JavaScript is terrible. At least Perl has a semi credible namespaces and library mechanism. If you have a big site with loads of JavaScript, you are just lost in mega page mishmash. And, JavaScript doesn't even have a native decimal or currency type, and the way JSON stores represents dates is just aweful. So, no, JavaScript is not going to take over the world.

CES's glory days were the 1980s, during the first personal computer boom. Then, everyone I think introduced stuff at CES... I remember reading old Compute! and Byte for goings on at the CES - there were reviews of the new Ataris, Apples, Commodores... and then I think even console systems were introduced there as well. So, CES meant, PC in its exciting newness, and already the luster faded a bit as computers became more commonplace. I imagine CES is still pretty cool, and if I were a retailer, I would think I'd want to check it out for the not marquee labels that introduce things that might still sell. But its not the center of the computing universe that, for one brief time, it was.

Let's see, he cuts off IR#1 at 1830, which pretty much misses the entire steamship revolution and the invention of so many consumer goods of the 19th century, not to mention, the facilitation of mass immigration to the USA by all those steamships, the openning of the west due to practical railroads.

Then, he cuts off the next IR at 1900, and thus misses aircraft, the widespread adoption of the telephone and radio, and consumer appliances.

And then, having decided that aircraft, telephones, radio and steamships were useless, he says that the next 60 years of IT will mean absolutely nothing.

I would be inclined to think he is totally wrong.

Here's the whole problem. Even if we reduced CO2 emissions to ZERO, it could still take hundreds of years for the oceans to uptake the excess CO2 and transfer it to the bottom. So, right now, mitigation and risk management are the strategy.

Musk once alluded to a better manufacturing process for actually building rockets. So, instead of saying that he's taking shortcuts and what not and doesn't have layers of bureacracy, what if he just has a cheaper way to build rockets that are better?

Is that it simplifies language binding. If you have the core stuff written in C, its fairly easy to bind to it from any language, whereas C++ is much more difficult - if not impossible, as I don't even think there is a standard C++ ABI. Certainly not on Windows. So, if you have your core os stuff written with C bindings, then, any language maker can talk to it, so that, if users want OOP languages, they can use anyone of them, not just C++.

I was a programmer that helped put together document management systems for people trying to get some compensation for the rather extensive environmental damages caused by the nuclear weapons industry and I feel a few facts are in order:

a) All nuke stuff is already privatized. It's subcontracted out or has been to players like EG&G, Dupont, and others.
b) Originally, no contractor in their right mind would touch the manhattan project. So the government indemnified them.
c) Layers of secrecy already exist within the privatized world, and unaccountability. And the military has a hand in it is as well, obviously.

Bottom line is, the result is, we got the bombs, the mess that was made is appalling, and the full story may never really be known. The moral is, it doesn't matter who does it, civilian or military, per say, as much as, what is needed is a genuine degree of openness and accountability and that is extremely hard to do when you also have to keep everything a secret. People abuse the system.

Letting Hamas and other terrorist organizations use Twitter keeps them in reach. Do you really want them to make their own, harder to find, twitter. At least this way, everyone can know what they are thinking.

The numbers the Guardian cites are somewhat dated and don't reflect the very recent American switch over from coal to natural gas. Many electricity operators have converted their coal plants to burn natural gas instead, because hydrofracking has made natural gas so cheap in the USA. This trend will continue and the result has been a net reduction in CO2 emissions, so much so that right now I believe the USA is on track to beat the EU at the CO2 reduction game (kickass!), because the Germans are retiring their nukes and using coal now in the winter.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428947/a-drop-in-us-co2-emissions/

and, while I disagree with this article about the risks / rewards of fracking, it is worth pointing out that as America switches to natural gas, the Europeans are buying our coal...

http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/co2-drop-us-25092012/

But, we humans ARE chimpanzee groups in a loose sort of way.

We need space surgery research. It's going to happen at some point. But, what we also need is faster spacecraft. Nuclear powered ships can cut the journey to Mars and asteroids down to months or even weeks, with even heavier payloads, and are designs that are viable. We could have artificial gravity by spinning wheels, arriving quickly at other places in the solar system, and know how to do surgery in zero g conditions. But, nope, instead we're going to have any number of earth bound pet projects.

LOL... LOL... LOL... Don't worry, they will kill it in favor of socialist highway construction...

Well that and all the touch changes they made - with the WM_GESTURE stuff, has been around since Vista... how long ago was that?

If it was genuinely confirmable, that would be the point... but until the time where someone can do that and routinely, then its not really much of a theory at all, is it? You can't have science jumping all over crazy idea because you want to overturn everything that is known. Let's face it, to people in the field, the standard model is as tried and true as say, a C++ compiler might be to be us in IT. Sure, there might be a bug in the compiler these days... but 90% of the time, its probably going to be in the code it is compiling first. Not impossible... but, increasingly unlikely...

Ok, let's get to some reality checks. One of the unofficial world records for a non-steroid'd woman bench pressing, on the entire planet earth, is in the neighborhood of about 400lbs. I can do that, and I'm a 45 year old programmer, and there's plenty of guys out there that can hit that pretty easy. In fact, the world record's lift for a guy I think is well over 1000lbs. So now let's see, at the top of the curve, the strongest guys are -twice- as strong as the strongest women.

So sure, let's have a competition... let's follow your suggestion and have men and women compete together in the same exact thing. You know what would happen? Women wouldn't even qualify for half of the events. They wouldn't be in any weight lifting, any distance throwing events, any weight carrying. What about wrestling? Are women going to do that? Hmmm, don't think so. Maybe play football? Are you saying women should just try out to be on the same football team as guys?

How can you say separate divisions for men and women are sexist, when without them, women wouldn't even get a chance to play?