I for one am happy that law enforcement is finally figuring out how to apply traditional police work to the internet successfully. It's the good old-fashioned sting made digital.

You've got to be kidding! The way to make grilling fun is to get good results, and that means understanding what you're doing. I use an app called BB Meat Master which has an odd name and looks basic but the info on it is absolute gold and I haven't grilled a steak wrong since. You can spend $100 on a wireless something or other or you can spend $1 on an app. Your choice!

So far the UK government has managed to do 0% of the things it says it will do, so I fully expect these measures to go precisely nowhere. Of course they'll annouce several monumenatally draconian and ineffective policies that they will later backtrack on before allowing this initiative to fade away.

Absolutely, however I suspect they may run into durability issues.

Why re-invent the wheel, just skin a few politicians.

One of the secrets of the internet's massive success is the lack of controls over it; if there had been strict security and processes in place it would likely not have come about. One of the downsides is that all our security measures are tacked-on, there is no built-in security to the protocols used on the internet and as a result security is a massive problem. How do we go from the wild west to having at least a reasonable level of trusted computing?

If I could keep my physical shape and my marbles I would see running out of things to do to keep busy as a problem. To combat that I would expect to see 95 year olds going back to University, and people having extremely varied careers like being a doctor, then an engineer, then taking 10 years out to lay bricks. The question I would have is would it work? Given that the one thing I would like to do in my life is to explore another planet and the technology to do that is centuries away, would I feel fulfilled with my life? I'd like the chance to find out!

As a parent I'd be more worried about my kid being targeted for being smart than stupid. Maybe in addition to a nice bracelet they should give the good scorers Jujitsu classes as well so they can protect themselves from the jocks.

Exactly, it's circular. People like what they hear so execs give us more of it to the point that's all we ever get. The same thing's happening with hollywood, nobody is willing to go off formula so we are getting the same movie formulas all the time.

There are 2 ways to look at these results. One is that out of all the music produced this formula is what the majority of people want to listen to, or it could be that this is what the record companies flog us because it's what they think we want to hear. Either way this is all that bands will be producing from now on, meaning less variety in music. It's a case of data driven choices gone mad.

My next album title's going to be I-III-IV, should make me a million.

Meaning we would have to wholesale re-engineer all vehicles at enormous expense, not a good idea when you cannot produce enough to matter.

Are you kidding? We are already overfarming as it is! We are irrigating so much that the water table is THOUSANDS of feet down in many places. Farming more is simply going to make it worse.

The sugars in switchgrass are hard to free up, they haven't found a way to produce ethanol from switchgrass in a way that produces more energy than it uses.

Well, that's not exactly true. Ethanol is actually a bad choice as a replacement for gasoline. First it only has 80% of the energy per unit of volume, meaning you will only get about 80-80% of the mileage off of it. Second, it evaporates very easily so there will be quite a bit of it that simply goes up into the air. Third, it is a solvent and eats away at seals and hoses. Fourth, it cannot use the same pipelines as gasoline for transportation, making it more expensive. All in all, not a good option.

You are definitely right in that biofuels imports would simply substitute one despot for another, however the problem is wherever it comes from it will still compete against the food on our tables and make food more expensive and scarce. It's already happened in places and I for one am not willing to have people starve so I can use biofuels that aren't really green. Ethanol is a poor substitute for gasoline as it only has 80% of the energy per unit of volume, and it has other properties that make it a bad choice for fuel. Add to that there's only 20% carbon saving compared to fossil fuels and there really is no point in using them.