The idea of there being a database of most citizen dna is not that unlikely, I don't know about the USA but in the UK taking dna samples of anyone arrested (and not necessarily convicted) is routine. Collecting dna is no harder than collecting finger prints and that seems to becoming increasingly something done in schools with little regard to the consequences.

I think it used to be the case you couldn't be catalogued without breaking some law but that no longer seems to be relevant.

yes mail order makes it a lot easier to avoid driving, I need a part for my car i could go to a scrap yard relatively near but still maybe â5 in petrol, get charged about the same as I would at an online discount motor spares place I found which has the part new for next to nothing the delivery charge is slightly higher. If I go to the city I will spend â10 in petrol and pay a premium for what I want even if I can find it. It's cheaper just to order online and wait for the postman to deliver. Heck sometimes I buy things effectively for free since even with postage it's cheaper than the cost of driving to get it.

Have you seen the state of Irelands roads?

well there is dual rate metering, commonly known as Economy 7 in the UK. You just get charged less for electricity during the night when demand is at its lowest.

Unfortunately they charge you more for metering it, even thou its pretty much just a relay which switches metering clocks at set times.

It's fairly easy to be power efficient these days. The annoying thing is its not the unit rate that makes much of a difference to my bills but the standing charge levys and other fee's. doubling my electricity use would probably would change my bill in the order of 10%. If I got dual rate metering my bills would increase.

Another con is the prepayment meter which again brings in a standing charge and higher unit rates making the bills much higher than they would be without it. This tends to mean the poorest people in society are paying the highest energy costs. This is quite hard to escape once you are in this trap if you are living week by week it is very difficult to save enough money so you are able to pay the bill when it comes in.

It's made even more difficult in that the meter rates tend not to be adjusted when the prices go up and so when you attempt to escape all of a sudden you find your prepayment meter which was supposed to help you budget has quietly been building up a debt. suppliers like this because it holds their customers captive as you can't switch suppliers while there is an outstanding debt.

Actually with a satellite dish you can pick up thousands of channels even more if its movable. In Ireland we have the slightly strange situation of having a national broadcaster RTE and a couple of others, but their output is dwarfed by the number of British channels available via satellite. Strangely Irish channels are encrypted on satellite so if you can't get a terrestial signal you have to subscribe to Sky.

The only thing is things like BBC iPlayer are regionally locked. Really not a problem to record from satellite if i'm that bothered but honestly i'm not.

Thanks for that information, thats $120 canadian cheaper than here. Just been looking at ebay listings there is around $30 -$60 worth of import duties it seems depending on the price. Still a price saving but not quite enough I think to make it worth while.

What do you actually pay for a chrome book in the USA? I see $199 list price but in the EU its 239 euro to buy not 144 euro which is equivalent to $199, local price is roughly $330. Just curious to know what the real price is. I think us prices exclude sales taxes

You do not have to watch it, there are plenty of bad movies made any way crud is crud.

I see where you are coming from but there is a difference between being prepared to defend yourself, yes I am, and the gp's hypothetical situation.

the GP wants to provoke a reaction.

If you poke a dog with a stick it may well bite you and you may have to kill or injure it as a consequence.
when the westboro baptists decide to picket a funeral they are goading for a reaction in order to drag someone into court.

The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman took place on the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, United States. If George Zimmerman hadn't ignored the Police directions to leave Trayvon to them and goaded Trayvon into fighting with him George wouldn't have been forced into shooting and killing Trayvon. Legally George was in the right because Trayvon did the wrong thing by physically attacking him but George set the ball in motion with his reckless or premeditated actions. Was he stupid or calculating?

I think you know really it's calling looking for a fight. Something the law doesn't seem to comprehend very well except perhaps Judge Judy, "but for this , that wouldn't happened" she often gets it spot on. She wouldn't condone punching him in the face, you don't take the law into your own hands, but he would get nothing if he sued the guy who got him kicked out.

The gp knows the gut reaction is for someone to punch him in the face, which if anyone was to do so, would tend to see him winning in court even after pounding on his assailant or shooting him as suggested by another poster. Cooler minds wouldn't take the matter into their own hands but look for a third party to resolve the situation.

