For example in San Ramon, CA, where I live, 123k household income puts you in the 50% range. It is actually exactly the median income for the city in 2012. Now that is 40 min commute to Google HQ. If you want to live closer, it is even worse... FYI.

Why does it all have to be either / or. Why cannot I have two circuits, one AC for the standard outlets and run a second set of DC outlets on the 24V for my computers, etc. Maybe run them along with the ethernet cables around the house. Then I don't need a UPS, I'll just use the Tesla battery for that and in case of power outage I'll turn off the heavy duty AC circuits. Lights can be wired on DC probably just as well...

We are not in it, because without the Chinese engineers, who would do the math necessary to get it done? :)

The answer is the same as the answer to a question: "How much of the driver's handbook do you need to know for entry level driver job?" ... All of it.

You just described two days of work. Maybe a week. What else?

You are confused. If you stone my child or if you send your infected child to spread a disease that will maim my child, I don't see much difference in it. You are simply a criminal. Most countries already have laws that punish knowingly spreading a disease. This is a very natural extension. So there is a very good reason in this case.

As I said, you are confused.

You seem to confuse two issues:
1) Saying a certain religion is not acceptable and will be prosecuted and prevented from practice. Like Catholics in UK of 16th to 18th century. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 and the Scottish Reformation in 1560, which rendered Catholic practice illegal.
2) Making a law that will make illegal some specific act, which coincidentally your religion suggest you to do or demands of you to do. For example making it illegal to stone an adulteress.

First is prevented by the constitution and second is not, as long as it is not specifically aimed at forbidding practice of that religion without being in any other way a problem for the society.

If you pick a stupid religion, you pay. It's like with Scientology. If you believe in that crap, you'll lose all the money you have. If you are Mormon for some stupid reason, you pay extra 10% of your income to Church directly. I cannot prevent you from consequences of your actions and why should I care.

You are FREE to pick any religion you damn well please. The government has obligation to let you choose your religion, no obligation to make laws that make it more convenient for you to practice your religion. They have no obligation to pay any mind to your religion whatsoever.

Stalking Laws: https://www.victimsofcrime.org...

You talk about those abuses like if they ever stopped. They just got better at hiding them...

Hence the dread! Back in '94 to '99 I've been sysadmin at the math department of my university. Already then all the students that were learning Matlab dreaded the subject. I was observing lesson after lesson, year after year, since they happened at the Comp. Lab. I was managing, always the same thing.

People who never actually made any product do not fully understand how wide is the chasm between a product and good product. And that the chasm between a good product and great product is even much wider.

We do understand the concept sometimes as 80:20. The first 80% of a product takes about 20% of time to make and the remaining 20% takes 80% of the time. Well, making a good product is another 80:20 split and making a great product is yet another one if not more. So you really spend 25-30 times more time and effort on great product than on a simply working one.

... Lucifer complained about God's betrayal and claimed that Hell has got to be hot, which is fully within the framework he is supposed to operate in and there is really nothing he can do about it.

You are simply deluded. You know what was NSA called before it was widely know it exists. No Such Agency. Shining a light on it will only drive the real efforts into more secrecy. Once NSA is exposed a new secret agency we won't know about will be created. I would not be surprised if the efforts were already underway.

YOU CANNOT PREVENT THIS! The state has too much power, too little to fear. You can only mitigate the worst excesses of abuse of power, which I described above. Once you force the government into accepting the above described abuses as price of getting the information it thinks it needs, there is no way back.

The Eastern Europe behind its Iron Curtain had a hope of the West breaking through and helping them overthrow the government and clean the house, but you have NO ONE. There is nobody more powerful than the US government. There is no hope for you to get any sort of external help once the repression starts. NONE. So you better not speed it up. It has already started in Guantanamo it will spread, but fighting NSA will make it spread even faster.

There is slight chance of this country collapsing economically before it can defeat Russia and China, but that would be a very small hope to look forward to. Most likely Russia will fall soon and China soon after and that will solve any economic issues US might have had, since all of the world resources will be available for the taking.

You should work for NSA, because the alternative to NSA is worse. Totalitarian governments like USSR, East Germany or North Korea will do anything to have a total information control of their population in order to ensure stability. We have a well established history that if they cannot get this information technologically, they will lie, cheat, extort, kidnap, bully or worse, just to get to this information. USA now falls into this category and they will do anything to have full domestic surveillance. If you don't help them achieve this goal technologically, it will have enormous human cost. The alternative of not getting this information is not acceptable to them so they will get it and you can only help to affect how they get it and how many people and lives are harmed in the process.

If you want to avoid the Gulags, the political prisoners, children not getting in universities because sins of their parents, neighbors spying on each other, informers and snitches everywhere, home searches, not being able to trust anyone, being afraid what your kids say in school that gets back to you, feeling helpless and afraid to report crime to police in fear they would instead investigate you. If you want to avoid all those things, you just have to go and help the NSA to get the information electronically, because the alternative is just too awful.