That's fine so long as you understand the tradeoff you are advocating.

It will likely involve an increased amount of crime, terrorism and money spent on resources to tackle the aforementioned problems. I don't know how much of an increase we're talking about.

On the flip side, it will be harder for the government to snoop on its citizens. Again, I'm not sure how much harder it'll actually be.

Personally, I'd rather risk some unwanted government snooping (there will always be some bad apples) compared to the risk of crime and terrorism groups gained a foothold. The former is a potential attacker. The latter is a guaranteed attacker. The former provides some form of transparency. The latter provides none.

I don't believe that you can have it both ways. I see this as choosing the lesser evil.

In an ideal world, individuals would use encryption that would protect their privacy from the run-of-the-mill attacker but not from the government.

The public backlash to such a model is the result of people not trusting their government (and by extension the police).

Tackle the lack of trust and these problems go away. This is a social problem, not a technical one.

Why stop there? How about click-to-play for Javascript?

My point is that Javascript, Java and Flash are meant to run in a sandbox. They are all equally vulnerable to such bugs.

This just in: Human beings contribute to global warming by breathing. UN officials have set out strict breathing quotas. Anyone surpassing these limits will be persecuted by the International Criminal Court.

I've got another one for those of you trying to lose weight: if it tastes good, it must be bad for you. Just put it down. If it tastes bad, it's probably good for you. Eat more!

The main reason I avoid IE is the user interface. It's behind the times with respect to end-user usability and developer tools.

I think the community would make more headway if Global Warming didn't imply warming. On a personal level, I've experience plenty of "screwed up weather" in the past couple of years (more often too cold than too hot). If the the term was used to justify extreme weather in general would people would jump on board.

Granted, this argument has little to do with science.

I stand corrected. So we've moved the timeline back to 1997 then. Thanks for pointing this out (I honestly didn't remember).

Reaching you and reaching the mainstream community/media is not the same thing.

He was, but he didn't trigger the concept reaching the mainstream in 2006.

No need for profanity.

In my personal experience, there was no "substantial interest" in global warming before the movie. No one was talking about it. I never heard about it once in the news or mainstream documentaries in the preceding 20 years.

It might have been all over the place for people looking for it, but it wasn't mainstream in the sense that same sense that search engines didn't pick up popularity before Google came on the block (there were plenty of them before Google but your parents didn't ever mention their name).

Global Warming isn't a rational/scientific debate. If it was, the idea wouldn't have taken off as a result of Al Gore's film. That's not science, it's a popularity contest.

I'm not debating whether the science is there or not. I'm simply pointing out that the idea of Global Warming didn't take off because of the science. And Karmashock is right in saying that when in doubt (there is contradicting evidence for or against some event being caused by Global Warming) the Global Warming crowd goes nuts when people dare to question it. You need to be able to admit that not everything is caused by Global Warming.

Science is not well served by shouting down people who disagree with you. It's served by providing evidence to back up your claims and explaining why your opponent's claims are factually incorrect. Labeling people skeptics without actually proving them wrong is counterproductive.

You forget that the only reason there are Arabs in the Middle East is because they invaded and massacred everyone else en-mass. How is *that* not imperialistic?

The Arabs of the Middle-East have no more claim to the land than anyone else. They are no less imperialistic than anyone else. The people living in Egypt are not really Egyptians. The real Egyptians (copts) are actively persecuted by the ruling Arabs. The same is true is virtually all other Middle-East countries.

Okay, no problem. It's all our fault. Sorry for our ignorant imperialist way. Sheesh.

Hint: There were no drone attacks in Syria nor US support for the rebels when Assad's own people tried to rebel against him and he proceeded to gas them. When we attempted to help them, you labeled us "imperialistic pigs". So you know what? Damned if we do. Damned if we don't.

The Syrian rebellion is not one cohesive group. You can hardly fault us for trying to help the original group only to have some of the arms fall into the harms of an extremist group that overpowered them.

What's the alternative, Sudan? Where millions of people get raped, the world cries injustice and nothing gets done because we don't want to interfere? Please. Give me a break.

No matter what the West does or does not do someone somewhere will find a way to blame us. They just shove it and take personal responsibility for what *is* their fault. Drone attacks might not be their fault, but flocking en-mass to Islamic extremist groups is. They are doing this all over the Middle-East with or without West intervention.

At what point do Middle-Eastern people begin to take some responsibility for their own problems? There is plenty of introspection going on in the West. There is none going on in the Middle-East. You'd have us believe that everything that is going wrong with those countries has to do with the West. I very much doubt that. I daresay a good part of their problems have to do with their own decisions.