You, like many other posters here, are confusing the javascript language with the implementations found in web browsers. Creating javascript bindings to C APIs and system level routines is as trivial as creating Python or C# bindings - web browsers just decline to provide this functionality for security purposes.

Exactly true. All the crap that gets blamed on javascript is only down to its position as the scripting language of the web. People would hate Lisp, Python or C just as much if one of those languages was used to power every epilepsy inducing geocites page.

British plug sockets almost always have a built in on/off switch. Sockets with a light that turns on when the socket is on are available but unusual.

Ah, but you use the same kind of plugs as NZ, so bagging the Kiwis won't help you here!

Do you really trust Firefox, Chrome, Opera etc. to be flawless and not to contain any bugs capable of being exploited to run arbitrary code? I don't - and I doubt the developers of those browsers would either. No software is perfect - and I very much doubt that any software as complicated as a modern web browser is exploit free.

No it isn't - it would be illegal for a company, but religious organistations are exempt from that.

Traditionally console are sold at a loss. The Wii breaks with that tradition.

Mass energy equivilence shows us that 1g of matter contains about the same amount of energy release by the Hiroshima bomb. Mass of fuel isn't going to be a problem for ships powered by matter/anti-matter annihilation.

Nice idea, but it doesn't work. You've turned the problem from "How do I encrypt X bytes of data in a deniable way" to "How do I hide a file X bytes long". In other words, for your scheme to work, you need to disclose your 'fake' key and hide your 'real' key - but your 'real' key will be the same size as the data you were trying to protect, so if you could reliably hide that data then you wouldn't need encryption.

Too late! The UK government has already removed the right to silence. Remember when the magic police arrest wording changed from: "You do not have to day anything..." to "You do not have to day anything but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court..."

We aren't talking about a penalties applied to individual companies - we're talking about a tax paid by all companies. In your example, the reason they weren't charging $60 a month before was that their competition was charging less for the same service. A new tax will drive up the cost for all companies, so custoemrs won't be able to shop around.

Come to the UK and experience the NHS - then you'll fight to the death against public healthcare.

I pay a substantial amount of tax - if I recieved a refund of the amount used to fund the NHS, I could afford very good health insurance. But instead, the government takes my money and pisses it away.

An example:

I recently moved home and have to register at a new doctors. NHS doctors only accept patients that live within a certain geographic areas, so I have no choice which doctor I register with - and you have to be registered to get anything other than a emergency appointment. When I tried to register, they tell me that I need to fill in a form and make an appointment to see a nurse who will process my registration.

Then they tell me that such appointments are only available Wednesday and Thursday between 2pm and 3pm. If the taxes of all people who were at work on Wednesday and Thursday between 2pm and 3pm disappeared, these people would suddenly be unemployed.

Stay away from state healthcare.

The Drake equation is maths. Just because we don't know the numbers to substitute for the terms, it doesn't make the equation itself any less valid.

England has everything to say about English - if you want to fork it and make your own changes, it's no longer English.