Actually what happens is that half of the government points to t3h ebil corporashuns and screams "See? They're trying to strong-arm us! They threaten us! Down with corporashuns! And multinationals while we're at it." and half of the population supports them when they enact idiotic laws (statalization, regulation, etc)

I fail to see how developing new systems to enhance digital communications could be anything than Information Technology.

You have a very good argument there. I must admit I am from a urban area in Europe and wasn't thinking of the logical implications of having large strecthes of land where no mesh net node would be available or the few existing ones would be overwhelmed by traffic.
Maybe the various mesh networking communities would be willing to finance long-range, possibly radio-based?, communication links to solve this issue, but then, as you point out, they'd just become ISPs themselves.
My project would fail :(

But not really hard when you deploy a wireless mesh network that simply disregards the existance of ISPs. That's how the internet started getting big, isn't it? Local islands of networked machines becoming more and more connected to each other until they were all inter-networked.
I don't understand why that can't be done again, except last time we needed ISPs to put down very expensive physical lines, while this time every trinket has wireless capabilities.
Last time I checked, mesh protocols had become quite good and lots of small, embedded router-thingies were available at cheap prices. So what's stopping us from building another internet?
Well in my case, national laws absolutely forbid me from doing that. Hopefully somewhere else it can be done. :( And so I answered my own question. I feel sad now

And that is the reason why you scare them shitless with horror stories about stolen identitites, their computer being used as a tool for criminal activities, their data being destroyed, etc. And it's not like you have to make this stuff up!
My gf always asks me before she runs unusual programs or downloads stuff from the web. Now, either I know what it is and tell her if she should run the program or not, or she waits until I go to her place and check it out personally. The poor thing is holding out on a frigging Live Messenger update... all it took was a hard drive crash, me restoring all of her stuff from backups in the span of an evening, and she now follows every advice I have on using PCs religiously.

I played Crysis, briefly, at mid-level settings. FarCry 2 does not pique my interest. But WoW?! It runs well on weaker setups than mine. I did turn everything to the max the couple of times I played it anyway.
I am playing Dead Space, Stalker, Pathologic, EVE, DoW and a few other games at max settings. Resolution is 1280x1024. If I notice any slowing down I turn settings down a bit until it's smooth again.

You know, I play most games at "full-everything" quality on an 8800GT and an Athlon X2 3800 with 4GB RAM. Power consumption is less than 300W at peak.
You don't need monstruosities unless you are deeply in love with diminishing returns.

Yeah right. My boss only hears "blah blah" and thinks "don't care - wanna play golf" when I say "unauthorised device into the corporate network". Tentative policies trying to deal with this stuff make executives cry bloody murder and are promptly removed. And even if anybody cared, there would be legislative obstacles to firing an employee over here: read, it's basically impossible unless they've got some CP on their boxes.

Then you wonder why the hell your son is lying all the time and why you can't trust each other. I guess.

Sometimes I do that on purpose to piss off idiots who tailgate. I switch on the extrabright rear fog lights, too.

I can't believe this. That crook makes a thousand bucks a month without doing anything at all but posting some auctions! This is frikkin unbelievable.

Well, *I* would. 120% of an extremely small chance of crashing still amounts to pretty much nil, while the 30% discount saves me a good deal of bucks. Besides, current planes are overrated, oversecured and overpriced.

Heh heh heh, amazing. I am just a lowly fighter :)

But surely you agree that there are sensible and less sensible ways to use a tool, in this case e-mail. You don't ask people to send you movies by e-mail because the tool just doesn't work that way: there are different, better tools you can use for that. SO it boils down to what is reasonable: 10MB attachments are close to the limit.

A car is also there to serve you but still you must conform to the way it works. You might build a joystick-controlled car for example, if you dislike steering wheels, but you'd never simply complain that a common car is forcing you to use the wheel, even though actually, it is. You just accept it because the tool is built in a certain way and you need to use it in a certain way to exploit and enjoy it. Most limits are not arbitrary; cars need a steering device and you *will* cope with that or build something new altogether. Technology has limits and best practices too: and it would be best to cope with that too, while we keep innovating, little by little. Remember IT in the 90's?

I like to explain to my users why systems and procedures are the way they are. Surely they will understand, appreciate and cooperate... maybe even give insightful input... Guess what? They are not interested. So while "my way or the highway" is too rude to be used for real in a workplace, sometimes it does boil down to that. If your kid insists that he wants to drink poison, you will stop him somehow, won't you? And it becomes "your way or the highway".

That's tragically irresponsible. It should be ground for termination and be made impossible technically. Unfortunately it's not, where I work. Our CEO worries that people might steal our valuable data on a USB stick and wants us to monitor or block USB usage... When people can simply mail themselves our whole file server contents (ok it's going to take forever but you get the point).

Come on guys... Why don't we just stop pretending that these studies are being done for anything else than the big money they bring?
This whole debate has nothing to do with science, climate change or threats to humankind. It's only got to do with the insane amount of money you get for supporting a certain side. That's it really, it's as easy as that.
So let's stop pretending or being surprised.