It's nice to see that we haven't lost our ability to be condescending without wasting effort on getting informed. Let me suggest some other headers along the same, stupid lines:

"What America really needs to curb gun-related crime"
"What Europe really needs to save the economy" ...

Well, you get the gist, I'm sure. We all have hard-to-solve problems, and none of us welcomes this sort of non-advice that sounds like 'why don't they just get their act together'. Why don't the Americans and Europeans 'just get their act together'? Probably because the problems are more complex than 'just something ...', and part of that complexity is that we in the West are tying well-meaning aid to greedy businesses who have no intention of giving these countries a fair deal. Why would a Western company actually help set up competition against themselves in an African country? Companies are businesses, not idealists.

You didn't actually read what I wrote carefully enough to understand the meaning, did you? What I'm saying, I hope, is simple, common sense: that we have to be intelligent about what we do and how we address this problem. We don't want to harrass people who have a legitimate wish to encrypt their communications - people who work from home over a VPN, people accessing their bank, and any number of other things. On the other hand, we do have to be alert to anything potential danger, because if we don't, bad things will happen.

If you have a better way of addressing the threat of terror, do let us all know, because we are struggling with this at the moment.

When the question is posed like that, no. But it has been taken out of a context, and it is similar to saying 'is carrying a crowbar really a sign that you are going to burgle a house?' - you may be on the way home from the shop, intending to break some timber apart. On the other hand, if it is about 2AM and you are in a residential area far from your home, friends or family, and you can't offer a plausible explanation - perhaps it is reasonable to suspect that you are a burglar.

Terrorists look just like everybody else, at least until they blow themselves up or start shooting at the defenceless, so we have to use a complex set of indicators to try to guess who is likely to be plotting attacks; unfortunately they don't all use emails on 'terror.org' or whatever. If a number of factors come together, then perhaps using strongly encrypted email is worrying - you may have something legitimate to hide, but most people don't bother with encryption if they are just writing to their mum.

I agree - as an atheist I can't for a moment imagine why any all-powerful being would pay the slightest notice to what any individual in a potentially infinite universe might think, do or say. Even to a believer, one's actions can only be judged on their effect on oneself and others, and blasphemy is only ever as bad as the harm it causes, which in most cases is none.

Still, whether you are religious or not, you are required to use your brain for thinking, and there is rarely any excuse for not having spared a thought for the consequences of your actions, especially if you have been given ample warning.

I do indeed; it is a question that needs to be asked - and answered. Isn't it better that people with a minimum of integrity and good intentions take the lead, than leaving it to the rabid fringe, such as the National Front or the like? Unlike those, I don't presuppose what the answer should be, and I am willing to be persuaded that it is worth the cost to society, but not without having thought it over and heard the arguments first.

And it is not about people's feeling getting hurt - if that was all, then I'd say, go for it. The people you are talking about here, are going to inflict a potentially heavy cost on all of us; it seems likely that they are going to do so no matter what we do, but in that case thinking about things will help us overcome the problems better, I would have thought.

- and you have no rights over the majority, come to that. Just to cast it in a harsh light: If you use your freedom of speech in such a way that you or your family are targeted by terrorists, should society be obliged to spend millions on policing to protect your lives? That is what happens at the moment: a small minority, who don't give a toss about other people get abusive and hide behind the skirts of 'freedom of speech', and expect the rest of us to pay up. Give us all a good reason why we should care that much about you?

Looking back to the infamous Danish cartoon of Mohammed, there were costs to Danish businesses, costs incurred for police protection for the cartoonist etc etc. We don't communicate into a vacuum, and everything we do has consequences. So what are you, personally, willing to pay for your freedom? Everything you own? Your life? How about the lives of your family and friends? And do you have a right to expect others to cover your expenses in these cases, as it were, even if you have no qualms about it?

You're welcome.

Look, the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo. I think one should try to read no just between the lines of what he says, but also what he does and says in other contexts - he has demonstrated a much more modern outlook that previous popes.

And the issue isn't as black/white as that either. Freedom comes with a price-tag; are we all willing to pay the price? And if not, is it right to force the majority to pay the price so that a minority can say what they like without having to fear any consquences? If you actually believe in freedom, then you have to accept that others have the freedom to not want the same as you.

I think what you mean is, educate the people to understand and accept democracy; this is obviously a good idea, but not easily achieved. It isn't as simple as just understanding that you can vote for things; people have to learn to trust each other and the system, otherwise the losing side is not going to accept the result and it will end in chaos. On top of that, there will be powerful interests against its success - rich business owners and corrupt, local officials.

Which is why it is not a good idea to give local government more power, before corruption at that level has been rooted out.

The licensing model on an IBM mainframe is different depending on what OS you run (and which CPU you use). In my experience, the really prohibitively expensive model is when you run z/OS + certain 3rd party packages, because they tend to charge you for number of seats, CPU cycles, etc etc etc. I think one of the reasons why IBM went down the linux and Java routes was exactly that - it appears they can't easily move away from the old licensing model on z/OS, but you can run both Linux and Java really cheaply, relatively speaking.

