If history is anything to go by Putin is going to keep doing land grabs until someone with a good arsenal of nukes agrees to play the brinksmanship game with him.

It's far too early to say but I'm hopeful that this isn't the only solution. The risk with brinkmanship is that it only takes a tiny mistake to turn into a global catastrophe. What we might be seeing at the moment is a credible attempt to move beyond hard power politics by the west and if it works it could set a far better precedent for diplomacy throughout the century which will become especially important as new global powers become more influential. Personally I think doing something like what you proposed, upping the military rhetoric would likely have little impact at all and would put Putin in a position where he couldn't pull back without losing face and control.

How is Prime not better than Netflix?

By offering more content that I want to watch... pretty much the only measure of better that I'm interested in. Literally the only people I've ever had recommend Prime to me point out that you can buy stuff through it. It seems like an odd point because I'm happy with Netflix and I don't need to buy more stuff to make up for a subscription service that I don't find satisfactory.

Of course, it actually requires doing some real physical work and looking at ads.

You're right. If your time has no value then you can almost certainly save a few cents by pissing time away instead. I'm not sure I'd be bragging about if my time was that cheap though personally.

It's $99, because seriously, paying that little for convenience and quick delivery is soooooooo expensive?

Because we're not all boringly predictable ;)

And how exactly do you suggest that Google stops the Play store from selling things to minors? Require that users go to a shop with photo ID to be authenticated and have fingerprints taken before they are allowed to buy things on the store which then require the matching fingerprints?

If a child knows the credit card details then they could buy something on the Play store and it can't viably be stopped by Google. It's a concern but not one that does or doesn't make what Google are doing illegal in itself.

It would be no different than taking your child to a store, allowing them to pick an item which you then purchase with your card by swiping and signing, BUT for the next half hour they're able to just grab whatever they want

It would be quite different. However it would have some similarities to agreeing to a room tab at a hotel that anyone with your room key could use to buy drinks then giving your kid the room key and being surprised when you get billed for the drinks they buy.

I find it one of the amusing ironies of many /.ers that they're sticklers for the laws when it comes to laws they approve of but when it comes to things they don't agree with they think the law must somehow make it illegal. Google 'should' change how the system operates because it's the right thing to do but that doesn't magically mean I think what they are doing currently is illegal.

No - because if you read TFA people are authorising a payment and google is taking more without authorisation.

Yes - because the terms the user has agreed to are clear. Should Google make it easier to use the device in the way the majority of parents and children want to use it? Yes. Is Google breaking any laws by providing a device that doesn't? Not that I'm aware of.

It's better than nothing, but a 50 mi x N mi grid search of the ocean floor is pretty much a non-starter in most areas of the globe.

Compared to the current situation of searching the length of a country and huge areas off both coasts that's a considerably easier task. Finding some wreckage within an area that size would be a comparative breeze. His point is that considerably less information, shared considerably less often would give the vast majority of the benefit and it's a good one.

This tech would NOT have to survive a crash, and that makes it a lot easier to build and prove/verify.

That's a big assumption and one I'm certain won't be accurate if this tech did get implemented. Unless the data transfer tech is 100% accurate until the planes complete destruction then investigators are going to want a crash resistant unit so that they can recover it if the transfer fails or is incomplete.

Nevertheless, $100k is a lot of money. Would the passengers have been willing to pay more for the tickets so that their loved ones would have a slightly better idea where they crashed? Probably not.

The solution being proposed here is that all black box data is constantly sent back from the plane. What I think you've highlighted is that 99% of the real benefit is just knowing where the fuck it was, getting the black box data a little faster really isn't that important. So the question is really is it worth playing that much for all the data if there is a cheaper solution that would just provide location information?

There's more you can do, and given how easy it is I'd suggest they do:
1/ You can remotely track, lock & blank the phone via the play store on the web
2/ If you're using two factor authentication for your google account then it would stop them doing any real damage before you have blanked the device

Careful, I'm not sure you can see over the top of all that hyperbolic. It isn't impossible for most people to hold the view that crime is bad an should be discouraged and that taking moderate steps to moderate your risk of being a victim is sensible; if you haven't already tried it then I'd strongly suggest giving it a go.

Not that it is without side effect... water is pretty darned important to human health.

Which is arguably why it shouldn't be 'wasted' by producing animal feed that is uses large amounts of water in regions susceptible to droughts.

In the UK the average 4 person family uses 165m^3 of water a year. If they were charged $0.03 per m^3 of water that would add ~$5 a year to their bills. It would also add $500,000,000 to the cost of producing Alfalfa based on the articles figures which might encourage farmers to either grow it more efficiently or grow something that requires less water.

The other solution is to have someone in government deciding what you can or can't use water for, banning some crops, forcing people to grow others etc. Does that really sound like a cheap and/or effective solution? It doesn't to me but then apparently enough dumb-asses on here can't see an argument based on pricing without a knee jerk response of modding it flame-bait it seems.

The only issue we appear to have is that either water is being sold too cheaply or the most profitable use of water is growing animal feed. If water is too cheap then put a small charge on it and spend the money on measures to improve water retention and reduce usage. If Alfalfa is the most profitable thing then you're pretty much stuffed because cutting it back will hurt farmers and the wider economy.

A vegetarian who likes baths, or god forbid has a swimming pool, almost certainly consumes more water than an occasional meat eater with a water efficient home. So rather than blaming meat-eaters, or trying to judge lifestyles as good or bad, let's just stop discounting inefficient water usage and let people decide what use they want to cut back.