the Foreign Office, State Department, Kremlin, etc. are opened to researches, the whole history section, probably, would have to be re-written.

make a fence unnecessary.

It defines the social border, the socially accepted line.

Crossing this line involves a reaction from the society, which wants to defend its norms.

If I were an Australian General Prosecutor I would suggest 2 -3 years of imprisonment to these group of young researches so that the next time they would think twice before forging public transportation tickets.

On the October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg the paper with 85 theses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

Just one paper.

It started the Reformation and the most destructive war in Europe, the Thirty Years' War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War

Up to 75% of the population of Germany was killed in this war. Immeasurable suffering and desolation. Armies were annihilated. All because of one piece of paper written by a countryside monk.

What I meant is that information from monitoring is collected and reviewed by certain people. Yes, they work for a government, but people do wear a lot of caps.

For example, we know of an extreme case, when a military officer send a CD with a sensitive information to WikiLeaks.org

But the same may happen with one's data from monitoring. It can be sent not only to a government via an official channel, but to a local mob, to political extremists, it can get just to a crazy person from physical people, who do happen to work for the government.

This is the problem.

It is the same with "saving the planet". We are to save human society, the planet and life will go on in any case. It is always about people.

Countries or governments do not monitor. These are people who monitor other people.

You have not been in Moscow for a while. Here it is: http://www.moninoaviation.com/g6a.html

International Committee of the Red Cross was created in Geneva, Switzerland, http://www.icrc.org/ by Henry Dunant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant and other nice people.

Geneva Conventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions were accepted, well, in Geneva.

It is sort of a good serious place.

Actually GIMP 2.8.2 is quite good. I work with it almost daily.

So many stars and still that Great Silence. Not a single, not even remotely meaningful signal.

When one looks at ancient neolithic art on stones or on animal bones, a meaningfulness, an intelligence is immediately visible. Not a slightest doubt when one sees it.

But billions of stars and not a single radio message. Not even a more or less complicated rhythm. Just background noise.

Could it be that we see sort of a mirage?

Fibre is from plastic. It is similar to a fishing line. Not like copper cable, which is very expensive.

Yes, vinyl disks are still in use. And CDs too. But I would say the standard is MP3 and the likes. The same is about dial up, ADSL, and fiber optic.

Why to worry about, say, vinyl disks' issues? 45 or 33 rpm, nobody really cares, except some connoisseurs of retro.

By 2014 a fiber-optic Internet access will be a norm, and the question of bandwidth will be irrelevant.

We do not have dial-up now, do we?

There are ERP (enterprise resource planning) where this issue is solved. For example, www.openerp.com

Outlook has to be installed on a computer, but a web-based application dose not.

A web-based application works in Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome, etc., on desktops, laptops, net-books, Linux boxes, etc.

No need for an army of tech-support boots on the ground. N need to care about hardware which users use. Use whatever you want, just know your login and password.

If one need a graphics' editor, - go ahead install what you need.