Parking tickets, like red light cameras, and speeding tickets are the responsibility of the driver, not the vehicle owner.

If you lend your car out and it gets a ticket, you don't have to pay the ticket if you can prove that you weren't the one driving at the time.

It's already activated, I'd be more concerned with how it's remaining active for more than 32 minutes without being connected to a planet in orbit of a black hole. And we all know that leads to a serious butt load of problems. :P

Deep Space Nine is a good case study for humanity's future economy. One example is Sisko's Creole Kitchen, the restaurant run by Joseph Sisko, the place is always busy, yet no one pays for anything. Joe runs the place because he loves it, not because of the money it would make him. Jake becomes a writer for the love of writing. Artists work for the sake of their craft, people in Starfleet enter for the opportunities that it presents.

Someone mentioned rent and land values, land is only scarce if you can't leave the planet, millions of humans have migrated to the stars. Cityscapes are far more massive than they are now, and without the need to commute land that is currently uninhabited, could very well have been reclaimed and made into massive housing centers.

To quote Captain Picard from Star Trek: First Contact; "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

Also from the Deep Space Nine episode "In the Cards":
Jake: "I'm Human, I don't have any money."
Nog: "It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement."
Jake: "Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
Nog: "What does that mean?"
Jake: "It means we don't need money!"

After Earth made contact with alien life, society shifted from a monetary based economy to a resource based economy. At the time it was easy to do because the world had been stricken by several massive wars over the last 70 years, that devastated the worlds economy and populations.

The article assumes that the change in economics came with the advent of replicators, but it actually preceded the replicator, by 300 years, give or take. It really makes me wonder if the author is more than a passing viewer of Star Trek.

It's difficult for us, people who have lived our entire lives thinking that money was a requirement of society, to think about doing away with it. We think about who will be garbage men, and street sweepers if there's no pay. Or what would drive a person to devote their time to becoming a doctor if they weren't going to make a fortune with their training. The simple answer is that most people in our society wouldn't do any of that stuff, without a financial reward. But that's because deep down most people are selfish, greedy individuals who focus on what they can better for themselves rather than being concerned how they can be a part of a society striving to better itself.

As to the scut work, that is handled by automated systems of robots.

There's a futurist from Florida, Jacque Fresco, who has been advocating the shift to a resource based economy for years. We're already equipped to provide for every person on the planet, the scarcity we face is in nearly every case artificial and used to playing with pricing and profit margins. One thing preventing it is the pathological need for people to acquire wealth, and that's a sickness that we may never overcome. Also although most of us claim we want equality for everyone, humans have an inherent need to separate into a class structure, in a society without money, financial inequality would be replaced by much more unpleasant class stratifications. And that is something I would really hate to see.

Even though I long to see a society where everyone is provided for, where anyone wishing to go to college can, where money is no longer the only reason most people work, where artificial scarcity is not a constant menace, where banks don't control governments, where millions aren't killed over resources, where no one is homeless or hungry; I've sadly come to the realization that it isn't going to happen in my lifetime, humanity has too far to go before it can be without its money.

I seem to remember reading an article a few years back that concluded that crustaceans lacked the necessary neurology required to feel pain.

This article seems to imply that the hermit crabs are able to sense an irritant and find a new home, not that they feel any pain. I've watched my own hermits climb out of their shells, turn and shake sand out of them, then scoot right back into them. I've even seen starve themselves to death if they're unable to find a suitable new home.

Too bad for every thoughtful man that has a vasectomy there's 15 other morons spreading their genes to innumerable idiot women and spawning an army of little morons to continue the cycle.

@Foreigner1:

Have you ever been bitten by a large aquatic rodent? Beavers are extremely stubborn, and have excellent reflexes, so for your average passer-by to try and get it off the road, would be quite difficult to "shoo" it away, and if they tried to grab it they could very easily end up in the emergency room having their hand reattached.

The best thing they could have done was stopped in front of it, in their car, with the hazard signals on, and blasted their horn at it, that might have convinced it to move, or at least protected from the other traffic, until fish and wildlife could be called, though they might just say "Yeh, so? Run it over, eh."

I don't know about anyone else, but if I saw a Dalek head coming out of a pond near me, I doubt I'd take the time to investigate.

I'd be doing the my best impersonation of Jesus at the Red Sea.

How do you spend $350,000 to renovate and not actually do any renovating?

Seems to me that Mr Schmidt has an agenda that he's working really hard to prove.

A site as important as one of the oldest known "cities" would seems to me worthy of far more study than a single archeologist running one small excavation. 45 stone pillars with hundreds more to go, doesn't seems like a lot of progress for 15 years of work.

Yay! Let's all use recycled tp, and contribute to global warming even more!

News flash, recycling may make you feel good, but aside from keeping trash out of the landfills, it actually uses more energy to produce (poor quality) products than if you used virgin materials.

Pulp forests are fast growing and consume large quantities of carbon dioxide. And until they can be replaced by hemp fields, they're the best option for paper.

And stop whining about old growth forests, the damn hippies destroyed the timber industry in Oregon because of the spotted owl and its supposed old growth habitat. Old growth forests are full of rotting trees, thick under brush, and are disasters just waiting to be sparked off by a lighting strike or an inconsiderate tourist.

I read an article last year about orphaned mortgages, ones that had changed hands so many times that it was unclear who owned them. I'd say it'd be worth the effort for everyone to demand to see their original note, in the chaos that ensued, chances are a large portion of home owners would find that either their note was permanently lost, or orphaned at which point they can petition for a release from the balance of their mortgage.

Considering the BILLIONS of dollars that the banks are getting from the federal government we should all be getting more of a break than what has been proposed.

Mind you, it wouldn't really help me in either situation, I destroyed my inheritance to buy a house that isn't worth what I paid for it anymore. But at least I don't have a mortgage. :P

Well, I could like it if it weren't for the gaping wound full of teeth.

There's a company that makes garage doors, CHI Overhead Doors, that was founded by and is mostly staffed by Amish. The factory is completely off-grid and powered by diesel generators. They have computer controlled machinery, massive steel fabrication systems, even vacuum forming machines. Interestingly though, the Amish employs don't operate the machinery, they have a small staff of Mennonites that handle that. But all the hand labor is done by the Amish. You'd be hard pressed to find better built garage doors.

Let's hear it for the feats that boredom can inspire!