I forgot to address the pay-what-you-think arrangements. Those work well because they can break down the 'payment barrier'. To most people, spending a few dollars is just like spending nothing. Apple capitalized on that idea with the app store and people are happy to spend heaps on small purchases.

Pay what you want... I can chip in a few dollars and hardly notice. All those small purchases soon add up to serious income for the artist.

The fact that some people will never pay for stuff is part of the problem.

Prices are high because the artist wants to be compensated for their work. I say the artist, but I mean everyone in the chain.

If more people paid perhaps those legitimate buyers wouldn't have to pay so much to compensate for the sales that never happened. Perhaps it's just that the chain's expectation of fair income is excessive.

I am, of course, playing Devil's Advocate here. I fully support copyright reform that ensures creators are given incentive to create, hopefuly helps bring prices down and doesn't lock up culture forever. I just don't think you can get that while the masses have no incentive to care.

Here's the problem I see with that: People like free stuff. If we make copyright terms sufficiently short that people could just wait and get a cheap-ass bootleg copy legally they might just do that.

Without a major uprising of sorts the media money will buy whatever copyright rules it wants. People won't rise up because they don't think there is a problem while they leech whatever they want for free off the Internet. It's not like most of them could afford the outrageous prices with their minimum wage and ever-increasing rent and utility bills anyway.

Seriously, let them take away the avenues for getting free stuff and maybe the plebs will start noticing them.

Two girls in Adelaide, Australia used facebook to be rescued from a drain they were stuck in. Ok, so they probably wouldn't have died, but...

http://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211909/Girls-trapped-storm-drain-use-Facebook-help--instead-phoning-emergency-services.html

I always wonder when I hear stories like this.

If you forget to put 70lb of paper in your bag you notice. If you forget your tablet PC you probably don't.

If you drop 70lb of paper you have 70lb of paper on the floor to reassemble into a neat pile. If you drop your tablet PC you may or may not be able to reassemble it.

If you step on 70lb of paper you get a little taller. If you step on your tablet PC it gets a little less operational.

If you run out of bog roll at 40k feet you can borrow some of the paper. Try wiping with a tablet PC.

What I wonder about is why don't they install some sort of computer in the plane permanently and make it part of the regular maintainence schedule to keep it running. Military grade hardware is available, and with a good SSD it would survive the most bumpy of rides without getting trashed. Let the captain plan his route on his tablet if he wants, but have him upload it into the onboard PC before he takes off.

Innocent until proven guilty when they get a complete list of your traffic history (well, the vehicle's) and pull you over because you had a few previous traffic offences in your record. Either they think they can make a false report stick to you to increase their quota, or they'll just pull you up to have a peep (particularly if those previous records were DUI or similar, so they pull you up for a "random" test in the hope that you might be drunk again).

Are you sure of that? Did you make your own refrigerator from raw materials? Have you consistently observed the inside of your fridge since you made it from raw materials? Can you be sure that a dimension hopping lion didn't spontaneously appear and disappear in your fridge? And how can you be sure that a lion won't be put in your fridge in future?

Your statement is probable, but that does not make it provable.

Most workplaces expressly forbid the use of their computer, Internet connection, etc for the viewing of non-work-related material. This means that unless you work for in the pornography (or closely related) industry you're S.O.L when it comes to violating the computer use rules. If one of your co-workers took umbrage to your watching of porn on company equipment you would probably be terminated for violation of the computer use rules rather than for sexual harassment ones.

I take my family to the library all the time. It is important to show them that libraries are places where knowledge and information, as well as culture can be found. Also, our local library is cool.. They have a cafe attached, and a selection of kids games/activities available in the library. You really can make an afternoon of it.

Now, if someone was openly watching porn in our library I would simply keep my kids out of view of the screen - simply because I don't want to expose them to it at such a young age.

I applaud the library's decision to not ask that the man stop viewing pornography, and I applaud their decision to not censor anything. Censorship is such a slippery slope. If we start censoring to protect the sensibilities of one minority why shouldn't we protect every minority?

The guy really was a complete jerk though (pun intended). If you are going to watch pornography then pick an area where it won't be openly visible to everyone using the facilities. Not because porn is bad, but because some people are easily offended and you should do them the basic courtesy of trying not to offend them. I'm sure you would ask that others would afford you the same courtesy whenever possible.

Is there anything else that offends your delicate sensibilities that the library should censor too? Never mind that. We'll just install this censoring system and you can come and tell us if we need to add anything to it that offends you later.

Proposing censorship is always a slippery slope!

What about chuck norris? He's plenty hard!

Problem:
    The application is too slow!

Hacker:
    This random piece of code looks poor.
    I'll put in some uber-tricky stuff that is highly optimized to make the compiler do what I want and destroy all chances of reading the code.
    Release

Engineer:
    In what way is the application slow?
    Show me how to reproduce.
    Profile
    Examine
    Optimize hotspots.
    Test
    Release

Taxing fuel is pretty obvious. The GPS solution seems a little nefarious and a lot flawed, because they don't achieve anything that a petrol tax doesn't achieve and there is a wealth of other information they could take from it about my habits.

Anything they fit to your car can be modified to report incorrect data, or disabled. When the devices are common because they're mandated it won't take long for someone to figure out how. The same thing happened here with the 100kph limiters for heavy trucks and buses. They are a good idea in theory, but once they were common owners/operators began tampering with them in order to exceed the limit. They do this despite it being illegal.

But it's in Google, it must exist: http://www.google.com/search?q=outside

So you never wrote a media player with a full-screen option or a game then?