Nor with Google Wallet.

My phone is actually handier than my wallet, because I use my wallet less and keep it in a less accessible pocket. Actually, most of the time while I'm in a checkout line my phone isn't in my pocket, it's in my hand.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google and bits of my code support Google Wallet. However, I was a fan of NFC payment before joining Google, and whether it's Google, Apple or someone else I'm really glad to see it finally taking off.)

Symmetric cryptography is not "totally insecure", and there's no reason to accept the complexity, large key size and performance hit of asymmetric cryptography when there's a perfectly reasonable key distribution mechanism in place. Further, your proposal wouldn't even help... who cares if the private key was never off the chip? Given a public key how do you know that the corresponding private key was ever on any chip? Answer: You need to obtain the public key in a secure fashion in a controlled environment, such as during manufacturing. If you drill down on the requirements for the context and process needed to identify that public key as trustworthy you find that you have exactly the same requirements for a secure symmetric key injection, which is much simpler and easier to manage.

And as for attack by NSA/GCHQ, if those are your opponents, and they're actually focused on you, you can't win. At most you can make them work for it a bit, but not very much. So it really doesn't make much sense to include national intelligence agencies in your threat model.

Given that the market is already oversaturated with supply, suggesting that the loss of a low-yield source will necessarily create a vacuum that must be filled is a rather disingenuous argument.

Specifically, dry farming is an inherently low-yield form of agriculture (and one which has a history of leading to dust storms and erosion in the areas where it's practiced, I'll add, since it eliminates ground cover), and the US already has a massive surplus of food supply each year (which is why we waste so much of it on useless stuff like corn for ethanol). Losing a single farm will almost certainly not have any sort of significant impact on the food supply, nor will someone set up a new, irrigation-based farm to deal with the loss of supply caused by this one's closure. Demand already outstrips supply. There will be no vacuum to fill.

On the other hand, demand routinely outstrips supply when it comes to power in California, and the excess power from this solar farm will supply enough for 60,000 homes. I'm not a huge proponent of clean power, but even I have to admit that keeping that many homes from having to use coal or similar sources would be beneficial.

Umm...they're doing both. They announced a 2900-acre US-based solar farm almost two weeks ago. This announcement is following on the heels of that one and looks to be a bit larger in scale (possibly because they don't already have smaller facilities in Europe like they've had for awhile in the US?). There's no reason why they have to choose either the US or Europe when they have the resources to do both.

Heh. I'm wrong a lot, definitely. Anyone who says they aren't is lying.

In that particular case, however, I never said what you claim I did. I never took a position one way or the other on hosts files as an ad-blocking tool. I just said you're annoying... and I greatly appreciate your continuing to demonstrate the fact!

Pedantically, I was wrong. But I think it was obvious I was speaking of a system producing so much waste heat that it was usable for cabin heating.

Thanks. I actually read The Cathedral & The Bazaar shortly after ESR published it, and have read it several times since. I'm really not sure how the "many eyes" notion got associated with Torvalds in my head.

Precisely. It's not that the hypothesis is wrong, it's just that it doesn't apply.

This doesn't reduce the value of open source for security software, because while it gives both white hats and black hats a great deal of help with finding vulnerabilities, the nature of security research means that the white hat side benefits more. Open source software, developed in public, also makes it more difficult for the likes of the NSA to insert back doors, because it's not just a matter of paying (or threatening) some company to insert the compromise. That's not to say it can't be done. I'm quite certain it is done. But it's harder, and it's more likely to be discovered and removed.

This. The problem with porn is that it presents an extremely skewed view of sex, which can seriously interfere with a normal, healthy sex life. Most people don't look like porn stars, and many -- especially women -- have no interest in doing many of the acts commonly portrayed. Anal sex, for example, is a porn staple but something relatively few women have any interest in. Porn also presents sex as a casual and purely physical thing for the most part, which leads people -- especially but not exclusively young people -- to see casual hookups as a good thing, while in reality most people who pursue a lifestyle of casual sex find it to be unfulfilling. And then there are the dangers of unprotected sex, which porn also portrays and thereby encourages.

I've read stories of men who found that they had to close their eyes and envision their favorite porn star in order to climax with their girlfriend or wife. That is really, really sad, because it means that they're missing out on the deepest part of the sexual experience, the bonding with a life partner.

In a nutshell, porn can and often does ruin real sex, replacing it with a shallow imitation.

Obviously, some waste heat will always be produced. Internal combustion engines, however, waste 75% of the input energy as heat.

Some produce much more than others, though.