If you stuck me in front of a computer to mimic code someone showed me at 7, I'd have thought "okay, great, when is recess?"

Really? I got stuck in front of a computer at about that age (it might have been 8 instead) and learned how to use LOGO to draw pictures and Hypercard to make moderately-interactive "stacks," and I thought it was pretty cool.

I even took programming in high-school and just absolutely hated it. Sitting in front of crappy macs writing boring basic...

Well there's your problem: you had boring platform (and probably a shit teacher too).

Ask yourself this question. Should I use a standard protocol with tons of tools an an ecosystem to support it or should I use a totally custom protocol to handle everything?

Yes, you should use the standard protocol... which means you should not be shoehorning printer control stuff into some custom monstrosity layered on top of HTTP!

...except that lpstat etc. already exist, so there wasn't a need to do that in the first place.

What does a GUI have to do with a web server? You could write a graphical front-end to lpstat (etc.) without bothering with the HTTP and whatnot and it'd probably turn out better.

"The rest of you can go on ahead," they said, as if we mighty fly on despite the loss of a teenager.

I bet it would have given the airline an excuse not to refund the rest of your tickets, if you had missed the flight.

There's an easier way to think of it: consider how much space 500 houses take up. Now consider how much space one windmill takes up. The windmill isn't very big compared to the houses, is it?

Also, consider how much farmland it takes to feed the people in those 500 houses. Then consider that you can stick a windmill in the middle of a field and it only displaces crops in the area occupied by its tower's base (plus some room for maintenance and maneuvering), not the width of the blades.

If you take the example of a small town and plop a single windmill in Farmer Bob's cornfield, you can power the whole town. If you put a windmill in Farmer Joe's soybean field too, you can power that town and the next town over. If you put a few windmills near every small town you might (I haven't done the math) end up with enough leftover power for all the big cities.

The point is, 80k windmills sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

The only trouble is that Netflix doesn't necessarily know who my ISP is. Maybe one day I'm watching it at home on Comcast, then another day I'm watching it on my phone with T-Mobile, then another day I'm watching it using a restaurant's wi-fi. For it to be "fair," Netflix would have to keep track of which ISP everybody was connecting through at any given moment and then pro-rate the surcharge.

The very reason Truecrypt died was because they couldn't trust future compilers for Windows.

[citation needed]

It seems to me that one easy way would be for the battery to just quit working entirely. People will figure out that it needs to be replaced, even if they don't know the precise reason why.

In fact, I even know of a revolutionary device that could be used to accomplish that function: it's called a "fuse."

Remember that any suit that can protect the wearer against virus is also impermeable to air. That means the suits heat up. They are sweating profusely as soon as they get their suits on, and they can only remain suited up for less than an hour before roasting in their own juices. When every surface is soaked in sweat, it's impossible to recognize when it's the patient's infectious sweat or your own.

We have the technology to make climate-controlled underwear (although admittedly it might be hard to find a way to exhaust the heat without compromising the seal).

We know the best practical approach is to use a buddy system, and have them help each other. Even so, the first buddy to disrobe is still handling the infectious materials while helping the other to strip, so they still have to be vigilant.

It seems to me a good plan would be to have the person on the next shift suit up, then help the person on the previous shift remove his suit. That way, the only person at additional risk is the last person in the chain.

How do we know what the audience "prefers?" Simple: the "industry association" of propagandists hires Nielson to poll a carefully-chosen selection of the most brain-dead, white-bread Americans to decide whether they prefer the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist A or the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist B. (Seeing a broadcast of actual facts isn't a choice, of course, so exactly nobody "prefers" it.)

Perhaps the Honda CR-Z, but that isn't exactly very popular (in fact, it's a flop; I'm surprised they still sell them).

What did they expect? It was supposed to be the successor to the CRX and (first-gen) Insight, and was way worse than either of them. They should have made it out of aluminum, at the very least.

Yep. For example, my old VW runs on biodiesel just fine, and all I had to do was replace the fuel injector return lines with Viton ones. (I might have to rebuild my fuel pump with Viton seals too, eventually.)

You joke, but their newest ship actually has sails!

From Wikipedia:

The ship is also designed to be one of the "greenest" ships afloat, and to showcase this quality, it runs primarily using wind power, with a 55 m mast system which carries 1255 sq meters of sail and is backed up by a "state-of-the-art hybrid". On board the ship can store up to 59 cubic meters of greywater and blackwater, avoiding the need for disposal at sea. All materials, from the paintwork to the insulation, have been chosen with a view to sustainability, and each component has been supplied with transparent ethical sourcing.

(It still uses diesel engines for maneuvering in port, of course -- I'm honestly surprised they don't run the engine on biodiesel. Maybe it's a logistical issue?)

I misspoke. I was trying to say that supporting or agreeing with the First and Second amendments are not mutually exclusive. Or in other words, that -- contrary to what "conservatives" would have you believe about "liberals," or what "liberals" would have you believe about "conservatives" -- lots of people think it's good to have the right to free speech and the right to bear arms.

And by the way, they're both all-encompassing: The First Amendment affirms your right to say whatever the fuck you want, especially things the government doesn't want people to hear. The Second Amendment affirms your right to self-defense, especially against a tyrannical government. They are nothing less than rules written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.