Not that Javascript doesn't have faults, but what exactly is it about Javascript that means it can't be used offline? The only real hurdles to writing 'offline' apps in Javascript are the lack of traditional local file access and other anti-cross-site-scripting features in browsers which have nothing to do with Javascript itself and everything to do with security concerns that would affect any 'web language'.

I give you, for example, GitHub's new "Atom" editor which, as far as I can tell, is mostly Javascript, running in its own gimped version of Chromium with the local file access API enabled. I assume Adobe Brackets is the same. Any 'offline' Javascript code that you've written in Node.JS are obviously a figment of your imagination, too.

Meanwhile, languages that "compile" to Javascript as if it were bytecode seem to work quite well, like the aforementioned 'Dart', Coffeescript, Haxe and Google Web Toolkit (which compiles Java to JavaScript). From what I've seen, although they ain't gonna be used for climate modelling or big data anytime soon, their performance is quite adequate for the sort of thing that web apps need to do.

No, it doesn't. It just suggests that interstellar travel and communication are very, very difficult. They don't have to be impossible, just hard enough to put a spoke in the Ponzi-scheme galactic colonization plan that the Fermi prediction relies on, and why SETI hasn't found any needles in the haystack yet.

We know that space travel is hard. We got from powered flight to landing on the Moon in a single human lifetime, then hit the wall. We have hugely successful, experimentally proven theories of physics that say that FTL travel is impossible, and well-reasoned scientific speculation showing that the possible loopholes (Alcubiere warps, wormholes etc.) require access to exotic matter, consume ridiculous amounts of energy, and (fortunately, for causality's sake) have deal-breaking complications... and even if they work may only provide near/at/slightly over lightspeed travel. We know enough about energy and matter to start doing the sums for slower-than-light interstellar travel and work out how difficult it is* (even SF writers fall back on Unobtanium power rather than 'old fangled' fusion drives for their generation ships, now).

As for communication/detecting signals, our only data point is us: A century or so after inventing radio, we're already switching to highly compressed, encrypted digital signals indistinguishable from noise without the 'key', transmitted at the lowest power and tightest beam possible.

So, despite all the plausible resolutions of the 'Fermi paradox' which, while not proven, are built on reasoned extrapolation of what we do know, why do people focus on the least plausible resolution: 'there are no aliens' which, while impossible to conclusively disprove without actually finding an alien, relies on us existing on the tail end of a probability curve?

That is anthropocentric thinking bordering on religion.

* Plus, if you can build generation ships that can survive in interstellar space, and manage their populations, it would be far, far easier to build space habitats and park them somewhere with solar energy and big chunks of raw materials floating around. Kinda reduces your incentive for Ponzi colonization which, as Greg Egan put it, "is what bacteria with spaceships would do".

Red herring. Where did the GP say that the nearside lane was clear? I've often been overtaking a string of slow-moving traffic, only to have some wanker in a big German saloon (the sort with the aggressive-looking LED running lights designed to intimidate peons without flashing and honking) drop out of hyperdrive 6" behind my tailpipe. If the nearside lane did have room to swing a cat, they would use it to pass you.

Less freedom than what? An XBox, Playstation or Wii with locked-down hardware, that probably aren't ever going to support alternative software or game stores without jailbreaking? And good luck building a homebrew XBox or Playstation using your choice of components.

Steam seems to be the least worst of the game platforms.

The real test of a SteamBox is whether you can quit Steam, access the underlying OS and install other software. AFAIK that is eminently possible under SteamOS - whether Steam Boxes will be locked down is unknown (it would be a mistake).

It would be nice if that underlying OS was Linux, but it sounds as if Valve has dropped the ball. It's OK taking forever to create the next version of Half Life - but if you're relying on third party hardware manufacturers you need to stick to schedule.

Strange. Although my annual income has less digits in it than yours, I've put by enough savings to easily drop ~$70k on a car without needing finance, yet I would only worry about running costs if it ran on single malt and was lubricated with white truffle oil, because it is completely bloody obvious that the running costs are trivial when you could get a pretty nice car for half the price, and insignificant c.f. the value a new car uses when it rolls of the forecourt (...actually the BMW i3 range extender sounds more suited to my needs, although I'd probably need to rent a long-range car from time to time).

I'll save you at least one Excel weekend, though: buying the $50k car rather than the $100k car will save you $50k. $50k will get you 10k gallons of gas. 10k gallons of petrol will take you 400,000 miles - or 100 miles every day for 10 years (by which time I'm pretty sure you'll have fried a Tesla battery or two). The only way you're going to save money with the Tesla is if you like it better than the $100k car (and don't end up needing a second car for long journeys). No Pugh charts (whatever the hell they are) required.

The question I'd be asking is not "how much am I going to save on fuel" but "how much is a 3 year old Tesla going to be worth". I'd put my money on depreciation making fuel cost savings look like chump change... and the more fuel costs you save, the higher the mileage and the worse the depreciation...

