Hang on, in the 70s, London was having bombings like that - by the American funded IRA.

In those days, we did not wet our knickers and give up our privacy (much), and carried on regardless with a stiff upper lip.

I don't know what went wrong, but this is just as small part of it. personally, I blame cheap hard disks.

The notion of not being immoral scumbags doesn't work in politics?

FTFY

do they spy on politicians over there too?

Several Prime Ministers have been spied upon as potential Soviet agents - so the answer you are looking for is YES

They are spies - they spy on everyone if they did not spy on everyone, how would they know who to spy on? Should you trust them? If you dont know how to think for yourself, then the answer does not matter.

Its the "Windows is running" bit.

It looks like that would probably be as reliable as what they do use, but cheaper to implement.

We are getting close to that in parts of the world, and it is spreading fast.

It used to be because the labour content was exported, but robots are replacing the offshore jobs/manufacturing.

It is time to come up with a new model of who gets what, and why. and how to implement it.

Or Ebola just may do it for us.

The reality is that TV, 3D or not, is unsuitable for people of any age. Have you watched Cartoon Network? That stuff MUST cause brain damage for sure!

Nope. There is no way to get round the convergence-accomodation problem, except when the image is both logically and physically so far away that 3D is irrelevant.

3D is a bad idea. It makes your head hurt because you are experiencing the impossible. If it does not make your head hurt, then it is doing you harm.

Or perhaps What is it?

Please can we have using TLAs without explaining them made a criminal offence.

Duh, it's a network device, everyone has unlimited network access everywhere don't they?

Well GCHQ and the NSA have unlimited access everywhere. I don't know about anyone else.

I have been responsible for language choice on many occasions, and I can say with confidence, sometimes I made the right choice and sometimes not.

For a project starting in 1983, and expected to last 8 months, Basic seemed like a good idea. By 1995, it should have been obvious to everyone that a re-write in ANYTHING ELSE was justified (not that I would personally recommend using Perl to write a Basic interpreter to re-interpret the original Basic code or using Snobol4 to translate the Basic into Fortran).

I could have used C instead - the project would probably have taken a couple of weeks longer, but would have saved countless people years of grief. I have C programs from the 80's that compile on *BSD unchanged, and still work as intended*. It was a toss-up at the time.

My point is that the language choice may be influenced by incorrect information about the external world - because the external world is subject to massive change.

* I had to rewrite some C from the 70's cos they were written for Idris and all in capitals :-{ Fortran4 programs from the 70's may compile and run, but you certainly need to re-test them!

Yes its true: my lawn is written in Fortran, but my Mum's has an Ibjob border.

I live in Europe where the only governors are prison governors - local government is by elected councellors who are about 50% from working class backgrounds, and corporate empires are owned by the general public through insurance companies and pension funds, If daddy owns a corporate empire here, the chances are it is the local corner shop, and you are from an ethnic minority.

I am not saying that having good family connections does not help, but it is certainly not the biggest factor in making progress, The people who say that are almost all parroting what they heard in the socialist circles they grew up in - who you know can hold you back every bit as much as push you forward, if not more.

the hereditary ruling class uses it's control of the world's resources

The inappropriate praise issue has already been mentioned, but there is a related one: giving children choices -

The hereditory ruling class puts enormous emphasis on passing on communication and decision making skills - that is why it is a hereditory ruling class. It is not the genes.

If the parents are barely able to tell the kid "shut up and play" what chance does the kid have against those whose parents insist the kids use correct grammar and approach problems logically from before they start school? The difference in the kid's ability to understand his surroundings, and get questions answered is immense.

The children from poorly educated backgrounds are given choices they cannot reasonably take (do you want to see Home Alone 3 - which is on at every cinema for 200 miles, or do you want Gratuitous Violence 6? - which has not yet been released, and in any case, they are not old enough to see), and then, when they take the wrong choice, their choice is overridden. The children from an educated background are given choices they can afford to get wrong (chocolate or vanilla ice cream), and then forced to live with their choice. The end result is that the kid grows up believing (correctly) that his choices are critical to his condition or have no influence on events - according to his experience.

Of course, this is partly because the barely literate parent does not understand the concept of researching the choices before offering them to the kid - that is why they themselves are not part of the Elite.

It is not a conspiracy of the illuminati - the problem is the illiterati who outnumber them millions to one.

There is plenty of good, strong scientific evidence that telling kids "thats great" when they are well aware it was crap is a very depressing experience for the kid, and leads to them going slowly off the rails <mild exaggeration for effect> It is not just useless, it is actually a very bad idea.

Unfortunately, a lot of the school system is allergic to science - so it is hardly surprising the can't teach it.

Everyone aknowledges some footballers are top rate, and some are not even so-so, but it is not acceptable to the union to admit the same for school teachers. This prevents meaningful discussion of the best way to deploy teachers with different abilities.

And the guy who said they wont get STM jobs anyway was right.

Even if he is willing (and he might be, look at his balloon adventures) Mr Branson is already rich and famous. Other people are motivated by seeking wealth and fame. Why should he stand in their way?

"Get rich or die trying is the American dream" and dieing is an important part of that dream.

"If it was easy, they would all be doing it!"