Won't somebody think of the children?

Typical slimeball politician - he'll probably come out with "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" next.

Don't forget - Canada doesn't have freedom of speech, so the police will be able to use this to harass thought criminals and other doubleplusungood types.

It took me 6 months to get used to a bloody mouse back in 1988, you insensitive clod!

Some of us used computers before GUIs were widespread...

The use of deception in primates of many kinds is well documented: see

here or here.

It's a useful adaptation for social mammals, and far from unique to humans, let alone post-Babel humans.

The bicameral hypothesis is crap, by the way.

An enquiring mind should be willing to test hypotheses on itself - the hypothesis, for instance, that smoking weed or taking LSD makes the mind less able.

Having tested that hypothesis and found it to be less than useful (I can still function perfectly well after a smoke or a tab), I conclude that the law is an ass, and I shall continue to indulge this "deficiency" so long as I find it to be pleasurable.

YMMV.

I remember this being shown on "Tomorrow's World" on the BBC, back in the days before they dumbed down their science and technology output to kindergarten level.

I think, but can't be sure, that it was the Microwriter that was featured - early 80s sounds about right from my rapidly fading memory...

Hacky networking? Like Windows and its unspeakable LanMangler implementation?

Trust me, Apple was way ahead of Microsoft in networking terms back then, with Novell a few steps ahead of Apple. VB at the time was primitive to say the least, and Microsoft didn't do TCP/IP properly until NT, which at the time was utterly crap unless you threw hardware at it.

Mind you, it's 20 years ago, so my memory might be tainted.

Nice view of the process.

Makes me wonder if the market is failing here due to the issue of patents (which are a privilege granted by the government to create artificial scarcity) being so profligate that we have some sort of patent boom fuelled by lawyers?

If so, it's due to head for bust any time soon - I wouldn't want to be holding stock in any company with that business model.

I wouldn't suggest that eliminating foreign aid would get rid of current issues - my own country seems to think that spending billions in aid as a means of "soft power" is a better use of resources than keeping our Harrier jets, for instance. Not being an expert on foreign policy like our esteemed Prime Minister, I tend to differ, but then again I'm a cynic and see most aid money going into Swiss accounts of various third world leaders anyway.

On WWI, I think you're half right - but the threat of German attacks on Atlantic shipping was certainly a factor, and it was in America's interests to keep trade going even at the cost of war.

Unfortunately, I see the current Iran policy leading inevitably to a war - whether the economies of the West will be strong enough to survive the inevitable oil crisis is debatable, and I worry that the response of governments will be to impose totalitarian rule on what will be an increasingly angry citizenry.

Ditto.

On the other hand, I have echoes of the sounds of salesmen bouncing round my old bonce now, and can't get rid of them.