If you think this isn't going to affect you or your lifestyle in any manner, you are one of two things: 1) almost dead; 2) an idiot. I have a suspicion it is the latter, sadly.

It's already affecting you and your lifestyle. Food prices, petrol prices, "gosh its hot out of season, no wait, this is oddly cold". Open your eyes.

What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.

Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.

So Lovecraft was a racist. So were many of his era, to the point where not holding those views was unusual at best. Does that really invalidate the literary merit of his work?

No person is defined by a single aspect of their personality, we are far too complex for that. If that were the case, people would not be able to learn and adjust to new viewpoints of any kind, much less moral viewpoints.

We do not change reality by changing the law, says your sig. It's true, we don't. We also don't change the past by denying it. And we can't change the future without learning from our past.

Finally - and this is intended to be thought provoking rather than insulting - how is your prejudice against people because of the views they hold any different from the prejudice against people because of the colour of their skin? You are placing them in a box labelled "arsehole", purely because of the views they hold, in spite of the fact that their racism was culturally normal and was only a single aspect of their humanity, much like a black man's skin. I'd be uncomfortable with that myself.

You must be the least observant person in the country then, if you haven't noticed the relentless line of celebrity based scandals which are blown out of all proportion by every mainstream and traditional media outlet in the country.

As soon as something is past (or looks like becoming uncomfortable), hey look, there's another scandal, who are we going to play the blame game with this week?

Even this Jimmy Saville thing is ridiculous. Fair enough the guy seemed to be a monster, but why has it taken until he's a year or so dead before one of the more than 400 victims spoke loudly enough to be taken seriously? Perhaps it wasn't the right time to open that particular circus.

Bread and circuses. Bludgeon the population into bovine acceptance of government intrusion by constantly providing salacious distraction. It's a tragedy.

"Those who don't object to tracking probably don't care".

This is incorrect and a horrible abuse of knowledge.

Those who don't object in all likelihood are people who don't pay much attention to tech news, because they use their computers as tools and for social networking. They don't object because they aren't aware they can.

This objection by the advertisers is purely and simply a case of them saying "Oh noes, if Microsoft put DNT on by default and we actually follow it, all our current data mining techniques will be useless!"

It is mind boggling that the question needs to be asked at all. Why should someone have to assert the desire to be mindful of their privacy?

You sir, are part of the problem.

Wow, you would be absolutely terrified to find out that I have my both stepson's girlfriends on Facebook, Google Talk AND in my mobile phone contacts.

What you are doing is applying a paradigm from decades ago topped by an unhealthy amount of fear to the modern world.

30 years ago, you are correct, a parent would have had the telephone numbers of the other parents in the kid's social group, because 30 years ago, the kids didn't have their own phone. No both my stepsons, for all the fact they are nice kids, are absolute dildos when it comes to remembering basic administration like keeping their phones charged. It's happened enough that rather than have to rely on smoke signals and hope, I and my wife now have the phone numbers of the people they are most likely to be around so we can get in touch if we have to.

Besides that, both of the girls are really nice kids. Personally, I'm glad I got the opportunity to see them grow up a bit as well.

I have to agree with some of the posts above - it is entirely possible - common even, since I think it's safe to say that pedophiles are a minority - for an adult male to have a non-creepy, platonic and non-romantic relationship with minors. It's called friendship.

I have to comment here, a lot of what you are saying is coming across as "not invented here" syndrome, which is a bit of a shame.

I'm convinced beyond all doubt that there are qualified people working on this. I'm also convinced they have more than a basic understanding of biology.

I couldn't find anywhere in the article or the linked videos where they had made promises to Ms Ashworth. On the contrary, she seems fully aware, as do the researchers themselves not surprisingly, that this exercise is experimental.

Unbelievably, I couldn't give a shit whether Americans are watching it or not, but here are a few incredible television shows created by the BBC which spank most - I did say most - comparable American products:

• Life on Mars
• Ashes to Ashes
• Top Gear
• Downton Abbey (which I thought was rubbish, but I hate period drama - rave reviews from others though

As far as journalism goes, The Daily Mail is an embarrassment. It's an affront to journalism which is purely aimed at tacky sensationalism which has only the most tenuous relationship with the truth.

But this conversation wasn't about "the UK's" journalism, it was about the BBC's journalism, which - while it has some weaknesses I have been known to bitch about - can only be regarded as among the best in the world. The ABC in Australia is the only organisation I can think of with a comparable code of journalistic integrity and surprisingly, the only better journalism I've ever seen comes from Al Jazeera of all places.

If you are handing out challenges though, how about you name just one solitary US news outlet which can be trusted to reliably provide balance to the news stories it broadcasts? Just one. I'll wait.

By the way, did you enjoy watching the Olympics live on NBC?

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a bullshit argument at best, I really wish supposedly intelligent people would stop trotting this shit out. The law and the government is "supposed" to be there to serve the people, not spy on them. This "nothing to hide" bullshit is saying "What's that? You would prefer to have a little privacy? Aha! Now I know you are guilty of something, it's just a matter of catching you!"