Great idea, balance global warming with a global "pea souper", what could possibly go wrong. Just repeal all the clean air laws around the globe. The resulting particulate pollution will more or less balance the warming, might need to set off a few volcanoes to even it up. Just one small snag, you will also require an entirely new form of aqua/agriculture that thrives on acid rain, the GM boffins have got that in the bag, right?.

Comprehension tip: "It proposes allowing private citizens to sue someone else for violating existing cruelty laws". AFAIK, there's no law against neutering animals. Now I'm sure there's a handful of people out there demanding such laws but the rest of us want domestic animals properly controlled, so you can stop fretting about PETA because even crusty old "geenies" like me view them as little more than a public nuisance.

Thing is, that run of failed predictions never happened. People who believe it did have abandoned critical thinking and put their faith in propaganda. However your claim is so obviously false that it is useless as real propaganda so I can only assume you're trolling.,

...burning hydrocarbon is the energy source where the biggest part of the cost is payed for by society. Here, fixed that for ya!

Many eurotrash countries have a stiff government finger in the HV transmission soup, which means their investments might be based on something other than "cheapest stuff that probably won't cause global meltdown in next quarter". I live in Denmark and have had one 10 minutes power cut in the last 5 years.

Actually in the case of the toilet seat and hammer examples they were both engineered one-off pieces that had to be carefully designed to meet specific weight and size requirements. Which is to say if you ever make one or two of anything the per-unit cost is astronomical.

How would the organization then differ from a normal business? This is *precisely* why the IRS has been cracking down on "open source organizations". You call yourself a non-profit organization and then just funnel what amounts to a consulting business.

There is nothing though to stop you from paying the lead developer to improve a project you use. But you would need to pay the developer.

Red Hat for instance isn't a non-profit. And I can see why the IRS would be suspicious of an organization which essentially operates a non-profit to launder a development company through. If they did have $20k to spend, they should have asked for the names of a few contributors and paid them to do something on the Open Source project. "Hey, here is a grant to fix some part of the project, whatever you want."

Okay, let's just speculate about all the ways this could be misused:

*-- Vending machines that make you reach into your pocket and pull out money whenever you pass by them.

*-- Rich handicapped people buying time on poor people's bodies.

*-- Rich people buying time on poor people's bodies, in order to do criminal things.

*-- Police officers with a 'lay down with your hands behind your back' raygun.

I'm sure I missed a few, any suggestions?

The same timely delivery issues could be said of defense contractors and weapons systems.

As soon as they gave him one years asylum he became a Russian pawn. What happens to him after the one year is up will now be determined at various negotiating tables where his fate will be just another bargaining chip.

"They're starving back in China, so finish what you've got". - John Lennon.

It was interesting that in the same prediction he was still hedging his bets on whether fiber optic communication would be common. Laser tunnels are strung everywhere and are ubiquitous. So common we don't even use all of them.

Yes, I think that has a lot to do with it. When I was at HS in the 70's boys were prohibited from taking either typing or cooking classes, for girls those classes were compulsory for the first 2yrs. Girls were prohibited from taking mechanical drawing and woodwork, again, those subjects were compulsory for boys for the first 2yrs. I'm 54 and have been a developer for more than 20yrs, I still can't touch type, because I can do 35wpm the wrong way and I would now have to slow down significantly to break those bad habits. Teacher's would brush it aside with comments such as "women don't build houses, they build homes".

This is why I didn't go into computer engineering as a young lad. I recognized that computers were tools, and the people trained to maintain and program them were going to end up as essentially service personnel. The high-level managers consider sysadmins to be one notch above a janitor. Shameful, but true. I realized this quite young.

Instead, I went into physics. I'm not appreciably higher in the corporate architecture, but what I do is so arcane nobody believes that I'm easily replaced. If sysadmins are treated like janitors, a scientist is treated like a skilled seamstress -- I'm still 'labor', but it costs so much to find someone who can do my job they're willing to cut me a little slack.

the whole world is watching