I dunno, you can brew beer. And after the holocaust, I'd consider beer brewed the Old Egyptian way (it actually contains high levels of antibiotics) rather than by "modern" methods to be rather more useful for containing outbreaks of disease. That would make starting over on the beer production a more practical approach.

Don't you ever confuse governments with the mentally ill. The more I compare modern politicians with the script for "Quatermas II", the more concerned I become. Look for strange purple blotches around the face or neck. That can be a warning sign of aliens.

You also need to consider that irradiated food has to be labeled as such and has generally been rejected by the consumer as unsafe. (Whereas, presumably, they'd have eaten food irradiated by far harder radiation, then smothered in radioactive particles of assorted deadly kinds, and regarded it as safe.) Most supermarket food is NOT irradiated, the market opted to go the GM route because people were more willing to buy something that produced its own toxic pesticides.

Yeah, but you need to consider that most lagers are just coloured heavy water.

Indiana Jones, in the Refrigerator, with the beer.

Cludo will never be the same.

Enlightenment is a gateway window manager. Exposure to E can lead to harder code.
Will SOMEBODY think of the users?

The school books weren't wrong, they were merely in a different parallel universe to the one they referred to.

The works don't have to be timeless - at least, not in the sense they were originally intended in. I have a book on DIY, philosophy and physics from 1776. (Yes, one book covers all three topics. No, I have not tried making any of the fireworks it gives recipes for.) Most of the science is plain wrong (thunder is NOT caused by the evapration of gunpowder), most of the DIY is impractical (gold leaf isn't exactly sold in corner stores) and most of the philosophy is... dodgy to say the least. On the other hand, it is a wonderful snapshot of Western thought at the time. As a narrative on how people thought, it is superb and worth the fair chunk of change I handed over for it.

I've also got a medical textbook on King's Evil (scrofulus), also from the 1700s. The "cures" probably killed more than they cured, but the list of case studies and their contemporary analysis is wonderful at, again, illustrating the mental processes of the time.

The only book I have that I used in the way intended is a cookbook from 1800. The recipes are excellent, not tried the mock turtle and I'll probably NOT try their suggestions for hiding the taste of fish that has gone bad, but everything else is good.

There's probably some scope for innovation - the codebase could probably do with a security audit or three, and/or a complete rewrite in a more intelligible language (Brainfuck, perhaps) or something respectable and powerful (AspectC++ or D would be the obvious choices there, you can then have it as a SOAP application rather than use the increasingly slow Apache server).

We also need more pink ponies. And cowbells. There is a distinct lack of pink ponies and cowbells.

As far as invention is concerned, there needs to be a complete rethink of the metamoderation idea (nobody uses it any more) and the firehose (which nobody ever used to begin with). Moderation abuse is commonplace, with trolls openly posting how they're abusing moderation to attack views contrary to their own and push agendas, so we need SOME sort of metamoderation, but clearly it needs to be a lot more effective or it's going to sit and rot like the existing system. The firehose, again, is overwhelmingly ignored. Users aren't using it to pre-screen stories for typos (and editors ignore the advice if they do), nor are they using it to encourage the sorts of stories wanted (with the result that those same users then whine about there never being any good stories). We need a replacement that people WANT to use.

For a start, it'll be a lot easier to post jobs.

...is just a "reference implementation". It is NOT the be-all and end-all.

If someone were to produce a wholly new windowing system that had a compatibility layer for the standard X11 API, support for the X11 configuration files, and the option of sending X11 packets over a network, you would have something that was compliant with the reference implementation. It would be a superset, but the reference specification would be 100% implemented according to the standard, agreed?

Indeed, since the current reference implementation is highly modular, you could replace one module at a time with something that solved the problems inherent in X but which remained 100% backwards compatible.

Let us call this new implementation X12, since it's a stepwise upgrade, similar to (but less crippling than) the upgrade from X10 to X11.

What would I imagine this X12 to look like?

Well, X is still horrible for games, so sprites and shaders make sense. (Nothing stops environments like Gnome or KDE from implementing their own, but to make games viable, you've got to have one API that always works even if you have other APIs for each desktop environment.)

