Your joke is too subtle without a reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%E2%80%93Nyquist_noise

In another sense, China is a province of Taiwan. It just happens to be under the control of a band of rebels at present.

There are no La Brea Tar Pits in Scotland!!

So, in Iceland accidentally sleeping with your cousin in a very real danger. That explains some things... like Bjork.

And you'll keep on researching it, until you give us the answer we want.

I don't know much about gun technology, so maybe somebody can explain why the lower receiver is the controlled part. Why not the barrel? It seems to me that the barrel is the heart and soul of a gun. You can make a gun with just a barrel and nothing else: it's called a cannon.

Furthermore, I would think the barrel would be the hardest part to manufacture, given the forces and temperatures it must endure, and having to be perfectly straight, and rifled. I would imagine that 3-D printed barrels are probably a long, long way off.

3-D printed receivers are already here, and only going to get better and cheaper. If they don't change the regulatory framework to start controlling the rest of the parts, then soon anyone that wants to will be able to make a gun at home and all the gun control laws in the world will just be so much pissing in the wind.

Some tragic stories here from Death Valley, one of the most hostile places on Earth:

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/30/3362727/death-by-gps-in-desert.html

I write lots of that "hidden computer code known as comments." I'm so l33t.

Watch how easily I launch an attack: /* format c: */

See how that worked?

I haven't RTFA, but from the summary, this sounds like a textbook example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor's_fallacy, which is a special case of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

If you have a suspect in hand, then DNA evidence can be pretty compelling. But when you comb through the population trying to find a suspect using DNA evidence, then you're walking straight into a miscarriage of justice.

People are always worrying about digital currency destroying the anonymity of cash. And certainly the government appears to have a number of motives for doing so, which fall at various points on the good/evil spectrum.

But I wonder if the government really, in its heart, wants to do that. The complete eradication of anonymous transactions changes the game entirely, and it would alter society in ways that are hard to predict.

There are a lot of activities that people want to keep secret, but that don't involve terrorism, drug-trafficking or pedophillia. Those less-than-squeaky-clean activities will become impossible. As long as humans have been around, it has been possible to deviate somewhat from socially-acceptable behaviour without too much fear. Suddenly, circa 2013, it becomes impossible. The government knows everything about everyone. By extension, everybody knows everything about everyone (because they can't keep their systems secure any better than anyone else.) So, what unintended consequences of that change might follow?

The people who make up the government are part of society, and they'll reap what they sow along with the rest of us.

The Mayor of Xyzzy may have liked to spark up a doobie now and then. But there'll be no more of that. Perhaps the Minister of the Frobnitz occasionally enjoys the company of those ladies who advertise in the back pages... sorry dude, that can be traced right back to you.

For selfish reasons alone, the government may want think twice about making anonymity impossible.

Your age is showing...

Yes, kids, PCs used to have turbo buttons.

They should have used the Apple Disc II. I always loved the sound of that drive. Kind of a soft swishing, not the angry gronk noise of most 5.25" drives.

I also fondly remember the sound of an Atari 800 booting from floppy. Especially if you had the US Doubler modification... the sound of speed.

We can call this one "Denialgate".

The 2G phones were designed at a time when the manufacturers still thought people gave a shit about coverage or battery life.

Apple has shown us all that they don't. Give 'em a slick user-interface and an App Store, and they'll just accept the poor coverage and the need to charge the phone every day.

The other difference is that the energy storage medium is reusable or recyclable in some way, whereas burning fuel is a one-way process. We have no practical way to turn the combustion products back into fuel again. Nature can do so, over a long period of time, but we can't.

In the case of hydrogen, we don't typically bother to capture the water vapour to turn back into hydrogen and oxygen. We could do so, but it's easier to just release it into the environment, and grab new water somewhere else.