If it was easy, we wouldn't have so many viruses.

Even better would be if they could engineer mosquitoes whose *grandchildren* (or great grandchildren) would be sterile, further maximising the damage.

I don't understand this. Did you mean to say that the Fed is trying a new trick to force the banks to release their reserves and spur a little inflation?

I know that it's said that ignorance of a contract is no excuse for breaching it.

But I sometimes feel that there should not be a requirement that the issuer of the contract should make it so obvious and public that there could not possibly any chance that the breacher could have acted out of ignorance.

Say what you like about software EULAs, at least in many cases, you have to have seen the dialog box with the text before going ahead to install the software - much better than having to search for some microscopic print.

I do recognise the difficulty of ensuring that parties in a contract know what they're getting into - that's why lawyers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Whatever they do, I hope they make the disablement reversible, for those who think they've had their phone stolen, only to find that it was just misplaced - or if the phone is later recovered from the thief.

But what really is reading without comprehension? That's just like moving my eyeballs across a page and having my brain register black glyphs on a white background.

Too bad I don't have points to mod this up. Love the way you send up the hype.

The article isn't really about making biofuel from self-destructing trees. It's about introducing the mechanism through which the lignin (in the trees) destructs to other crops that grow much faster and leave a lot of waste, like corn.

Personally, I think that sourcing energy from biofuel will never really scale, anyway...

"Everyone should..."

Ah, but that's the problem.

"Should", while pointing to the ideal, does not reflect what works in the real world.

I don't think that Mr. Eich will change his opinions as a result of this, but I'm damn sure he'll be much more careful how he airs and acts upon them in the future.

I'll leave it to others to decide whether that's a good thing.

...Keep your political views well hidden if you plan to head up an organisation that is sensitive as to how it is perceived by a cross-section of society.

So what if there was sound? Who cares? Do people who like the Tesla like it because it is relatively quiet, or do they like it for other reasons (because it looks great, runs on electricity, smooth acceleration, etc.)?

I don't see why the original post thinks that we should all see the addition of engine noise as funny. Mildly perplexing, yes, but that's about it.

It's kind of getting old hearing about the latest spying activity of the NSA.

It would be more interesting to hear who they're *not* spying on these days.

I don't know that having too much time on one's hands leads to crime.

It's arguable that crime happens because:

- people are poor (I assume this won't be an issue in a TNG world);

- the adults who should be acting as good role models for children either don't have the time to do this right, or are just simply absent (again, not a problem in a world where there's more than enough time to do the things we want.

Of course, there will always be sociopaths who commit crime for whatever reason.

Where I live, self-checkouts are still going strong in grocery stores. In fact, I prefer to use them because wait times are much less for me.

I do wonder how they deal with the possibility of fraud, but I guess I live in an area where the level of fraud is not high enough to outweigh the advantages of cost/scale.

The reason the news on Ukraine is such a big deal is that it's largely been engineered by Russia.

But - what if the people in Crimea had agitated to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, without any provocation from Russia? This is not entirely far fetched, given the region's history and ethnic makeup.

Should the fact that Ukraine would not want this to happen be a reason for it not to happen?

Shouldn't the people who live in a locality be the main people who decide their destiny?