Well, he's making a lot of advances in electric car technology and is dropping strong hints that he plans to share those with the rest of the industry on a fairly generous basis. Selling premium-priced cars to the rich is a good way to bankroll that - in 5-10 years time the rest of us may well be benefitting from this work. I can respect that.

What he hasn't done yet is created a compelling alternative to the gas-powered car. The Tesla has a very clear niche where it might be practical if cash were no object: private garages and long, regular commutes of 50-100 miles: long enough to make you want to travel in a luxurious car, short enough to fall comfortably within the Tesla's range, home-based so you can recharge overnight.

I'd be OK with that if the Tesla website didn't try and push things like economy (no, you're not going to save money unless you conveniently ignore the extra cost of the car - but if you have that sort of money why would you care?) and how easy it was to make a road trip (...just start driving, then have lunch at a supercharger! On the newly-localised British site this advice is followed by a map that shows no superchargers in the UK)

I think they're on the verge of getting there: make that mileage '250 miles minimum)' rather than 'up to 265 miles (unless you get stuck in slow traffic and need lights, heat or air con)' and have supercharger stations every 50 miles or so (otherwise your useful range gets reduced because you have to recharge early or detour to charge) and you might have a viable care replacement.

There's also a scaling issue with chargers: I was looking at (non-Tesla) chargers in the UK and, superficially, its not too bad. Look closer, however, and most of those stations only have 1 or 2 bays - often one slow and one fast (with different connectors). Arrive there and find the bay in use (with the owners off having lunch somewhere), or out-of-order, and you'd be stuffed. You'd have to be so cautious about how soon to recharge that it would decimate the useful range of an EV.

Seriously? If all those hypothetical wasters go to school and get decent, well-paid jobs (assuming someone pays to feed and shelter them while they do), who is going to flip the burgers and clean the toilets?

Of course, that won't be a problem, because going to college never guaranteed anybody a well-paid job, and the main effect of an increased supply of college graduates in an unregulated economy would be to reduce vacancies and push down the wages of all college graduates.

I suspect that a lot of that money is fairy gold that would disappear if it were ever spent. What do you think would happen, say, to the MS share price if Bill Gates just dumped all his shares on the market?

I'm not sure the problem with wages is so much the billionaire's club (there may be other problems with that) as the large number of management/admin employees on mid 6-figure salaries, often receiving several times more money than even well-qualified employees 'below' them, let alone the janitor. Re-distributing some of those wages might make a difference.

I'd vary the GPs suggestion and have a maximum legal salary of (say) $100k, or maybe lower, with any benefits beyond that in the form of shares (with a strict minimum holding period) or other long-term profit-sharing schemes. These should satisfy strict criteria to ensure that they were genuinely dependent on medium/long term performance and carried significant risk (not the typical dollar-on-elastic share option scam).

I don't mind some people becoming rich. I do mind some people getting high-6-digit salaries for turning up to work and implementing short-term-ist slash & burn schemes.

Translation: the employer can only get away with paying only $7.50 because the government makes up the difference between that and a realistic wage. Benefits without minimum living wage == state subsidy of industry. Still, don't worry, if you look around enough you'll be able to find someone faking disability to parade in front of the media, and prevent people asking awkward questions about how much taxpayers money goes to allowing working people to survive on unliveable wages.

You don't need to be a socialist: lack of a minimum living wage means that the taxpayer is forking out vast quantities of money to subsidise businesses by allowing them to employ people without paying them a living wage. Even the capitalist paradise of the USA understands that you can have too many people starving in the streets and spends billions of dollars on welfare. In the UK, the government makes a huge song and dance about the long-term unemployed while avoiding the elephant in the room: a huge chunk of the welfare budget is being spent to allow working people to sleep indoors and eat food so that their employers can pay them peanuts.

Also, you can't sell things to people with no money, which is a problem... we've tried lending them money that they can't possibly repay, and that went a bit pear-shaped, so we're trying it again to see if it turns out differently this time.

Lorenz contraction, says the tachyon.
Why the long face? asks the barman.
A tachyon walks into a bar.

Seriously. The current Kindle does one job - reading long texts for leisure - really, really well, and is pretty much crap at anything else.

The e-ink display is very restful to read for long periods, even in bright sunlight and gives incredible battery life, but at the expense of a glacial refresh rate and the need for pixels to be regularly cycled to black. Its no good whatsoever for the sort of fluid touch interface that you'll see in a 'proper' tablet or smartphone.

The Kindle is my go-to device for 'sitting down with a good book' (or even 'sitting on a plane reading low-mental-load crappy SF shorts') but for any other use - even reading reference books where you need to rapidly scroll/skim, use indices/TOCs or follow links, a tablet, smartphone or laptop runs rings around it.

As soon as someone cracks a full-colour, high refresh-rate, low power 'eInk' technology to replace backlit LCD in tablets and phones, the e-reader will be dead overnight.

