electricity is not a hard thing to make. my rambling on which must have been tldr for you said how easy electricity is to come by if you're just powering one guys gear. or mobile devices.

i know a guy who can test and replace most parts on a motherboard. post appocalypse thats real handy, i never learned it, because blown caps can take a number of other hard to find parts... still with 3d printers that can 3d print themselves means the ability to print computer parts. not top of the line, but for data preservation and access technology it's pretty feasible when you consider sites like http://www.cd3wd.com/ are doing now, to advance civilization in the third world nations it means that people will continue to make useful technology and need skilled tech people. an appocalypse would make it hard but not impossible. patents on software and hardware has done more to stunt technology than anything else. so post appocalypse there will be people stringing up 80 watt wireless tranciever from a tree or flag pole like they do now in africa, and powering an 80 watt and a few hundred 5 watt devices is easily solar powerable not to mention other energy sources like solid waste and biomass gasification... corn can be turned into plastic with a catylyst... so its really hard to say what it's gonna look like. the assuption is that tech will die that is not necisarily correct.

apple"and has shown no willingness to compete head-on with Android for the entire smartphone space."

have you read this http://apple.slashdot.org/story/14/03/12/0011257/apple-demands-40-per-samsung-phone-for-5-software-patents
or maybe this http://apple.slashdot.org/story/13/11/21/2137256/samsung-ordered-to-pay-apple-290m-in-patent-case
or maybe even this http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/27/1546238/google-and-samsung-sign-global-patent-deal
freebsd had code years back that was patented and 'leased' for free to freebsd when the owner sold the rights freebsd was in a panic to rewrite a huge portion of it's code base... there are linux distros that do things 'wrong' (ie binary blobs and code that is in effect a rip off of copyrighted and patented code) totally 'free' systems do a lot of wierd interface choices and code writes that are sub optimal, just to avoid patents. but when a company is making a lot of money, they get sued for it even if small linux distros get away with not paying up.

Didn't the US Navy retire heavy artillery? Could that be why the rounds are so expensive?

"I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us." Kinky Friedman

i thought someone else had said it prior but a quick googling and this was the first atribute i could find

slashdot is evolving in a brutal and ugly way.
mod points go to fresh blood and editors.
there is no longer m2 to categorize mods as abusive.
old people aren't given respect since slashdot decided to 'sell' low uids in a desperate measure to make money.
people seem to be confused as to why things aren't written in a nutral point of view as if the whole web has to be like wikipedia, and links to prove your points are becomming less valuable due to the demise of m2.
slashdot is dying. slashdot is trying to be more 'mainstream' and less techy, taco has his trove website as a hobby in his free time as a journalist now. trove is yet another social media website from what i saw of it. techy people use other sites now. i find facebook and g+ use up most of my time i used to spend in the comments section.

for a long time i was down to one laptop. it did dual boot win7/ubuntuLTS i once went 2 months without booting to windows. somehow i talked myself into buying more modern computers. it was a mess, linux didn't boot right, so they all wound up as windows machines, with one exception, the one i'm typing on right now. i needed an os that could verify if usb thumbdrives were clean of viruses and linux was my first choice. anyways i understand the hate of windows. i was spending hours formatting and reinstalling in the vain hope it would make windows better. my experience with linux is less than stellar. so far only debian, ubuntu, and linux mint have been any use, i found a rare bug in pclinuxos full montey using firefox where if you 'drag' a tab to a new window then drag it back to firefox it at least for me was a hard lockup of the system, and that broke pclinuxos and now i'm using wheezy, which considering i'm using a $300 laptop runs smoothly.

"Functionally, you need two things to infect a machine. A weakness you can exploit on target machine and a vector through which infection goes in"
compromising a system doesn't always leave a trace. for example heartbleed doesn't leave a single logfile of it's infection. it can infect many many computers https://github.com/musalbas/heartbleed-masstest/blob/master/top1000.txt 43 of the top 1000 websites is vulnerable to heartbleed not to mention how many consumer devices aren't safe.
because there are humans involved in coding for computers mistakes are made. this is a universal weakness. a vector i am assuming you mean a 'carrier' for the virus and well most people qualify as a vector for virus transmission.
NAT is not a protection against the above. and software can't stop a determined cracker once they get any admin power they use scripts and macros they target BIOS maybe. and virus protection or firewalls don't always load prior to everything else, leaving a possibility for infection based on when the service is started.
xbox one was cracked by a 5 year old, albeit one who was cracking cellphones at age 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/04/five_year_olds_xbox_live_password_hack/
and yes locking everyone up would make it hard to spread computer viruses. it is not a good idea though, you're claiming you can beat human nature... which is the vector of any real hacking. good luck with that.

The real irony is that you've confused Iran and Israel.

Then why aren't you buying your own modem for less than $50 and saving yourself the money every month? I mean, I get it, I think Comcast is for the birds too but honestly bitching about something you can buy yourself and they'll absolutely allow you to take on all the risk for is not something to choose to complain about.

a typical gas station and 'pump' between 2-20 cars. 1000 cars is thus 500 to 50 stations. power demand for electric cars 'fast charging' is going to be difficult, replaceable battery packs and smart grid regulated slow and fast charging fixes the problem. but we aren't going to sell a half billion electric cars.

"Back to the discussion..."

the summary is -1 flamebait. it's only link is to another slashdot article, and thus all the 'wtf didn't the editors read the link' stuff.

And this kind of stupidity is proof that freedom is bullshit.

scott walker has busted numerous work unions, taken the right to vote away from women and the poor. through unreasonable requirements. before a state id or drivers license was fine, not so anymore. when a person changes their name they need the official marriage or divorce paperwork the certified change documents and that is for every marriage and every divorce no matter when it was. and everyone needs their birth certificate to vote. knowledge of this isn't exactly out there to everyone, and getting replacements isn't cheap or easy, so with the feds lowering food share by $15 per person per household that may mean the difference between eating a meal or voting. this is not right. i only know because my aunt had to have this just to renew her drivers license and had to go a second time with all her divorce and marriage paperwork.

firefox doesn't have instability problems. i have been using it almost since day 1. i have had problems with streaming under linux. i don't know if it is linux, my wifi router, or what, but firefox is rock solid, and other browsers (opera, chromium) exhibit the same linux problem. firefox is perfectly stable on windows, even for streaming. then again i use noscript, WoT, and ghostery. and while chrome has plugins like those i am familiar and comfortable with the firefox versions.