It does seem like a bad idea to base a virtual currency on the amount of energy wasted to "mine" it. While that may not have been the original intent, the way it's panned out is you mine it by burning up electricity in order to compute them. Unless the NSA has figured a way to utilize those computations to aid them in decryption and wanted to encourage it for that reason, it seems it's devolved into merely burning up resources in order to turn it into money. Then again, I suppose mining for gold isn't all that different. Still, wouldn't it be better to come up with a way to produce artificial scarcity that conserves rather than wastes energy?

Oops, I didn't intend to create a plug for that site, I didn't know it actually existed and is some kind of proxy service...

How about creating a proxy server that sanitizes the header. You browse to https://myproxyserver.com/get?... and it pulls up the page after cleaning the headers. And it patches all the links on the page to also go through the proxy so you can simply surf away... I'd think such servers might exist already...

It's cheaper to employ them overseas, you don't have to pay them as much or pay benefits.

The fact that these scum choose to use the Charlie Hebdo attack to justify it particularly stinks. I'm sure the Charlie Hebdo victims weren't doing the cartoons in order to get the government to outlaw free speech, but that's the impact such action would have.

Encryption insures you can speak freely without the chilling effect of knowing your government may be listening. To ban it is clearly to eliminate freedom of speech.

What we'll probably see occur is at some point the insurance companies are going to stop writing policies on risky properties. Some have already. Currently, there's a lot of investment going on in new Miami properties by many people who aren't actually planning to live there, they see it as an investment. And since at the moment, they are able to get disaster insurance, how can they lose? Well, they can should their policies get cancelled. Give it another Katrina or New Orleans and that could start happening.

The other possibility is the government could at some point decide the problem is serious enough but understand that taxing the fossil fuel industries directly will be ineffective. An alternative would be more subsidies on clean energies and disaster bail-out funds all paid for by taxes on the consumption of fossil fuels. That could happen after the next disaster incident where people start clamoring for "bail outs" or money to build more sea walls. Those things could find funding from consumption taxes, which will make fossil fuel production less attractive because the market is moving elsewhere. But there's going to be a lot of opposition from moneyed interests, it remains to be seen how long it will take for such things to occur and impact the market sufficiently to make any difference.

The other thing I'm worried about though is the tendency to use this as an excuse to expand nuclear power. The problem I have with that is not that nulcear power CAN BE made safe, but that the way things work, IT WON'T BE. Think Deepwater Horizon. Do you really want a BP running a nuclear power station? Think incompetence. Google "nuclear accidents." The history of safety in the industry is not good, nor is it in ANY of the fossil fuel industries. And there's a new one now-- New Mexico. Not too serious an accident I gather (though an expensive one), certainly it's not a Fukushima, but the point is not how serious it is, but that it happened at all, demonstrating that stupid accidents happen all too often: http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

Until we get better HDR and color gamut that exceeds the RGB limits we've been all too used to since color began, 3D is pretty boring, we've had that sort of thing for about a century. It's been done (better than RGB at least), there are 6-color monitors and projectors, and presumably cameras that have been prototyped (I've seen the results, and it can be jaw-dropping), but we need them to go mainstream.

The problem is not at this point any radiation risk. The problem is DOE is INCOMPETENT. An accident cannot be tolerated in nuclear materials handling. No matter what you say about how great and safe nuclear power CAN BE, the fact is, give the actual mechanisms of management and implementation, IT'S NOT. In this case, it may have been a relatively minor mistake, but minor mistakes can be catastrophic, and THAT'S WHY NUCLEAR POWER IS A BAD IDEA. Either government or corporate bureaucracies are completely incompetent at managing it. Do you want a BP running a nuclear power station? You remember, the BP that was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster?

Except that raising the fines takes a lot of money, and you have to counter the massive amount of money being spent on the other side to keep them from being raised and to confuse the "debate". And even if the US did raise the fines, there'll always be some third-world countries willing to roll over for big money and allow carbon emissions there to go unchecked-- corps will just move their operations to such places and be done with it. I think the post by v(*_*)vvvv is pretty much correct-- we're screwed, better get used to the adverse effects of GW for the rest of our lifetimes at least. Don't be buying any property in Miami. I'm personally looking forward to opening up the gondola concession on the National Mall-- people are still going to want to visit the Lincoln Memorial...

Corporations operate on short-term results. It's about the immediate stock price, what happens in the "future" is for the most part, not a concern. And they're willing to spend stupid amounts of money and screw the environment without a thought about it to achieve that goal.

There's nothing pseudo about the effects of more and more people refusing to vaccinate their kids due to unfounded superstitions:

http://rt.com/usa/220715-mease...

If I was asked to design my idea of the most boring game ever, Twilight Struggle would be it. Cons: limited to two players, pasted on theme is "alternate history" of recent events (most of it within my lifetime) board design is a world map, runs overlong, verbose text on cards, graphics stolen from back issues of Life magazine. If this is what the majority of BGG users like, I'll have to stop referring to it-- to say they are geeks is a gross understatement, as they must be all still living in their parent's basement.

If the NSA can do it, maybe you can too!

Managers have no confidence in themselves-- they know they are incompetent at motivating people so they have to resort to big-brother intimidation techniques and vacuous pep rallys with inane slogans and sports metaphors. It then becomes self-fulfilling for the most part, you get what you pay for...

It sounds lame, period. I see no reason to get upset about any of it. The movie is lame, Sony is lame, the North Korean dictator is lame. I could care less what happens to any of it. Why act like it matters in the least by making any kind of deal out of it at all? And if anyone acted cowardly here it was the theater owners who refused it. If I was Sony I'd just release it into the public domain right away to shut up the critics and move on.

No pretense they have any respect for the Constitution, due process or the privacy of citizens. There's no doubt everyone will have to take matters into their own hands now. No doubt they'll make that illegal too, at which point only criminals will have any privacy.