What Edith Macefield needs is lots of balloons.

"/* ugly hack to... */" is a modest expression of pride describing concise, functional, readable and elegant C code in the same way as the term "//elegant approach to..." in C++ describes some borderline-insane misapplication of the STL with the incomprehensibility of perl and the verbosity of java.

Could it not also get more RAM and CPU when docked ?

The appeal of the cute fluffy penguin coupled with religious angst about the BSD daemon sealed the deal for Linux.

Roads could be better laid out to separate nose-to-tail convoys of self-driving trucks from other road users. It always seems to snarl up the whole highway when one truck takes 10 minutes to overtake another. If they could all move along with shared engine capacity that could probably be eliminated.

If they moved the lane barriers around they might create a single central lane that is used for self-driving trucks, have each section run one way for some period and reverse it for the next period. Have the sections end at convenient marshaling points for interconnection to other transport / big cities, intersecting highways etc. or to drop in drivers for local deliveries.

Leave the rest of the road for human drivers

Oh look SSN as ID again, what could possibly go wrong !

maybe it's a single windows machine riddled with some virus

Well the Germans re-unified, maybe a unification of the US and China wouldn't be so bad over the long term. So long as I don't have to learn to speak Chinese.

If the statistics are so favorable for the gun proponents, why not sponsor independent research to show (or of course refute) what a wonderful idea universal gun ownership is.

No, but it is what gives cops cause to shoot people carrying cell phones in dimly lit areas, it's what compels cops to stay ahead in the arms race and it's what sends too many cops to an early grave.

I heard somewhere that they put all attendees through a metal detector.

or if you set the timer to go off on the leg from ORD to LAX but get off at ORD and don;t mention the baggage. If I were the airline, I'd be using the necessity to resolve that conundrum as the basis for my complaint, not some rubbish about not being able to sell the same seat twice.

I've never understood why they won't transfer me to an otherwise empty seat on an earlier flight when I happen to be early for a connection. It would seem to be in their best interest to fill up the planes and push the "empty seat" to a later flight when they have a chance of selling it, but they never do offer me a free change, they always want to charge me an extra $50, so I just get a soda and wait it out.

I have come to believe that end-end connectivity is the problem that a lot of people think NAT solves.

Apparently I shoudl ahve used google !

In theory, calculation shows that 1 kWh is enough to produce one ton of fresh water from seawater. However this assumes a perfect thermodynamic and mechanical system which is not possible to build. In practical terms a desalination system will require 7 to 18 kWh/m3 depending on the corresponding investment.