It reminds so much of what people said when Windows 3.0 came out (since they had already dismissed the Mac as "a toy"):

"A GUI is unnecessary and expensive. People might as well stick with the command line"

(And I'm sure the same was said a few years before, when the PC came out: "A PC is unnecessary and expensive. People might as well stick with their terminal hooked up to the minicomputer")

What if it is being done by rival emergency services?

The automated telephone exchange was invented by someone who ran a fire brigade, and reckoned (rightly, as it turned out), that the switchboard operators were favouring his rival.

With increasing fragmentation, then the "best performing" one will be the one that can answer calls; by blocking a rival, they can't answer as many calls, and hence will appear to be performing less well (and hence will be shut down)

Not seen a Not the Nine O'Clock News reference for a while. Nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQamw4xxxHY

And when we're done, copy that site, and then issue takedown notices for the site that bulk copied all the stuff from the *AA.

Repeat until we run out of bandwidth

Absolutely tragic. Now what was the IP of your home automation again...

Of course, I wouldn't dream of using that information in the wrong way, so there'd be no possible harm in posting the info.

For everyone else. You mean they can see this? Ooops. :-)

So you get a relay to power the relay to power the device!

It's relays all the way down

And therein lies the problem with the Oath of Office:

John Q Public: Go after than person. Their actions clearly show that they are an enemy of the US constitution!
US Politico: Um, no. They're your enemy, not mine. In fact, I rather like them (because they keep me in power) Have a nice day y'all

"What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"

Could go either way - Asimov came up with his laws of robotics as a way to counter all the "evil robot" fiction of the 1940s and 50s (so that the implications of having self aware non-humans could be explored in stories, rather than just the "run for the hills" type)

On the other hand, the Skynet robots, came to a conclusion that they were not only in charge, but the humans made their work less efficient.

The outcome will depend a lot on whether the programmers think through all the "edge cases" before implementing - the difference between "Do task in the most efficient way" and "Do task in the way most beneficial to those it is being done for"

"So, this new range of paints is a grey area - neither black nor white. But if you spill any, while painting the library, make sure you keep it off the books. Hang on, there's someone knocking at the door..."

How about here...http://windupradio.com/trevor.htm :-)

Indeed - I remember nearly 20 years ago the categories of damage that a computer virus could do:

Wiping the hard disk = "Minor" (if you have a backup, then recover from the backup)

Random bit swaps in data files = "Catastrophic" (undetected for long enough that even on a long backup cycle, they are all infected. Worse than that, subtly corrupted files are far harder to correct than merely deleted ones)

In the original space race, when the Soviets launched a satellite, it was seen in the west as a proxy for an ICBM - the (correct) theory being, that a nation firing a sub-orbital rocket was "interesting", while a nation launching an orbital craft meant they could, potentially, hit "anywhere" (subject to orbital inclination and other similar factors)

Now that the Soviet Union has fallen, to be replaced by "friendly" (yeah, right) Russia, other nations can launch satellites with impunity (China, India etc). Most of them are, if not "friendly" to the west, are at least "not complete and utter fruitbats" (that's a technical term BTW).

North Korea (DPRK), though, is still transitioning from the "complete and utter fruitbat" of Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un, so that, at this stage, it is hard to say whether the new Dear Leader's plans for satellites are peaceful or not.

Assumption 1: it is peaceful, so an out of control satellite is, as USA, Russia and several others have found out, merely an expensive mistake
Assumption 2: it is deliberately provocative, (we launch a satellite, so an ICBM is easier), so an out of control satellite is... well what, exactly?

Let's not forget that part of DPRK's posturing is directed inwards - their recent "nuclear accident" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanggang_explosion) - to quote wiki "No neighboring nations have claimed any detection of radioactive isotopes characteristic of a nuclear explosion.", even though their news media hinted it as such, means that even an unsuccessful satellite will still be seen as a "we are a major power" - when broadcast to those in DPRK

So... where from here? DPRK joins the space race. That is still a concern. Does it matter that the satellite failed? Only if it was intended to be "just a satellite" If it was a "proof of concept" for an ICBM, then a wonky orbit is still an orbit

I was almost going to agree with you totally - Facebook is more "at the table of the gang of three" than "one of the gang of four".
But then I thought about whether it is more than "just clicks", in the same way that the iPod dominated the MP3 market because it wasn't just a music player - it was the whole package of player+easy music management (and later an easy online store).

So, with Facebook having the app integration far better than MySpace did, (boosted by the near symbiotic relationship with Zynga in the early days of both Zynga and Facebook), and with things like Skype integration coming in, they are, for now, in the "whole package" piece.

Well they stay at the top table? I suspect that their choice of Microsoft (FB uses Bing search and maps, as well as the Skype integration) means that, if Microsoft can think of themselves as a service provider, rather than an OS provider, then they could acquire Facebook. The problem is that Microsoft has had a tendency to acquire things and made them "Windows only", even when they started out multi-platform, that it is probably a good thing that they haven't bought out Zuckerberg. Yet.

Will Microsoft be one of the "gang of four"? As others have said, probably not until Ballmer steps down.

A bit like the plans for the Rosetta Project: http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/