I have in the past worked as a club doorman and been that third party. The job is not about breaking up fights and throwing people out but preventing these situations occurring. Once they occur well innocent bystanders can get hurt, you ruin the venues reputation as a safe place to have a good time ect.

So what you do is have a word with the trouble maker explain to them that they are creating a problem, everyone's having a good time, I don't want to have to ask you to leave but if you persist... to which they generally agree to be more pleasant and then you keep an eye on them for the rest of the evening, generally their buddies will be quite persuasive and keep him from drawing my attention again. Rarely do you ever need to back that up with the use of physical force.

The GP seems to be a bit of a socio-path, has trouble comprehending how others feel, that doesn't make him a bad person there are a lot of brilliant minds round here who relate better to computers than people. I mean just look at his reaction to my original post he now thinks he is the victim :). At a conference I expect most people would just complain to the organisers or ignore the "glasshole", thats a perfect term. After all who wouldn't expect to get fired or at least reprehended by their employer if they punched another companies rep.

In a wider situation, a bar for example, reactions maybe physical. Most of us are too polite to actually do anything about the Glasshole, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear a cheer or a round of applause as he gets kicked out or punched.

Really what I was trying to get through was that the advantage of having some ones details come up on google glass are out weighed by the negative perception of being a glasshole.

A lot of conferences may have name badges you could always discreetly google the name , discreetly. Far better would be to do your homework first know who you want to meet and a bit about them, those you meet for the first time, write the name company and context down as soon as you get the opportunity. You really don't need to know about all 2000 or so delegates just the ones that you feel are going to be useful to know.

People will be genuinely flattered if you remember who they are and a bit about them and have a genuine interest in what they do and who they are, however if its obvious that you just looked them up, it will be a negative reaction. Which is why Google Glass, is not a good tool for that kind of situation. You can also know too much which also gets a little creepy especially if they haven't told you that information themselves. You could ask a question or relate something that might cause them to volunteer that information if that is useful to you but tread carefully.

To be fair a lot of people will cop on to the fact that you researched them prior to this 'chance' meeting but it's still flattering and an ego boost. At a recent staff meeting I got a big round of applause after the boss said something nice about my work, made me feel good but it was quite meaningless. They would have applauded anything really it's just what was expected of them.

Anyway to go into a situation looking to press some ones buttons is not the same as being prepared to defend yourself against a physical attack. I am perfectly capable of defending myself if need be, I just don't look for situations to cause the need to arise.

Merry christmas to you, I hope your having a great family day.

Maybe that should be a social cue, that it is unacceptable behaviour on your part, your attention is unwanted.

People are not computers most of them have feelings they like some people they don't like others and most people respond negatively to being catalogued and targeted for adverts, this would be similar behaviour.

knowing my name will not be a positive thing for you, as you obviously do not give a monkeys about me just how you can use me to your advantage. At a minimum I will ignore you, if you persist I may do something negative this might be as passive as choosing your competitors to do business with instead of your company.

Maybe meeting and greeting is just not your strong suit, perhaps somebody else should be doing it instead? I'm not saying this because I am good with names and faces, far from it. If you want to get people on side with you then you talk to them not stalk them.

You do not want to be known as the creepy socio-path with Google glass.

Being prepared to enter a situation with relative strangers prepared to assault them is rather worrying. If I had a problem with you and your creepy behaviour. I could complain to the event organisers who would probably ask you to remove your google glass or have you ejected from the building if you refused. There is no need to get involved with you in a physical confrontation. In fact if I really wanted all I need to do is mention to a female colleague that you are scanning her with google glass and you will be ejected and possibly police called.

The key difference between putting solar panels on a roof and fitting these windows is the electricity producing windows are fitted in place of ordinary glass windows.

The cost of the units is offset by not having to buy ordinary window glass. That should make a difference in payback costs and break even point.

Choice is good and not having to choose is also good.
Thats the best aspect of KDE and Gnome. As a user you might choose one of these as a base desktop environment others are available but your still free to pick up the applications that you want to use.

I'd bet most users (who have a choice) use a mixture of Kde and Gnome applications.

