You create a Facebook account, add no data about yourself, turn off all notifications, then suspend it. Your name/email combo can't be used again by anybody but you. Use Facebook to not use Facebook.

It's as simple as this.

Lock up a few kilos of Lithium in all the cars of the world, and Central/South America and Afghanistan will make the Middle East look like a cakewalk.

Meanwhile, there's a biofuel tech in Texas that uses farm waste to create a crude oil that can be pumped into existing refineries to produce all the normal range of fuels and plastics, yet burns cleaner than mineral based fuels in unmodified engines to produce a fraction of the CO2 emissions of the farm waste left to rot. Google Vetroleum and Sustainable Power. Using just 1/6th of the USA's farm waste, this tech could meet all US land transport demand. Using all the world's farm waste and you could run the space programme on it - run a mission to Alpha Centauri on it :-)

If electric cars are the future, civilisation is fucked.

Yeh, Macroslop is more like an ugly stepsister getting her comeuppance at the end of the Cinderella story ;-)

"Vetroleum"

http://puregreencars.com/Green-Cars-News/Technology/john_rivera_claims_he_can_produce_limitless_fuel_from_farm_waste.html

There is no other, available now, backward compatible, sustainable, environmental, socially expedient technology out there, and Vetroleum needs to be backed by every government in the world - buying out the patents and making the technology public domain, if necessary.

Without oil there is no photo-voltaic solar, no modern agriculture (fertilisers and pesticides come almost exclusively from by-products of the petroleum industry), no mining. It took 50 years and 2 world wars to build the petroleum economy and infrastructure, and hydrogen is only in its infancy. Vetroleum bolts onto the existing oil industry with little change to any infrastructure. It makes farming more cost effective and CO2 neutral, too.

According to the German report, we have 15 years, according to the US one, we have as little as 5 years. Hydrogen is not going to be wide enough spread in California, let alone the rest of the world, in 5 years. Vetroleum could be rolled out in 5 years if we start now. It could also end all those oil wars in the Middle East.

Published first in May 1961? Isn't this 8 months too early for the 50th anniversary? I should know, I just turned 49 last Thursday and I was born in 1961.

Exactly my point :-)

<blockquote>Particularly fatal bike riding.</blockquote>

fnur fnur. You know that it's not cycling which is dangerous, it's all the fat bastards in SUVs, passing out from carbo shock after eating a 26 inch pizza and a 40 gallon drum of coke while yelling into their cell phones at a call centre who won't help them who are dangerous.

Danger is an effect we have on others, not something that inherently stems from a normal, healthy activity done reasonably. I've been cycling in traffic for 35 years and mountain biking for 25. The only harm I've ever come to was off-road, jumping beyond my ability. Cycling in traffic has resulted in some scares from aggressive sociopaths who got licences to drive because there has never been a psychological requirement to getting one.

Dan Maes has done the oldest trick in the political book - vilify a minority who stand out. Many a politician got elected screaming, "lynch the nigger!" This is just the 21C equivalent.

Does nobody in authority understand the concept of field strength? It's OK to expect that some parents might not understand this, but surely people authorising the installation of WiFi networks might be able to make a simple connection between WiFi being tiny wattages and larger field strengths being necessary to harm tissue (ie leaky microwave oven.)

Bloody "WiFi sickness"? Bloody bollocks.

In 2015 we'll all have flying cars, jet packs and ray guns.

But we do. They fly into trees, they fly off the road and they fly into people and property.

There's actually a really good fatality proof technology that's been in cars since before Henry's T-Model. It's called braking. It uses controlled friction at the wheels to reduce a car's speed. The idea is the driver slows to a speed suitable for the conditions and, using their eyes, brakes to a stop in order to prevent collision. The user interface is a simple pedal, next to the accelerator pedal. It's actually as easy to use as the accelerator! Really!

It would apply to recordings made in the USA, and probably such recordings where rights were assigned to a US entity before 1972. Anything recorded outside the US are not subject to the USA's strange mess of IP law.

Want to list the real world, non-developer tasks that iPhone can't do.

In 6 months with mine, a cheapskate 3G, I haven't found one yet. Granted, I don't want to program it or program another puter remotely. I don't want to hack into Norad to find alien contact conspiracies, either. I just record complex, multitrack audio with it. Write ideas down as I get them, log my cycling using a GPS, play the odd game, read a book, listen to music, surf a bit, check mail, take photos. I keep meeting people online and IRL who tell me my iPhone can't do these things because of Apple's "walled garden". Funny, I can do them and at a fraction of the cost of some platforms. (Compare Luci Edit SD on Windows Mobile at AU$700 with iSaidWhat?! for iPhone at AU$1.19, or Multitrack at AU$20 for example.)

And one API, one development architecture, verification by Apple that the code isn't an exploit, all make iPhone very secure. PDF exploit aside (it'll be closed within the month with a simple update) most of the anti-iPhone talk on Slashdot is along the lines of, "I'd never use one because they can't do ..."

Anybody who hasn't used one for real world ongoing, everyday tasks, anybody who has only used a demo in an Apple store, isn't qualified to comment.

Honestly, what walls? I haven't struck any in my use of it and I'm pretty demanding.

Lets see, half the apps on iTunes equate to a flashlight, a farting toy and a few other toys? Hmm, then how come I have an office app compatible with Macroslop's offering, several music apps including a 16 track recorder, a few MIDI apps and various audio field recorders I use for work (all mission critical quality) and any number of really good communications and network tools, such as GPS apps, social apps, oh why do I bother feeding the trolls?

Simple - 130,000 apps. If there is a wall, it's a long long way away and it's hardly East Germany inside. Seriously, the people hating iPhone and iPad today are the descendents of those who burned crosses 100 years ago.

In iPhone's "walled garden" one presumes this app would be rejected. I'm cynical enough to think the odd one might get through, but most won't.

This is one reason why, even though I looked into Droid first, that I ditched Droid and went for the iPhone. The walled garden has its advantages. (I am feeling quite smug at the moment.)

Meh, don't feed the trolls.

This is classic profile reversal. Nearly all serial killers have narcissistic personality disorder, so "the media" turn this around to lump the two together as a given.

A high proportion of iPad early adopters may fit this profile, as might early adopters of the mobile phone 15 to 20 years ago, or early adopters of the motor car. As the device becomes less an object of hype and people realise the iPad fits their needs (rather than non-iPad users ideas of everybody's monochrome, vanilla needs), this profile will lose relevance.