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The key is that this needs to be systemic policy. If the manager is also graded on his ability to "level up" their subordinates, then it is suddenly in *their* best interest, too.

At Amazon, it's called "Hire and Develop the Best", and everyone is graded against it. For people managers it is obvious - your hiring choices need to be good, and you need to make a good effort to develop your team members. For worker types, it's more about mentoring junior staff.

http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node=239365011

It's not just a talking point - everyone really is graded on each of those skills every year.

What happens if this bacteria grows really good at it and starts munching away at everyday items on land?

You get something like Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters .

How different is this than Netflix or Hulu, other than the inclusion of a set top box? Many smart TV's now include Netflix and Hulu capibilities.

The question is will Intel license the tech to TV manufactures to include it along with Netflix and Hulu. If so, what is the future of a dedicated settop box along the lines of Boxee? http://www.amazon.com/Boxee-D-Link-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B0038JE07O

Will it be able to include Hulu and Netflix? If not, I suspect the sales of a single supplier solution for content and hardware will limit it's target demographic. Customers are not looking for another monthly subscription.

For a while Intel did have a streaming service where they provided services for media companies. It steamed the Rush Limbaugh show for a while and other talk radio. The old media services center was on a good fat pipe in Hillsboro Oregon with a link into the backbone in the Qwest hub. If they do provide service, they know how to get a good backbone connection.

As far as 5 cables running into a home, how many homes consume enough content to justify the cables at $50-150/month each. I pay for just internet, bundled with pots to get the discount. The POTS is stripped bare, eg no long distance, as these legacy items have been way surpassed by other survice providers in value. I have 4 other sources of no fee long distance so paying the incumbant their prices for it is a waste of money.

Want must have content does the new kid on the block plan on providing?

CFLs are more like $1.50 each:

http://www.amazon.com/GE-13-Watt-Energy-SmartTM-replacement/dp/B000NISDNU/

Partly because there's been a decreasing number of cases where the scientific consensus is that the use of chimpanzees as animal models is needed, relative to alternatives. Since you need to convince an Institutional Review Board (for any study, not only involving chimps) that your study is necessary, beneficial, and the best choice relative to alternatives when considering both scientific merit and ethics, there are a decreasing number of cases where IRBs approve chimpanzee studies. Cost is also a factor besides IRB issues: if you can do something without chimps, it's usually cheaper to take that option.

Here's a blurb from the National Research Council's 2011 study on the subject, in which they set up a "Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research" to assess the current situation and make recommendations:

While the chimpanzee has been a valuable animal model in past research, most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary, based on the criteria established by the committee, except potentially for two current research uses:

1. Development of future monoclonal antibody therapies will not require the chimpanzee, due to currently available technologies. However, there may be a limited number of monoclonal antibodies already in the development pipeline that may require the continued use of chimpanzees.

2. The committee was evenly split and unable to reach consensus on the necessity of the chimpanzee for the development of a prophylactic hepatitis C virus (HCV) vaccine. Specifically, the committee could not reach agreement on whether a preclinical challenge study using the chimpanzee model was necessary and if or how much the chimpanzee model would accelerate or improve prophylactic HCV vaccine development.

That's from the biomedical-research recommendations; their conclusions on behavior research were that chimpanzee models may still be quite valuable in that area. In addition, they recommended that genomics research using chimpanzee genomes was both valuable and of relatively little ethical concern, so should continue.

You get ten times the light for a given power consumption with LEDs.

Good old fashioned light bulbs are cool when you have power to burn, e.g. automotive headlights. Even there, though, LED modules provide a better experience; they have more controlled color temperature and a far longer lifespan, and can better be tuned to put the light specifically where you want it. The only drawback, as ever, is cost. Both the LED lamp and the enclosure are more complex than just using a good old filament lamp. And for an EV, the power consumption is an issue. Likewise, on a scooter or other small vehicle with small amounts of horsepower, a high beam actually requires measurable input. LED is superior there as well.

