South Africa is the rape capital of the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#South_Africa

Why are the more worried about porn than actual crimes? Any logical person can see that banning porn would likely make the rape situation even worse. I'm glad to see they've got their priorities straight.

The whole world seems to be in a state of insanity regarding porn at the moment. We've got the Australia's small breast ban and cartoon laws, Canada's Cartoon laws, the UK's Extreme Pornography laws, the US's Obscenity Laws and Agnes Chan leading the lunacy in Japan. Could I ask these moral crusaders to kindly fuck off.

Yes. Pictures of women over 18 with small breasts are illegal on the grounds that it is "virtual child pornography":

http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/australia-bans-small-breasts/

Drawings of girls under 18 are banned because that too is virtual child pornography:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/simpsons-powerpuff-girls-porn-nets-jail-time-for-australian.ars

Basically then if they want to arrest you I'm sure they could find something in your porn collection that's illegal, whether its a girl with small breasts or some cartoon porn.

Much like Canada they're very concerned with "virtual" things down there and far less concerned about real crimes. No doubt they'll be banning virtual murder and virtual dangerous driving in computer games next.

With the new auto-breaking system Volvos stop reliably without even the need for a driver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg

Er...okay maybe you have a point.

I use Bookmarks menu to access and organise my bookmarks. I use the history menu to open tabs I've recently closed or go back to websites I've recently visited. I use the tools menu to access options, addons and clear history. I use the file menu for print, work offline and occasionally import.

In answer to your question then, yes the menu bar is very useful. It provides rapid and structured access to a lot of functionality. When I use an application with a menu bar I can always find the functionality I'm looking for easily but in applications without a menu bar (Office 2007, Chrome etc) I can never find what I'm looking for.

Menu bars provide a consistent interface across all applications so even if you haven't used an application before you know where to find options and featurs. Removing it gives every application a custom interface, making it very hard to use unfamiliar applications. Put a Office 2003 user in front of Office 2007 or an IE6 user in front of IE7/8 and and they'll struggle to use the application. However if you get an Office 2003 user to use Open Office or an IE6 user to use Firefox they'll be able to adapt very quickly thanks to the consistent interface menu bars offer.

When Microsoft started the trend of removing menu bars with Vista and Office 2007 I believe their aim was not to improve the user experience but to lock users into their applications. An Office 2003 user can adapt rapidly to any other Office suite thanks to the similar interfaces, however if someone is only familiar with Office 2007 it will be very hard for them to adapt to other suits because Office 2007 has a completely custom interface that is inconsistent with all other applications. This way they're locked into MS Office and Microsoft wins again.

The removal of the menu bar is a travesty of interface design but it's a massive win for Microsoft and, bizarrely, organisations such as Mozilla seem happy to help them along.

Most people in the west would probably be happy to pay a few extra dollars for their products. The best solution then would be to increase their hourly rate and cut their working hours, which would have a hugely beneficial impact on their lives while only causing a very small decrease in our spending power.

From your post it seems you have no interest in improving their conditions and just want to put them out of the job. Yes, let's stop buying "all that crap" because I'm sure the KYE workers would much rather be unemployed and starving on the streets.

I think you should tell everyone where you work so we can all help improve your conditions by not buying any products from that company. Would you like it if you lost your job because helpful people put your employer out of business?

"it is necessary to satisfy mens rea"

The discussion is about child porn not gay porn.

There's a reason BIDU hit $630 yesterday having only been $100 a year ago and it's not because Bing will be taking Google's place.

I can't see Google withdrawing because they'd be handing what will be the world's biggest market over to a competitor. The free speech situation would also become worse with BIDU as the main search engine since they'll be far more inclined to do exactly what the government tells them.

It makes no sense financially or socially so Google would have to be completely stupid to pull out.

"Think it's illegal? Call the cops with details."

You: "Officer, I was interested in these so called 'dark nets' so looking around I happened to find a website with child porn on it. Clicking about the site I found there were literally hundreds of images so I thought I best report it to the police."

Police: "Please stay by your computer and we'll be around to arrest you shortly. Enjoy your 25 years in prison."

I think you need to review the "Don't talk to the police" video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

If you see a house being burgled, ignore it and continue on. If you see somebody being raped keep walking. If you see a child in trouble, absolutely never go near them. The last one is particularly important since children are the greatest risk to your freedom in the current political climate and should never be approached under any circumstances.

"It's impossible to say how computing would have changed"

We can get some ideas how things would be different by looking at the browser market. In particular we can compare the IE6 period, when Gates' monopoly was at its peak, to how it is now that Mozilla, Google, Opera and Apple has revived competition:

IE6 Period
-Zero innovation
-Focus on lock-in
-Standards ignored
-Insecure

After Competition was Revived
-A wealth of innovative features introduced
-Fair competition based on the quality of the product rather than lock-in
-Improvements in speed, security and stability
-Browsers generally following standards making things easier for developers

We could then look at how the OS and Office market is now and, based on the browser market, make some guesses at what the world would have been like without Gates:

OS and Office Suite Market with Gates
-Zero innovation
-Focus on lock in
-Standards ignored
-Insecure

OS and Office Suite Market without Gates
Executive summary: a shit load better

There's no denying that Gates is a great business man; he has ruthlessly strangled completion, locked in users and abused his OS monopoly to expand into other markets. This strategy has made Microsoft biggest and most successful company in the IT industry with obscene profits and massive influence, so it's hard not to be impressed by his business skills. However, everything he has contributed to IT has been negative and if he never existed we would likely have vastly superior software than we have under the Microsoft monopoly. Personally I would rank Gates as the single man who has done most damage to the software and IT industry.

Am I stupid or is the sign in the article telling people to always park in front of the entrance?

It essentially says to never never never never park there and isn't a quadruple negative a positive? Furthermore if you never never do something then you always do it so it seems he permanently wants somebody blocking his door.

If you don't want to see adverts don't visit any websites that have adverts on them. If you're repeatedly visiting websites that you know to have adverts then you're looking at the adverts voluntarily so it is no way an invasion or an intrusion.

Besides, without adverts the only way websites will be able to fund themselves is through fees. Would you rather pay a few dollars a month for every website you visit?

Philip Campbell was one of the "scientists" selected to join the "independent" review panel for the UEA leaks. He later had to step down when it was revealed that he had already made up his mind before any review:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/aposclimategateapos+review+member+resigns/3536642

I'm sure he was replaced by somebody equally independent and impartial and that we can expect the same level of impartiality from the UN's review of the IPCC. This is nothing but a waste of taxpayer's money.

72.54% of Windows users continue to use XP, so it is abundantly clear that the the market prefers XP to 7/Vista. If Microsoft had any competitors they would be forced to continue selling XP in order to avoid losing market share, however their monopoly means they do not have to worry about this since there literally aren't any competitors*. They are therefore abusing their monopoly by forcing 7/Vista onto a market that does not want it. What the judge says is true and Microsoft really aren't benefiting from this since they get a sale whether it's XP or 7, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a clear case of severe monopoly abuse. I certainly feel abused because I want to buy a laptop with Windows XP but all the options in my price range come with Windows 7 Home Premium. How can the judge conclude this isn't monopoly abuse? Somebody get the EU!

*Mac OS is not a direct competitor to Windows since I can't legitimately install Mac OS on my PC. Alternatives like Linux aren't quite ready for the mainstream desktop user yet.