No, but you can still get fired. Or rather, fired at.

And, lo and behold, Iceland is already back on track and out of the recession slump. Yes, it was a very painful cut, but at least they got a horrible end instead of a horror without end.

I've never encountered a bank doing this, and if they did then I'd strongly object and report them to the regulator.

You wrote about something like a prepaid charge card. A Maestro or Electron card can be issued by any major bank on an existing account, so you don't need to jump through hoops and pay even more fees.

First of all, if your bank can charge $180 in overdraft fees for being a few cents over then you really need to get a different bank.

Secondly, if you're in a position where $3 can push you into the red, but you can still manage to afford a smartphone, then you're doing something seriously wrong with your finances.

You should also consider getting a card like a Visa Electron or a Mastercard Maestro - these are debit cards that do not allow you to go overdrawn (they are intended for minors) and will just reject transactions if there is not enough money in the account for them.

Netflix does run their own CDN (based on FreeBSD) for the movies, which are the vast majority of their bandwidth. The Amazon stuff is for the web UI and background processing workloads (e.g. working out popular films related viewing patterns and so). This stuff is pretty busty, especially as more and more people use custom NetFlix apps and so don't hit the web UI at all.

Not noticeable? So I can run it on the machine connected to my projector, that runs FreeBSD and happily plays content grabbed from iPlayer or DVDs? Oh, no, sorry, not supported. Well, at least I can play it back on my WebOS tablet. Oh, sorry, not supported. Well, I can at least copy a few films to watch on a mobile device while I'm travelling? Oh, sorry, not supported either.

Meanwhile, I'm paying Lovefilm (Amazon) a monthly fee to rent DVDs because I can take these with me (or rip them for a mobile device, as long as I delete them before I send them back) when I travel, and I can watch them on every device I own.

Now, technically, it would be possible for me to rip every single DVD I rent, but I don't do this because there's no point. The entire point of paying the monthly subscription is for someone else to be responsible for maintaining the large library of content and being able to watch some of it when I want. I'd end up spending a lot on hard disks if I ripped them all and 99% of what I watch I have no desire to re-watch anyway.

A system that let me download films in a DRM-free format and had a monthly cost proportional to the number that I downloaded (e.g. 50 hours for the cost of my current 3-DVD-at-a-time package) would solve the problem for me and would mean that there is no danger (from their perspective) of my downloading everything I might ever want to watch - a somewhat silly fear that is predicated on the idea that there will never be new releases that I want to see - and cancelling the subscription.

If you'd read my post, or even the sentence you quoted, then you'd know that it's not my country and that I am very much aware of this (we hire a reasonable number of PhD graduates from places like MIT who've just been kicked out of the country by this policy).

Someone with a job offer for over $100,000 or a research position (university or private, but one requiring a PhD)? Make it contingent on staying in a position that meets these criteria for 1 year, but not necessarily at the same company.

The total amount of high-level waste is small enough to make public control pretty easy. And subduction trenches are not simply "under the sea", it's very deep under the sea. There's no circulation there, so "leaks" (and all feasible plans require vitrification of the waste) won't carry far in the worst case.

Besides, waste will then be buried in short (1km or so) shafts. It will then be carried inside the Earth mantle where it'll be slowly (over millions of years) dispersed in convection flows.

Nuclear power plants provide almost all of the energy in France and more energy than renewables in Germany. And as for the government's targets - do you want to bet money against me?

No, building coal power plants is not stupid - it's a necessity. There's no way renewables can provide enough of the baseload for Germany. It was known from the start (except for cretinous Greens) that Germany has to do it if nuclear powerplants are to be closed, and no amount of renewable funding can alter it.

It depends. If you, your company, refuses to do business, it's your problem. If you are a country that not only represents a sizable international economic factor but also has the leverage to pressure others to follow your example, you're essentially dealing a serious blow to another economy. Take a look at your country's economy and realize that it highly depends on imports and exports. It depends on you being able to import food, machinery and/or other products and export your surplus. Inability to do so leaves you at a disadvantage in your economy's development.

So please don't tell me economic warfare doesn't exist. It does. At the very least if you're an important global player. What do you think would happen if any trade between China and the US suddenly ceases?

If you had told someone half a century ago that someone should flee to a commie state for his freedom...

The times sure are a'changing.

Dig out Guido and hope he has more luck this time.

No, but I really expected a better lie than "ads". It's like he doesn't even try anymore.

Well, I actually contribute to fighting cancer at my $DAYJOB. While Green hippies actively promote it, it's so fun to stop trains with nuclear materials.

Fighting against new cancer-causing coal power plants? Nah, that's not fun at all.

As for "unqualified success" - how else would you call a program that is guaranteed to fail to meet its goals, while using many times more resources than alternatives?