Slashdot would be a better place with that moderation. You made me laugh, thank you.

This is false. Any study done on this shows that smokers pay more than they consume, precisely because they die early. Taxes are quite high on smokers, and many pay a premium on their health insurance anyway, but they don't linger until late in old age so they cost less in pensions and healthcare over their lifetime.

that's a tippling point...

No, their names were "Herr"

I personally think that the great breakthrough that would change everything is energy storage that is significantly more energy dense (orders of magnitude) than the batteries we have today, chargeable, and stable.

Think Heinlein's Shipstones and you've got the idea. Anyone who managed this would need to spend the first half of the money to build somewhere big enough to store the second half of the money.

I think the howls of protest are because India still receives a lot of foreign aid. It is a perfectly rational question to ask - if I country can afford a space program, why do they need aid?

If you, as a merchant, are accepting Chip & PIN transactions, then you're paying significantly lower fees to reflect the significantly lower risk . If you're accepting mag-strip & signature, then you're paying more for the transaction because there's a much higher risk that it's a fraud. If you're doing a card-not-present transaction (i.e. online) then you're paying even more because the risk is even higher.

This technique, which is a result of insecure hardware on the devices, is very hard and requires a lot of infrastructure, for lack of a better word. In 2010, the US had 27% of all card transactions worldwide, but 47% of all fraudulent transactions. The facts and figures say that Chip & PIN is more secure. The problem is that the US is so used to hucksters and fraudsters that they need the safety blanket, whereas in the EU the instance of fraud is so much lower that it's not seen as a problem.

All transactions are also vetted by more than the EMV, previous transaction history and known locations are taken into account, as well as overall usage. The PIN itself is separate from EMV (they go in two separate data elements in a transaction), and EMV has more than just this number, it also has other checks like an Application Transaction Counter.

And lastly, whatever the specifics of where liability lies, the banks treat disputes fairly because it's easy for them to do, and the person getting done is generally the merchant. Bear in mind, to get money off a card you need the following:
1. A machine, registered to a bank which is regulated by that country's local regulator (so no "magic" banks).
2. A merchant account, verified by said bank,
3. for which you need to be a registered business.

It should also be noted that the number they're talking about is not random and was never intended to be random, which is why they use the term "unpredictable" rather than the technical term "random".

The flip side of this is that the processing fees for Chip & PIN cards are significantly lower. The fact is that fraud is vastly reduced by using Chip & PIN, so the fees charged can account for that.

From the WHO

The whole report is worth reading - there's a lot of information in there and a FAQ on the second page.

The report also notes that there is a tendency to attribute all health problems in a wide area to Chernoybl, and that the major problem is trauma from the panic.

I believe it's arguable whether Chernoybl should be included in any discussion - the cause of the incident was not an accident, it was deliberate (even if those doing it clearly had no idea of what they were doing). So, yeah, you turn off all the safeties and backups, then scram the reactor and ignore the subseqent alarms. Uh... not the greatest idea?

Really? I've never paid the Olympic tax! Sure, some (maybe most) of the athletes get government funding, but it's not that impressive. In the main the bulk of the costs of running the games are paid by the hosts.. NBC giving them $PILESOFMONEY helps with that, but it cost a $EVENLARGERPILEOFMONEY to set up.

I'm amused that you think that a corporately sponsored version of the Olympics would be better.

No, stop being so wrong.

You are paying your ISP to provide internet, regardless of the content. It does not imply any rights to have content available, so tough cookie if it isn't. Net neutrality, wot.

Really? One of these things is not like the others :)

There are jobs in Ireland - but the construction bubble effectively lured a generation into trades when what it turns out is needed is professionals. A number of labs closed down as well as everyone consolidated. There are fields where every position has several people with the skills and experience applying for it leaving graduates in the lurch.
On the flip side, anyone with any kind of decent development experience will have a job in no time. All the major software companies have development centers in Ireland, and it's not just for the 12.5% corporation tax rate. Hiring people here is expensive, the Employer PRSI is high, the income tax is pretty high and the VAT is very high indeed.

The tradespeople got badly shafted by the bubble bursting. Construction is non-existent now and many of them had set up as sole traders and weren't paying their employers PRSI so they don't qualify for anything but the most basic social welfare. Many have left for Australia and Canada where there is demand for their skills.

On the corporation tax: the thinking behind this tax rate was sound. The government at the time cut way back on exceptions to the tax rules so everyone paid the same. As was mentioned above, France's effective corporation tax rate is 8.2% against a headline rate of 33%. There isn't a corporation in the world paying headline rates so what should be being compared is effective rates. Ireland's effective rate is pretty close to the 12.5% headline rate, and is unlikely to change.

All research done on this shows that this is not true. The only thing that has changed is the amount of stuff that gets broken and people that get hurt. That is a function of having more stuff and more people in vulernable places. If cities in places with names like "Tornado Alley" weren't growing, or places like Miami that have historically been swamps regularly hit by hurricanes didn't expand very quickly in the last 30 years, then it wouldn't look so bad. Further, because news is now effectively instant we hear about it now, not yesterday.

It's like saying "Well, Indonesia and Japan were both hit by massive tidal waves in the last 10 years, but we don't have any records of that happening before so it must be our fault". It's nonsensical.

Well, yes. It doesn't. It's an evolving system, why would it return to it's previous state. What it WILL do is find an equilibrium. See Ascension Island for a living, breathing example of this. A few hundred years ago it was a rock. Then along comes Darwin and convinces the British to dump a pile of vegetation and now it's a lush tropical jungle with a diverse biosphere.

A biosphere is not static - it changes based on inputs. A closed biosphere is delicate, and invasive flora or fauna can totally change it but it will eventually find balance. Another great example is the cane toads in Australia. Local birds have finally figured out that it's full of tasty meat, and it's not poisonous if you don't try and go through the top. So now they flip the toads to get at them. This means that the toads now have predators so their population should stabilize. It's changed the Australian biosphere, but it's finding balance.

None of which is to say we should not be reducing carbon emissions, of course, but wild anecdotal claims don't help anything.

They say they "like Dostoyevsky"