I tried this (and was very excited to find it), but sipdroid seems to have trouble staying logged in to pbxes, so I only sometimes get incoming calls (or can make outgoing calls); and call quality is ok-to-poor (but it is free).

Thank you! Scientific rigor and grammatical rigor seem to be decoupled for the OP.

Try it out in henna (or some other semi-permenant ink) first. This has the advantages of 'wait ten years' –specifically, you're not stuck –but also lets you see if you really like it in person, you aren't just imagining it.

Personally, I am not tempted to get a tattoo. In addition to the permenance issue, I think my body is pretty sweet on its own –doubly so if what you want to celebrate is the beauty of the natural world and our understanding of the same.

I've kept ~7k in the past year, and my delete:keep ratio is somewhere between 10:1 and 2:1. Then my keep:share is another 10:1, or steeper.

I frequently know a photo I'll like as I frame/take it, but sometimes not; and the freedom of holding down the shutter and taking five or six frames as something happens (or in low light) is great.

On a bike trip in Thailand, I was glad I had the freedom of two 16GB cards; I could hardly imagine stopping to change cannisters every 24 frames, or having to lug an extra backpack along for all the film.

I have a few important passwords which are in my head, and a bunch of others which are in an encrypted file. (All of them are randomly generated ascii strings.)

When some site asks me to sign up, I generate* one. When I have to log in, I decrypt (gpg -d passwordFile | grep siteName); if I end up using the site a lot, then I end up memorizing the password.

I choose a nonstandard keychain-like approach so it's portable and so it's not as obvious to a snooper (though now /. knows).

At work, they have a policy that requires password changes every 90 days... which would require some system or writing down, except that there's only a 15-password history to prevent repeats.

*I wrote a mkpasswd (and then discovered that one exists already, of course). Some sites don't allow some characters, and then it takes a few tries to get a string they like.

In fact, such devices exist: the BrailleNote is a portable computer with a Braille 'screen'. Among other things (wireless internet, bluetooth, voice memos, word processing) it e-book reading as a feature. (I have never used one myself - I am sighted, and can barely struggle along in Braille - but a blind friend of mine has one.)

I only ever use the one on the left side - and similarly, I only ever hit space with my right thumb, so the left half of the space bar could go, too.

However, ~ is handy both in the web (URL) and command-line (path) environments.

I totally agree.

We had keyboarding/computer class in middle school, where I topped out on a good day at about 30wpm, and learned the aquarium game and hypercards.

Then, I got instant messaging, and learned to touch-type 60wpm so I could keep up with four concurrent conversations (though I'll admit my preference to keep proper spelling and punctuation in that context is atypical). (And then, I decided to learn C, and installed OpenBSD on some box, and learned about computers.) So while basic computer literacy is a good requisite, I think it's better aligned with reading and writing, or physical coordination - a tool, not a subject.

As to the four-year-old girl: my boss' daughter, 1 a few months ago, plays with laptops, and rejects a detached keyboard when he tries to subsitute it. (She has her own obselete iBook, now.) It's probably mostly imitation (and bright colors) at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was computer-fluent by four.

...and would you agree with the robotic copy of you, as it brought its handy built-in axe down on its old copy? (See also, The Prestige.)

Moreover, if the brain is simulated well enough, it will certainly appear self-aware. Even if there is a difference (such as it not having a soul), that's not something we can (so far) experimentally determine, and therefore any metaphysical postulations are, or should be, beside the point in the question of ethical behavior towards the simulation.