Very uaseful for law enforcement to kill the smartphones of anyone they consider problematic, like leaders of streets protests or occupy movements.

There was a time in England when you paid fire fighters insurance. They marked the houses that had paid. Houses that didn't pay - well, picture two Mafia heavies sauntering up the driveway, making comments about how combustible things are and what a pity it would be if an accident were to.... happen. (Terry Pratchett made a reference to this in his books because it is such a sick, evil and yet utterly predictable outcome.)

The service became one of the first truly national services because organized crime syndicates, even firefighting ones, are not approved of.

By moving mills away from slicing the arms off children to being run by trained adults interested in mill work, those children got to have this thing called education. Instead of being a burden to others, they became valued members of society, including scientists and engineers.

The left was arguably a major factor in the Enlightenment, without which no science could be done except in secret from the conservatives.

A large proportion of schools and universities in Britain were founded, funded and run by the left. No left, no Faraday, no Rutherford, no Turing, no Crick or Watson - name something you can't live without and I can show those components that would not exist without left-wing establishments, left-wing idealists and left-wing philosophies.

Can you name anything, anything at all, developed because of right-wing ideology?

The really interesting science, that is, there is no guarantee of a return accountants would recognize as such. (Scientists consider no result a result.)

In space science, this is worsened by rockets failing, the harsh conditions of space wrecking probes, the hazards of space junk, the very long-term nature of the work, the fact that all costs are up-front and the commercial rewards beyond satellite relays are never tangibly linked to space research by the public, creating the illusion that space has done nothing.

Just cut back on projects. Starting with those involving spending money in districts whose politicians work to cripple NASA. Remember, we're coming up to yet another election year and there's no news like bad news to shape the outcomes.

I'm sorry, you lost the right to put on the whole "Oh poor little AMD is being abused by the big bad monopolist!" the day that AMD came out with Mantle and started leveraging it's 100% monopoly in the console market in a much much worse way than Intel ever did with its 70 - 80% "monopoly" in the desktop market.

@Castr --

Apple isn't Microsoft. The OSX 10.8 (July 2012) didn't support minis that were sold in early 2009. The specs were:
The Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 2.0 features a 2.0 GHz Intel "Core 2 Duo" (T7200) processor, a 4 MB on-chip level 2 cache, a 667 MHz frontside bus, 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300) memory, a 5400 RPM, 120 GB Serial ATA hard drive, a slot-loading 2.4X double-layer "SuperDrive", an "Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64 MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory", and a bundled Apple Remote.

I guarantee you the current minis won't be supported for 5 years. Apple has never had that longevity of OS support.

Given the impact voting has, I could be swayed, too, ya know...

You really know how to ride an analogy to Absurdistan...

The problem is that this is exactly what "the masses" want. And they are very eager to believe the promise that this is what they get.

They don't want to deal with "that intarnets stuff". They don't want to be responsible for little Timmy's surfing habits. Not only because little Timmy usually knows ten times what they know about computers and can easily defeat any kind of "protection" they throw in his way. Not only because he simply grew up with it, Timmy also has about ten times more time at his hands, not to mention a whole schoolyard of information on how to thwart any and all parental blocking and filtering. Plus, unlike for his parents, it's quite a bit of a status symbol for Timmy if he can evade his parents' directives, that's something you can brag about amongst your peers.

What his parents want is that magic little box that makes all the stuff they don't want go away. Porn, predators, violence... they don't want Timmy to see that. But they do want the internet as their nanny. Just like the TV was. Why oh why can't there be some watershed on the internet? It did work on TV, didn't it?

And no, I'm not kidding. That question actually does get asked and is a prime example of what people do NOT know about it. And why it is easy to trick them into believing any kind of snakeoil you promise them. Because they want that snakeoil to work. They want their perfect nanny. They want the internet to be just like TV was, a neat way to get rid of your kids but not be seen as a bad parent.

I'd prefer an IQ test for voters.

Sex education will happen. No matter whether you want it to or not. You can only decide whether your kids learn about it in the classroom or the school yard.

The government does acknowledge the existence of bitcoins. They're just not sure quite how to classify them. They don't have most of the properties of a currency, but they do have some. They have most of the properties of a security, but not all. They have a lot of the properties of a scam, but not all.

I see more than a few F-250s that don't have a spec of dirt on them, no equipment near them, wheels and shocks in a configuration completely unsuitable for doing any work. As a matter of fact, most of the trucks that I see that aren't directly used to carry landscaping or construction equipment have never been near any work or towing.