Short answer: "It's a risk to give access to your identifying information to people on the internet. Unless it's us."

So the geeks would be the early adopters, and everyone else would probably wait until Facebook inevitably turned the thumbscrews on the users enough for them to become dissatisfied.

Sure, the geeky masses. WordStar. Spreadsheets. In other words, business needs at home and in the small offices.

For personal use, the geek stigma was only overcome once people found they could play decent computer games.

Thirty years ago, the idea that non-geeks would ever start using computers themselves seemed absurd.

Forty years ago, the idea that people - rather than corporations and governments - would use computers themselves seemed absurd.

For that matter, I wonder how much Assange's appearance itself can be altered.

Suppose the embassy were to play host to a convention with a large number of people?

On the nose.

I'm amazed the British government is making such a PR debacle of this by pursuing it so publicly. Surely Assange would be scheduled for a heart attack in a year or two instead, and leave it at that?

Ecuadorean diplomats should now regularly ship moving crates, boxes, novelty oversized cakes and so forth out of the embassy on a daily basis.

You unintentionally expose a great proof for the concept that enabling us to exercise freedom is not the agenda of this kind of legislation.

Banning ownership of specific 'things' is enforceable across the board, which is the appeal. Even though it overreaches into legitimate uses, politicians haven't been finding that a concern. But they should. We never gave them the authority to pass legislation which encroaches upon our rights. However, this now happens routinely today.

Now if only there were some cryptic clue as to their actual agenda. Because it certainly isn't upholding our rights.

I was going to reply to tell you you're correct, and to ask you to stop freely giving out the results of your intelligence to the government in the form of a viable plan of action.

Then I noticed the flaw. When people print guns freely, and when they're upset enough at the government, the popular, strong refusal to that sort of legislation becomes an insurmountable obstacle to disarming the citizenry.

We'll encounter state militias mainstreaming again long before we'll encounter any significant threat to disarm us. The U.N. small arms treaty which attempted to bring the gun rights of the citizenry within any member nation under the authority of the United Nations just collapse, because the United States delegates stated that problems domestically would prevent them from being able to meet the deadline. In other words, the People adamantly refused to tolerate it. The best the U.S. delegates could do was shake their fists in the air and yell, "We'll be ba-a-ack! Just you wait!" in traditional bureaucra-speak.

And that's how that works.

In addition to a lot of the arguments being made here against Mr. Gemmell's rationale, he's not even thinking creatively about the alternative ways a revenue stream could be generated. Case in point: I just played a Flash game yesterday that shows a video ad while loading. The ad unlocked additional features of the game for that playthrough.

But Mr. Gemmell doesn't consider developing new, innovative possibilities like this. He just wants the cash, and will happily use the "locking down" of other peoples' machines on a widespread basis to achieve this. Where's the "locking down" of the property rights that are supposed to come with buying something, like an Android? If it's my device, why wouldn't I have root? It would be apropos if Mr. Gemmell made enough money to buy a car, only to have it stolen within the first couple of weeks.

Mr. Gemmell makes it sound only right for companies and developers to "protect" their [currently-only-imagined] profits, but it comes at the expense of the property rights of the users. So he argues for further inroads on users' access to their own machines, while attempting to make it seem natural, fair and just.

"Electricity-generating solar cell windows"?

As opposed to solar cells that that generate, say, xenon and mummy dust?

Er. Source, please? I've never encountered that one before.

Why then would we say GBLT if those who were Bi- fall under the category of Gay?

I don't think you can apply the same "Slashdot geeks don't get laid" to the gay male contingent. The dynamics don't work quite the same way.

Women have learned to withhold their consent to sex in order to broker power with males, and essentially reserve it much like doggy treats with the result that males compete to become the highest bidder in terms of fitness. (This in turn reduces the majority of women to the level of some hybrid prostitute-drug dealer.)

Men, however, can probably never learn to do this, and typically wouldn't condone such cruel ploys anyway. I've found they're nearly always down for it, particularly in a social niche that's being underserved by women. More often than not, even ostensibly "straight" guys start to get interested after a long enough dry spell. Hence, I tend to fare rather well generally, and in the geek communities particularly. I suspect this is rather common.

I've always assumed it was to prevent them from slapping against their foreheads cartoonishly when running.

Thanks for reminding me that, being gay, I'm fortunate not to be living in the 1400's and fumbling around in the dark with those tricky codpieces.

If you'd like to hear more, or encourage participation yourself, here is a source with about five thousand people getting started on it.