"Any device that can't pass testing and demonstrate that the balance is in the favour of false positives simply will not be used. Period."

Except if you're in a third world country where they don't have standards and where even something that is only right even only half of the time is infinitely better than nothing.

"> There's a difference between "meets none of the standards" and "compliant, but untested".

No there isn't. You comply with the standard when the pass the tests. You comply with nothing before that point."

Yes, there is actually. You can run the test yourself and meet all the standards yet not get certified because you are not an official testing body. E.g. I can get NASA to test that the bicycle helmet I made meets the Australian Standards, and you can bet your arse that it'll be an accurate result, yet it still won't be certified since they aren't certified to test it.

No, you can't say he didn't. There is simply no record that he did. Considering the vast majority of what he said is not recorded, I'd say it's in the realm of possibility that he said it to someone but we'll never truly know whether or not he did.

Did you know it was a quote from The Sea Wolf without looking it up?

My mind is already made up. You should be able to determine it from my words.

Public health is way more important than most people think.

Note: in no way have I suggested the internet is not useful or good.

Trying educating a country suffering a smallpox epidemic, oh wait - we wiped it off the face of the earth with vaccines. If you are suffering through disease epidemics, the epidemic will cripple every other endeavour you try to do. In other words, the internet is useless if you are suffering from a disease epidemic.

Try educating a country without the internet. A much easier task. There are huge and successful systems dedicated to doing just that.

The internet does not equal education.

"Handing out vaccines isn't going to structurally improve lives"

Yes it will. From both an individual health and public health perspective it is a game changer with massive improvements in people's lives.

"There's no room in business for humor."

I disagree. John Cleese explains it best:

http://videosift.com/british/video/Why-laughing-during-something-serious-isnt-disrespectful

"If there was an indication of bomb or drug making activity, then more pooper snoopers could be temporarily installed upstream."

This would be trivial to defeat using slow release chemical cocktails placed in the sewers (which are easily accessible by the public) to give false positives at dozens of other locations.

"I would think this would be an excellent way to identify meth houses"

There are peer reviewed papers on this very topic (for identifying drug users and manufacturers). It's also been successfully tested. Again, easily defeated.

Without an agreed upon definition of privacy this is a fairly futile discussion.

"I'm willing to bet the answer is the latter, not the former."

You're probably right. The USA story is going to be very different from how it is in Australia. It can work though, you just need to do it right. Although that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing.

"never understimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes"

So true.

Users here are happy to pay a little extra for a 1TB plan if they need it. I think the fact that we don't have good cable TV penetration has driven us to use the internet to supplement our viewing needs. We do have the problem of a lack of competition (21 million people in a country about the size of the USA - yep, a serious lack of competition occurs).

iinet (a popular and large Australian ISP) offers these price points (which are fairly indicative of other ISP's prices):

$59.95 - 100GB
$69.95 - 250GB
$89.95 - 500GB
$109.95 - 1000GB

I don't know how that compares to what the USA has. I guess if you're getting unlimited data transfer for less money than what we get 100GB for then you're going to feel ripped off no matter what.

Well said.

I think admins privileges need to have a limited time. E.g. You are only an admin for 3 months. This would keep fresh people rotating through.

There is no requirement on wikipedia to ever discuss an edit (prior to or post editing) on a talk page, it's a suggestion only (as part of the 5 pillars). In any case Ignore All Rules trumps all. But there seems to be an admin consensus that it is a rule, supporting your statements.

Bandwidth is the rate at which data is delivered (which can affect the total data transferred in a given time slot if you reach the bandwidth saturation point). E.g. 50Mbits/s offers greater bandwidth than 10Mbits/s.

Data usage caps is what these ISPs are talking about. This is the default practice in Australia and it works just fine. You pay more money for more data transferred each month. E.g. You pay $50 for 150GB of data transfer each month and another person pays $80 for 300GB data transfer each month.

In Australia, when you have reached your maximum amount of data transfer that you have paid for, you then have a bandwidth restriction applied, e.g. you have your 20Mbit/s of bandwidth restricted to 512Kbit/s for the remainder of the month. You may further purchase data blocks to increase your data usage cap and derestrict your bandwidth if you have already transferred data up to your limit (in any given month).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing)

Evidently you need a trip to Imaginationland...

To answer your question, in the words of Trey Parker...

America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

"feminists were all cool"

Where does anyone say that all feminists were cool with it?

Note, all is different to some.