Eh, PayPal was among the first revolutionary online-payment services that enabled the rapid expansion of e-commerce. What you know now as the "evil PayPal" is what happened after Ebay bought it.

I still can't believe it is legal, in so many ways. I mean, I don't think anybody could argue ebay is not a monopoly in the online auction space, and yet they are allowed to only permit their own payment service (so they take a percentage on top of their commission).
Then, they hold your money like a bank account and even extend credit, and yet, unlike banks, they can freeze your money with no explanation.

The PayPal situation boggles the mind, but it is not related to Musk's X.com/PayPal.

I am pretty sure that depending the frequency and the intensity it might have a great effect on calorie requirements. Obviously I can't be sure since there is no first hand experience on these matters on /., but that's what bibliography indicates. Hmm, of course now that I think about it maybe the last statement was not accurate, as "first hand" does come into mind when thinking about the relevant experience of the average /.er...

what about Ender's Game? They completely failed to deliver the point of the book...

You are obviously too new to this internet thing, otherwise you would be at least aware of the 90's sensation that was dolphinsex.org...

So there was no monkey business with... ehm... chimps that led to the species jump?

It's the Coriolis effect. Duh.

First Martian traffic event, woohoo! Granted, it is not a red or even an orange in the google-map traffic scale, but still...

Hmm, so you are saying it is not really an ISP. It is only an email provider. And so we are not really talking about something like a 3rd world country, it is not so much a matter of infrastructure but of control (Cuba perhaps?). Have you looked at getting them satellite internet perhaps? I haven't looked at it recently, but I remember apart from expensive "regular" services there were some inexpensive ones where you would put a file in a queue and it would be broadcast to you. If something like that is available, you could be putting big files with your messages, videos, or whatever else you wanted up for them and set it so that it was downloaded on their end.

Do you time travel to 1995 to visit your parents? In any case, the overall scenario and questions don't make sense. Do they have some sort of dial up service that only allows them to access their email (with a 15MB inbox no less!) and nothing else? If so, not having web access how do they get all these viruses and spam email? If they do have web access, why do they have to use that "blast-from-the-past" email account for which you are trying to find crazy workarounds instead of anything else? It doesn't have to be webmail, you can set them up with a POP or IMAP service. Also, why the talk about running commands from email, can't you use one of the dial-up friendly remote management software? TeamViewer works over 56k. I doubt the "anonymous poster" is describing a real situation, it sounds more like an attempt at trolling.

I did not think SpaceX even with its excellent track record would have convinced the bureaucrats to give them a solid chance instead of just give everything to Boeing as usual. And actually $2.6b is to SpaceX probably more than what $4.2b is to Boeing. And it might actually force Boeing to actually develop their solution efficiently for once, since I doubt they can count on huge cost overruns if the competing contract is on time & on budget.

Yep, 20 years ago you didn't have the Moissanite choice anyway ;)
Diamonds are very common in nature. Their scarcity (and price) is artificial. Which is the main reason a diamond loses 50% of its value the moment you walk out of the jeweler's door. And let's not even go into ethics. Plus, it has a nicer story to tell - it is a material that was discovered in small traces in meteorites ("space rocks"). In fact, my wife's only problem is that it looks a lot like a very expensive diamond, so she is not comfortable wearing it everywhere.

Moissanite is actually transparent.

My wife's wedding ring is moissanite. I know all about its hardness, heat resistance, brilliance, rarity in nature (mainly from meteorites) etc. That's my whole point, their Sapphire pitch was all marketing and when it didn't pan out they should have at least given something good to their customers...

Sure, Apple is all about marketing, and they loved to give that "2nd hardest material after diamond" pitch when introducing their watch and would have loved to have it on the iPhone as well. Just for the hype. But since they found out it did not actually work, why not go to the best actual material out there that many other top devices are using instead of going back to hardened glass? When people at work pull out their cellphones, if you look at those without any screen protectors/cases, devices like the Samsung Galaxy S series have immaculate screens, while the iPhones are full of scratches...

The whole point is the first 1% and the last 1%, otherwise, the Mars Observer is probably still going strong having completed several thousand % of its original trip to Mars...