need something not found in nature to grow -- thus preventing them from becoming an invasive species.

Ah, yes the Lysine Contingency

You mean AI hasn't been writing /. headlines for years already?

Remember when you could use Code Warrior on your PowerBook to compile code for an alien supercomputer?

For many, of course, they'll be looking to upgrade in 2 years. Between the two purchases, the income used toward a $1000 smartphone seems truly more "disposable".

It's $41.66/month (when you use the device payment programs). That's less than what people are paying for their phone plans, cable/satellite subscriptions, internet service, and all kinds of other things

Does that make a $1000 phone a smart purchase? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how much you plan to use it, what you plan to do with it, etc.

But when you look at the - effective - device-as-a-service that you can do now (where you can upgrade every year for usually the same price (or only a small increase)), and that monthly fee becomes a highly-affordable option for lots of people.

Effectively leasing a phone is very different from leasing a car -. you cannot reasonably expect a phone, as used by most people, to last more than 3-5 years, whereas you should reasonably expect a car to last 10-15 years with routine maintenance performed.

that $2400 camera lens can last you a lifetime. An iPhone X you probably wouldn't use more than 4 years

Odds are very good that you will not use that $2400 camera lens nearly as often as you'll use a phone. I'd wager the actual lifetime, when measured in used hours, for that camera lens is quite a bit less than the lifetime of a smartphone

Sounds like Disclosure or Jurassic Park Who wants to browse the web visually?

You want the hair, too, eh?

Isn't this, more or less, the concept of the movie Surrogates?

Which really means it will depend on where the "majority" comes from. Remember, in this country we do NOT vote for president - we vote for electors who vote for president (the Electoral College). A "majority" does not guarantee a win.

That is correct - when reimaging is not an option, it's a [close] second

For a Mac or Linux machine, I run a dd from /dev/urandom into a file until it crashes (that way apps are still "ok" .. but a reimage is an option, too).

For Windows, I either reimage myself, or erase/uninstall everything and then run a simple script to dump 1s into a file till it crashes.

If you're really worried people are going to be poking around your laptop, don't use it for personal work. It IS a work machine, after all.

If you "need" to use the work machine for personal work, do it in a VM. You can move the VM off later, and then just overwrite that part of the disk on the host.

That's a heluvan acceleration! Knots == nautical miles per hour

And if you're a US citizen, you're still taxed federally based on how you make and where

Or maybe, just maybe, they don't have any real work to do, and are instead worried they'll lose their cushy government gig, so they make crap up to stay employed

Though I'm not intimately familiar with the business workings of Ancient Babylon (and other civilizations), the vast majority had private enterprise (ie capitalism) in place long before the feudal system

Then wikipedia has failed you - the Tamil Tigers did this, too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/21/newsid_2504000/2504739.stm

It later emerged that a female Tamil Tiger (LTTE) suicide bomber had assassinated Rajiv Gandhi.

Saw a great film about this in college, too