That would truly be crazy! My downloaded TV has no ads, and my shoutcast radio does not either! Not needing to be mentioned before, but neither does my modern windows 7 OS.

The thing I don't get about this line of reasoning is that republicans in the USA are MORE big government than anyone! They start wars, encourage wasteful spending by getting the private sector to do their job (for a profit, which can only increase costs, DUH), cut taxes/services forcing more burdens onto the individual, etc.

That is why I think its all a sort of cultural brainwashing, mixed with racism and lack of diversity. I am not from the USA, however i see the same things in rural areas in my country. If you live in a city, you actually have to coexist with more people around you, so it forces people to be more civil to one another and respect each others space and values. (for instance my asian neighbours who cook the stinkiest fish imaginable every single god damn day), however I have no choice but to put up with it really, so you gain a kind of acceptance. If I was in the country, I would simply burn a cross on their lawn or something to try and get them to leave. You cant burn crosses on everyones lawn in the city. First off, most people do not have lawns.

So you are stuck with accepting them and realizing that you probably piss off people around you too. In short, density makes people more civil I find. You cant start fights with everyone in your apartment building that annoys you. There would simply be no time for anything but fighting.

I would think in rural areas you need to rely on the government MORE, per capita. The government pays a premium to support your infrastructure out in the middle of nowhere. The government pays to have doctors stationed out there (ok maybe not in the USA but, in other countries this is true). They pay to upkeep roads which are used less than the cities. Government run power companies pay more to provide services out there, again less users per sq km costs more. Laws mandate that greyhound and other bus companies must go to these far flung places, instead of just dropping them and disconnecting the communities.

I don't think the idea of a sensible level of government has anything in conflict with a self sufficient attitude. There are some things that it is impossible to DIY, DIY healthcare, DIY highway systems, DIY firefighting and police (enforcement of sensible laws), DIY mail service, DIY internet. Americans seem to have defunded their government services over the years, and then complain about shoddy service. Its a really annoying cognitive dissonance not found in many other countries. Most people expect that you get what you pay for, and government services are no exception.

So in short, its great to be as self sufficient as possible however no man is an island, and I would rather have well run and well funded governement programs when I do need them, then underfunded and non existent programs. Even if 99% of the time I dont need hospital care, I still will pay to have that hospital properly funded because of that 1% of times when you really do need it.

"I'm sorry, where are these magic plants that don't need backup power?"

You didnt try very hard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor#Safety_features

CANDU reactors, yes I would trust them no matter what as they are designed to fail peacefully without power. Now for american reactors which were built by the lowest bidder in the 60s /70s - I would want to be far far away from in ANY natural disaster.

With the USA's famous lack of regulation and much corner cutting, who knows what will happen in the real world?

And if there is an incident, you are making possibly a large swath of land uninhabitable for 10000 years. I am not sure why everyone is so PRO nuke on slashdot. Most of the plant designs that are currently operating were built 50 years ago with a lifetime of 30 years.

So to sum up, yes nuclear power CAN be safe, however as fukishima shows, just because its nuclear power is hopefully heavily regulated, does not automatically mean it cannot fail! At the end of the day, these systems are built by man who is fallible. You can argue whether or not it is worth the risk, but you cannot argue that there is no risk whatsoever. (I think I was actually agreeing with you and disagreeing with parent, but I see the same infallibility argument often in these discussions)

"The error I am seeing on this thread time and time again is the assumption that 3-year-olds are stupid.
They aren't. They have a hyper-active ability to learn that leaves all adults in the dust. This is exactly when they are learning languages and most of the building blocks of knowledge that are incredibly important and we take for granted."

So then we could paraphrase this to say "Windows 8: if you have no problem picking up foreign languages, then you will have no problem learning our interface!". Which isn't exactly a selling point as most people cannot pick up a foreign language with the ease that a 3 year old could. I think you are misinterpreting the "error" you claim people are making. I think most people realize that children before puberty are much better at learning than adults. I'd even go so far as to call that "common knowledge".

No one said kids are stupid. People have been saying that kids are not a good baseline for "adaptability" when your target audience is not really 3 year olds.

1) OCZ drives are GARBAGE along with most products put out by that company. Avoid at all costs.

2) Crucial m4's as wonderful as they are, had a firmware bug in the last version, whereby if the power was lost in some circumstances the drive would then fail to post. The fix strangely was just to apply power and no data cable for 2x 20 minutes periods. So just hook the drive up to power and wait 20 minutes. shut down and then do it again.

Its amazing, but i have personally fixed 3 drives doing that magic trick. I believe they have corrected this bug in their 000F firmware. Otherwise it seemed to occur mostly in laptops when they were shut down improperly. It was scary for sure! drive appeared to just disappear from the machine.

"So what do you like to drink. We'll try and get that banned, too."

I doubt they will make you a single drink if you asked for 1L of whiskey or vodka in a bar. They would say that its illegal and dangerous to make such a powerful drink. However, they will happily sell you ten 100ml drinks.

Do you understand how its not about freedom now?

And trust me, if there was a multibillion dollar industry telling people to smoke as much weed as possible per day, I would advise them that its a bad idea and not good for you. However weed should obviously still be legal. You are trying to say that because someone sets a limit on you, its akin to a ban when clearly this is a false dichotomy.

