[ -z "$STEAMROOT" ] && echo "stop right now!" # no need for if ..then.

Euh locks on doors don't stop burglars. They stop kids from doing petty vandalism. Burglars can easily pick your door locks, or will simply break a window to enter.

In the UK at least, door locks have an important function. They turn entering your house from traspass (NOT a criminal offense) into breaking and entering (a criminal offense).

In the USA they invoke a requirement to get a warrant for LEO to enter the house.

How about, instead of playing war games, you use the same resources to actually secure the vital infrastructure that we get regular scare stories about,

You assume that the cyber war games are about preparedness. In reality, these events are about creating headlines that can be used to justify more intrusion into people's private lives.

Let me first express my sympathy for your personal tragedy.
And now respond:
1. The drugs taken were already illegal. Your personal experience shows that the laws against such drugs don't work.
2. You ignored my point that we have historical data that banning personal vices leads to more hardship, not less.

The standard Uber defence of "he's a contractor" will last about 2 second before being torn to shreds by the dumbest of Australian judges (who will be quite intelligent in their own right mind you), Uber facilitated the transaction, Uber takes the money from the client and gives the money to the driver

In just about any jurisdiction, I think that the fact that Uber takes the money puts Uber on the hook for damages. If the passenger pays Uber, then the contract is between the passenger and Uber.

Uber is following the Paypal playbook. Steadfastly deny the obvious ("we are not a bank") until they are established enough to go legit.

Doesn't seem fair to me, but then the constitution is probably written in some strange dialect of English where the meaning is something different to a lawyer.

Substitute Supreme Court for Humpty Dumpty:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

Because crack and illegal abuse of prescription drugs also ruin people's lives.

Yes, but whose lives are ruined? The lives of the people who choose to take such drugs.

Plenty of people's lives are runing by gambling and alcohol, yet we know that banning these vices leads to worse problems than regulating them.

So a conductor "sliding" to a start an orchestra. But on a computer / the interwebs...

And if the orchestra includes a Theremin?

I imagine that the Prime Minister thinks that he can force Google and other emails providers to hand over emails to GCHQ and, crucially, the Prime Minister cannot comprehend the idea that people can set up their own email server.

The same argument goes for other protocols.

Probably, no one, other than politicians and Dail Mail readers, takes this seriously. It will be forgotten about after the next election.

The automakers would dearly love to ditch the dealership model of sales and go for direct sales.

Why did GM not do this in its recent bankruptcy in every state that allows direct sales?

Or you mean an industry wanting a new entrant in to that industry to be subject to the same regulations the rest of the industry is forced to follow, right?

You fail at reading comprehension. In this case, it is the car dealers who are trying to introduce new regulations that would disadvantage Tesla.

Even if legally in the clear, just dealing with an LEA when someone uses your machine as a child porn host is going to be unpleasant.

Imagine this in the UK:

Police:"We think you have kiddy porn on your computer, what are the contents of these encrypted files?"
You: "I don't know"
Police: "Tell us the password"
You: "I don't know it"
Judge: "Go to jail until you tell us the password!"

People's right to know about abuses of the law with

..with not being sued for contributory copyright infringement (or whatever it is called). Probably.

I use Pandora continuously at work, and I have discovered new music through it.

Radio, on the other hand, even if you hear a piece of music that you like, the chance of actually being told the name of the artist is close to zero. So, there is no chance to really "discover" music.

Because 99 percent of what happens in a cop's day is mind numbing, boring shit. All we need is the video of the incident. Maybe it should also come on when they call in a stop but to run that thing 24/7 is ridiculous.

So record a 30-minute loop all the time and if some kind of event happens, aoutmatically store the last 15 minutes and the following 15 minutes. The storage could be triggered by gunshot sound, tazer use, or manually, by the policaman. It's not difficult, dashcams for cars work like this (with automatic storage if certain levels of G-force are detected).