There is ABSOLUTELY no way to tell the difference in most cases. Since "discovery" research is usually funded the researchers have quite a strong vested financial interest in it. Moreover, don't you think GlaxoSmithKline will just classify every scrap of research they possibly can as "for the sake of discovery". It'll be like Hollywood accounting.

I'm not much of a grammar Nazi but I can't help myself here. It's FEWER test, If it can be counted it's "fewer" if not, it's "less".

This is really measuring the wealth of countries, not the cheapness of beer since it measures the number of minutes worked to pay for a beer. Even the major European economies have per capita GDP's 20%-30% lower than the US when measure via PPP (Purchasing power parity).

While I wholeheartedly agree I'll also point out that in the USA we frequently see riots, including property destruction and arson, when sports teams win championships. Which is worse, "They said something deeply offensive to us, let's go set fire to something" or "Our team won, let's go set fire to something!"

That's ridiculous. Studies have found that lots of things bring long term happiness including Money, Marriage, Social ties among many others.

Are you implying that having no beak ISN'T a health problem? Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils.

This is a bill to force telcoms to not dispose of the data they've collected for at least two years. There's nothing in hear about "a plan to capture the online data...". Now the data is being retained to help in investigations but there's a HUGE difference between the telcom having it and the government having to subpoena it and the government collecting it all themselves.

Free would be a huge step up! Since I use Windows I am, in fact, inviting hackers into my system every day and paying for the privilege.

Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up.

Had you followed the links you would have seen that the US has "networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout" which exactly matches your claims of what Iceland has. A surprising amount of those without broadband access are on tribal lands which are governed by different laws.

Not to say that the US couldn't do better on this front but the idea that Iceland is wonderful and the US "Suck(s) that bad" is hyperbole and ignores the facts.

It's a book about a father and his young son trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world where most remaining people have turned to cannibalism. Scary stuff. Note: I had a typo and my spell checker turned "cannibalism" to "Canadianism". I was inclined to leave it but that premise for a book is just too scary for publication!

The difference between software development and most manufacturing is that they produce the same or very similar product thousands or millions of times where we produce a different product every time. This "building an app is like mass producing a chemical" philosophy is one reason why most software shops have insane amounts of unneeded documentation and overhead. I certainly agree that some standards, processes and documentation is needed but it should be kept to the bare essentials as every bit of work done that doesn't directly build a product could well just be a waste of time.

Stop using your grammar jargon on us! You are preventing me from using my core competencies to leverage mind share in the forum space!

Haven't you been listening to the media? Global warming is 100% bad with no possible benefits to anyone. You must be one of those evil greedy capitalists maybe even one of those... gasp... frackers!

Of all the days not to have mods points! While long this post is well reasoned, well argued and fits into my preconceived biases (in other words, I think it's right on but recognize I'm coming from a particular viewpoint).