Yes, I tried GrooveIP too, but for whatever reason it didn't like my internet connection, or perhaps my (fairly old) phone, and had a significant delay (up to 0.5 sec) -- so essentially gave me a half-duplex connection, whereas for whatever reason sipdroid has only a small latency (usually 0.1 sec or less)... sipdroid does "integrate" into the android dialer, but not very well, but hey, it's cost-free!

I use GV as my "primary" cellphone #. Granted, I don't actually use my "phone" as a phone very often. I pay next to nothing for cell service, since my phone is connected to wifi most of the time. Sipdroid + GV, while probably only about 95% reliable works well enough for me -- I have had issues with texts not getting forwarded properly, though I solved that by having all texts sent to gmail. It's slightly inconvenient to have two "cell" numbers, though most people i know can deal with that. The voicemail transcription is pretty neat, works well enough, and is often hilarious. I'd pay a reasonable yearly fee for GV. It's my impression that GV mostly exists because google is interested in optimizing its voice recognition system. I sometimes "donate" accurate translations of my voicemails.

I'd pay a reasonable fee for GV, especially if there was an app that properly integrated it with the android dialer (sipdroid is really a hack).

That's true. And I guess that wold be part of the reason for the restricted access to those camera feeds, and maybe any cameras that aren't in a public fixed location need to be handled differently, or remain secured until subpoenaed or requested under FOIA.

Further: generally, I don't see the objections about people using the camera feeds for nefarious purposes. I guess it might make a criminals job easier, but it doesn't "change the game" in that it doesn't let anyone do anything they can't already do.

And, sure voyeurism is an issue, but I still think that if the cameras exist, and *someone* gets to review their output, then there needs to be a way for others to also review that output, and more importantly verify that when video is used as evidence that the whole story is being represented.

I've said this for years. I have no problem with all the public-facing cameras, so long as the output from all those cameras is available to the public, preferably directly, in realtime. The cameras then become a public asset. Law enforcement can use them, but so can the rest of us. There's already no expectation of privacy in public places, so I don't see any issues with universal access to the data.

I'd guess it might be necessary to restrict access to police dashcams and "uniform-cams" for a time, but eventually it should all be made public, with review processes in place to make sure that none of it gets "accidentally" deleted.

There's already a "smart" gun. Its called a shotgun. Handguns are dangerous, largely because it's relatively easy for the user to shoot themselves, or accidentally shoot someone else with one. When was the last time you heard about an accidental death (or even a homicide) involving a legally-obtained shotgun?

IMHO, most guns (and ammunition) other than shotguns should be stored in locally-managed, locked & guarded arms depots, perhaps adjunct to local police stations, or even better, dedicated organizations (militias), to be used for civil defense, in the event of an invasion or (god forbid) civil war. If there was such a system of militias in place, I might actually be interested in exercising my 2nd amendment rights, since it would serve a useful purpose,in that it would reduce the ability to justify the existence of a standing army (the true reason for the 2nd amendment). As it is, I have no interest in guns, and even less in the politics surrounding them.

Technically, it was applesoft basic on a Bell & Howell Apple ][ in 5th grade science class. The teacher had written a program in applesoft basic to drill simple arithmetic problems, and another to drill spelling words, both including simple animation and sound. I was enthralled (even before I saw the thing actually do anything, since it sat there for weeks for lack of an RF Modulator to connect to a TV, which the teacher eventually built from simple parts, much to my amazement). I looked at his code and immediately began writing simple games (text adventure, tic-tac-toe, pong, etc.) and even "ported" his original program to the C64 and TI/99-4a -- though I think in many ways my learning to program started much earlier, since I was always taking apart (and sometimes putting back together) various machines, appliances, electronics, what have you, from a young age, and developed a basic empirical understanding of mechanics, electricity and electronics, which translates somewhat into basic logic, and perhaps more importantly the willingness to learn from (and copy) "prior art" and to not be afraid of breaking stuff or making mistakes. There's a (potential) drawback though to empirical learning, in that it makes it more difficult to fall into academia and established theory, since unlearning is sometimes more difficult than learning, though personally, I have no regrets in that regard, since it also makes acquiring new skills much quicker. I wish I could pick up new human languages as quickly as I can pick up new programming languages.

Not refuting anything you're saying (Because I agree wholeheartedly), but the quote from 1 Timothy is:

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."

Emphasis added, since I think that's the most important part of the quote. Money is just a tool. It may be a tool that we need to leave in the dustbin of history, and I'd personally like to see that happen, since there are many ways we could live without a monetary system entirely, but as a pragmatist, I don't see it happening anytime soon, at least not without a very strong catalyst.

I've been saying this for years. Sometime shortly after the 1Ghz "barrier" got broken, almost all computers became "good enough" for almost everyone.

I just recently put a built-from parts (and virtually silent) circa 2003 machine with a 1.8 Ghz AMD Barton, back into service with a modern 80+ power supply, 1.5 gigs or ram and a new(ish) drive. It may not be quite as snappy as my current main system (which is 5 years old) or my htpc (which is 7) but it's really a perfectly usable machine with a fresh install of pretty much any modern OS.

The primary reason to run current-gen hardware these days is lower power consumption, and to a certain extent modern graphics hardware (capable of hardware HD x264 decoding). If all you need is a web browser and office suite, anything that uses reasonably fast RAM from 10+ years ago will more than fit the bill.