Most LED lamps suck eggs, which is why people think they're a bad idea. Get CREE lamps at home despot for the same price as cheap crap lamps, and save your receipts just in case they do fail and you need to take advantage of the ten year warranty. Ten bucks for a 40 watt equivalent, thirteen bucks for a sixty watt equivalent. Dimmable, extremely lamp-like, little larger than a normal lamp (but there are considerations there, which is a shame) and with a great warranty.

As an aside, you can also get a CREE flashlight on Amazon for ten bucks (e.g. FordEx Group 300lm Mini Cree Led Flashlight Torch Adjustable Focus Zoom Light Lamp*) and have it in your hot little hand within a week. Around 280lm on one normal AA, since they have a boost converter. I can run on a basic Eneloop (I don't even own any Eneloop XX, I'm cheap) for weeks of normal use, and by normal I mean that I do my own wrenchin' and need a light for that, I go out in the yard after dark or before dawn semi-regularly, etc.

* (affiliate link. if you don't like me, you know what to do)

I disagree that booth babes represent any form of sexism. What it represents is a form of social injustice where the beautiful people are given opportunities that ugly people could never have. This is a form of prejudice. Ugly people are discriminated against in nearly every aspect of human life. It has been shown that those people who were born beautiful believe that happiness is their birthright and really are much more likely to achieve success financially and just in general. Beautiful people have huge advantages in nearly every aspect of life. Isn't it about time that we started cracking down on such injustice and inequality?

This is an area of life where affirmative action and quotas really could help. The problem isn't with what the booth babes are doing. The problem is that they were hired at all for any job when an ugly person is unemployed or is paid less solely because they are less attractive.

Join me and support true egalitarianism in happiness and overall life experience. Hiring a beautiful person should be treated the same as hiring someone from another country. A company should have to show that:

1. There is no ugly person who can do the job. In the case of booth babes this is almost certainly true which brings us to the next requirement.

2. The job itself that truly does require a beautiful person must be shown to be truly necessary, not just in terms of greater profits for shareholders, but for the greater good of society. Pornogrophy for instance can easily demonstrate a greater good, because it benefits ugly people who would never otherwise get to see a beautiful person without their clothes on. Booth babes might also serve to give ugly people an experience that they might never otherwise have: of interacting with one of the superior or super-race of beautiful people who would certainly ignore them if their jobs did not force such contact.

Prejudice against ugly people should not be tolerated in our modern world. Especially since ugly people are actually the majority. The beautiful people only exist at all because we allow it. It's about time they started to treat their inferiors with a bit more respect. They were born lucky. We were lucky to have been born at all. It's time to even the score.

I disagree that booth babes represent any form of sexism. What it represents is a form of social injustice where the beautiful people are given opportunities that ugly people could never have. This is a form of prejudice. Ugly people are discriminated against in nearly every aspect of human life. It has been shown that those people who were born beautiful believe that happiness is their birthright and really are much more likely to achieve success financially and just in general. Beautiful people have huge advantages in nearly every aspect of life. Isn't it about time that we started cracking down on such injustice and inequality?

This is an area of life where affirmative action and quotas really could help. The problem isn't with what the booth babes are doing. The problem is that they were hired at all for any job when an ugly person is unemployed or is paid less solely because they are less attractive.

Join me and support true egalitarianism in happiness and overall life experience. Hiring a beautiful person should be treated the same as hiring someone from another country. A company should have to show that:

1. There is no ugly person who can do the job. In the case of booth babes this is almost certainly true which brings us to the next requirement.

2. The job itself that truly does require a beautiful person must be shown to be truly necessary, not just in terms of greater profits for shareholders, but for the greater good of society. Pornogrophy for instance can easily demonstrate a greater good, because it benefits ugly people who would never otherwise get to see a beautiful person without their clothes on. Booth babes might also serve to give ugly people an experience that they might never otherwise have: of interacting with one of the superior or super-race of beautiful people who would certainly ignore them if their jobs did not force such contact.

