Wow. This needs to be modded up for the subject line, if nothing else. That's the best short analogy I've ever seen.

Yeah, that's going to happen. 1.2 billion people. Every one of them will voluntarily hand over their fingerprints and eyeprints.

Methinks either "voluntary" or "every one" is being grossly misrepresented here.

Time for me to go to my voluntary re-education classes sponsored by the Ministry of Love.

Birds, when ill, will feign being perfectly healthy right up until they drop dead. Many humans, when ill, will feign being healthy until they can no longer hold up the façade and fall over unconscious.

Most animals, when witnessing another similar animal that is very ill, will react with revulsion and fear.

It's prossibly* a result of a few millions years of natural selection. Those who stay away from their brethren when ill tend to live, whereas those that stick around and contract the disease tend to die and/or limit their reproductive potential.

I think a lot of the scary shit humans do comes down to these sort of innate psychological traits. They're left over from an era that no longer exists and is largely irrelevant (not entirely irrelevant, see Norovirus and Influenza etc etc).

*prossibly: it was a typo that I decided, as a sexual descendant of possibly and probably, was a good word and deserved to live.

That is precisely when children are NOT cute.

...I keep trying but no matter how hard I work at it, no useful syllables are formed.

This probably encompasses the user experience of an MSNokia phone, so maybe that's apropos.

As to the above drama about mixing measuring units, the article says:

So there you go. Both measurements in Imperial European Units.

But then I read on, and was pretty stoked to see them discovering things like this.

Nice! I'd love to see a time-lapse video over the course of the next million years watching this black sheep star get flung out of its little flock.

I know, I shouldn't feed the troll. But since trolls are tireless, we must be also tireless in trying to talk sense.

It isn't stealing. When I steal, you don't have what I took from you.

The copyright contract has been broken. It is specifically mandated to be for a LIMITED TIME. Since copyrights are now unlimited, there is no longer an obligation to follow copyright.

The justifications aren't tortured. At this point, the justifications of the copyright cartel are pretty tortured, though.

The people actually producing the art work don't get much compensation for their work. The copyright cartel makes sure of that. Musicians don't get their royalties, and film crews are constantly the victims of bizarro accounting rules where no matter what happens, the film always "lost money."

And your flippant dismissal of calling politicians corrupt flies in the face of extremely extensive and well-documented history.

What do you call the opposite of a tinfoil hatter? Someone who in the face of overwhelming evidence still believes the lies of the slave driver? A Stockholmer? This is you. Welcome to your new label.

Clearly what they are doing (the airport officials) isn't right. But so far as I can tell, airport officials have made a career of doing wrong things and saying it's in our favour. From little things like taking away our water, to major things like irradiating us. It's a little disconcerting.

Mod this up. These people aren't "conspiracy theorists" anymore. When in doubt, you should assume a theory about the US gov't spying on you is true. The burden of proof is on the person suggesting the UNLIKELY event: aka the government acting above-board.

Can you give us any references for any of this? Even the non-scary parts, like just what protest was it? Where? Was it written up in the news? Especially interesting would be if you have references for the scary shit, though I understand how it's probably all tied up in secret courts with secret laws.

Let's make a poll. Those silly guys keep talking about how the government is spying on all of us. Those silly tinfoil hatters!

Oh, my. There is a cabinet in a major data interconnect area siphoning off all data. Probably nothing. Imagine what those silly tinfoil hatters are gonna say about it! Ha ha. Let's make a poll.

Oh my. There are some leaks showing potentially massive surveillance of everyone, but probably nothing. This is gonna suck. Those silly tinfoil hatters are gonna have a heyday with this.

Oh my. The executive branch has been conclusively shown to be wholesale spying on everyone, and lying to the legislative branch about it, and the legislative and judicial branches have been proven to be at the best lax in their duties to reign in the executive branch.

Let's make another poll making fun of the tinfoil hatters.

RTFA. If the user doesn't buy in a few days, they delete the domain- doesn't cost them anything.