Issuing ID cards is an old tactic dating from the colonial period to suppress national security - as in, regular serial bomb attacks. Both the British and new local governments used it, either to suppress independence movements, or to suppress communist/breakaway movements post-independence.

Regular bombings is not something that happens nowadays in the West, obviously. The United States, which is generally free of persistent domestic terrorism, may not have excuses to implement national ID and databases, but other countries may need it. Don't export your conceptions on first-world freedom to places where first-world safety don't exist.

It's reasonable to assume that electronics may be more expensive in Ghana, so a used HDD may be worth more. But, yes, foreigners haggling probably can't get a good price anyway.

This is, amazingly, an actual (and common!) Chinese proverb:

No matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger.

An amazingly optimistic culture, eh?

This comic captures this point very clearly. Also: "[The] future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

No: Flashblock doesn't prevent flash applets from running, it merely hides them as soon as it can. If your connection is sufficiently fast and your computer sufficiently slow, you'll still get hit by Flash exploits. And then there's PDF exploits/misc browser holes, too.

Less "beta" and more "it's not WinME/Vista redux, honest!", I guess.

Damn it, he's not saying "we should bury Darwin's theory of evolution altogether to hide from the mad fundie hordes!", he's proposing a change in terminology that seems entirely appropriate, to be honest.

And the reason, quite rightly, is this: "We don't call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism." The theory of biological evolution has changed since Darwin introduced it.

To continue to label modern evolutionary theory as 'Darwinism' walks into a creationist trap to paint evolution as some sort of Darwin-worshipping religion. And I only wish I were kidding.

Cue the million and one Slashdot analysts who believe they, yes, they! alone understand Thai domestic politics, and hence they know that this is a simple instance of unreasoning tyrannical government censorship rather than, say, a careful political gambit being played by pro-monarchy upper-class forces amidst a political battle that has lasted the past two years.

Yeesh. This isn't some minor county library board going thinkofthechildren!!1! yet again. The point isn't to actually control speech - this is a power play.

Safe for use by second and third parties to redistribute published news, in that if you republish or distribute a Xinhua article in the PRC, you probably won't get arrested, because the article's already been vetted. It doesn't mean "safe to take for granted, without scepticism".

Countries that censor news often don't explicitly define what is acceptable, and the standards can change often, hence why internal political commentators need to rely on such gauges to see what the current acceptable topics are.

Internet Explorer has a porn^H^H^H^H privacy mode where privacy settings are locked down. Why not build an analagous 'secure mode' for Firefox or Konq. where security settings are all locked to high heaven for that browsing session only?

That way users can both bank online securely and not have half the web break for them because they've disabled javascript.

Wait, wait - global warming legislation crushes liberty? Security theatre obviously does, but how does environmental legislation do it?

Do you lump in 'creation science' court rulings in there as well? Oh no, the evil statist liberals are coming!

That's because governments are too incompetent and stupid to do anything themselves, don't you know that! [/groupthink]

"Global warming is caused by solar changes" crackpot vs. "electric universe" crackpot?

Fight! Fight! Fight!