Prejudice against ugly people should not be tolerated in our modern world. Especially since ugly people are actually the majority. The beautiful people only exist at all because we allow it. It's about time they started to treat their inferiors with a bit more respect. They were born lucky. We were lucky to have been born at all. It's time to even the score.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Science-Force-Trainer/dp/B001UZHASY $40 at Amazon, and it's got a Star Wars theme to boot. EEG is literally child's play these days.

hired muscular guys to stand around shirtless

Were the booth babes topless this year? Bring on those pics!

I'm not sure what you are on about with objectification. Beautiful people of both sexes are desired and admired and, frankly, worshipped as superior creatures. I've never met a beautiful girl, at least in the US, who didn't view me as obviously inferior and not worthy of even the slightest glance. If there's any prejudice it's the beautiful people turning their little noses up in the air and sticking with their own kind.

I believe there is a strong parallel with aristocrats and peasants of a few centuries ago. The beautiful people are the new aristocracy. Only other beautiful people are worthy of their attention and interest. Ugly people are viewed with the same contempt and disgust that the nobles / aristocrats of the middle ages viewed peasants. Any interaction with them is avoided at all costs. It even dirties them slightly even to talk to them. Just like the aristocracy, the beautiful people are born that way and will retain that sense of privilege and superiority for their entire lives. The beautiful people consider success and happiness to be their birthright and they are not incorrect in that belief.

hired muscular guys to stand around shirtless

Were the booth babes topless this year? Bring on those pics!

I'm not sure what you are on about with objectification. Beautiful people of both sexes are desired and admired and, frankly, worshipped as superior creatures. I've never met a beautiful girl, at least in the US, who didn't view me as obviously inferior and not worthy of even the slightest glance. If there's any prejudice it's the beautiful people turning their little noses up in the air and sticking with their own kind.

I believe there is a strong parallel with aristocrats and peasants of a few centuries ago. The beautiful people are the new aristocracy. Only other beautiful people are worthy of their attention and interest. Ugly people are viewed with the same contempt and disgust that the nobles / aristocrats of the middle ages viewed peasants. Any interaction with them is avoided at all costs. It even dirties them slightly even to talk to them. Just like the aristocracy, the beautiful people are born that way and will retain that sense of privilege and superiority for their entire lives. The beautiful people consider success and happiness to be their birthright and they are not incorrect in that belief.

"Or you keep throwing things at it until it gets better by itself and the psychiatrist takes credit for it."

Yeah, it is ironic how homeopaths are villified but psychiatrists are celebrated, when the placebo effect is strong in both... Must have a better PR firm?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
Quoting Marcia Angell:
        http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)

Bruce Levine's book goes into detail on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711

Also:
"Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why."
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all
"Now, after 15 years of experimentation, he has succeeded in mapping many of the biochemical reactions responsible for the placebo effect, uncovering a broad repertoire of self-healing responses. Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol."

The mind/brain/body/spirit/etc. indeed is amazing...

I've done it with one of those world's-cheapest four-port USB2 hubs that has the molded foot-long pigtail and the really square transparent case.

And I'm doing it now with this hub which was recommended for RPi noobs when I bought mine.

It does pain me to run a hub that's nearly as expensive as the computer, but I was going for the zero-frustration approach. "World's cheapest" does appeal to the low-cost solutions driver in me, though - got a link?

After all, Microsoft is handing over all of the zero-day exploits and they are free to peruse the source to the Linux and BSD kernels.

We don't think they're attacking every system - we think they're attacking the high-value targets where the largest number of people are (Google, Facebook, etc.) They're storing away all that information for later prosecution of political enemies.

If they were in every system in the world, we'd know about it. Lots of paranoid people run IDS's, some even with one-way isolated passive monitoring. NSA can't break that.

What the OP is proposing is that they may be in github, or if they aren't, it's a high-value target, so he wants to get out of the way of the spies (and the spies have spies, some of whom will sell his trade secrets to his competition).

The silver lining here is a potential resurgence for open source and end-to-end Internet solutions. Who wants to bet if they have taps on Amazon and Rackspace?

No, you are that which experiences those memories and personality.

Ah, "you" are the homunculus. But does the homunculus have its own homunculus?

