Star Trek had degenerated into some candy ass soap that was one step up from a cross between Guiding Light and the Teletubbies. These new movies are a definite improvement... less hippie love and more nasty. But our heroes are still stepping out of space shuttles onto planetoids and alien planets that for some strange reason always have a breathable atmosphere, earth gravity and no hostile micro organisms their immune systems are unfamiliar with... And why do they need space ships if Khan can beam himself accross hundreds of light years to the Klingon home world? Ahhhhh... The joy of science fiction (mostly fiction but with a pinch of science sprinkled on top for total realism).

What makes you think that socialized/national health insurance system is any different from any other health insurance mechanism? If you have private health insurance, and this insurance company does not explicitly state in it's insurance agreements that alcoholism, smoking, drug use and the afflictions these things cause are not covered by the insurance policy then you are already paying for the treatment of people who wilfully ruined their body. Sometimes it can also be difficult to prove that a disease was caused by some habit rather than by something else and totally unrelated. Many health insurance policies cover at least some form of treatment for things like this, for example, for addicts to help them quit the habit. Of course this varies between companies and countries. The question of whether alcoholics with cirrhosis of the liver, drug addicts or smokers with terminal lung cancer should get medical care in a socialized system is a difficult topic. Are we really comfortable with people like this being thrown into the street to die? There is a question here about compassion and basic human decency, you might want to consult your bible on that subject. I'm an atheist myself but as I recall Jesus Christ had some very thought provoking and insightful things to say about compassion.

Don't tempt me, my other favorites would be those rolling block Remingtons or a falling block Sharps single shot rifles. This thing was on offer, I like oddballs and nobody wanted it because: "ya'know ya might run into a deer one day and need to pump five shots into it with yer bolt action repeater" ... anyway the price was right and I bought it.

Yup, true dat. I bought a single shot German break-action rifle and every once in a while when I take it to the range somebody comes over for a look (sometimes they even mistake my KB for a shotgun) and then criticises me for not buying a bolt action repeater. I usually reply by asking them how many shots they feel are optimally optimally needed to take down one deer. I only do target shooting but even I know that the answer is one shot, two at the most if something goes very wrong and for a rapid second shot I'm better off with a double rifle than a 5 shot bolt action repeater since semi automatic rifles are forbidden here except for shooting at paper targets and getting caught hunting with a semi auto rifle can get your firearms license revoked for a loooooong time.

And proud of it...

Dynamite is indiscriminate, it kills a whole lot of other animals that you don't eat, explosives can harm species like whales that are important apex predators and who rely upon hearing for hunting, if the explosive sinks low enough it can ruin the features on the lake/ocean bottom that are important fish habitat which has already happened through the over-use of ocean bottom trolling nets in many places and it has ruined fisheries to the point where people have begun to sink artificial reefs to try and restore stocks, basically the list over why this is a bad idea goes on ... and on ... and on. Fishing with dynamite is about as intelligent as slaughtering your cows with an RPG.

Sounds like something from an episose of red Red Dwarf.

Humans are not carnivores either they are omnivores. It is one of the secrets of our evolutionary success. If it looked like it could possibly be edible humans would try to eat it. Humans have even developed methods for making otherwise toxic fruit, vegetables and meat edible that are so complex it make you wonder how they figured them out in the first place. If you try to subsist only on a diet of meat you will start feeling some effects just like if you go vegan without supplements. The first one is probably going to be scurvy unless you start eating your meat raw or rather rarely cooked and start eating parts of the animal that are normally not eaten by modern westerners but that contain vitamins such as certain internal organs, eyeballs, spinal fluid (you suck it out of the spine like a straw) and the skin. Of course these would have to be eaten raw or cooked very rare since too much cooking will break down the vitamins. Are those fruits and vegetables starting to look good yet? And before you answer keep in mind that raw or rarely cooked meat can contain some nasty parasites.

Guillotine 1.0 for disposal of feudalistic workgroups.

Apparently you encrypt an iOS device when you enable the pass code option. The default pass code is numerical and is only 4 digits, which is very weak. You can activate a 'pass phrase' option that gives more security but the pass phrase should be at least 12 characters long. An 8 char password can, for example apparently be cracked (brute forced presumably) in under 2 hours. Since the iPhone defaults to a 4 digit numerical code I don't suppose cracking 98% of these devices will be terribly hard. However, as always, it appeals far more to the Apple haters here to jump to the conclusion that iOS devices phone home to Apple and send them your encryption keys and pass phrases in clear-text. I am not so sure about that myself, I know of a criminal case where a FileVault image was sent to Apple for decryption but they returned after a while saying that their people had failed to crack it.

Google makes money by facilitating access to property that youtube users want the public access. Youtube is a facilitator, Google earns money off the leechers that youtube user's content attracts and in return youtube users get to publish stuff for free to a much larger audience than they could otherwise easily attract without without paying up significant amounts of money. That's what scientists call a mutualistic relationship since both participants benefit, not a parasitic one as you are rather snidely implying. Google is not a charitable organization, Youtube has massive overheads, Google is under no obligation to operate Youtube at a loss as a public service for your benefit. If they are pissed off at Microsoft showing Youtube content without ads and providing a download button they can block all Windows Mobile OS users. This raises some interesting questions though because Firefox, for example, has several Youtube download plugins and a whole slew of adblocker plugins available. Will Google also block Firefox users? I installed Ghostery on my Safari browser and I could install an adblocker if I wanted to. Will Google block all Mac and iOS users as well?

Ok, firstly the Stasi is history so don't try to smear it all over contemporary issues to make some sort of point that only makes sense to a neo-cnoservative mind, there are very few people here who watch FoxNews or whatever the German equivalent of that sewage pump may be for any other purpose than to amuse themselves. Secondly, if you are going to accuse the German state of gross privacy violations name concrete examples (read: more than one) and provide details.

According to this:

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/buying-guide.html

If you have CS3 or later (which I have) I get a creative cloud subscription for $29.99, which apparently includes most if not all the junk you listed. If I upgrade my CS5.5 boxed PS version to CS6 I have to shell out around GBP 300 (USD 464.49). That's the equivalent of about 15 months of the package you listed above at USD 29.99 per month. At $50 per month it's about 9 months worth of subscribing. If the Singe app subscription costs $19.99 it works out to 23 months. All of this assumes that Adobe won't be charging overseas customers significantly more than US customers as they normally do, or that customers in certain regions are just shit out of luck because Adobe rejects any credit cards issued by banks outside of Adobe's "approved market regions" as they have done for years in their web store. You are right in that there is a lot of value in the subscription pack but here comes the rub: I only need Photoshop, I don't need the rest of that junk anymore than I was willing to subscribe to a package of 25 TV channels just so I could watch Game of Thrones on the single one of those channels that had the exclusive broadcasting rights in my country.

Adobe? Making a money grab? I'm SHOCKED!!!

You are obviously not an overseas customer of the Adobe corporation. Not that Adobe customers in the US aren't getting ripped off too, they just get ripped of a bit less. Presumably this is because they can more easily form a gigantic angry mob, drive down to Adobe HQ with torches and pitchforks and burn it down. Adobe needs to keep them teetering on the edge of snapping without actually tipping them over the edge.