Can't say I'm too bothered with the live tiles on a desktop machine

There are few enough live tiles and they can be deleted by hand. What you cannot delete by hand[*] is the Start Screen entries that are created by software that you install:

> dir "C:\Users\tftp\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" /s
[...]
Total Files Listed:
52 File(s) 77,633 bytes
77 Dir(s) 395,226,988,544 bytes free
> dir "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" /s
[...]
Total Files Listed:
485 File(s) 743,447 bytes
401 Dir(s) 395,092,660,224 bytes free

How long will it take you to scroll horizontally through 537 tiles that all look alike?

[*] You can delete the tiles from the start screen; however you have to do it one by one, and instead of using the DEL button you need to use the right-click and then select from menu at the bottom. It can take quite a while before you figure out what needs to be deleted and then delete it. Worse still, some of that may be still necessary, but there is no backup. It's insane for millions of people to be forced to do such things in this day.

Windows <8 has this problem taken care of by using hierarchical start menus. MSVC may drop 50 shortcuts into the menu when you install it, but you will never see them until you need one... and if you use it often you can copy it into the next tier of access (Pin to Start, Pin to toolbar, copy to desktop, assign a hot key.) The idea of the Start Screen comes from mobile world where one application has at most one launcher. This is not how it works on a PC - a large application may have tens of sub-components that are all independent applications, and you may need to run them from time to time.

With no Windows Updates, and with no WGA, MS would have no way of knowing which XP out there is pirated and which isn't.

Ignoring the fact that copies exist (and everyone involved knew that), physical destruction is in fact the recommended way to destroy the data on a hard drive, SSD drive, flash memory, etc. etc.

To rephrase: It's relatively easy to ensure that this HDD does not store any data. However it is nearly impossible to ensure that this data is not stored on any HDD.

That's another way to formulate the Broken Window Fallacy. In this case, though, an immaterial object (your time) is destroyed instead of a material one (glass.)

Percentage-wise, cash is used primarily for legal activities. Its role is diminishing with proliferation of alternative payment instruments (plastic, checks, online transfers, Bill Pay services) but so far cash has plenty of legitimate uses.

On the other hand, BTC shines in gray economy, where you need to pay online but do not want your identity to be known. See the case of BitInstant - the exchange was heavily dependent on Silk Road. BTC is either pointless, or inconvenient, or financially unattractive to pay for gas or for coffee. Credit cards are far more convenient - the transaction gets confirmed instantly, and you get insurance against fraud. Many banks also offer one-time, unique c/c numbers that you may use with a vendor who you do not trust. All the benefits of BTC (for legal stuff) and no hassle.

If they're being charged with Money Laundering, doesn't that mean the BitCoin is now considered "Money" by the Feds?

It may well be that BTC was declared money specifically to smother it in regulations that all banks follow. If BTC exchanges have to follow those regulations (as BitInstant had to) then all the advantages[*] of BTC magically disappear, leaving people only with disadvantages.

[*] The list of advantages is already pretty short. The main one was that it could be used as cash over the Internet. But this is no longer safe, since you can be sure that computers at TLAs are happily chewing the blockchain and building the graphs of all wallets and money transfers. Once the cash ends up at a monitored location (such as at exchange that got the memo) the wallet can be associated with a person. Governments always love to count money in other people's pockets. With that advantage gone, what else remains?

no evidence he had done anything other than write his dreams and fantasies down onto paper

So what would you say if you find someone with a detailed plan of a bank, its vault, and nearby houses? Can the owner just say that he just put his thoughts on paper without ever intending to dig the tunnel that is depicted right there?

But his case would be easy compared to those two that you mention. Taken alone, a plan of a bank is not illegal. It may become circumstantial evidence later on, if you do commit the crime. It would be evidence of intent. But the plan itself is just a piece of paper. Those plans are stored in the architect's office, and building maintenance people have copies.

The second person in your story, OTOH, could be guilty of manufacturing a CP book. I do not know what the law says about legality of such literature - it's probably similar to CP cartoons, where no actual C's are harmed. But the society may be sufficiently upset even by fantasies, and it may make laws to forbid such books and such cartoons in order to stomp out such behavior. Otherwise if there are books, songs, cartoons, forums, this creates an infrastructure where people can embrace their inner desires - and some of them will want more. If there is no such infrastructure, there is hope that those desires will starve and die, and become replaced with something that is legal and can be practiced.

The law, in its infinite wisdom, forbids both rich and poor alike from panhandling, digging through trashcans, and sleeping under bridges.

The law also forbids rich and poor alike from trading stocks during certain periods of time, and from insider trading, and from failing to correctly account for profits of their corporations, and from failing to pay inheritance taxes, and from speeding in their Ferraris, and from paying less than minimum wage to their employees...

Certainly they'll look at them and if they have dying parents that should be pretty much the end of it. It's reality and the world we live in.

The reality of the world is that US or UK police cannot possibly prove or disprove that Mr. X went to Syria to see his relatives or to play a soldier. How do you propose to "look at them" if they were in a war-torn country? Should they just ask politely? What kind of an answer will they get?

