I get horrified by the number of times I come across "magic black boxes" (usually Unix) that are an integral part of some financial system but literally nobody knows what they do or how they do it cos' all the support staff have been laid off over the years without anyone being trained in the obsolete POS...

You're right. 1984 didn't have anywhere near as many cameras...

You know how there's often a recycling bin near normal vending machines for cans/wrappers etc? There's your clue.

And the chances of a discreet camera being fitted either in or near the machine are...?

And the list of occasions when someone has involved the police to correct a wrong done to them, only to find the jackboots of the PD crashing down on them because it's easier than tracking tha actual criminal just keeps growing. I thank Glub that I live in a country where they don't regularly hand out a tool whose only purpose is to kill other human beings to any no-thumbs whose greatest qualification is being able to tie their own jackboots...

I'm sorry but my brain keeps confusing Ron Paul with Ron Jermy... it does make political discussions more amusing though...

And I suppose the forced abortions for violating the policy are just stories made up by counter-revolutionaries to make the Great Leader look bad?

In my first year of Aero Engineering we had an Electronics lecturer whose Scots accent was so thick we could barely understand him and his handwriting was totally illegible. Our entire class has to have their exams re-examined by someone else and in the end our marks had to be doubled to achieve something approximating a reasonable grade curve. And yet he was still teaching the next year...

You assume WE love the US. The love is long gone, the "special relationship" only endures because we're afraid the US will find us even if we go to a Battered Countries refuge...

Borderlands 2 is so much more fun co-op than single player - my wife and I played B1 seperately but decided to go through B2 together. Sh likes the close-in Siren, I snipe as teh Assassin. The nearest we get to arguments is, entertainingly, in the driving sections where she doesn't appreciate my habit of using the shortest route possible no matter what that involves driving over/off...

Money's not the only motivator to go to work but it's the deal breaker. And if i could earn 80% of my salary by sitting on my arse working on personal projects then I'd go for it.

A simpler solution - shoot all the lawyers.

Yeah, sure. Pretty much any people with more religious indoctrination than education are dangerous savages wo are likely to respond to anything that challenges their narrow world-view with violence. Same sh1t, different flavour.

When I was unemployed there were so many companies using New Deal to get basically slave labour. Such delights as a 26-week "training course" that involved 35 hours a week of night shifts for £10 a week on top of your JSA... to qualify to be a forecourt attendant... Basically the company getting someone to do the graveyard shifts for a pittance who couldn't afford to quit or they'd be reported for non-compliance and lose ALL their benefits.

And then you have a prima facie case to drag the whole sorry mess before an ECHR court whose judges just love to piss from a great height on national policies...