I suppose being Slashdot, everyone is immediately thinking of technical workarounds but the main issue for those wanting to filter "porn" is defining what "porn" actually is, such that it can be recognised by an autonomous system. No two humans can agree on a definition other than "I know it when *I* see it", so how a computer is meant to cope I don't know.

Yes, you can blacklist/whitelist sites but you'd end up with the British Library, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the British Medical Association blocked while hotbabesinswimwear.com gets allowed because there's just enough covered.

For those overseas readers who are not well versed in British politics, this is not really a serious suggestion - we're approaching the "silly season" and things like this are run up the flagpole to impress the gullible and distract attention from other matters.

I think all there is is circus magic. It just gets more convincing with scale.

Consciousness is most likely an illusion brought on by a certain amount of processing power and connectivity (and I count myself in there too). In a quantised, deterministic universe, "minds" and "souls" are as likely as gods...

This mud is no ordinary mud. There are significant deposits of Ganjonium, Tokalite and Reeferine alongside the rare earths...

It would be amusing if the only ultrabook you could buy *without* a touch screen was a MacBook Air...

...should be just about enough to run one instance of Crysis 4. If you've got an OC-192 internet connection, you might be able to play it in HD as well!

"Long involved biochemical reason why. Basically, the easiest way to kick in the apotosis chain is to heat the internal cell temp by approx 1 F. Heating to 1 F kills circa 98 pct cancer cells and impacts 2 pct non-cancer cells. Heating to 4 F kills 100 pct but kills 20 pct non-cancer cells, which causes organ failure and terminal death for person."

That is interesting but seems to be contrary to experience. A 1F change in body temperature is close to the normal diurnal variation. If a 4F rise "kills 100% cancer and 20% non-cancer cells", then a) you could cure cancer by giving people a good dose of the 'flu and b) I and many others I know shouldn't be here, having had sustained body temperatures in the order of 103F when ill at some point in their lives...

As a FTSE100 company, we're just rolling out 5,000+ of the latest iPads to frontline staff. We were told this was a relatively small deployment in the general scheme of things. I think Apple have reached critical mass in the corporate arena and are seeing substantial growth, possibly more than people thought possible...

Or security by economy of effort. As it is, it takes 2 minutes to access the port to reprogram keys. If that port and its wires were buried in the engine so that you had to put the car on a lift and take it half apart to access, they'd move on to easier targets.

I think some of these issues have come about in the EU because of a) competition directives and b) enforced standards.

BMW and other manufacturers are forbidden from operating a 'closed shop' for spares, technical details or anything that a 3rd party would need to service/repair their cars. This is generally good for the consumer but in the edge case of car security rather bad, in that a non-OEM agency can demand access to key programmers etc. then sell them on and/or hand them over to criminals.

The diagnostics port in the car has (AFAIK) to be in the passenger compartment and readily accessible, by regulation, so that nixes the idea of siting it somewhere unusual or protected. Some people I know have re-wired their ports to need a custom adapter, so someone trying to attack the car from that direction would fail...

We're just about to introduce iPads for all the pilots in our airline (about 3,700) and you would not believe the amount of compliance testing and general farting about that's required to get electronic equipment approved for use on the flight deck.

Apple makes two series of iPads (2 & 3). Take just one of those, iPad3 and you have various memory capacities with/without 3/4G. OK, standardise on just one model, say the iPad3 32GB 4G. This has batteries that come from several different manufacturers, not to mention GPS/wireless chipsets that are also sourced from multiple vendors. Each of these has to be tested separately for compliance and if any more changes happen during production you're back to testing again.

Your average non-Apple tablet has these problems as well, plus is much more of a moving target in terms of continually changing hardware. Many of the cheaper units would have difficulty during the approval process from a technical point-of-view (shielding, RF emissions, battery construction, etc.).

Most of the reason that iPads are fairly ubiquitous at the sharp end of commercial aircraft is not some pro-Apple bias but simply that a great deal of work has been done (and money spent) on certifying them for this, so you don't have to re-invent the wheel if you want to fit them in your aeroplanes...

"Is consciousness only available in higher order complex physical structures (like higher order mammals), or is it possible in lower order structure too, like rocks?"

I am a rock, you insensitive clod!

"I was fortunate to see The Bourne Legacy recently in 4K digital and it was stunning compared to even 2K digital, let alone 1080p and 720p."

I watched a movie in 4K recently and all I could see after a while was the makeup on the actors' faces, the props and reflections of the camera and technicians that had been missed by post-processing. I can't even remember what it was about... Too much unnecessary detail!

I run a 720p projector at home with a good decoder and I don't feel a pressing need to go to 1080, let alone 4K or 8K. I can see why a "retina" display is good for photo editing or reading but for rapidly changing content I fail to see what the fuss is all about?

Epic $#!+ can't come out of sitting in "Building 4, where Bill Gates' office used to be ..."

Look. They've converted Building 4 into a huge outhouse where you can do an epic $#!+. What more could you want? (Apart from softer paper...)

"There are just nine of these guys"

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne...

Ooooerrrr! Jony Ive must have made them out of Aluminium, maybe Titanium for the Tim Cook's One!

Yeah, me too! The letter pairings li and ll look pretty similar in the font I've got, plus I suppose my brain was hoping for "Alien"...

I think the problem these days is that governments are attempting to legitimise stuff that they have always done but has dubious (or no) legality.

We need an arm of government that can operate outside the law on occasions to deal with those who have no respect for it at all, like terrorists bent on mass murder. What we don't need is the laws changed to make what should be clandestine activities perfectly OK and normal. This paves the way for the 2am knock on the door.

I'm sort of alright with GCHQ or the NSA tapping in to everything as the results are unlikely to make it outside of secure environments. There are also still enough civil rights left in most democracies that you can make a very public fuss if you think you have been wronged. What I don't want is things like this made legal and contracted out to the lowest bidder, who keeps unencrypted databases on malware-infected networks and employs minimum wage keyboard operatives who make a bit on the side selling bank/credit card/personal details to the mafia.