Also, I know Amazon is teh evilz (but no more so than Apple, Google or Microsoft), and the Kindle is their cash register, but they also run a bloody good service. As they say, the Devil has all the best tunes (and books).

Because PHP also has a perfectly good chassis, body, roof, steering wheel, gear shift, seats, windows, instruments, cup holders, audio, fluffy dice etc. that you know how to use and don't want to throw away.

People don't use PHP for the language (which is fugly), they use it because it has a huge collection of useful libraries, supported and well documented on the php.net site - and it is almost certainly available on your web hosting service.

Not knocking Node.js, but it is still "getting there" as far as mature library support goes: yes, there are plenty of modules, but you're still more likely to find 4 diverse, half-written modules for a particular function than one complete, well-documented, future-proof choice.

It can also be overly complex: Node's USP is asynchronous, event-driven programming, which is cool, but harder and overkill for many applications. Then there's the small matter of having to effectively roll your own web server for even the simplest dynamic web page (OK, you'll probably use a third party module - pick one and hope it stands the test of time, then learn how to configure it) and you'll still probably need a black belt in Apache to set up a reverse proxy to your app.

Mind you, the great thing about Node vs. PHP is that nobody ever has anything bad to say about Javascript as a programming language </sarcasm>

No, but maybe if you're going to have a bit of heavy machinery rolling along the road, someone needs to be "in charge" and responsible.

My guess is that an "autonomous" car will need an emergency kill switch (required on virtually any bit of machinery) and maybe the ability to be manually 'driven' at 5mph with a full symphony of flashing lights and warning beeps, so that if the computer gets stuck it can be manoeuvred out of the way.

It also seems sensible that it should be accompanied by a 'responsible person' with some minimal training in emergency procedure who can call the emergency services when needed (or *stop* the vehicle calling the emergency services unnecessarily). Nothing like the sort of training required a driving license, but AI has a long way to go before it can deal with anything the world can throw at it.

So, age requirements could be relaxed - but not removed. I'm sure a 14-year-old could cope. Some of the stricter drink-drive limits could also be relaxed - but that doesn't mean its a good idea to be paralytically drunk in one of these.

Yes, there are driverless trains, but (a) they are on rails, which limits the sort of scrapes they can get in to, and (b) there are humans on-call, at a much higher human-to-vehicle ratio than you could ever expect with domestic cars.

Instead of citing a silly youtube video that's part of the FUD campaign against the common core (motivated by political dogmas that have nothing to do with math or education), why don't you try referencing the actual common core state standards say is that 2nd graders should be taught to:

Note "strategies" (plural). Good "common core" activities take a class of problem and look at multiple ways of solving it. As others have pointed out, your 'common core' subtraction method is one perfectly valid strategy for doing a subtraction in your head. Its not a replacement for the traditional way (which, as you can see, is perfectly compatible with the common core definition. If any teachers really are teaching "your" method, rote, as "the way" to do do subtraction, and marking the traditional method wrong, then they really don't have a clue about common core. More likely someone with an axe to grind has cherry-picked the example from an activity in which students are specifically told to try different methods, or explore strategies for mental arithmetic, and presented it out of context.

Also, please bear in mind that the current 'status quo' in US schools is not:

32
-12
------
20

....but more like:

...and its logically impossible to get any more insane than that (plus, the kids still can't do it).

From the common core state standards:

Either your son urgently needs to change school or, more likely, you've again picked out part of an activity designed to help kids understand a topic from different perspectives and weed out common misconceptions. In this case, lots of kids would answer '0.06' or '0.6' because they think division always makes things smaller. This sort of activity helps them understand why that is not true.

A good activity might have kids repeating a method like this with 1.62/27, 162/27 and 162/0.27, maybe using manipulatives or some software, and reflecting on the result sandwiched between more traditional problems using the standard algorithms.

[Citation Needed]. There's certainly nothing of the sort here. If anything, the thrust of the common core is that there isn't just one right way of doing something (read the Common Core Math Practices).

If any teacher is actually doing as you describe then they are emphatically not teaching the common core, and someone, somewhere along the line has either pulled a massive TL:DNR (not impossible) or is deliberately spreading (or unwittingly retweeting) political FUD.

And remember, the status quo is that millions of kids fail to learn the good 'ol fashioned way of doing things.

Anybody who's actually any good at math (including most of slashdot) will tell you that the great thing about math was that they didn't have to remember lots of stuff because it all fitted together and made sense. The challenge is, how to make that happen for the other 90% of the population who are desperately trying and failing to learn math by rote. Back in the good old days of the 1950s, being able to add up, multiply and divide reliably without understanding it might land you a job as a clerk. Not any more - understanding is required, and a good way to achieve understanding is to slow down and spend some time looking at concepts from different angles... except then some dork comes in, takes a snapshot of what is visible that second and presents it as "what our kids are doing now instead of proper maths".