Not much current, only ~100-300 Amps @ 1 Volt, the usual.
Not much at all.

I'll have you know that /. is still one of the premier tech info forums.

There are no more notable forums of that size, AND paid shills post ON FUCKING 4CHAN. /. >> 4chan when it comes to tech info.

So, all your points are m00t and void.

You speak like a shill.

No, they will not.

Expected user behaviour if you want to maintain your system is review what each and individual update does (KB article) and having identified all Windows 7 upgrade and telemetry updates, unchecking them, and hiding them (right click / hide update).

Works fine with me. Woe be unto he who does not know which exact updates are malicious, because if you allow one, they will be possible to purge only with specialized 3rd party apps (yes there are such apps).

"Visual representation" is a red flag, it always contains less information and detail than good old text (text in the eyes of a proficient reader mind you).

And, well, one property of graphical representation is that it is (more easily) accessible to idiots, aka, "The Management".

So there you have it.

> traditional state issued currency and state regulated banking

Where in the World do you get THAT ?

Syria ? Iceland ? Iran ?

Truly not US if that is what you are implying ?

To me, agming is better than sex.

I mean sex is very, very good, but I cannot have sex for multiples of 12 hour runs at times, all the while having sustained fun that is purely intellectual. Sex just cannot provide that, it only provides a release from tension, in a metaphysical, and very pleasurable sense.

If sex was best in life, humans (those pesky men actually, damn those sex-less engineers) would never have built cities

The recent and more interesting and also quite unique footprint IMO is nuclear explosions.

They should be fairly unique, fairly high-radius, and fairly indicator-of-lifish.

1. Most of the worlds evolved more to fantasy-like societies, like special-ability oriented, earthbound. For what we may know, special biological abilities akin to magic are norm, and tech is a deviation. (Total speculation).

2. Societies have space travel, but are very introverted in general and live inside mental macrocosm, rather than (space) macrocosm. (Read: "The Pod and the Barrier", by Theodore Sturgeon for what I'm referencing here)

3. There exists force that is extremerly dominant and prevents any free interstellar travel. May be active, may be passive relics, may be programmed bots/nanobots. (I think this one is highly likely, because it is extremely probable that some societies have say, at least ~10 million year technological headstart over others, and that is, paradigm-changing (pardon the word). We may not even understand such technology, and it unavoidably has, perfect cloaking, because at this point it would be trivial. We may already have invisible aliens among us, and we'd be none the wiser. In this case advertising our presence by use of nuclear weapons / other stupid activities (EM footprint, may be easily identifiable / detectable) may be a very, very bad idea, in case they are hostile / exploiter type.

4. Luck, which I think is totally unlikely.

5. They may already have left footprint (may be likely ?), if you think it's not the case, then explain the artifacts on Earth (pyramids all over the world aligned in certain directions (would require 1 world civilization which organizes building of them all to certain precise measurements, for all we know, they may not have been built by savage natives (pharaohs), but rather claimed by them by scribbling their writ on them), Moon being very peculiar distance from Earth and having very peculiar measurements, various reported phenomena found in coal mines reportedly hundreds of millions of years old (hard to prove, but interesting nonetheless)). DO NOT DISCOUNT WHAT IM SAYING HERE, IT IS NOT ALL CLEAR CUT AND IS NOT ALL"WOO CONSPIRACY". There are too many outliers found for them all to be natural deviations of a single civ (ours).

After all the considerations, same things apply even if light speed barrier is unbroken, because with high automation, you need only max 70K-100K years at lightspeed to totally map the galaxy, so if any civ existed in our galaxy, it is a certainty in statistical sense that it visited Earth either as bots, or living creatures.

All of the above is wild speculation taken with large doses of salt or soy sauce, your preference.

Casuals now infect Golf too.

There will need to be a purging.

Of casuals.

You seem to be forgetting about battery life, and game library, 2 factors which were decisive in case of Game Boy. Nothing else compared.

It is political partisanship, political agenda, and new cult of Malthusians.

Statements follow:

1.Climate change exists. Of course, it always existed.

2. We live in mid-low ice age.

3. Ice ages are bad for civilisation, Global warming is good for civilisation. While cold, there is no Civ, only war, while warm, there decreases parts of livable land insignificantly, instead, food-producing and otherwise unlivable land increases significantly (Siberia et al.)

4. Whether GW is Anthropogenic is a discussion, but if yes, we need more of it. Humans are doing very good in burning oil during mini-ice age, lest we lapse again to it (and unavoidable wars and scarcity and death that would follow).

5. For politicians, cold, scarcity and death is good, because it leads to wars and strenghtening of holders of political powers.

You forgot the crucial "banks destroy peoples wealth".

the fact that the average common denominator for intelligent discussion dropped markedly and measurably in the mentioned span of time.

Now you have to WORK to find a good, intelligent circle, and then work doubly hard to protect it from casuals..

This has to do with the fact that before, only academics and at least computer enthusiasts and hardcore geeks used the internet.

Now, Biff "uses" it too.

UI is sometimes good.

UX is ALWAYS bad.