And yet, everybody screams about America that emits only 15%, ignores Europe that emits about 16% (and climbing), and China at over 1/3 of all CO2.

And yet, that is a joke. China emits more than 1/3 of the CO2 emissions in the world today. America is below 15%. And Europe-OECD is actually ABOVE America. The problem is, that IPCC normalizes in bizarre fashions. The idea that CO2 emissions are compared in a national way is a joke. Germany's emission are climbing fast and yet, total emissions are below America. Many nations in Europe are fairly low, and yet, in terms of CO2 / $GDP, they are monster high.

One of the real problems with China is that few fully realize how bad of shape they are in. When OCO2 comes out and the numbers are measured for CO2 flows in and out of CHina, the world is in for a shock.

The uproar was that with computers long term storage the IRS could do things like make you pay taxes on something your parents did 60 years ago, or use the power of tagging to harass specific organizations based on political leanings. What absurd notions those people of ancient times had!

Chuckle.

What could be worse than food!?

Taco Bell

So, the more appropriate method is to ask (nicely, or send some guys with guns) the cell service providers to shut down all towers in the required area.

They are not going to do that because a cell tower covers a lot more area than any protest.

Consider the protest in Nevada recently over the Bundy Ranch cattle being taken by armed federal agents. If you shut down cell access for that group, you are shutting down cell access for a potentially very large area of I-15. That's just not going to happen.

The reason why the kill switch would be used is that it cuts off video/image feeds from newer devices, the older phones that still might work would not be as much of a concern. As long as the government can prevent video and images escaping real time they have a lot more latitude in dealing with civilians.

It's not the IMEI blacklists that I'm worried about. See, if we already have the technology to disconnect devices from the networks, and we have encryption available on the devices, so we really don't need this new "remote kill switch" anti-feature. Folks worried about losing data can use encryption if they want to protect their data, and the remote kill switch doesn't prevent theft because Faraday Cages exist, and black-market thieves will figure out a way to zilch the chip's radio or NoOP the part of baseband/firmware blob that activates the kill switch, etc.

What I'm worried about is getting a "device bricking" standard for all devices so that all they have to do is flip from blacklist to whitelist, and presto they'll only function if they ping corporate/government towers every so often and authenticate with an approved citizen's ID code. Can you say Forced Obsolescence? Intel demonstrated their capability for PCs, and cars now have black boxes standard. The Pentagon has plans to push things like this through for anti-activism purposes.

Here's how you know it's a government job: This non-feature isn't being implemented by customer demand. This isn't something that these folks started offering then got popular and now they're standardizing on, nope. It's something they're making standard whether you want it or not. That's a huge red flag. Isn't this a fucking capitalist country? No, it really isn't. This is anti-consumer collusion of the highest degree. The US Is a plutocracy. Just like Noam Chomsky has been saying for decades. If the USA was a capitalist country then we would allow the market to decide if end users actually want this non-feature whereby the government or your carrier can not just cut off the cell-tower, but brick the devices, cars, computers, etc. to prevent them from being used anywhere. Late on a payment? Oh, they don't just cut off your service, you won't have a device or car to drive to work. Say something "anti-American"? Well, your cell will die on the road and so will your car, then you'll just be black-hooded out of service too. Do consumers really want this? Of course the answer is no. Thus this will be legislated into place "for your own good". Just like censorship and wholesale warrant-less wiretap spying is, and for the same reason as always.

The Stasi would have creamed their pants for some shit like this on machines and typewriters. What soldier would sign up to fight for a country that's doing this shit? If not for uniforms, you wouldn't know which side to fight against: Given only a description of the country's behaviors you'd find us indistinguishable from our supposed worst enemies. If you don't think that's a valid comparison because of some moral high-ground, then you don't know about the Native American genocide or the US eugenics programs. What a sad time to be an American.

In San Francisco you "have to see the poor" daily as well. Hows that working out for them?

The trouble with the homeless is that they are not just poor, there are usually multiple problems at work including mental issues... so seeing them and giving them money is usually not helping much.

If you really want to help the poor I suggest going to Modest Needs, that is the best place I've found to help the truly poor directly before they fall off the bottom rung of the ladder.

So please take your "standard" USB on one

I do every day and charge iOS devices with it all the time. The cable hardly matters, and in fact it's easier to find an Apple cable in a store if you've forgotten one than the "wrong" kind of Micro-USB cable (since there are a few different types).

You are on the wrong side of standards on this one.

The fact that you can plug anything into USB is enough.

That is a big reason, but it also mattered that the device itself was not OSX shrunk to a touch-screen tablet (some people thought that's what it would be instead of using IOS). That was the mistake Microsoft made.

But it's also related, Apple had the luxury of not just plopping desktop OSX on a tablet because they knew iOS developers could produce a good range of software out of the gate. Microsoft apparently never trusted in the development community enough to take that leap of faith.

There were many tablets released before the iPad that did not sell that well.

Yes, Microsoft made them, they ran Windows, and since applications were not designed for touch they sucked compared to laptops.

What Apple did was not marketing, but make a tablet that was usage because everything from OS to software was made for a tablet, not a PC.

It also relied heavily on many IPhone developers being able to quickly write software for the tablet before it was even launched - we could only test apps on the simulator before they went into the iPad App Store on day one! Kind of insane if you think about it, but it generally worked because the devices were similar in OS. If there had not been a good base of software from day one, sales would probably not have been as good... oddly parallel to a console launch come to think of it.

The new universal apps and WP8.1 might change that. I don't even have an WinRT or WinPhone device but I write windows code for a living. The dev tools are probably the best in the industry and to be honest if you want to make a lot of money the WinPhone is a good target since as you point out it is not filled with apps yet but the phones are sell okay. Not at the IOS or Android level but well enough to make good money.

Took the mouse about as long to take off.
As I said I am a big fan of Android and have an Android phone, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. I also have a macbook and run Windows and Linux on my desktop.
Microsoft has great development tools and lots of developers. It would be foolish to not recognise those strengths.
I want Microsoft to do well in the tablet market and I want Apple to do well and I want Android to do well. I like the idea of choice.

Yes they are tough and yes Summer in Florida is not great unless you are the beach but it is no where near as bad you think. Lots of people seem to like being hot. North Carolina is also not as bad you you claim. The mountain areas are very nice. Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are all nice places to live depending where you are. Seattle? I actually really like that area but being from South Florida I worry that the would sink into depression if I lived there for any length of time. I do like sunlight. I went to Victoria for my honeymoon and would rather live there than Seattle :)

As opposed to a city where people use the public street as a toilet or attacks people if they work at a tech company?
Florida has a lot of smart people that work at the KSC, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RIM and several bio tech firms are moving form California to Florida. Also are roaches do not fly. Please stay in California because it will soon be like Detroit and the Rust belt when it becomes the crack pot belt. Eventually companies and workers will get tired of the abuse and move. Even Oregon and Washington are good options for them to move.