That is not entirely true.
The train station ticket machines gives them back in change, and merchants happily accept them. But it is true that you normally won't get them in change from merchants.

Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals

Because when they withdraw them and make slightly less impossible and expensive proposals they seem reasonable to the politicians?

Interesting. What is your opinion on embedded SQL? (as i Pro*C/C++ or equivalent)?

I never completely understood most of my colleagues' preference for JDBC-like access to a database, when embedded SQL catches most errors much earlier (t compile-time). Sure, it is kind of ugly, but JDBC-like access with its many getString()/getNumber()/... isn't pretty either.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-vyncke-advanced-ipv6-security-01 has some interesting ideas. At least it is a starting point - we don't want to end up with the same situation as for IPv4 where everything has to be piggybacked on inside-initiated HTTP connections.

Italian does not differentiate between mitts and mittens - I guess there has never been the need.

CCN = Cyclomatic complexity number

It is basically the number of of different paths in a code block. It indicates how many tests you have to perform to reach 100% coverage. But more importantly it is also a reasonable indication of how complex the code is to comprehend. A cyclomatic complexity of 20 is quite high, unless the 20 different paths are 20 different cases in a switch statement.

Look for "cyclomatic complexity" on wikipedia - it covers the subject quite nicely.

Argh... stupid moderate button. Posting just to cancel the down moderation.

Your ISP is likely not counting bytes that transfer through a connection to your modem

Actually, they most likely are.
For dialup, PPPoA or PPPoE they get all the nice byte counters using RADIUS accounting. All BRAS boxes supports that. (RFC 2866)
Some ISPs use Netflow protocol (or the newer IPFIX) on some central routers. The downside is that they have to correlate the usage information with the IP-address assignment which can be tricky near the session start and session end.
Some ISPs collect the byte counters from the DPI boxes with fine granularity. (Allot, Sandvine, Ipoque, ...). Some of the DPI boxes can automatically correlate the IP-address with the subscriber information, producing ready-to-charge CDRs.
For DOCSIS environments I would expect them to collect the byte counters using the SAMIS interface (Note: I don't have detailed experience with DOCSIS).
In 3GPP IMS environments they can get the byte counters from either the Rf (offline) or the Ro (online) reference point All specified in 3GPP TS32.299. Some operators are also doing it via the Gx reference point in newer releases but that is quite ugly.

The byte counters they collect may include L1/L2/L3 overhead. Eg. RADIUS usually include the L2 overhead from PPP, Netflow usually includes the ethernet overhead, DPI boxes typically reports byte counters that make sense for the inspection granularity, ditto for 3GPP Ro.

How do I know this? I work in the business.

Yes, he should select a phone with a poor antenna, and eat more cookies and sweets.

Have you actually tried blocking the signal with a Faraday cage?

At work, coworkers sometimes forget their mobile phone on their desks when going to lunch. If the phone rings then we do something about it, such as locking it into a heavy-duty transportation box, hiding it under their desk, etc.
Last time we put a coworker's iphone into a cookie tin (ok, the tin was not strictly a cookie tin but a flat tin can used for yummy Tunesian pastries, but I digress). The iphone lost signal. After the coworker came back and we had discussed Faraday cages we put the iphone into a different tin can (one used for Malaysian sweets) but it kept the signal. Puzzled, we tried with a different brand of mobile phone (HTC I believe) - it kept the signal inside both tin cans.

Conclusions:
    - The iPhone antenna is worse than that particular HTC
    - Blocking radio signals is hard.

The next experiment we are going to do will involve grounding the tin can. (preferably in a new tin box so we have a change to eat pastries again).