I want to say something about this, something clever, something snarky...but I'm at a loss. I mean, this is a facepalm of such epicness it is nearly unfathomable.

At the risk of being tagged "flamebait", I'm going to second this. It seems to be rather -unscientific- to snarkily jab at "investors who fund climate change skeptics whenever possible"; science needs research, and the more the better. True scientists are --BY DEFINITION-- skeptics, at least they should be. From the link posted above, it seems to me that the Koch brothers have a pretty rational mindset: research, research, research, research.

Besides, at 7 Billion mouth-breathers and doubling quick, if climate change is proven to be anthropogenic, we're screwed. There is no amount of "reduction" we could do at this point short of Logan's Run scenarios to rewind the damage (nor was there, by the time we were scientifically advanced enough to start to figure it out, the damage was already done).

NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!

"probably just a statistical fluctuation"...or is that exactly what the Higgs Boson WANTS us to think???

That sneaky particle...

I think it is time for another Amendment to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights discusses a great amount about the OUTPUT of citizens, but little regarding the INPUT...mostly because at the time of the founding it was impossible to -record- such things. The only means was to write about experiences, what someone heard, saw, smelled, tasted, or felt. However that equation has been altered greatly in the past 150 years, starting with photography. Yet the citizenry's right to secure backup of the human sensory system (or electronic record that corresponds to the human sensory system) has not been recognized accordingly.
Photographers are still fighting photo bans, and dealing with unconstitutional charges that result. And that is for the oldest form of "record keeping"! There are still outright bans on audio in many states, though video--due to its similarity to still photography--is in a somewhat legal limbo.

This is going to require an Amendment to fundamentally enumerate and incorporate the human right to record the environment. That should not extend to electrical interception (true wiretapping) or electronically-assisted interception (unidirectional microphones and telephoto lenses), but simply to the environment as presented to the human in place, at human levels of perception. Although "photos can lie", human beings should not be hamstrung to the subjective judgement of character (he said, she said) when significantly more accurate measurements are available. If the citizen has a 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination, they should certainly have a right to provide individualized proof of innocence!

Can we all just finally come out and state--once and forever--that the use of a person's photo and name in an *advertisement* (whether as an explicit endorsement or not, regardless of privacy policy or where the photo was uploaded, whether it was on a social network or search query) without the expressed consent of the person is a crime? At the least it strains copyright, it is a theft of service, and at most it constitutes conspiracy to commit fraud. Yes, fraud; because if a company is using my likeness without my knowledge in an attempt to create the impression amongst the people in my social circle that I endorse the advertised product or service, then that company is committing fraud upon my friends.

I don't care what the "Privacy Policy" states, criminal behavior is criminal behavior and cannot be policy'd around. Maybe these advertisers should start coming above board and offer to pay the idiots of their world for their photo and name on an opt-in, campaign-by-campaign basisthere'd be plenty of moron takers and we could use the jobs/extra income.

With all the rest of the ridiculousness going on in this country, it is quite refreshing to see that logic and reason--and scientific basis--can still win the day occasionally.

Anybody else bothered by the fact that a Constitutional Scholar who has ascended to President seems to have a fairly layman's concept of what the Bill of Rights does? I mean, the Bill of Rights applies to the GOVERNMENT, enumerated specific rights that the GOVERNMENT cannot infringe upon. However, TFA seems to insinuate that Obama is expecting this new "Bill of Rights" to be applicable to corporations, even other individuals.

Isn't the concept of what rights are and what the Government can/can't do a distinction that a Constitutional Scholar would not be so haphazard in conflating? It seems to me that a programmer wouldn't go around talking about "refactoring" in regards to bringing manufacturing back to town.

Hrm. Since Apple has admitted that OS X development went a bit off track (for at least the 2nd time) due to iOS development, perhaps Apple could use a guy like Ozzie to act as the yang to Steve's ying: working on and leading the "off cycle" OS development while Steve spearheads the next great thing.

I currently have a (~) 7" touchscreen Pioneer headunit in my car that integrates with the iPod. I really wish it was an iPhone mount. However, the current iPod Touch/iPhone screen is just TOO SMALL for dash use. I have to wonder, given the brouhaha surrounding the iPod integration into some BMWs and the Chevy Volt, if perhaps Apple isn't looking to that "personal space" as another market segment.
#1 People spend a lot of time in their cars
#2 No one likes the current crop of automobile dash unitsthey all suck UI-wise
#3 It is a fairly lucrative market but I doubt that any of the car makers really want to be in that space (given their heretofore lack of design effort)
#4 Double-DIN is right about the size of what a 7" iPad would be
#5 Microsoft SYNC, ugh

Plus, the kiddies in the back seats could be sporting the iPad, a much more rounded solution then a stupid animated feature in the head-rest DVD player, again.

I agree with this approach. Having worked in a three tier system (DEV, TEST, PROD), I can say first-hand that the lack of an integration testing environment can be devastating. Although adding one increases your costs (arguable with good virtualization/VM management), an integration testing environment is invaluable.

I tried to implement such a four-tier design at my last gig during an intensive environmental redesign, in which we moved most of the iron to VMware and implemented DNS indirection in each environment, but ultimately got shot down on trying to break TEST into separate INTEG and ACPT. The managers simply couldn't grok the usefulness...even most of the testers thought it would be a hassle.

Shortly before the end of my consulting involvement with the project, there was a major production meltdown due to a confusion of installed inter-dependent testing versions in TEST with several days of mission-critical PROD downtime as a result. [Thankfully I was not involved in that project.] Unfortunately, to this day, similar problems persist.

An INTEG environment doesn't have to be fully built out, and it shouldn't be used for performance testing. Simply keeping early testing code corralled in the INTEG environment makes sense for when a problem in PROD requires an IMMEDIATE "stable TEST" environment, and if there is pre-ACPT code in there you just can't perform adequate troubleshooting as your infrastructure grows.

Wasn't one of the core arguments that Microsoft made during the US Antitrust trial was that IE could NOT be separated from Windows without fundamentally breaking the OS?

Sooooo...guess, uh, they lied.

I hope this new 'decision engine' wasn't consulted about its own name, otherwise it should be avoided given the quality of its decision-making.

What a joke. Begin with the proctological comments...

Dammit these people in power in America piss me off. STOP USING THE TERM 'CZAR', 'TSAR', whatever! STOP STOP STOP.

I can't wait until a President is ready to march to Congress and appoint Der Fuehrer of Alternative Energy, which would prove that they have no clue what these titles mean to people around the world as well as citizens in our own country. I doubt Obama would appoint an Imperial Wizard of Credit Debt or Grand Dragon of Terrorism.

The term 'Czar' relates to a despicable history of oppression and murder. The term itself comes from Caesar, not exactly a bright point in Europe's history. There are better terms, and we as a Democratic people are more creative than this.