You are aware of nuclear fallout, right? Radioactive fallout, coupled with the massive dust from all the explosions and fires, is a serious threat to food and water supplies even thousands of miles away from the actual explosions. Some of it could even be subtle, like rises in cancers and mutation rates that take years to fully manifest.

I suspect what the parent was referring to is the relatively short half-life of the tritium used in the fusion stages. Normally it has to be replaced every few years to keep the bomb fully operational, but as you said that still wouldn't prevent someone from getting an old Soviet warhead and turning into one or more single-stage fission devices and/or dirty bombs.

Might want to take a break there or you'll get some nasty chafing. ;)

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. "Government hands off my health care! Oh, but can you watch my kids for a few hours?"

And, more importantly, Barrens chat is *created* by kids, and the occasional adults acting like kids.

Reminds me of BBSing in the 1980s. I remember on one board a guy was trying to sell a used vacuum cleaner, but the silly profanity filter kept censoring it when he tried to talk about how it could "really suck.". :)

The absolute worst I have encountered is Coldfusion, where you have to do insanely verbose crap like this:

<cfquery name="getId" datasource="somedb">
SELECT id
FROM users
WHERE login = <cfqueryparam value="#login#" type="cf_sql_varchar">
</cfquery>

If and when that happens there will be far bigger problems to worry about such as food, shelter and sanitation.

Heh, suicide for hackers: "ssh -l root mypacemaker kill -9 1"

I don't know how it is where you live, but around here pay phones have all but disappeared. If you get stuck somewhere at night (car problems, etc.) and you don't have a cell phone, you're screwed unless someone is nice enough to stop and help. Which, usually, they aren't. That being said, having a prepaid phone is certainly a great option for those cases. I'm just saying, cell phones aren't as much a luxury item as they once were.

Hmm sounds like an episode of "Fear Factor" :)

I see what you mean; I just think it's my different style of game play. As I mentioned in my original post I generally just play to 80 and start over again with a new class. The quests are the same of course, but I try to mix things up a bit by doing different zones, and I also enjoy learning the new play style of the new class. i must say though, one more time through Dragonblight and Zul'Drak and i might have to scream. With four 80s and a 75 so I've run Northrend way too many times in the past six months. :) I would love to try some of the endgame stuff again but it really is hard finding a good casual guild, and I don't want to join a hardcore guild that forces me to raid....once that happens it goes from being a game to being an unpaid job.

Spending money on hobbies is fine, I'm just saying I don't get why someone would want to play an achievment based game and then buy their achievements. It seems to me like buying trophies for your wall. Sure, it makes you look cool, but there's no real sense of accomplishment to go along with it, for me at least.

You're right about the flying mounts; it was silly of them to make what is essentially the next upgrade after the fast epic mount be SLOWER than the thing it's replacing. Fortunately the standard flying mount is getting more than 2x faster in the next major patch, and also somewhat cheaper. Ground mounts are getting a LOT cheaper.

Mounts aside, in over four years of playing WoW I've never felt the absolute MUST HAVE desire for anything in-game. Sure, I've wanted some things (dungeon armor sets, for example) but never to the point of paying for gold to get them. To me paying for gold so I can buy some really nice item is basically just turning that item into nothing more than a reflection of the size of my real-world disposable income. I would rather there be some sense of accomplishment attached to it,even if it's just a lot of farming or holding out for six months until my regular game play has built up enough gold for it.

Then again, I'm what you might call a "hard-core casual" player. I play quite a bit, but I just play to have fun and I'm not overly concerned with comparing myself to everyone else in the game. Usually after I hit 80 I just start levelling another alt of a class I haven't tried before. I don't even bother with guilds because the casual guilds are almost useless and the alternative are the hardcore guilds that kicks you out because you decided to take a couple weeks off from the game.

I think you mean budget deficit But if they're having trouble dealing with a surplus then I'd be happy to do my part and take some of that extra cash off their hands. :)