" disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps"

Every single water filtration plant has very large diesel generators that can run the place for months without electrical power. And no, a solar flare can not burn out giant motors and generators, all that can be ran easily without the SCADA system. In fact we used to run drills operating the place by hand, as most of the guys that did it from 1940 until 1990 did it mostly by hand.

Simple, it's the same people who get into a hissy fit whenever someone posts something that's contrary to their view of the world. The group think on /. is thick, and the site is screaming in decline as noticed by the lack of comments on topics and poor commenting.

You want people to adopt electric cars and hybrids in greater numbers sooner? You want to wean the general populace off of fossil fuels? This is how you do it! Of all the complete wastes of money the U.S. government commits, this comparatively speaking would be a drop in the bucket and of great long-term benefit to the entire country. While we're at it how about they sink some money into electric vehicle support infrastructure like rapid charging stations, too?

Ads and marketing in general have evolved from simple, respectful "hey, try this! It's good" into manipulative nonsense. Few people can see through it and the result has been devastating to them. It has shaped and certainly harmed the culture of the US and even results in violence in some extreme cases where people want things so badly they hurt and kill each other to get it. Though most will disagree exactly when things have gone "too far" few will disagree that they have.

They'll never pass up an opportunity to squeeze more money to fund pet projects back home. Hell, they're already talking about tapping the untouched potential of my 401(k).

The point of password reuse is to use an algorithm that you can remember but not someone can guess.

This is not my password but it's an example of how I create one:
If I visit a site and it's name is GoogleSucks.com, I will use my "easy" word + the first syllable of the site + a padding word that I use on all sites, Depending on how asinine the password requirements are, the beginning or end of the password will be padded with numbers and symbols, but always the same ones.
So Googlesucks.com might be turkeyGootrucking8
and another site like a bank site that I want higher entrophy on will use a different algorithm, so BOA might end up a hard non-englisht word + the passing word, then the company's initials + needed password entrophy, so BOA would end up with namastetruckingBOA8

So when I use sites that want to remember my shipping address or credit card (I never save my credit card number, I don't care how "safe" your site is) I use the harder credentials. I just want to post a comment on the many HuffPo type of sites, easy password all the time. So while each password for each site is unique, effectively the easy password is reused but padded with something unique to the site so that even if the password was stolen it's unusable for any other site.

Homemaker is a career, and it does take certain skillsets that are developed over a lifetime. It's an important career chosen by many women throughout history. Consider what happens if the next generation is not nurtured and educated.

And it is a future proof job - can't outsource child making and rearing, and she has capabilities unique to her sex. (eg: half the potential competition of other career paths) Kids are also an effective retirement plan when raised well.

Even if you don't think it's the best option, it's a valid option, and a noble one.

You're either retarded, or you don't do anything useful with your computer.

Anyone who wants to do anything graphics-intensive would laugh at someone trying to push a laptop on them.

I hate idiots who think laptops are for gaming. They go buy the crappy $200 Walmart bargain, then wonder why it won't play BF4.

Are we assuming all transactions humans do are with merchants?

Naive as hell !

Crappy list of examples, I'm sure there are hundreds of examples:
1) What about if I want to buy your [insert bike or computer or whatever]?
2) Baby sitter?
3) Kid's allowance?
4) Pay some kid kid to mow yard.
5) Underground transactions (illegal stuff)

  It already happens in Africa, with cellphone to cellphone transactions. You take some money from the bank which goes to your cellphone account. You spend your cellphone account and get more money. Taxi drivers receive cellphone cash, and visit the bank to convert some of it to cash, but use the cellphone money to buy gas, food, etc.

Why cellphone. Printing money that wears out or is germ laden does not pay. And the cellphone technique limited to small transactions works.

The importance of cash will continue to decline with transactions with merchants, but it will never remotely approach "cashless".

Good luck everybody

This is not at all about the French/US competition, the big French sites like fnac.com are subjected to the same rules of course.

You can think one thing or another about the rules, but they are about the big sites killing off the small local shops.

I worked on the beginning of Regan's Star Wars project. We viewed the problem as one in which you try to stop a bullet with a bullet. Add long range and intelligence to the bullet and the problem gets harder.The problem is hard and physics places many constraints on the solution. At one point management thought that space based defense was what we wanted until we showed that the time/distances were too great to be effective. Now we just have a scaled back terminal defense with very limited capabilities.

After all these years the only value that I think that missile defense has is PR. Effective? Not really. Forget Star Wars the movie. It's not going to happen.

Uh, yeah. Most judges rubber-stamp search warrants.

Also, does concealing a memory device now automatically imply child porn?

The cops get bolder every year, and people just go along.

Cop: "I asked him for his ID, and he went fishing in a pocket. IT COULD HAVE BEEN A GUN OR KNIFE, SO I SHOT HIM".

The other side of that coin is:

Is the new opportunity worth the hassle of starting over in some locale where the COL is 3 times higher, your rights are much more restricted, no big game hunting because of the population density precludes the use of even a bow and broad heads, despite the fact that you'll wreck a car a year running into said big game, and its 4 hours to someplace where drowning a worm might get you fish for dinner.

That occurred to me when a head hunter called me, offering 10% more to be the Chief Engineer at a tv station in the top 25 market. But it would have come with all of the above limitations. Even at 200%, which said tv station could well afford, it wasn't worth it to me.

Basically I had found my place back in 1984. I can walk to hunt deer or fish, COL is 1/2rd that of the big city, the house that came with the girl I married in 1989 has been paid off for 15 years, and stayed here till I retired 12 years ago. Technically, my reputation for being able to walk on water when the boat has already sank has been well established, and I still get yells for help occasionally. As a technician who can actually fix things, I am a C.E.T. & have what used to be a 1st phone license before the commission threw us under the bus, we are a dying breed, literally, and I find that I have, at nearly 80 yo, inherited some of the local radio broadcasters, because the engineer they were calling when the cash cow laid down and went dry, had died.

But the surprising detail most find hard to believe is that I am not a "papered" engineer, I have an 8th grade education, but was good enough with electronics that I quit school in the middle of my freshman year in high school, mostly due to health/allergy problems, and went to work fixing what was then these new-fangled things called televisions. Circa 1948-49. And yet the medical help locally available is pretty good. In early June, about a month ago, I woke up, just barely conscious and couldn't breath, on the bedroom floor while trying to tie my shoes to take the better half out for dinner, a pulmonary embolism that damned near punched my ticket. The better half, sitting in the car waiting, finally came back in to see what the holdup was & called 911. They got me to the local shop, started the clot-buster, and shipped me off to a larger facility. I am not 100% yet, but getting there, and TBT I feel better now than I have in years.

The guy from ultrasound looked at my heart with its blown up 2x right half as it was trying to pump into the blockage, for about an hour. I presume looking for places that ought to be bypassed or stented, couldn't find any and said once its shrunk back to normal, you ought to be good for another decade. 2-3 months to shrink again. Sort of feels like getting a warranty renewal but there is no such thing in life.

So I'll be here to pester you folks for a while yet, offering my comments on having observed life for nearly 80 years now. Some comments will come from my experience as a working joat, I am a decent mechanic and am now playing with smaller CNC machinery. I've also made some furniture & remodeled a few guns over the last 50 years.

I rather enjoy being close to the biggest frog in the pond, even if the pond is just Pedersons Puddle. It has its advantages.

Cheers, Gene