I for one am very glad of the lesson taught to the world by the detonation of two bombs during wartime Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I live in Australia, and we were next on the invasion list. I regret the loss of civilian life that the Japanese people suffered as a consequence of war and I am glad that Japan is now one of our greatest friends and highly respected.

I think it was inevitable that we would discover some method for extremely large scale destruction and I'm glad that humanity has so far not used the technology since WWII for anything more serious than sabre rattling- and that's bad enough. We need to understand how to deal with this kind of power because as much as we may not like it, it exists and it has existed all along. There are worse things than nuclear weapons too, so the learning experience is useful in other areas.

I personally support the idea of a monument to those men who were part of the Manhattan Project and think its pretty shallow for people to call them murderers etc. Firstly: fuck you- you weren't there (and neither was I). WWII was a response, NOT an invasion.

I agree with jtownatpunk.net 's comments. Take advantage of the learning experience while there are still people alive who can look you in the eye and tell you what it was really like back then. Sadly for the Manhattan Project the time for that is likely past.

Australia would be trivial to excise from the internet. The government would need to make precisely two phone calls. I'm sure they've already prepared the road in terms of that contingency.

Bullcrap. All most of the developed world has done is export is problem to other countries while patting itself on the back and saying "how green am I". What you have actually done is export your manufacturing to places with far WORSE pollution standards than you have, and add the cost of shipping to the environmental tally. This is the same fallacious argument that those morons in Australia used to justify their do-nothing carbon tax. If you want to seriously tackle sustainability then you need to tackle the population problem as well as emissions. If you don't do it then by 2050 with 9 billion people on the planet you've got absolutely no hope of reducing emissions to "2000 levels" or "1990 levels" when we have 50% more people than we had in 2000. Even if they are dirt poor farmers burning cow chips to cook we're still in deep deep trouble.

We come across this regularly in confidentiality agreements with totally inappropriate clauses in them, for instance:

Must remove all copies of and derivative works from all backup media, databases, disks, etc.

You can set up systems that allow for some of this, but I can think of many cases where expunging derivative works can be practically impossible without violating some other piece of keeping-records-post-Enron kind of legislation (and we are in Australia with NO US subsidiaries). For instance, I could create a space for this material so that it is never backed up, then delete it when the CA finishes, but I have no control over whether the staff copy bits of it to other places or forward it around on email while creating derivative works. And you can be damn sure I'm not destroying my backups (our policy is keep forever- its amazing how long ago you might need documentation from relating to a lawsuit)

I know most of this discussion is weighted towards social media content, but the fact is if it is visible it may be copied, reposted, altered to be offensive to you or others and then it really is impossibly expensive to remove.

For instance, there is stuff I put on the web in the early 90s I wish to hell I hadn't. It's everywhere. Eventually it might be forgotten, but I'm pretty sure it'll outlive me.

Why don't you go back and read your original post again and ask yourself why buying your fish from America cost so much. This link might help you too- once you get your head out of the sand you might begin to discuss things rationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing

The thing you really need to understand is that in your little world people can afford conservation and regulation. In 80% of the world it is either unaffordable or unenforceable.

When you vote you are exercising one of the few types of force that has any meaning. The real pity is that once you have exercised that force the party you voted for can change their whole agenda.

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but since we've already decimated 70% of global fish stocks your options are limited.

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 3, 2006

An international group of ecologists and economists warned yesterday that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, based on a four-year study of catch data and the effects of fisheries collapses.

The paper, published in the journal Science, concludes that overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors are wiping out important species around the globe, hampering the ocean's ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients and resist the spread of disease.

"We really see the end of the line now," said lead author Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University. "It's within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don't change things."

I've used thinkpads exclusively for small business and personal use since the early noughties. In this time I've bought roughly 30 machines every three years, so three or four generations. The ones I had the most problems with were T40-T42, still practically from the IBM stable, but compared to anything else (NEC, Acer, HP) I encountered they were literally streets ahead. The current generation we have is X200-220 and T400 series. I wouldn't touch anything that's Lenovo by Lenovo like the L or W series. Of these we have had a single failure- a DOA motherboard. And no failures at all since. The machines are mostly out of warranty now but we're still going to use them in our business for a fourth year without warranty since they have shown themselves to be bulletproof. The only change we made is to recently replace all the SATA drives with some SSDs we had spare.

My boss had a T42 several years ago and propped it in his bag against a taxi. The taxi ran over and totalled the laptop but we just removed the HDD and plugged it into another of the same model. He also had one fall from an aircraft overhead locker onto the floor. No screen breakage, booted up first go. I've dropped my X220 onto concrete and there is only a small crack in the bottom left of the clamshell.

By comparison we had an Acer "business" laptop that went back to the shop 6 times due to motherboard or graphics card failure (amounts to the same thing but anyways). Each time it would take WEEKS for them to give it back to us. I've NEVER had a warranty repair on a Lenovo take more than 7 days. These days it is 48 hours or less.

The thinkvantage onboard software which keeps all the drivers and software up to date could teach Microsoft update a thing or two.

The only complaints I ever get about them from staff is that they look ugly. Personally, I don't care if they look like the proverbial russian tractor- all that matters to me is that they run like a rocket and never let me down.

IBM X220 FTW.

Agreed. They forget at the very moment the snout hits the trough and then become focused entirely on keeping it there.

And neither would Australians if they weren't fined for not voting.

'completely trashing any semblance or notion of transparency or participative democratic process of policy development.'

This behaviour s common practice for Australian governments. Most particularly the one we have now despite the Prime Ministerial promise to "let the sunshine in".

Worst Australian government in my lifetime (40 years) - probably ever.

No human interaction for a whole day? Clearly this is a slashweenie fantasy!

That's 4chan you're thinking of.

Don't put macgyverbot in a room full of guns.

Seems Weird. How do millions of app devs do it then?