He was also an obese asthmatic and died from the strain of trying to run away from a volcano.

Oh, sexconker, you and your stories - "the study is wrong", "beer kills brain cells".... Now let's go back to that ... building ... thingie ... where our beds and TV ... is.

Likewise. I've got a Windows 7 gaming rig that has seen LOTS of installs and uninstalls, driver updates and Windows updates and have seen zero performance reduction.

Maybe this was a thing in Windows 95, but I'm not sure it's a thing now as long as you're not getting infected with malware.

This story has pretty much nothing to do with the "Internet of Things" they are trying to sell us.

I seriously doubt that any of the WiFi sensors in Intel's machinery required an account with a third party company which then collected data on how Intel used their machines.

We already have an Internet of Things. It's called, "things".

Counterpoint: people who have the most to gain from racist propaganda and muckraking are black "leaders."

And the ones who have the most to lose are the racists.

It's gotten so bad that you can hardly use racial slurs for sports team names any more. Thanks a lot, Obama.

A tricorder's nice and all, but you wanna see real technological innovation? Here, I got your technological innovation right here:

https://vine.co/v/O7jjJMi5wTa

I like how you think. I'm OK with this thread turning into ideas for ways to turn the ebola zombie apocalypse to our advantage.

On the down side, I'm leading my fantasy football league by almost thirty points. Just my luck the world comes to an end in week five.

I don't think you'll have to use Nukes. Once Texans figure out that there's Ebola running loose around their state, they'll get out their shooting irons and go full survivalist. If the guy who's the first ebola case turns out to be a black man, I've got a feeling there are going a whole lot of people of color heading for Oklahoma and New Mexico tonight.

By the end of the week, Texas will look like an episode of Walking Dead. In other words, nobody in the rest of the country will notice.

Is the end of humanity due to the Ebola virus an acceptable excuse for adultery?

Asking for a friend.

I've been reading up about that story, and the city officials didn't really mention anything about the fact that it was a connected domicile. If their rationale was based, as the officials said, on the International Building Code, there's no mention of connected vs standalone domiciles in the IBC. So I really don't know what this was about.

It seems like they were looking for a reason to cite this homeowner, who has had other run-ins with housing before, mostly for capping off her sewers.

While I personally see a device like this (sorry... ROBOT!) of rather limited use for testing prepared dishes, I can see great utility for it for testing ingredients. You could have a standardized, unambiguous way to rate the quality or at least properties of a given product, be it meat, fruit, vegetables, etc. I bet cultivar breeding programs in particular could really benefit from this - "Well, I was hoping that this new mango would be a huge innovation, but actually it's almost identical to a Keitt. Though to be fair its mouthfeel is somewhat like a Carrie, and it does have a small amount of a new novel aromatic compound..." Just a single mass produced sensor package that measures a wide range of different properties at once in a repeatable, universal manner. If such a thing could become widespread, I'd bet half of the "cultivars" out there would pretty much disappear, having been shown to be essentially identical to others.

Can you point me at an example of this verbiage somewhere?

I found this pretty quickly. It seems like local officials are using overbroad interpretations of codes to keep people from disconnecting from the grid. I don't know how widespread it is.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/02...

Pardon my linking to Reason Magazine. I don't like to use them as a news source because they're kind of unhinged over there. But they have the most thorough coverage of this story that I've found. If you want a more balanced source, the same story is covered by Al Jazeera and several local Florida sources.

OK, I get it. I agree. There are some externalities that are obvious, like the downstream pollution caused by certain types of mining or drilling.

But there has to be proof when you try to put a number on it, whether it's a $5 solar surcharge or a 20% tax on solar cells. Like you say, "prove it". Unfortunately, it seems like the only proof they need is a fat bundle of bills in a lobbyist's hands.

I don't know if you've been following this story, but the efforts of the energy companies to thwart any development in renewables has gone a heck of a lot further than a $5 monthly surcharge.

In Oklahoma, Wisconsin and other states, they are requesting special taxes on solar panels. They don't even care if the money goes to them, they just want solar users penalized. Yes, this is about more than just the economics of energy. There is malicious intent.

First there will need to be a minor revolt against codes requiring electrical service as a condition of human occupancy.

I'm convinced we will see houses with electrical service that are not attached to the grid. In our lifetime.