I mostly agree. But there are some kinds of robocalls that are actually helpful. Our kids' school, for example, uses a robo-call system to let parents know when school is canceled due to weather or other reasons.

Right. Maybe we should all switch to Skype, or Facebook, or email, for all our communication. The telemarketers would never find us there!

The summary, and article, are predicated on the notion that it can't be true that certain occupations require inborn ability.

The truth is, people are born with certain talents and abilities. Some are good at art, some are good at science,, some are good at teaching. Why do we keep trying to force everyone to be equally good at everything?

Once you type words into a computer, whether as email text or documents, you have to assume they will be retrievable by someone at any point in the future. Even if your company has automated retention policies, somebody could easily forward or save whatever you write, an email server somewhere could retain what you sent, a backup system could archive it.

Document retention policies are like school zero-tolerance rules. They are stupid to begin with, and they don't achieve the desired result.

Once upon a time, AOL was king.

It's about psychology: guessing what your opponents hold, whether you can beat what you think they hold, or whether you can bluff them into folding.

I'm betting that a good human player could pretty quickly learn how this bot plays, and learn how to react to various scenarios to defeat it...regardless of the math.

The only people who want a "smart home revolution" are advertisers. They would love to be able to show you advertisements on your refrigerator, stove, thermostat, and everywhere else.

Programming is a creative activity that is greatly enhanced by teams of programmers being present together in one place. Team members feed off each other, and perform far better than they could in isolation. Sure, programming CAN be done remotely, but not at the same level.

This is true not only at the individual level, but at the corporate level. There is a reason software companies congregate in Silicon Valley, why oil companies congregate in Houston, and entertainment companies congregate in Hollywood. The talent pools for these industries has been built up over a long period of time, and establishing similar talent pools elsewhere is no easy task.

It works both ways: a software company in Silicon Valley has a much easier time finding good programmers than software companies elsewhere, and programmers in Silicon Valley have a much easier time finding good jobs there, than elsewhere.

If programming were strictly about efficiently providing instructions to computers, then anthropomorphism would be wasteful and counter-productive. Think about all of the code and processor cycles devoted to displaying data as windows, folders, icons, or just plain aesthetics. Those metaphors are highly wasteful of computer processing power.

But the point is, computers are, above all, a tool for people. So why not make them function in a way that is understandable to people? If anthropomorphism helps programmers understand the interconnections of complex software, then by all means, we should use it! If the metaphors break down, fix the metaphor, or use a different one. It's how we think. It's OK if it's not perfect, as long as it gets the job done.

I don't like progressive glasses, or any glasses for that matter. I love my multifocal contact lenses, Typical multifocals have five focal lengths, and you can't even see where each ring is, your eyes just naturally move to where the text is clear. There is no going back to glasses for me!

This is just iTunes, but for books. The book industry was just a little slower to go digital. They will go, kicking and screaming, but they will go. And the result will be a win for consumers, and even a win for authors (maybe except for the few who are household names).

At the time, he was always running around in a ninja outfit. But this idea would have been just enough to get him to change costumes. Hint: If you're older than 12, you might want to consider wearing this getup strictly in your own house!

Or Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter...pretty much EVERY email provider scans messages for the purpose of advertising.

I'm not sure whether 1) this judge is stupid, or 2) there are a whole lot of tech companies in a lot of trouble!

...than as a sorting algorithm!

Face it, smart kids were mercilessly teased in school since a long time before 1994. But being socially awkward, these kids stick to what they ARE good at, like tinkering with computers. This provides an escape for them, since they don't have a clue how to be accepted by others.

Girls tend to mature socially earlier than boys. They DO understand how to relate to others socially, and they don't want any part of the kind of treatment they see their smart male friends enduring. So...they do the smart thing...they stay away.

Is this all a terrible injustice? Probably. But we shouldn't be blaming the men. They are the ones who stuck with their quest despite the pressure. If there is anyone to blame, blame Hollywood, which (at the time) produced movie after movie reinforcing the "nerd" stereotype.