There is no identifiable part of the brain that "experiences" what other parts of the brain do. Your brain does a lot more than just the things you're consciously aware of.

http://www.amazon.com/The-User-Illusion-Cutting-Consciousness/dp/0140230122/

Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services

Now you've heard. Of course the Soviets didn't limit themselves to such bourgeois crimes.

Katyn massacre

No indeed.

Soviets Face Up to the Gulag
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened

A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
The Soviet Story (2008)

There is a lot that is hiding in Soviet history.

The Great Terror: A Reassessment

I think one of the most shocking things for people that believe the United States is the great evil in the world is to get a serious look into Soviet history.

The peoples of Eastern Europe are great peoples, but they long labored under the most oppressive of governments.

Um... $50 dollar routers have been done, for a few years now.

I know. I have one myself. But the cool thing about the Pi is you could run whatever software you like, or even write it yourself, and it would be open source. I'm frequently reading about vulnerabilities showing up in off the shelf routers. With a software solution on a Pi, you could patch and upgrade it yourself. And if it didn't offer the features you wanted, you could add them.

The cited router, runs Linux, with several distros with prepackaged TOR modules available. See openWrt, DDWrt, Tomato and more. Everything you suggest was done on the WRT54G 5 or more years ago. Raspberry Pi offers nothing new. It is under powered, lacks ports or WiFi, doesn't have established router software support... There is no advantage to using a Pi for a router over the linked router. None.

Um... $50 dollar routers have been done, for a few years now.

I know. I have one myself. But the cool thing about the Pi is you could run whatever software you like, or even write it yourself, and it would be open source. I'm frequently reading about vulnerabilities showing up in off the shelf routers. With a software solution on a Pi, you could patch and upgrade it yourself. And if it didn't offer the features you wanted, you could add them.

I've always thought the Raspberry Pi would be a pontentially much more useful device if it had two Ethernet ports instead of one. It could be a NAT box, Firewall, TOR proxy, or any number of other things. By separating these functions form the computers you're trying to protect, you potentially have a lot more security. Dare I dream there will be a model with two Ethernet ports sometime in the future?

Um... $50 dollar routers have been done, for a few years now.

Can you provide an example of something that the Soviets did that the United States has not done?

Slaughtering 20 million of their own citizens, and that's just under Stalin.

While you're formulating your answer, consider that the United States is the only country to nuke another country.

That's true, it ended WW2 with several million fewer casualties than an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have allowed.

We used our own prisoners and citizens as guinnea pigs to conduct experiments in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.

Common practice at the time, as reprehensible as we now view it. We also treated our prisoners significantly better than the Soviets powers did. Also bear in mind that things like the nasty side affects from radiation simply were not known at that time.

We engaged in witch hunts, like McCarthy appearing before Congress to say he "held in his hands" a list of known communist co-conspirators.

This doesn't even count as a pimple on the ass that is known as the Gulag's. Tens of millions of people were sentenced and countless millions were killed for political dissidence.

I'm not sure your claim that the USSR and the USA were significantly different in their propaganda campaigns

They were, and to be frank the US really sucks at propaganda and the Soviets were masters at it.

http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
" Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
"In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a "droud" in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brain. In the Known Space universe, wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting themselves in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of Known Space humanity without self-control. Wireheading need not use an actual brain implant; the pleasure centre can be remotely activated by a small device called a "tasp" (important in the Ringworld novels)."

Also related about "Supernormal Stimuli":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
"Our instincts -- for food, sex, or territorial protection -- evolved for life on the savannahs 10,000 years ago, not in today's world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects, from candy to pornography to atomic weapons -- that gratify these gut instincts with often-dangerous results. Animal biologists coined the term "supernormal stimuli" to describe imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and exert a stronger pull than real things, such as soccer balls that geese prefer over eggs. Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett applies this concept to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment, demonstrating how supernormal stimuli are a major cause of today's most pressing problems, including obesity and war. However, Barrett does more than show how unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. She also reminds us that by exercising self-control we can rein them in, potentially saving ourselves and civilization."

