Make threats to intimidate and milk them for money (extortion) and not actually go to court. I know the lawyers have a legal term for this kind of bad faith, but I've no idea what it is right now.

IANAL, but I think the word you're looking for here is "barratry."

While in the US there is a generally accepted right to self defense, the legal theory in the UK is that fighting crime is the police's job.

This brings up a question. It's well established in the US that the police have no responsibility to protect your life; if you call 911 when the Bad Guys show up and get killed before the police arrive, your next of kin don't get to sue the cops. (Look up Warren v. District of Columbia for an example.) It's not that much of a problem here as you have the right to defend yourself, with deadly force if necessary. In a legal environment where that right to self-defense isn't guaranteed, as it isn't in the UK, does that then imply a potential liability if their police don't do what has been decided is their job? (I suspect it doesn't, but I could be wrong.)

That was my thinking. Maybe we have giant silos of cacao, and those are dwindling, although I lack the imagination to think this is literally true. The whole premise looks like a reason to raise prices and profits.

If the world is eating more chocolate, it means the world is getting richer. Not many in China would be eating chocolate regularly 20 years ago, Same could be said of other areas.

Regardless, the math doesn't add up, particularly the future estimations of us consuming a million tons more than we make. The only place you see that kind of math is typically in the Ministry of Truth.

12 Power Cycle Count is relevant on the EZRXs (greens); that keeps increasing unless you do certain things to prevent it, and I think (this is murky) I saw a weak correlation between this going into way up, and the drives failing sooner.

I've not done anything special with the two that I have in a media server at home. This stat is at 5 on the older drive and 4 on the newer drive. By comparison, a Seagate Barracuda LP in the same box is at 128 (it's quite a bit older than the WD drives), and the boot drive, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 I grabbed out of the unused-drive box when whatever drive it replaced failed, has 365 spinups logged.

(Looking at the stats for all of my drives, the outlook for that 7200.11 isn't so good. :-P )

The "programmers" can scream all they want but VB with Access did one job and did it VERY well which was allowing anybody to build single function programs quickly and easily. VB code was very human readable

I'm stuck maintaining some Access projects. "Readable" isn't an attribute I'd apply to most of the VBA "code" I've run across.

That's probably a ClearQAM signal that he is receiving. Most HDTVs in North America have dual-standard 8VSB/QAM64 tuners so they can receive both broadcast and cable channels. No CableCard required.

It's more likely that it's a mix of that and analog. In Las Vegas at least, Cox makes all channels below 100 available as unencrypted analog video, receivable by pretty much every TV built since the '40s or so. Local channels (including the subchannels many of them have offered since the digital transition) are also available in unencrypted digital form. It works out to probably somewhere around 70-80 channels, with maybe a half-dozen in HD, a dozen or so in digital SD, and the balance in analog SD.

I cut off TV service about a year ago, switching to data-only service. They've not bothered blocking these channels, so they're still available. My TVs are set up to tune them in, but I can't remember the last time I watched something that wasn't streamed from across the Internet or played back from the file server on my LAN.

The military and corporate planes have had rear facing passenger seats for ages. It certainly doesn't affect babies being carried in rear facing car seats. There's all kinds of safety reasons why this is a good idea, but I can't find anything substantial to back up your claim.

I've flown on 737s with rear-facing seats. Southwest used to have them...last time I recall seeing them was in the mid-'90s:

http://www.blogsouthwest.com/flashback-fridays-southwest-airlines%E2%80%99-interiors-over-years/

They blame changed safety regs, strangely enough:

When Southwest introduced the 737-700 in January 1998, new federal safety regulations doomed the lounge areas. No rear-facing seats could meet this new safety requirement, and the -700s were delivered with all forward facing seating. Lounges in the -300s and -500s were phased out, and only the -200 retained lounges until they were retired at the start of 2005.

Bill-denomination is something that's interested me for awhile actually; it seems from my limited view of time like in the United States, the $20 has been the standard bill for 30+ years.

As far back as I can remember, $20 has been the denomination dispensed by nearly all ATMs. A handful of ATMs might mix in $50 or $100 bills for larger total amounts (Wells Fargo has some that do $20s and $50s, but most of theirs still just do $20s), and there were some ATMs outside the student union that used to dispense $5 bills (this was at UNLV in the early '90s), but most of the time, you'll get $20s.

Lead acid batteries can produce hydrogen gas. Not sure what nicads do, except for "very little".

I don't know how right handed people do it, but as lefty, I wear my watch on my left hand

You're doing it wrong. :-) You put your watch on the non-writing wrist. I'm right-handed, and I've always worn watches on the left. If I wore them on the right, the wristband would've scraped against the paper or the desk as I was writing.

Then again, who needs a watch anymore when your cellphone shows network-synchronized time that never needs adjustment?

Exactly. This is the probably the best and least error prone book I know about his life. I've read it more than twice.

I gave up spray deodorant and switched to stick years ago, simply because I didn't want to be inhaling aluminum chlorohydrate and other goodies. That it isn't good for the environment is secondary to that.

I agree that smaller government isn't "the" answer, but smaller is easier to keep an eye on, and much of the "smaller" means that things instead get shifted to the state or local level. Frankly, I like that, because I can easily go downtown, or easy enough to the state capital, but when D.C. is in charge, there is zero chance of being heard. I would rather be a tiny voice here in NC than a non-existent one in DC.

Most who remember the TV show 6 million dollar man, that was footage of a DynaSoar's unsuccessful landing

Nope...that footage was of two experimental lifting-body aircraft from Northrop, the HL-10 and M2-F2. The crash footage was of the M2-F2. Earlier in the credits, the HL-10 is shown being dropped from a B-52.

shouldn't require waiting for a new Linux kernel to ship

FTFY. Even the most ardent Stallmanites don't usually try to claim credit for the kernel.