He didn't leave entirely... during WWII he worked at the Pentagon with Isaac Asimov, John Campbell, and a couple of other prominent authors on top-secret (at the time) projects involving quite a bit of technology development (including what would eventually become high-altitude pressure suits, if that gives you an idea).

Dude even broke Navy protocol and hired smart women to the team, as he managed the projects under his care.

If I remember right, he retained his rank at the time.

IIRC parts of Earth were - notably India (and China?), where the populations were too large to otherwise sustain.

The Lunar colonies began as a ginormous prison, but the expense of sending parolees and ex-cons home was too onerous; so they stayed, formed their own society, and grew on their own.

I think the premise is still quite doable, especially if there were some condition on Earth which prevented agricultural production from reaching its current capacity.

Given that only half of the voting population actually votes in the US, I'm not so sure that suffrage is considered to be a major societal function.

Even in the book, Rico's old man is a successful businessman, and had never enlisted (at least not until way later in the book after shit got real, as you yourself mention), and basic human rights (outside of voting) were allegedly guaranteed to all regardless.

I disagree, but only a little - the military was mostly a vehicle from which to tell the story, and it portrayed quite vividly many of the morals and weltanschauung (for lack of a better term) that military service imparts on those who enter it. More importantly, it explained it in a way that civilians could put to use in their own daily lives.

May have mixed up the man, but replace it with "The Author of Poor Richard's Almanack", and the point stands.

All I know is, I'm praying "...please don't fuck it up as bad as you did Starship Troopers..."

...might make a difference in this case, considering that it was set up on the down-low (as opposed to a Hotmail/Yahoo freemail account). Also, you misspelled "primaries" up there, where it would make a pretty sizable difference. In elections, its impact would be in the timing of a big event surrounding it's disclosure or prosecution. ;)

Dr. Zhivago had that in the latter part of its storyline.

Thinking that's the most likely outcome from my POV as well.

After all, if you're pressed into service as a "hacker", it wouldn't take much to discreetly slip information to the authorities, considering that most cartel types don't strike me as being technically uber-literate. Sure it would be a massive risk, but totally doable depending on the environment.

Not really - you can still buy old XServe boxes for a relatively reasonable price, pack them with RAM, and load ESXi on each one so that you can run a buttload of little OSX VMs on each one. Yes, it's perfectly legit to do exactly that under the Apple EULA (I did it for a former employer who wanted rack-mounted OSX instances for testing - it was its own little cluster in a vSphere farm, and it was far easier to clone off replacements or new VMs.)

Some of us cannot afford our very own personal render farm, or justify the cost of renting time on one, merely to satisfy our little hobbies. ;)

Personally though, it's not just work that keeps us from rebooting. On my part, it's usually a month or two between reboots on my MBP laptop, and even then patching is usually the only reason... why bother waiting for a full boot process to finish when I don't have to? Close the lid and let it go to sleep... it's only a few seconds waiting for it to wake up when I want to use it again.

Thomas Paine would say you have a very bad idea there.

There are times when anonymity serves a greater purpose. If I lived in a predominately Islamic-ruled country and wanted to criticize the ruling class about their policies towards women, or introduce the idea that maybe Islam is not a good basis for a legal system, I damned sure would want to remain anonymous while doing so, lest I wind up getting imprisoned or whipped to within an inch of my life over the charge of "blasphemy" (yes, that's a thing in some places, and yes, it goes on even today.)

A better US-based reason? Leaks to the press. Leaks are what point us to uncovering crimes and misdemeanors by public officials. A historical example? Watergate's "Deep Throat". A recent example? Mrs. Clinton's little habit of accepting massive amounts of payola from foreign sources to her "charity" while she was Secretary of State. If it weren't for a leak to the press, no one outside of a few elites would know about it.

So no, m'dear - removing anonymity is not a good thing.

It would help if they did a better job of figuring out which ones were dupes before posting them, no? ;)

Won't have to... just work for a private company in some capacity. Even if it wasn't in tech, I'd rather be a lowly factory worker in East Bumfuck, Russia than a famous prisoner in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Compared to Club Fed (if you're lucky - Death Row if you're not)?

I'll take "Shit-holes I'd rather spend the rest of my natural life in since prison or death are the only other alternatives" for $1000, Alex!

Thinking the same thing here.

I love living here and all, but damn - if I were a young single guy and my home country wants me imprisoned (or worse - probably worse) over uncovering illegal activities they committed?

Screw that - I could learn Russian easily enough, many of the women there are reportedly rather cute, vodka ain't that bad as far as booze goes, and I can easily deal with living in cold-ass weather 9 months of the year.

I'm the oldest of eight... my youngest brother tried that stunt when he was 14; I was visiting at the time of the incident, and the little punk was acting out, thinking he was a badass (all of us boys did that, and we all learned the hard way that the old man will call your bluff without hesitation). Anyrate, the cops did indeed show up, and my old man told him exactly what happened, and then said "...and if he wants to go into foster care so bad, I'd love to drop him off into it right about now." The cop laughed. One of my sisters immediately chimed in and asked if she could have his bedroom after he leaves, and another offered to help him pack. I just sat back laughing my ass off, as my little brother's face turned rather pale.

Needless to say, the officer politely declined, and after he left, *everyone* looked at the poor kid like he just screwed up big-time. I offered to take the little guy out back and have a chat with him, and my father agreed (I was 24 at the time); 15 minutes later he was apologizing from the bottom of his very soul (though he still wound up grounded for two months).

Mind you this was in Arkansas, where you were practically allowed to beat your kids to within an inch of their lives if needed, so YMMV.