Wait, nevermind... it just occurred to me that an addiction to fans may have been caused by the lack of air conditioning.

I can say that, aside from the pleasure of moving air (not necessarily cool air), having a fan on my face was fairly integral to being able to sleep. I've since beat the habit, but still... not sure where it comes from as I did not grow up with air conditioning. *shrug*

I don't NEED it any more than I NEED anything else in live other than shelter and calories. That said, what I WANT is to get rid of the phone service and simply be able to take and leave voice messages via something more like an iPad... a mobile work-facilitating communications hub. I find it a false necessity to have to put down a gorram phone number on legal forms, etc... especially when, given the fact that I don't place or receive calls, even GOphones cost me on the order of $50 a minute since their minutes expire. My smartphone has been an invaluable resource to me, though, on many occasions... I just don't need the gorram minutes that I have to have to use the damn thing. And I'm not making it up at all when I say that I've lost 115 lbs through the use of an iphone app.

....keep in mind that ALL brand new techs had to start out as playthings of the rich to help fund the perfection of the tech and the technique such that reproduction could be affordable enough for all. And before YET ANOTHER PERSON starts signing about chestnuts over a volt/tesla fire, keep in mind that thousands of combustion engine vehicles are catching fire every year.

I was just having a nearly verbatim discussion regarding voice communication; I'm willing to pay for wireless data plans and a VOIP connection (say, in attempting to make an ipad or similar by SOLE computing/communication device)... but not for a single damn voice minute. Prepaids typically run me about $30/minute... my iphone about $90/minute. So yeah, I empathize!

I've kept the promise to myself that I won't be buying another TV until I can literally roll it onto an entire wall like wallpaper. The precursors to that technology already exist, so there's plenty of room in perfecting and economizing the concept.

My 3 year old MacBook Pro has proven to be too heavy to be EASILY portable (portable, but dissuasively so) and it suffers a bit with some of my gaming on the side (i don't even dare try starcraft 2 on the poor overworked and now slightly damaged thing.) Still, I have some photoshop and flash work to do; I do a lot of python, perl, php and jquery work, etc... those probably would be fine on even the current generation of tablet. But yeah... I'm trying to run the macbook into the ground (as I want to abuse as few near-slave-labor foxconn workers as possible) so that hopefully in another year or two, the tablets will be up to all the tasks I want. Further, I'd rather that I didn't have to have it AND a phone. Quite frankly, if not for all these online and offline forms requiring a phone number, I wouldn't even have that... I ~never~ use the damn thing other than for such legacy issues.

After first being acquainted with this amendment, I went to look at what currently is law... and, quite frankly, as an IT person, I ~already~ appear to be covered by the previous broader/more vague definition already in the code. Can someone analyze how impactful the difference in language ACTUALLY is?

A proper scientist is a perpetual skeptic whose job it is to routinely test and attempt to disarm common knowledge, accepting results only through verification, not just once, but endlessly.

There have been a number of articles (many of which passed through slash-dot) regarding plant growth in the face of added carbon dioxide. A few species do grow more... most simply cut back on the number of pores they grow so as to maintain their natural transpiration rates.

And, thus far, quantifiable increases in temperature AND worldwide damage have EXCEEDED his early estimates. But then again, we're afraid of facts, now, aren't we?

I can say much the same as you, @poster, and toss onto the pile that, in spite of 15 good years doing programming, my initial educational period was ... stormy? Incomplete, and not something I like to get into on my resume; though I tend to be frank about it (it's also a popular topic of complaint with me given the hostility from the financial aide department that didn't help at the time.) At any rate, I do impactful coding and really have no business complaining about my job, but I am ... I don't know... disenfranchised a bit from the project that, for years, I rescued, resurrected, breathed new life into, and now merely maintain and tweak. So what do I do? (with cyclically variably success), I do personal projects... Two years ago, I wrote a novel (though it sits on the shelf now waiting for an epiphany from myself in regards to the all important rewrite); this past year I've stewed up no less than three web/game projects (none of which are past the drawing board as yet) that I believe could be game changers in political, social, and entertainment arenas (we'll see how THAT goes, hehe.) I'm just saying... make your own interests; invent your own jobs, if you must. Just 'do it.' =3

pfff... even if string theory doesn't pan out; one of the best ways to discover 'what is' is to examine and study 'what isn't.'

For god's sake, don't cripple the poor kid by subjecting him to our conveyor belt of education; he needs someone or someones who can keep challenging him... and, beyond that, the opportunities to teach himself using application. (Learn by doing.) Maybe he'll need a social and sociological curriculum on the side to make sure he can interact with the rest of humanity... but, all that said, our educational system is designed to create automatons who subject themselves to the whims of the few; opportunity is created as much if not more often than given, and he needn't necessarily rely on rote and proscribed methodologies to succeed or surpass.

No, not quite; It would get very few things done... nearly all of them the RIGHT things. Government is meant only to be the collective tool belt, replete with powers of leverage and enforcement, wielded by the citizenry for the benefit of the citizenry. One isn't meant to play with tools, nor use them any more often than any give job calls for.