>up, had our undersea cable cut twice by drunk idiots dropping anchors in the wrong spot.

Are you sure the cable wasn't stolen, for the value of the scrap metal.

The days when investing in the stock market was a socially responsible activity, ended about a century ago.

The days when the individual could make money by buying and holding stock ended more than 3 decades ago.

The days when an individual could make money as a day trader ended about 2 decades ago.

The days when an organization could make money on the stock market, without using HFT ended about a decade ago.

Verizon either started as one of the Baby Bells, or bought out enough of the Baby Bells to be considered one of the original Baby Bells.

>OK, here's a challenge, a leisure society for all with minimum livelihood and medical care guaranteed for all? I mean since we'll *obviously* have these incredible levels of energy and resources and technology, right????

With a couple of changes in government rules, regulations, statutes, and laws, that could be implemented today.
(By today, I mean that if the laws were literally changed today, the transition could start on 1 June 2015, and the entire process be complete by 1 September 2015.)

The major issue is whether or not the general population will accept the consequences of a shift of that nature.

It is a given that business will, on general principle, oppose that shift. It is highly probable that the general population will side with business, and oppose the shift.

>Now give me that "phat venture capital check" is what they're (i.e. the Navy's contractors) advertising.

Back around 2000, there were a couple of firms that claimed to outfit laser weapons on private yachts. Weapon systems that could destroy the boats that the pirates were using.

These systems were not cheap, and once installed, did limit which countries one could visit.

Her Majesty's Royal Army.

The Army that has no qualms about grabbing civilians,put them into camps, and has an official, formal policy of starving the inmates to death. Her Majesty's Royal Army has never rescinded the official order to starve civilians placed in concentration camps.

The army that decided that the best way to help wounded, captured enemy, was to execute them on the spot. Another order that has never been rescinded.

From that paragon of information known to be false, but is believed by the editors to be true, regardless of the actual facts:

This is the list of Schedule I drugs as defined by the United States Controlled Substances Act.[1] The following findings are required for drugs to be placed in this schedule:[2]

1) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
2) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
3) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

I see the LSD is listed as Schedule 1. Guess somebody doesn't know that it is/was effective, when used to treat various psychological issues. The issue for the clinician is doing an accurate psycho-diagnostic exam. Something that takes roughly 3 hours of patient time, and another three or so hours, sifting the results.

Mescaline can be legally used for religious purposes. Come to think of it, it also has been used for psychotherapeutic reasons.
Again, it works as a psychotherapeutic agent, when used for the appropriate condition, which takes roughly 3 hours of patient time, and three or more hours sifting the results.

IOW, the therapeutic treatments are known, but current medical practice in essence, prevents the diagnostic to be made. (Let's face it, when you have 180 seconds with a client, one can not do a differential diagnosis, much less an accurate one., And insurance companies are doing their utmost to reduce client face-time to 60 seconds, or less. )

Wasn't one of their defenses that after the "safe injection site" opened up, both legal and illegal sales of those specific drugs went down?

>IOActive's reverse engineering process required the use of skilled technicians, sophisticated lab equipment, and other costly resources not generally available to the public.

Since when have the bad guys limited themselves to what was available to the general public? Or even limited themselves to what one person could do?

I take it that the Cyberlock is effective, only when the attack is carried out by somebody like my next door neighbor. He is a very nice person, but due to Alzheimer's, people in the neighborhood do have to occasionally walk him home.

>There is nothing to note beyond 'welcome to the low end of the phone business'.

I'd love to know what the high end of the phone business is, since models that have an MSRP of US$1,000 are not getting updates in a timely manner, if they even get them.

>They also abandoned my Apple //e

I don't know when Apple officially dropped support for them, but they stopped manufacturing them in 1997, and selling them in 1998. However, as recently as 2008, one could still find "Apple // Authorized Service Centers". Places that one could take their Apple // to, and have both software and hardware issues fixed.

Apparently, for some businesses, it is cheaper to use buy "broken" Apples, and have repaired, than to write/rewrite/port the software they use, to something that runs on more recent hardware.

I bought a Google Experience device, within days of the official release of that device.

It did not ship with the then most current version of Android.
It was not updated to what was the most current version of Android when the device was released, until after Google had released two more versions of Android.
IOW, there was no point in time when the current version of Android was available for the device. There was a period of perhaps as long as six months, when the version of Android it was running, was the second most recently released version of Android.

Given Google's failure to support their own "Google Experience Devices", I have no illusions about the will, and desire, of other companies support of their hardware. In all instances, the only safe assumption is that there will be a point blank refusal by the vendor to update, fix, or do anything with either software or hardware.

Washington State treats "intellectual property" as part of the assets upon which an organization's Business and Occupational Tax is determined.

Assuming the Libertarian Party is true to its principles, fraud statutes would enable the little guy to fight Comcast, AT&T, etc, and win. If their advertising promises one thing, but their service delivers something else, fraud has occurred, and penalties would be paid.

> I'm not sure if the robots were pink or not - they were a light color, could have been beige, white, or some light shade of pink.

In a fit of moronic stupidity, Mary Kay let its trademarked color lapse. Since then, the company has been scrambling to find a shade of pink that they can claim to be theirs, and theirs alone. Consequently, their livery has ranged from a pearly white-pink, to a very dark purple-pink, wandering through both orange-pink, and a greenish-pink.