But the OP is a cell phone liability. He or she admits to breaking numerous phones and to-my-knowledge "replacement phones" don't get the same "low-cost-subsidy" as the phones you'd get for doing a new contract. I don't know the deals that Verizon or AT&T are offering for the current iPhone5, but I assume 2 million people aren't paying $500-700 each. More likely, most are getting the phones with a $200-300 "new contract" discount because that's how the business is run in the states.

All that aside... a few years back I put my college aged brother on my family plan with a Motorola Droid. I opted for the insurance on his phone. He eventually managed to drop it into water and it stopped working. I think the crux of the issue isn't "which insurance to go with" but what level of insurance is needed (and that's a *very* individualized question that isn't appropriate for Ask Slashdot). Another post mentioned being mugged and extreme sports as reasons why phone insurance might be necessary. My guess is that the OP is somewhat of a klutz and buys the insurance because it's a good value for him or her. Just because it isn't a good value for *most* people, doesn't mean the OP should avoid it. That said... this is not a good question for the stingy, risk-adverse Slashdot crowd who -- I believe -- avoids paying extra for things like cell phone insurance.

<pedantic>The correct noun is "noun".</pedantic>

If you got 2 weeks... a single day off for an interview would be 10%.

If the only domestic people who pose a threat to security are sub-stupid imbeciles, then targeting and protecting society from sub-stupid imbeciles is the correct course of action. If you're trying to suggest the possibility of well-educated, coordinated groups posing a threat, then I'd suggest figuring out the motives that would cause this group to take action against the state.

One difference, I think, between sub-stupid imbeciles and well-educated, coordinated groups is that "being pissed off that their lives suck" is enough of a motive for sub-stupid imbeciles. Whereas well-educated, coordinated groups have the advantage - most likely - of having comfortable lives in a meritocratic democracy.... so you'd need to look towards more rational motives like financial or political gain. I think... it turns out that being an enemy of the state is not the best way to gain financial or political power within the US... so intrinsically you don't see well-educated, coordinated groups "getting their plots foiled" by the FBI.

Government has two jobs: (1) ensure freedom; (2) provide security. Draconian laws seem to keep people safe, but saying that they are the *only* laws out there is simply ignorant.

Right now groups are rallying for the freedom of a society that allows Gay Marriage. Meanwhile, there are group rallying against the freedom of women to exercise medically safe Reproductive Rights. In terms of "ensuring freedom" the arguments boil down to "Does allowing Group X do Activity Y cause undue harm or penalties to people not in Group X?"

Arguments -- whether they are correct or not -- is that Gay Marriage doesn't harm anybody and evidence is given that children of Gay Couples do well. On the other hand, allowing Gay Marriage means taking the terms Wife and Husband out of anything related to Marriage and replacing it with Spouse and Spouse... which is a tremendous amount of paperwork for Hospitals and the IRS. And nutjobs also argue that Gay Marriage will eventually lead to people wanting to marry Cats, Dogs, and Goats... which is a dumb argument but that's the best that nutjobs can do.

For Reproductive Rights, you make the case that the potential for life of a fetus... who is not in Group X.... is irreparably harmed by allowing abortions.

So then there's Net Neutrality... Group X is Network Company's, Group X' is Network Users, Activity Y is Censor other Company's Networks from Your Network Users. The arguments are, "(1) Sure, why not? A company's gotta earn profits to build infrastructure," and, "(2) Network Companies engage in territorial monopolies that limit consumer choice on a local level so if Net Neutrality were not allowed Users might end not having access to parts of the Global Network unless the User can successfully petition their Local Government not to renew a lucrative Contract with the Incumbent Network Company the next time it expires (however many years that is)."

All kidding aside... they are *probably* trying to go paperless. Laptops/desktops allow a paperless office (e-mail, databases of information), but when you're reading and reviewing documents printed pages were king right up until the Kindle Touch. I'm actually surprised it just says Touch and not DX since the bigger size is supposed to be better for displaying graphs/charts/tables. But for reviewing and commenting on straight-text the Touch is a phenomenal platform.

Now... I can't guess what the savings is for switching top paper-users to e-Ink, but I can imagine 100 pages/day * 5 * 50 = 25,000 pages/year. Assuming a cost $0.01 for each page, toner, and maintaining the printer... $250 per person per year. This could very well be off by an order of magnitude in either direction, but without having the data for office product costs in the State Department it's okay to make WAGs.

If they are in an exploratory phase.... $6,600 per person is justified if they've got plans to roll it out to an extra 20,000 if the "pilot program" is successful for a more reasonable market rate (call it $500 per device... and $10M order). In this case, the $16.5 M + $10 M e-Ink project pays for itself in less than 4.5 years (assuming paper use drops precipitously).

Though after throwing around this speculation, it'd be nice if TFS gave more insight into the actual goals of the Contract that's in question. I could easily be completely wrong. Sometimes government wonks - as with business wonks - just want shiny new toys paid for with the shareholders (taxpayers) dime.

I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but a device with the 4 features you listed will end up costing far more than $100k/each. But given the features listed... the only application that comes to mind is exploring lakes/oceans on a celestial body that isn't Earth.... which would be awesomely remarkable.

The bar is pretty low here. I'm pretty sure being "wet" is enough. As long as the contents of the package don't evaporate before they reach the buyer, the seller is getting what they bargained for.

I'd wonder if anybody would buy Holy Gatorade on eBay... there must be enough religious jocks in the world to tap into that target demographic.

I agree. For space missions, Goldilocks Zone is much more valuable to study than Non-Goldilocks Zone. This also explains the investment in Telescopes capable of finding Earth-sized planets in *other star systems* which could become targets for probes in the future when Faster Than Light travel becomes possible.

I'd say a tool shed might be a viable place to relocate. Leave the original foundation in the old place... build a new one and just bring the walls/shelves to the new place. A savvy vacationer might also have the option of relocation their mobile home. I suppose technically those count as "places".

My corporate firewall warns me that the link to openmint.net contains a Trojan Virus. Buyer Beware.

Yeah... but adding $38 * N (where N is the number of shares sold during the IPO) to the Facebook balance sheet is better than adding $24 * N. An IPO is an opportunity to fund the operations of a business. Facebook's war chest has $38 * N more than it used to have. They can buy other companies, buy buildings, make payroll, fund lobbyists, and other things that an expanding company needs to do. The fact that the stock is down $14 * N (36%) since the IPO means shareholders have lost a lot of money, but this isn't a Facebook mistake. I'm sure Zuck is happy about having $11 Billion compared to $16 Billion that was theoretically available to him at the time of the IPO. And having a $50 Billion company with $38 * N instead of a $50 Billion company with only $24 * N.... Facebook is in pretty good shape.

Congrats on the expected child. Also, I like your sig. :)

The semi-colon after "instance" is, however, completely and totally wrong.

It implies 15% of the traffic care about IE. Lots of web developers use multiple browsers.
I might be that they need to switchover to IE to read articles that describe how IE renders
things incorrectly when given certain inputs. It wouldn't surprise me that w3schools has
pages that demonstrate how things appear differently in different browsers...

That being said... 85% traffic from other browsers is a good thing. This is a solid B.

I have a theory that 10% of people are simply very bad drivers, bikers, and/or pedestrians
who don't pay close attention to there environment. I find it *comforting* that this statistic
suggests that 90% of people are good drivers, bikers, and pedestrians. I mean... 90% is an A-.