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Let me present you this new technology. It's called "The Internet". You can use it to look for answers to all your questions*.

*: For a fully immersive experience, all your questions should start with "nude pics of "

Ignoring the fact that it's broken and incompetently written, it also has a very unstable API.

Add to that the ridiculous feature overlap between jQuery and vanilla JS and it's clear that such a fit would be very uncomfortable.

I use Google Reader for syncing all my news and important links.

Samsung S4, unlocked price: $699..

Strangely enough it's actually $649 you seem to have found a vendor on amazon who is inflating the price... (or perhaps thats a 32gb model?)
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=samsung_galaxy_s4&feature=device-featured
the htc one is a mere $599 for their 32 gb model....
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=htc_one&feature=device-featured

What in the world are you smoking, and why aren't you sharing? Also, do you understand that the Nexus phones are sold without profit, and even support costs built in? Google themselves have said that multiple times. It's the cost of hardware, and that is it. Have a think about it. Why would someone essentially do what an a "dump" of the Nexus hardware?

Interestingly enough the nexus phones aren't sold without profit, in fact the nexus 4 has ~$150 profit. They just aren't sold at ridiculous levels of profit... Note that price is based on a tear down and the price of components.

Samsung S4, unlocked price: $699..

Strangely enough it's actually $649 you seem to have found a vendor on amazon who is inflating the price... (or perhaps thats a 32gb model?)
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=samsung_galaxy_s4&feature=device-featured
the htc one is a mere $599 for their 32 gb model....
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=htc_one&feature=device-featured

What in the world are you smoking, and why aren't you sharing? Also, do you understand that the Nexus phones are sold without profit, and even support costs built in? Google themselves have said that multiple times. It's the cost of hardware, and that is it. Have a think about it. Why would someone essentially do what an a "dump" of the Nexus hardware?

Interestingly enough the nexus phones aren't sold without profit, in fact the nexus 4 has ~$150 profit. They just aren't sold at ridiculous levels of profit... Note that price is based on a tear down and the price of components.

Besides, OSC's SF books have nothing to do with his views on a totally orthogonal societal issue.

Not so. Enchantment is about pre-ordained heterosexual marriage and the struggle of the Christian partners against pagan deities. It's a thinly-veiled showcase of his beliefs.

Boycotting the former because of the latter is called an ad hominem. Case in point, a lot of people enjoy Disney movies and Ford cars despite Walt Disney and Henry Ford being nasty antisemitic pro-nazi nutjobs.

No, boycotting the business of someone whose beliefs you despise is called the free market. Christians do it all the time. Whether or not someone can enjoy a movie is incidental to whether or not they choose to do so. Personally, I boycotted the movie Powder because the director was a convicted child molester. I don't give a shit whether or not the movie was any good. Disney knew of his history when they hired him, and I won't give them a dime of my money for that product.

... which works for local communications even when the internet itself is down. Importantly, this is an application that already exists. Plus everything we're doing is open source and we'll never lock any features behind a paywall.

I've been working on Serval's software for a couple of years now building the core feature set; encrypted calling and messaging, distributed phone number lookups, file distribution, software updates and installs in the field...

But since we're initially targeting android phones, we're stuck with the range limitations of Wi-Fi. So we're trying to fund the design and manufacture of a pocket sized device with much longer range (totally shameless plug).

There's still a few missing features in our software that we'll need to finish before we call it version 1.0. But with a enough funding I could easily build a P2P directory to provide services across the internet. With no centrally controlled servers at all.

I also recently switched back from google-chrome to firefox. In my case, there were two reasons:
- google-chrome memory consumption was enormous. It also grow over time and with the number of opened tabs so i had to restart my browser periodicaly otherwise it slowed to crawl before long.
- google-chrome is horrible at solving user-reported bugs. Developers usualy don't even ackowledge them or comment on them. For example this bug is 2 years old, affect great number of users, is easy to fix but it's still unconfirmed.

WebODF uses Closure Compiler to do type checking and has lots of unit tests. This rigorous checking is essential if you want to write a serious project in pure JavaScript.

The 2nd amendment is because we didn't have a standing military at the time, nor did most parts of the US have any law enforcement of note. Having those firearms at that time served a legitimate need.

Nice to see that you're pretty much completely ignorant of the reasons behind the 2nd amendment.