And on overcoming "The Pleasure Trap":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Like moths to the flame... Just because we can do something, does not mean we should. That said, people will do this. Not sure what the outcome will ultimately be, but the "natural selection" point above, to select for people who do not do this, may well come into play. And that may also be part of the adaptive evolutionary value of religion, to scare us away from some unhealthy things and attract us to some healthy things (whatever else one can say about specific dogmas):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions

So, maybe the only people who will survive being overstimulated by electrical thunderbolts will be those with a deep abiding religious feeling that such a life is wrongly lived?

I was about to post the same thing. The scene in Niven's The Ringworld Engineers where Louis Wu is shown to have become a "wirehead", someone who becomes addicted to directly stimulating the pleasure centre of the brain and losing interest in all else in life, was one of the creepiest things I've ever read.

Doesn't work; human brains are far more complex than rat brains. Researchers actually experimented with similar electrode based stimulation in humans some time ago. While there were marked changes in behavior (the descriptions I read were suggestive of a reduction in inhibition), it was nothing like Niven's description of wireheads.

However, I must say that the Soviet regime in was in some ways really better than you've accustomed to believe, that is for sure. And, in some ways the US has commited much more horrendous misdeeds.

That would be more meaningful if you at least gave some examples.

1. War crimes and supporting horrendous regimes abroad: US has a much worse track record in that aspect (read about Nicaragua, Colombia, etc. etc.). (Even if you take into account Afghanistan, Chekhoslovakia, etc.)
2. Untill the middle of 1970s the USSR really existed to educate and enchance lifes of it's citizens. The drive of Russian Revolution was still there. Read something about Soviet education, Soviet health care. At the same time USSR was really undemocratic. But it was not so scary to live in as you'd like to believe.
3. You really need to understand how bad was the state of Russian Empire before revolution... To see that USSR has fixed lot's of problems.

I'd like to elaborate on this, but I need some work to do. Still, I hope you've grasped the idea.

I was about to post the same thing. The scene in Niven's The Ringworld Engineers where Louis Wu is shown to have become a "wirehead", someone who becomes addicted to directly stimulating the pleasure centre of the brain and losing interest in all else in life, was one of the creepiest things I've ever read.

...(beyond develop hobbies, spend time with family)...

Develop hobbies and spend time with your family.

Programming (or learning to program if you don't already know how) is a productive hobby. Get a train set. Repaint your house. Buy and restore a classic car by hand (although that can be quite expensive). Go hiking/kayaking/skiing/biking/fishing. Learn to play the guitar/bass/drums/piano/sax/trumpet/sousaphone. Have a barbeque. Build a barbeque. Go geocaching. Go geohashing . And get your kids/parents/spouse/siblings/friends/neighbors involved.

I only wish I have free time for these things

It is called "Gang Leader for a Day". Good read.

http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=014311493X

Thankfully, in 20 years we'll have rich trust-fund hipster-kids developing on film "before it was cool."

Already happening. My local bookstore, unable to make much of a profit on books alone and therefore offering all kinds of hipster items, does a brisk trade in the retro film cameras from Lomography. Lord knows where they develop the film, though. (Unless setting up your own darkroom is a hipster fad I've overlooked.)

You can make a 9mm SMG without a lathe, actually. It's surprising how many stock parts (tubes etc) can be appropriated to use in such a project.

It's smoothbore, but for this kind of gun I don't think that matters much.

I've tried other headsets in the past - they all fail on wind noise.

I use Cy-Fi Bluetooth speakers when I bike. Unfortunately they've quit making them, they're hard to find, and even though there's tons of Bluetooth speakers out there now unlike when these were made, none of them are bike mountable now. Sure you can do your own hacks, but built in water resistance isn't a given on the rest of them and making your own tends to limit the sound. These support calls - good enough to say "I'm on my bike, may want to call later." At which time they'll try to talk to you anyways then complain they can't hear you for crap. At which time you remind them what you said the first time. They actually sound great on the road.

