I was looking into the YaCY P2P search engine ( http://yacy.net/âZ ), but I have not given it a go yet. Have you tried that one? What did you find about it that was bad?

Your dream has been (partially) answered: Namecoin :)

If that is their worry, then buying any NATO countries produce would not help them. AFAIK The SAAB Gripens use American engines, avionics and components. Apart from the airframe and the final country of assembly (and some local parts), they are not really making much a difference as far trust of the hardware goes.

If that was the real worry, then you'd have to buy someone elses (probably Russian), but they went out of the race a while ago.

One of my faves (physics simulator), where you can create all sorts of machines.

The only game I know of where you can simulate nuclear reactions, and build different types of nuclear reactors/rockets with it.

Wasted hours of my life on it.

GPL game at: http://powdertoy.co.uk/

Funny you mention that, here in the UK, like in most of Europe, cars have DRM already. As such you have to go to "authorized" garages, where they have to reprogram the car computers every time they replace the part. The result being that they can charge you £300 to replace a headlamp.

Classic cars (80's mostly), anyone can do it, and it is cheap (I had my alternator replaced for £35, including parts cost). When I tell people that their jaws drop, as their yearly checkup alone costs a few hundred. That is why I never owned a new car.

The thing is, so many people have realised the same as me now, and have started buying classic cars, that classic car insurance premiums have been increasing rapidly. Car insurance companies have taken to refusing to insure classic cars because of demand, unless you can provide you will not use it as a daily driver (i.e. you can only have a classic if you own a modern, and the classic is only for meets, shows and the occasional drive).

It is becoming harder for me to keep mine to be honest because of the switch, and I wonder if in future there will be a bigger push to restrict people from the classics.

It is interesting to note that the largest rise in classics I've seen corresponds to the years when European new car sales have been flat or shrinking. I suspect causation.

Yes, I've heard great things about the trains in Europe, however they don't go where I want to, and quite frankly I like driving.

What I would not mind is an extension of what Germany does. There you can drive your car onto a train, and it will do the long boring slog for you (which currently I have to do on highways), and you can drive off at your destination.

However the above is only in Germany (And in Italy, but apparently it doesn't work that well there, and is horrendously expensive), and the high speed rail doesn't go to south/southeast Europe at the moment.

We will see what the future holds, but I am grateful that we actually have alternatives to flying, at least in the core EU.

Actually, my description of the above is from the EU ;-)

What, you thought we were better? Pretty much everyone here mimicked the US when they introduced their procedure, primarily because they insisted that anyone flying to the USA had to go through this, and it was cheaper to just subject everyone to it then make a whole separate line (and hire separate people) for those traveling to the US.

I pretty much avoid flying in Europe whenever I can. Driving is so much nicer (even if more expensive), plus I can take as much luggage and liquids as I want, without being fondled at the border!

At least we have the option of high speed trains, which I've heard work really well.

Between the long lines at security, stress, and being fondled and stripped before entry, the only nice thing that was left about flying was the lack of self-important people yakking on their phones throughout the flight... until now.

(hopefully the roaming charges will make absolutely sure nobody does voice calling, but that will depend on how much they charge).

Well... it has less to do with intelligence, then with the driving lessons and tests.

In Germany you tend to not have such incompetence at the wheel. Ditto in the Nordic countries (Finland is where I had a chance to directly observe).

What these countries have in common is a very thorough course in learning to drive, and a lot of time spent on theory (including things about distracted driving). They take driving with the seriousness it deserves.

Quite frankly, I am shocked for what passes for a driving test in the US. It is almost as if driving is a joke, or a game. It was really surprising, considering the US is seen as the worlds biggest Car enthusiast.

Maybe they did, and maybe we are the evidence of it? I can imagine a robotic probe that seeds DNA to hospitable worlds is possible, but that would just be the seeding of life, not any society/culture (and evolutionary pressures may well make the resulting beings look very different to the original). I see no difference to claiming life was brought to this earth by comets, space dust or alien robotic spacecraft (except plausibility, but we will never really know)

I guess it depends on what your goals are as a species, an exact copy of your society (unlikely given the distances and opportunities for information exchange), or just knowing that you are seeding the universe with life that may well develop one day.

Remember, we are only getting started with exploration, only in the last 15 years have we started detecting exoplanets. For all we know some of these exoplanets may bear signs of life, we just can't detect it yet.

Heh, my Nokia n900 had an app that did the same thing. Fired off every single "power off" command in its database. Took about a minute and could turn off every electronic device in the vicinity with an IR port.

If it wasn't for the broken usb connector making it impossible to charge, I probably would still use it. Shame most new phones don't have CIR.

Yes, it could be the case that these things may need some time to recharge between blasts, but the advantage is you can have many up in the air at the same time.
So one may only be able to fire every minute, but if you have 20 of them in the air targeting a missile, there is a good chance they will destroy their target.
Unlike manned aircraft, these things have already proven to be able to loiter for hours, so having quite a few in the air at once is possible.

Besides, as energy storage improves, I see no reason why the recharge time won't decrease.

You are making the mistake of assuming that the cold war was fought between lovers of freedom, democracy and individual rights, vs totalitarian all controlling power hungry nut jobs.

Truth of the matter is, both sides were all controlling power-hungry nut jobs, and the cold war was a fight over who gets to be the all-controlling big-daddy of the world.

The problems with the Soviets is that they laid their system bare, they didn't bullshit. This is how life is, these are your rights, if you're a party member, or if you work to benefit the system, you will be rewarded with perks (Nicer houses, cushy jobs , nice car, sometimes even nice German/American ones).
If you don't work for the system, but not actively against it, you are pretty much left to your own devices, live and let live, and all that.
If you work against the system, directly or indirectly (or you piss off someone in power), then you can be arrested, tried, stuck in prison/work camp, or otherwise disappear.

Now the western system, that was far more subtle. They told you you were free, they gave you the impression you were, that you could choose who ruled you, but fundamentally I don't think the systems were different, like so:
If you work for the system, or to its benefits, you are rewarded with more tokens than most (currency) with which you can spend on bigger/nicer houses, or a nice foreign car, etc...
If you ignore the system and go about your daily life, you are pretty much left alone. You earn your keeps, pay your dues, and you live you life.
If you work against the system, directly or indirectly (or just piss off someone high up and well connected), you can be arrested, tried, put in a prison/work camp, or disappeared (via drone or otherwise). For minor misdemeanors they can just destroy you financially, which is another, less radical lever they have against you.

Turns out, when push comes to shove, people are more willing to serve you if you give them the illusion of freedom, choice and power. One ideology was in your face, the other was in the background. Turns out this worked well for a long time, until the internet came around and made knowledge dissipation so easy, that people began to realise what their world really looks like.

For some the revelations were not a surprise, for others it was a confirmation of what they suspected, but some are in shock about it all, and more are in denial about it.

What makes you think drug smugglers have not been doing this? Since the paparazzi autopilot came out in 03 (and got refined by 06), it has been perfectly possible to build a DIY drone good enough to move a few tens of kilo's across borders.

Considering the profit motive, and lucrative money for any nerds involved, it would not surprise me if they were one of the first non-military users of the tech.