Actually, there are a -lot- of reasons that have been stated / opined as having been behind the 2nd amendment by scholars that seem to have put a bit more effort into their thoughts than you have:

• * To preserve slavery: http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery, and http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letter-the-real-reason-for-the-second-amendment-protection-of/article_0cb7886a-653c-11e2-9962-001a4bcf887a.html
• * Rawle believed its purpose was to check government's "inordinate pursuit of power": http://books.google.com/books?id=akEbAAAAYAAJ
• * Blackstone covered some ground with a self defense argument: http://davidkopel.com/2A/LawRev/19thcentury.htm
• * Spooner believed its purpose was to counter "government tyranny": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#cite_note-141
• * Carl Bogus, in the UC Davis Law Review, makes a strong case for the intent being to assure States that Congress couldn't disarm their militias: http://www.saf.org/lawreviews/bogus2.htm

The bottom line is that there exist a multitude of opinions, from scholars that actually back what they say up with decent arguments (you didn't quite make it into that group this time, hedwards), and cold fjord's post falls right into the middle of the range. I would say that making a single-line blanket statement of opinion as fact, then telling cold fjord that -he- is ignorant is laughable.

BTW- cold ford, I'm moderating tonight so posting as AC, but I -did- read your prior posts, and I guess you're not a shill. :-)

Google says they did the extra padding to create a "unified experience" for all. Meaning us normal users get to suffer because we somehow need to have the same interface as people using tablets. Like you, I'm going back to Firefox as my primary browser, or Waterfox to be exact.

But a cyclist running a stop sign has a much better read on the situation because he can actually see and hear what is around him.

I always love this theory.

I drive a convertible with the top down, meaning I can see and hear what is around me. So do I get to run stop lights, too?

[...] drivers don't seem to recognize that when they get all pissy because they just saw a cyclist run a stop sign.

Frankly, what drivers get pissy about isn't so much bicyclists running stop signs or stop lights. What makes motorists pissy is bicyclists who run stop signs and stop lights, get injured, and the bicycling community cries out about how dangerous it is on the road because cars keep hitting them and how something needs to be done because bicyclists are so vulnerable.

In these cases, what needs to be done is for bicyclists to stop at stop signs and stop lights, like all other road users. If bicyclists are so vulnerable, why do they insist on tempting fate by running red lights and stop signs? Perhaps if they did more to protect themselves--maybe starting with not running red lights and stop signs--it would be helpful.

There are definitely "road rage" incidents with bicycles. There are definitely idiots out on the road who figure they're going to pick on a bicyclist for doing things that are perfectly legal (eg, taking the lane). There are drivers who don't pay adequate attention while driving--there was one recently where the driver "accidentally drifted into the bicycle lane while going around a turn" (ie, she was texting and not paying attention to the road). When I'm out on my bicycle, that's what I worry about, because I have no control over that and I'd love to see something done about that.

But idiots who run stop signs and get hit by cars? I have no pity for them. They could have saved their own life by following the law.

Talk about a display of ignorance. How many cyclists have you seen run stop signs and red lights? How many of them did you see get hit by a car because of that?

I bet it's zero, isn't it?

So why the hell do you conclude cyclists get hit because they and only they violate laws?

Never really ridden a bicycle on roads, have you? I guess that explains your complete ignorance.

The ten or so cyclists who I personally know that have been hit were all hit while just riding along the side of the road - either from behind or by a car pulling in front of them. Hell, one guy I know has been hit three times. He got a new $5000+ bike out of it every time - because the DRIVER was at fault. Each time.

Imagine that.

Drivers pull out in front of cyclists because the drivers are clueless - "It's gotta be slow. it's only a bike".

Drivers get impatient, pull past a cyclist then immediately turn right. Happens so often it has a name: "right hook".

Drivers open doors right in front of cyclists - happens so often it has a name, too: "doored". I bet your ignorant of that, too, right?

Please, quit displaying your ignorance.

And why should cyclists in general be subject to vehicular assault because humans are scofflaws? Would you as a driver attempt to run a random, innocent driver off the road simply because you saw another driver run a stop sign last week?

No?

THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CONDONE SUCH BEHAVOIR TOWARDS CYCLISTS, YOU HYPOCRITICAL EVIL JACKASS?!?!!?

But a cyclist running a stop sign has a much better read on the situation because he can actually see and hear what is around him.

I always love this theory.

I drive a convertible with the top down, meaning I can see and hear what is around me. So do I get to run stop lights, too?

[...] drivers don't seem to recognize that when they get all pissy because they just saw a cyclist run a stop sign.

