I know I'm going to regret asking this, but WHY do you assert that everyone will have to produce home-grown produce? And how do you come up with that 5% number?

Yeah. I did some charity work recently that involved standing mostly still for two days. It took over a month for my knees to recover enough that I could walk without limping again.

Standing still fucking hurts. Stand up meetings hurt, let alone a full day in the office.

I can sit in an office chair on the other hand for 70 hours in a week with no ill effect. I shuffle a LOT, which spreads the load and stops repetitive strain.

So I'm going to have to stop playing http://store.steampowered.com/... ?

The company behind that game do state that they aren't publishing plans, and you couldn't build a firearm based on their game, but it's easily got enough information on how designers went from breech loaders to fully automatic that I could translate into a functioning system.

I just don't own a lathe or CNC..

The bit that I don't get is why the Greeks don't create a new currency (call it the Geuro) peg the exchange rate at one Geuro to 400 billion Euros, print one note, hand it to their creditors and _then_ let the currency devalue.

Anybody asking to exchange it for the 400 billion Euros just needs to find someone with 400 billion to exchange - i.e. not the Greek government.

You could argue that it's effectively a default, but in the event of exiting the Euro it's a nice way to finish with a big 'fuck you'.

I agree. If the US and Europe are fine with letting Greece slip into Third World Status, the Greeks should look at Russia for help, which I'm certain the Russians would give.

Can you live in the Bay Area taking home 42k/year?

I did for years (also working for the state). I was living here for nearly a decade before I made more than that, in fact; as a grad student my stipend was less than $20k. I have no dependents or debts to pay off, no severe medical conditions, and my benefits were always sufficient, so it was actually very easy. I lived alone for the majority of that time, but even when I shared houses or apartments it was in relatively nice neighborhoods. (All rental, of course.) Until recently I was always living very close to where I worked. I usually had at least a little disposable income and by the time I was taking home more than $30K I was saving some of it.

That said, I live in the East Bay, not SF proper, so my rents are merely extortionate but not totally unaffordable. $42K won't go very far if you want to live in the Mission - and 10 years ago, it wasn't totally unrealistic for a (childless) grad student to have that ambition.

Honestly, from what I've seen I think senior government-employed or government-funded scientists in the Bay Area mostly get paid enough already (and I would include myself in that category until very recently). It's definitely more than we'd get in another part of the country, and we/they get to play with a lot of very cool (and very expensive) toys. But the cost of living is a huge problem for recruiting; a UC Berkeley professor of my acquaintance told me they were finding it increasingly difficult to hire new faculty because they'll never be able own a home anywhere close to Berkeley itself.

Well, "management-imposed restraints" doesn't actually answer the question of why, so your question wasn't unreasonable.

Based on the trajectory of Slashdot after the Dice takeover, though, presumably the real answer for "why" is "because our managers are total morons."

Why not?

What's wrong with saying "All medallions expire at the end of the year. Anybody wanting one after that gets its on an annual basis, for $200, after proving they're capable of operating a taxi in my city"

That's kind of how London does it.

Why is that? Is there legislation preventing this?

If I file three no-fault claims because other people hit my car from behind, and my next door neighbour files no claims at all, my premium will rise and his will not.

This is because the insurance company has identified that I'm more likely to be involved in an accident, and that makes me a higher risk.

What excludes Pennsylvania from this logic?

Trademark holder did a poor job researching his trademark and finds prior use in a domain name now attempts to abuse anti cyber squatting laws to grab domain.
This is one of those areas of tech law that will need to be ironed out in the future perhaps adding a domain name check to the TM check when registering a trademark.
I hope the law going forward dose not favor the trademark holder over prior use owner.

Mostly in the United States, and non-European countries. Germany seems pretty healthy. Maybe some Scandinavian nations as well.

The rest of us.

We do however find racist, misogynistic, homophobic and other jokes funny. You forgot the disabled, jokes about the events in Tunisia on Friday and jokes about the bus crash in Belgium this morning.

It's called humour. Maybe you lack it, but you can go fuck yourself if you want the rest of us to abandon it.

To be fair, over 200 tools if you include the stuff that comes with Cygwin.

45 is more than I install but it's not more than double. But it's no different than having to configure a Linux box with all the apps and libraries you want either.

So basically you and your girlfriend don't know a thing about windows or how to configure and maintain it.

That's fine, you don't use it and if it was important for her she could learn.

The rest of the world will keep getting along fine in the meantime.