Movies also try to be "real" ...

What??? Which ones? Can you give an example? All I see in movies is trope after trope after trope, no realism in sight.

Ah; a story on how hiding behind pseudonyms is no bad thing.. ..followed by a comment thread in which lots of people hiding behind pseudonyms insult each other in ways they would not do if their names were actually attached and the comments could follow them home.

That is no bad thing. I'd rather not have everybody censor themselves down to meaningless banalities for fear of possibly insulting some extremist whacko. Sure, some people will "abuse" their privacy, but such "abuse" is harmless and easily handled by moderation and reputation systems. E.g. I read Slashdot at a high mod threshold and haven't seen any pointless insults or other misbehavior in this discussion.

I have a big bulky DSLR ... in a camera bag ... at home. I also have a camera/phone in my pocket, ready to take a picture any second of the day. Guess which ones takes more shots? Image quality is far less important than image content -- interesting things happen suddenly and rarely wait around for me to run home and get my good camera. Cost isn't nearly as much of an issue as convenience. Remember: the best camera is the one you have in hand, ready to shoot. Of necessity that one is usually going to be small, fast, expendable, and therefore relatively low-quality.

As a dangling modifier this is totally ungrammatical.

You're deluded if you don't think inflation isn't a problem.

Wait ... what?

You're deluded if you don't think inflation isn't a problem.
!(don't think inflation isn't a problem.)
!!(inflation isn't a problem.)
!!!(inflation is a problem.)
!(inflation is a problem.)
Inflation isn't a problem.

Really? If that's what you meant to say it sure is an odd way to phrase it. If it isn't what you meant then of course it's even odder.

/even odder

You didn't have to read the article, or even the entire summary. The first four words ("A story at Wired") tell you in no uncertain terms that it's going to be a story of, by, and for pretentious twits.

If you create an easier-than-standard path through security constraints, the bad guys, just like the good guys, will take the easier route, every single time.

How is that a failure? Now you have a much smaller pool ("Trusted Travelers") which contains all the bad guys. Seems like that would make them much easier to catch.

You aren't a lawyer, you're a dictatorship apologist.

Make that "profiteer." The worse the laws, the more you need lawyers. Lawyers love bad laws.

it is easy to accidentally pull one out if you are rummaging around behind your devices

That's not a bug, it's a feature. If you accidentally tug on a cable the best place to relieve strain is in the low-force connection between plug and socket. If the connector were locked then the strain would damage the cable, plug, or socket. I'd rather kick the plug out of the socket than tear the cable off the plug or the socket out of the device... or yank the device off the shelf.

See also NOVA: Dimming the Sun, which discusses, among other things, the effect of the September 2001 air traffic shutdown on weather (not climate).

Why they decided to pay $600M and then ask for a refund is a bit perplexing.

The sunk cost dilemma sucks you in and drags you along, potentially forever.

From that same document:

1. As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes.

So 500,107 MB = 500.107 GB

"Formatted capacity" has nothing to do with file system formatting; it refers to the host-accessible storage capacity of the drive, which is 976,773,168 sectors (also from that same document). The contest is to read all those sectors in under an hour. Sectors are 512 bytes each, so you need to read 500,107,862,016 bytes in 3600 seconds or an average of 138,918,851 bytes per second.

"Life expectancy" was driven down by infant and childhood mortality. Once you survived your first 10 years back then you were no more likely to die than someone of the same age now. E.g. mortality rates between ages 15-45 were similar to what they are now. "Old age" was probably a bit younger than it is now, but not by much (ten years or so). So lower life expectancy (at birth) was not a good reason to marry at 13 rather than 30.

Such a device would be possible, but fairly expensive, as it would need to act as a USB host.

Not necessarily; it could be a filtering hub, watching all traffic that passes through it and dropping all packets from any device that identifies itself as any type other than mass storage. Think of it as a USB firewall.

BRB, off to file my patent.

FTA:

One problem with the debate is that it's a false dichotomy,

O RLY?

since you can embed a Web browser within a native application.

That's a native app.

And, conversely, you can extend an embedded Web browser to provide access to native APIs.

That's a native app.

The two alternatives have not been mutually exclusive for years now.

Whatever. If it runs in a plain old web browser, it's a web app. If it uses platform-specific native code it's a native app. Duh.