Because it is not about reason. It is about fashion. Fashion is a way of displaying your group/tribal affiliation. It can provide a person with a sense of belonging and social acceptance. "Choosing" a set of beliefs is a way of building an identity and forming social bounds. It takes a lot of reasoning to get someone to change their identity.

even the feudal farmers were capitalists

Are you refering to the privileged landowning classes? Or to thier property...the farmers? Or would you also refer to American slaves as capitalists because they calculated to ROI and decided that picking cotton was more profitable then getting hanged?

Can you please expand this to explain other research professions. For example in your theory do all researchers need to predict an impending calamity in order to demonstrate a need for thier services? For example: Physicists Botanists Chemists Biologists Astronomers How do they justify thier paychecks if they are not predicting doom?

$15k ???? Why so cheap? I can't imagine most ppl would get off the couch for such little money. Especially since the publicity they get is just as likely to attract bad attention as good.

Gosh you mean that economists have stated that a carbon tax is more effective then cap and trade at reducing carbon emmisions. Your right that sure sounds like a sinister plot.

Wouldn't data centers on the moon make sense? PV is more efficient in the cold so they would do well. A cold environment means that the energy generated by PV goes more into data processing and less into cooling. Shipping bits to earth has to be easier then atoms. Issues would be lag and bandwidth right...

Like many, I am violently opposed to warrant-less wiretapping. That is NOT what is happening in this case. This is the case of an arrogant internet company assuming that they are above the law. Smuckerbag may have a gazillion dollars but society has never granted upon him the honor and duty that is granted to judges. He should learn his place which is below the law like the rest of us.

Oracle seems to be doing good job milking RDBMS which was dying longer than Yahoo was around.

What the hell are you talking about? RDBMS Still run the world. Do you think your bank uses noSql? or hotel reservation systems, or the IRS, or well hell you know everybody everywhere. Just because there are some cases where nosql is useful does not mean relational systems are dying.

Sounds a lot like al qaeda.

More scaffolding means more jobs and more ways to obfusicate your actual worth to the team.

How many years does PDF have to be a primary attack vector before we strip Adobe of the business license?

Umm wtf? There are a half dozen documentaries that include interviews with the designer of thin thread and former managers who put it into operation. The problem was not that they shut down ThinThread. The problem was that they removed the safeguards that were designed into it to prevent dragnet collection of domestic data and then put it in the field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... That is what Tom Drake raised alarms about. He said check out this ThinThread thing we should use it. He was told no and then cut out of the loop. Then he found out they removed the safeguards and deployed it. He went to his boss, and the intelligence committee and then they ruined his life. Instead of doing the "right thing" he should have pulled a Snowden and be living large in Russia.

The opposite statement is equally bad. eg. "Ever notice that politicians can never accomplish long range goals because they only focus on short term results that will win votes"

I think politicians setting long range goals is a very good idea.

See? In fact you could say that this gentlemen is being very virtuous. He is proposing a plan that he probably won't be around to take credit for if it works.

Agreed the only barely useful "draw Muhammad" "protest" would include a draw jesus being buggered by John the baptist, Or the pope on his knees blowing Hitler, or Siddhartha eating a jumbo hotdog with the works at a monster truck rally. You know spread the whole lighten message around a little.

WTF is wrong with America? How did you get so broken? Your so worried that you might be judged for being soft on Muslims that you feel compelled to state that you wouldn't care if they were all slain? The USA is around the bend full on crazy nut bar broken. For your own sake and the rest of the civilized world, get therapy.