Ah... argument by definition you just made up. That's not the empiricist way... more like a theologian's.

Seriously? Abandon individual privacy but try to simulate its effects with legislation? Privacy affords one real dignity, autonomy, and economic advantage. It corrects for the excesses of law, limits the will of the ruthless, and satisfies an innate psychological need. When someone learns something private about you, your game-theoretic outcome IS harmed irrevocably. And when they act on that knowledge (as the majority of humans and human institutions will inevitably find a way to do--legal or not since it's very easy and very deniable), the crow comes home to roost. NEVER trade real up-front protection for some sort of bureaucratic after-the-fact promise.

CueCat's premise wasn't wrong... people do want to skip/shortcut the process of entering URL's found in print. However, it required users to overcome significant hurdles, both on the publishing side (purchasing a license agreement) and on the consumer side (acquiring and hooking up the scanner, then being near your computer when you wanted to scan something).

A better solution, especially at that time, was URL-shortening in its various forms (including TinyURL, which came along ~1 year later). And now, of course, everyone scans QR codes with their smartphone. CueCat was silly, but a lot of silly internet startups were happening in that '99-'01 timeframe.

That's a funny definition of fairness. You're trickling power into the grid in an unannounced, come-what-may sort of way. No scheduling, no guarantees, no maintenance obligations, and little predictability. By contrast, that retail power you're pulling is a consistent, reliable product backed up by an army of regulatory shotguns. You're providing generation. The power company is on the hook for generation, transmission, distribution, commitment/dispatch, customer service/billing, storm crews, fuel diversity, research, regulatory/environmental compliance, and so forth (even planning 20 years ahead where needed). Big difference.

A fair price would actually be LOWER than wholesale. Even though hour-ahead purchases are typically non-firm and subject to transmission curtailment, the power company still has a clearer picture of what's coming and how to navigate it. (The exception might be if transmission into a service area is heavily constrained... effectively spiking spot prices. Or if enough people adopt solar that they, as a class, become statistically predictable to a degree that rivals wholesale market participants.)

Then, hope you don't mind if I interject some recommendations. :-) Set in the near future, Holy Fire is an intimate look at the implication of life-extension and the meaning of youth (but not in a philosophically ponderous way... it's more of a wild chase). Incidentally, it includes a lot of fashion/clothing, which may not sound like a strong selling point, but it definitely broadens the appeal and accessibility of the work outside traditional sci-fi audiences. Technically speaking, I feel it's his most well-executed story, so it's usually what I recommend to people despite it being tamer than...

Schismatrix. This book is set further in the future when first-world humanity has spread thru the solar system. It's my personal favorite for its vast, world-building scope, and unrestrained hacking of the human body (again, much of it in the life-extension vein). I love too that it doesn't revolve around a single gimmicky artifact (e.g., looking at you Stargate) but around a large number of competing technical approaches. Bruce described his work in retrospect as being something like a sea-urchin... ugly and assymetrical, yet pieces break off and embed themselves in you for years.

I'd also recommend Distraction, which is a fun read. All three novels portray a struggling humanity trying to hold life together in the gaping face of limitless technological potential. They are best thought of as biographies of fictional people (Bruce can be weak on plot) that are heroic for their ability to adapt and change.

I feel his other works (the ones I've read anyway) pale in comparison... Heavy Weather is okay. Zenith Angle, while politically insightful, is decidedly mediocre. YMMV.

Your argument makes sense for a high rate of usage, but there are many lights that only get used a few minutes per day (if that): think closets, bathrooms, basements, garage doors, attics, guest bedrooms, sunrooms, porches, floodlights, harsh bedroom overheads, and out-of-the-way lamps. It depends on your families usage patterns (obviously), but in some households this describes 50-60% of the bulbs. It doesn't make sense to populate these fixtures with something that will take two or three decades to repay itself (and that's best case assuming the more exotic bulb doesn't give out or get broken prior to breakeven).

It may not have a custom-compiled kernel, but companies do the same thing with Windows. They take the stock OS, tweak all the settings, add custom scripts, install various software packages (database drivers, antivirus, remote management tools, etc.), put their own branding on it (with wallpapers and other gimmicks), and then burn a disk image. Same thing with PC manufactures, if you've ever had the pleasant experience of scraping away their bloatware.

