For that matter, I wonder how much Assange's appearance itself can be altered.

Suppose the embassy were to play host to a convention with a large number of people?

On the nose.

I'm amazed the British government is making such a PR debacle of this by pursuing it so publicly. Surely Assange would be scheduled for a heart attack in a year or two instead, and leave it at that?

Ecuadorean diplomats should now regularly ship moving crates, boxes, novelty oversized cakes and so forth out of the embassy on a daily basis.

You unintentionally expose a great proof for the concept that enabling us to exercise freedom is not the agenda of this kind of legislation.

Banning ownership of specific 'things' is enforceable across the board, which is the appeal. Even though it overreaches into legitimate uses, politicians haven't been finding that a concern. But they should. We never gave them the authority to pass legislation which encroaches upon our rights. However, this now happens routinely today.

Now if only there were some cryptic clue as to their actual agenda. Because it certainly isn't upholding our rights.

I was going to reply to tell you you're correct, and to ask you to stop freely giving out the results of your intelligence to the government in the form of a viable plan of action.

Then I noticed the flaw. When people print guns freely, and when they're upset enough at the government, the popular, strong refusal to that sort of legislation becomes an insurmountable obstacle to disarming the citizenry.

We'll encounter state militias mainstreaming again long before we'll encounter any significant threat to disarm us. The U.N. small arms treaty which attempted to bring the gun rights of the citizenry within any member nation under the authority of the United Nations just collapse, because the United States delegates stated that problems domestically would prevent them from being able to meet the deadline. In other words, the People adamantly refused to tolerate it. The best the U.S. delegates could do was shake their fists in the air and yell, "We'll be ba-a-ack! Just you wait!" in traditional bureaucra-speak.

And that's how that works.

In addition to a lot of the arguments being made here against Mr. Gemmell's rationale, he's not even thinking creatively about the alternative ways a revenue stream could be generated. Case in point: I just played a Flash game yesterday that shows a video ad while loading. The ad unlocked additional features of the game for that playthrough.

But Mr. Gemmell doesn't consider developing new, innovative possibilities like this. He just wants the cash, and will happily use the "locking down" of other peoples' machines on a widespread basis to achieve this. Where's the "locking down" of the property rights that are supposed to come with buying something, like an Android? If it's my device, why wouldn't I have root? It would be apropos if Mr. Gemmell made enough money to buy a car, only to have it stolen within the first couple of weeks.

Mr. Gemmell makes it sound only right for companies and developers to "protect" their [currently-only-imagined] profits, but it comes at the expense of the property rights of the users. So he argues for further inroads on users' access to their own machines, while attempting to make it seem natural, fair and just.

"Electricity-generating solar cell windows"?

As opposed to solar cells that that generate, say, xenon and mummy dust?

Er. Source, please? I've never encountered that one before.

Why then would we say GBLT if those who were Bi- fall under the category of Gay?

I don't think you can apply the same "Slashdot geeks don't get laid" to the gay male contingent. The dynamics don't work quite the same way.

Women have learned to withhold their consent to sex in order to broker power with males, and essentially reserve it much like doggy treats with the result that males compete to become the highest bidder in terms of fitness. (This in turn reduces the majority of women to the level of some hybrid prostitute-drug dealer.)

Men, however, can probably never learn to do this, and typically wouldn't condone such cruel ploys anyway. I've found they're nearly always down for it, particularly in a social niche that's being underserved by women. More often than not, even ostensibly "straight" guys start to get interested after a long enough dry spell. Hence, I tend to fare rather well generally, and in the geek communities particularly. I suspect this is rather common.

I've always assumed it was to prevent them from slapping against their foreheads cartoonishly when running.

Thanks for reminding me that, being gay, I'm fortunate not to be living in the 1400's and fumbling around in the dark with those tricky codpieces.

If you'd like to hear more, or encourage participation yourself, here is a source with about five thousand people getting started on it.

Then it's only a matter of time before one acquires the other. Imagine the crossover opportunities.

If I were demeaning to people, as you are, I'd probably be posting anonymously as well.

Rather than leaping to the conclusion that I "don't understand how U.S. law works" and spewing basic reiterations of the legal system at me, try addressing the actual content of my post.

Well, what I'd written was:

And what I'd meant by it was: The court that ruled on it. Which was located in Oregon. Which is where he did it. They ruled that it was protected speech.

Then I went on to make my point regarding that. How are you able to give me a remedial summary of U.S. court jurisdiction when English poses such a problem for you?

Right, I keep forgetting not everyone is current on the same things I am. There's a growing trend for Americans to take a more active role in upholding the law, and working with LEO's and even the FBI to make citizens' arrests. Thousands of them are learning the laws of their own country again, and what to do when public officials (including judges) aren't upholding their oaths. It's only been the lack of law knowledge of most of the citizenry, and the lack of inclination to uphold our founding principles, that has enabled courts to become so very slipshod in their decisions of late. And that trend is on its way out, it's just not being reported by the mainstream news yet.

So what I'd meant was, using the courts is going to become a viable strategy again because the People are starting to once again use them collectively. Class actions against those who've enacted un-Constitutional legislation, not to mention the bottom-rung lackey manning the backscatter scanner, are going to be quite feasible and effective.

Those "(presumably male) linen underpants" look more like a g-string.

Perhaps those bards got up to more fun in the taverns than we know.