I have some Plantronics stereo headphones that completely sucked balls on my Evo 4G WiMax version, despite the above Cy-Fi speakers totally rocking with them and about three different models of Jawbone doing really well with it also. They are awesome with my Evo 4G LTE. Why they sucked so bad for the last phone and not this one I don't know, could be Bluetooth version I don't know. What I do know is it's the first headset I've ever had that could work with voice commands and other calling apps, but it didn't because the microphone sucks so bad.

I think the one thing those executive understand better than most is market trends. Their lives are immersed in it looking at graphs, tables and projects. They're just a wee bit smarter and knowledgeable than you make them out to be. An interesting book to read that spends a lot of time in the tech world would be The Innovators Dilema.

Part of this is also psychology. We're wired to dislike being wrong, especially in public - it indicates to others that we aren't fit for reproduction. Most people would rather dig their heels in than admit they're wrong (viz: any government official).

You first have to pop the person out of heuristic mode and into systemic mode. The easiest way to do this is to phrase the information as a question. Best is constructing the question in a "leading" way to encourage them to choose your side of an issue..

So for example:

"Would you support the ban on Child Pornography if it resulted in more children being molested?"

(CP being the most emotional hot-button issue I can think of.)

(For more info, "The Psychology of Selling" has a lot of down-to-Earth information on convincing people.)

Are there no limits to OEMs cheaping out on parts? Really? They can't just buy an existing product? They have to have their awful vendors do it for slightly cheaper despite typically epically screwing it up? Here's the thing they just invented except oops, this one's over a year old and is faster and more respectable.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227744
And don't forget the fastest single drive in the entire world:
http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Z-Drive-Series-Maximum-ZD4CM84-HH-300G/dp/B005HU0KCG

5" tablet :)

IIRC they did more than this, including some overburden loosening for coal mines, and some early fracking. (What's the Russian for "Atoms for Peace"?) But ANFO and dynamite are cheaper and come in a better range of sizes, they concluded. And fracking had to be done hydraulically, which required better steel.

Besides, the N thing upset the lunatics. After the Cuban missile crisis, the Russians eventually decided it was better to keep things cool on that topic.

Have you ever actually listened to George Carlin?

Yes. Did you know that he has a long history of releasing recorded comedy routines on various media? They are available on Amazon.

Have you seen his "Al Sleet the "Hippy Dippy Weatherman" routine?

He was still doing it years later: George Carlin 'The Hippy Dippy Weatherman'

That is how he made his living. Could he be insightful? At times, sure. A philosopher? To the extent that anybody can be, in an informal sense, sure. But he was certainly no Buddha or Jesus.

And he got some things very wrong that should have been obvious. After Saddam's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in 1990, the UN took action against him. The US led a military coalition of 34 nations, including the armed forces of multiple Arab nations fighting as part of the coalition, to remove Saddam's army from Kuwait and restore Kuwait's sovereignty. There is no question about who was the aggressor, or why Saddam's occupying army in Kuwait was being attacked, and UN approval was explicit and strong. And how did Carlin respond?

Carlin: Most overrated comic ever?

Carlin had a coherent analysis once, but by the mid 80s if he was still the boldest standup guy out there, never missing a chance to attack U.S. racist-imperialism abroad (his 1991 HBO special made a lot of his audience nervous and/or confused when he dismissed the Gulf War as one more case of us bombing brown people because they’re brown — which he distinguished from WWII, the last time we bombed white people, which because they were muscling in on our game) , it was in the context of an increasingly cranky and humorless misanthropy. When you spend a fair chunk of your time complaining about the annoying habits of the people around you in various settings, no matter how reasonable your arguments, it makes your more overt politics seem too damn abstract, i.e. why exactly does what the U.S. or organized religion does bother you if you don’t like people to begin with? (Bill Maher also suffers from this contradiction, never mind Lewis Black.)

He reduces the US action to racism, overlooking the fact that the US had many allied nations of the same group, Arabs, and was acting to restore the rightful government of an Arab nation after an attack by a "brother Arab." Wrong. Misleading. Dishonest.

That doesn't mean that he didn't go after other groups and ideas as well.

CARLIN: Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling. It's what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn't anybody understand that? Interfering with nature. Over 90%, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They're extinct. We didn't kill them all. They just disappeared. That's what nature does. We're so self-important, so self-important. Everybody is going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all, save the planet. What?

