Here ya go It's been on the books since 1974. The Federal government is prohibited from collecting personally identifiable on you without notifying you, etc. How's that working out?

The problem is that the phone companies believe that those call records are made on their systems and belong to them. The credit card companies own the transaction records between you and some merchants. Just because your name is in it, they don't believe that it is your information or that you have any control over it. Copyright does not apply to facts and its tough to draw a line anywhere over what should be private.

You've clearly never worked on consumer electronics if you believe a dollar in cost is insignificant. Switches are cheaper than pots.

I was going to argue then I remembered exchanging 4 emails with someone sitting two cubes away last week for just the reasons you mentioned. It leaves a record and its a better way to communicate technical information.

Ignore the naysayers. Do what you love. As for programming, professionals have created more security nightmares than amateurs.

Model of Consciousness seems a bit ambitious. Something easy to measure and readily available is how to hit a baseball. A fastball is moving faster than your eyes can track it, so you have to create an internal model of where it's going and swing a mechanical system (your arm and the bat) at the right time and place to knock it into the stands. It would be interesting to determine what inputs the brain uses and model the control system.

Ford is doing a recall on an event that occurred at roughly 8 times less rate than Teslas fires. They didn't gloss over it and say everything is perfect. They analyzed the costs of the lawsuits vs the recall and came to the conclusion that the recall would be less expensive. It's a voluntary recall.

FTFY

The common thread in all those changes is cost. Digital tuning and volume control is cheaper than analog. A single touch panel replaces a bunch of separate controls. They don't have to change back even when it is unsafe because all of the manufacturers do the same thing so it is "industry standard practice".

No it isn't. Skills become obsolete in a year. Theory never does.

So multiple people in my apartment can't use NAT?

From the article: Instead of paying new employees during an onboarding and training period, business can now require employees to take a “free course” before paying them a dime.

The next step is when companies start suggesting the problems they would like to have solved for course credit. The course is "free" to the participant,but somebody is paying the bills, and that somebody expects to get something of value.

Look what happened to Quest and their CEO after refusing to give up data to the NSA.

and who says there are too many frivolous lawsuits? If I were the judge I'd have thrown it out because you directed the suit to the wrong target. You should have sued the cat.

UA flight 93 shows that people can change from sheep to sheep dogs pretty quickly when properly motivated.

According to Wikipedia, it is 9.3 g/L so you are off by a factor of 10. It should be 0.23 gm of urea.

You are saying that somebody writes to total stranger, tries to get them to support some shady purpose, uses his real name, and then expects them to keep it secret? On what do you base this? Is there a chapter in Emily Post on dealing with terrorists?