Frankly, what drivers get pissy about isn't so much bicyclists running stop signs or stop lights. What makes motorists pissy is bicyclists who run stop signs and stop lights, get injured, and the bicycling community cries out about how dangerous it is on the road because cars keep hitting them and how something needs to be done because bicyclists are so vulnerable.

In these cases, what needs to be done is for bicyclists to stop at stop signs and stop lights, like all other road users. If bicyclists are so vulnerable, why do they insist on tempting fate by running red lights and stop signs? Perhaps if they did more to protect themselves--maybe starting with not running red lights and stop signs--it would be helpful.

There are definitely "road rage" incidents with bicycles. There are definitely idiots out on the road who figure they're going to pick on a bicyclist for doing things that are perfectly legal (eg, taking the lane). There are drivers who don't pay adequate attention while driving--there was one recently where the driver "accidentally drifted into the bicycle lane while going around a turn" (ie, she was texting and not paying attention to the road). When I'm out on my bicycle, that's what I worry about, because I have no control over that and I'd love to see something done about that.

But idiots who run stop signs and get hit by cars? I have no pity for them. They could have saved their own life by following the law.

Talk about a display of ignorance. How many cyclists have you seen run stop signs and red lights? How many of them did you see get hit by a car because of that?

I bet it's zero, isn't it?

So why the hell do you conclude cyclists get hit because they and only they violate laws?

Never really ridden a bicycle on roads, have you? I guess that explains your complete ignorance.

The ten or so cyclists who I personally know that have been hit were all hit while just riding along the side of the road - either from behind or by a car pulling in front of them. Hell, one guy I know has been hit three times. He got a new $5000+ bike out of it every time - because the DRIVER was at fault. Each time.

Imagine that.

Drivers pull out in front of cyclists because the drivers are clueless - "It's gotta be slow. it's only a bike".

Drivers get impatient, pull past a cyclist then immediately turn right. Happens so often it has a name: "right hook".

Drivers open doors right in front of cyclists - happens so often it has a name, too: "doored". I bet your ignorant of that, too, right?

Please, quit displaying your ignorance.

And why should cyclists in general be subject to vehicular assault because humans are scofflaws? Would you as a driver attempt to run a random, innocent driver off the road simply because you saw another driver run a stop sign last week?

No?

THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CONDONE SUCH BEHAVOIR TOWARDS CYCLISTS, YOU HYPOCRITICAL EVIL JACKASS?!?!!?

Sure, great if you're a hosting company or iTunes but is that really enough of a savings for the amount of change needed to implement it for the rest of us?

I'm not sure you quite understand what "the rest of us" means. "The rest of us" do not read HTTP headers (and even fewer do it without a tool that is converting it into a more readable format anyway). When browser makers boast a 5% speed up (source) then I would say yes 10%-20% is enough to warrant someone implementing it.

Additionally- how do you think that plaintext gets transmitted?! Your tool is already converting from a binary protocol to a human readable format. Now it will be able to use less binary to convey the same information.

I'll just leave this here.

i will be riding and walking against traffic out of self-preservation, and will continue to advise others to do the same

Sure, do whatever you want, but please don't advise others. What you're doing is dangerous and illegal. Here's what others say:

Is it safer for bicyclists to ride with traffic or to ride against traffic?

Bicyclists should ride with traffic. One of the keys to safe bicycling is to be as predictable and as conspicuous as possible so that motorists always know you are there and can predict what you are going to do. By riding against traffic -- especially on the sidewalk -- you make yourself almost invisible to motorists turning at intersections and driveways who may not be expecting or looking for road users coming from your direction. Indeed, as many as one in four bicycle/motor vehicle collisions involve a rider who is either riding against traffic and/or riding on the sidewalk.

In a lengthy article explaining why riding the wrong way against traffic is dangerous, author Ken Kifer explores the three principle dangers:

• Turning motorists are not looking where wrong-way riders are riding.
• The motorist and bicyclist have limited time and little space in which to react to each others' presence.
• The closing speed of a bicyclist and motorist riding head on into each other is higher than if the bicyclist and motorist were traveling in the same direction.

He also points out that riding with traffic decreases the number of vehicles passing you, and doesn't bring you into conflict with bicyclists who are riding the right way with traffic!

There are many, many others sites with similar information: http://www.capitalbikeshare.com/news/2012/02/24/never-ride-against-traffic or simply Google: bicycle ride "(with|against)" traffic

If sina.com (and online news portals sohu.com and netease.com which all carry the same piece) are not major Chinese news sources, I don't know what can be. Further the original sina.com link is contributed by Globe Times which is a subsidiary of People's Daily and is considered more pro-government than its parent. PD's website also carries the same news. And why is the re-posting of BBC article even logically relevant to this discussion of censorship here?

