I really feel for these poor misunderstood billionaires.

I buy 100 machines from Dell, I get fired, I can be replaced by anyone who has worked with Dell before.

I build 100 machines, I get fired, the company is screwed. Ergo, I don't get fired.

I think it's pretty clear which way is smarter.

God they really are bad at this aren't they?

I don't pay so much attention to the polls. I hadn't really noticed.

In defense: Holga cameras take really interesting looking pictures, and fixie bikes are good for...

um...

bike polo i guess.

Writing forward with no editing or deletion, while still getting to read what you wrote yesterday. They still make new typewriters and a no-frills manual model goes for like $90.

But unlikes some sourpusses around here, I appreciate the appeal of using weird tools to do common tasks. So if ed is really your thing, ignore the haters.

This is a somewhat important story. It isn't idle.

The interesting thing here is that her suit worked. I just searched google and yahoo for Beverly Stayart, and none of the kind of websites she was talking about came up.

We'll be able to live on Venus and Mars before we can live on this planet, even if it is a paradise.

The fastest man-made object ever was the Helios 2 probe in the 70s. With a gravitational assist from the Sun, it was able to reach 150,000 miles per hour. Even if we could escape the solar system at 10x that speed (which is FAR beyond our current capabilities) it would take almost 10,000 years to reach a solar system 20 light years away.

Realistic interstellar travel requires relativistic speeds, and right now we aren't able to accelerate anything much bigger than a hydrogen atom to those kinds of velocities. Not only that, but when you start to approach your destination, you need to be carrying just as much energy to slow back down.

A lot of people seem to think we'll be launching robot probes on 200 year missions within our lifetimes to go explore these newly discovered planets. It's easy to have one's imagination off by orders of magnitudes when thinking about interstellar distances.

Because Government is the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. They are different from you by definition. It's like this in every single nation-state that has ever existed.

Nah. It blows.

Star wars might have only passable acting, but it has great characters that you actually care about. The only remotely charismatic character in Avatar is the evil army guy.

And the special effects might have been impressive in a technical sense, they look like the box art on graphics cards.

Oh, I get it, it was supposed to suck.

What Kurzweil doesn't understand could fill a book.

Several in fact.

The problem with IE6 is that it doesn't render CSS properly, has ugly javascript quirks, and is STILL FUCKING USED BY 30% OF THE DAMN INTERNET.

And yes, I am a web developer.

20% of school leavers in the UK are functionally illiterate

You mean graduates?