Just to be clear, the concept of nationalities isn't going anywhere any time soon, as long as there's a need for there to be law and order in society. What *may* change is a person's affinity to a particular nationality.

Nationality is really just a legal construct, anyway - it allows a body of people (known as a 'government') to determine what rights and responsibilities you have by virtue of being in a particular physical location.

I think that most people have a stronger affinity to a culture - especially the culture they grew up with - than they do to a nationality, since culture evokes a more emotional response. Of course, for many people, the two are the same - but if you're a naturalized immigrant, they are two very different things.

Nationality will become even less important to people if more countries start trying to attract people to live in them (for economic or social reasons), but I don't see happening for a long while yet.

If their security is so bad, you should be able to hack into their network.

Once you've done so, post the story of the hacking on the internet.

Nothing like public embarassment to make them clean up their security practices.

What if I don't know your email address, or I don't have access to a facility from which to email you?

What might be more convenient is to have a transcription of my voicemail sent to you as text, though (assuming your number is a mobile number).

What's more likely is the evolution of the transcription systems mentioned elsewhere in this thread, where the voicemail that the caller leaves is transcribed to text and sent as an email to the callee.

That's certainly more convenient that having to drop the call and send a separate email.

To be clear, as long as:
- callers call callees;
- callees are not available to pick up the phone;
- callers want callees to know there and then why they called;
voicemail is not going anywhere soon (although the means through which voicemail may be consumed might change).

"Now, to bring this home with a car analogy (and a moderately controversial one, although it shouldn't be), quoting the voltage of an electrical power source is not unlike quoting the torque of a car engine."

This assumes that we all know what the torque of a car engine means.

I'd use a water pressure analogy myself.

Have you considered how much it will cost your company to implement and manage such a solution?

You'll need to be able to convince management that the likelihood and impact of your company's IT infrastructure is high enough to justify such an expense.

Political Action Committee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
You don't have to care; I wouldn't, if I lived outside the US.

I'm being very specific here - I'm referring to internet controlled home lighting. If all I care about is switching on/off lights, it is overkill.

I can't say I'm too hot ('scuse the pun) on remote controlled heating either; I'd need to see significant savings before I was tempted to invest in that.

Of course, if this is all about having fun while engaging in a home project, that's another story altogether.

I get that large industrial/office complexes might want to automate/regulate lighting, but why would you want to do this for your home?

Looks like overkill to me.

I wonder if the directorate gave the drivers enough of a heads up before the crackdown; if not, that would seem a rather harsh move.

Looks like Google wants to get children used to the idea of using Google Docs when they're young so that they keep on using it as they get older.

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.