M$ has root, brah.

Not for me they don't.

I think I'd be able to have a better lifestyle/standard of living now by working less hours than them.

They are valued by me, a geek, too. Since my mum and extended family went apple I rarely have any support calls :)

Computers are stupid because they rely on a developed industrialised economy and would worthless in an apocalyptic scenario \s

However, as I live in a developed industrial economy and I am "surrounded by machines that make my wishes real"...

^This.

I got up to ~96kgs/212lbs at 173cm/5'8" by working in IT and developing OS software for fun. Went to a gym and cycled the 8 (hilly) km each way to work for a while and lost ~10kg.

Got very fit after my office moved 24 (hilly) km away and decided to keep riding it. I now ride for fun (up to 400km in a day), have a personal trainer to make me work muscle groups that cycling does not work and to generally kick my^K^K^K^K^K^K^Kencourage me, and generally am considered a fit bloke.

The advantage cycling gives is that you are likely to be able to get to work in a comparable time to driving, but getting fit at the same time. IOW, it takes no time out of your day. It will also allow you to get over the pain hump* while doing something practical. Once you are over the hump you'll (well, I did, YMMV) start enjoying exercise and being fit for its own sake, so going for a run will not seem liek an ordeal.

*The pain hump is just getting used to exercise after being a potato for a few years.

My definition of trust is that it is a gradient, rather than binary...

I get a tiny winy say in government. I get no real say in what happens in corporations.

Here's what happened to one person who took "backups" home and also wrote to the embassy of a different country in which he worked and offered to sell them secrets.

http://www.johnwdowns.com/blog/?p=100

FTFY

Only if you do not give your own preferences. Vote below the line.

Spot on.

This is similar to the human race not being able to develop technologically without the discovery/use of fossil fuels. However, we are (probably) not going to be able to continually progress without moving onto more advanced power generating/harnessing/whatever technologies (which would have been impossible to discover/develop without having a good fuel source to begin with). IOW, you cannot jump straight to solar electric energy without first having a useful fuel source to develop it, in our case fossil fuels.

WRT to eating meat, it is perfectly possible to reproduce now without every eating meat and it having zero net affect on brain development of the child etc etc. However, the human race might not have become what it has done without eating meat back in the day.

We solved the problem of dimming (CFLs) by having a lamp in the corner. We already had a wall light and a ceiling light in the room. 8 step dimming (if you include no light and do not include the hall and kitchen light which also can spill over to the lounge).

In Australia C-sections are often done for liability reasons. They tend to get sued if they do not do everything possible and the baby dies or has other bad stuff happen.

Our ob was completely fine, actually very happy, with my wife having a natural no-drug birth... in hospital and with everything, including drugs, to hand if needed. We're not stupid. The midwife thought it was awesome and is writing a paper on the birth.

USE ALL THE THINGS!

Seriously, we did hypnobirthing - lots of witchy-witchery-woo in that (no, really, there is), but it worked. It helped my wife really relax. All through the pregnancy, we did loads of exercise (she was walking/jogging 8-10km a day up until a few days before the birth), yoga, maintained a good diet etc.

So... all holistic and stuff, but with modern medicine, which we ended up not really needing, to hand should Pete raise his Tong.

We have a Honda Jazz (Fit is the American name for the Jazz) 1.3L Manual and our trip computer (which I reset when we bought it and not since) shows 6.7L/100km which is 35mpg.

So... hmm...

Australian BTW, so distance blah blah much of a muchness compared with US.

So did battleships.

In Australia (at least in NSW anyway) the registered owner of the vehicle is assumed to be the driver. Statutory declarations have to be signed etc if this is not the case. Not necessarily a good idea to sign an untrue stat dec either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Einfeld#Criminal_conviction

"people get worried about disclosing their weight."

To people. To a machine?

"A machine probably won't be double-checking"

I think you are wrong. Machines can easily be designed to double check.