I remeber people making such claims but I also remeber everyone else laughing at them. I was more interested in the fact that the probe had to twice traverse a gap in Saturn's rings so as to put it in the right orbit when it arrived.

From the WP entry on UL - "UL is one of several companies approved to perform safety testing by the US federal agency Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)". If UL started handing out certs without doing the work then their license will be pulled and they will go out of business overnight.

Very few "free markets" spontaneously arise and prosper, the government creates them with the judicious use of regulation, the most basic of these regulations is property law, the saftey cert market is simply a more recent example. This is actuacully how things should work, the government defines a fair market for the public good via regulation of property and trade, business competes to implement the new market as efficiently as possible. Neither can do it alone due to self-interest getting in the way, which is why politicians and CEO's need to be kept at arms length from each other.

Surely that would imply I could rewire your neurons without affecting your ability to think.

Here's where I think people get confused - intelligence in not consciousness, nor does it imply it. For example an ants nest is intelligent in that the nests have found an algorithmic solution to the traveling salesman problem that is faster than human solutions and gives more highly optimised answers. Ants nests conquered the planet a long time ago, cell phones are still working on it, neither need consciousness to survive but they both have intelligence in spades.

This is why it's known as the "hard problem of consciousness" rather than the "hard problem of intelligence", which if you take "intelligence" to mean "the ability to independently acquire and apply knowledge" has already been solved. IBM's Watson is clearly artificial and it can answer open ended general knowledge questions that its creator cannot. It does this in the same way a natural intelligence does it - statistical inference.

One neuron at a time

You do realise that the Magna Carta was forced upon the crown by wealthy mearchants, right?

Yes, Europe puts more restrictions on the fourth estate, they did after all have some serious propaganda problems with Germany in the 1930's leading to everyone pulling out their guns in the 1940's. The right to free speech is enshrined in the UN declaration of HR which almost all nations are party to but none actually implement in full.

European restrictions are traditionally enforced by libel and deformation actions in court. Outsourcing the decisions to google is being sold to people as a "right", in the same way that "keeping the peace" has already been sold to American's as the right to bear arms. Few people actual buy a gun to kill a specific person but most American's think that maybe one day I will need it. Well, it's the same behaviour here with Europeans, they figure that maybe, one day, they will do something that they want the internet to forget. Call it a "right" and suddenly they will defend it to their last breath.

Ironic how this issue leads to a discussion about just how powerful language can be in persuading humans to vote against their own self-interest, no? We are all susceptible to this behaviour to some degree, and if your arrogant enough to believe it can't happen to you, you're probably already serving in an army of "useful idiots".

It may surprise you to know that European's are people too - offer them a "right" they will take it and defend it, just like American's do with their handguns. And yes, this is state enforced self censorship, there are enough legal avenues to redress victims of libel and deformation. Sure they are imperfect even after centuries of case law but outsourcing the decision to google is certainly not the "gift" that many people think it is.

To be fair, libel laws have been around for centuries, why is google now being expected to preempt a decision that should be made by a court?

Of course they are, rule #1 if you don't want the job then make a dogs breakfast of the whole thing. This "self censorship" push by the EU is a gigantic burden on ALL search companies. If I were in google's shoes I'd wouldn't even bother reading the complaints, I'd automatically unlink the site and very loudly proclaim I cannot be expected to adjudicate on all of Europe's libel and deformation claims. Then just wait and hope to hell it provokes enough outrage from publishers to put these decisions back where they belong, in a court and aimed at the author.

Indoctrinated? - Humans are social animals, turn that 15 minutes into 15 days, and introvert or not, most people would start hearing voices and talking to hallucinations.

Agree, the whole RTBF thing is needlessly creating problems for companies like google, google are naturally going to start upsetting the likes of BBC, sky News, et-al to try and get them on-side. Europe has libel, defamation, and stalking laws already so if someone is harassing you online or telling porky-pies about you then you already have the legal tools to set the record straight. Embarrass yourself in public? - Bad luck I'd say, we've all had days we'd rather forget.

Sorry but the driver cam would only make it worse for you, riding five abreast and taking up all lanes does not give you the right to ram them from behind. Think about it, would you ram an oversized tractor doing the same thing? It would be a different story if it was night and the cyclists were not lit up, or if they were on a "no bikes" freeway, but you would still have a lot of explaining to do.

If we need to do an Apollo 13 and scrub build a CO2 scrubber from parts we have on board Earth, then I think this is a better idea.

Q. How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb.
A. None, we don't do hardware!

Fax machines were invented in the 1930's, they didn't really take off until the 1980's. The reason being that before the 1980's there was no comms standard for fax machines, if you wanted to send a fax the other person had to have the same brand of machine for it to work. This meant business could have an internal fax system but it was useless for interfacing with any external entity.

It's also somewhat paradoxical that without the "bad idea" of TCP-IP we wouldn't be having this conversation. I really don't understand the slashdot paranoia, nobody is forcing you to put these gimmicks in your home, and governments/corporations can already crush you like a grape today if they so desired. So even if your every movement was forcibly broadcast live around the planet, I can't see how you have anything to lose other than your dignity.

These people added a couple of critical steps that you left out.
4. Measure results.
5. Rinse and repeat (because perfection is desirable but unobtainable).

More unintended consequences? - There's a TAC (road safety) billboard near where I live, it shows impossible physics. It's basically the hypnotoad of road safety signs, extremely distracting the first couple of times you see one.

Note that the link is about the campaign winning an advertising award, the guy handing out the award actually says - "I first saw one of these as a huge poster down in Melbourne. I almost crashed....". - Still, nobody seems to have spotted the obvious problem hidden in his statement.

Feynman nailed flying saucers before the digital era.