Many computer newbies don't even know how to change colors, font sizes, wallpapers, etc. :(

Are you still unemployed? :P

Do we know that with 100% certainty? If not it makes sense to hedge the bet a little.

A Brown Bess doesn't use primers.

I'm vegan

It's a shame mosquitoes aren't.

I seem to be foie gras & filet mignon to them. My wife never gets bitten.

Don't worry about the bacteria getting out of hand. If necessary we'll kill them with a virus. Or gorillas.

I make better than 300K per year as a software developer, when you include base, bonus and stock grants (which I view as variable cash bonuses, since I have them sold automatically the instant they vest). And I don't have to stick my fingers in peoples' mouths.

Most of Greece's population don't pay tax not because they don't want to, but because they're out of fucking work.

One slight flaw with that logic: they weren't paying taxes before either.

Someone did a study comparing the number of expensive cars to the number of people whose declared income was sufficient to afford them. Guess which was larger?

Whatever you think of the various sides of this argument, it's interesting to me to look at how different the sides are.

The US is, on average, far more concerned about pornography and other sexual issues than the UK, but there is not and never will be any significant discussion of government-mandated filters, outside of specific situations like government-run schools. The reason is our belief in the importance of free speech. Although there are plenty of Americans who would like to ban porn, no one at a national level says it out loud. No one seriously talks about it even at local, highly homogeneous levels, because everyone knows it won't fly.

The UK is somewhat less prudish than the US, but is perfectly willing to carve out large exceptions to free speech wherever it's convenient. Therefore, British pols do talk seriously about trying to ban porn, except for adults who opt out.

Europe (as a whole; there are exceptions) is even less concerned about free speech than the UK, but apparently considers porn to be something worth fighting for, to the degree that they're willing to invest at least a little effort in fighting to keep porn available to kids in the UK.

FWIW, I think porn is bad. Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with human sexuality, but porn presents an extremely distorted view of human sexuality. I think regular consumption of hardcore pornography, particularly by adolescents, skews expectations and perceptions in ways that have negative consequences. That said, I have no interest in trying to ban it. I do filter it on my home network, but that's a half measure which mostly serves as an early warning system (I get notified of attempts to get to porn sites) which offers a chance to talk the issues over if I find my kids looking for it.

All of which mostly says that I'm a fairly typical American parent: concerned about porn but unwilling to take the strong anti-freedom steps needed to effectively ban it :-)

Why privacy because a citizen has it and a slave does not. The freedom to keep yourself to yourself versus being slavishly continuously exposed to the inspection and judgement of others. Privacy is about the choice to be private, loss of privacy is the loss of that choice, that choice being denied and even worse the association with public humiliation and degradation that comes with that loss of choice.

Now, strangely enough challenge those with power enough and you have to abandon privacy otherwise they will forcefully invade it with the claims that your attempt to maintain privacy is an attempt to hide conspiracy and seek to expose you supposed conspiratorial secrets with a life threatening armed assault. So requiring you to abandon privacy to a degree to enable them to spy. This as a personal defence, as they then no longer have an excuse for a physical raid, something they will be looking for in order to punish you via corrupt prosecution as punishment, not conviction, just the abuse of the prosecutorial procedure.

The porn filter and protect the children thing is a straight up lie. It is all about censorship about blocking any ideas that compete with the false ideology of the rich and greedy, that ideology being they want more, more, more. It is all about accidental block sites, union sites, opposition (real opposition) political sites, real news sites, blogs basically anything at all. All so very accidental, then it takes months to unblock and costs thousands of dollars and then it gets accidentally blocked again.

Reality is, if they are serious about porn, they should simply strip sic it of copyright protection, cripple the ability of corporations to generate a profit from it and with out the profit there is no money to make more. Done and finished.

Of course it all has nothing what so ever to do with porn, that is a lie. All about blocking the majority from publishing anything and putting the power of publishing content back in the hand of a psychopathically greedy minority.

"Shall I felate you with my misshapen blackened teeth, luvvey?"

"Please do, dearest, and I shall think of England while you do it!"

Yeah, I sure would think so. But then again, it's reasonable to expect the stove to not leak gas. It's far less a given that whoever fills gas into the tank doesn't spill a few drops. People are clumsy and self service pumps are the norm.

That's certainly fine with respect to crimes that justify criminal punishment (e.g. prison). But if regulators choose a market-style punishment (fines), then they're just acting as a market force, and that's a consideration for shareholders as owners.

Utter nonsense. Yes, in some cases that may be the effect, but it's certainly not the design. Your cynicism has gotten the better of you. By design, boards of directors are intended to serve the same role that elected political representatives do for citizens of a nation; to represent the interests of the voters. It's not feasible for every governmental or corporate decision to be voted upon by the whole body, so they choose representatives. A proper board of directors takes a dim view of executives acting against the interests of the shareholders, and boards that fail their jobs badly enough do get ousted.

That just indicates that regulators are not making the fines large enough. If regulators want to use financial penalties, they have to make them large enough that bad actions are unprofitable.