And it makes a lot of sense for a company to roll their own: it allows a single specialized group of sysadmins to decide best policy, implement it, test it, and roll it out in a single uniform way. Front-line support can then provision a new server or workstation without having to think about it, and everything will tie into LDAP/Active Directory/asset management and the rest of the corporate network just fine.

Seems quick to me... where I work, I saw it take ~8 years for a modestly complex VisualBasic application to be replaced with a .NET one. These sort of transitions take place in an environment with a lot of moving parts and ongoing demands for change and many competing priorities. Heck, we're just now to the point of completing the Windows XP --> Windows 7 transition. Big organizations move slowly... sometimes for reasons that are dumb, but frequently because that's the only way to do it.

Have you read modern patents? They consist of dense legalese that's of no practical value to technologists. And twenty years is not "short term" in computing... our industry proceeds much faster than that.

Two parts: (1) traditionally, the availability of a readily accessible power outlet has been a cue that the outlet is available for (free) use by everyone who's authorized to be in the area. It's not a theft because--in the language of our existing social norms and conventions--the receptacle is actually an invitation unless there's specific signage to the contrary. If you don't believe that, well, then you'd better not charge your personal cell phone at work, plugin your laptop at the airport, or hookup your GPS to your buddy's lighter port without getting explicit permission.

And (2) the part about it being only 5 cents. It does society no good to saddle innocent, productive citizens with criminal records for a 5-cent infraction. That's just crazy. Seeing things in such black-and-white terms creates a user-hostile society that is focused on legalism and pedantry to the exclusion of real justice.

Wrong: you are operating a motor vehicle. The task is inherently dangerous, even if you aren't texting. Even if you could text and 100% drive "correctly", because part of the responsibility of driving is guarding against other drivers, pedestrians, and road debris that doesn't behave "correctly".

Besides, situations (1) and (2) aren't as safe as they seem. In situation (1), people begin texting at a complete stop but end up trying to finish their texts after beginning to roll again. Though not fatal, low speed rear-endings are still vexing to everyone involved. In situation (2), "stand-still" traffic is pretty rare; usually the traffic you are stuck in is of the lurching "stop-and-go" variety. Texting here increases your odds of low and moderate speed rear-endings.

Meh... it might get them a lawsuit, but they are under no contractual obligation. Even if they were, they could just throw in some twist and call it something different ("it's an anti-virus security feature"). The only thing that prevents this is the threat of competition (since it seems anyone can build a game console these days) and upset buyers potentially boycotting them.

To contradict myself, I guess there's an off-chance that some AG's would notice and try to bring home some much-needed bacon for their state's general fund. Maybe Microsoft and Sony are taking that into account.

Useful until you need to write a method that accepts such an array... then you have to use LBOUND() and UBOUND() (or the Ada equivalents) and write slightly more abstract code. That's a slight reduction in readability for the vast majority of cases.

It's the easiest option, given all the tradeoffs (see other responses to this thread).

Uh... bad precedent, dude. Infanticide, forced abortion, a skewed 5:6 sex ratio. (Though... one could argue that it's better than the pandemic/famine/war/anarchy that a population crash would inevitably bring about... but I still wouldn't hold up China as a model.)

Really, if you want negative population growth (like Japan), you need a large, secular middle-class that's well-versed in family planning and too busy to bonk.

And authority is never the source of truth. It's a good reminder, and one that needs to happen frequently.

At the same time, authority is frequently a necessary shortcut. Most casual participants in the Global Warming "debate" don't have the time to deep-dive the dozens of interrelated specialties needed to understand climate science. Instead we choose the narrative we find most convincing, whether it's ((greedy grant-seeking scientist supporting Al Gore's vision for controlling us all)) or ((greedy carbon-heavy corporations fueling disinformation campaigns against truth-seeking academics)). Arguing-to-consensus supports the latter by reminding us that there's strong agreement among people doing real-world investigation, and that's the closest to the truth we can get in time to make a decision.

Another good reminder, but I'll nitpick a little: the scientific community isn't a democracy but a worldwide collection of highly-specialized researchers. Fallible? Yes. Corruptible? Some of them. But it's not the same thing as inviting all members of the populous to pick their favorite option after 8 months of intense media campaigns.