me. I do. I could play all kinds of games to get out of the 40% rate I pay on half my salary. But I'd rather the NHS got it, than a private healthcare system I sponsored with my avoided spend on tax. Because thats better for me? No. Because that's better for the country I live in and the the one my daughter will grow up in? Yes.

Not the point for me. I have a 12 year old daughter. We both search the web. I don't want hardcore porn turning up in her or my results while browsing the web on the living room machines, as if for no reason other than it would be hugely embarrassing.

I'm both liberal and realist. She'll see it. But some of it really isn't for public viewing, right? So not censorship, just better user control. For all involved

You're shitting me?!

resource sharing. Car drives you and maybe a neighbour and a couple of others on the way to work. Then makes a parcel drop from your work to elsewhere, from there taxis someone to a doctors apt...
With complex routing software, cities especially could become far more efficient, yet still very convenient (unlike much human driven public transport). It can help with congestion too. Much of todays gridlocks come from behaviours of humans that can be suppressed and overcome in machine. Forcing clean flow. Also mix them in amongst human traffic and the human traffic starts obeying these cleaner flows. I suspect if we ever get to ~10% automated, we se a massive reduction in traffic jams and accidents amongst human driven cars.

I'm confused. Do you think I'm religious?

no. This is not analogous to publicly questioning religion. Although it may be similar to making highly offensive (to believers) remarks in a crowded mosque. This 'joke' was posted on a facebook page dedicated to the search for (now the body) of this little girl. The intention could not be to convey anything other than offense. You could not expect the vast majority of the audience reading it to appreciate any intended 'humour'.

Do I think it should be illegal to go into a mosque and loudly, grossly defame the Islamic belief and culture. Yes. It would be dangerous (why it is dangerous is a different matter). Do I think it should be illegal to publicly express your disbelief, another belief, your reasons for not liking the belief.... No. If the guy who wrote this wrote it on his own wall, who cares. If he publicly stated he didn't care about the girl's wellfare. Again, he'd just have a very small very strange bunch of friends at the end of the day. But by targeting those who would be most offended, he has performed a criminal act. Government don't decide on what can be said and what can not. The legal system (including a jury of peers) does decide on how it was said, and if it was intended as an expression, or intended simply to grossly offend. Again, I see this as 'right'.

If you were the father of this child, I'd say this could very easily insight terrible actions of violence.

The UK has excellent freedom of expression. We can mock our leaders and authority figures without much care at all. "inalienable" seems to be the problem in the the US. Freedom of speech being "inalienable" gives it an air of absoluteness. But its a subjective term. How different is telling this joke to her father, to yelling fire in a theatre. Its dangerous to do so. Even if you forget the very real hurt it would cause, even if the father/relative/whoever didn't react? "inalienable" means it can't be taken away. But "it" is subjective. Freedom to get one's point across is one thing. Freedom to hurt another while doing so (or while not even conveying anything meaningful) is another.

Then block it. Or stop using facebook. But it sure as hell won't be the only reminder. Or the 'worst'. I refer you to my earlier post on how precious a late loved one's FB account can be. FB could be smarter bout reminders, but I've found it by far the most considerate info holder of my wife's (in this respect). It allows you to register the profile as being of someone who has died, with very little fuss, many nice touches happened. E.g. She's still in my friends list, but if I start typing her first name in a post, it won't auto suggest it. This is a very nice touch indeed. Very considerate. Where as the local government might send me a form requiring her signiture to confirm she's no longer requiring service X. Srsly. Despite being told why we needed to cancel. And having multiple other similar notifications. She still gets more mail than me. Every day... So no, I don't agree with this.

I can't tell you how important my late wife's facebook account is to me. It is betond money. I realize I'm not 'entitled' to it. And that one day it will die too. Maybe at the hands of a troll (they already hacked her twitter acc to do pharma spam). Or a data center outage. Or a change in policy. Whatever. Nothing is for ever.

But for the time it is there, it is greater than any scrap book, photo album or other personal treasure. Neither of us care greatly about advertisers using the data. It is a detailed, personal record of the happiest time I'm ever likely to have. So deletion would not get my vote! If it were deleted I would certainly want to download a copy first. I know I'm not entitled to it, but again, it's what I'd want...

what should a brilliant jerk do with a start up might be the real question. If they're brilliant, it will probably be up to them in reallity.

but it's not behind. It has grown. Ahead of the market. It's waiting there for the market. The market is what is slow (comparatively) here. I have a Google Nexus One, running Android 2.2. Some years old now. It is still a miraculous little tool. I have no need to upgrade. In fact I have an iPhone4 and never (literally, other than to check what it did) used it. The iPhone is heavier, shorter on battery life, and I can't swap out the battery and so carry multiple with me. I regularly use my 'old' Android for sat nav, playing mp3s when working, buying music, streaming music to my livingroom media player, controlling my TV and media player on my media box, finding places, finding new places, taking pics and video (many hours worth), checking Facbook, looking shit up, playing games, reading books, as a recipe book, as a cooking timer, as a third screen when coding, and as a dog training tool, a torch, texting and phoning. And skyping. And a tape measure. And translation device, spell checker, wireless keyboard and trackpad for my media playing pc, and internet radio player. In car media player and hands free device. And wifi hotspot provider for when I'm out and about with my laptop.

But I'm not a power user! I don't need the 8 cores on the latest devices, to do all that at once - and screen in screen video playback for multi tasking that await in Jelly Been. I'm not sure I know anyone who does. The only thing I ever wanted that it didn't have was host mode for USB, so I could control robots with it via micro usb. But I never have time for that anyway...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Use_of_misleading_language My point: Use of objective, scientific terminology falsely affords a veracity to a given subject, in many pseudosciences. Scrum, in this sense, could be described as a pseudo science. The storypoint is not an objective unit. But velocity, in common parlance, is. You see a graph (a quantity/value based representation) of a scrum's 'velocity' and you have a certain warm feeling of empirical certainty/reliability. That something here was measured. But a storypoint is a quality not a quantity. The graph is meaningless. And I mean entirely meaningless. And it misleads the audience. Making them think quantitative facts have been reported. When actually subjective assertions have been manipulated and described in a quantifiable context. This is irresponsible. But gives the impression of being highly responsible. It misleads.

I no longer consider any manager to be 'professional' if they get so dogmatic and process obsessed that they underline the word 'must' before asserting the need for a given practice or methodology. What you describe here is a soulless, creativity sapping mess of ass covering. It will not make better software, but simply reduce the attack surface of you in the boardroom/excecs' meetings (I've been dev, lead dev, Arch, Lead Arch of 30 devs, CTO and owner - if that makes any difference). It helps justify larger teams. It helps eat precious time. It helps track nonsense constructs, such as 'velocity' (please - as a physicist this term misuse makes me want to commit violence - what are the units of a scrum's velocity exactly?). It helps do many things, but not make better software more productively.

only those who get caught, get heard.

My wife passed this year. And in reality, its not this simple. The first issue here is that dealing with court orders is the last thing you want to be doing. Your head is a mess. A real big mess. The question here is a great one. How do you make it easy, is the point. What you suggest sounds easy. But in practice, I promise, it's not.

And its not just legal documents you want access to. It's a friend's email address, or a recipe for her favourite cake. Even if you can get a court order to do this, would you?

This is a digital problem with a complex human coating. I want to hear the solution to the question asked, as asked. I don't have the answer.