He called and said "We've broken flash on both Macs and can't watch youtube videos now. I've installed it twice on your mom's Mac but it didn't help."

Could be a lot worse. I emailed my mom a screenshot and she replied, "How did you do that?" I wrote back saying, "I have a Mac and don't know how to do it on a PC like you have, but if you Google 'windows screenshot' you'll find something that will tell you." Two days later I get a call: "I did what you said and now my computer runs slow and has all these strange windows and icons everywhere and my email doesn't work." "What did you do, mom?" "I Googled what you said. Then one of those sites told me my computer had a virus and I clicked a button to clean it."

This was my mom so I helped her, but this is a good example of why I'd rather have burning bamboo shoved underneath my fingernails than work tier 1 tech support.

Have you considered an armband-style case for your phone? It straps the phone to your body pretty much as if it were a watch. You'd have to remember to take your phone out of your pocket and put it in the case when you suit up, but I assume you'd have the same problem remembering to remove a watch and put it back on over your suit.

That "shadow" system you speak of could in fact be the catalyst we've all been waiting for to push the majority into IPv6 space.

The majority would never even notice if thepiratebay.se, demonoid.pw, or any similar site were to vanish from the official root servers. The majority simply don't use such sites. The minority who do fall into two groups: People who casually download a show every now and then, and people who are hardcore into the whole pirating scene. The hardcore people will simply change DNS providers and use one the MPAA can't touch. And the casual downloaders would only be mildly inconvenienced until somebody puts out a DNS-switcher browser plugin that dynamically picks DNS providers the way FoxyProxy dynamically picks proxy servers.

That said, IPv6 probably would solve this problem. It solves a lot of problems that people don't actually have.

What would happen if the tension provided by the balloon's lift was removed, for whatever reason?

Why do you want to know? That sounds like the kind of question a terrorist might ask, sonny...

A circumnavigation of Venus would test our ability to function in deep space, to enter a planet's gravitational influence, to create robust shielding for the higher radiation at Venus's relatively close proximity to the sun, to devise zero-g strategies for long-duration flights -- all of which would bolster us for an even longer journey to Mars.

We've already done most of those things. Function in deep space? We've sent many successful probes all over the place, adding a human payload doesn't change the physics. Enter a planet's gravitational influence? Ditto. Create robust shielding? We need to figure that one out before leaving the Earth-Moon system, and test it on a probe before committing people to it. Devise zero-g strategies for long duration flights? Been working on it ever since Skylab, no need to even leave Earth orbit to study the effects.

None of these things require or even benefit from using Venus as a target, nor does Venus make a good testbed for missions elsewhere. With the Moon or Mars, the problems on the surface are very similar to the problems on the journey: Low pressure, low gravity, exposure to radiation. With Venus the problems are exactly the opposite of those on the journey. High pressure, high heat, corrosive atmosphere. Venus is a pressure cooker full of sulfuric acid. That makes Venus a lousy analog of anywhere else in the solar system, with the possible exception of Io. If we're going to spend the effort on surviving Venus there has to be some reason for it that's unique to that planet. "Practice" ain't it.

I actually think we're at the point where we can start to do this. There's enough wealth to give everyone a living-wage stipend without requiring that they have a job. Enough to cover food, shelter, clothing, and health care so no one ever has to worry about starving or freezing to death, but not enough for a lot of luxuries. To get more, a person needs to work at one of the jobs that automation can't yet do. As automation improves and is capable of taking over more, the line between "necessities" and "luxuries" will shift until, at the extreme when automation can do everything, everything will be classified as "necessity".

There will be people who just don't want to work and are satisfied with the basic stipend. That's fine. I think that most people want to do some sort of job, though. They may not want to the job they have, or may not want to work as much as they currently do, but in general I think people like to have a sense that they're doing something useful. People will find a way to make some luxury money with their hobbies and by doing the things they like to do.

But who will do the dirty work? Who will be the garbage collectors, the janitors, etc? I have a feeling that the current wage structure will be turned on its head. If no one has to do the dirty, dangerous jobs in order to eat we'll have to increase the wages to create the incentive. The person who cleans the toilets might end up getting paid more than the middle manager in the cushy office. This extremely socialist society might finally achieve the free-market ideal in the labor market by giving everyone the ability to say, "Screw it. I'm not getting paid enough for this bullshit."

Yeah, the devil's in the details. This scheme has a hell of a lot of details to work out, and even in the best case I can't see any politically feasible way to get from here to there. I anticipate that we're going to have a very nasty time of it as the pool of workers grows and the pool of jobs shrinks, until the culture grows out of the "Why should I work to pay for them to be lazy?" mentality.

I had a bunch of third-generation copies of cassettes (yes, *cassettes*, dammit!) of Blue Oyster Cult albums back in high school. Never could figure out the damned lyrics. They *sounded* like "mistress of the salmon salt", and "the queenly flux, eternal light", but they couldn't be. Those phrases and most of the others I thought I heard made no sense. But try as I might I couldn't twist the sounds into anything coherent.

Then they invented the Internet, and I could look up the lyrics online.

Fuck.

Someone who wants to be offended can find reason to with anything.

• Barbie's a manager who employs male engineers: "This teaches girls that women need men to do their work for them!"
• Barbie's an engineer working for a male manager: "This teaches girls that women will always be subservient to men!"
• Barbie's a member of an all-female engineering team: "This teaches girls that women can't work on an equal footing with men!"
• Barbie's a member of a racially, culturally, ethnically, and genderally diverse autonomous collective who share all the tasks equally: "This teaches girls that women can only be generalists and never excel in any particular area! Oh, and socialism!"

It sounds to me like the group who should *really* be offended are the computer engineers for being so badly misrepresented. Oh, and Barbie fans because it makes Barbie (not women in general, just this particular woman) look like a freaking idiot. (Going on the descriptions here; of course I haven't read the book. Who needs actual facts when we're surrounded by all this juicy hearsay and speculation?)

And yes, "genderally" is a perfectly cromulent word.

And say, exactly, "Hi, I have a business account. I can't email my customers who use Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail, apparently because those providers are blocking mail originating within Comcast's IP space. This needs to be fixed or your business account is worthless to me and I'll consider it a breach of contract." Work with them. The answer might be to move you to a different block of IP addresses. Or, it might be to forward mail through their servers. There is undoubtedly a solution.

Also, talk to Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail about being blocked. Maybe they can tell you what criteria you're hitting. It may not be Comcast's fault. (I know it seems incredible, but it is a possibility. Really.)

Lastly, if you can't get satisfaction from Comcast but there really is no alternative ISP that works for you, you can purchase email service from hundreds or thousands of different providers out there. Get an account somewhere else and set up your server to forward through theirs.