Company Spokesman: Surely you don't think it's our fault.

Company Spokesman: Especially if it's going to cost us money.

Now I can upgrade the Man v. Neanderthal first-person stabber that I've been working on to a first-person thrower.

Let's be totally honest, and call it what it is. The system only works as long as people believe it's stable. We're doing the same thing Japan did. We know exactly what happens when you do this. It works for awhile. Then it's over.

Usually we don't discuss these things until they appear on the Bad Astronomy blog.

As a practical matter, it's criminal when a court says it is. Meanwhile we've just got another story on the internet.

I don't know about that. Right now all we have is the plaintiff's word for it that proper protocols weren't followed. They admit there was a warrant.

Let's get some facts before we jump to conclusions. If we have a story everytime someone cries foul, there won't be enough bandwidth for anything else.

Now if someone gets convicted, or slapped with a zillion dollar fine, then we'll have a story.

Maybe they confiscated the disk drive.

Let us know when you have the other side of the story.

Hard to say. When I read 1984 as an adult, it feels more like a dissertation about the rules of language, than a plausible future that could actually happen. I mean, he goes into some incredible depth about the way language works, what it's used for, and why the people in power wish to control it. As far as the playbook... the playbook is as old as time. The reason why 1984 is so jarring is because this is the way governments behave.

Thought crime is an interesting angle though, granted, but it's not that much of a leap from the things that are happening now. We have it now in the Western World, but nobody seems to have a problem with it. We live in an age where saying the wrong thing on the internet at all can land the cops at your door, even if what you said online isn't illegal. I've seen this first hand. It's happened to me.
 
The argument I always hear is that communication on the internet is an act of speech. But it's clearly not. It's an act of thought. Speech is a very specific thing.
 
Everything that happens on the internet is a thought. If it were speech, people would treat it differently. And if you want to skew it that way, you could make a fairly convincing argument that thought crime is already here, and that the government is actively monitoring the thoughts of billions of people right now. Not only that, but they're seeking even more power to monitor your devices. And, as you know, those devices are heading inward. Literal thought crime might only be a few years away.

You forgot to mention the girls.

What most people want is a place where they can have everything and do anything, and not suffer any negative consequences.

Some idealists apparently aren't aware that Utopia means "nowhere".

LoL

Assuming it works like it does in the USA.

I've long noticed that ants seem to have a predilection for electricity. They crawl all over electrical conduits, enter homes at electrical outlets, etc.