And what you say about mainframe stability vs other HW - I don't think this is entirely true. Most of the very impressive features on other server HW originated in the mainframe - like hot-swappable disks, CPUs, Infiniband etc. And in my experience you don't really need a huge number of operators either; that was more in the old days, when you needed people to change tapes, load card decks and physically move printer output outside the server room. Even back then, you wouldn't see many system programmers - one largish place I worked, there were two: 1 CICS specialist and one for the rest.

The thing is, at the end of the day, the z/OS, for all it's idiosyncrasies, is not really very complicated - it's just that they so often name things differently.

- and another one, somewhat abridged:

A Windows admin, a UNIX admin and a Mainfram admin went to the toilet at the same time;

- the Windows guy finished first, washed his hands and wiped the fingers on a huge wad of paper towels and threw them on the floor, mostly unused

- The Linux guy washed his hands and carefully dried his hands with 1 paper towel, which he then deposited in the bin

- The mainframe guy just headed for the door, remarking "I learned long ago not to piss on my fingers".

This is problem I have given a good deal thought to as well.

First a bit of background: I have lived on UNIX and Linux for most of my far too long career. I programmed Windows and OS/2 back when it was fun (ie. Win3 and earlier; the fun went away after that); I have programmed C and C++ most of the time, and I have worked with both GNOME and KDE.

The problem, I find, is that you get tied into whichever environment you choose, so I took a step back and tried to figure out which environment give me most mobility across platforms and desktop environments. My answer, much to my dismay, was Java, which is available on nearly all HW and OS, and which has extensive and concise standards for almost everything relevant to a developer.

I am still new to it, but the technology I really like is Java Enterprise (previously J2EE) - what I've done is download a package with Netbeans (an IDE), Glassfish (application server) and J2SE (the Java SDK), and it becomes relatively easy to develop database applications, with a frontend in JSF, which works in all browsers across OSes and gives you full GUI functionality, and a backend that can run on a remote application server (not only Glassfish) and against any batabase with a JDBC driver.

Perhaps this is overkill for you purpose, but to me it seems ideal.

Somehow it still annoys me that people think of evolution in terms of some sort of deliberate purpose or 'providence'. It gives a completely skewed idea of what evolution is and it feeds religious superstition.

Evolution has no 'direction' - life doesn't evolve from 'worse' to 'better'; those terms have no meaning in this context. If one must assign some sort of direction to evolution, it would be something like 'life often tends to become more complex over time' - the word 'often' being central here, as there are many examples of organisms becoming simpler with time.

Evolution most certainly has no purpose - a trait evolves because it happens to be advantageous at that given moment. The ability to speak - ie. communicate vocally, following a sort of grammar - seems to have very deep roots, and it is easy to understand why: a sound signal is fast and carries far in both water and air, and it allows you to communicate with little expenditure of energy. You can use it for mating calls or warnings, it can be used to maintain group integrity etc. It is, incidentally, also useful for communicating knowledge: 'I know where there is water, follow me' or 'avoid humans, they are dangerous'.

Clearly the ability to communicate clearly is an advantage when you teach others how to make tools, but it is false to look for purpose in this - the only purpose of communication is the purpose the communicator puts into it.

Yes, I know, the subject is rather trite, but I think it sums up what the real problem in democracy is. For democracy to work, it isn't enough to get voters to vote; they have to understand what it is all about. You really need to educate yourself about what the different options are in an election, you need to understand - and agree with - the rules. How often do people actually know or care about what they are voting for or against? The way it works in America, most people prefer to vote with their 'gut-instinct', which is no more than the sum of vague prejudices, misunderstandings combined with passing whims and fads; those in power like it that way, because it means they have an easier time of it than the likes of mr Putin or the Chinese government. Power brokers fear nothing more than intelligent, well-educated people.

Not really - I say, we need to have that discussion. All the time, really; unrestricted freedom is an illusion, all you can do is try to influence which restrictions you have to live with. If we don't, then it will always be the bullies that win - as you say:

The great tolerance that is required of members of society, in order for freedom of speech to work, has to be very near universal - the venomous idiocy of Westboro Baptist Church is only harmless because the vast majority agree that they are idiots and that you just have to tolerate them. But this level of tolerance and insight is not a given, it requires a lot of education - everybody has to grow up to learn to accept that these ideals are right. Ironically, the people who are up in arms about freedom of speech are showing exactly the traits that will choke society's ability to allow freedom of speech - they are confrontational, unwilling to seek compromise, deeply intolerant, unwilling to educate themselves about their perceived enemy - "the Muslims". So, it has descended into chest-beating, dick-waving and "Islam is so and so". You can't beat the enemy by becoming part of him and repeating his wrongdoing.

That was what happened during the great Communist scare - freedom was used as an excuse to attack certain groups, and once it was started, it became horribly easy to 'prove' that this or that person was 'a communist'. Do we want to get to the point where we persecute 'Muslims'? Where it becomes a crime to use a head scarf? Where you are under suspicion if you are unwilling to burn a copy of the Qur'an? That is where we appear to be going.