Also on games, but also for multimedia, sound would be good. The challenge is that you want a universal "front end" API where you can switch between engines (such as PulseAudio or Jack) without having to change the code. You'd simply get the characteristics you want. The reasoning there is that different sound systems do have different characteristics and you want a different set for different circumstances. But, again, manufacturers don't care about your freedom to choose, they care about being able to sell to the most people with the least variation in the codebase. No problem. If there's a single universal API that forwards what applies, translates those things that are translatable, and ignores the rest, then the manufacturers are happy and the freedom people are happy. Everyone is happy. That's good.

For scientific and engineering work, you get the best results by converting from vectors to pixels at the last possible moment. Metafont/metapost have a good way to describe shapes (though you'd want to "compile" these descriptions into bytecode for efficiency), and transformation matrices aren't complicated. It would take a bit of work to get the system to work efficiently in 4D, but it would make life a lot easier.

The legacy X11 protocols aren't very efficient OR secure. They're needed because there's so many X11 terminals out there, but X12 should only use X11 to talk to X11 systems. X12 to X12 should be designed from the start to be secure, compact and extensible. It should also be transport-independent. Why should X care if it using TCP, UDP, DCCP, SCTP or something yet to be developed? Or what version of the IP protocol is involved? (If it IS involved! What's wrong with X over Infiniband?) So long as both sides of the connection know what to use, and things that have to be reliable are kept reliable, it's just a port as far as 99% of the code is concerned. Only when it comes to building it in the first place will there be any difference and that can all be hidden in an abstraction library.

Some nations provide grants and, arguably, a superior education as a result. It is my contention that educational systems that are driven by "market forces" must, by definition, offer the least at the greatest price that they can. (The more you offer, the greater the cost of providing the service. The lower the price, the less the return. Profit is return - cost. Market forces maximize profit and the only way to do that is to reduce what you offer and raise the price.)

It is also a truism that beancounters aren't very good at deciding what services are actually important to the consumer. They're very good at telling you the price of everything but the value of nothing.

What is wanted is to abolish student loans, switch universities to grant-based systems, fund students via grants, and pay for it by demanding that the universities so-funded provide education of high enough quality that the fraction of the increase in profits that go into taxes covers all those grants. That doesn't mean any individual line of education needs to pay for itself, only that the system as a whole be in dynamic equilibrium. The cost of one course must be covered by the benefit of another.

By eliminating market forces, universities can focus not on fund-raises and PR stunts but teaching and research.

Oh, that's another thing. I'd argue that all universities must do both as must all lecturers. (How the hell else are the lecturers to stay current, if not by research? How the hell else are the researchers to improve their communication, if not by teaching? Have different ratios for different jobs, since not all people are good at both, but breadth of experience shouldn't be limited to students. Fossilizing is how you ruin a good lecturer.)

Since most kids enter university with inadequate education to actually DO any kind of real degree program (universities often waste the first year teaching remedial maths and English), I'd contend that schools should also be forced to pick up the pace. This, of course, requires adequate funding, but it also requires a serious look at what is being taught. Creationism and ID are distractions. Standardized exams may be cheap, but they allow teachers to teach to the syllabus (ie: teach the least) and to avoid teaching any understanding. Schools should be 100% about understanding, facts should be on formula sheets. I'd also abolish leaving school before completing a BS/BA rather than at a fixed age. It means the best can leave at age 15, so it doesn't change school-leaving ages, it just means those leaving early are competent to.

A Tardigrade is a retrograde TARDIS and everyone knows that a TARDIS can handle outer space.

Automated monitoring systems like OnStar probably report FAR more information that you need be concerned about than a glorified proximity detector.

On the other hand, I DO see a considerable safety issue. It is already well-established that the protocols used in "intelligent" cars can be broken and that false instructions can be injected into critical systems (brakes, door locks, etc), that many of the newer cars use ethernet (which means adding a wireless network device would not be hard) and some have wireless built into this internal network (which means driving one near a Black Hat convention is a really bad idea, even if you are insured with Geiko). Adding yet more wireless components to this, where data can (and will) be spoofed - that is asking for trouble.

