The article fails to mention the treatment given to David Nutt by the last Labour government in 2009. At the time, he worked on the Advisory Council on the Misuse Of Drugs, which was meant to be independent of government. Based on their findings, Nutt pushed for the classification of illegal drugs based on actual harm, rather than arbitrarily as it still is now. The ACMD also published about the relative harmlessness of ecstasy and cannabis.

For this heinous crime he was sacked by the then Home Secretary, who said "he was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy."

Not long later, Cannabis was back to being a class B drug after only a few years at class C.

It seems that all governments are anti-scientific when the science contradicts their ridiculous ideologies, especially when it comes to drug policy.

An an aside, I remember the Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown, went on a morning talk show and said, with a straight face, that some strains of cannabis killed people.

People have been saying there's going to be a population crisis since Malthus, and that was nearly 2 centuries ago.

That isn't to say that we have infinite potential for population growth, just that we shouldn't be getting hung up on any particular number as "the limit".

My preferred solution (to this and many other problems) is for humanity to get off this planet and into space colonies around the solar system. To be perfectly honest, I see this as more feasible than trying to stop population growth, which I can't see happening without (or even with) unacceptable coercion.

At the minute, they're locked into a futile game of whack-a-mole. It makes me laugh sometimes; the BPI have more or less veto power over the major ISPs in the UK and all they can do is flail around blocking a few sites and proxies. I imagine some bitter, humourless executive in the bowels of the BPI shaking his fist and screaming "CURSE YOU INTERNET!"

I say they're lucky, as I suspect in five years time they won't even be able to play whack-a-mole. What with censorship by various states, the NSA revelations and increasing authoritarianism, I think the next "generation" of P2P, web and messenger services are going to be anonymous. Tor we all know about, and I notice I2P shows a lot of promise. File sharing will likely be the first breakthrough anonymous application, but I2P supports far more than that and other services will quickly follow.

I think encrypted, anonymous services will essentially be game over for censorship.

I personally think this whole scenario instead proves just how afraid governments are of us.

It somehow reminds me of the Soviet Union, which was so out of touch and terrified of its populace that it used to jail poets and painters. Now the US government is so afraid of its populace that its mining people's fucking Facebook logs and mobile phone conversations.

Your article reminds me of the Randi prize for proof of the paranormal; it really doesn't matter what I say, you sure as fuck aren't going to pay out. I suppose this makes me "SUPERFAIL" (seriously?) in your eyes.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the Miranda warning, specifically:

Note the use of the word against. There is no mention of anything you say being used in your favor. The criminal justice system is adversarial, not co-operative. The state prosecution in a court is there to convict you, it's not there to find out "the truth" and set you free. This works in a sense because eventually in such a scenario guilt or innocence can be proven.

Imagine that person A has been arrested on suspicion of murder. A policeman is currently interviewing him:

Cop: Were you at home after 6pm on April 15th?

Person A: I refuse to answer the question.

Now, in court, *beyond a reasonable doubt* where was Person A? Does it prove he wasn't at home? Of course not.

Without the 5th amendment and the protection it gives, the state would say Person A's refusal to answer the question would indicate he wasn't at home. But that assumption is by no means *beyond a reasonable doubt*. The refusal to answer the question could be used as evidence against you, like it is in some other countries. Yet that provides no information as to your actual whereabouts! It pisses on the burden of proof completely.

The founders of the United States weren't stupid by any means. They wanted to remove the possibility of guilt by mere inference and replace it with guilt based on actual evidence. I'm confused as to why anyone would consider that "unnecessary".

I do wonder if this document is authentic. It looks like it was created by a teenager. Look at the PRISM logo, for example, which looks like it was made on MS Paint. Why are the list of companies bizarrely represented on a graph with one axis?

Also, what about the cost? $20 million a year is nothing. In government, that's probably the total cost to buy a laser printer. I can't imagine a massive data mining operation costing less than a few hundred million a year.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not blindly saying it isn't authentic either. I'm saying it *may* not be authentic. Since we don't really know anything except for newspaper reports based on one very sloppy looking document, I think some skepticism is healthy.

It could also be NSA disinformation of course. Or disinformation from another agency or country! It could be a legit program presented as an unauthentic looking document to spread skepticism!

If it is true, the question is how to stop the bastards from doing it. If it is true, I hope they're as woeful at gathering data as they are at displaying it in Powerpoint presentations.

This doesn't really address the whole issue, but remember that the war on drugs has stopped scientists from being able to conduct research for decades. LSD and Ecstasy both had incredibly promising properties in treating some illnesses, especially in the area of mental health. This was until research was banned by governments around the world. I wonder what sort of illnesses, diseases and conditions we'd have cured today if they hadn't banned it.

It pays to remember that through drug prohibition governments are not just waging a war against the individual's rights, but waging a war against scientific research.

As far as I understand it, the ones that make the real money are hideously rare, like the Nintendo World Championship gold cartridge for the NES.

A full collection makes money because it contains a lot of rare games in among the big sellers. Old console games are inherently collectable as well which helps.

The way to make money out of it would be to identify which games may become collectors items and start buying them up before a real collectors scene for the console starts to appear. The risky bit is they might not rise in value at all - it all depends on how strong the collector market is 10 years in the future.

The author seems quite intent on blaming individuals for what is a structural malaise.

There's money in the kinds of fields the author talks about, and it seems a bit harsh to criticize people for trying to make a living. Agreed, Angry Birds isn't pushing the boundaries of human evolution towards a fairer, more peaceful world, but this isn't the 50's - the teet of government research is drying up through constant cuts and marginalisation. Academia and the public sector doesn't seem to have the clout it used to, and as a result long term humanitarian projects are dying off. The death of the public sector is the real reason we've never gone back to the moon. That's neoliberalism for you.

As for the "underclass" (a word I despise), I've been wondering recently whether we're witnessing the technological trend futurists warned us about; persistently lowering labour requirements. Figures certainly seem to point that way.

Outside of tech and Wall Street, making a living is quickly becoming harder and harder. There simply isn't the amount of work there was forty years ago. We're looking at genuine human tragedy if the situation is not resolved.

I feel the only cure is a guaranteed minimum income. Let us solve all these problems at once, forever.

Agreed, It's essentially a Phyrric victory. We didn't get all worked up about Microsoft back in the day just because it was Microsoft, but because their monopoly threatened the open nature of the PC platform. Now we have a mobile platform with two major players, one of which is closed in a way that Microsoft could only dream of.

Quick, get someone over to the Watergate!

And, I would wager, reasonable, patient, even handed clients (which will be the government, and not the ridiculous assertion as stated in the article that it's the taxpayers). I challenge anyone to look at the Victorian dinosaurs in power in the UK and assume any of those qualities.

That was just a cheap shot at the government, I admit it.

I imagine whatever will run UC on a technical level will just be another government collossus. Their minds are incapable of conceiving or implementing anything else.

I bet they run Linux.

If they followed the lead of other UK burger manufacturers and they used horse meat instead.

Ordinary man just pales in comparison. What a shitty comic that would be.