There is even no way to prove that someone from UK went to Syria. The border between Turkey and Syria is wide open, and you can take a taxi from one country to another. There will be no records, no visas, no stamps in the passport. Once you are out of UK you can go anywhere and do anything you want. Short of being photographed, none of that can be proven. Many fighters keep their faces covered (which is not a bad idea in a desert anyway.)

The monitoring net, done poorly (as you can do it only poorly,) will only snag innocents who are stupid enough to admit that they went to Syria or other hotspots. The bad people will lie to you, and you can't do anything about it. As result, you not only have bad people against you, but also you push the innocents into the hands of bad people if you mistreat them. If you do not want people to go from UK to Syria, why do you admit Syrians into the country in the first place?

Oh come on. Guilt by association has always been a part of the scenery.

And so was burning of witches. But we got better.

There are plenty of people in Syria, and they have relatives who live in other countries. Should those relatives be waterboarded in UK if they go to safe areas of Syria just to see their dying parents?

Because of side effects of new technologies. You can say the same thing about nuclear power, for example. If you buy the light side of it - easy power with little fuel - then you have to also buy the dark side of it (potential contamination of large territories that cannot be cleaned for a hundred generations.)

In this case the only thorny issue of GG is its camera - that may or may not record you. You are not important to millions of other people, but you are important to you. It may well be that I will see your face in a GG video and will never realize who you are; but your friends will recognize you; and your parents; and your GF; and your boss; and all the other people that you know and who know you. Is this important? Usually it is not. However sometimes it is important; GF #1 does not need to know who GF #2 is; your boss does not need to know that you are not sick at home but running an essential family errand that you could not wiggle out of. People like to keep private things to themselves. Sure, being in public already breaks this intent somewhat, but you can manage it as people managed that risk for thousands of years - you do not show up where you can be recognized. GG changes that - you can be recognized even if you are on the other side of the planet.

Note also that many techies are joining the crowd of those neo-Luddites - not because they are despising the technology, but because they are concerned about what this technology brings us. Not all new technology is automatically good for the society. This here new and shiny collar may be new and shiny, but if you look carefully, it is a slave's collar. Do not wear it, even if it is artfully made.

Bluetooth operates at low power (1 mW for Class 3, 100 mW for Class 1.) GG is not likely to run at anything but the lowest power - it costs battery life. GG will not harm you. However it remains to be seen if your eyesight will be affected. EM radiation issues were studied by many teams; however, as I understand, GG was never studied by eye doctors and medical researchers. There are several aspects of a HUD like GG that may be relevant (focusing of the eye; shifting of the view center; and probably a dozen more that I know nothing about.)

'What exactly does having this thing attached to my face do to make up for having this thing attached to my face?'

Google can make pretty penny on selling GG to people who already have an answer to that question. Numbers of those people are growing every day. Those people are absolutely certain that everything that happens to them is so precious, important and valuable that they just must, as a service to humanity, carry GG on their face all day and all night, lest we, poor peons, miss one of their exciting adventures. Those people consider it perfectly normal, social, and entirely not offensive, to [threaten to] record other people against their wishes. They also wear GG while operating two-ton vehicles on freeways and then claim that "GG was not turned on," as if anyone can prove it one way or another. Why not - nothing bad can ever happen to those people; they do not need to be careful at all.

Considering the Princeton grad was working for the A&M grad, I'm not sure the contacts and networking were working out as he expected.

It cannot be determined without knowing more. For example, the Princeton grad could be 23 years old and new to the company, whereas the A&M grad could be 60 years old and own the company.

Computer literacy used to involve typing a terminal command. All the PC folks in the 80's and 90's did it.

Yes, all the 0.07% of the population. The rest was in fear of the computer, for a good reason. Back then computers were not very useful unless you were a programmer, or your specific need was covered (MS Word, Excel, WP.)

If you can't "write it yourself" in this instance, which amounts to running an operation across a set of files, then sorting the result, then you do not know how to use a computer. You know how to use some applications and input devices. It's a big difference.

So what? Most people today who use computers on daily basis cannot do any of the above. Does not mean anything. They can use a few applications, and that's all they need. They do not know that the computer can also calculate pi for them. They do not need that. Hell, I'm working with computers for many years, and I can't tell you off the top of my head how can I program MS Word to open all .docx files that match a pattern and then replace one string inside with another. I'd have to study on this scripting and automation thing that I never needed to do before. Does it mean that I don't know how to use computers? You just can't know everything.

Now go press the Towel key to open Window8's start screen. Start typing...

And observe how much backlash this decision caused - to the extent that many people refuse to buy Win8 boxes. People are just not that good at typing; but they are pretty good at finding icons on the desktop and clicking on them. Typing requires being able to type fast, and being able to remember what to type. None of that is a certainty.

The OS exposes your computer's features to you. If you do not know how to write a simple set of instructions for it to follow, then you do not know how to use a computer.

Again, it's just a matter of definitions. For one man, "how to use" means "being able to access Gmail in a browser." For another man, "how to use" means ability to program a new OS from scratch, using their own compiler.