...marijuana doesn't replace the pain relief of opiates.

No, for many people it's more effective than opiates. I know literally dozens of medical cannabis users who have given up opiate pain killers completely and replaced them with medical cannabis. But it's important to experiment with different strains and find what works for you; all cannabis is not created equal.

Personally, I use Kush and Afghanistan strains and crosses for migraines. Over the years I've tried literally hundreds of strains, and looked into their breeding history, and came to the conclusion that it was Kush and Afghanistan strains that are the most effective for my migraines.

Where an opiate pain killer will dull the pain of a migraine, the proper strain will completely eliminate all migraine symptoms for me within 5-10 minutes of consuming a half gram dose. Triptans, on the other hand, only work half the time and take half an hour to have any effect, if any. Opiates only dull pain and actually make the nausea of a migraine worse because they upset my stomach. Add in the addictive nature of opiates, and I think you can understand why I'd much rather use medical cannabis than prescription opiates for what ails me.

Google isn't detecting potholes? Back in 1985, we had that on our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. The LIDAR on top of the vehicle was generating a ground profile. This was for off-road driving, where that's essential. I'd assumed Google was doing that; they have a Velodyne laser scanner that provides enough information.

In traffic, sometimes you can't see a pothole because it's obscured by a vehicle ahead, but if the vehicle ahead doesn't change speed, direction, or attitude, it's probably safe to proceed over the ground it just covered. On high speed roads, you can't see distant potholes clearly because the angle is unfavorable, but if the road ahead looks like the near road, and the near road profiles OK with the LIDAR, the far road is probably good. That's what the Stanford team used to out-drive their LIDAR range. (We didn't do that and were limited to 17MPH).

Fixed road components should be handleable. People, bicycles, and animals are tough.

I suspect in reality that the best sites would continue, but there would be a lot more paywalls around, probably less editorial integrity on open sites as things like product placements and affiliate referral fees became more reliable revenue streams, and maybe over time we'd eventually get somewhere with micropayments. In some ways, moving to more "honest" funding via paywalls and/or micropayments might be a better long-term model for the people who do produce good content and run valuable sites than what we have today, though no doubt it would be a painful transition with many casualties.

The thing that makes me a little sad inside is that the aggressive, irresponsible advertisers have spoiled the model for the moderate, responsible ones. Because of the former group, I do block very aggressively when I'm browsing, and I don't feel any guilt about it because my motivations are security, privacy and performance. However, I also have no problem with people who just want to make a bit of money from running a decent site, and I wouldn't block their ads if there were a reliable way to allow those while still eliminating the rest. Unfortunately, I don't see that being possible any time soon, which is why none of the commercial sites I've ever run myself has relied on ads as a business model.

Sure you can. I've run various personal or social group sites over the years that just paid a little to keep things running, without expecting any sort of income in return. For the personal sites, I do it for the satisfaction of giving something back, and sometimes starting enjoyable discussions with others who share my interests.

I also run some commercial sites, aiming at a wider audience, charging real money for signing up. This is a completely different scale of commitment in terms of hardware, connectivity, and operating costs.

If you're running a discussion forum that you share with 50 friends, sure, it can be in the first category and you can do it for peanuts and enjoy all the high quality interaction you like. But running a significant news or social networking site with thousands of participants? Not even close.

If you do that, you're just giving Russia the justification they needed to turn that kinda-sorta-cold-but-lukewarm war into a full out one.

The problem when calling bluff is that the other one can do it too. Do you thing you will get the necessary popular support for a war against Russia over some country most people never heard of? You still need some kind of Pearl Harbor to convince the people that this war needs to be fought. And after the 9/11 ruse, I think being convincing could be a tad bit difficult.

So the new cold war ain't democracy vs. communism but corporate state vs. national socialist dictatorship?

I wonder which is the lesser of the two evils...

There's a difference between having a thick skin and intentionally wallowing in a sewer. :P

Hey, if you want to torture yourself with a thin-skinned attitude by going on the 'net, go ahead.

But don't expect the 'net to change just because you're offended. It's not going to happen.

Trolls like you amuse me. Didn't your mama call you upstairs for breakfast a few minutes ago?

Yeah, my original trackball lasted me a decade, too.

The new one I bought last year made it a whopping 7 months.

Exactly: pinpoint heat sources will see that energy rapidly disbursed throughout the entire suit rather than stay concentrated in a hot spot.

Water's heat conductivity, its ability to spread heat out into meaninglessness, is one of the reasons why it's effective at extinguishing fires.

And that number is likely to be higher than reality since people who aren't very sick will be unwilling to present for care and, given the poor state of public health infrastructure in that neck of the woods, population surveillance is very hard.

They will have a better idea in the upcoming months when they can screen for Ebola antibodies in the general population.

... and it will only require 50,000 words in which to send it.

If you haven't got a thick skin, get off the internet. People will disagree with you, contradict you, post things that make you uncomfortable or that you find downright revolting.

The world is not "your oyster." People who disagree with you and that you find disagreeable have every bit as much right to be there as you. And when you consider the fact that some people find your Bible quotes and homilies offensive (as do I), it soon becomes clear that it's impossible to please everyone.

If you only want to hang out with like-minded people, form a nice little coffee-clique of people and socialize instead of trying to find "happiness" on the 'net.