This starts happening already. They get some of their billing outsourced to India and some of it done by machines. The linked article is 4yo now. I guess the billing is as painful as it always was but part of the profits are siphoned out of the system to few guys that own legal rights. Now if they automate and offshore the plumbers that would mean revolution. It will happen eventually.

I know this is off topic and off the main line of your argument but why do you consider M.D. in falling down as a guy who 'went nuts'? I mean the movie is (slightly) overblown but in any of the situations that we see Defence guy taking action against the system, I actually could agree that the actions were reasonable except maybe blowing up street with a missile which could injure bystanders. Come to think of it - our meaninglessness is so profound these days that just the only way we can get message across is with direct and possibly violent action as other means are not available due to corruption of the overwhelming system and inactivity of bored majority. Only then, after such direct action, we may realize that this has been pointless anyway as nobody caring watches and those that do are already blinded by many of such actions in the past.

As for the rest of your story - I wonder how it will all change (assuming no dino killing meteor event interrupting the experiment) in few years - more factories coming back to 'developed world' going full automatic so good jobs going away now not only to offshoring but also to automation. What jobs will our kids have to support their families? Human tendency is to go for utopia and end up with dystopia so ....

Saw a (BBC?) documentary about people living around in the Chernobyl Zone and research done on the food that can be grown there without risk and apparently there are ways to avoid much of contamination if one knows which plants and plant parts to eat and which not. Having luck I suppose plays also a role as there are places there where contrary to what some claim radioactivity killed almost all life. Bottom line is you do not have to die directly of radiation (of the type we talk about here). The atomic man however was exposed and suffered a lot because of that. He died of something that had no direct relationship to the accident, this much is true but I would not like to have to lead his life.

How independent is this 'independent' US government agency?

judging on the '-1' score neither group has sense of humor

any policy can be judged on its costs and benefits. Direct costs and indirect costs of this policy are dire. Damage to US reputation and to Western citizens relationship with their states and their agencies that so creatively together with NSA misinterpreted laws and regulations is huge. There is also this little item of lost business due to NSA machinations.

The question is: was it worth it?

if these were hookers then he would be guilty of paying for sex which is a crime in this great country. these were just callgirls that you know are to show you the city etc

vibrators?

yes - huge grid smooths local shortages but as far as I know we do not have such a thing like Europe/Asia/Africa grid, we may have some in Europe and possibly in some areas of Asia and Africa but calling it continental grids is an overstatement already. What we have in Europe may be _almost continental_ that is quite some zillions of investment and few 'manmonths' of work are needed. Meanwhile in Germany some offshore wind parks cannot be connected to the grid and their owners seem to be on the way to be paid for energy that they could have otherwise produced - the costs of this payment for energy that has not been consumed cover suckers like me. This little example is to illustrate not the impossibility of the task but that instead of talking about a continental grid maybe we should be fixing big local grids.

That is OT but funny how it relates to my QA assignments - I keep on hearing about products being almost ready and how future releases will bring the glory but lowly and not important 9in10 install fails are not worthwhile investigating. eh humans...

you forgot the endless bitching on /. about dumbass half brain of a scientist while at the same time not being able to explain the exact mechanics of the banjo effect.

I am half burnt now but I still remember times at school when this sort of explanations provided me with joy at learning stuff like physics and math instead of listening to explanation of a teacher that has no f. clue what he is talking about and what role his 'knowledge' has in my and my fellow students reality, combined with explanations in another subject ended with 'it is just so'. I am not sure we have to shoot things into orbit just to find out that parking lot without trees is hotter than one with them but I like when there are formulas at hand when one asks for them.

and we slashdotted the bloody attorney site or is it just me not being able to click properly???

germans love to be abused obviously.

So instead of the current mess in nuclear free Ukraine we would have the same mess only with nuclear armed Ukraine. That is indeed appealing idea.

I do not thin that legit ads are a problem but neither you nor I can distinguish legit ads from malicious ones which devise needs where there is none and doing some other stuff nobody wants except their authors or police department that now can detect that you rolled a conical object and now a sweet smelling cloud is being dispersed by air condition - augment this with automatic sentencing or even better preemptive sentencing as after all system will know you wanted to commit a terrible crime even before you do. I think there is huge potential there!

first works, the other other does not.