Please tell us more on how to differentiate between gravity and acceleration, even more inside an aluminum barrel with cloud-obstructed windows, at night.

I think a certain Mr. Albert E. would like to have a word with you.

Good point.

Plant insurance is the another thing that comes to mind: nobody, really, nobody will insure a nuclear power plant against the risk of meltdown, no matter how small.

So the plants run uninsured.

Not a big deal, since meltdowns happen quite rarely. BUT: Coal, gas and oil fired power plants have to provide private insurance. Nuclear plants don't.

But since damages will be felt by people, will destroy property, will destroy health and wipe out entire towns, an uninsured nuclear power plant is in fact still insured against meltdown - just by the taxpayer.

Therefore, a running power plant will bring profits to a private corporation, while the general population aka the Taxpayers bear the risks.

Private gains for public risks. Now why do even die-hard free-market zealots have a problem with nuclear power?

How many excuses do people make up for not using WPA2 encryption that is so totally for free built into their routers and devices?

By the time you're finished writing your post, you could've set up WPA2 and be done with it. Everyone who read your post could've been done with setting up their WPA2.

With the cost of education and training for each individual soldier and the pensions to be paid if something should happen to them, expensive ammunition is the least of financial worries to a modern army of professionals. Getting the mission done with all your men coming out unharmed is worth a lot, not only financially, but also strategically: you can influence and take part in battles you've never could before, because the risk is higher for a spectacular failure. Wounded soldiers always cause public inquiries on exactly why The Army of One needed to be there. When it's more likely that all the blue guys get home unharmed, you can take much more chances in ethically/morally/economically questionable settings. And that is worth not only the insane cost per bullet for some...

Good idea in hiding the SSID.

Bad truth is, your clients have to actively probe exactly THAT SSID every few seconds if they're not connected to it. So they're trying to connect to it every time you're away from home, ie. airport, Starbucks, the mall, all places where you least want your device to send out *anything*.

If you've got more than one hidden SSID, the active probing the clients have to do gets increasingly ridiculous.

And the signal modulated onto your powerline ethernet is protected from your neighbors how?

Did you think the modulated EM waves carrying your data are
a) traveling only to those parts of the line that are located inside your property
and/or
b) refusing to radiate off from all that definitively unshielded plain wiring inside your house?

Powerline is a security risk, if you ask me.

Some of us live in that magical land of fairytales where it's below zero every night for about half the year, every year, with temperatures during the day being not much higher.

In a climate like this, banning small electric heaters that also give off some light is pretty hilarious.

People heating their homes with electricity (very popular in France, BTW) should not use electric light bulbs because of what?

Nobody knows for sure, but judging from the evidence presented and the circumstances surrounding them, a clear verdict should be possible.

A cached database of location points is only created for a reason, especially when it's done on a mobile device, using scarce CPU cycles and even scarcer battery power to do it. The GPS receiver and CPU consume quite a bit of power, which is the most precious resource on a smartphone. Switching on the main radio for triangulating its position when GPS is unavailable is even worse, considering it is then usually triggered inside buildings, where the main radio has to ramp up transmit power to get to their cell tower.

Fine-grained tracks recorded when no application is actively requesting them?
An uncalled-for but constant drain on the most precious resource and deciding factor of a smartphone - its battery?
Neat position databases with no discernible limits in length, just for a cache?
Large amounts of data synchronized to a new phone via the owner's synced computer, by accident?
All this effort for a database that until now wasn't documented, unused and unavailable to any existing app in the entire app store, for a legitimate reason?

All cheaters usually exclaim even when caught red-handed "It's not what you think, it's not what it seems, there's a good explanation for it."

But all things considered, this is a textbook example of "if it quacks like a duck". And Apple cheated on this one. Face it and show them the door.

It's also a network effect at work here:

First, it's important how many of your friends have a BluRay drive, so you can watch your movies at their place and vice versa.

