Isn't nepotism a word with French roots? How fitting.

Latin--but close enough! nepos, -otis, m.: nephew

They fired me three days after reporting this flaw, calling me a security risk.

This is a lesson I learned early on--fortunately not at the cost of a job: don't make the people responsible for security look incompetent or they will label you a "hacker" (in the pejorative sense) and do everything in their power to harm your career. If security is not one of your job responsibilities, keep things like that to yourself.

That's where Big-O notation came from.

I don't use illegal drugs, but would have to have emptied my last can of beans before accepting a job that required a drug test that didn't involve a TS codeword security clearance or was truly a physical safety critical position (e.g. commercial pilot). This is on principle, not because I don't want my employer to know about a weekend crack habit.

+1

If you're carrying it with your regular cell phone, "they" already know who you are. Unless they think it's your siamese twin.

They'll require ID to activate and thus be worthless on eBay--or anywhere else, once something like this goes into effect.

No, it's a self-balancing stable system. The more tax breaks and subsidies you give yourself, the smaller your vote. Do remember that the poor will naturally outnumber the rich to a great degree, and that the reverse is impossible. Giving a bit more power to the productive (less stupid) people would lead to political debate being a bit more intellectual.

Our current system is unstable. Welfare slowly increases over time because the poor are able to vote for it. They destroy their own jobs (their global competitiveness) via all sorts of goodies that raise the cost of employing them.

China's desire to control its exchange rate isn't just advantageous for them, its good for us (those of us in westernized countries) too. If it wasn't for their exchange rate, we wouldn't be able to buy all the cheap products we have today. Flat screen monitors, computers, hell even little dinky plastic parts would be much more expensive. As much as we may not like our money flowing into the east, I highly doubt anyone here would be willing to give up the lifestyle that cheap Chinese products has provided us.

I find it odd that no one has mentioned MorphOS.