Because abusive monopolies or oligopolies have *never*, ever happened.

Asteroid capture and mining is potentially lucrative but completely unknown in terms of economy, safety, proper technique, etc. Generally what governments excel at is exploration of unknowns. You think there would BE private space flights and planned space stations if NASA and the USSR hadn't gone up first to see if, oh, people could even survive in zero-G, let alone get up there and back? Is it inefficient? Sure. But governments can take risks that private agencies, with shareholders that demand risk prevention, can't. Once the maps have been made, so to speak, then you can get the massive influx of private sector enterprise.

In other words, it's an investment.

BumWine.com lists the only wines you'll ever need.

So take the challenge, easily beat it, and donate the money to the charity of your choice. A million dollars can feed a lot of starving orphans.

Yes they are. And that's a huge problem if you want to look at their source code, as in Microsoft departments tend to be incredibly clannish and intra-competitive. So Microsoft Research has the following choices:

A) Spend weeks or months bickering back and forth with the gaming division for access to the Halo source code, or
B) Just grab some open source code and get on with it.

Pen15 fits easy in the hand, interfaces well with both sides, and works well digitally.

You might not want to whip it out at the local coffee shop though.

(time to burn through all that excess karma I guess...)

Nonsense.

Xenogenetics labs working on tiny fragments of alien DNA (or equivalent) would be of no danger whatsoever. How do I know? Bacteria. Millions of species of hardy, survivalist badasses that have survived through more globe-spanning apocalypses than you've had hot dinners. So let's say there's an accident and some tiny sequenced fragments of alien genetics fall into a pond somewhere. Assuming A) the environment doesn't immediately kill them and B) they're complete enough to form autonomous life, they'll have to contend with the fact that they're competing for survival against creatures that are built to survive the shit that Earth throws at them. Not a chance in hell.

Barring some situation where you've got incriminating stuff on the drive, your best approach to this problem is just to be honest. Approach the IT department and state the following case:

-I've been here for ten years. While I didn't squander my time on personal crap, there's bound to be a personal email or credit card number somewhere in a browser cache or temp file.
-I've got (X instant message/skype/whatever) account running on login, and I don't want to leave that hanging around.
-What can we do to protect both myself and the company?

Suggest a drive wipe and reimage. It's a bit overkill, so if that's an issue suggest you be given supervised admin privileges to wipe temp folders, uninstall software, wipe leftover program and document folders, delete your old user account, etc. Ask about a place to back up all your work files in case anyone needs them.

Of course, your IT might not be retarded, but it doesn't hurt to ask. And if you've got admin privileges, do all that stuff yourself.

You just have to be more creative. For instance:

If that was me?
Boil your waterskin, throw it in your opponent's face.
Boil your opponent's saliva.
Boil your opponent's urine.
Boil the sweat inside your opponent's armor.
Boil the aqueous jelly in your opponent's eyes.

Shitty starting spells and low hitpoints only sucks if you don't consider it a challenge.

I wouldn't have made it to the end of that meeting. I'd have left and been out the door the very second this douchenozzle opened his mouth. Well, at least the very second he mentioned the whole thing about the bad references.

Of course, I do recognize that there are good economic reasons for not being able to do so. But hell, telemarketers are always hiring and will give you a million times more job satisfaction than working under someone like that.

Sadly you're probably not going to get a response from the advertroll. He's quick-posted his ad in response to a keyword in the article ("Firefox" probably) and will disappear afterwards. Honestly, I've learned just to ignore the first post/thread in the comments of Slashdot articles now.

A delay! Just what all those whiners... err citizens wanted, right? Well, this will serve one purpose at least - to wait until the opposition's momentum has died down before going to a vote. They learned their lesson from the Occupy movement well: wait until people are sick of hearing about the issue, then move to squash it.

-Morbo

Still somebody's property you're profiting off of. And will do you little good when Ivan The Problem Solver tracks you down and introduces your testicles to high voltage.

You're obviously intentionally misunderstanding his point. Easier to make fun of the "bleeding heart librul" than to confront the issue head on, I suppose. OP isn't excusing crime or criminals. What he's saying is that the low-level low-lifes are the symptom, not the cause. Don't go after the hooker or the drug delivery kid, go after the ruthless pimp and the drug cartel. Sure, it involves actual work, but as anyone who's ever seen a huge drop in spam after a botnet takedown will tell you, doing the work and going after the source will get you FAR better results than trying to shut down a million easy to hit endpoints.