shush now... I was merely attempting to balance a predominantly 'PC' representation of our current worldview with a balanced counter-opinion. I'm actually climate-agnostic these days.

and if that's the one thing you picked up on from the points I raised, then, yes, it's clearly the frontrunner candidate for being something that future generations will dispute and/or laugh at us for.

agree completely.

We live in an 'enlightened' age where we realise that racism is a bad thing. But we subscribe to plenty of other virulent irrational hatreds (according to another age's moral viewpoint). How would we feel if the best and brightest of our generation were discarded from future history books for being religious, or disagreeing with homosexual marriage, or eating meat, or supporting climate alarmism, or driving cars, or any one of a hundred other things that we consider normal now?

Our current views are incomprehensible to an educated person of 200 years ago. An educated person of 200 year's time will probably find our current worldview primitive beyond belief.

Hesitate to judge, lest ye be judged in turn. Appreciate the genius of Lovecraft's writing and ignore his irrational prejudices.

can't use OS X without buying an overpriced piece of crap from Apple.

can't use Windows (from 8 onwards) without buying all my software from Microsoft

so.... yeah... let's use the open operating system with a proprietary DRM system and see that as a step forwards...

I hear what you say, but if Google can basically fork Linux to create a massively commercial phone system because the Linux dev community weren't playing ball their way, there's nothing to stop Valve doing the same.

I wanted to rephrase your analogy but I've had too many gins to work through my own tortuous logic.

Agree with both, but once Valve decides to bring Steam to the Linux party and get most of the games library working then two things happen:
1: one of the major reasons (if not *the* major reason) for using Windows at home disappears: gaming.
2: the Linux development community can go on bickering all they want, but unless their proposed solutions are compatible with what Valve are building Steam on they'll be irrelevant as no-one will use them. Steam will effectively create the standard.

Linux is simply better code and a better architecture than Windows, as it should be; it's had developers calling the shots not commercial managers. So it's not at all surprising that it will run stuff faster than Windows. I suspect a LOT faster once there's been a few iterations.

Interesting times :)

the queen doesn't get fired, it'd take England to become a republic for that to happen (interesting thought... if England became a republic before Australia, would the royal family move Down Under?)

From my exhaustively-gathered and utterly scientific data collection (talking to random people in pubs), I think there's a narrow majority for Australia becoming a republic when herself dies, regardless of who's in line next.

We're already seeing calls to ban alcohol due to its "anti-social effects". Alcohol can be demonstrated to cause more harm than tobacco, especially now less people smoke.

But every time we criminalise an activity, we create more criminals. Making tobacco illegal is not going to stop people smoking, it'll just create tobacco-smuggling gangs who will have to shoot cops to survive. The Law of Unintended Effects has killed more people than Philip Morris ever did.

From where I'm standing, I see all of that coming from Christian fundamentalists too.

There are plenty of perfectly reasonable people of all races and religions, and a minority of extremists.

You've got to stop feeding the trolls...

On behalf of Australia I'd like to apologise to the rest of The Internet for our politicians' stupidity.

However, in our defence, we are once again only seeking to win the America's Cup equivalent for the 'world's most ridiculous internet-focused legislation'.
We will, of course, be forced to hand it back very shortly after acquiring it.

If your business is making toast, yes.
If you don't know how every part of your business works, you're vulnerable to changes that you can't foresee, or better-researched competition.
So yes, if you have a toast-making business, you really need to know about toasters.

Most startups fail, yes, but entrepreneurs usually try more than once.
The mantra is 'fail fast': If your current business isn't going to work, then find out fast and do something else.
It is risky, and there is a danger that you'll spend years working very hard for very little actual money, but you only need to get lucky once.

bullshit, I've never met a problem that couldn't be solved elegantly with just a hammer.

your screwdriver fancy-dancy crap is just adding complexity to problems. Screws are just odd-shaped nails after all!

I think I can speak for all men about the punching in the nads thing, yes. It's a common experience and we all perceive it in the same way. Yes, there will be people on the edges of the bell curve who enjoy the pain, but they will still experience the pain in the same way.

The listener also has a choice, which is the bit overlooked. The listener can take offence, or not take offence. They can listen, or not listen. They can interpret the intent behind the words as generously as possible or as meanly as possible. Being punched in the 'nads always hurts, being told you're an idiot can hurt or not hurt depending on how you take it, and the person telling you you're an idiot may have no idea they're about to cause pain rather than laughter.

And I'm drawing on the history of prohibition, when alcohol was criminalised and the majority/large minority of society still drank it, enough to make the rule of law irrelevant.
There's also the outlawing of prostitution, which doesn't prevent prostitution, just makes prostitutes less likely to report crimes against them (such as rape) and makes them more vulnerable because of their criminal status. It's pretty easy to see if you criminalise a common activity, it doesn't prevent the activity, but criminalises otherwise law-abiding people and prevents the reporting of more serious crimes because of the criminal status of the victims.

A punch in the 'nads is perceived by every victim in the same way, and there is a clear intention on behalf of the puncher to cause pain and injury. This is not so clear-cut with trolling and griefing 'offences'. An insult or a taunt is perceived differently by different people, and the 'perpetrator' has no means of knowing in advance how their comment will be received.
Taking too much offence is as much of a problem as giving too much offence, especially when we as a society universally blame the giver not the taker. This gives over-sensitive people immediate 'victim' status, which some people enjoy and therefore court offence so that they can be victims. If we limit the ability to give offence without making some sensible rules about taking offence too, then we end up in a situation where no-one can say anything meaningful, just bland platitudes.

Indeed, and murder, and theft, and so on. We reject the fact that a minority of our community perform these acts, and the punish them if they do. But criminalise too many things (like alcohol for example) and suddenly a majority of our community are criminals, the word 'criminal' ceases to have any negative effect, and it becomes impossible for us to reject them. Then the rapists will have a field day because they're suddenly the criminal majority and aren't being rejected by society. If you really abhor rape, then you'll work hard to prevent attempts to legislate morality because it will dilute the social consequences of rape.

It's the removal of personal judgement that worries me. I'm no longer able to judge for myself 'is this a safe thing to do?' and suffer the consequences. Mostly because of the insurance industry's habit of suing anyone else when a claim is made, so site owners and operators have had to set standard rules for everyone, and set those rules at a low enough level so that idiots won't hurt themselves.
So we now see personal judgement and personal responsibility as a dangerous thing that must be removed from any situation and replaced with standard behaviours. Anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed (and will eventually be mandatory), because if it was harmful or antisocial there'd be a rule against it so it must be OK.
We're starting to see rules against trolling and griefing appear, which is the next logical step.

But morality cannot be enforced by laws, banning something doesn't prevent people from doing it, it just makes them criminals when they do it. If you ban enough things, your entire society becomes criminal and all the laws stop having any meaning or effect.