Even if the wireless is nothing more than a primitive radar setup, there's plenty of paranoid nutters out there who have worked hard on screwing up radar bouncing off cars for years. It is impossible to predict what some of these modifications will do, beyond putting totally inaccurate information into other people's navigation systems. Systems that will be directly hard-wired to brakes and other controls.

In other words, once this technology reaches a significant number of people (so that the increase in accidents is statistically measurable), I expect the deaths from hijacked and/or misinformed computer systems to be far greater than the number of people saved. Early on, when the probability of encountering malicious geeks or paranoid schizos is low, the death toll will go down. If the subsequent rise takes long enough to occur, the new technology will be so "essential" that the "essentialness" of it will be considered more important than the safety aspect.

The "winners" aren't getting treated much better - war-zones don't magically stabilize afterwards, they remain unstable. In part, because anyone who seizes power by force will have no choice but to maintain it by force; in part, because lawlessness is an environment where old scores (real or imagined) get settled by the gun with no regard for "due process", innocence or guilt, or whether the supposed crime was last week or last millenium; in part because businesses that sell arms do well when instability is maintained and lose custom when peace is restored, giving them a significant motive to ensure instability remains as long as possible; in part because Russia and China have zero interest in seeing UK/US-backed regimes any more than the US/UK is partial to Russia/China-backed takeovers; but also in part because the successive kicking over of hornet's nests in the region for the past 70 years by assorted outside powers (ie: all of them) has led to the formation of ultra-nationalist and ultra-theological extremist movements who don't give a rat's what happens to their own country, just so long as it's them that are doing the happening.

The French Revolution resulted in societal collapse for France. Sure, under the Royalists it wasn't doing great, but the mass slaughter (which didn't stop at Royalists) wiped out most of the intellectuals, free-thinkers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs. The result was anarchy, followed by the rise of a totalitarian State.

The American Revolution was bankrolled by businesses, armed by the French (mostly the Royalist French, with the result that the French Revolution caused untold suffering in America) and hijacked by the slavers. Oh, it was a genuine upswelling, perfectly honest with very legitimate grievances, but by the time it actually turned into a mass movement, the honest, aggrieved parties had largely lost any control. What we recognize as America's independence from Britain was, tragically, also the moment it became a slave state to corporate interests. Americans never got to enjoy their freedom, and what little freedom they actually had has eroded. Not because of any change, but because the rot was actually built into the system from the start.

The Russian Revolution suffered a similar - but far worse - fate. Instead of multiple corporate interests, you had a single cult interest, and instead of a few hundred "undesirables" vanishing every decade or so, they had a few million. But ultimately, that's merely a matter of degree, not a matter of substance. A small lever can lift a paperweight, a large enough lever and a place to stand can shift a planet. Still a lever, same physics, nothing but the scale has changed and scale simply isn't significant.

The Cromwellian Revolution set up a hereditary theocracy in Britain that was so despised and so utterly beyond evil that the son of the executed King was actively petitioned by the nation to return from exile.

Revolutions have never, in all of human history, been kind to those who actually wanted good things to happen to their nation.

If the Brits storm the embassy, they will be in violation of International Law. Diplomatic status isn't a national law issue. You only have to look at the absolute horror the rest of the world felt when Iran stormed the US Embassy to see what will happen. Britain would, rightly, be expelled from the EU and isolated by sanctions from the rest of the world. No, their "special relationship" with the US won't help - in part because the US doesn't see anything special about it, but also because they're a few thousand miles further away. Britain, whether it likes it or not, IS utterly dependent on the patience, tolerance and goodwill of Europe. Push Europe too far and Britain becomes the first EU colony.

Do I think it likely? Cameron is insane, Clegg is Cameron's pet poodle, the Liberal Democrats daren't bring down the coalition by walking out because the utter hatred they've engendered will cost them every last seat in Parliament and they know it. So it really is all down to Cameron. And, as I've said, he's insane. Truly insane. Dangerously so. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he ordered the SAS to storm the embassy (as per the Iranian one when it was seized by terrorists). Nor would I be surprised if he gave the order to give no quarter. He truly is delusional enough to regard himself as divinely entitled.