I'll bet you'd still get government alerts on your voice-only smartphone. Heck, even when I didn't have a text plan, I still got free AMBER alerts at 2:00AM when I was asleep.

That's the nice thing about T-Mobile. They give away all this bandwidth to anybody.

Or...

The reason you get free streaming from select streaming music services is that they are paying T-Mobile.

Wonder which one it is?

Speaking of fantasy scenarios...

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you're replacing one fantasy scenario with another. And I could easily believe that the lions share of houses would have solar before this cheap alternative battery technology is available.

I dunno. If someone had been micromanaging it, maybe they would have remembered to reinforce the floor.

Reminds me of an old joke.

"The IRS is introducing a new form for taxes next year. It's very easy--just four simple steps:

Step 1: How much money did you make last year?
Step 2: What were your expenses?
Step 3: How much did you have left over?
Step 4: Send it in."

Yet.

Hm. I thought it was a corn tortilla rolled around a filling and covered with a chili pepper sauce.

The more you know...

Seriously? What's more important than getting a "Score: 5, Funny"? It means you've made at least five people smile. Isn't giving others that joy more important than whatever code slogging you're doing instead?

Really. You need to work on your priorities.

...and if you only have part of the key, why should you devote resources to protecting it? Let the other guy worry about that.

Kind of like immunization...

...and, frankly, I don't have a problem with that.

If you want to incur the hassles of off-shore workers in different time-zones and all, that's fine. You will probably find an appropriate balance between on-shore and off-shore environments. I know some companies who have QA teams off-shore, for example, so that they can basically get 24-hour coverage. The developers make the bugs during "the day", QA finds the bugs during "the night", developers come in the next morning and find a load of bugs waiting for them to fix.

It really depends on what you're doing. It can be tough to afford to pay someone to live in southern California or The Bay Area or New York City. If you can find someone who can live and do the work in Harlington, Texas, or Argentina or Cambodia or Portugal, more power to you.

I have a problem with you bringing someone over here to do the work at the cheaper prices.

I'd imagine there might be an issue if you filed a claim and they looked at the data and said, "Hey, you weren't even in the car!"

"Of course I was! Look at this broken arm!"

"Not according to our data."

"Well, I turned off the phone..."

"Ah! That's against the policy--the phone must be on if you're in the car. We don't have to pay a cent! Whoo hoo!"

Which would have turned into calls about how the government is wasting money building infrastructure that will never be used.

All things are obvious with 20/20 hindsight.

This is actually interesting.

When things get tough, you want a human being with experience. The problem is, as the computers take over, having a person in the cockpit doesn't really mean anything. Sure, I can fly an airplane. But you wouldn't want me behind the stick if we're dodging thunderstorms. You'd want someone with experience flying in that area in those conditions.

That's the interesting angle. Which would you rather have on the stick? A computer or an inexperienced human?

That struck me, too. Forget the terrorists and evil-doers. One good thunderstorm and suddenly your plane has no pilot.

I gotta admit, that caught my eye, too.

Not necessarily. Industries and governments are famous for two-faced policies.

If the insurance company says that they were manmade, the government can say, "No, they weren't, but this is a civil matter and we can't interfere." And nothing will happen. Worst case, it will be tied up in courts for the next 20 years. By then, those people currently in charge will have made a ton of money and be retired somewhere outside the US.

It's kind of like the music industry claiming that a 30-second ringtone is enough the song that consumers must pay royalties while, at the same time, claiming that they weren't so they didn't have to pay the artists royalties.