I am certain I would take offence at 1bn being spent on my behalf without prior consultation. Its actually a criminal offence and possibly could construe false accounting. Do you know what those words mean? Spending money demands a paper trail and minuted meeting notes. Or used to.

If you can now spend that amount without due ovetsight its no wonder we're financially shafted.

He's not the Emporor. Bitch.

When we had fiscal oversight and corporate law.

Besides there's (typically) nowhere to park. I've decided to leave in the next few weeks. Life's too precious for this sorta shit.

And, ok, its probably quite fun -- but I was paid double this in 1991 (£10,000) for a week/10 days -- my first consultancy.

It wasn't even NASA or a mega-corp. It was documentation on the Victorian Architect, Waterfield, for a small museum.

Although I'm rural, the local amenities are actually great -- one of the reasons I'm here. We're lucky. Excellent doctors and hospitals, too.

Great neighbours who aren't weirdos, its also so quiet on a Friday and Saturday you could hear a pin drop. That might drive some people crazy but I like it.

I have a little garden which I'm making nice and a few interesting little techie projects that I want to finish (I just don't have time right now) but I will quit and then use my time rationally. Who knows where it might lead?

Partly my own fault because I chose several years ago to live in quite a rural area. Still, not worth the hassle.

Although, weirdly, there are those in there who do even further commutes.

I've got a life, my own internal dialogue and other interests. Life's short enough as it is.

They are differently enabled. Evolution gave them all they need to thrive and be successful. Intelligence is, in evolutionary terms, very expensive, hi-maintenance and often counter-productive. So is individuality. These things are not the natural end-product of an evolutionary process like they are assumed to be. In fact, its normally the exception rather than the rule. Simplicity (seldom complexity, except for a short while and in niche settings) is the end result of a perfected organism in harmony with its environment.

You get what you need for the time frame in which you need it. After that, as soon as you don't need it so much, it will go. Like flight in birds. Dodo's didn't need it, lost it rapidly and then humans arrived. We killed them, tried to eat them and our technology (ships) brought vermin predators (rats and cats) to their world which they had no defence against -- and that was the end of them. Our `intelligence' didn't pan out too well for them. And they're just one example of this sort of thing. Its happening all the time.

When you are sitting in the shattered and burned-out remains of your world (literally or metaphorically), intelligence looks overrated. The same will eventually, inevitably, happen to us. An AI, or our own avaricious greed and ambition, will probably finish us all off.

Big brains, language and tool-making abilities are not necessarily the best or inevitable end outcomes in evolutionary processes. They happen because they need to. Then again, sometimes they don't, and that can pan out OK as well. When it does happen it also tends toward the self-limiting, as well. Just what you need and no more.

The evolution of an AI will be as much an accident as a design. And that's good because it won't be forced into a form that is trying to mimic our own imperfect intelligence.

The reality is, for some, the value of their digital dabblings will be worth as much, if not more, than their tangible assets -- if not today then several years down the line.

So establishing legal ownership on these is potentially very important.

I know. Some things (years old and forgotten) have benefited me greatly.

It also is one where heredity and genetics plays an enormous role (as opposed to purely environmental conditions).

Like I said, molecular biology is something we've only just noticed far less got a handle on.

Ars Longa Vita Brevis.

Be kind to people and don't prejudge. Grudge and jealousy are hideous, crippling afflictions (and its half of what's wrong with us as a species) and they don't help you in the time of your own need.

Some things are meant to take time and be right. First time.

Survival rates are spectacularly better than they were fifteen or twenty years ago and they are getting better all the time.

Also there is no one type of lung cancer, brain tumour or bladder or bowel cancer either. There are many different types. Half the battle is identifying (and successfully treating) the right sort.

I still think there will be cancer in fifty years time. But we won't have to die from it. We may never eradicate it though, because it is a tough, complex bio-engineering problem, closely allied to programmed cell death and immortality. That's another tough nut to crack for the same reasons, inexorably intertwined as they are.

She also watched her husband and father of those children, John Diamond, die a long, slow lingeringly horrible and miserable death from mouth cancer.

In life, no one gets off scot-free. And no one deserves to be on the receiving end of stupid, sour, ignorant, sweeping statements like this.

But that's a whole different argument. At present it is "programmers" (self-taught or academic or industrially trained) who make things and routinely test them for hardness. You can't suddenly invent rules that say only certain types of programmer may use and deploy "hacking" tools. That won't work because there is no defined path to test suitability or career fitness in the majority of people who define themselves as "programmers". Too broad a church. Too many disciplines and areas of specialisation. And too few people qualified to legitimately or meaningfully assess that either way. Or are we going to say, for example, only Microsoft Certified Pros are allowed to test? God in heaven forbid!

Reputation (from both peers and clients) and demonstrated output that works is the only test for whether someone is a good or bad (read, fit or unfit) programmer.

And no, in answer to your question, we don't allow only certain government regulated individuals to have legal access to perfectly ordinary systems analysis tools. They are probably the last people you want doing it.

Why bother with the hard stuff when opinionated prejudice gets you where you want to go?