be excellent ideas. And the caring anbd capable people completely separating fron the rest is also a good trend.

Is fun watching folks compete to be best, I have seen it at the Olympic level, but it is useless. And considering the expense, outrageous.

Fairs were a good custom in many ways, particularly World's Fairs. I miss them, and could do entirely without the Oily Pimpics.

Any fool can learn a name a postal address an email address a birthdate a social security number. Those things therefor have no value and there is not much point in obscuring them. Passwords (disgusting method, relies on users and communication cryptography, neither of which is reliable) are perhaps another matter - but hopefully if the access a password guards matters, that password is NOT used elsewhere by that user. Well, one might hope I suppose.

Biometric has a chance, at least to guard access at the endpoints. Maybe the quantum folks will discover something that not only obsoletes existing cryptography (as it appears they basically have), but something reliable.

I suspect currency interchange by NFC might be the solution for money. I can think of no solution for privacy and reputation. Perhaps social and legal penalties for degrading someone based on information that in former times would have been private might help, but gossip control is contrary to human nature. We're in a village of a billion and climbing towards ten times that many, this is one of the ways things are and increasingly will be different.

I'm in between Manning’s original statements-by-his-actions and this contrition. (1) Airport users and news watchers knew, or IMHO ought to have known, a great deal about the several threads behind the growing security state: (1) Power politics just can't be nice; we may one day have species-wide law IF we can figure out how to have one government and not be oppressed, but it's a jungle until then. So the revelations ought not to surprise; (2) Government has a propensity to avoid embarrassment at almost any cost. Obviously silly and wrong yet in part somewhat excusable: graceful acceptance by most of at least the general legitimacy of authority is fundamental to authority existing without either stark oppression or the sort of anarchy that can kill a major fraction of the whole people; and (3) individual empowerment is a new thing, with the part that applies to the ability of seriously angry people to essentially wage war like a State being a real threat, one that properly scares people.

I think we knew about most all of it, or ought to have, making almost all of the revelations not revelations at all. Except for the disclosure of sources and methods, this could endanger the lives of people acting from conviction and in our interests, not a good thing.

In sum, Manning was no traitor, yet if his apology is centered on the possible risk to the lives of agents and tipsters; it makes sense that he would now say that.

Why were the family concerns considered worth blocking research over? I find it unbelievable that an individual would be thought to "own" their dna.

Maybe exactly how the well-connected and well-healed do it is technically new, but gossip is as old as humanity and is actually a far more reliable safeguard of reasonable behavior by most people most of the time than any number of laws. For almost all of our species' existence - except maybe from 1750 to 200 - everyone knew everything about everybody. That's normal. Privacy is a middle class addiction - we are too well off to do as we please because we have nothing to lose, and not powerful enough to do as we please because everyone fears us, so we pretend we can do as we please via privacy.

Bullshit.

What works is what Britain did in Malaysia and Kenya, what Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane did: kill every last one of their race, culture, faith, and nation, and destroy the capacity of all their lands to support civilization or indeed human life.

Old style media would enjoy it, and so would I.

easier to retrain society to ignore OLD gossip, than to keep old deeds from becomming known through technology. If it can be done, it will be done.

why any rational person would care what vehicle a cab driver drove escapes my imagination. why anyone would think a standard would help anything other than the state-sponsored monopoly and the winning vendor escapes me. why any of us tolerate us as a whole making rules for all of us escapes me also.

You the people are the moral equivalent of the gang banger doen the street. I pay him no heed and I piss on your ideals and sensibilities also, at every opportunity.

I can see that perhaps fewer firearms MIGHT correlate with fewer people shot, but probably it would work the other way. Someone contemplating potential use of a firearm, for whatever reason, surely can readily obtain a firearm, regardless of whether or not "printable guns" become an additional access method. And I notice that marijuana and cocaine have been illegal for longer than I have been alive, as has under-age drinking of alcohol, but I know of nothing besides chosing NOT TO that keeps anyone wanting alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine from getting some, and it seems that the number detered by law is quite possibly exceeded by the number spurred on by the concept of doing something prohibited.

Which is nothing.

The value of a democracy and a republic is that decisions are hard to make and implement, making the society somewhat stable, while also tending towards the members redoubling efforts during tough times, making them resilient as well. But the idea that such dcisions as are made have greater legitimacy is hogwash. Crowd sourcing works like a market, one idea and one transaction at a time; making rules based on majority opinion is just a less compeytent form of dictatorship.

I hope we get to the DuneUniverse soon, where Families have Atomics and there is no public aurthority.

Things change, I am said to be good at dealing with change, but I DO NOT like it. Yet what I am used to and like, now, was unimaginable when I started my path (life: 1948; computers: 1965) a few years ago. Viva la difference. But it's a MIND shift I think anyway - its not a tool on my job or an appliance in my home or a major corporate asset...it's getting so it's more like a door knob (famously held to be the total example of what computers WERE NOT). And I'm beginning to see it that way myself - dislike for the small expensive doodad that likely will be lost or stolen, beginning to be replaced by a feeling that my net and compute comnection is a basic sense, that I wish always to have everywhere and when.

Doomed from the start. First we have people expecting that they can do more together than apart, usually untrue. Totally untrue if it involves voting...that is, the idea that a community can make a decision and compel its members to go along. Legitimate when arguably the survival of community and members is at stake but not otherwise. Neither fuel economy nor automobile exhaust is a problem at all, in that sense.

Then we have the idea of standards and objectivity, another set of false concepts, more trouble than they are worth.

I doubt it is possible to regularly operate an automobile without obtaining a pretty good idea of its fuel economy. Enough said.

The whole thing just taxes people with better things to spend their money on for something that really does not matter, except maybe to people who believe in such fantasies as nations controlling their fate, governments having wisdom, or that people are too stupid to conserve if they find something to be scarce or expensive and being used wastefully. If it’s cheap and abundant it CAN’T be wasted.

There are so many things alleged drivers do besides drive..paint toenails, eat lunch, discipline kids/pets, drink beverages (the more dangerous of which seem to be the hot ones that can end up in senistive boldily places), look for toll change, talk to the other folks in the car, stare at the attractive person of the opposite/appropriate sex, etc. that I see no reason why we should worry about the various uses and missuses of telephones/tablets/smartphones/texting platforms. And besides, as long as we let PEOPLE drive without supervision, injuries we will have, regardless. Even airplanes being flown by computers and supervised by expert pilots crash. THIS IS JUST MORE BLUE SMOKE AND MIRRORS!

When people die, we feel motivated to make recurrence less likely, but when what we do won't do that, but only make it look like our leaders care, I say its a crock of male bovine solid waste.