I think you're giving the average citizen far too much credit. They see entire corporate IT systems taken over with dozen keystrokes on TV a dozen times a month, if you asked you might be surprised to find that an awful lot of people would immediately believe that an airplane could be taken over in flight the same way. The reason they don't worry about it is because they don't think about it, it never occurs to them. They never worried about box cutters being a hazard to everyone on a plane until after 911, not because they weren't but because it never occurred to them. A month later most of them were OK with being prohibited from carrying nail clippers.

The bottle opener on my key chain helped get me married. Back in the days before every bottle was a twist off I became really popular at some of the fiestas that I went to in Peru. By the time that the Fiesta de la Candelaria came around I was in good enough practice that I could almost keep up with my future in-laws' beer consumption, so was able to hang around long enough to be introduced to the stunning redhead I had seen hanging around.

Took the P-38 off my key chain years ago when the thing somehow managed to gouge me while I was climbing a tree.. It was very old and worn and wouldn't stay closed any more.

I have a "Drink Coca Cola" bottle opener that I found in my great-grandfathers basement after he died in 1975. I have a tendency to lose pretty much everything that isn't attached to me, but I have never lost that key chain. Even when I've lost other key chains that I was carrying for work, that's the one that I never lost. I'm getting almost superstitious about it.

I also have car keys and house keys, and a key that will open every access control cabinet and NVR server rack for a very large customer of my former employer. They let me keep the latter as a memento (after grinding all the teeth off it).

I don't think personal computers are the target for an OS like this, embedded hardware like access control panels, refinery crackers, antenna controllers and the like would be. A lot of that stuff still runs on TRON, this would probably be a replacement for that kind of stuff.

So you're not a US resident? Didn't realize that, but that's probably part of the reason you don't understand how SS is structured. It's not supported by taxes, it's a trust fund. Everyone pays in a certain percentage of their income and then withdraws after certain conditions have been met. It's currently stable for the next couple of decades, and could be made permanently funded if the utterly discriminatory income cap (people making over $118500/year don't pay anything into the fund beyond that amount) were removed. It actually works very well, better than any phantasmagorical free market system ever could. I'll never need it, but it's a wonderful thing that it exists for those who do.

What does Norquist or his ideas on taxes have to do with PNAC?

Apparently context and history is irrelevant, everything happens in a vacuum. No wonder its hard for you to make sense of this stuff.

You really need to go look at the original PNAC documents before you start talking about people like Norquist and his disciples. Apparently you're not aware of what truly vile human beings they are.

BTW, go talk to your (depending on how old you are) grandparents or great-grandparents, ask them what it was like before Social Security. It exists because it fills a definite need, one that cannot ever be supplied by the mystical magical free market.

Norquist was one of the main financial advisers during W's first administration, this was his advice since at least the mid-'80s. The position paper was from the early '90s. Fortunately Clinton never listened to him, but Norquist was probably one of the main reasons why the whole Iraq fiasco was charged to the country's credit card.

I certainly never expected Obama to be the second coming of FDR, but I certainly never expected Bush Lite, either.

After twice asking Bank of America to stop sending the stupid "convenience checks" linked to our credit card, someone stole some out of the mail box and wrote a $996 check. We got it canceled, and found out that they chose that amount because over $1000 was a felony and the police won't bother investigating misdemeanor fraud. BoA cancelled our card and reissued new ones immediately, but my wife was in Peru. I tried to stop or delay the cancellation but their customer service person said that it was required, she didn't have a choice. Fortunately Rosa had a debit card and was able to withdraw cash until I could overnight the new one down to her when it arrived a week later, but she would have had problems if she were in a smaller town.

BoA finally stopped sending the checks after that.

Yes, they do, and no, they're not.

It has been theorized, but entirely discredited. Another planet breaking up would have left a lot more debris behind than exists in the asteroid belt. There's not even enough there to make Mercury or the Moon, much less a gas giant. Even if there were some unknown cosmic vacuum cleaner that sucked up the majority of mass the missing planet would have left its signature on the orbital dynamics of the rest of the planets, and there's nothing.

I'm just wondering how anyone noticed. It's Philly, most of the area looks like a train wreck . . .

I still find frelling **security** equipment without the ability to change the default password on it. Obviously we don't install it, but the stuff is sold as "professional grade" and costs big piles of money.

My kingdom for a mod point . . .

lack of cheap (coal fired) electricity is holding back Africa

Lack of cheap energy, yes, but that certainly wouldn't be coal in Africa because they don't have any really large easy-to-exploit deposits of it. They don't have a lot of sites appropriate for hydro power, but they get plenty of sun. They could import coal to burn give electricity today, or import solar panels to give electricity for the next two decades. Best would be to build their own solar panel fabs, but the investment is too risky for most companies.