CARLIN: I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths, people trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. There is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The plane

Learn.

The Chinese should read this book.

It's an eye opener. HINTS: Technology and man power aren't the problems. And dealing with mosquitoes hasn't changed very much in the last century.

Also, for you program managers, it's an AWESOME read and helps when you're crying yourself to sleep from the mean nasty things your developers say about you.

Yes, it's pretty slow; yes, there are limits. If you need more, then you need to pay a little more. Compared to the situation 5 years ago, costs are way, way down.

It's been a while since I read it, but "Showstopper" is a pretty good history of Cutler & Windows NT: http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0759285780/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1370920903&sr=8-6&keywords=showstopper

If the submitter found the cause of the problem with "a little scratching" I doubt that the ones who hired him are in the dark as to what the problem is. What they need is outside confirmation that absolves them of responsibility. It may be productive to create a list of best practices for IT managers (preferably one from a generally accepted outside source) and see how the guy stacks up. If you want places to look for this, I suggest you start with CIO Magazine and maybe get a book or two on the subject. (Here is one. There are plenty of others.)

Just keep in mind that, if it works out, you might find yourself making a career of this. There is no dearth of incompetent IT managers out there, nor of bosses looking for a good excuse to give them the axe. Whether they deserve it or not.

Your superficial arguments are quite unconvincing. For an in depth analysis of the court case, I recommend that you read the excellent book Judging the Supreme Court by Clarke Rountree. Looking beyond the question of whether the justices should have ruled differently, you can get a pretty good idea of how they came up with their rulings. The case that the conservative justices made their rulings for political reasons rather than using unbiased legal interpretations is pretty overwhelming. The justification provided for the majority (conservative's) opinion uncharacteristically used liberal arguments and, more damningly, claimed that this decision should not be used as precedent for other cases - a dead giveaway that they did not themselves believe the justifications for the ruling that they were giving.

Arguments can be made over how the justices ought to have ruled, but there is little question that the decision made in Bush v Gore was a political one and not one motivated by honest interpretation of the law. I will forevermore think of the Supreme Court as a corrupt political body whose rulings deserve no respect intellectually, although we are legally bound by them.

I'm not a wine snob, but I know there are certain things that sometimes you *can't* replicate.

After decades of analysis, we still can't build a violin as good as a Stradivarius. We still can't fully replicate Damascus Steel (OK, maybe the lack of a living slave in which to quench the blade is part of that :-P). I'd argue that fine liquors -- wines, whiskeys, etc... fall into that category. I'd say it's almost an art form.

I'll admit it, I have no evidence for that last assertion/argument. But I'm a romantic at heart,

As a fellow romantic, I must tell you, that's your problem. I thought the same thing until I read The Wine Trials, in which the authors ran blind taste tests, with cheaper wines often winning. For example, Domaine Ste. Michelle ($12) consistently outranked Dom Perignon ($150). In the 2007-08 experiment, the 507 tasters "represented many different segments of the wine-buying world. . . . Some were wine experts, others everyday wine drinkers. They included New York City sommeliers (wine stewards) and Harvard professors, winemakers from France, neuroscientists and artists, top chefs and college students, doctors and lawyers, wine importers and wine store owners, novelists and economists, TV comedy writers and oenologists (wine scientists), bartenders and grad students, 21-year-olds and 88-year-olds, socialists and conservatives, heavy drinkers and lightweights."

As for Stradivarius, "the many blind tests from 1817 to the present have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis," so sayeth Wikipedia, but you can consult its citations at the bottom.

On the other hand, I recently read that there ain't nothing like Roman concrete.

The Proteus operation is not one of Hogan's better works. If you are willing to give him another try, try Voyage from Yesteryear, The Two Faces of Tomorrow, or Code of the Lifemaker, which are all about post-scarcity technologies in various ways as hard sci-fi. It is the post-scarcity aspects that are similar, even if Hogan's are much more near-term.

