Control (wether by government or corporate) requires the ability to take from others. You can't take from people who have nothing, therefore you can't control them. The purpose of welfare programs is to ensure you can control them.

A well regulated capitalist economy works very well. Unfortunately capitalism percieves regulation as damage and routes around it.

The extra radiation you get from the porno-scanners is much less than the extra radiation you get from flying in the upper atmosphere (reduces atmospheric blockage of solar radiation). Flying is a significant source of health risks already: hightened radiation levels, reduced circulation due to cramped seats, poor air quality due to reduced circulation.

We should be pushing for high speed rail links anyway. You can't power a jet with solar energy, and at distances below a thousand miles there is no difference in total travel time.

No person in their right mind would link the entertainment network with the flight control system. It wouild be criminal negligence. Why risk a blue screen of death?

In his defence, a rather large cheque was also in the letter.

Given the tiny size of the sails, i think painting all the roads and parking lots to reflect light would work better.

Any spacecraft operating in the atmosphere should be considered an aircraft, and therefore subject to existing aircraft regulations. So preventing the FAA from passing any new regulations might not stop them from regulating space travel.

I want a food replicator. Pick stuff from a recipie, eat without cooking. Dump in bags of ingredients once a week or so to refill. It doesn't need a huge selection so long as it's consistent and gives ok results. Ability to program (or download) your own recipies would be nice.

You could write down your choice after you do the research at home, so you don't forget on the way to vote. That appears to be the only way your comment makes sense.

Electronic voting machines (at a polling station) don't need to be networked. Just have the machine print out the ballot, and the voter puts that in the box.

An ideal voting system requires you to travel to a secure location (to prevent impersonation), cast your ballot in secret (to prevent coersion or bribery), gets recorded on paper (to prevent computer fraud), gets stored in a secure location, under guard (to prevent vote stuffing), and gets counted in public (to prevent fraud and vote stuffing).

If you can prove who you voted for, then you can be coerced or bribed into voting a certain way. making the anonimous ballot optional makes it worthless.

The phone belonged to the company. She should have left it at work when off duty.

How can you call yourself a nerd and not worship Athena, goddess of knowledge? Brilliant, well educated, and with the body of a greek goddess.