I don't see how removing the middle man from the equation is giving more control to apple. If anything, it's just distributing it to every single person with a phone.

I think you're all getting hung up on the 'ONLY APPLE' part, and not the "you won't pay anything for service anymore, since you're 'paying' by extending the network with your own device."

It sounds like a cross between the themes from Blade Runner and Cosmos, but not nearly as good.

If he's like me, then get him into college and grad school ASAP and get him on with his life before he's 18.

If he's like my wife, then leave him in the normal school system so that he can enjoy the rest of his childhood. He'll thank you for it.

Both my wife and myself were at the top of our respective classes and went to top tier colleges. We're both well above (though not as much as this kid) what society would consider genius. And we both would have been better served by completely different approaches.

There isn't a single answer for this. Thinking that there is one answer for "what to do with a genius" is making the terrible assumption that all geniuses are alike.

How about we just ask the kid what he wants? He'll be better qualified to answer that question.

I just bought a couple bags of Taco Flavor (the original) in their original-design packaging (think Pepsi Throwback for Doritos if you haven't seen these).

Then I got back to my hotel and read this.

I'll dump a bag out on the floor in his honor.

This is not about wanting to have different identities, or to be able to be a dick online. It's about freedom itself.

Without anonymity you don't have the freedom to say what is right if it goes against society's current notions of morality. If you do, you'll be silenced and punished (either by the authorities or society at large) for stepping out of line. I want to live in a world where people have true freedom of speech, and that world cannot exist without anonymity.

If anonymity weren't a foundation of freedom of speech there would be no such thing as a witness protection program. You need to be able to say things with freedom from repercussion for any social or scientific progress to be made. You won't always be right, but you'll never know if you had to keep it held inside until the world was ready to hear whatever it was that you wanted to say.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

1. This is horrible, and I'm thinking that the term "going postal" will be replaced by "going bank" after people get pissed off about this.

2. Groupon is the most worthless piece of crap because of which I've ever been forced by my wife to do things. Deals are only marginally better than deals already available at the locations that you can't use if you're paying with a Groupon ($50 groupon for $25, and half off deals all over the menu on a regular basis that are only for normal people without the damn groupon), and there's a time limit on Groupon so there's a risk of attrition and a certainty of doing something when I don't want to do it.

Wow this pisses me off.

The most laptops I ever checked through security was 16 (across 2 bags). None were stolen, though one of the displays was cracked once. When they re-packed they did it poorly hence the breakage.

I really like the firearm idea presented elsewhere in this thread.

In normal conditions, saying that the follower is a terrible driver if they can't stop in time is absolutely right. I agree in principle.

The problem comes in areas, like LA, where there is so much reckless traffic that it's virtually impossible to leave a safe stopping distance in front of yourself. If you leave 1.1 cars worth of space, within a few seconds another car will fill the void. The only way to always have enough room to stop is to not drive at all.

This wouldn't apply in the vast majority of locations, but LA is an outlier in this regard.

So in general, I agree. I'm just pointing out that situations can (in some locations frequently) arise where you don't have the ability to maintain that cushion.

That said, I have managed to never run into anyone in any situation.

Historically, things that "everyone already knew" have been wrong enough of the time to warrant testing.

Also, things that have been shown one way with several experiments could either really be that way, or the methodology in all of the experiments could have been wrong.

It's not about demonstrating the obvious, but about demonstrating it in such a way as to reduce external noise from the system to make sure that the premise is actually sound.

In time, there will be a market for this stuff. Everyone will have already destroyed what they kept for exactly the wrong amount of time (so long that it got in the way, but not long enough for everyone else to have destroyed their copies), and if you have things like 5.25" drives that actually work they'll be valuable to those who need them.

It's like any item. In the 70s I could have picked up a bunch of awesome '60s era muscle cars for cheap and kept them in a barn somewhere. These days those old cars are worth more than new cars.

If you don't have the capacity to store a lot of stuff easily, then ditch the computer stuff. If you do, and don't mind having worthless crap around for another 20 years before it's valuable, then by all means keep it.

If my heart stops beating I will die - we should give it a generic nobel prize just for being so intelligent.

Manufacturing jobs are low skill because you could teach a dog to do them in a few hours, if the dogs had opposable thumbs.

In any factory you used to have a bunch of unskilled labor, and then some skilled trades to fix things when they broke. Tinners, electricians, pipe fitters, welders, and so on aren't low skill; they're blue collar because they're labor intensive.

Looks like they're a little behind schedule developing the Ghost X-9. I do think that I saw Sharon Apple giving a concert last year, though.

Everyone in the world would probably agree that Apple will "never replace MS in the workplace."

It'll take longer, but unless Apple falls apart businesses will be changing how they operate to incorporate some of the cool stuff that Apple can sell them. It's just starting now.

Nice anecdotes, but the only problems I've ever had with macs are directly related to printing.

1. I have a Samsung ML-1740 laser printer. It's cheap, is no longer sold, but it works fine as long as you can print to it. My niece's linux laptop was able to print to it immediately, but Snow Leopard balked at it and I can't actually print to it anymore from my machine. Perhaps if I knew more about printing it would be trivial to write my own driver or install a third party driver that actually works with that model of printer.

2. I have never gotten my Airport Extreme to share printers via its USB port properly. They'll print once or twice and then crap out and need to be restarted. I haven't determined if this is a property of the HP printers that are causing this issue or if it's something related to the Airport.

I ended up breaking down and just buying 2 new printers. A color inkjet with built in wireless support (figuring that something this new would come with working drivers), and a Xerox laser with built in networking and Postscript support. Worst case I'll always be able to print to that laser printer with a Postscript driver.