Kde seems to be making some advances in supporting touch and making the view part of MVC more flexible and why shouldn't it be this way wimp and touch interfaces have differing requirements. Gnome seems to not be moving much in this direction if at all but thats fine by me only my tablet has a touch-screen so far.

With Microsoft backing touch with windows 8 (love it or hate it) and the kinect bringing gestures into play its likely our hardware is going to be supporting touch and gestures in our not too distant futures. Voice too if we can overcome the embarrassment and the recognition becoming accurate enough to not wind the user up.

With 2 or more teams with alternative view points quite different applications and desktops are developed. One teams idea's may work better than another which may inspire another team to steal, as in take that idea and turn it into their own.

Imagine a world where the choice wasn't between kde and gnome but say unity was the one and only linux desktop whats your option then windows?

Even with windows you have windows 7 and windows 8 even Microsoft gets the need to have choice. They might prefer everyone to move to windows 8 but they still have to support 7 for a good while yet.

Some people do die each year from lions, but even some of those could be avoided. Lions seem to prefer cattle pigs and other animals in preference to humans. Hopefully the statistics show that getting killed by a Lion is a relatively rare occurance. If you read the reference extract I've quoted. It seems going out in the fields in the evening is a bad idea, as the lions are hunting. Thats the kind of thing i'm thinking of when I talk about respect and understanding. Now you could choose to ignore that you are likely to find lions in the fields in the evenings in which case it may well end up as a matter of kill or be killed but why blame the lions for that?

http://www.lionaid.org/blog/2011/12/lion-population-number-declines-problem-animal-control-or-trophy-hunting.htm

Human/lion mortality

Much has been made by Packer and others about the estimated number of human deaths in Tanzania from lion attacks. In total, Packer recorded 563 human mortalities from 1990 to 2004, or about 37 per year, translating to about 8 people per 10 million in the Tanzanian population. The attacks were registered from numerous districts in the country. Without diminishing the tragedy of those deaths they have to be put into perspective as they have led to a demonization of lions and a strange justification for trophy hunting â" essentially the sport hunters are doing the rural communities a favour by keeping man-eaters under control. Not only is this complete nonsense, but human deaths caused by lions are actually miniscule when compared to other sources of annual human mortality in Tanzania.

For a short list, in Tanzania 193 to 1499 people per year die of rabies-infected dog bites, 600 from snake bites, 1,900 from falls, 4,700 from drowning, 6,000 from asthma, 13,000 from road accidents, 14,000 from violence/homicide, 21,000 from malaria, 23,000 from diabetes, 35,000 from diarrhoea, and 122,000 from HIV/Aids/tuberculosis. Tanzania ranks 21st highest among 220 countries in terms of an infant mortality at a rate of 6.7 per 1000 live births as of 2010. The number of humans killed by lions in Tanzania per year (37) is equivalent to the number of people killed in the USA per 100,000 inhabitants by lightning strikes. Lion attacks might make the news much as shark attacks do (over the past 50 years, only one person has been killed by a shark each year in Australia compared to 87 people who drown at beaches annually), but in reality the number of people killed by lions in Tanzania is miniscule compared to the hyperbole that such attacks have generated.

Most people killed by lions are out at night and unprotected. Packer and colleagues were able to assign specific times to such attacks â" after sunset and between 6pm and 10pm in the evening on moonless nights. People were out at such times protecting their crops from elephants and other herbivores, and were attacked either in the fields (lion were also hunting crop raiding animals like bush pigs at the time) or on their journeys back and forth from their villages. As with livestock depredation, there would seem to be practical solutions available to avoid such mortality. But as mentioned above, the long-term probability of a dangerous predator population continuing to live in close contact with humans must be considered insignificant .

You miss the point rotting food stinks and attracts insects.
I don't use a dishwasher and in summer i tend to use solar for heating water anyway. It doesn't do any harm to feel a little smug in the summer when you get your hot water for free.

In the winter hot water is pretty much a side effect of having to keep warm in winter.

you know when you wash the dishes and the waters not so great after doing the washing up, ideal for cans. But anyway if you rinse a can with cold water right after opening it, generally it will just rinse clean. Not every can but mostly.