Clearly another victim of Department of Education!

When I search for GOSSIP using https, google directs me to a results page that has GET data in the url. One of the entries in the get request is: "q=GOSSIP". Im not sure, but I dont think that GET data embeded in the URL is encrypted, just the content of POST requests and the response data from the server. Maybe I am wrong, but I think this shows that it is non-trivial to see exactly what you type directly to search in the https://google.com/ homepage.

Unfortunately for you, the Buckeye State managed to defeat a stricter-than-Walker bill and the state is still doing fine. It also helps that the Republicans here know well enough to leave labor relations issues alone lest they incur a third 1958-level event.

If you want an example of how labor and business can cooperate, Ohio would be one of the better examples. Certain must-pass bills that are considered business-friendly in other states (the ALEC-written, multiply deployed Walker bill as well as the Ohio-defeat-by-referendum-inspired RTW bill) are not necessarily considered business friendly. That, and against the trend for transplants to opt for worker-hostile states (read: the entire South), Honda chose to locate itself in Marysville.

Certainly there's plenty of pressure against the state to harmonize itself with the South, but I don't expect it to be a law-violating lockstep action.

(Before you start citing the departure of NCR as evidence of business hostility, they were already on their way out in the 1990's)

People have been predicting the wealth economy for some time, but have no clear plan on how to transition to that model.

Here's an opportunity: redefine "full time" to be less than 40 hours. Our productivity is now so high that fewer people need to work, but at the same time we need to employ everyone in order to prevent unrest and revolt.

Productivity is high, so we should have more leisure time. GDP per capita has skyrocketed, it's doubled since about 1990, and the average citizen would get $40,000 per year if output was distributed evenly. That's every man, woman and child - employed or not, and every year.

Corporations have to start spending money on the people instead of cutting people out of production. Better educated workers, happier workers, healthier workers make your business stronger and give better return on investment than rehiring. Much better return than "cost accounting", which aims to make the cheapest product people can tolerate.

Government has to start rerouting wealth from businesses to the people, by way of infrastructure benefits. Free health care and free education, as well as infrastructure projects (national system of renewable power generation, universal internet service, &c) enrich the population without coddling to the lazy.

Production is met by an ever-dwindling need for human interaction. We should embrace this trend in a way that doesn't require armed revolt.

Apparently entering searches in the search bar sent them in the clear

That's certainly possible. It depends on how Firefox's default search engine is configured. If you want to be sure your searches are encrypted, go change the setting to use https://google.com./

Apparently entering searches in the search bar sent them in the clear and certain keywords could trigger a new certificate. Put in the same keyword and nothing happens you need to find a new keyword to trigger a new certificate. I used one of those lists with supposedly sensitive keywords.

That's impossible. The session encryption negotiation is done prior to any data being sent, so the certificate provided by the server, and used to encrypt the session key, is delivered to the browser before Google receives any keywords.

The tool shows what the NSA could know about you if they had access to your gmail. However, Google rather staunchly maintains that the NSA does not have any access to Google user data, with the exception of specific information about specific individuals when proper legal documentation has been provided and reviewed by Google's legal team, and even then the NSA does not have access to Google's servers; Google retrieves the specific data requested by the order and delivers it to the requestor.

In addition to the previous public statements, David Drummond just published the following op-ed in faz.net (in German): http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gastbeitrag-von-david-drummond-gleichgewicht-zwischen-sicherheit-und-buergerrechten-12272710.html. Here's a Google+ post that contains an English translation: https://plus.google.com/u/0/105603626919803672092/posts/bT7ndyhJmUk

Unless Google is flat-out lying of course. I don't believe that is true; I don't think Google could be legally compelled to lie, and I don't think the CEO and legal counsel legally can lie to the public, but you have to make your own evaluation on that point.

Really?

don't think of it as 'entire drive in half a minute'

20 megs in half a minute, is
https://www.google.com/search?q=three+terrabytes+divided+by+20+megabytes

157,286 times..
78,643 minutes
1310 hours

so basically, if a three terabyte drive can be read entire in less than 54 days,
it's still faster.

Actually, there are some add-on KMZ files that allow you to animate plate positions and paleogeography, but they're fairly simple.

