That would explain a great deal about the modern world.

Yes I agree, we're heading for asymmetric demand pricing [something I just made up] like the airlines and railways, it's expensive at the moment you need it, but the base costs remain constant. It's called automated blackmail or increasing shareholder value [in Europe, most of the utilities are privatised]. Also there's cash to be made on speculative option and contract purchase using the big data leeched out of the grid.

Am I being cynical? No, just reflecting the values of late stage capitalism...

Yes, but unhappily the other fuckers are usually very similar to the previous fuckers and about as corrupted by non-transparent lobbying and the entitlement culture of professional politicians [in the UK, they've usually been to Oxford and haven't actually had a 'job' except as 'special advisers']. I think there are a couple of solutions:

1. Apprenticeships for politicians and senior civil servants. They need to live in bad housing and do shit jobs before any promotion
2. Sortition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition choosing representatives by lottery, to prevent all the cosy, sweetheart stuff. The quality won't be worse and will even out

There are probably plenty of other ideas, but what we have certainly doesn't work properly for the 'people'.

Not really, given that a lot of our lifestyles are unhealthy anyway. I have relatives in Korea where they eat tons of meat and then have regular colonoscopies, that seems to me to be faintly ridiculous. Why would we change the planet so that we can become obese and ill?

Incidentally there's a strawman argument there too. I'm not suggesting that we return to the state of hunter/gatherers.

I agree 100% with you that GMO holds promise and != Monsanto. But we live in a corporate-dominated world and it's a legitimate fear that GMO will become a tool for control and profit rather than improvement of the human condition. Second point, mono-culture and gene-spliced is a lot less sustainable/more risky than natural high-yield. We could concentrate on eating less protein too, that's what takes the majority of the space/water etc.

Just take liver out, go out drinking and put it back in when finished. What could wrong with that?

Oh absolutely, at 62, I've seen punched cards, disk drives the size of washing machines, computers the size of a decent sized appartment, compuserve and everything on up to the Raspberry Pi. That included hacking via acoustic couplers, slow modems etc. etc. Old certainly now doesn't mean pre-technology and old tech is tech, usually just slower and bigger.

As in any 1950's science fiction film: 'Sir they're getting bigger!' Yes, what go possibly go wrong with all of this?

Yes agree, we seem have US influenced laws in the UK too, either as part of our highly asymmetric 'special relationship', some the recent deportations and deportation attempts, for example, or via the WTO [wealthy terrorist organisation]. We need to wake up to this and see what we can do to push back via boycott etc.

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy [with a laser]...

Yes naughty students for dying just to avoid their financial obligations. Never heard of such outrageous behaviour.

Rot13 is exactly one half of Rot26 which is a stronger algorithm used to hide things in plain sight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purloined_Letter I hope this explanation is useful.

I'm 62, I don't really use my mobile [to the great exasperation of younger members of my family and certain friends, yes I do have those] except for emergencies and uncertain rendez-vous arrangements. I don't have an ipod or mp3 player either. I have plenty of computers at home.

By now you are thinking, here's an old luddite, an idiot, aren't you? But I like to sit on a London bus and stare into people's gardens or read a book on the tube [that's the subway or MRT to most of you] rather than scrunch up my face with some tiny game, even frozen bubble: http://www.frozen-bubble.org/, my all-time favourite. I find a lot of time to play the guitar, program and paint too.

To me, most of smartphone world is just a drain on money and time for trivialities like facebook and other social media. The telecom companies are encouraging it all, because it's revenue from 'apps', bandwidth, premium services etc. I don't need any of it minute by minute. If I'm reading a serious book on public transport, I'm learning stuff, if I'm staring at things randomly I find that problems are getting solved in the background, same with running which I [obviously from above] do without the obligatory mp3 player.

I'v been messing with computers since about 1975 and I really enjoy most of the modern world, but, I assure you, real conversations, real downtime, staring in space here and there is part of the mix, life isn't just pokes, tweets and 'friend' requests.

Agree, this is dot.froth to coin a new phrase and tld isn't it? Important problems aren't solved by 12 hour hacks even using 'world class experts'. If things [world hunger, war, disease, space travel] were that easy, we'd all have our togas, flying cars and vacations on the moon now. Get over it.

Well, for the moment, I'm still using AWS EC2, but I've started buying books [and everything else] from other suppliers, because of this. A real shame, I feel that Amazon is a genuine success rather than dotcom froth, but big things seem to become evil by some hidden law of scale.