A slightly more cynical view:

Putin is going to grab Ukraine (or as much as he can), because he's willing to put boots on the ground and the Western World isn't. He's correctly surmised that the West has overextended itself a wee bit (both in terms of materials and willpower and moral authority). After all, he's "liberating", ain't he? Isn't that what the US did in Iraq? And Afghanistan? He's even invited by the locals!

Ukraine likely doesn't have the forces to stop them (if they did, they woulda kept them out of Crimea). The western world doesn't care enough to put skin in the game. As long as he doesn't heat the water too fast, I'd bet on Putin getting his Ukrainian lobster dinner.

I treat it as a civic duty to keep them on the phone as long as possible (personal time permitting, obviously).

Sometimes it's just the old "hang on" and put them down routine. But the fun days are when you argue with the "Account Services" lady about why they need your credit card number, or (my personal high score) getting the "car warranty" guy to tilt and swear at me when I told him I wanted to extend the warranty on my 1967 DeLorean.

This makes an easy comparison.

Currently, you pay a gas tax, per kilometer. No-body cares *what* you do with the gas at that point, or where you go. You can drive on freeways, you can commute to work, you can roadtrip across the country, you can just drive around the block for hours on end if you want. The only limit is the physical ability of the roads (expressed as a speed limit).

Conversely, a toll road will charge you for each segment of road. Suddenly, *where* this road is and what it connects to becomes a huge factor. If I own the major route, I can charge more (forcing you to pay or take a longer but cheaper detour) If I own the road that goes past the supermarket, I can charge more for that segment because it's popular (and the limit of what I can charge is "as long as it's cheaper than driving to the next furthest market"). If I own this movie theatre and the road in front of the competition's theatre? I can make it prohibitive for anyone to do business there. Just think how much fun you could have with speed limits. And how much is access to the road in front of your *house* worth?

And if you own a whole lot of roads, you can change speed limits to encourage traffic to go to stores you like/own, and away from competition.

This is the world the ISPs want to live in - they control all your roads, and they want to be able to adjust the toll road pricing so it's "cheaper" to go to their stores instead of their competition.

The secret to hooking viewers is not to sell it as a TV series - it's a novel being shown on television (or a really really multi-part mini-series, I suppose). Season 1 is a bit slow, but mostly we're setting up places and people and themes. Sometimes the villain is a throwaway one-shot, and sometimes it's someone we're going to keep seeing for years and years.

Barring that, there's plenty of sites that list the "essential" episodes, so you can give them the short-version to get them hooked and then back up to get the details.

Well, properly - the series arc ends at season 4. Season 5 is the "everything else" season (basically, the B-plots that got bumped from season 4 to make room to finish the main arc). There's a lot of good stuff in there (the telepaths are a bit weak-sauce, I'll admit), but I enjoy it mainly for covering the "yay, we saved the day! Wait, what do you mean we have to keep working tomorrow?" angle that is often missing from big heroic stories. (Yes, you've started the ISA. Now you need to run it. Yes, you've sent the elder races away. Well, there were folks who really liked working for the Shadows and are a bit miffed that you chased them away. Hey, remember all those telepaths that saved your bacon? Time to pay the piper...)

Did he then post your home address online, and tell you he'd come over and assault you? That you're only use in life is as a pretty face to satisfy him?

No? Then it's not really in the same category, is it.

I've had (and delivered) crushing insults to work. Never felt the need to personally threaten anyone. (And I've had exactly *one* supervisor threaten my physically. Once. And I never worked with them again.)

Overwhelmingly is almost too light a word here. Let's put this into some hard numbers. Take 1000 rape cases, put all the victims on one side of the room, put all the perps on the other. There are ten women on the perp side of the room (outnumbered literally 99-to-1 by men), and 82 men on the other side of the room (outnumbered "only" 11-to-1 by women).

Go figure that women worry about being raped by men...

Of course, when something actually *does* happen to a woman, she'll be blamed for not being more careful. After all, she's been getting threats all this time, hasn't she? She shoulda known that it was dangerous to leave her house.

Why don't we step back a bit - when is death/assault threats *ever* a valid response to anything involving video games?

What's "sexual" about Girlfight? If it was called "Guyfight" or "Dudefight", would you assume the same?

Don't buy into the hype. My kid's seven, and we're still doing fine in a 2002 four-door Echo. (They call 'em Yaris these days). And that's counting a week long camping trip this year. Far more important than Massive Cargo Space is simply a back door to get the kid in-and-out of the seat. But what we save in fuel more than pays for the odd time we need to rent a larger vehicle.

Babies need a stroller and a diaper bag - bag goes next to kid, stroller goes in the trunk. (And after about a week you'll get one of those little umbrella strollers for the car because you don't actually need a Baby Suburban Stroller anyway.) Once they're toddler age you're down to just the bag for snacks and such, and that's about the same size as those big purses you see everywhere.

One small difference - when's the last time a poorly socialized woman went on a killing spree because men wouldn't date her? Or start spouting crap about "alphas" and "betas"?

Only one of the genders gets violently offended when things don't go their way. And the other gender gets blamed.

Then say nothing, and call in an anonymous tip afterwards.

Well, he is getting advice from "cyber engineers", so you gotta consider the source.

In all seriousness - I get that we want to make a differentiation between this and electrical or civic engineering, but please pick something better than "cyber". Otherwise don't be surprised when everyone expects you to look like a Borg drone in a suit.

Fair enough. But are you truly suggesting that hearing something is worse than hearing nothing?

Reading the article (I know, I'm terrible, I read TFA), the message I get is that the implants give options. Maybe they'll be unlucky and it won't help much, and they'll go the signing route. Maybe they'll be lucky and have little or no issues. But either way, they have *choices*. If it was my kid, I wouldn't have blinked before going for the implants.

Culture is entered, not inherited. Tell me my infant kid "belongs" to your culture? I'll show you where to shove your culture - my kid will decide for herself, thank you very much.