What gets me is the mild warming we are obviously going to be experiencing (since large CO2 increase have not shown not to correlate to rapid temperature increases as previously thought) is going to bring an overall boon to the planet, just as it did in ages past - a wider range of arable land.

Sure some land will change for the worse, but overall as a species we will be better off - and the rate the climate is changing allows for plenty of time for people, plants and animals to adapt.

There's all kinds of reasons this won't work, but I'm glad someone disagrees and is spending time developing it anyway because it seems like a cool concept and the idea of a modular phone/phablet/tablet/laptop/desktop system is appealing.

I think a lot of components are rapidly approaching the point where they're good enough for most people -- how many more ppi is Joe Sixpack going to want once a phone is over 300 ppi?

Would you consider home address, and phone number also to be a bit of a breach?

Because you can get those and a lot more with just the email address and a call to the CurrentC web service.

they just got a hold of their email mailing list

From registered email addresses, you can get things like home address/phone number, and lots more data that may be of interest.

Basically the breach got a bunch of primary keys they can use to get something more juicy later.

You like many people say that but do understand what it means.

A big company wants to build a theme park and gets development money from the state.
A church wants to build a theme park and gets development money from the state.
That is okay because both are treated the same.

If only the church or only the commercial company get money then you have a failure of separation of church and state.

And just so you understand this is the exact wording in the constitution
""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." and Article VI specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." "
In other words the original intent allowed states to actually have state religions. It only restricted the Federal government and even those restrictions are very limited and DO NOT LIMIT WHAT A CHURCH CAN DO! Some states have also embraced the separation of church and state but all those laws would make it illegal to exclude a church from receiving the same breaks that a non-church entity does from a state.
It is not a law to protect you from religion or to restrict religion. It is a law to protect the church.

Yet people would probably be okay with a theme park full of witches and fairies getting tax breaks.

But it can cook you. But then water can drown you as well.

The only sensible remark here.

Most people think that scientist are strange people who have amassed a huge amount of very precise facts about an extremely specific field, some of which might be useful (facts or fields), but most of which are useless to the common people. The prototype is the scientist lady in the TV series "Bones". Scientists are assimilated to dorks who have not only not an ounce of creativity in them but also no social skills.

In reality scientists need to be extremely creative in their work, and need to have the humility to accept that they know or understand only a tiny amount of the world that is around us. It is very easy and quick to tread into the complete unknown. We cannot at present even reconcile the most established theories we have about the way the world works (relativity and quantum mechanics).

No, that is easy. Most paths in science have never even been tried.

What is hard is to find a path that leads to somewhere. Then just as hard it getting the somewhere you discovered to be accepted by the scientific community. Think plaque tectonics, relativity, quantum mechanics, even something as fundamental as cosmology, and so on.

First you need a friend with an Apple computer and OSX 10.6.8 or later installed. Then you can download the 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10 version of OSX for free on the Mac App Store. If you do not own Apple hardware but want to try these OSes anyway in a VM for instance, it can get a little involved but is generally doable.

You vote for whatever keeps balance. Like you say, both a and b are bad - so if you keep things even then neither side can implement the full extent of their evil plans.

It says a lot about a system that you are better off handing a piece of paper with your routing and account number to a minimum wage worker than use the "secure and convenient" electronic payment app.

That's a small reward for the personal data you are feeding them directly in bulk. It has nothing to do with the fees.

Otherwise there'd be a discount for cash or debit cards, right? Which there is not?

You only get a discount when they get you in return.