The weird thing is, most cutting of energy use is done through better technology. The laptops I replaced our desktop machines have half to a third the wattage on the power supplies, and work just as well. My investment in LED light bulbs is just the start- I want to install a low voltage USB-compatible power grid in my house, to run all sorts of things at fractions of an amp, or at least under 2.5 amps (my new cell phone and tablets use higher amperage chargers). I've replaced my refrigerator with a newer model that uses half the electricity and added five more cubic feet. And yes, I drive a prius.

Funny thing is, I'm not particularily an environmentalist. Less dirty energy costs less money.

If you need money to get companionship, you may want to invest that same money into buying a personality.

Why is there a debate at all?

Because people want it. Suppose (just hypothetically) you were getting a subsidy from the public, and that the subsidy served no useful purpose. Then suppose someone said, "Hey, this is getting expensive and unless we change the rules for how we compute your subsidy, it's going to get more expensive in the future."

You would call for debate. Why wouldn't you? What've you got to lose?

Futhermore, if you lost that debate, and then people started saying, "Let's change the rules for your subsidy, either eliminating or reducing it," you would call for debate, because since your subsidy serves no useful purpose, the rational course of action is going to be to eliminate your subsidy.

I think we're pretty much now at the stage, where we should start seeing some some great arguments for how pollution reduces crime (and pollution solves some other social problems as well), and that if you want to be tough on crime (and address other social ills), then we need to increase pollution. (That'll be the liberal argument, put forth by Republicans.)

This will be countered by the argument that increasing pollution just makes industries become dependent upon pollution, cleaning up the pollution is needlessly expensive, and industries that pollute could be just as productive without the pollution. (That's the conservative argument, put forth by Democrats.)

"Are you pointing to problems in general, or some theologies in particular?"

More in general, in that all theology that ends up personal, ends up a finite brain contemplating an infinite being.

"As a sola scriptura type, I'd like to point to some specific English language scripture as a possible solution, but the same problem heads its ugly rear there, too. Guess we'll have to be humble and rely on faith, no? :-)"

My response to that is John 21:24-25 :-). But more seriously, yep, same problem rears it's ugly head there, perhaps more so. The book is a reflection of God's work with his people a long time ago, it isn't God himself.

That's why I think internet speed should be measured in Gigabytes per month. Seriously. About once per week I get snailspam from CenturyLink, wanting me to upgrade from 7 bullshit units to 20 bullshit units. Except each "plan" is the same number of Gigabytes per month. So how it is an "upgrade?" Oh, if I give you more money, I'll be able to hit my cap faster? That's silly.

Now if you're telling me my cap will change from 200GB to 571GB, that is an upgrade I might be willing to pay for. Because then you'd be talking actually-relevant numbers.

What I don't want to see are solutions that are dependent on outside resources

This is totally understandable but TFA is about a tech, not a product. Relax. I think the whole point of this is that people will be able to build stuff out of this. i.e. you'll google "arduino thread" and instead of just seeing programmers talk about concurrency, you'll also see some networking stuff in your search re--

Fuck. Guys, why did you have to call it "Thread?" WTF were you thinking? I declare: strike one.

Too late.

You cannot serve warrents to search property in other countries.

You can if it's controlled by someone in your country. When point a gun at someone's face who is in the same room as you, all kinds of things are possible.

If they say no or "hard drive crashed" then you do something, and then ask "who had been the second largest stockholder? You're now the largest (after us)."

It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to switch to paper debit cards that had the amount of the card printed on the front. When you used that card, the cashier simply gave you lower-denomination of cards (say, a $5 debit card when you paid for a 5 dollar item with a $10 debit card).

Once this practice became pervasive enough, unfortunately the government would have to step in to create rules and regulations as to how all the printing would appear, and to prevent fraud. I suggest they mandate the use of engraved printing plates; green magnetic ink; and heavy cotton rag for the card. Oh, and to certain security features like holograms, watermarks, embedded plastic strips, etc.

My god, the level of convenience we'd enjoy would blow away any other form of paying for goods and services literally overnight.

Let me guess, you don't get vaccinated, either...

Are you just as histrionic over Lois Lerner's missing emails?

That was awful. Pick up just about any Harry Turtledove book for a more thoughtful take on the subject.

You need one of those gay European man purses to carry around all your loose change. Then it makes sense, I suppose.

I do want the string built in Sequence Order.

Here's the weird thing- query #2 has been working for 4 months. Not sure what changed, but the explanation that the rows are being fetched slow makes sense (they're always messing with my server settings!).