Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.

There's nothing reasonable about pulling the plug on a national broadcaster, without notice, in the middle of the night, and turfing every employee out unilaterally onto the street. This is industrial relations amateur hour.

The guys in charge of Greece have no idea what they are doing. None whatsoever. The same could be said for most western government. The only things these guys know how to do right is overpay themselves.

No. The change in America following the Sep 11th attacks was only loosely related to previous Cold War policies. America was in many ways demilitarising and advancing throughout the pst Soviet Union 1990s.

Then Sep 11th came, and the USA went into a supercharged spiral of descent, economically, legally, politically and probably culturally. Like a traumatised patient inflicting self harm, the US continues to tear at the fabric of its own national identity in response to the attacks. I don't think it will stop until the patient is dead, or practically so. Madness does not follow reason.

"Now that we know who the enemy is, It is time for America to Act."

Wake me up when they have 4k ones.

If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will?

I can't get angry anymore.

I've spent the last 12 years watching the western world, and my own country in particular, fall apart in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew about the politics and the rule of law has been been invalidated three times over to the point where I can't make beleive anymore.

How can I be angry at an outcome which I knew was inevitable? And outcome produced by a system that is inherently dysfunctional? I may as well become angry at a bird for eating a worm as become angry at the US government for doing what everyone saw coming since 2001. What happens when a government is given arbitrary powers, an eternal enemy, and a compliant judiciary and media? We all know what happens. The government being in the west does not make it different and anyone who ever thought so (I include myself in this) was a fool.

I used to think that eventually, the political class would stoop so low they would hit rock bottom, and the resulting public outrage would sweep them away. I no longer see a logical rock bottom, apart from a return to hunter-gatherer status. I see a slow collapse of the west in general, and the US in particular, along the lines of the Soviet Union, which spent 80 years dying.

In 100 years time, things may be different. But don't expect anger or change in the next 20. Expect decline.

What's the use of turning off an option in a browser made by a company that acts hand in glove with its domestic intelligence agency? How can anyone trust one checkbox in Chrome after this?

No. I'm not even surprised that the newspapers are surprised.

It's obvious that the media is getting its own back for Holder's tapping of AP phones a few weeks back. This is simply a petty power struggle between a pair of jilted political class lovers.

Unfortunately, the populace is stupid, and so we will continue to see such erosion of privacy based upon the flimsiest of disingenuous excuses.

The population is not stupid. But there's only so much ordinary people can do when the entire state, civic, and industrial apperatus has been seized by an essentially criminal class.

Actually, given the outrightly criminal nature of that banking system, this is not an unreasonable suggestion. We already know that the likes of HFT companies regulalry engage in DDoS attacks against exchanges, so the skillset for this kind of work is there.

Why aren't they making the world better the way I think it should be done?!

Because the industrial and economic policies of their governments are shifting them into increasingly valueless industries.

If you are looking at resumes that actually list what /classes/ the candidates took, they probably have zero experience. The other guy who has some actual experience or did some personal project interesting enough to fill the space will get the job.

There's only one solution to a completely corrupt system. Walk away from it. Broshius made the correct decision by leaving the game behind him.

You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. I'll repeat that. You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. There are too many people inside who have spent their lives justifying and profiting from their misdeeds, who are not about to turn over a new leaf or air their dirty laundry because you've made an appeal to their conscience. They killed theirs long ago.

The best thing to do is leave the rotten ship to sink all by itself. Every honest person who stands by a rotten game, or bankrupted bank, or broken political party is just propping up an at best amoral system, and usually an immoral and even illegal one. There is no obligation to stay loyal or remain in solidarity with a disloyal and dishonest organisation.

Broshius has done more for baseball as a law student that he ever could have as a player or a fan.

If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.

I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.

Maybe they're going for the complete casual gaming market here, people who will flick over to Angry Birds or whatever. But even the most passé of run-of-the-mill gamers is going to spend an hour or so playing shooters online, and are not going to be inclined to flip over to daytime TV, or browse the web in the middle of their frag session. I just cannot see this working en masse.

Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.

If reporters come to understand that the administration came after them on a fishing expedition, which is what this was, they will not be happy.

Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.