The only sensible remark here.

Most people think that scientist are strange people who have amassed a huge amount of very precise facts about an extremely specific field, some of which might be useful (facts or fields), but most of which are useless to the common people. The prototype is the scientist lady in the TV series "Bones". Scientists are assimilated to dorks who have not only not an ounce of creativity in them but also no social skills.

In reality scientists need to be extremely creative in their work, and need to have the humility to accept that they know or understand only a tiny amount of the world that is around us. It is very easy and quick to tread into the complete unknown. We cannot at present even reconcile the most established theories we have about the way the world works (relativity and quantum mechanics).

No, that is easy. Most paths in science have never even been tried.

What is hard is to find a path that leads to somewhere. Then just as hard it getting the somewhere you discovered to be accepted by the scientific community. Think plaque tectonics, relativity, quantum mechanics, even something as fundamental as cosmology, and so on.

First you need a friend with an Apple computer and OSX 10.6.8 or later installed. Then you can download the 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10 version of OSX for free on the Mac App Store. If you do not own Apple hardware but want to try these OSes anyway in a VM for instance, it can get a little involved but is generally doable.

You vote for whatever keeps balance. Like you say, both a and b are bad - so if you keep things even then neither side can implement the full extent of their evil plans.

It says a lot about a system that you are better off handing a piece of paper with your routing and account number to a minimum wage worker than use the "secure and convenient" electronic payment app.

That's a small reward for the personal data you are feeding them directly in bulk. It has nothing to do with the fees.

Otherwise there'd be a discount for cash or debit cards, right? Which there is not?

You only get a discount when they get you in return.

And Windows doesn't require you to jump through hoops to get it to "a certain level of functionality, depending on your Windows experience"? It takes me ages to make a Windows machine act like a civilized Unix box. It seems it takes you as long to make Linux act like Windows. I don't think that's a fair criticism of either OS.

AT&T issues press release defending action as within the definition of "unlimited" they found in the dictionary in that one empty cubicle the temp was using last week.

Settlement agreed upon with the FTC to include your choice of $2.99 worth of AT&T credit on your account or a check for $1.19 if you send 3 years of back statements, including the envelope, to Dewey, Cheatam & Howe who will be overseeing the settlement process.

No, it's not for free. Trust me, you are paying for it in the form of increased prices.

Yes of course, but tell me with a straight face that wide CurrentC adoption means lowered prices from the retailer...

Didn't think so.

So why SHOULDN'T you prefer to get the benefits of using a CC if you are going to be paying the same exact amount for something anyway?

This is one case where both Apple and Google could and should work together, to jointly ban the app until the companies involved open NFC back up for transactions again. Without an app CurrentC is dead in the water.

Especially Google should be upset, because Android users had working NFC payments at many of these stores for years before the ApplePay launch triggered the NFC lockout.

Frankly I'd almost be OK with both Apple and Google banning the app on the grounds of it being so close to spyware as you cannot tell the difference... it requires a lot of information and collects as much as it can that it doesn't need permission for.

WMH I liked but WoH introduced too much metaphysical crap -- the religious group and its telekinetic leader and the strange, godlike woman at its core were too much. I wanted to read about the post-technological world, not a quasi-fantasy world populated by near-magical peoples.

I didn't know there was a book 3 out, I'll have to look into it.

I also think he had too many excuses/gimmicks for arbitrarily eliminating some kinds of technology. I would have thought that there would be more "at home" electricity through the adaptation of car batteries and car alternators adapted to work as generators. I read another post-oil type book where these were common.

His paved roads were all reduced to rubble in a really short time. I would assume that without car traffic roads would last a long time -- my residential street is asphalt with a gravel/tar sealcoat and it hasn't been rebuilt in the 15 years I've lived there and shows almost no wear. My uncle owned a farm on a trunk highway in Kansas. In the 1950s they moved the road a mile away and the old trunk highway became a county road. Traffic is low but the road never deteriorated in any meaningful way over 50-some years.

True but how many times have you heard that Christians have killed more or that religion as been the cause of more deaths than anything else.
Nations and leaders with atheist ideologies have killed the most people. That does not mean that all atheists are mass murders anymore than most religious people are. Any large group will have monsters and saints.

True but it is hard to explain that the idea of more evolved or less evolved doesn't work at all. Or that even the change from simple to complex is not a sure thing but depends on selection pressures.

True but I have used some SSIDs like FBI4395, NSA02395, and BugsBunny as SSIDs.
Some kid with a cellphone hotspot set it up as a joke and forgot that it was still on the phone when he got on the plane.