I love plastic notes as they don't get damaged when they get wet - i live in the tropics and often get soaked in an unexpected sudden downpour. The old paper money used to be a real pain when it was wet, but with plastic notes, you just dry them with a towel and they're good as new!

It also doesn't turn to papier mache in your pocket when you get soaked in a tropical downpour!

It means nothing. Strictly speaking, there's no such thing as the internet anyway. An "internet" that wasn't connected to the internet couldn't possibly succeed. What they really mean is they want international network conections that don't go via the US. That's not very hard really - just lay a cable to Europe.

It's usually me they say it to!

That must be the cue for someone to whine at you that /. is unashamedly US-centric and if you don't like it go back to where you came from!

It doesn't say anything of the kind.

WTF? You demand a citation, then spill a bunch of false information, I mean "informed opinions", with no citation at all. WebMD says you are totally wrong. It's fat.

No citations there!

Most drunk drivers can drive as well as most sober drivers

Of course they can. Just like the vast majority of people think their driving skills are better than average.

Most people may be able to drive reasonably well when they're not too drunk, but their reaction times are slower, so if something happens - .e.g., a pedestrian walks out in front of them - they can't react as fast, and that pedestrian's dead, where they may have lived if the driver had reacted faster..

A hangover is caused by dehydration.

No it's not. A hangover is caused by ethanal poisoning. Ethanal (archaic name: acetaldehyde) is what your liver converts ethanol into - it converts that to ethanoic acid (archaic name: acetic acid, aka vinegar) before it excretes it. Ethanal has an apple smell and even inhaling its fumes can give you a mild hangover. Water helps dilute it and helps your body excrete it, but dehydration only exacerbates a hangover, it doesn't cause it.

What gives you the idea that I'm not already older? :)

Hint: I was in my late 20s when I registered on /. You have my UID number, work it out.

You're not very old then.

When i was in my early 20s i was programming computers that loaded their stage 2 boot loaders off paper tape and their operating systems from punched cards. Slashdot was nearly 20 years away in those days.

There is no causation between beer consumption and a "beer gut".

Citation please!

I think you're almost certainly wrong (no citation, this is just informed opinion) - particularly when it comes to people who drink home brew or other beers that have a fair amount of live yeast in them. Part of a beer gut is intestinal irritation causing swelling - and that can be caused by yeast. Part of it is a swollen liver - caused by the alcohol. Probably only a relatively small proportion is fat.

I doubt it. I'd say the original purpose of faith was to allow people to overcome their terror of dying and to pretend that they weren't just going to cease to exist one day.

A secondary purpose of faith was to give a small elite power and wealth.

Nah, you'd have to be pretty delusional to believe that god cares. Just look at the horror and misery going on around the world all the time - if there was a god that cared, it wouldn't be like that. And the old bullshit line that it's all part of god's mysterious plan, is nothing but desperate rationalization.

The point of faith is to quell your terror of dying.and the fact that one day you just won't exist.

The problem is that we created god - and we obviously weren't very good engineers because the god we created seems to be a bit of an arsehole.