The current situation in the UK was on my mind when reading up on this case. It seems like, at least currently, in the US defamation and libel suits have a hard time proceeding except when it's incredibly blatant, or when the plaintiff has far more in the way of resources than the defendant. Having done a bit of business in the UK, and having a few relatives who've done a lot more, I've been getting the feeling that media there would be scared to do a lot of the things that media in the US currently takes for granted.

Several of his earlier posts had already been up on Slashdot when they were new last month. Though the previous posts have more information, it seemed odd to link to them after having gone there from the newer post.

And unless they're transmitting from the middle of nowhere, it's extremely hard to get a narrow enough search area to find one person with a radio setup that might be quite small. You might know that they're in a particular apartment complex, but without searching room-by-room, DF systems aren't good enough to get an exact location.

Even in the US, it takes quite a bit of effort (and some luck) to find people using a radio improperly. When I lived in Maryland, there was a guy who made fake distress calls via his marine radio on several weekends in a row. The state police & USCG narrowed the search area down to a fairly small area, but since it was in the middle of a marina, they couldn't determine which boat it was coming from. (He eventually got caught when someone who had been on the pier at the marina overhead him making the transmission.)

But T-Pain's on a boat!

Or that the sampling wasn't properly randomized.

Just like AIS, except in cars?

Except for the fact that the much-shortened reaction time in operating a car versus a ship makes that almost useless, that's a great idea!

But all microcontrollers include a microprocessor.

Except that it's the colonies used by commercial beekeepers that are among the hardest-hit by CCD, and their replenishment programs can't keep up with the loss. If a cure for CCD can't be found, in a few years the supply of hives will be lower than the demand for pollination services.

But a 200 page novella does?

I've always disliked the 'number of books read' metric. I could re-read all 38 Discworld books in about the same amount of time it took to read the Night's Dawn trilogy.

And even if the electricity did go up, the overall *energy* usage would be less than moving a ~4000 pound vehicle across ~50 miles (typical american commute).

Exactly. Although, I think maybe that was part of their 'this was in Britain, so YMMV' statement at the end.

If the average upper-middle-class British commute is much shorter, it could drive up transportation costs. If they originally lived two miles from the workplace when it was five days a week, and then when it became a once-a-week deal, they got a house 25 miles away, it might create more pollution than you saved. But most Americans who work jobs that can be telecommuted to already live quite a few miles away, so assuming they're going to move much further without some good evidence that is the case is silly.

The amount of gasoline consumed is directly proportional to the weight being carried.

It's more like directly proportional to the total vehicle weight. A 5400 lb delivery vehicle is going to use a lot of fuel even if it's nearly empty.

Not having the actual study, it's hard to say, but it seems like there's some big assumptions here.

For instance:

It also highlights that working from home can increase home energy use by as much as 30 per cent, and can lead to people moving further from the workplace, stretching urban sprawl and increasing pollution.

Sure, it's going to increase home electric usage. One would hope, though, that the employer doesn't keep all the equipment running - which means the majority of that is just being shifted, not created anew. As far as increasing pollution from transportation, that I don't get at all. Suppose I work from home three days a week. To spend the same amount on driving, I'd need to move two and a half times as far away. And even then, I probably wouldn't, since it would mean more highway miles and less downtown miles. How many people are going to move from a twenty-mile commute to a fifty-mile commute just because they're working from home Tuesday - Thursday this year?

And if the employer set up the work-from-home program permanently, they can get a smaller building since they know 60% or more or staff is home every non-meeting day. So then there's likely very little extra electric usage.

But who gets to classify 'ultraviolent' vs. 'violent' vs. 'comic violence'? If it's an industry body, then there's the same kinds of conflict of interest that leads to independent films getting 'worse' ratings than big studio releases. And the last thing we need is an Australia-style government run ratings board.

The obvious solution is to prevent children under 18 from buying any media at all. That way it's a content neutral restriction, and all the responsibility for what kids are playing, reading, or watching falls on the parent.

My Windows boot just has shortcuts for the two or three games I'm currently playing, and to the directories for .mod files for each of them.

My Linux boot is much the same as yours, with about three 'permanent' desktop residents, and the rest of the space used for things I am or should be working on right then.

Once it's hard to find something, I'll sort through them all and put them in appropriate filing locations, and then start filling it back up.