I think he's saying this to generate debate and thought about aliens. It's too late to hide. The radio waves are already on their way. But if he's saying this on a TV show he's trying to generate buzz for it and get people thinking about it. It also leads to the conclusion we need to build SDF-1, thereby getting humans into space.

Hawking isn't called a genius for no reason. There is another subtle arguement there that we need to get of this planet to start looking for those resources too.

Etc etc.

The original post thinks it would interesting to be the fly on the wall to the "discussions"

I lived over there for 5 years. I don't think it would be quite so interesting unless you haven't been following Chinese politics and all for the past 15 (or 65) years. There will likely be two camps in the Gov't. One that sees the problems of letting a company like Google be forced out of China (call them the Capitalists) and the group that has been trying to make this sort of thing happen ever since the first let foreign companies in in the first place (the Nationalist Communists if you will).

The thing of it is, the Capitalists sympathize with the Nationalists. They just don't want it to be so overt and obvious.

You just have to understand they don't see what they're doing as wrong in any way. Protecting their regime is #1. It has been for thousands of years for whoever is in power there. Currently you can describe it as Nationalism. Go back and read about the lead up to WWI and you'll get a sense of the mind set of many of the people in China, if not the majority. War (with Taiwan) would be glorious, an Empire is a right of China's and to some Everything (worldwide) is part of China and maps should show that.

You don't think the rest of the arab countries are scared out of their wits that Iran might get Nukes? You don't think this has caused the Saudis to pursue their own Nuke program?

Well, I think you need to look a little deeper dude. You'd do well to start with Stratfor.com if it wasn't so expensive. but then a good education is priceless, and boy are you in need of one.

This is Exactly what s happening to celebrities today. Out here in LA there were was a gang of teenage girls that followed al the celeb mags, watched the TV shows where the celebs showed off their houses etc. Then they got on Twitter and face book to see when these celebs left town. BAMN! they robbed the house. Took the police a year to find them!

They had millions of dollars worth of crap they hadn't figured out how to fence!

What? "Completely socially accepted?!!"

This is news to my wife, who is from Taiwan.

And for the 5 years I lived there and I certainly did not see any "Social Acceptance" of this. Other things perhaps, but certainly not in public places and on display. If you show this to her and her friends she will NOT be socially accepting, let me tell you!

I agree. This is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of rebooting a game!

I did think about it a little the other night and I'm not sure what more you could add to it other than graphics. Make battles bigger I suppose. Much of the time you were supposed to be commanding grand battles, and you had less than 50 or 60 guys on the board.

But beyond that it'll take some major brainstorming to make this game significantly better and worth doing. Perhaps the guys maintaining the old version have much better ideas than me :)

Google can afford billion dollar lawyers.

"You came in that thing?, Youâ(TM)re braver than I thought"

I'll just add a little here as someone who has interviewed a lot of people for Net Admin jobs in the past few years.

For us, a huge missing factor on the younger applicants is, quite simply, maturity. The advantage older applicants have on this front can't be overstated.

Kids have a tendency to engage in "guerrilla maintenance" as we call it here. Just reboot it and see if it comes back up without considering if doing so will take down production.

Kids also have a tendency to not see the bigger picture of how IT fits into the rest of the company. You have to box them in with ITIL processes to keep them from doing dumb things.

Kids also are also not very good at leadership situations in dealing with others.

Those are just the disadvantages the question poster might use to his advantage. It isn't always true (I've got a 25 year old on my team that has broken all the above descriptions, although he was a student of mine some years ago :))

I'm sure someone else will post all the disadvantages you face as being older, and the advantages of being younger. Read them and consider them in how you will minimize them when looking for a job and working it once you've got it. Although the biggest disadvantage I've seen on older applicants that come into the industry late is low expectations of themselves and their career. Shoot for the stars, not the mud.