Actually, the main crop that is quite profitable but requires vast amounts of water is not rice, but nuts, specifically Almonds. Rice isn't a problem because the delta around the Sacramento river normally floods, so it doesn't take a ton of effort to rice farm up there. The issue is irrigating both snowmelt and river water to the central valley to grow almonds and other crops.

The grandparent was more alluding to the fact that by him taking the class possibly meant someone else couldn't. In many cases, classes are bound by how many students can take them. Especially in lower division/intro courses that people from many majors have to take (Calculus, Basic Science, etc.). So he "stole" an A or even a grade period if he was forced to take the class instead of letting him skip out of it and let another person take the class instead of him.

I don't know how much the parent knows, but it is known that various elements, either added or part of a nuclear reaction will "poison" it and absorb neutrons, limiting or completing killing the chain reaction. So I imagine if you contaminate the fissile material with such elements, it will make a chain reaction/detonation not possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison/

Seriously. Does no one read Mythical Man Month anymore? This stuff has been done to death for ages now...

Pretty much this. I tend to get the news either by visiting the various news sites, local and national, or just using Google News. Along with Slashdot, Ars, and a few others, that pretty much covers everything.

Anecdotally, I never watch TV and I'm 27, part of a fairly large generation/cohort that has shown to be very unlikely to adopt TV. Ran into a classmate from high school and the story was the same, she doesn't even OWN a TV, let alone TV service. Like me she gets everything online. On the non anecdotal, it is telling when they are routinely, for the last 4 years running that I know of, the winners or runner up to the most hated companies in the US, with their customer service rated below everyone in their industries (Both TV and Internet Service), and are rated below even banks. I think that really is amazing and has to be sinking in, that people rate their ISP and TV service below those who arguably have committed massive criminal behavior and can strip people of their homes. Mind you, in this day and age, being stripped of Internet Service, while no where near as bad as losing ones shelter, is a pretty crippling blow to economic and educational opportunity and in some cases, denies you even basic functioning life since some government functions are moving to be purely online. Even in the case where it is not, the sheer difference in what you have to devote time to without an internet connection represents a massive drawback (Imagine having to personally drive or transport to pay all bills, as well call business to ascertain information, as well as conduct any government business of any kind, such as taxes or drivers license).

To expand upon this. Oil made plastic possible, and with it, saving lives. Before plastic, we did not have a sanitary way to store or transport many chemicals and substances, among them, blood. With the advent of plastics, safe blood transfusions became possible, along with other transfusions. Burning the oil in a gas tank is a terrible waste, it is better used for the medical applications. So much of what you see and take for granted in a modern hospital is plastic and thus based on oil (Plastic Syringes, IV drips, Latex gloves, bags to hold transfusions, plastic tubes, the list goes on and on.)

Sadly no, thanks to AT&T, class actions against service providers are dead, since it is now legal to sign it away and agree to binding arbitration, which favors the corporation 90% of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_v._Concepcion/

And what do you say when the wealthy becomes the government and impose the uniformity anyhow? Welcome to feudalism.

Umm... you CAN mod SC2 games, the editor ships with the game. To make a "Maphack" mod in the SC2 editor is literally 2-3 lines of code. So if you want to make a mod that does maphack, go right ahead, takes 0 effort and time. And can be applied to any melee map. The mod in this case is designed purely to cheat in ranked ladder games, nothing more.

The range means you can fire it from beyond the horizon, so radar can never spot the firing. The speed means you have no way in hell of dodging it or shooting it down. And the kinetic energy of it means no armor will block it, short of armoring the ship to the point it can't move. Just take aim at the power plant or armory of the other ship and you get a guaranteed kill. I think the key advantage is the inability to be dodged or shot down like a shell, but the range of a missile. Also, I imagine detecting a missile launch is easier then detecting a railgun firing.

You do realize, by the way Korean conglomerates are structured, that it is completely impossible for anyone to buy Samsung? You would have to buy out the entire Samsung Chaebol, which includes a large bank, large ship building company, large insurance company, and the electronics company, which combined represents like 1/5th of Korean GDP

In that case, Amazon simply declares itself to be "in" a state with 0% sales taxes and everyone avoids sales tax, thus reducing every state sales taxes to basically 0%?