You think the great lakes are inexhaustible fresh water? Also, they are getting more and more polluted and more and more water is being removed each year. I believe that we are near the beginning as to how political it will be. It may rival the American southwest as to how much each municipality is allowed to take each year etc.

They're compact enough to throw in a messenger bag along with a laptop.

And when somebody takes your messenger bag, *poof* there goes your data AND your backup. Happened to my father, he was always backing stuff up. But he put his backup in his laptop bag. His truck was broken into one evening and the laptop bag was stolen. The data on the laptop was worth many multiples of the cost of the laptop. He would have been happier if they left the bag and took the truck! A fairly new truck that was worth less than the data lost.

Having to prove the new medicine is both better than the old one, with less side effects is indeed a worthwhile endeavor. However, from things I recall, a lot of trials test the new medicine vs non-treatment via placebo, not against the current best treatment.

One other issue is a lot of side effects are seen many years down the road for the newer targeted medicines. Are the side effects caused by the drug or normal human variation due to aging?

The final thing that needs to be investigated is the people who demand 'medicine' for everything. If you just give them the 'right' medicine, they dont' need to do anything else. See also: prescribing antibiotics for viral infections, weight loss pills, etc. If society is going to be paying for health care, can we as a society force others to live healthier? I would be first on the chopping block for not being quite as healthy as I probably should be, but that is the question everybody ignores.

God help you if you order gifts through amazon as well. 'I saw you buy X, you might like Y.' Uh, nope. That was for my sister. Thanks for trying though.

I refer to the old video console wars. 32 vs 64 bit processing etc. The new processors can work on 256bit pieces of data at once via AVX.

I would imagine bridge clearances and weight limits on bridges would be at least 2 of the issues leading to the path chosen. (others would be things like permits, powerlines etc)

Just don't commit any crimes...
Just don't be associated with those who commit crimes.
Don't be associated with those who are associated with people who commit crimes.
Certainly don't walk/run/drive/bicycle through any place that has recently had a crime committed.
Don't appear to be doing something worthy of being noticed, even if it is benign.
Don't get in the way of people who would rather have what you have.
Don't make people upset with you.
Don't let people get upset with you even though they don't know you.
Don't have the wrong skin color.
Don't have the wrong gender.

People may argue slippery slope, but most of those are already being used EVERY SINGLE DAY to target people. Collection = abuse. You can't get around having it, if you're not gonna have people use it. Occasional news reports about people at the DMV grabbing celebrities police reports and that is stuff people think is necessary to collect! What about everything else? Also, the security of databases stinks. More so via people than technology.

If they haven't done it already, I'm sure they will soon do something like the following: We will lower the transactions fees for using debit/credit cards if you send us a list of items sold. (doesn't have to be with the transaction, just some time later would be sufficient, i.e. on a weekly or monthly basis). Though, now that I think about it more, it will go: We will RAISE the transaction fees unless you share the list of items sold...

People will not pay extraordinary amounts for slightly better hardware and software. (no apple doesn't count, they are good value for money, though you can't get good enough for low money from them.) Take for instance houses. People still make wood stick frame houses, even though they are quite lousy for insulation and longevity. A much better masonry or adobe house costs roughly 5-10% more, but they are very few and far between. Now take what most people are willing to pay for hardware ($0, free with subscription!) and software ($0). Now how does that figure into building them?

I don't even want to consider how many patents are involved in GPUs these days. Hardware AND Software have probably got to be in the 10s of thousands. If they started to get uppity and make something very good, they'd be blow out of the water in the courts because they couldn't possibly have gotten better without deliberately copying our patents...

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people are Terrible at searching (or really doing anything complicated on a computer). People think nothing of asking siri complete questions, but only type 2 words into google and get upset they can't find anything. Asking google complete sentences has worked well for me for years. Show this technique to people and they are completely amazed. I know my mother is terrified of hitting the wrong button on her phone. How does this happen to people?

Duck Season
Wabbit Season
Duck Season ...
Daffy tells bugs to fire and gets shot.

How the title is misleading.

Maybe it wasn't just harmless humor with all the gun issues these days and the lack of understanding.

Unfortunately getting that info is hard enough for contractors to obtain, even those working on the utilities. Some would say its a security issue, another because they may or may not be accurate (A fair amount of the time it is the later). They are a part of the public record. Subdivision plats usually show where they were supposed to go. County records departments usually have this info as well.
Crowd sourcing would work, but again accuracy is a MAJOR issue. Having a utility company come out and mark where their utilities are is your best bet (doesn't scale though) and again, may be wrong. Just note that almost every house usually has water/sewer/power/cable/telephone lines and expand that to block, city, state and you'll get the idea across.

Why is I measured diagonally? Why are hard drives measured in 1,000,000s? Because the number is bigger. For 8.5x11, you can truthfully say the max size available on the screen is 13.9". If higher numbers don't mean better, we wouldn't have this problem.