Yeah, I'm in one of those neighborhoods in Europe. It's also important to have room for the kids to play. An area where I used to live was pretty neglected, so the kids had little beyond a patch of grass and a load of alleys. Surprisingly enough, a fair few of the kids in the neighborhood turned in to little shits that'd throw stones at passing traffic, abuse passers by, and graduate to stealing cars. There has been investment in the area (facilities and general civic involvement in the neighborhood) and this has indeed improved matters. It's still not a charming area, but far improved over what it was ten years ago.

One problem here was parents raising kids the way they keep their dogs - let them run around outside, and let them back in at night. This of course leads to two problems:

1) The area is covered in dog shit, and charmingly enough, the occasional human shit.

2) Kids end up forming gangs, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. This in turn creates a vicious feedback loop that encourages some parents to keep their kids indoors. This I can understand. Who wants their well raised kid to be spending their days in the company of track suited mouth breathers doing little other than hanging around outside convenience stores or lurking in alleys.

Parents should be encourage to socialize their children - not just to have them play outside. Parents must know what they're children are up to. The city has to provide adequate facilities so that children aren't simply hanging around on the street, and I'm not against the idea of a curfew for people under 16. It's bizarre to walk around this area, and see young teens hanging around in the dark at 10pm. Parents need to be held responsible for the actions of their children - particularly if a child is repeatedly offending. In such cases, if the parent can't raise the kid, then the state needs to become involved, whether that be taking a child away or hopefully just offering assistance in raising child.

Yeah, as noted earlier, it's a sin tax with not strong correlation between the accused and the sin. I see no reason why I should pay a tax on Left 4 Dead 2, because Fourkiller blames it for bullying and kids not getting enough fresh air. Definitely, if he wants to do this, he should be even-handed. Tax movies and music intended for a teen or higher audience, and the same with books.

His concerns about bullying and kids not getting enough exercise are valid. What's fucked is his way of raising money to solve the problems.

It is indeed a sin tax - no more justified than a blanket tax on TV, DVDs, music, books and everything else that could possibly keep a child from playing outside.

Money could be used to provide better facilities. Where I work, for a long time there was fuck all for kids to do, so it was hardly surprising that we'd end-up with crowds of tracksuit clad hoody wearing kids looking for trouble. Personally I wish those kids had spent more time indoors, so at least they'd be too fat to run away when I have to chase the fuckers for throwing stones at my then wife when she was walking home. But, I digress. A sin tax is no way to raise money for this kind of thing. Fourkill thinks that video games are to take the blame for a generation of fat fucks with no social skills? Well, what about other media and the parents who allow their kids to be playing games or just hanging around the streets, acting the maggot. If Fourkill won't tackle the root of the problem, then let him find another way to fund this boondoggle. He could lube up and sell tricks on the streets of Oklahoma City. A cavernous anus is a small price to pay for the children.

I find that eating healthily more expensive in terms of time spent preparing food, while the food itself is cheaper to buy - excepting of course shit like the giant bags of "chicken" nuggets and chips that the stereotypical mum in sorely strained stretch-pants will be shoveling down the necks of Chantelle and Darren. Vegetables are generally cheaper than processed stuff, and a far better option if mum doesn't want Chantelle's future boyfriends to struggle to differentiate a hole from a fold in her flesh. Chubby can be cute. Waddling down the road, with an arse that would send Sir Mixalot running, is as attractive as being punched in the neck.

I don't see why gamers should pay for this Democratic Party fuck's drive to get fat kids out in the sunshine? Same with cigarette taxes to pay for the healthcare of children, although a cigarette tax that's focussed on smoking related illnesses would seem more equitable. Have more physical education in schools, and require it be passed in order to graduate - with obvious dispensation for people with genuine handicaps or injures. i.e. not a free ride for someone who can't put down the fucking fork and consequently has legs like larded-up tree trunks. The parents who think it okay that their fat and pale kid has a KFC bargain fucking bucket for breakfast might think again, and if not, have them shot. This makes as much sense as Fourkiller's suggestion.

If everyone fails to realize that data posted to Facebook must necessarily be stored by Facebook, then everyone you know is a fucking moron. The same is true of people who think it appropriate to broadcast news of your divorce. Get new friends.

Accidents will happen - particularly from newbie users unaware of the site and social conventions for the users.

Yeah, it's a very unlikely series of events, as proposed by the guy I was responding to. I don't believe Sealand has to worry about an unprovoked naval assault. If Sealand ends, it will be due to an accident, or as you said, through legalistic means.

Truth! I followed the SCO story, thinking that there must be an amazing master plan being hidden by McBride's apparent bumbling destruction of a healthy company. It came as a surprise when McBride was ditched, as this was when I realized that McBride and SCO's board and shareholders were seriously expecting McBrides almost decade long string of consistent failure was going to be replaced by some kind of success.

Come on Sony, don't disappoint me! What's this amazing secret plan that forces you to give the impression of a company being run by a severely autistic couple in the middle of a messy marital breakdown.

50 odd years ago the French state was still executing people by decapitation. Would that invalidate modern day French criticism of states partial to height reduction among criminals? Obviously not, yet that seems to be your argument.

You don't seem to understand that I'm not using Islamist as a synonym for Muslim - read the fucking post. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that I don't think that all Muslims are pining for a caliphate, but then that's only going to obvious to people who aren't dumb as a sack of hammers; find one and ask them to read my post to you.