If you want more technical, you can run GPlates, a fantastic, cross-platform (Windows, OS X, Linux) open-source program for modeling plate motions. Unfortunately the learning curve is pretty steep, but if you follow the tutorials you can do some very cool animations. You can even load GIS files and your own plate rotation poles if you're into that sort of thing and are willing to configure the files correctly. For example, GPlates comes with a fairly current set of plate rotations, but you could input the poles from this recent paper to see how they compare to previous ones. These days most plate reconstruction is done with specialized GIS programs like this.

They should consider Atlanta. Several of the folks who work for me moved back to Atlanta from SF with their families. Square is a great place to work, and Atlanta is a great place to live.

Google Nose is real?

Don't forget the new NSA Knows enhancement.

Google Nose is real?

Remember Google recently added Malware to Google transparency report Take a look at the major uptick in malware warnings in 2013..... perhaps a sign that more and more popular destinations are getting compromised and actually leveraging remote code execution exploits, or other trickery, that may be among that covered in the patches.

There's this thing called Patch Tuesday; first Tuesday every month. There are almost always plenty of remote security vulns, with patches. If there aren't -- then there are plenty in the pipeline that they have just delayed another month (in most cases), OR that they put off patch development for.

There are no shortage of windows vulnerabilities.

If you want to get out of the patch grind... I would strongly suggest switching to Chrome on Linux or MacOS :)

In terms of their ubiquity in modern marketing, QR Codes are a slightly annoying solution in search of a problem; but as an engineering approach to the sort of problem the OP described, they're fantastic. There are many free and open source QR Code generation utilities and libraries, and the QR Code spec itself was patented, but freely licensed for public use by the Toyota subsidiary that invented it.

QR codes include error correction, and can encode binary data on the order of a hundred times the density of a regular bar code.

Go google for this. Then pull up the links: Ann Coulter did not object to the news about NSA phone snooping on principle, but does have a problem with it under this particular president.

I guess you could call Ann Coulter a "neo-con", but she is just a talking head, so she'll make hay out of anything that her audience wants to hear.

Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin asked: “How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?” In a separate newspaper column, Sensenbrenner went further, claiming the administration was abusing the law. that piece of trash sat on Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (Chairman) when all of this went down. He was right in the MIDST of it all, and then claims that he knew nothing about it, while claiming O is behind this.

Sensenbrenner is trash, but I don't see where he really "claimed O was behind this", he is, however, claiming the program went too far, and he didn't know how far, apparently, because he wasn't in the right meetings. But Snowden's documents have shown that even the Intelligence committee was not informed about everything going on, although there were "lawmakers from both houses" briefed. A total of 8, according to leaked documents.

The interesting part about this is that even Sensenbrenner, who loved the PATRIOT ACT and all this federal power and secrecy, thinks the PRISM and NSA programs go too far. That's a pretty stunning indictment.

On Sunday, the Republican senator and libertarian firebrand from Kentucky declared that he planned to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, claiming the NSA surveillance programs that intercept internet communications (for supposedly foreign targets) and sweep up the phone records of Americans are "unconstitutional."

Rand Paul is not a neo-con. There is no credible definition of that term I have EVER seen that would apply to Rand Paul. I guess you're just using it to mean "anybody on the right," but that's not how it's typically used. Rand is on the side of liberal Democrats more often than he is on the side of the neo-cons.

That Piece of Trash

Paul? Fuck you, you piece of stinking garbage. I know Rand, and he has more honor in his pinky than you have ever thought of exhibiting in your entire life.

sits on Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (starting 2011). IOW, the senate version of what Sensenbrenner is on. He has almost certainly known for the last 2 years.

Nope, as pointed out, the NSA revealed this information very selectively, the committee did not know the extent of it. Didn't you hear about Clapper actually lying to committees when questioned about it?

I could continue on and on, but what is the point of it? The fact is, that the outrage by the neo-cons, is just another made up garbage.

It is, you made it up. There is no outrage from the neo-cons, only from the civil libertarians. You lumping the two together just shows your ignorance. You might as well stop now.

However, this one has backing with far left, and Libertarians, all of whom have NO idea of what is really going on.

I don't really know what you're trying to say, here.

I mean YOU have ma

Go google for this. Then pull up the links:
Ann Coulter did not object to the news about NSA phone snooping on principle, but does have a problem with it under this particular president.

Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin asked: “How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?” In a separate newspaper column, Sensenbrenner went further, claiming the administration was abusing the law.
that piece of trash sat on Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (Chairman) when all of this went down. He was right in the MIDST of it all, and then claims that he knew nothing about it, while claiming O is behind this.

