I know of a system that did PKE right: Lotus Notes. There was a nice checkbox to make it sign every mail you sent, every user had a keypair, you could verify both sender and content with a click. You could even prohibit printing ou copying an individual email.
It is universally despised.

Only problem is: Wifi does not do 21km links, more like 100 feet. Except if you have ultra-directional, amplified emitter-receivers at both ends.

I am not sure I encountered a TOS lately that does not incorporate this language. Even my cellular service has that!

Not that it could stand in court, mind you, but I am sure that I will only get dinged enough that I am not willing to pay a lawyer to make it right.

Luckily, there are many sane jurisdictions in the world where if an annex is not present at sign-up, it is not considered part of the contract, even if mentioned/refered to in it.

I even know a place where if a part of the contract is too difficult to read (ex.: low-contrast writing on the back of the paper, 6-point typeface, etc.) that part is null and void. An untested theory includes convoluted language in that rule.

I'd like to point out the following:
1) iPhones are avaliable for almost nothing down (with contract) and an iPod touch can be ordered new for 200$
2) DLSR's are even cheaper with no need to have a contract
3) bitcoin is bullshit.

Revenge of the nerds 3 ? ewwwww. At least it was better than Revenge of the nerds IV! *shudders*

I'm currently moving in that direction, and I will probably get a Guruplug. Same low-power processor, a little more memory, same USB connectivity to a HDD, but with Wifi. I will stuff it in a closet somewhere so if a burglar comes around I will not lose my backups. Plus, there are two interesting distros avaliable offering DLNA and "personnal cloud" functionnality: Tonido and an open-source one.

Ahem, a time capsule of the last 5 years of the century would be more like it.

First half of the nineties = Wolfenstein, Doom (barely), 386-486 class machines, no 3D accelerators, Adlib or Soundblaster, mouse optional.

last time I built a PC for gaming, the video card alone cost more than the PS2 I bought after dropping Grand Theft Auto 3 in it and being forced to reduce detail and textures to min to make it work.

I highly doubt that a PC *can* be built to handle console-style games for 3 years after it's purchase. Video cards have a useful gaming life of about 6 months to a year after launch. In contrast, consoles have at least 5 good years after launch and then stagnate for a while before games are not made for it anymore.

Money talks and says: buy a console to play.

Pathetic "attack": some mentally retarded moron tries to *light up C4 with a match.* No even a threat since C4 does not detonate this way by design.

Same quality of "attack": no chance of working. Not even drunken-redneck-quality planning or execution.

I can't believe these are viewed as terror attacks by anybody. Of course it is convenient to the expansion of the national security administration, so I understand they are excellent excuses to get their hands in your pants. Which is why I have been actively avoiding US airport connexions for a year.

Debt to GDP is like comparing what you owe Vs your income. If 100% debt to income was the bankrupcy limit, most people would become eligible by buying a car. What is important is Debt service Vs gov't budget aka payment Vs income. As long as the government has enough money coming in to pay it's interest and capital, it's still OK.

Still, it's always better to owe less (or nothing at all). Perpetual war is a costly venture, and the US decided to finance by credit instead of keeping it to avaliable funds.

I am quite surprised that you are refuting my thesis by refering to a text that says exactly the same as me. Currency is not a means of storage of value or measure of value (I assume that those are the mysterious "2nd and 3rd meanings" you talk about). Storage of value is the same as having a defered exchange. For example: "I give you one pound of meat today for an iPod in a year" is the same as "I am selling you this meat for X simoleons and next year I buy an iPod for X simoleons". Measure of value is iffy at best, for the exact reason I described in my original post: the value of things fluctuates for many reasons and for no reason at all (aka whim or fashion).

Also, I cannot fathom why you would bring Zimbabwe hyper-inflation in a discussion about value and money. In fact, I am surprised a gold bug like you did not bring up the Weimar republic instead. It is self-evident that bad actors, be they governments or corporations, can ruin a whole economy. But Zimbabwe was never a credible government anyway.

Backing a currency on gold, at best, makes the operation of printing money more tedious because a government has to find more of the stuff before, and at worst strangles an expanding economy because value is created but gold cannot be. The only applicable patch would be deflation: since a finite amount of gold represents an expanding economy, everything must keep being "worth less" in gold for everything to balance. And since gold-backed currencies have worked by the principle of "fractional reserves" for a long time, they were a sham anyway.

As for a unique currency resolving poverty, I present you the perfect counter-argument: Rome, Medieval Europe and Renaissance Europe were full of poor people, even as currency was made of real commodities (mostly metals) and was directly convertible in useful objects in your smithy's backyard.

That's a common myth: gold-backed currency has "real value" and fiat currency has no "real value". The thing is: money serves as an exchange medium of value. Since the usefulness (or value) of gold (or just about anything else physical) depends on many factors, the only sane option is fiat.

Here is an example: how much of your work is one ounce of gold worth? The most certain amount could be construed by the work you would have to spend to mine and smelt it. Possibly as much as gold is worth to you *right now*. You may be inclined to offer less work next year to get an ounce of gold; maybe none at all since you have no need for it at the time. Ergo: gold has no fixed, intrinsic value. This can be extended to anything: iron, oil, grain, meat, pretty shells, etc.

Whatever serves as currency, including bits, serves as an exchange medium for value; it's form is not important.

Problem is: in practice nobody gets anything close to any of the two options for 40$ per month.

Here is what major providers are selling around 40$:
Bell "performance": 6mb/1mb, 25 Gb cap, 42$
Rogers "express": 10mb/512k, 60Gb cap, 47$
Rogers "lite": 3mb/256k, 15 Gb cap, 36$
Telus "standard": 5mb/?, 30 gb cap, "fom 45$"
Videotron "standard" 3mb/? 4gb cap, 30$
Videotron "high speed" 7mb/?, 40gb cap, 54$

Since the major providers have gained the power to throttle financially all the competition, this is what we get. Forget about 100Gb caps, they were only offered by small competitors (Teksavvy offered 200Gb (30$) and unlimited(40$)).

Fuck partisanship. This is objective evil, free of dem/gop bias. Yes, the "internet kill switch" is designed to do what Mubarak did. In fact, this is it's ONLY use.

It does not have any parallel in any other communication medium: not TV, not the telephone networks, etc. Why? Because our forebears would have sniffed the fascist, totalitarian bent of it and would have shouted "NAZI, STALIN!". Now most of the US is constituted of pussies: "oooh, please save me from the teeeeeeerrorists! please! put everybody in a cage if it would save me from the teeeeeerorrists!"