Of course - but I hope you realise that the source of the income is rather irrelevant - it even works like that when the income they receive is something like an unemployment benefit that's almost as much as what they make when working, or under a guaranteed "basic income" system where the state provides an basic income to everyone.

inflation != economic growth.

They're often not even closely related.

Just have a look at the rate of inflation in Zimbabwe over the past years (thousands of percent a month of even a week it has been) vs. the economic growth (highly negative) for an example.

Money is just one motivation for people to get a job.

There are other motivations as well: to have a life, for starters. To feel (somewhat) useful. To get out of the house, meet other people.

You may have heard of the concept of volunteering, people spending many hours every week doing unpaid work. In those cases, money is obviously not a motivation.

You're nicely mixing up things.

Coal in power plants is a fossil fuel and has nothing to do with wood/charcoal burning in stoves.

China is very aware of the environmental issues of burning coal. The main reason for them to use coal is because they happen to have lots if it, even though they'd rather use other fuels. They also have a significant nuclear power supply.

Interesting you give this totally flawed example. It's telling, really.

Burning wood is carbon-neutral. It's carbon that would've been released back to the atmosphere after the death of the tree anyway. It's burning fossil fuels that is the main cause of climate change, and that's what we do in the developed world at a massive scale.

Now there are serious environmental issues related to burning wood or charcoal, most notably air pollution. But climate change is not one of them.

My argument is the exact opposite. It is that by being smart, you can improve your standard of living for a lower overall cost, benefiting yourself and benefiting the environment in the process.

At least one of my banks complained of a too long password when I used an 8-character password. I had to shorten it to no more than 6 characters.

Some forums don't even accept that short passwords.

I have three bank accounts, two PayPal accounts and a credit card account. That's six highly sensitive logins.

Then I have my local computer (remote ssh login) and a remote cloud server (remote ssh login). Also requiring decent passwords. That's eight already. Plus one generic password for slashdot and all the other forums.

So that's nine passwords to remember. Well, I may be able to manage that.

Now the second part: remember which password belongs to which service, without making your passwords something like (still have to remember the first part separately), which in turn would compromise your password's security.

For added difficulty: I don't use all the above accounts actively. It is quite OK to remember a rather complex password you use on a daily basis, it gets harder if you check your bank maybe once a week, let alone that dormant account that is accessed maybe once or twice a year.

That just doesn't work. As a result, the banks that don't allow me to use my password manager have a relative weak password, something that at least I can remember easily and link to the correct account, for actual security relying on the second factor in the authentication chain there. The alternative would be the good old post-it note, or having them written down (or stored in a plain text file) somewhere.

People are not computers. Memories falter and fail, and are inaccurate. We'll have to live with that.

If so I doubt it'll pass the "right to be forgotten" criteria, one of which is that it is about something so long time ago that it is not relevant for the present. Can't say that about this case, which is positively current.

It's change, but it's not a change that necessarily costs a lot of money. On the contrary, many environmentally friendly changes to people's ways of life can save them money.

Key to climate change is the amount of fossil fuels we use. Reduce that amount, by saving energy, and you can save money. A CFL costs less money over its lifetime than an incandescent bulb, an LED may end up even cheaper. Sure it's a bit more of an upfront investment, in the end you save money.

Buying a smaller fridge that's got better energy efficiency (more efficient cooling system, better isolation) and you're going to save a lot of energy - you save money.

Get a more fuel efficient car, less trips to the gas station, save money. Even better: use public transport or a bicycle. Especially a bicycle is a really cheap, fast and even healthy (gives your exercise in the process) way of getting around town.

Get proper isolation for your home. Double glazing, foam isolation in between the double brick walls. Save a lot of energy, and have a more comfortable home (no matter whether you try to cool it or heat it) to boot. It's an upfront investment that saves money over time. Get a fan, so you don't have to switch on that A/C when it gets warmer.

And the "few people changing is meaningless" argument is downright stupid. A few people changing IS meaningful. It has to start somewhere! Those few people that do change may well inspire other people to follow suit. Their changes in consumption patterns may prompt manufacturers to cater for them the moment the movement is big enough, again prompting more people to follow suit.

Change the world, start with yourself. Otherwise your whole "we've got to change!" argument IS meaningless.

Indeed, poll question is flawed.

Just today I replaced two CFLs. One due to physical damage (outer glass bulb broken, lamp itself still working), the other burnt out after five years of almost daily use - so some 7500 hours of use. Not bad. The new one is markably brighter as well.

I have to replace the incandescents we still have in the staircase leading up to the apartment (not using CFL as those are used seconds a day and rather have them bright upon flipping the switch - one of the rare use cases where an incandescent makes sense) much more frequently, every year or so one out of the four fails.

First of all, I'm old enough to remember a world without Internet, without mobile phones, even without computers (other than the occasional MSX or C64), and have been doing internet banking from the time you had to dial in and use a command line interface (probably telnet) with the bank to get things done.

Yet I still never heard of those products. Maybe they were US-only? Not worldwide?

No matter what, you totally confirm what I suspected: nothing of value was lost. Sure it may have been valuable, but such products long lost their value, being overtaken by much more powerful online solutions.

I for one had never even heard of these products, and I don't think I've ever encountered a web site using it. All I see is Google Maps when sites need to do something with mapping.

Which still makes me question: why 39 shots when the victim (allegedly) shot only once?

They don't have to start shooting back (certainly not 39 times). Maybe shoot once or twice, and demand the suspect to drop their weapons and surrender to them. As you say, they have no special forces training. So if the suspect doesn't respond, they take cover, keep an eye on the suspect, don't allow him/her to leave, shoot back only when absolutely necessary (e.g. when the suspect opens fire they may fire back), and call in the special forces - including a negotiator who can talk the suspect into dropping their weapons and surrender.

But of course they won't do that. That's going to cost a lot more than 39 bullets: the wages of these special forces people, the training costs, the court costs afterwards (a suspect caught life you'll have to put on trial after all - a dead one you just put in a grave), and of course the extra work for all those cops to do the paperwork in preparing for the court case. No, just killing your suspect is much quicker and cheaper. With the added bonus of being able to claim another victory in the "War on Drugs" and showing how dangerous those dealers really are, and how important it is to get more money to wage that war.

More likely: the killing of the granny was indeed an honest mistake, and then they tried to cover up their mistake by making her look like a criminal by planting drugs and the gun, in an attempt to justify their actions.

Not trying to say what those cops did is good. Mistakes happen, sadly, and they should take all precautions to prevent that from happening.

Firing 39 shots sounds totally excessive - the hit rate is also pretty bad indeed. That indeed leaves some 33 stray bullets, no telling where they ended up. Flying out through windows hitting some innocent passer-by maybe? A few years ago in Macau a motorcyclist got hurt by a police bullet, after an officer fired a warning shot in the air a couple hundred meters away.

All in all the police definitely had motivation for a cover up if indeed it was a mistake. The victim being dead and unable to testify against them definitely makes such a cover up easier.