That's a false dichotomy. I'm happy that you enjoy and are passionate about your chosen profession. I would be happier if the root of that passion came from helping people from getting screwed over by a broken, ludicrously complicated system that's often devoid of common sense. I know you weren't saying this, but it came off like "Isn't it amazing? Due to a technicality and an out-of-date precedent set 60 years ago, you'll be spending the next five years in prison despite your innocence. What a knee-slapper! I love this job!"

Most people, other than attorney's apparently, aren't having fun when they are in court. It's often gravely serious. I don't want to be jerk to you or anyone. I just think it was a little insensitive to call it fun.

It's good to see that an actual attorney is weighing in on this. It provides, at least for me, a better perspective on where the profession stands.

If ever my life, my family, or my livelihood is on the line in a courtroom; I will try to remember that my attorney is "having fun".

All suspects are guilty, PERIOD. If they weren't, they wouldn't be suspect would they?

You are correct. I misquoted Brian O'Driscoll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O'Driscoll. I was so quick to respond, I didn't give what I was typing a moment to sink in.

I apologize, internet.

Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in fruit salad.

That will fall to people like you and me. Do you have what it takes? Remember, service guarantees citizenship.

He could have at least dressed up as The Joker.

I've always felt the argument to curb greenhouse gases has been ill-stated. While there are some who still deny global warming is happening, the primary debate between the left and right seems to distill down to whether it is man-made (left) or cyclical (right).

It seems to me the better argument from the left would be: is polluting the air good for you or not? The answer is obviously, no, it's not good for you. So regardless of whether it causes global warming, we should always be striving for less pollutants and cleaner air in much the same way we strive for safer cars. I suppose the global warming aspect helps push the immediacy of the need for change vs. the cost of that change, but so much time, effort, and money has been wasted on both sides arguing the merits of man-made global warming, I wonder if this was the most effective road to go down.

No one is ever going to say how much it would suck if the air near factories or major metropolitan areas smelled as clean and fresh as the air in rural Vermont.

Festo's Smartbird is hardly indistinguishable from a real bird, but it is much more so than say da Vinci's ornithopter. A slow and steady progress can be charted from the former to the latter. At some point in the future, the technology will be nearly indistinguishable from a real bird, thus passing the "Norvig Test".

That's the whole point of the Turing Test; it's supposed to be hard and maybe even impossible. It doesn't test whether current AI is useful, it tests if AI is indistinguishable from a human. That's a pinnacle moment, and one that bestows great benefits as well as serious implications.

Personally, I think it will happen; maybe not for 50, 100, 500 years...but it will happen.

Speaking of more suffering...

A former prison inmate once confided in me that he participated in gay sex while in prison because, as he put it "Hey, that's your life." It's my sincerest hope that Mr. Ravi will get to experience "that life" and all that it encompasses for those 30 days.

Someone may even video tape it.

Well, there's always the possibility that some enterprising manager finds that if he provides performance enhancing narcotics to the miners, his quarterly numbers and thus compensation will go up. Then a marshal of Scottish descent will catch on after a miner wigs out on the drugs and opens an airlock without an environment suit on. He'll try to stop the operation leading the manager to send up some thugs to take the marshal out. This will cause a bloody gunfight and some EVA shenanigans; maybe an explosion or two.

Props to everyone who's old enough to get the reference!

Amen, brother. I wish I had mod points.

At Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.
  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/101277-inside-californias-star-power-fusion-facility

It would be on my list.

Opening PDF files in the browser is great and all, but I would be more interested in using this lib to programmatically create PDF files from what is in the browser. This would be particularly useful as svg gets wider adoption. Right now, the process requires conversion to canvas as an intermediate step.