This segues nicely with a question I've been idly wondering.

Consider all natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tornados, volcanoes, hurricanes, forest fires (kinda natural), tsunamis, mudslides, etc.

Now consider all human safety factors, such as crimes of violence, unsafe nuclear/chemical plants, likelihood of being targeted/invaded by a foreign entity, random government oppression, and so on. And I suppose you should consider automobile fatality rates (which probably outweigh all other factors combined).

Plus toss in random other safety factors such as poisonous insects/spiders/snakes, rising ocean levels, and whatnot.

Now where in the world would you say is the safest place to live?

Maybe central Canada somewhere?

I'm just askin'. It't not like I live my life by these considerations (though I have shied away from Western North America a bit... ya know, 'cause o the big one).

Yeah, but all that not-getting-laid... how fun was that?

There's an easy solution.
Just hire one of those security companies!

Exactly. The story that still isn't being expressed well is that your data is in the hands of every company you have transactions with.

And so you are entrusting all of them to have top-notch IT (better IT than all hackers interested in targeting them). What are the chances that's the case?

I'd hazard that 10% of companies have good, solid, rigid security policies (and it's the policies that matter much more than the tech, usually). So that implies that 90% of the time you hand out your personal info to someone, it's highly vulnerable.

Just chew on that for a bit. I'd be very interested in hearing proposals for a global solution.

Well, from the linked resource, you can download the whole thing as a PDF. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

A series of tubes? With naked women in it?

How could that be anything but the net?

Well, that's a rather harsh commentary, which is probably why you both hide behind AC. I said, "Does seems like a bit of a disconnect..." I am not exactly advancing a political agenda.

There is no limit to the number of posts a slashdot conversation can permit. So why do you get so upset when I politely and mildly mention one aspect of an issue. Do I somehow diminish the quantity of other comments?

Chill. And expand your mind. A little meta-analysis never hurt a conversation.

Oh, wait! I got it: feed the RFID chips to the cows and chickens. That way your milk and eggs will have built-in expiration tags.

Does seems like a bit of a disconnect that we're worried about the electronic security of our net-connected fridges when much of the world is more concerned with the existence of food, let alone what device it goes into let alone how well that device monitors the rfid chips of each bit of it.

Is Soviet Russia, spam sends refrigerator!

Wait a minute...

There are some complex facts that usually don't get dragged into this discussion because they make it so much larger. But some interesting facts to color the warming issue are:

1. We are currently in an ice age. The current Quaternary glaciation (i.e., the current ice age) started 2.5 million years ago.

2. Within that ice age, we are in an interglacial: a period of temporary(?) warming within the ice age. Our current interglacial is the Holocene epoch, which started 11,700 years ago.

But as long as we still have ice caps, we are still in an ice age. If the ice caps melt, we'll know the ice age is over and we're back to what is in fact more normal temperatures for Earth.

However, it can't be said that Earth's normal warm is necessarily good for humanity. After all,

3. Humans, as in the genus Homo, evolved around 2.5 million years ago. The same time as the the beginning of the current ice age. In other words, the adversity of the Earth's freezing put heavy evolutionary pressure on our ape ancestors.

So, cold = good? Well, remember the current interglacial started 11,700 years ago. Now that's interesting. The Old Stone Age begins with the first humans, that ~2.5 million years ago. But...

4. The Middle Stone Age started right around when the interglacial started. That's when humans first began to make more advanced tools, create advanced art, develop spirituality, etc. In other words, when things warmed up a bit, humanity began to flourish.

So what's good? Warm, cold, in-between? What's "natural?" 'Cause that seems to be extremely warm... unless you're talking about humans, then it's extremely cold. Or moderate.

Complex, eh?

Now, apart from global warming, the related issue that always gets short shrift is ocean acidification, which is also caused by an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere, and which appears to be a huge threat to life on Earth. But it's harder to understand than warming, so let's not talk about it.