Second, it's equally important how many high-resolution movies you have watched. After several movie nights with a razor-sharp, crystal-clear image, it needs some willpower to go back to regular resolution DVD. I'm discounting pirated downloads of several GB that take ages to complete and online streaming that freeze a few times per movie as your flatmates, kids, spouses or neighbors download something else on your shared line. BluRay has none of that, but a perfect image. After a few movie nights with a high-res display or home cinema projector, going back is painful.

(But they have forced advertising on BR discs, and do I hate these bastards for that)

The BluRay burner in my Thinkpad is only 2x speed, which translates to 25GB burned in about 40 minutes. About the same time it takes to burn a DL DVD-R. I can live with that, as it is twenty-five full gigabytes of stuff. Ripping or transcoding I have not even tried, but I know it takes a literal whole day, so 40min of burn time is a joke compared to that.

But it is a godsend when you also have a high-megapixel digital camera and an itchy trigger finger. Movies go straight to portable HDDs anyway, but with each digicam picture weighing in at 5mb, a single at disc worth 25GB is golden, even more as it is at least somewhat resistant against shocks, electrical failure and totally immune to erroneous overwriting.

If the only thing that prevents the collapse of the Western World is protection of intellectual property, then be sure to have a good bug-out location.

Maybe I'm just too jaded, but relying on intellectual property that can be copied digitally, perfectly within a few seconds is probably not the most sustainable basis for an economy.

When all you have is something that can be multiplied a millionfold within a few hours, you're hosed. Sorry to break it to you, but it's true.

Of course we can make laws and enforce them, but unlike physical crimes like theft and murder, it is no real harm done, but all hypothetical musings on "potential lost sales". And it is nothing but statistics and vague guesswork. I think many people have bought real, genuine Bluray-discs of movies they already possessed pirated copies of. Actual loss of sale = 0, probably even better, since they may not ever heard of that movie before. And I think many people have seen pirated copies of movies they would have never spent a single dime on and regretted every minute of time wasted for it. Actual loss of sale = 0 as well.

You cannot make reliable assumptions on potential sales lost. Therefore, you cannot judge about a fair punishment on it. Something that cannot be punished fairly cannot not be punished without hurting tangible, actual rights. If the business model of the Western world relies on that, I'd sell my stock in them, fast.

But please. Think about the number of immigrant people that are too many for any given situation to remain reasonably stable. And then think about the 3 billion people in this world that would give everything to be a migrant worker in your country. Why don't we accept them all? Why don't we invite everyone, from everywhere. Stricly everyone. No limits, no questions asked, everyone's invited, the more the merrier.

Why not? We let some in, why do we treat them different.

Think of oodles of people, marching without end, a never ending stream of human flesh, a quarter mile wide, endless over the horizon. A Tokio subway in rush hour. Without end. One person per square foot, for as long as the eye can see.

Is that too many? Is it racist even though the immigrant's "race" is absolutely irrelevant here?

Is there any number of people that are too many, any number after which migrant workers become invaders?

If yes, we need to get honest and discuss on which number that is.
If no, we need to be consistent and let everyone in, all 3 billions. Everyone living in a household with more than 3 square foot per person should freely accept another migrant worker into their apartment. And then another one and another one, and then some more. And their children. Don't be racist, let them in until every inch of floor is covered with people.

Welfare don't necessarily need to stop. But with open borders, it's ruining any and all financially stable situation.

Close borders and/or limit welfare.

Strictly maintaining both is fiscal suicide, or in old terms: treason.

With the Army and Reserve and National Guard gone, it's a matter of months.

And yes, you are being invaded every second. Because your only important Border is a Swiss Cheese, and the Border Guards responsible are handcuffed.

You always have a choice on how much you drive on the roads. (Choosing not to drive is impossible, of course)

Change the place of residence, buy from a different supermarket, choose another job, choose another form of commute, get a different school for the kids. There's usually an option to change the distance to travel for daily routine trips. It's not always convenient and certainly not free as in beer to do so, but it can be done. Sometimes, it is the cheaper option, sometimes it's the only one and sometimes it's impossible.