That the research has ended? Maybe that's what they've made you believe using a late-model cerpan? Cue Twilight Zone music etc. etc. etc.

As a 63 year old, life spent in IT, I fear e-books: DRM, can't share, they will be very selective about texts [blockbusters, crowd pleasers], 'book' can be removed remotely etc. etc. That's apart from the pleasure of having a house full of book, trashy science fiction from the 60s and 70s, crime novels and even a few serious books too.

As a Brit, I feel that this would solve a great many problems simultaneously. No sneaky air-holes for these a*-holes either. There, I feel much better now...

Exactly, I have two phones, one for home, one for business, the 'newest' is three years old and I'm not changing either. They both 'work', apparently an alien concept to millenials other assorted young'uns.

It was an illustration. Actually, I don't mind if other people take me seriously or not.

For those younger readers of slashdot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

We don't need firemen to burn books now, we just need Amazon and all the big corps that control the various e-readers to send 'censor with extreme prejudice' packets [I've made that up, but it'll come] to those naughty people who read naughty books. We must think of the children, mustn't we?

And of course the next thing is radicalism [people really need protecting from Karl Marx don't they] and unpalatable material [people need protecting from Mein Kampf too]. Let's not forget cult movies etc. which we can dump in the constant change of format from VHS to DVD to Blueray to next-profitable thing.

The world will be really lovely when we've finished all this, just Disney, idiot talent competitions and gameshows. Personally, I can't wait, can you? Meanwhile, I'm stocking up on physical books whilst they're still available, that way they have, at least, come around and break the door down to get them.

I don't want my pesky mice to live 20% longer. I want my cat to kill the b**gers.

And also, the MI5 [internal security service for the UK, as opposed to MI6 or the secret service] do a pretty good job of losing data themselves: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/03/28/second_spy_loses_laptop/ Sometimes, one feels, it's questionable whether they need help from journalists, simply for the act of 'losing' anyway.

Pretty lousy cop too: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/02/ian.blair.resigns very political and not very coply [to use Jess Stone's lovely word].

Robert Peel, the founder of our police, believed in 'policing by consent'. We, in the UK, are drifting further and further from that with armoured police vans, tasered up thugs 'patrolling' and [one recent incident I witnessed] 10 police for one angry unarmed man in a incident in a bus queue. Birghtly painted cars including one I've seen recently marked 'interceptor', they've obviously been watching Mad Max. They are rude and patronising if you ask them something and violent towards any protestors. Crime is declining here too.

Most of the bad trends tend to drift in here from the US and this is one.

I was mugged last year. It wasn't very serious, but, in spite of 12 similar incidents they couldn't catch the guys because their main 'method' was 'look at CCTV footage', they are not 'near' the community, something that would enable them to do 'police work'. Go figure.

Skynet jokes aside, it's [my opinion] a general problem with sub-symbolic and also, in a related area, data mining. It works [sometimes], produces a number rather than a model or chain of reasoning and we can't really follow it. I wouldn't be really happy to have something like this in an autopilot, for example. Losing control and depending entirely [no shutdown and back to 'manual'] on systems that we don't completely master [actually with the amount of things that are 'connected' we're heading there anyway] is not a great recipe for the future.

I so agree with this, absolute privacy is an illusion. Even if 'they' [tin foil hats on, guys and gals] can't get at the text of your stuff, they can use traffic analysis to get a little insight into some of your social graph. So I also use DDG, encrypt stuff where I can, use Tor, anything to increase the levels of difficulty and make the system run hotter.

Also, finally, they might work out that this is foolishness: http://qz.com/92207/simple-math-shows-why-the-nsas-facebook-spying-is-a-fools-errand/ and go back to some real work, as if that would happen.

I really like the theme song to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfREvKI8DQI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety

Sir, my brain is getting BIGGER! [cut to tanks, artillery etc. etc.]