So the other four countries will get as close to the disputed territory as possible, and then drill sideways to get under it and extract the oil.

Sometimes life gives you more than you can handle, and you just want to shut out the entire world. Like the loss of a child or partner. It's not an elegant way of dealing with the problem, but alcohol is cheap, legal and pretty effective in numbing your brain.

Yes. You're making a down payment of $199 on the phone and paying off the balance in $10 monthly installments for 24 months. Makes perfect sense to me. Same approach many people take to buying a car. I don't agree with it - I have a Nexus 4 and am on a prepaid plan - but if that's what people want to do, I see nothing legally or morally wrong with it.

Remember how cable TV was supposed to be ad (commercial) free, because the subscription fee was supposed to be the primary source of revenue? How long did that last?

Seriously? Are you going to log on daily to the web site hosting the recordings and scan every minute of footage for your image (or images of family members/loved ones)? Just because you weren't arrested doesn't mean there isn't an image out there of you that you would prefer not to be in the public domain. The ability to record everything/everyone/everywhere necessitates a new set of laws and controls to protect our privacy.

Half of all credit card holders carry a balance from month to month, and a lot of them make the minimum monthly payment. Those people won't move to CurrenC as it would be a step backward in their eyes. That will slow the adoption of it and eventually lead to its demise.

You are assuming that capitalism would survive and there would still be "rich" and "poor" people. At some point the economy will start to shrink because there are not enough people earning enough money to buy more than just essentials (e.g., cars, trips, consumer electronics). Once automation displaces enough workers, discretionary spending would plummet, taking with it any company that depends upon it. That would lead to more unemployment and even less discretionary spending, reducing corporate earnings and dividends/capital gains for the upper class. The economy craters, much like the Great Depression, throwing millions out on to the street, including members of the middle class whose taxes support the state. Where is the state going to find money to run these three letter agencies if no one is paying taxes? The rich? They would have abandoned the state long before that, forming their own feudal territories in an attempt to protect themselves from the roaming hoard of hungry and desperate peasants. I believe society will have to find some alternate approach to capitalism. I'm not sure what that is, but I do believe it is coming in our children's lifetime.

- Waterproof to 30m
- Seven day battery life
- Ability to do basic functions when away from a phone (date/time, calendar, GPS tracking, pulse monitor), with an auto sync function as soon as you are back in range
- $100 price point
 

The engineering challenge will be to come up with a battery small enough to fit in a watch, that can power all the functionality of a phone.

What if it's not intimate photos? What if you have a bad day and type out a rant about your employer or the government in a document on your PC, and it gets auto-sync'd to the cloud? Most of my family and friends who mentioned this issue had no idea that when they checked the "backup" option on their phone, that it was copying EVERYTHING to a cloud server. They're just not that technically-literate.

Look elsewhere. I too am Canadian and my father grew up in Ukraine and barely survived Stalin's reign of terror. The US is entering a period of isolationism after the debacle in Iraq, and they don't have the stomach to confront Russia. And any tussle between those two nations will result in the global economy shitting itself big time. Russia will get eastern Ukraine with its agriculture and access to Crimea and the Black Sea, and Europe will get a frightened and bankrupt remainder in Western Ukraine.

Yeah but there is a large number of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and many are sympathetic to Putin. I predict the country will be partitioned: Western Ukraine will align itself with Europe and be fast-tracked for NATO membership, and Eastern Ukraine will fall under Russian control.

I would think Putin would continue south rather than tack north. Moldova would be the next candidate. Then maybe Bulgaria and / or Romania.

I can't speak for Comcast, being Canadian, but Rogers (my ISP and cable provider) has been calling me a couple of times each year. They thank me for being a customer and then start in with a pitch on how much I can "save" if I increase my internet service level or add more services to my bundle. Bell Canada (my phone provider) does the same. My wife hates it so much she screens all calls through the answering machine.

In my last eye exam the optometrist noted my corneas are starting to show signs of cataracts. Given my family history (both parents have had surgery for cataracts), I'll probably need corrective surgery within 10 years. I'm hoping that when it comes time to do it I can get intraocular lenses (IOLs) to fix my vision. Since I can get through the day without glasses and only really need them for reading, I've never given laser surgery much thought.