On Sunday, the Republican senator and libertarian firebrand from Kentucky declared that he planned to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, claiming the NSA surveillance programs that intercept internet communications (for supposedly foreign targets) and sweep up the phone records of Americans are "unconstitutional."
That Piece of Trash sits on Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (starting 2011). IOW, the senate version of what Sensenbrenner is on. He has almost certainly known for the last 2 years.

I could continue on and on, but what is the point of it? The fact is, that the outrage by the neo-cons, is just another made up garbage. However, this one has backing with far left, and Libertarians, all of whom have NO idea of what is really going on. I mean YOU have made a number of accusations, yet, you are showing no proof of it.

I did a little bit of wire-wrapping myself to build an I/O system for Commodore equipment, but not much, and wire wrapping was going out of style even then. Good points about knowledge of physics etc. as a layer below. I do not know off-hand how to make a transistor chemically in practical terms, for example.

As for difficulty of lifework, it's a "standing on the shoulders of giants thing". One success (like with Doug) can enable the next, like the systems Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay and others pioneered in turn support my own ambitions. Compared to about thirty years ago when I started this quixotic scheme, self-replicating space habitats almost seem like an easy reach at this point (even if still decade or two away from a seed launch). Still a lot of work, but I can see how it could possibly happen by a global networked effort, as described here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
"We believe that thousands of individuals (such as the people at this conference) are ready and willing to make compromises in their own lives to nurture the space settlement dream at the grassroots level - but in a more direct way than has been attempted thus far. In particular, individuals could collaborate on the iterative development of detailed space habitat designs and simulations using nothing more than the computers they already have at home for playing games. While excellent progress has been made on the general engineering design of space habitats (in terms of basic physics and proof-of-concept projects), many of the details remain to be worked out. There have been individual attempts in some of these areas (e.g., the SSI Matrix effort), but a persistent collaborative community has not yet coalesced around constructing a comprehensive and non-proprietary library of such details."

More floundering efforts towards that:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

A better success by others?
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://openluna.org/
http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net/

Starting around age 63, my advisor at Princeton, George A. Miller, started plugging away at the (effectively) open source WordNet project and accomplished a lot in 20 years. WordNet underlies much of Google's success. My indirect hand in that:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/openvirgle/PdK35mSNoSU/3zLpZuljHiMJ

But likewise, I can credit his patient systematic work and decision to open source his effort as setting a good example for me.

And, at some point a system can begin to reflect on itself. I agree how little we know individually about how to make stuff in a complex technological environment (compared to day, a family farm, with self-replicating seeds). Thus my suggestion of something like "OSCOMAK" using computer networks to systematize such knowledge on how to make stuff.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
"The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. ... The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any

but let's be real, is Google opensourcing the stuff that is runs their busines?

Open Source Projects Released By Google

And here's why you're wrong:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuqlWHQKlooOdGJrSzhBVnh0WGlzWHpCZFNVcURkX0E#gid=0
That's voice data, and e-mail is even simpler
Bill Binney already worked out that Bluffdale will have 5 ZB of storage capacity, taking into account that a portion of the facility will be used for code breaking.
That single datacenter is enough to store all of the world's textual communications for 100 years.
If you keep in mind that they already have 4+ datacenters around the US with comparable storage capacity, it's a no brainer.

The Serval Mesh software for android encrypts voice and text messaging by default. Though it's focused on enabling communications in a disaster when everything else has failed, and doesn't have any internet based message routing. It's perfectly fine for a small community, or for sneaker-net based messaging.

They're also starting an indiegogo campaign to build and sell a device with much longer range than Wi-Fi.

The reality is that Chavez did more for social conditions in his country than any other president in living memory.

Yeah, except for those rampant human rights abuses. "Social conditions" includes things like free speech, whether you feel you can get justice, feel safe. Even if what you claimed were true - that his people were better off with him than without him - the ends do not justify the means.

Whether US government officials (not "USA"; don't confuse a country's government or leadership with its people) found him a threat and a risk (not "hated him viciously") is irrelevant to Chavez's power-grubbing, human-rights-abusing, autocratic ruling. That you use the word "vicious" to describe the US government's attitude towards him, instead of how he treated his own people, shows that you have a serious perspective problem.

Hypergamy.

Above average is simply not good enough for the majority of women. Contrary to popular belief, mating is the genetic drive of life. Men are disillusioned with the non-benefits granted to both men and women in a lifetime of servitude. The ancient greeks had it right. "Friend" meant friend with benefits, naturally. Share common interests and have a good time? Have some sex, why not? Hell, invite your S.O. or other friends.

