The default is already "Filtering ON", even though the Gov tried to insist that the ISP's call it something like "your choice" to hide the fact! Railroaded in by referring to it as some anti-child porn crusade, it also includes filters to block (extreme) political websites too.

Who determines what political sites are extreme?

Of course in the US asking ANY question when you've been told to do something by an officer is "Resisting Arrest" and can get you in a LOT of trouble! So if you think it may be an official stop (for whatever) reason you just do what you're told for risk of getting into serious trouble!

Who was the US politician who openly called for Assange to be assassinated? They've not collected him from Washington and shipped him to Guantanamo yet I see!

Please provide a link to this evidence. Fracking has been industry standard practice for 50 years or so - it is NOT a new invention - and there are no recorded instances that I am aware of where contamination has been proven.

There was a case where contamination was found, but tests that would have shown fracking to have been the cause (the gas that is released has a 'signature' and so can be traced to a specific well) was not done for some reason (possibly because the well drilled to run the tests could have been the problem!).

America can't have it both ways. They made online gambling illegal and then go after the companies offering online gambling from elsewhere. Dudes, it's not the online gambling that's the problem, it's your citizens being bad by ignoring your retarded online gambling laws!

... and now the French are giving you some of your own medicine. Reap what you have sown!

Yeah, I get that, but I thought that the gravitational attraction was between the relative masses of the two objects. Presumably, therefore, any massless doodah wandering by would be unaffected by the masses of thingamejigs it might pass.
That being so ...

A mass-less photon (at speed) whizzing past a superhumongous 'body' would be unaffected by it, gravitationally, regardless of how massive the body was, if it had no mass. Ergo - a photon at speed has mass.

Where does that mass come from. If it comes from momentum, then it must have mass at rest (mass * velocity).

>Photons have no _rest mass_ or they couldn't go the speed of light.

So, we keep measuring the speed of light more and more precision, and what if our precision with that measurement simply isn't up to the job, and light actually travels at ever so slightly less than the (theoretical) speed of light.
Photons at rest could then have a Really (really really ...) small mass ...

ebyrob> I think momentum is an important term to remember here. Photons may not have rest mass, but they do have momentum. (in classical physics: p = m * v)

Hang on ... isn't momentum mass times velocity?
Momentum? why you keep using that word?

Oh I do hope they don't try and Top Gearise it, like they did with Gardener's World a year or so back. With GW they reverted to the old format (and quite possibly killed Toby Buckland's TV Gardener career!).

Hey BBC, do us all a service and just leave it alone!

Ironically, Germany!

You hear a lot about "but then only criminals will have guns", and that may well be partially true.
The difference, of course, is that if only the criminal has a gun they mug you, you hand over your wallet, and they leave. They are unlikely to decide to shoot you anyway because then they're murders rather than muggers. best of all, you live, but are a little poorer.
The other fact that is ignored is that criminals simply do not walk into schools or cinemas and shoot kids. They just don't do it!

To recap:
Strict Gun Laws = a chance to be robbed at gunpoint, far less chance of having someone shoot your kids.
No Gun Laws = Far less chance of petty crime, but a high incidence of mass shootings.

For the record, in the UK you are more likely to be mugged at knife point as guns simply aren't that easy to get hold of - but you're still unlikely to be mugged at all. Also, those criminals who _do_ get guns tend to use them to shoot each other rather than the public at large.

Er ... no. His post successfully explained the anomaly to me. That you cannot see the point isn't down to his explanation being 'bad', or indeed because he may be egocentric (not sure how that affects it either way?).

His point, if I may attempt to clarify, is that because Japanese culture has the aforementioned duty, failure, shame deeply ingrained, combined with the history of ritual suicide, that there may well be more people considering suicide because of their perceived failures, shame, loss of face, etc, and ritual suicides are most often committed using blades anyway, so _possibly_ even if there were a gun available, they'd chose to use a blade, but given the strict gun control, and the fondness for harakiri (suicide by ritual self disembowelling) the lack of guns doesn't hold them back.

I wonder whether higher rate taxation doesn't just encourage those caught to seek out the loopholes. A flat tax rate, combined with a reasonable initial tax free earning seems like the best, and fairest, way to me. Include in that tax rate any and all income, including dividends, and you (fairly) eliminate many of the current loop holes (the UK tried to target Contractors with IR35 rather than simply taxing dividends, the common loophole, possibly because of the big business lobbying during the Blair Govmnt).

Oh, you mean like when Gary McKinnon, who similarly walked into unsecured US military and NASA computer. The difference - oh yes, no one noticed for ages!

Fixed that for you

Fixed that for you