I thought Java was a software platform that ran above the OS to give OS-independent code execution. I haven't heard of it taking on OS responsibilities on its own. Can it double as an OS, talking directly to the hardware?

It's not uncommon, around the house, for me to answer her cell phone if the kids have her occupied (or vice versa). And I'll often use her laptop for just a moment to check a map, a calendar, or a webcomic, as my home computer is a gaming rig in the basement.

And, of course, there is the ever present "providing-tech-support-to-family" angle, which covers both laptop and phone.

Surprisingly many, if you stop to think about it. And I'm not even going to get into considering the web servers, routers, and the whole internet backbone that is handling these very page requests as an "interaction". I mean, five minutes of thought gave me the following list:

Windows XP (directly) at work

UNIX (remotely) at work

Windows 7 at home

Android on my phone

OSX on my wife's laptop

BREW or whatever it is now on my wife's phone

And who-knows-what on the ATM's, cash registers, and other computers-we-barely-see-anymore which I run into every day.

So, surprisingly many. And I'm sure I've missed a few. I wonder what the CISCO VOIP office phone next to me is running...

I guess it's the "major tech company" part that makes this shocking, right?

Where I went to grad school, it wasn't uncommon to have at least a few students living (and I mean with their sleeping bags, pizza boxes, toiletries, etc.) in a lab or storage room for long periods of time -- months or more -- in lieu of paying the high rent near campus. There were always the whispered stories of x student being caught trying to wash himself in the chemical safety shower or y post-doc who finally ran afoul of faculty after using his office as his kitchen.

A clear and concise refutation of this very argument! http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/

Last seen this morning on Slashdot.

It was popularized by a Dilbert strip from the early days of the comic, though there are plenty of claims that it goes back even further.

Basically, randomly fill a bunch of Bingo boards with phrases regarding the synergization of your core compentencies and the like, decide on a pot for the winner, take your boards to the dreaded meeting, and Bingo away.

No, not quite. Power dissipated (in this case the "heat") is V^2/R. Higher resistance means less power. Stove elements work by putting mains voltage across a fairly low resistance, causing plenty of current, power, and heat. In actuality, 110 Vrms is not enough to produce much in the way of a burn.

Now, you are correct about the bloodstream being a good conductor. It is quite rare that a live wire will directly contact the bloodstream, though -- but it does not need to. The resistance of human skin is non-linear, and is actually lower at higher voltages. Additionally, there is plenty of capacitance involved in the body's circuit*, meaning that the full impedance at 60 Hz is lower than just the DC resistance. If there is a route through the heart, and the "let-go threshold" has been exceeded, then even 110 V can be deadly -- no burns necessary.

*The human body model capacitance is only 150 pF, but this represents the body's capacitance to the outside world. The actual capacitance through a narrow layer of skin is many orders of magnitude higher, though I can't get a good source for the actual value.

Yeah... the group that applauds this man and the group that wanted punishment for the mother are not the same. In fact, they are generally quite opposed to each other.

Differing points of view? Well, yes, actually.

Yes, though I liked him better before Asimov made him into an immortal, omniscient deity-robot.

Well, two issues, here. First, you seem to be assuming "hacker" roughly equates to "guy who messes with computer-stuff for the heck of it". There most certainly are hackers/crackers (depending on your preferred use of the term) who harm people and systems, sometimes for money, sometimes for fame, sometimes for fun.

Aside from that, a hacked medical device makes for a really easy way to kill someone from a moderate distance and leave very little trace of whodunit. And I'm not even going to begin to consider all the reasons a person may have for wanting to kill, or even simply extort via credible death threats.

It's not limited to hospitals, either. I have Type I Diabetes (the autoimmune strikes-randomly and needs-insulin-to-survive type) and so I always wear an insulin pump jacked into my abdomen. In the pump, there is an insulin cartridge which contains a large reservoir of insulin -- injecting 1/20th of the reservoir could kill me if I'm not treated quite quickly. Injecting the whole thing is a death sentence if I'm not already in a hospital bed and hooked up to an IV. The kicker is that the device has RF access, and is likely hackable. I have turned off the RF from day one (partially due to the battery drain, partially due to my worries of a possible hack or mis-delivery) and sacrificed some of the pump's features, but most pump users will not do this.

It's a glaring vulnerability in a life-or-death system.