The modern monogamous life-long marriage is a very recent development -- A fucking fad that's counter to human nature, but propped up by religion. Since men accumulated wealth, and their offspring were apprentices (benefiting the guy more), it benefited women to be guaranteed a man can't just ditch his wife for a younger more fertile mate. Now that the earning playing field is leveled, but the monogamy is still in play, the benefits of playing that game are gone.

It would behoove everyone to learn that similar to chimps, we evolved from a tournament species where males competed for social standing to gain access to sex, and women competed with each other based on their good child-rearing looks -- Mm, nice hips, big boobs, make good baby. Mm, strong alpha male, protects me and kids. We're no longer slaves to our genes, but if this doesn't sound fucking familiar, then you're better at self deception than I thought.

Guess what? In a chimp society, only a few top percentile of males end up mating. Put that in your stupid pipe and smoke it, you damned dirty ape.

Seriously, WTF people?

On top of that, all these extensions to block ads are going to end up backfiring in a huge way. When sites start to lose significant amounts of money, they're going to move to more and more annoying and integrated ads, until the ads become indistinguishable from the content itself. That's just making the web worse for everyone.

So block the annoying ads, let the non-annoying ones through, and don't destroy the internet.

Meh. Too late. AdBlock Plus is already receiving sponsorships/bribes to let "quality" ads through:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.horizont.at%2Fhome%2Fdetail%2Fgoogle-ist-geldgeber-von-adblock-plus.html&act=url

Thanks for the link and more history. I'll have to check out the PowerPoint file when not on a ChromeBook (just trying to test out a possible future of computing). One of the best academic course I ever took was with Michael Mahoney related to the history of technology, although that was just before he was getting into the history of computing.
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/computing.html

I implemented a software version of Memex, mentioned here in 2005:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156379&cid=13111905

Memex seems like the first version of a "Social Semantic Desktop"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_desktop

I've worked towards that on-and-off as time permits with my Pointrel system. I see you have a long list of related publications on technology and society it would be interesting to read through.

I don't know if he is connected to any of them, but William C. Norris who championed "PLATO" for computer-based education is another great example in that area of people trying to make computer innovations to help humanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Norris_(CEO)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_system
"PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) [1][2] was the first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I) generalized computer assisted instruction system, and, by the late 1970s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. Originally, PLATO was built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary -- university) to UIUC students, local schools, and other universities. Several descendant systems still operate.
The PLATO project was assumed by the Control Data Corporation (CDC), who built the machines with which PLATO operated at the University. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world; the last production PLATO system was shut down in 2006 (coincidentally, just a month after Norris died), yet it established key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games."

Alan Kay and his colleagues working on Smalltalk are yet another, somewhat as a follow on to Doug's work.

I just watched the 1950s movie "The Invisible Boy" (with Robbie the Robot") and it is interesting how it presaged so much later thinking on dangerous out-of-control AI. Human-machine symbiosis may have its own issues, but still seems more hopefull somehow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Boy

Still, I got that with the 1950s "Forbidden Planet", and I guess that shows the dark side of human-machine symbiosis, :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet

Technology is an amplifier. So what do we want it to amplify?

Soft humanities things like morality and aesthetics and stories we tell ourselves to make a mythology become very important in that context.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/06/26/023212/why-engineering-freshmen-should-take-humanities-courses

The 1950s story The Skills of Xanadu by Theodore Sturgeon is the most hopeful in that sense. It would be great to know whether Sturgeon was thinking about Weiner's or Bush's writings?
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=

A recent article in CNN outlines why there is little in the US Media regarding Eric Snowden and the NSA Prism program

You must be one of those types that won't look out his window to see that it is raining because a TV weatherman said that it was sunny.

Little coverage in the US media about Snowden and the NSA? That is ridiculous. You couldn't event try Google News?

A near-complete lack of articles in main-stream media about the Prism program and Snowden is all the evidence I need to come to that conclusion.

That isn't simply false, it is a lie.

NSA is literally threatening journalists with prosecution for espionage for doing their jobs

NSA isn't threatening journalists. To the extent that anything like that is happening it is coming from the Justice department over older leak investigations and isn't close to being a blanket, although it is very troubling as far as it goes. Slashdot has covered this before.

Ditto.
 
Let me just leave this right here...
  A good read.

This duopoly. EU banks are always grumbling about how they want to start a new network to break the Visa/MC duopoly... too bad no one managed to do it other than tiny hardly accepted anywhere (in the EU) cards like Amex, otherwise you would be correct and we could not longer call it a duopoly. Just because there was Linux in the 90s, did not mean that Microsoft was not the undisputed monopoly at that time...

