I'd like to take this opportunity to demonstrate how groupthink is a vicious cycle. Even if the majority of Slashdot were to agree that Facebook is a privacy nightmare (and let's face it, they probably do), people still resort to blowing each individual small problem out of proportion to try and support their hypothesis. We have a case of what is essentially fundamentalism - finding facts to fit the theory instead of finding a theory to fit the facts.

In this particular instance, have you considered that 'liking' objects is left up to the discretion of the user? It's not a case of "everything I view on the Internet will be visible to my friends and relatives". Previously, if I had found a product that I liked but didn't know who in my social circle could find a use for such a thing, then there would have been no feedback from me, as a trusted friend/relative of the searcher, for the searcher to rely on in deciding which brand of the product to buy. Now there is.

Don't want it seen? Don't like it.

"At the current trend, right now 1 in 4 children live on food stamps. If the current trend continues 2 of 4 children will be food stamps by the end of 2012."



This is clearly an alarming trend! We have to act before more children turn into food stamps!

It's not particularly a question of impatience however: as someone who participates in a lot of online discussion boards, there's often an issue of community discussion that arises on the Internet pertaining to media that I'm not going to have for another 6 months.

For want of a better example, I keep up with the TV show House quite avidly and I can think of 2 discussion boards that I frequent which both have official threads dedicated to the show. In addition, I have a lot of friends who torrent it as it is released in the US. It would be impractical for me to hypothetically bury my head in the sand any time someone is discussing it around me, so I'm forced to either torrent and keep up with it or subject myself to spoilers left right and centre.

That said, I won't pretend that the convenience I get from torrenting episodes isn't a benefit.

and Profane accessories?

Which does work just fine for Indie game producers. However (unfortunately) it's a different story for the producers of mainstream games who have no need of exposure whatsoever.

Perhaps not as pertinent to discussion of the actual content itself, but I'm fairly sure I've never heard of a Digital Ecomy Bill. Does TFS, perhaps, refer to the recently passed Digital Economy Bill?

"The free-to-air channels in Australia treat their viewers with content as far as programming and scheduling is concerned" The word you're looking for is contempt, I believe. Treating us with content wouldn't be so bad :)

I'm still at college. I'm very anti-censorship. However, this is not a case of censoring material that is ethically objectionable. This is a case of actually getting kids to do what they should be doing. Our college employs a rather heavy-handed filtering system that will block a LOT of stuff that it is not intended to. While I was doing a project on euthanasia about four years back, I found it impossible to do any research while at school because the word 'suicide' - as in 'assisted suicide' - would result in a blocked webpage. However, while this may be an example of poor implementation of webfiltering software, it's incredibly easy to see that it's there for a reason. This is a respectable private school, yet I would hesitate to say even that 10% of the students attempt to remain on task while given a lesson to do something on a computer. It turns into a session of communication via web-based email or IM services, playing flash games and searching for proxies that remain unblocked in order to access other censored material. I can guarantee that if it weren't for the filter, nothing would get done by these 17 and 18 year old kids who are supposedly going to be the future leaders of Australia. So when it's their downtime and they're at home, I agree absolutely that the web should remain both neutral and unfiltered. But in a school situation, there need to be boundaries set so that they'll actually do something useful.

Speaking as a 16-17 year old who has safe sex and hasn't had his life fall apart after this, I'd like to second this comment. Maybe the general trend is that teenagers are irresponsible when it comes to sex, but I would argue that there are always exceptions to trends like that and education in matters like sex is likely to reduce the risks associated with it than telling children not to have it.