Mod parent up for this sentence alone: 'Climate change isn't the end of the world, but it is the end of "life as we know it".'

That is the point, exactly.

"People keep saying "the science is settled!", but when has that ever been a mantra in the scientific world before?"

Erm, all the time, actually. The whole point of science is to be able to know something about the world, and act on that knowledge. We know enough about semiconductors to build computers, for example. There's plenty we don't know about semiconductors, but we know enough to act.

The notion that all scientific knowledge is merely conjecture, based on the facts as we know them but continuously open to being disproven, and therefore not a basis for action, is rhetoric gone wrong. The openness of a piece of scientific knowlege to being disproven is not an on/off binary state. If you were to discover some facts that appeared to show that semiconductors don't in fact work the way we thought they did, and have this completely different mechanism of action, we would question whether the facts were real, and if they did ineluctably lead to that conclusion, etc etc. We'd question even harder if you told us that the facts appear to show that computers can't work at all.

There may have been Oxford grads, but there was also the estimable Ross Anderson from cl.cam.ac.uk and his team.

That's because you've got a system that optimises only for speed, with security a very poor second. The aim of more modern systems has been to optimise for both speed and security. Chip-and-PIN is quite fast, and is widely used in Europe eg for grocery shopping. But contactless pay is taking over in the UK for low value purchases in high volume shops such as lunchtime eateries and, now, the Tube. Worker bees and commuters value the speed, but also want decent security.

And? Is there a problem with that, morally? If so, can you please articulate it?

A "girly" UI? What, are you eight and stuck in a playground where that's actually a cutting insult? Grow up.

With that finely honed wit, I think it's fair to say that the Catskills would never have come calling for you...

Strikes me as a clever and interesting idea

It's excellent rhetoric, but it's rubbish policy. If we elected governments that imposed no restrictions on the production of anything, then we are allowing the unrestricted trading of every product imaginable: polonium, abuse images, human body parts, unsafe cars, to name just a few examples. Many products cause harm in their production, or cause harm in their usage. And your ability to sue the, say, auto manufacturer who sold you a dud is a bit restricted if you're in a vegetative state. Thus, we elect governments who impose regulations to mitigate the harms.

Ayn Rand's libertartian wank-fantasy would be a pretty horrible place to live (and die).

You don't need legislation to deal with this.

The hassle of a repair will figure into people's purchasing decisions. Other businesses will spring up, who make money from facilitating the repair process. Etc

Where is "there"? The whole of Africa?

Are you proposing that you can create an impermeable land and sea border for the whole of Africa? A border that can be maintained in the face of the breakdown of multiple societies due to the combination of Ebola, other current and very severe problems in these countries eg Boko Haram, malaria, etc, and the economic embargo you're effectively imposing through the border?

Yeah, well, let us know how that works out for ya.

Why do people talk so definitively when they are verifiably wrong about stuff (and why do they get moderated informative)? "Nobel prizes are never given posthumously" is just not true. You only have to look at the Nobel Prize Foundation's own website to see this:
"From 1974, the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that a Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement of the Nobel Prize. Before 1974, the Nobel Prize has only been awarded posthumously twice: to Dag Hammarskjöld (Nobel Peace Prize 1961) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Nobel Prize in Literature 1931).

Following the 2011 announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, it was discovered that one of the Medicine Laureates, Ralph Steinman, had passed away three days earlier. The Board of the Nobel Foundation examined the statutes, and an interpretation of the purpose of the rule above lead to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman should continue to remain a Nobel Laureate, as the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet had announced the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine without knowing of his death."

I would also be interested to see if you can point to any actual rules that stipulate the Nobel Physics prize may not be awarded for pure theory.

What would a trivial dismemberment look like? Losing only your little toe?

What the fuck are you talking about?

1. Ebola has already reached several large West African cities.
2. "Down there"? Are you on Mars?
3. Reaching a city does not inevitably mean pandemic. Cases were reported in Lagos, which is really quite a large city what with its population of 5m+, and yet containment and tracing worked and the city is Ebola-free once again.

All that indignation and yet you don't appear to know why a 72 hour quarantine is not hugely helpful for a disease with a 2 to 21 day incubation period.