Lots of people end up replacing perfectly good hardware just because "windows gets slow" which (sadly) few people seem to know that a reinstall will fix. That might take a few hours, and to hire a tech to do that might cost $75 or so... but that's still cheaper than a new machine.

Others have brought up good points countering your "non-story" opinion, here's (I think) another:

If banks are willing to do THIS:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-hsbc-probe-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211

For semi-anonymous international criminal syndicates, or whomever they did that for, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same thing for their actual BUDDIES who run legitimate multibillion dollar businesses? And there is (as others have pointed out) always suitcases filled with $100 bills. It's really not that long of a boat (or private jet) ride from Florida or Texas to the Caymans or Bermuda.

I wish I had mod points for you, but I don't, so I'll comment instead and say that the fact that there are people willing (indeed, even eager) to compare an act as essentially harmless (as admitted by a major corporate head) as sharing some TV episodes, to the heinous and criminal act of rape, simply to try and strengthen their argument, is a good example of one of the issues facing our society: totally inappropriate hyperbole. Certainly this social issue is more important than online filesharing.

My next paragraph may make me a tad hypocritical, though perhaps illustrates my point.

The (thinly veiled) comparison to rape suggests that this person (if he/she/it is not a troll, which I guess is likely) thinks that rape is not much worse than, or even equivalent to copyright infringement. It's a logical hypothesis.

Slightly more seriously: If the poster was not a troll, then I'd guess that they're not consciously aware that they think that way, and the comparison bubbled up out of the unconscious, perhaps in reaction to seeing a somewhat charged and leading assertion, since I don't see that HBO is "inducing" anyone to infringe copyright any more than the US Mint induces people to counterfeit, though if I was going to make that point (I don't personally care to, since I would say it's irrelevant) I think I would let my argument stand on it's own without denigrating womankind or bringing up 9/11 or whatever other horror might be in fashion, since at least for a free-thinking audience, the hyperbole only serves to diminish the point.

That said I do think it's somewhat refreshing to hear a corporate spokesperson admit what most of us have known for years, that casual online (or offline) sharing of copyrighted content, on the whole, is at worst economically neutral, since much of it amounts to free advertising, as some of the people that obtain or and/or provide an infringing copy will also spend money on the same or similar content, or cause others to, since people will spend money on stuff they like.

I feel for the friends and family of the poor guy, and wish them the best, and I'm sure it's an impractical suggestion, and in no way is it likely to happen, but In my opinion modern humans have no business living on what is essentially a giant sand bar that supports a delicate (and slowly dying) ecosystem. Though I'm admittedly biased. I simply don't like the place. The weather is almost unlivable. It's cold in the winter and unbearably hot and humid all summer. Culturally, it's not my cup of tea either.

Draining the everglades (which is/was a beautiful and terrifying place) was one of the worst ideas ever. The CoE does some great things, but that was not one of them.

Granted Cape Cod and the islands in my home state aren't much better (ecologically speaking).

That may be true, but you seem to have missed the point of the rebuttal. It's completely unnecessary to "carpet the entire surface of the earth" with panels.

I've done the math before as well, and it's a very small percentage (around 0.1%) of the earth's surface required to produce all the electricity needs of the planet with PV panels, or a little under 1% to produce ALL the energy needs of the planet.

That would be a decidedly non-trivial undertaking. Though The same effect could be achieved over a long period of time by having lots (and lots) of grid-connected solar systems (with storage) installed all over the place. A distributed solution would not require massive changes to the transmission lines to be rolled out in one project.

It's my understanding that the problem of storage is really the only barrier currently to a 99% PV electrical grid.

We could only generate around 20% with PV without needing serious technology upgrades at substations and additional on-grid storage.

There are also the (probably limitless) number of (vanishingly unlikely) possibilities that could be if our understanding of the universe is flawed or incomplete, i.e. there is stuff going on at *much* "smaller" scales than the planck length, and the universe has much more energy available than we're aware of, or that "time" can actually be "rewritten" in small, or large ways, or that paradoxes actually are somehow "features" of the universe, ways in which the universe can actually to be "logically" inconsistent with itself: "existential dissonance" if you will.

Or how about that even if it were to become *technically* possible to create a paradox (you have a time machine) in actuality, it is discovered to be impossible to create one. You can travel in time, but any action that would create a paradox simply does not occur; no matter how hard one tries to create a paradox, the action always fails. It's hard to rationalize something like that, but our *actual understanding* of the universe is increasingly hard to rationalize as well... so it's not *that* much or a stretch to imagine that the cosmos may have properties even weirder than an infinite number of simultaneous universes, that is: one universe that can be changed at any points in time, but those changes are forced to always have conditions that don't contain outright paradoxes, or if you do create one, the universe spontaneously "heals" itself. Perhaps your time machine ceases to have been made, and therefore you never traveled in time to create the paradox, so the universe just "pops" back into place, with no one the wiser. Only time travelers that know the "rules" of time could ever successfully travel in time, everyone else would only end up back where they started.

Try pageplus. They resell verizon. I have an old off-contract droid x that I keep activated as a cell phone for under $4/month. It's connected to wifi most of the time, so I hardly ever use the tiny amount of voice/data that I get for that price. It works perfectly as an occasional use cell phone, but full time pocket computer.

I used to have a tracfone, but pageplus makes it *cheaper* to have an android phone. I dunno how they do it, but I don't care as long as they stay in business.

It's true though, actual "smartphone" plans from all the major providers are at least $30/month, and more like $75/month if you use a lot of mobile bandwidth.