Yubikeys also support the HOTP standard, which produces 6-digit codes. This is what kernel.org actually uses, not yubikey's own implementation.

Battle.net authenticator uses TOTP, so yes, you can. :)

Right, that's why the US didn't fly into Afghani airspace to get Bin Laden, because doing so without the consent of the Afghan government would have been illegal.

I've handled one of these phones and holy crap... Until I dug down into it, I *thought* it was running iOS. It's a straight up, shameless copying on the entire interface, down to the configuration menus. Even then, unless you knew what you were looking for, an end user would just assume it was iOS.

I can't imagine Apple not going to the WTO and waving their hands ineffectively as the Chinese make a mockery of international copyrights.

Why would it make low-risk drug development more profitable? I'm assuming you mean the minor variants when you refer to low-risk drugs. Currently they get the full patent period for minor variants, since they are already authorized to sell them. This makes minor variants ridiculously more profitable than new drugs. Under my system, the minor variants get a much shorter patent period while the original drug gets a longer patent period. Well, a longer sales period.

Note: it's interesting that the original post describes the opposite problem (at least in wording). The article is about high-risk drugs being favored over low-risk drugs. This is because high-risk drugs succeed or fail quickly. Low-risk drugs take longer to test. Therefore the system is biased towards dangerous drugs. I'm guessing that you meant business risk rather than medical risk, as otherwise, your post makes no sense to me.

I'm also unclear as to why "socialized costs for prescription drugs" causes minor variants to be favored over new drugs. Yes, it causes new drugs (both variants and original drugs) to be less expensive to the user than they otherwise would be. It discourages doctors from making a trade off between cost and efficacy. But looking purely at the variant/original issue, I don't see how it matters. This is not to say that I don't agree with making prescription drugs bought by end users. I like that idea, although I suspect that it would be politically unpalatable.

Now if you want to raise a new issue of new drugs being encouraged in areas where there are already perfectly good old drugs, then that's a separate issue. My suggestion won't help with that, as it's completely orthogonal to that issue. It's not intended as a cure all. It's focused on two problems: the favoring of minor variants over original testing and the corporate disincentive to test fully.

It's possible that the FDA's standards are arbitrary and could be relaxed, but even if they are, it doesn't solve the problem. Currently, if a company finds a problem in testing, they are highly incented to avoid doing additional testing to explore the problem. Additional testing both increases their costs and reduces their revenue. Under my system, it would only increase their costs and potentially reduce their liability costs. Revenue would be unaffected (although delayed). This might even help with arbitrary FDA rules, as I expect some of them exist to cover over the disincentive for companies to extend testing.

The biggest oil platform, Hibernia, can only accomodate 185 people.

Perhaps, but this is still addressable by changes in the patent system. In particular, they could change pharmaceutical patents to have three periods: testing, restricted use, open use. The testing period would last as long as necessary, perhaps longer than patent periods are currently. The restricted use period (primarily for antibiotics) would last as long as the approving agency desired. The open use period would last for a defined length of time (perhaps eight years). The effect would be to increase the open use period for new drugs and decrease it for retreads.

The current system makes it difficult for a pharmaceutical company to extend the testing phase. Each additional year in testing is a year lost from being able to actually sell the drug. This produces bad results, as companies are terrified of extending the testing period. If the patent period were shorter but only started *after* testing was finished, this perverse incentive could be removed.

Because despite recent bad press, they are interested in security.

Your post makes various other points that sound reasonable to me, but I have to call out the above line from a couple of angles:

1) using the phrase "bad press" implies a virtuous subject that has been distorted by a reporting industry with a non-virtuous agenda. NOTHING OF THE SORT has happened to poor lil' NSA here... they FUCKED us, straight up, and got caught red-handed.

2) Whatever the extent to which the NSA is "interested in security", it might as well be the extent to which a wolf is interested in "keeping chickens alive"... yes the wolf wants a food supply, but that doesn't make the wolf a proponent of livestock. The NSA is all about surveillance at this point; their putting on the badge of promoting security is a means to an end. I won't rehash the extensive list of public standards they secretly compromised to that end; it speaks for itself.

Again, I think much of what you wrote makes sense, but in this particular line you stray notably too far into something approaching neutrality about the NSA. They are bad people with a bad agenda, and they'll fuck YOU the first chance they get.

Does the semi-autonomous (or future, 100% autonomous) car pull over?

I *knew* I recognized that shade of pink!

That's great that you believe your own bullshit as well. Imagine you build two power plants, one nuclear and one that's a solar farm and they both cost $1bn. Which of those plants over its lifespan is going to have a higher cost? How much security is your solar farm going to need? The bigger question is... in 20 or 30 years when the nuclear power plant has reached it's effective lifespan, how much is it going to cost to decommission that plant? Vermont Yankee which Entergy said they'd be closing on 2014, they're talking about it costing more than a billion to decommission it. Even those costs don't include the long term storage costs of all the spent fuel that'll end up who knows where.

So great, you get your electricity for a couple cents cheaper per kwh now... at what cost later on? Both in environmental and in remediation.

Though ultimately, I see centralized power companies in the same light as I see newspapers. They will evolve or they will die. As the market economics for consumer power change and the TCO for solar combined with better storage options make going off grid more and more feasible, power companies are going to grasp harder and harder onto their dwindling customers, or come up a better model. Those companies who do, will end up eating those who don't.

are the laughing people getting paid?

Obligatory Uncle Ben quote here.. As someone who has access to everything, you need to exercise a certain level of discretion. However, at the same time you need to have some common sense.

It's a simile