It seems a lot of people don't know about half their GPS devices. Of course, smartphones...and what about the drawer full of old ones? Tablets often have them. Cars too!

If you simply have intellectual curiosity, why not? But if you want to use your knowledge commercially, you might want to focus on languages that businesses actually use. A language is much more than a set of syntax, it's an ecosystem. Try finding code snips on StackOverflow for your new language...good luck with that! The majority of the benefit of using a particular language is not the syntax, but the community support.

This gives me an idea...

Let's hold a hearing on scientifically driven politics, and don't invite the politicians!

Better still, let's just leave out the politicians altogether. Only problem is, then suddenly scientists would become politicians.

...it's probably the student's fault. When the whole class fails, it's probably the teacher's fault.

Exactly. Neither does Google. It's more that older people no longer want to put up with the stuff Google wants from its workers.

...has to be pretty low too. They hire any teenager who will show up and punch a clock. But who is complaining? Should we sue McDonald's because they create opportunities for people who need that very first job? (Wait, somebody probably IS suing them for this.)

This isn't about hiring integrity, it's pure and simple, about extorting some money out of deep pockets.

Biometrics are only good so long as the device that reads your pattern is "honest." If you have to inject a device to read your biometric patterns, you could just as easily inject a device that pretends to read your biometrics, but actually copies someone else's.

According to the CDC, about 1.5% of children in the US have autism. Of those, about 90% have had normal vaccinations. If you're one of the unlucky parents, you're going to be looking for a cause. Of course, it MUST be the vaccinations, what else could it be??? There is probably no way to convince these parents otherwise.

Graphs can lie just as easily as statistics themselves.

SIL (http://www.sil.org/language-development) is an organization devoted to language development in remote populations with little or no education or language definition. Although they don't create languages entirely from scratch, they do clarify the boundaries of tribal languages, create alphabets for them, and teach them to read. Because of this, many of your questions are well-researched; SIL is considered something of an authority on linguistics around the world.

So it's all about the percentage then? He should cut off X percent of Apple's business (Indiana) but not XX percent (China et al)?

The distinction between a "scripting" language and a "real" language is quite arbitrary, and the lines are very blurry. The difference used to be that scripting languages were interpreted, while "real" languages were compiled. But these days, many languages are hybrids, or somewhere between. Some languages can be used either way.

C++, for example, is usually compiled, but not always. C# is "tokenized," only partially compiled. JavaScript is a scripting language, but bits of it are compiled while it runs. JavaScript is an example of a language that is often seen as "not a real language," but amazing things are done with it, including a fully functioning Linux kernel. http://bellard.org/jslinux/ Given what it can do, it's hard to argue that it isn't a "real" language.

Don't get so hung up on the distinction between scripting and "programming." If you can do one, you can do the other.

Maybe that was written by somebody who uses Google.

Why does my Slashdot account need a password stronger than that?

Aerial drones are a kind of robot, and we're already making laws about what they are allowed and not allowed to do. In some cases, these rules are being programmed directly into the drones themselves, similar to Azimov's three laws. But these rules are much more specific and complex than what can be summarized in three succinct rules. They tell the drones where they are allowed to fly, and where they aren't, in minute detail. As robots become more capable, I would expect these rules to become more complex, not less.