All prepared foods are taxed (in canada anyways). I could easily see them judging a sugar drink as "prepared" food. After all, alcohol is taxed. I pay 3 separate taxes on alcohol from a retail store. Of course you can homebrew, and since that is considered a non prepared foodstuffs, there is no tax on that. So there are always ways around it for those so inclined. Its pretty easy to homebrew gingerale for instance.

"Most people who've taught or given presentations would attest that people who think they can talk (or think of questions) and listen at the same time are deluding themselves."

Really? Bringing a pad of paper (or smartphone) to note down comments for the question period in a meeting isnt standard where you work? People just rely on their awesome memories, or what?

You can easily take 10 seconds to note down a comment for later without detracting from your listening ability at all. If I can do it, and my job is not specifically to listen and ask questions, I am sure someone whoes entire job revolves around listening to lawyers and other extremely boring and esoteric people all day, can make the effort to learn that skill - if they have somehow gone through life without it.

its a cop out plain and simple. These people dictate the laws for your entire country (sometimes the world), yet cant be bothered to take basic notes for their own reference? bullshit.

Ah LOL!

You are following scripts and pre programed algorithms with fake sandboxed physics. I think its hilarious when people try and justify playing angry birds as having any real world uses at all. What do you think you can now throw a shot put ball with a more proper trajectory? Give me a break!! It may be technically more interactive than tv, but that is made up for by having the smartphone turned on and receiving 24x7. Like having a tv strapped to your face, which auto detects where your drool lands on the controls to derive intent. Its interactive!

I have met very few people who can actually use a smartphone "properly". Most people are checking their work and home emails and doing something on facebook. The article is right. People don't just stare at walls any more because all their time needs to be "productive". However no one really knows what productive even means anymore. Is it working all the time and burning yourself out? Is it firing off comments to your friends so they know how quick and snarky you can be? Why are these things "productive" while staring at a wall and letting your mind wander is considered not?

I would argue that the more breaks you take from your routine, the more likely you are to think outside your environment and comfort zone. Smartphones have created, in a few short years, a culture of people who are so disconnected and alone that they need a small glowing screen to babysit them all the damn time. I mean its common now for people to think its perfectly acceptable to be on their phone on the toilette. This smartphone wave is so fucked up. And don't get me wrong, I love the internet. But does it really have to be everywhere, all the time?

Hate to break it to you, but that overpriced microbrew that you are buying did not cost more than 1$ /pint to make. (I consider a pint to be ~500ml, a tall can)

So you can have cheap good beer, especially if you homebrew. My beer costs about $1/L and is as crafty as they come (I make it in the bathtub!)

Many feel that the election was stolen due to illegal robocalls by conservatives. But yes, it is a point of national shame that even 40% of the country voted for these sickos. Especially after they were judged in contempt of parliament and should rightly be in jail. The main problem is that the canadian economy never collapsed as the american one did. Housing in vancouver and toronto is still in a bubble. The economy is hanging by a string basically and all it will take is most likely one moderate jar to send it under. But as of now, the conservatives have propped things up and sold stuff off to foreign interests in order to keep us from sliding under. They cannot continue that forever and then their reign will end, same as bush.

MSE? have you ever done any back to back trials?

I used to recommend MSE, however after it not finding something when I KNEW there was a virus, only avira was able to find it and remove it.

Ever since then, I have swore by avira. However you do have to jump through hoops to get it working though, such as having to blacklist avnotify.exe in secpol so you don't see avira ads. Annoying, and why it makes it difficult to recomend to anyone who is not comfortable with editing windows security policies.

This is a very interesting topic to me as well and I am somewhat saddened to see everyone recommending MSE which hasn't seemed to work well after the initial few months when it was released.

I now wonder how many people with MSE just think they are secure, because yes it is very unobtrusive. However after finding several other viruses which MSE did not detect over the last year, avira was the only one to find them all. I do several virus uninstalls a month, mostly from employees home systems. Many have MSE installed.

Yes it takes great skill to attend meetings, sign cheques and provide "vision". He didn't build shit. Thousands of programmers employed by him did. CEO's have crazy visions all the damn time. Just because in highschool he did some programming doesn't mean he knows what the reality of software development is on the ground, 30 years later.

But what exactly is he trying to say? Online cloud based collaboration is the future. That is what everyone is saying these days. And as with all future predictions, I am sure they are 100% right. After all, we all telecommute to work using our very own government provided T1's without even having to undock our hovercars!

You know, thats funny. When he says "lets see if those bastards can do 90" I always thought he meant 90km/h. ( i still do kinda when I accelerate past someone and think of the line from the movie) And for years I was thinking, so what? he beat a run down beater of a VW bus. When really he should have said 150! (150km/h = 90mph) Which makes more sense as most 80s cars cant do past 140 or so, so it would have been an appropriate level of massive speed for the time.

Ah unit conversion fun!

" But unless authorities or the facility in question are contacted, they have no business what a person says in his own Twitter."

How does something you post to the internet, on a site made expressly for the purposes of sharing this information with others, become "your own" anything? He didn't write this in his private notebook that some police officer found in an illegal search of his bedroom. Once you post something to the world, you lose your exclusive rights to it. This includes the right to bitch that people are reading and in some cases reacting to it. DUH!!!