Ditto. Hovever installing a ramp does not mean you are not allowed to have a staircase. I seriously doubt introducing a law that technically handicaps web site owners is the best way to help blind people access the web.

That would be the American way of doing things, I guess. But don't forget to make a profit on the prisons.

"They" are humans, "they" already have the power to implement the obvious solution you offer. The social problem part is that "they" won't do that. Now if we attempt to solve that by exchanging all of "they" with people like "us", there will be a lot of dead bodies and the "people like us" will do exactly the same thing as "they" did.

You've nailed it. The secret service does not exist to crush dissent, it exists to crush organised dissent before it takes root.. They collect "meta data" not because of the fig-leaf of privacy it affords but because it holds the information they want - relationships between "subversives" (real or imagined). Trawling a gazzillion emails for key phrases is inefficient and error prone, the network of relationships tell you exatly which individuals to remove to most effectively dismantle the entire organisation.

Trivia: Biologists use the same network analysis methods to identify key species in different habitats.

The exploit transmits your identifying information to IP address 65.222.202.54. The information includes a unique tracking number generated by the exploit server, your computer's MAC address, your computer's host name, and any other IP addresses and host names visible on your local network.

This IP address traces back to a Verizon business account just outside Washington D.C., not far from FBI and CIA headquarters. You can see the IP location trace here, complete with a zoomable Google map. However note that the location trace is probably just an approximate location. Zooming all the way in shows a local shopping center, but that's probably just the location randomly landing at the "center" of a town or other service area.

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Oracs are not whales, they normally hunt whales and ignore humans. Orcas will even work with humans to catch whales. No, not just scavanging around during a hunt like a shark does, but actively herding the whales into twofold bay, alerting and directing whalers to the prey, assisting with the kill, and fending of sharks should one of boats be capsised.

The Orcas only ate the tounge of the humpbacks, the rest they left for the humans. I've been to the small museam in Eden several times over the years, it's fantastic, one of the best in Australia IMHO. It's main drawcard is the skeleton of "Old Tom" on display, several of his front teeth are missing due to being worn through by the harpoon rope, one tooth still in place has a large grove in it from gripping the rope.

I'm over 40 and already have reading glasses,

Similar for me, but I am finding my first pair of bi-focals to be a bit of a WOMBAT, and will probably revert to separate distance and reading glasses on the next iteration.

but I'd need to get special phone-only glasses to see any more detail or smaller type.

I got a 7in tablet instead. Surfing on a phone needs both magnifying glasses (a binocular microscope, or jeweller's hands-free binocular loupe ; I use both routinely) and probes to activate the touch screen.

It must be almost heretical to some of the younger developers to hear mantras such as "smaller is better" shrugged off as self evidently stupid. Oh dear. What a pity. Never mind.

Not really, because all you have to do is your best driving once in your life and you're good for the next 50 years.

Now, change the law so everyone has to recertify every time they get their driver's license and then you might have a point.

[OP here]

I've actually been arguing this point for the last 20 years, since about 5 years after I got my driving license (at age 24 or 25 ; I'd have to check my diary).

Get a driving license tomorrow, and read it's expiry date of (say) 2023-08-04, on which date you no longer have a driving license. Put a different date in there for "earliest possible driving test re-sit" of (say) 2022-08-04, so that you can manage the transition reasonably.

It sounds eminently sensible to me, and without too much stress on the training-examination system, I think that we could get there in 15 years from the current (UK) situation. But I'm used to people ignoring my suggestions ; it only gets annoying if they've asked me for advice and then try to avoid the bill when they don't like what they get.

Watching a client burn $40 million this year ; very sad, but I did tell them "don't do that" ; and they did. I got my consultants fee though.

The real point being that if you want to introduce 'new' technology to a functional environment, it should be mandatory to be TRAINED

and then assessed

on the new technology.

And if you fail the assessment, and are subsequently found to be driving and using the new technology, then you lose you license to drive.

Pain as a method of motivation?

Do people still believe, or at least pretend to believe, that crock of shit? All that inflicting pain does is motivate the victim to find some way of stopping the pain - telling the waterboarders what you think they want to hear in a modern pro-democratic example ; punching the games master in the face when he flogged me in examples from my own history. Since the games master was attempting to motivate me to give a shit about sport, and what he gained was a bloody nose, then that was really successful, wasn't it?

Which examples of causing pain can you think of that aren't cruel? Or are you one of these people who believes in beating up your own children? Or are you the BDSM auto-flagellant who was around in this thread earlier - I didn't note his/ it's/ their user name.

Hey McGrew, ever watch James Bond? :)

Seriously though, I agree with what your saying, we have the same problem in Oz on some issues (dope is a great example), right now we heading into a federal election, both major parties are competing with each other to see who can capture the xenophobe vote. Contrary to what some people think, the parties are not conspiring with each other. They are responding to what is (shamefully) a popular sentiment amoungst Aussie voters, that ugly sentiment is reflected by the system because political parties tend to shift their policies toward the "middle". In otherwords bipatisan inhumanity is the democratic reflection of an ignorant public, not a corruption of the system by people in black helicopters.

It looks like your post was intended to show the prior commenter was "not in touch with reality", however what you actually did was confirm that he was right. Your conclusion states "Secure Boot wouldn't be a problem ...if...", which pretty explicitly states that Secure Boot is a problem. Your conclusion is actually confirming that lock in problem of Secure Boot, regardless of what anyone claims the intent was, and regardless of any arguments over whether the system is otherwise noble or malicious.

And yeah, TrustedComputing&Secureboot are a truckload of extremely malignant problems even if Linux were a majority share of desktops.

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Why would you want to reward energy consumption, particular when the social benifits of the infrastructure in question is widely disputed?

Besides the fact that the DoD already incorporates climate change in their threat assessments (see http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf and http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf), there's the bleedingly obvious conclusion that if an area goes through enough environmental changes that mass migration is better than staying put, conflict with the surrounding areas is guaranteed.

I mean, when New Orleans was evacuated during Katrina, that already sparked enough conflict. Now imagine that the change is permanent and that it's not just a major city evacuating, but an entire geographical area. We'll find out just how far we have evolved from chimps (hint: not very much).