Unless you want encryption, where each OS seems to have its own solution (cryptsetup for Linux, geli for FreeBSD, native ZFS for Solaris, etc.)...

Every (high-tech) employer that I've ever worked for has allowed a cash alternative -- but only if you could prove that you had other insurance through your spouse. And the amount that they paid out was less than what they would pay for the insurance, but it wasn't a trivial amount...

I am offended that some operating systems have hijacked ascii characters to use for meta functionality

That is one of the very nice things about MacOS X -- since it uses the Command (clover) key for menu shortcuts, that leaves the Control key sequences available for emacs-style editing commands, which work almost everywhere.

Under Linux, I'm never sure whether Control-F will move forward, or bring up the "Search" dialog...

Real programmers didn't have editors. If we wanted to change a line in an Applesoft Basic program we either had to type it over or 'List' the line press ESC and up arrow to the line.

The latter of which is, of course, an editor...

Though, unless you first wet your screen width to 33 characters (poke 33,33, IIRC), any edited wrapped lines would include the seven extra characters that the system added in order to pretty-print the source.

God help me for remembering all of this...

Only problem is that the overhead bins on the few last rows are often filled with crew's stuff, PA system boxes, firefigthing equipment, portable oxygen containers and a ton of other stuff. So you might end up putting it under the seat in front of you (which sucks if you're tall).

But, being the first on the plane, you can put your stuff pretty much anywhere...

Everyone knows that they're both the most unsafe seats, and the worst overall, being so near the toilets... right?

And it really sucks to have so much available overhead space for carry-ons...

The "known issue" is that it turns on the camera every three hours! (AppOps showed that; wonder any google is trying to get rid of AppOps...) No idea of why Skype thinks it needs the camera every three hours, but it can't be good.

This was was causing the camera daemon to spin and not allow the phone to sleep, resulting in only a few hours of battery life.

Seems likely that the intelligent women have started to decide to go into law and other fields instead. The way that engineering is going, that probably makes them a lot more intelligent than I...

For the sake of peace, let me suggest a compromise:

I would base the "compulsion to serve" more on whether the service is creative or not.

I don't even understand why anyone would want to compel a photographer to photograph their wedding! It would seem very unlikely that the quality of work would be very good.

Doubly so for forcing someone to make a wedding cake for me; I wouldn't want to take a bite of that...

News Update: The police, in conjunction with several federal agencies, has determined the official cause of death to be a weather balloon. And swamp gas.

Ah, so suicide then?

Counter to what many people on ., think, there are many studies showing making things illegal has a real negative impact on usage.

Yes, but only if the perpetrators think that there is a high liklihood of getting caught. If the penalties are very high, but the liklihood of being caught is low, there is little deterrence...

And, in particular, programs could test to see whether the monkey was running, and if it was, disable potentially destructive functions, such as file overwriting, etc.

I love good news, it's a shame there is not more of it.

The way that I look at it is that there is so much good news every day, that most isn't even worth reporting...

And I'm not even that much of an optimist!

Nope, sorry, but there are NO porn stars that are that pretty. I don't want to actually SEE all those human flaws.

Is that how you feel when you see a woman in real life?

Hypothetically, of course...

But more interesting than 4K or 8K, is high frame rate video. I've seen a demo from the BBC showing a 300 fps system.

But, people will still then complain that it isn't "movie-like"...