Option 6: Slag the tablet. Data destruction assured

Gas lines need nonconductive sections to protect from becoming long ground loops.

It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

But there's opportunity cost to committing for another 2 years.

And are you seriously telling me if she gets an iphone 64 GB 5S it's the same price as if she gets the $20 special?

Not true. When I go to the US (or travel) I buy a prepaid sim card for local calls.

Verizon is able to sell you a sim card for your iphone if you have a 5 or later. If you have a 4S, you are right, but it's been some years since that was state of the art.

It's cheaper for cell phone manufacturers to make 1 chip for all the bands, then have to retool for each different cell provider

Phones like the iPhone have the ability to use most american, european, asian, and FAIK african cell phone bands, for years now. Most high end android phones have similar abilities (and some allow multiple sims).

My iphone has never been unable to communicate on a region's network, and I travel a lot, My (unlocked) iphone has worked on all four continents mentioned. Quite a few places in America, most countries in europe west of Czech (and who'd want to go east of there), South East Asia, and Morocco (OK, not all of Africa).

Of course, maybe el cheapo brand cell phones might differ, but if you are paying $20 for a cell, who cares if you can unlock it and use it again?

True story:

My sisters's iphone screen broke. I asked her what she was doing with it, she said "Nothing, Apple wanted $100 to fix the screen but I just signed on for another contract with Verizon and got a free iphone."

This is how a lot of people think, and they're too naïve (or dumb) to realize the truth (no comment on sis). Her iphone is worth several hundred dollars, and if the phone is fixed for $100 she still comes out ahead. Verizon, meanwhile, will charge her more per month and actually, she's losing money on the deal.

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

I second that. I'm at 300+ books (although I have a tendency to buy professional reference materials that are $50+)

Kindle is awesome. Easy access to English language books (I live abroad, try finding the latest anything in Vietnam), it's searchable (great for reference books), and I own two kindles so I can keep an entire kindle of reference books in my desk without a huge footprint.

Not as bad as one million trillion microbecquerels.

Oh, wait....

That's brilliant. Sir, I tip my hat to you.

This story was not accepted for publication by Slashdot, and I am submitting it to another venue for consideration. - Bruce

The nice thing about ebola is it's not airborne, you need to actually touch someone's fluids to get ebola. So, it's completely avoidable, as opposed to airborne pathogens.

I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.