One of the big horrors of the post-apocalypse world is the idea that it's a zero-sum game: two starving men fighting over a gnawed bone. It's that idea that you can't share and you have to fight, that makes things as grim and martial as they are generally presented.

As long as that notion is held, we're going to lose as a society. But as soon as that notion is discarded, the whole game changes from how to survive into how to help each other to thrive. Lemonade from lemons.

Ia! Ia!

It's nice work. Will he regret it? Probably not. You get used to the choices you make - whether they're visible or not. Do I regret going into IT and taking a life of Dilbert cube hell? Getting married? Having mackerel instead of falafel for tea last night? Of course not.

And we'll all leave ugly corpses. In a way that's part of Zombie Boy's message - here you go, this is you in ten, twenty, forty years time. I get a squirm off his ink, and it's the same squirm I get from the very, very old: it's the vertigo of the edge between "people" and "meat".

Worrying *now* about whether you'll be green and saggy or pink and saggy a gazillion years from now, that's just vanity. :)

@37: That's what I was thinking too - unless the big cheese has issued a statement about what (or where) is unacceptable to photograph, then this statement is "it's legal." And I'm fairly sure that the big cheeses haven't done that.

So the counter to a cop who tries to stop us is, "Is this area/activity expressly declared in your Chief Constable's memo about photography, and please may I see a copy?"

#4: The discs' data was not encrypted.

If it was, this would be no big deal. Which is why we insist on encryption (though users sneaking stuff out are an alltime bear to put a cap on top of).

Trust Terminal 5 to jump the TSA's shark. Man, that's incredible. I can see why they might not want a shirt bearing "OSAMA ROXXORZ" and a pic of old Beardy with an AK, but a Transformer? Kinda going off on a trippy tangent of their own there - I'd love to see what went on inside that rentacop's head.

@Carlos - just let oil prices do it for us. :)

It's kinda sweet (and devilish cunning). Next: Feed it Second Life avatars for wacky cross-life spooning fun.

Dierken, the problem is that while Phorm offers an opt-out, most people affected by its snooping won't even realise that they've opted in when the opt-in is buried in the T&C's of your ISP's latest bumf. For that reason, chaff sounds like a great way to obfuscate everyone's habits and make monetizing your breadcrumb trail a losing proposition. I'd like to see chaff added to every user's regular browsing suite right alongside anti-virus and anti-spyware.

Plus, of course, Phorm is a secretive and closed organisation. I don't actually *trust* them to opt me out. How many other opt-outs have you opted for that have had no effect?

Not Lamarckism at all. There is a spread of jaw power in the initial population. In their new location, the ones with strong jaws do better than their weak-jawed fellows because the food is different here. The strong-jawed ones are better fed, fitter, and so survive to have more litters of more and healthier offspring.

Wow, that's cool about the lizards.

Just saying.

Too much fighting here, not enough lizards.

How about an awareness-raising photography comp? Get hundreds of people taking suspicious photos! Judge the best!

"Acid test" - unlike, say, the litmus test, the acid test will destroy its failures.

"P's and Q's" - I've never seen a quart served in a British pub, certainly not from the modern era.

Another reason, sadly, is that protest can be ignored. And that's what is happening, a lot.

The internet as a tool to facilitate direct action, on the other hand? Now that I can get behind.

EppB said, "Maybe it's a bit excessive, but they trespassed first. He has the right to protect his property,"

Well, no. He has the right to use reasonable force to defend his person. Trespass is not a crime for which we club people with logs or chuck crap at them - and long may it stay that way. Cultural differences, old chap, cultural differences :)

Frank In Virginia - A photog flashmob, you mean? Great idea!

"If he had the time, money, and energy to build a house like that, why wouldn't he get a permit?"

Because he is a fool. UK farmers famously keep trying this sort of thing, and this individual had other ongoing planning problems. So he was "known" AND he was deliberately trying to conceal the works behind those bales.

Green belts are important. We don't have a lot of space, and green belts stop developers from turning the whole country into a hideous grey suburb.