The thing about writers is, it may take decades for people to learn about the prose that stands the test of time. So, I guess most authors may be old by the time that happens.

An on-line page turner for me by Roger Williams, even if too graphically violent:
http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/

Bound to be other great voices out there.

I like some of Peter F. Hamilton's stuff, although again it is too graphically violent for my tastes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reality_Dysfunction

I really like Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismatrix

I read somewhere that modern sci-fi is so hard to write because it gets boring because things are so safe (or just crazy -- e.g. anything goes nanotech). Larry Niven faced that and supposedly threw away a lot of his stories about the "Teela" gene time of lucky people who won a birth lottery, because they were too boring. Space exploration to other planets like Star Trek linked to what people knew of exploring new continents and islands on Earth. What can really connect to what people know when talking about deeply different virtual reality and nanotech and robotics? It's probably pretty hard to write a story interesting to humans.

Even Iain Banks struggled with that, having to write stories in ages when the human form was popular in the Culture (he says sometimes it was not popular) and writing about "Special Circumstances" having adventures on non-Culture worlds.

I've pretty much stopped buying sci-fi novel though (compared to buying one or two dozen a year a couple decades ago). The current ongoing changes are pretty much too exciting as they are. :-) Hard to recall the last new novel I've bought, although I've reread some old ones...

Sarah Zettel is an interesting author (blending Islamic ideas with science fiction themes, example, a woman starship captain who wears a burka and goes through all sorts of hoops to keep correct by the law -- the core theme of the book is about AI though):
http://www.amazon.com/Fools-War-Sarah-Zettel/dp/0446602930

Baen might have younger novelists somewhere?
http://www.baen.com/

For some people nothing says "appeal to emotion" like FBI arrest reports I guess.

Here are some great resources for anyone confused by information at "911truth.org" and would like more information.

'Debunking 9/11 Myths': Nano-thermite dust found near Ground Zero (Photos)
Debunking 9/11 Myths: conspiracy plots are sheer fantasy

NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Resources for debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Debunking 9/11 Bomb Theories

The Truthers Are Out There

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

So until the insurance companies start requiring HD dashcams, we might not see them since the demand for them nearly anywhere else is naturally going to be weak.

My insurance company doesn't require a dashcam; nor it even offers a discount. I doubt that they even know about such cutting edge technology.

But I purchased one and use it daily. It's an HD dashcam, made in China (of course.) It records for 8 hours of HD onto a 32 GB SD card. I have it permanently plugged in, and it operates automatically.

I understand that in case of an accident it could be useful. But the primary purpose of the camera, for me, is to just record whatever happens around, for any reason. If I want the recording, it's there. If I don't want it, no problem - it will be overwritten in 8 hours. So if a UFO, or a bear, suddenly shows in front of my car, I don't need to do anything special to record it. I saw pheasants in the road, chickens, deer, turkeys, pigs... Sometimes you just want to understand what turns you took to get somewhere.

Could you play a NES game on SNES?

yes

I just read this in a neuroscience textbook published last year.

Look to answer your challenge global warming. It's beyond ridiculous what's going on there. The fossil fuel industries are not just using the same tactics the tobacco companies used to deny the cigarette - cancer link, they're literally using the exact same personalities who are still alive and still doing industry's bidding.

If you want a concrete example of a desperately needed regulation being derailed through an industry's political efforts , then this is the atom heart mother of all examples.

I defy you or anyone else , irrespective of their pre-existing beliefs, the strengths of those beliefs and disinclination to believe anything else to read Merchants of Doubt and not come away with the absolute certain knowledge that carbon emissions caused, human invoked, global warming is real and the industries involved are systematically and knowingly lying about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

As far as industry input goes, it was the Republicans who in concert with industry thought up cap and trade- a market based approach to emissions reduction incentives. When the Democrats went along with the idea, the Republicans abandoned it (! ! !) and started in with the suicidal denier shit.

You can always add one via bluetooth: http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Smartphones-iPhone/dp/B00512Z28W

Fermat's Enigma by SImon Singh
The book covers many interesting figures (pun intended) that contributed directly or indirectly to the solution.