"There are more Android devices to choose from."

But there are also other iPhones to choose from. Apple still sells the 5s and 5c...

There are a lot of Android smartphones but not actually that many if you look at the models that sell in large numbers. Basically, there is Samsung.

Wait, what? Since when are retailers supposed to ask for your identity when using a credit card? My understanding was that they were actively discouraged from doing so by credit card companies. In fact, I remember they used to have a toll free number you could call to report a retailer if they refused to accept your VISA without giving them ID.

That's what I thought had happened. I remember TPB selling themselves to a software company for like ten million bucks with plans to turn into a "legitimate tracker of licensed/contracted content". Everyone went nuts over it. Then they all switched to private trackers.

I've actually always been highly suspect of TPB. Not because of those behind it, but because it is such a high value target, compared to other trackers that you could use (especially private, obviously -- though then there are situations like Demonoid and others that become really iffy due to certain events).

but the extremes get a lot more extreme

The opposite is true, we've had fewer very large storms, less destructive weather of all kinds across the globe.

Gaia is pissed off you are trying to make her dance like a monkey for your own agenda and is sitting ion her hands.

Here's the thing. Whether it's happening... whether it's human caused or not... LET'S STOP POLLUTION FOR IT'S OWN SAKE.

I totally agree.

But all of the Alarmists don't care at all about pollution, they only care about CO2 - which is not pollution, and stopping that does pretty much nothing in terms of stopping real pollution.

When you all get back to caring about the environment and not making people at alternative energy companies (or carbon exchanges) rich please get back to us so we can start trying to protect the environment again.

They're mostly a waste of time anyway everyone just strokes their own egos and you spend 2 days digesting information in an archaic inefficient way

You're doing it wrong.

The reason to go to the conferences is NOT the lectures (which these days are all on videos anyway) but to spend AS MUCH time as possible talking to either the people working for the company who produces the technology the conference is about, or people working heavily with said technology. You learn a LOT more that way and make great contacts that are really useful in solving problems or finding new jobs.

Going to conferences is also something to mention on a resume in general, it shows a lot more dedication than most people to keeping technically sharp.

"And here we see that increasing CO2 levels is causing increasing global temperatures..."

Yep, coorelation != causation.

Yes, that's why they had local events in other cities.

But I think it's kind of dumb to think that in a city with tens or hundreds of thousands of cars idling daily in traffic for the past 70 years, that 500 busses making a single trip is going to have a more negative impact than if leaders don't hear some kind of voice for change.

Not content to reinvent jack and init poorly, Poettering has decided to reinvent microkernels poorly as well. We're doomed.

Their traffic is up that much?! I assumed they were all but dead.

Also, I thought they sold themselves to GGF and went legit half a decade ago?

I am not an atheist, just practical. While I personally believe we'll get our acts together and get the technology to prevent most major extinction events before they happen (such as large asteroids, and even climate change), eventually our sun will expand and burn away all life on Earth. I see no reason why life on Earth should just accept its extinction lying down. There won't be any humans around, as we would recognize humans, but whatever our descendants look like, I'd like to hope they've gotten off the planet long before that happens, and brought along plenty of other Earthlings with them.

This century, we have the ability to get at least some of our eggs out of this one basket. Over the coming millennium, I expect we will be able to travel to other solar systems in generational ships. I happen to believe life is sacred. Shouldn't we try to preserve it for as long as we can?

Redundancy, and 3D printers that can make all the parts for new 3D printers. Even if two of your three printers fail, use the third to build two more and hopefully the two that fail can be cannibalized for spare parts enough to build a complete working model.

Or build those parts to begin with. Especially when we start colonizing outside our solar system, being able to pack solid containers of materials as densely as possible and then building everything when we get there, is going to be critical to keeping weight down by nature of requiring less packaging. A big cube of metal is a lot cheaper to ship than several large metal machines.

http://www.space.com/27211-made-in-space-3d-printer.html/

It's ABS, and quite small. It's more for testing than anything else, but they say they intend to print functional items rather than just toys.

This requires a great number of assumptions or an tremendous amount of work to prove them out and there are too many variables to make this viable in more than a few very specific edge cases.

Even if we somehow know that the account belongs to the person it appears to, that the account is active, that it doesn't just appear active due to automatic sign-ins, browser extensions, mobile apps, malware, that someone else doesn't have access to the account (any form of significant other, roommate, family member, etc), that the person actually ever reads their messages (I have an account just so nobody else can use the identity; I sign in maybe twice a year; I can count the number of times I have read my inbox there on one hand), that they read *that* message, etc.

If it were simply enough to say "we know this account really belongs to this person and that they actively login and use the account", then we wouldn't need certified mail or people to serve a summons in person. It would be enough to say "we have a mail address for this person and we'll just send a regular first class mail notification to them". But that *isn't* enough. And neither is saying "well, shit, we sent a facebook message".

And facebook can be more reliable than physical mail? We're going to bank all of this on the reliability of a single third party entity? Didn't we just go through like six months of "gosh, we lost every single email for all these important IRS people of the last five years, because email's supes unreliable, guys!"?