The IRA put bombs in pubs and Burger Kings, with nothing resembling a "warning" issued and with there being little point in planting them unless the aim was to kill civilians, primarily or secondarily.

Frankly I'm tried of hearing people on this side of the Atlantic give them a pass simply because they were made up predominantly of Christians and because their cause is sympathetic. They were (and the remaining pockets who've continued to fight since the peace agreements of the 1990s still are) murderous thugs. At best, you can argue they weren't as lethal, with fewer people killed and with no attempt to drag in unrelated countries into their bitter dispute. But yes, as a Brit living in Britain for the first 25 years of my life, there was a target on my back - not as big as it was for soldiers, police, and everyone from construction workers to bankers considered by some arbitrary definition to be helping the British in Northern Ireland, but it was there.

As per ISO 3166, the correct two-character code for that country is GB, not UK. The TLD ought to match.

Unfortunately, changing *.uk to *.gb would be about as easy as the IPv6 switchover...

This led to clever people developing submachine guns.

Give it a couple decades and you'll be able to download plans for your own battlebot and then create it on your printer

so, what's your point?

if someone is going to fight you, and you can afford to put out a robot to fight them instead of your own flesh and blood, are you saying we shouldn't do this?

robots killing robots

wars settled in a clash of machinery without any humans for miles around

With mine I can transfer money. However, it's protected way beyond a simple password. I need a "random reader": a simple device that accepts my debet card, requires my PIN and gives me back the one-time key to even see my details. When signing a transaction I need to give the PIN, a one-time key from the webpage and the amount of money before the comma (probably to prevent hijacking).
  I feel quite safe with that.

Unfortunately, the Mars Landing will never take off under the combined weight of tea baggers, so no reason to party yet.

I mean, seriously, why do you care if Earth becomes another Venus?

My twin nieces, Ruby and Winnie. My nephews Leo and Max.

Sorry to appeal to emotion, but I find your attitude a little cold, a little remote, a little shitty.

Every country has a list somewhere of people that they want dead. Every. Last. One. And what's wrong with them being public? Would it be more ethical and moral if they were private? What's really going on here is your idea of democracy is this utopian society where everyone is nice to each other and because it's so wonderful nobody would ever want to kill another person. The only place like that is North Korea. Everywhere else strives for balance between freedom and security. And even if a perfect utopia were to emerge in the world, it would be standing shoulder to shoulder with dystopias wanting nothing more than to pull it down to their level.

Non-violence is a virtue; It's something to strive for. It's not something that has ever, or likely will ever be, obtainable. Not by large groups of people. Not by governments.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration summarizes October 2012:

Emphasis added. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. That’s beyond astonishing....

Maps and the full article are here.

If the prospective editor can't use mark-up, what does that tell you about their overall intellectual ability? Keep Wikipedia great, full of high-quality articles by intellectuals -- disallow visual editing.

If by "leading the way" you mean "stigmatizing bike riders as too poor to own a car", then you're right. I see about 1-2 people per month wearing spandex, which means they're riding recreationally. The rest are working poor...to be looked down upon, in the same way that normal Americans look down on rural residents.

Actually, I may be wrong, but the way I see it, the Saudi government is actually rather progressive, for a Muslim nation. The King has pushed for many reforms there. The problem isn't the government, it's the people themselves: they're mostly a bunch of lunatics.