It's going to suck mightily for them if unlimited data plans go the way that unlimited home broadband plans are, and if the end of network neutrality makes it possible to charge extra for packets exchanged with a site owned by a company that hasn't signed some kind of deal with your ISP. That cloud stuff's not going to seem so neat when a user has to pay extra fees just to use basic features of their devices.

Correct - the laws of physics do not enforce or encode any ethics or morals, only cause and effect. Sentient lifeforms can create those rules as they develop their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, and the effect their actions have upon it.

Reality will operate as it does - meanwhile, we can choose to act better toward each other, and toward other lifeforms. No one will judge us but us - now, how would you like to be viewed by our descendants, or the descendants of other, possibly sapient organisms?

If dolphins have rights, we won't be able to use them in genetic experiments to make them smarter.

We could ask if individuals would like to participate, but that requires a form of descriptive, common communication between hominids and delphinids, which in and of itself could be a worthy project, and certainly a prerequisite to seeking consent for a genetic manipulation project.

Perhaps the capability to perceive intelligence and self-awareness in other lifeforms should also invoke a responsibility to treat other lifeforms as we would wish to be treated.

Think about it - if there were an intelligent predator that used us as lunch, and the relationship was stable, how would you wish to be treated by that lifeform prior to consumption?

I'm one of those nuts that thinks we need to treat our brain-possessing food sources much better anyway, and that we can choose to act better than we do.

What's scary about recognizing the right of other lifeforms to be treated with dignity and respect, anyway? Much of our intellectual evolution concerned refraining from doing things we are perfectly capable of doing, or developing more ethical methods of doing things; this is no different, in my view.

Get your relatives copies of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World".

Honesty.

...ok, you know there is a difference between a lockout and a strike, right? The employer initiates a lockout, the workers/bargaining unit initiates a strike.

So you're saying the plant management should be declared terrorists? I just want to make sure I, and possibly you, understand what you're typing.

Am I the only person outside of South Africa who wasn't annoyed with the sound of vuvuzelas? CBC seemed capable of keeping them low, but audible, in the live mix.

That said, disabling game functions strikes me as preferable to draconian DRM schemes that end up causing unnecessary frustration for paying players.

Wake me when there is independent confirmation of this claim reported somewhere other than arXiv.

I once read of a fictional solid rocket motor design that used small fuel pellets fed into a combustion chamber instead of a big ol' rubbery chunk of fueI to allow for restart capability, among other things. Not being a rocket scientist, I'm unable to perceive the technological and physical obstacles to building such a system, but I do wonder if such a system is possible.

if the student does know that the test will be drawn from a publicly available pool of questions, and that therefore many other students will be looking at it beforehand, it only makes sense to even out the playing field by looking for oneself.

Playing field... as if this were a zero-sum game or something, which I suppose it might very well be if the students are graded on a curve. I went to a postsecondary institution that, at the time, appeared to discourage such grading practices; top-flight work was graded as such, regardless of how many students managed to accomplish it.

Sure, the system is broken, but when it's a person's future prospects we're talking about, can we really blame them for not being the one to stand up and try to fix it when they know they have a near 100% chance of failure?

Welcome to my frustration. Don't worry, after the revolution the socialist meritocracy will solve everything. And give you a pony.

Not to cheat on a test, no. I guess using practice questions to test their own understanding of the material prior to the actual test is too much to hope for, though if someone's willing to engage in boring rote memorization of an answer key, why not make the job even easier and actually try to understand enough of the subject to do well on a test without trying to recall, under pressure, which letter is the correct one?

Goodness, if you're not in school to learn, get out. If employers demand a university degree without actually being concerned about the quality of that credential, that just means our educational and labour assignment structures need serious improvement, not that it's OK to cheat on a test for the sake of getting a degree demanded by employers, whether it means a damn thing or not. Frankly, the increasing emphasis on postsecondary credentials as unnecessary qualifications for jobs is a symptom of too much reliance on automation in hiring processes (goodness forbid enough people should be employed to actually go through resumes; let's just scan for keywords and names!), along with the belittlement and delegitimization of non-institutional education and skills development. Goodness, does every paper-pusher and junior account executive need an MBA? Don't even get me started on the subject of social service agencies that worry more about the presence of the letters "BSW" or "MSW" in a resume than whether the person can actually handle working with people in crisis, without sufficient time or resources, on a daily basis, as that's something I hear about at home on a regular basis.

There must be a better way.

I'm not sure what to make of your equivalence between a minimum of support for those who don't possess property and resources, and the profligate waste and destruction of property and resources.

Elements of this make me think of the Anarchist Free University.

I doubt these will replace established institutions, but instead complement them and bring advanced education to communities that might otherwise treat expanded knowledge as something to suspect, even suppress.

Wow. I feel like I'm reading a summary from 2000 to, say, 2003, during the good ol' days of emergency patches for zero-day IIS holes and Outlook Express-exploiting worms.

Thanks for the memories, MS. Apple may one day produce bigger security holes, but you did it with pathetic panache and stack-smashing style.

Those were the days...