Dave, let me ask you this: if I bring a video camera into a theater and point it at the screen the entire time a movie is playing...yet the camera is *off*...exactly what crime have I committed? Since when is *carrying* a camera considering sufficient evidence to say a crime has been committed? There is no statute, law, or even *warning* at a movie about carrying a camera. There *are* warnings about *recording* the movie, but he wasn't recording it and nobody could prove he was before they snatched them off his head. If somebody had tried that with me in a darkened room, this former Marine would've given them a broken arm and my foot on their neck immediately thereafter. And *I'd* be perfectly within my rights to do so given the cost of Google Glass and my immediate perception of attempted theft of property.

And I'll remind you, this fellow was wearing *prescription lens* Google Glass, which means he *needed* the glasses to actually see the movie. The fact that Glass was attached is incidental.

The beauty of living in a free country is the author is not required to carry two kinds of prescription glasses. If he wants to carry one pair, he can carry one pair even if Google Glass is attached to it. Just *having* an item that *might* be used to commit a crime does not make you a criminal, nor does it give the police/FBI the right to treat you as one. Your logic is the same asinine "logic" used to impugn non-violent, non-threatening people who wish to carry weapons purely for self defense.

There's sufficient molecular oxygen dissolved in seawater for a fish. Humans have much higher metabolic rates and require a great deal more oxygen...too much for a device like this to supply. The "gills" would either have to be massively larger or they'd have to have a very powerful pump pulling huge quantities of seawater through them. The former is obviously not the case, and the latter would require a much larger battery and pump.

Well, that's true if you consider "knew what they were doing" as disabling all the safety measures, disregarding all standard operating procedures, and operating the reactor in a known-unsafe condition. The Chernobyl operators were doing and ill-advised, poorly-planned, badly-implemented test of some reactor systems that involved going completely off the farm vis-a-vis approved operation of the reactor. True, the RBMK designs were fickle and dangerous to begin with, but they'd operated for a long time without incident because operators *respected* that danger. Chernobyl was an example of what happens when you don't respect it. Had the reactor been operated within its safety margins, nothing would've happened.

My understanding of the situation is Fukushima had a PORV for hydrogen venting but *not* a flare-off stack that would be present in more current designs. They vented the hydrogen only to prevent reactor vessel overpressurization, and crossed their fingers there wouldn't be an ignition source that would cause an explosion. Obviously they lost that gamble.

I work in the nuclear power industry as a consultant (IT, not nuclear tech, but I'm around a lot of nuclear engineers who I chat with). It was ridiculous that a flare-off stack was never implemented at Fukushima. I'm really curious why. I know first hand that modifications to existing plants is a red tape nightmare, but adding a flare-off stack should've been something that was easy to get approved and to implement given it's a proven technology.

No, it doesn't. Those 13 people at Instagram made out like bandits, true...but what are they going to do with that money? They're going to (a) invest it and (b) spend it. If they invest it, other businesses will benefit from it, which in turn will benefit their employees. If they spend it, whoever produces the goods and/or services they spend it on will benefit.

Using Kodak is a very poor example. Kodak had every possible opportunity to capitalize on the digital age. Instead, they felt threatened by it to the point of shunning it until it was too late. Same goes for Blockbuster vs. Netflix. Technology will always march on, and those who don't adapt will always be swept to the wayside by it...and those who do adapt will always prosper in the new order. It's been this way since the first machine put the skilled laborer out of a job. Just because we've got an Internet now doesn't mean this is going to stop. It can't be stopped without stopping progress altogether.

And as they get "priced out" of the market, they will leave their job, either for a higher-wage job in another field or for a similar wage job in a different locale. And the supply of talent for your hypothetical service tech will fall...and the salaries for these techs will rise as demand outstrips supply...and things will balance again in a while.

Left alone to itself, without onerous regulation or price fixing, the free market will *always* establish a new equilibrium when these fluctuations happen. We fuck things up when we try to "fix" something that isn't broken in the first place. Artificial wage controls. Rent controls. They all create more problems than they solve, and all are unsustainable in the long term.

All the more reason to use it! Remind me again why the government needs to know what I, as a free, law-abiding citizen, do with my finances.

So the *signature* piece of Obama's second term agenda -- the legislation he's harped on loudly and constantly -- launches with an epic fail. The contractors working the site were sounding alarms well in advance of the launch. And yet Obama is somehow utterly unaware that the launch could be anything but a total success? I call bullshit. Either Obama is the most disconnected president in recent history when it comes to the success of his *core legislative agenda* or he's just bullshitting about not knowing there were issues on launch day.

Just ask Pelosi: they had to launch the website so they could find out what would crash it.

...this kind of government idiocy, ineptitude, and invasion of privacy is exactly the same kind of crap we're inviting into our healthcare system. TSA, NSA, DMV...ACA. Yeah, gimme more of that fucked up shit.

...but good luck finding another sucker willing to take his place. The USS Blackberry has been sinking for a long time now. Nothing and nobody is going to save it. Whoever takes the helm at this point will preside over the dissolution of the company, not its revival.

...armed gunman opens fire on unarmed targets, and the logical response is to request that his targets be allowed to arm themselves to fend off future attacks of a similar nature. Remind me again why it's practically impossible for me to purchase a handgun to defend myself in California?

As opposed to the door already open for atrocities *with* permanent damage, yes, I understand that fully. I choose the non-permanent damage, thanks very much. As an analogy, which would you rather have happen to you: get shot or get tasered? I can assure you, the former is much more painful and damaging than the latter.

When we capture a guy carrying an IED, that's as "convicted" as it needs to be, whether he's killed anyone with it yet or not.