Good thinking

Relevance is not absolute but contextual. If you remember as you went through life, first young and simple ideas and tunes and interactions, as you get older, your politics and sensibilites (often) mature and what used to be exciting and 'relevent' becomes, simple and unsophisticated, and newer attempts at cultural expression leave you cold.

How many adults that listen to or enjoy classical music started out listening and enjoying classical music? I think that is a process of maturation and an appreciation of expressions people are capable of.

So it may be a fools errand to try and bring people into the symphony before they are ready to sit quietly and enjoy the experience and have the maturity and respect to allow others to sit quietly and enjoy the experience.

Copyright laws last too long
Copyright infringement penalties are too high. The punishment does not fit the crime (what are we doing Sharia law, hand chopped off for stealing?)

Most of what I see of the articles at Stack overflow are about syntax and symantics of how to problems in a specific language. Most of the company sponored documentation is organized differently, by feature and what its parameters are, not generally how to use it in conjunction with other language parts or even what the intent of the use is.

I see the same thing at work with a new task / hours data entry which is a spreadsheet with 100 rows of projects. I had to comment to my boss that this document was tuned for executive use not for data entry. Different needs need different views.

Also there is the sub-dialect problem. If you are comming from Java and having to do the same thing in c# they call the same thing by different terms, and the frameworks are maybe equivalent but stuctured differently, so the Stack overflow query on more common terms and problem specific language gets you a solution much quicker than trying to navagate the traditional document hierarcy. That is not to say you don't need both views, you do. But usually software only gets the one view. The other is built from the deficiencies and idiosincracies of the software.

How many times recently have you tried to call say a cell phone or cable company only to go through the decision tree hierachy that does not give are you an option your need, but you don't find that out until you are 3 or 4 levels down on the tree and you have already invested 10 minutes and then r put in a wait queue for another 20 just to find out you are in the wrong place. That design may save on some human salaries but at the cost of many very pissed off clients.

I think most people would like to talk with a person that can understand what you need and help. We certainly don't have a technology yet that allows a machine to take that place.

There also seems to be the effect if not the intent to limit access to only certain problems or complaints which you can do by design with an automation but not a person. So limited access for complaints is the other problem.

There is a reason we send men to the moon. The value of there observation and ability to adapt and re-task (currently) is far superior to machines. As for unmanned attack aircraft. There is a delay from the remote control site to the plane. That delay both ways says that the ability to pull 15g's to get out of a bad situation probably will present itself too late, or because of the delay you will need that speed of evasion.

Not to mention the de-humanizing effect we have seen already with the video game war where the warrior has no skin in the game. The human equations that should be there as a deterent to war, aren't. That is probably the biggest risk and failing of this direction. Of course those who just want to win and don't care of the cost to the other side, that can engage in riskless carnage, will attract the very people that would naturally be culled out through the process of war. That culling of sociopaths is part of our natural evolution. If you take away their natural predators (man, the other side) then as with all species they will overpopulate and strain and break there ecosystem.

As exampled by Walmart and the Wall family having more wealth that what is it 40% of the rest of the country. Maybe we should broaden the anti-trust laws or modify them so that companies that try and take over hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, sporting stores, appliance stores, building supply stores, automotive supply stores, nurseries .... are trying to monopolize the retail space at the expense of hundreds of thousand mom and pop stores and hundreds of thousand US jobs. The too big problem also is a problem for companies that succeed. Thats why we had anti-trust legistlation. It needs to be updated.

The ideas presented are some of the most thoughtless brainstorming I have ever heard. Brainstorming is good but some filtering should be the next step and certainly before you tell anyone your ideas.

First. Put computer into guns. Like they can't be hacked, turning your gun into your own worst enemy, shooting where you dont want or not shooting when you do.

Have building sensing. As if sensor signals can be suppressed or overridden. Like the Drones snagged by Iran which tricked it into landing inside Iran, intack if the stories are to believed. Or the hacks to turn the traffic lights to your advantage.

Lets say you have building sensing through some suppression signal. What would be the default behaviour. If you did not get the signal then allow firing, or not allow firing. Well probably the signal would allow firing (the default). Maybe a little aluminum foil on the antenna would trick the gun into allowing firing.

Biometrics, only prevents someone else from picking up you gun and using it. Doesn't help if its your gun that you want to clear out a school with.

Maybe some combination of all those things would be good. It would make the cost of a gun prohibitive and we would have fewer guns which translates to fewer gun deaths.

The problem is loosing your child. China's one child policy has left much of the country with families with one child (little emperors) that know that they can just leave there parents which for a Chinese family is a horrible idea, unthinkable, especially a son. So you have children that know they have presure that threat to disown their parents as extreme leverage. So the "Just kick him out" is truly a scary , not to be considered because of the consequences action. No wonder the father took indirect steps to make his son want to stop game playing. The Chinese do things indirectly and communication is an art in a way that we don't fully understand. So assuming the same value system, and behaviours we would take in the West have any resonance in the East.

There are differences in the brain wiring between males and females generally as shown by numerous studies. The way they approach problem solving and focus. Add to that the existing evovled male and female sub-cultures and you are looking at very different value systems and skill sets. Which implies that they will perform differently in the same tasks. It may be the that way education has evolved favors the skill sets and approaches that females are better at, including reward systems, types of tasks assigned, and expectations.

It may also be that the job market seems to be rewarding college degrees less and mayb the male culture, not seen the garanteed payback is not as motivated to continue, where the female culture is seeing the long term value of education for quality of life, child rearing, and the communal, network time that is college.

Its not sexist to recognize differences. The differences are not good or bad, just differences.

When you bring science into it, I have heard that at least in one case, the round-up corn which is GMO and resistant to round-up the weed killer, is easier to keep weed free, but the crop havested has higher concentrations of round-up in it which is not healthy. So GMO may not be all bad but not all GMO crops are good from a health standpoint.

Lets just hope that no one decides that you should be sterilized, or your head drilled and you pleasure removed. When people usually think of these things, its always someone else who is deserving. What happens, like it did in Germany, It would end up some government functionary would decide you would benefit from such a change, because they did not like your attitude, habits, political or religious affiliation or maybe race. There would be a rule, some criteria for deciding who. Like we have problems with the no-fly lists, your name might just end up on the list of those to be, "Bettered".

I bought a Soda Stream and when I opened the box there was a piece of paper saying that you are licencing the soda stream technology, not buying it. I looked and there was small print in a pargraph on the side saying the same thing. I think it said it was a transferable licence and that you could only use it for the purposes intended by soda stream.

This is the first attempt I have seen that a kitchen appliance is being sold with the idea that you are not buying the appliance, and will never own it, just licence it. That strikes at the heart of the 'buying' something at the store. This is an attempt at a business model that maintains control of your carbonated water maker in perpetuity. I look forward to the test for this business model in court.

No the gun and the bullets killed the kids, the gunman used the killing machines and pointed them in the right direction with the intent to kill. If the killer had had a knife, at least he would have had to work for those kills, it would have taken more time, more kids might have been saved, the teachers would have had a chance to get between him and the kids and maybe subdue him.

Guns are efficient , impersonal tools that allow people to engage in killing in very impersonal ways, like a video game. I suspect we have more death and injury from guns because they can reach out and kill without the shooter being at risk or having to work for the kill. Too easy, to impersonal so we end up at risk.

I for one when I have to go to the bathroom really badly can miss the combination on the bathroom a few times before success. I suspect if there is a shooter around the same would hold. Also if a gun wielding person (don't want to leave out the ladies) comes into the classroom, what would you think he would do if he saw the teacher start opening the safe?