Agreed. His app has 1-5 installs on the Google Play Store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symbolapp.top15

I blame the Girlfriend Pillow. With parents to supply food, an internet connection, and one (or more) of those pillows, what reason is there to go out?

Na, you are wrong. You can of course package a private copy of Qt for Android/iOS/etc with your application but you can also use the shared copy provided by Ministro:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.necessitas.ministro&hl=es

Digia is already working on a "Ministro for iOS" to provide a shared Qt copy for all the apps.

There are several languages that are written on top of OpenCL - that is the whole idea of this API. But if your read the article, it seems this guy was the actual inventor of the wheel.

Same response happened when some guy made Rootbeer and let some marketeer write an alike article. It was suggested that you could just run existing Java-code on the GPU, but that was not true at all - you had to rewrite the code to the rootbeer-API. This Harlan-project is comparable: just beta-software that has not run into the real limits of GPU-computing - but still making big promises that in contrary to their peers they actually will fix the problem.
I'm not saying it can be in the future, but just that this article is a marketing-piece with several promises on future advancements.

Check out Aparapi and VexCL to name just two. There are loads and loads of these solutions - many of these wrappers slowly advance to higher level languages, and have been in the field a lot longer.

You are wrong ! A simple search shows that it was illegal until very recently.

when all other funding was going to AI, Licklider also funded human-machine interaction via Doug.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
"He has been called "computing's Johnny Appleseed", for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age. Robert Taylor, founder of Xerox PARC's Computer Science Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center, noted that ""most of the significant advances in computer technology -- including the work that my group did at Xerox PARC -- were simply extrapolations of Lick's vision. They were not really new visions of their own. So he was really the father of it all."[2] ... Licklider was instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research that led to modern personal computers and the Internet. In 1960 his seminal paper on Man-Computer Symbiosis foreshadowed interactive computing, and he went on to fund early efforts in time-sharing and application development, most notably the work of Douglas Engelbart, who founded the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute and created the famous On-Line System where the computer mouse was invented."

But there were others even before that, from Norbert Weiner to Vannevar Bush to Theodore Sturgeon and others. Doug's life was a link in a chain that stretches back to the first idea of a "standing bear" cave painting made by the "Walking People" thousands of years ago to instruct the young.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Walking_People.html?id=-kTrc1oSkycC

Just like our lives now are links in a chain the hopefully stretches out to new future possibilities.

But that is not to take away from the importance of what Doug did with his life. Otherwise maybe we'd have only AI and not human-machine symbiosis?

There's also people who intentionally get themselves rear ended for insurance/lawsuit claims.

Speaking as someone who's had this done to him, it was still my fault. I should have expected them to be assholes. And I was being an asshole, so conservation of asshole momentum was preserved. You have to expect people to fuck up, or do something stupid or violent. THAT is what defensive driving actually means; assume the other guy will do the wrong thing. It's usually a safe assumption.

I was on a local road heading west to turn right onto Ackley when a stupid-looking woman came whipping around the corner at the far end and heading towards me (East) on the other side of the intersection. My assessment of her intelligence was based on the look on her face (blank) and the kind of car she was driving (crossover SUV, pretty much always driven by people who can't fucking drive.) I signalled right, she signalled left, and sure enough, though I had no stop sign, she just jerked right through the left turn. If I hadn't planned for this and hit the brakes at about the right moment (no screeching, because I was planning) then she'd have hit me right in my driver's door at speed, and she took the corner fast, too. As it turned out, she was heading for the same yard sale I was. So when we both got out, I said "are you aware that left turn always yields?" and her angry response was "I didn't think you had a stop sign." I asked why, did she see one? Of course, she said no, but continued to argue with me angrily about it, and even suggested that I should learn to drive when I informed her that she should do so.

Whose fault would it have been if we had gotten into a collision? She would have been at fault, but it would have been both our faults, because I knew she was a stupid bitch just by looking at her. You can say that's prejudiced, but I was right. Is it also prejudiced to assume that people in expensive new BMWs and Mercedes will cut me off and then slow down in the left lane as I pass through Marin? Fuck no, that's a certainty.

It's all about the storm surge
two thirds of Key West was underwater during Wilma.
That used to be a once in a generation thing. Then it's going to be every 20 years. Then every 5. Even if it doesn't turn into New Atlantis, that's gonna put a real crimp in the island lifestyle.