. . . it's what's on it. Get Skype or Google Hangout or MSN Messenger or whatever gets her family's faces in front of her, and visa versa. She'd much rather see you than Bob Barker.

It was seventy year ago that Roosevelt sign an executive order to begin nuclear development. Now, the two largest uses of fission energy are boiling water and fueling bombs that never explode (thank goodness). Is that progress?

Picture one of these coming down to Earth, crashing onto a playground at the largest kindergarten in the world, deep frying ten thousand little tykes in a hellacious ball of fire. Sure, it will never happen -- cause it will never be built. Actually, it WILL be built, right after the government fixes the economy.

The Department of Labor has turned this over to Facebook - http://www.myskillsmyfuture.org/
See http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/10/facebook-labor-department-job-seekers.html for the details.
I think this site has no future.

This quarter, actually. It makes sense if you think about it.

Could anyone think of a better way to defeat an omnipotent enemy than causing it to go Stasi on itself?

See http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi

As we say, Stasi "is TSA." Anagram-wise.

Many businesses have been refusing cash for years (e.g., Hertz, Amazon), and the practice has been upheld in the courts. The law about "all debts public and private" relates to the government, not to any business obligation. Several /. forums have already beaten this to death. The only reason refusal of cash is not more widespread is that credit card companies charges are so high most businesses enjoy the extra margin of a cash transaction. However, MasterCard and Visa both show that cash transaction are more costly than credit cards due to the handling costs (including 'shrinkage'). I bet that 99% of the value of all retail transactions will soon be electronic.

. . . another year to use the computer, you are out of your fucking mind!

If you believe that every system has flaws, then you might be able to see when it may fail. For example, the income tax system has always been ham handed. Those who understood it well enough could always slip between the regulations to avoid some or all of it. In the early days, about 90 years ago, most people ignored them. In the 1940s, they passed payroll withholding and started collecting from those who were employed by others.

When most of the revenues were coming from a large "middle class" the system worked because it was easier to pay the government than to pay a tax attorney to find the cracks. People who were really rich could still afford to pay tax attorneys to minimize or limit their taxes, but it was a relatively small percentage of federal income tax revenues.

But as wealth began to concentrate, an industry of bright financial and legal professionals flourished, allowing more income to be shielded from the IRS. The rich, who got richer, weighed the cost of the tax verses the cost of testing the tax avoidance in tax court and decided the best return was "playing in the gray." The IRS has no choice but to go to tax court when someone challenges them. They do not have enough people to fight every rich person or company. Often, the well-paid lawyers of the taxpayers are better versed on the law than the civil servant IRS lawyers. As the rich get richer, they influence tax laws to gain a greater advantage. Eventually you have a society of people who are either too poor to pay much tax or a few too rich to need to pay tax. That is when the tax system fails. Frankly, no tax system can succeed when the money is too closely held by a few.

The irony is that we tax productivity. Imagine a company going to its most productive people and cutting their pay as they worked harder and better. There is a better way to collect federal revenue -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2011/09/02/guest-post-income-tax-alternative/ .