Would you describe as "Islamist" all Muslims who took to the streets over the Danish cartoons? How about the ambassadors from countries with predominantly Muslim populations. I wouldn't, because I know what the word "Islamist" means. I think it's fair to say that Muslims are somewhat prone to taking offense when they feel that their religion has been slighted, and Allah knows, it's not difficult to find some way to piss them off. Christians will do the same - particularly in countries that don't trouble themselves too much with rule of law.

My memory fails me! I have managed to forget the worldwide riots and attacks on people and property that resulted from the launch of Monty Python's Life of Brian. Similar tragic events must have occurred when Jesus Christ Superstar premiered, yet for some reason my memory fails me. There are indeed moderate Muslims, but those are not the ones "owning" the name. Where are these moderates when embassies are being set ablaze by angry protestors? Where is the unconditional condemnation of bounties being placed on the heads of writers? Muslims aren't the only ones in the wrong here, as we saw with Christian leaders bending over backwards to express sympathy with offended Muslims who'd been driven to calls for murder by fucking cartoons - some of which had been fabricated by the Danish Imams in order to rouse the rabble.

  Accepting that some Muslims are moderate, and indeed many come to the west because of this, it's still evident that Islam is an angry, insecure and relatively young religion. There is no compromise possible when anything can arbitrarily sacred, and respect demanded without cause. Dwell upon that.

If my ignorance can be seen a mile off, then excuse me while I wait for a trip to Mars in order to fully appreciate your breathtakingly vast ignorance.

A lack of nationhood does make fair game of structures and ships. Why would a Royal Navy attack on Sealand be any different to the navy using cross-channel ferries for target practice? Even with Sealand currently sitting in waters claimed by the UK, there remain limits on what the navy can do - both under British law and international conventions. An unprovoked attack would be what's more commonly known as piracy.

The analogy really doesn't work, but yes, I've seen those 80s movies. Not to worry! The geek will stage an electro concert, or some strange shit like that, which will get the school on their side - with of course some hot cheerleader chick who all along had a soft spot for geeks.

There is no geeky underdog in this real-life story. Instead what we have are two corporate behemoths, slugging it out - neither of which come out of this spotless.

If I missed the point, and this analogy isn't based on 80s movies, then please at least teach your son that the past shapes us, but it should not be a prison. Move on, and understand that peaking at high school isn't always a good thing. The princess is probably now just one of many fairly mundane people, or loaded up with a bunch of kids with more fathers than most of us have limbs. You are among friends!

I'd have to ask, why? A distributed model could be useful for load sharing (hosting files and such like) and for failover, yet for those to be of much there'd have to be some way of sharing the data across the network - same for the idea of the company providing backups and redundant services. Wouldn't this set-up undermine the notion of greater control and privacy?

Security and privacy may in fact suffer if the system is reliant on each user securing their own systems. The main advantage I can see of a decentralized system would be in terms of not being reliant on a company to keep the lights on. Overall though it seems to be a step backwards, to the era when people ran their own web and mail servers from home. It's fun for the more geeky types, yet not really something that the average social networks user is likely to want. I'm pretty geeky, and I appreciate the simplicity of Facebook - particularly the way in which it's made communication with less technical relatives far easier. I have decent enough privacy settings there, and I don't see how a distributed network would make much of a difference. Either way, the data are going to be flying around, and with both approaches, I can choose what I want to make public. Facebook are bound by data protection laws, although there'd be no harm in the US tightening things up a bit.

Apple and MS could try to get in to this market, but it'll be a tough fight. Ping, despite being tied in to the most popular legal downloads system, has hardly been a roaring success.

Regardless of Facebook's perceived hardware and software shortcomings, they have an amazing amount of momentum and social lock-in. A competitor is going to have to do something good to make a dent in that. I walk around town, and I see signs on a lot of businesses now inviting patrons to follow them on Facebook. This is pretty serious name recognition for an online service. Twitter too is big in this area.

Sure, the Islamists are perfectly happy to let us enjoy our lives, so long as we leave them alone. You're somewhat underestimating the Muslim capacity for butthurt and completely unjustified notions of superiority. The only way that Islamists will be content is when we either adopt Islam or agree to live under its rule. Even then, which version of Islam? Muslims have a rich tradition of killing Muslims who belong to different sects.

The Danes have a long history of charity and are hardly known for militarily throwing their weight around in the middle east, yet a few simple cartoons was enough to cause the Muslim world to erupt in to riots and the issuing of death threats. We can no more find accommodation with Islamists than we would be able to with 14th century Christians. Muslims will demand too much, and offer little in return. These are the people who happily see anti-semitic cartoons in their newspapers, yet will demand death for someone who'd poke fun at a dead schizophrenic with a hard-on for little girls. How about the "God bless Hitler" sign, and similar, that were being held by angry Muslims? Religion of peace, my arse.

There is no compromising with this mentality. We cannot reason with it, and we certainly cannot make it happy enough to leave us alone. Either we face it down, and preserver or values, or we allow these repressed bigots to impose theirs on us.

Well, I am for nuclear energy as much as you are. But I guess there is no harm trying renewable energy resources as much as humanly possible. Countries in Asia like India and countries in Africa like Kenya get huge solar energy and could start using them, with some backup nuclear plants. (I do not agree with GP that new nuclear facilities should no longer be built)