Arguably, the legions of Mormons knocking on doors do more damage than anything Scientology does. Then there's Jehovah's Witness which are in the same damaged goods camp.

Not a Mormon, I grew up with plenty around. They have mind boggling beliefs and are decidedly self interested and encourage exclusionary practices. There is little difference between Mormonism and Scientology. Both wrote a book to follow. Both are insidious. Both make ridiculous claims.

Arguing that one is 'better' than another is like arguing which shit does more good instead of which shit is stinkier.

If you have ever flown, you've been on board a plane with dozens of cell phones that have -not- been turned off, electronics in luggage that haven't been turned off, an the list goes on -- on every flight for the last 20 years, and probably much more.

Stupid regulations are stupid. If you really spend more that a second actually thinking about it, aircraft would be dropping out of the sky every second because of electronic interference. And if electronic interference caused problems like that, we'd be really wondering what kind of lame ass testing they do with their electronics on their plane. No shielding, open air, hand soldered, flimsy electronics, usually put together by a high-school-enthusiast-intern. It would be dropping like paper each time radar shined on them.

Other places have done it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7334372.stm

human brain simulation mostly be like this:
'what am I going to wear to the party?'
'I hope they like me.'
'Is someone hearing my thoughts?'
'who did this to me?'

That was the tech of the last century. Unfortunately, the off-hours have proven to be too costly, especially when they get injured or need time off.

Sorry, our common sense is copyrighted and only available in Canada. For more information about Common Sense international availability, please contact our lawyers. They will be watching you carefully for any infringement, intentional or accidental.

First Post?

This may be one more step towards a replicator.

Also, I think we could use the sun to help out http://www.kidstatic.com/2011/06/solar-3d-printer-egyptian-desert-as-materials/ - wouldn't this be a similar idea?

The problem isn't the car, it's the number of people - as population grows WE all suffer.

i.e less people, less power required, less agriculture, less environmental stresses. The opposite is basically true too.

Everyone who has, or has had multiple children are the root multiplier of the problems we are facing today. To blame any single technology as the problem is disingenuous.

Perhaps this is something you're looking for:
https://github.com/SoftwareMaven/DeDuper

google: github deduper

I sense sarcasm... and good point. No idea is perfect for every situation.

After thinking about it a bit, it might just be a nice way to update the bios on 100s of servers.
suppose this:
You have 100s of extra USB keys (say colored blue), then update the bios on all of them the same way on your secure workstation. Spot test a few (or all of them) independently, and then walk through your server farm swapping the keys (old ones, black, with new ones, blue). Perhaps it can be hot-swapped - less server down-time.
Since your requirements would be frequent bios updates because your server hardware changes all the time, perhaps there could be convenient accessible spot for the usb key for bios updates, or a single shared usb bios slot for a rack (some sort of auto-detect usb multiswitch comes to mind).

Let your imagination go wild!

Along the same logic, I would argue, why do we need to have the bios have built in writable flash memory these days? So many simple options to solve this come to mind, but if I really wanted to update the bois - which is incredibly rare - couldn't we be a little more hands on and use a USB key for example?
here's a possible solution:
- I could pull out a small USB drive/key from the special slot on the mobo
- stick it into my USB slot on a running computer
- write a new bios to it with my fancy updater tool - simple so far
- stick it back into the mobo (it could even lock in with a clip for those who vibrate a lot)
- (re)boot
- new bios is read from the -special- USB.

bonuses:
- if something goes wrong - place in a new different USB drive/key
- test with a different USB drive/key to see if the update is better, then update the special one
- I can think of others too!

what I mean by "special USB", is that it is only accessed and read by a booting bios, so doesn't have pass through or presence to the OS. It may be especially small.

I seem to remember somewhere that we don't really need much of a BIOS since the kernels do all the probing for themselves a second time anyway, so in many respects we have 2 boots, once (slowly) in BIOS, which is promptly thrown away, and another in whatever OS you might load.

I couldn't agree more!

Comic book characters are yawn. Snores!

I have no interest in Avengers, Batman, nor Spiderman -- DC or Marvel, whatever -- they aren't sparking anything in me. Finding a movie that's interesting and that plays in a theater is getting harder and harder, especially when the good ones fly through in a single weekend making it sometimes near impossible to see. Marginally good ones aren't around much at all, making it so disappointing to find something entertaining.

TV isn't much better for selection, I guess that means I'm getting old, or movies are becoming something of a past art form... but there is a ton of crap throughout the history of it.

I'm going to go read a book with... paper pages.

Groovy is OK. Your suspicions are correct. Debugging it is sometimes worse than pure Java because you really don't know where it actually broke. If we are talking about web development, then probably looking at Grails - which doesn't run the same on development as in deployment. On top of that, It makes assumptions that I don't like. It does have some nice features nevertheless.

This idea of owning has been bugging me for a while, and I'm coming to the conclusion that it does't matter: i.e. 'own' vs 'rent'. The difference is rather semantic and maybe the problem down to the core. I'm stepping rather out of scope here, but it is similar to the idea of discovering vs inventing. Perhaps a little humility is in dire need. This blade cuts both ways. If all things are 'rented' then we can say that corporations, governments, or individuals have no rights to anything. Perhaps our laws should reflect that idea more.

It is a nice thought that I 'own' something - anything even - but really, I'm even renting this body for a few decades or whatever. Soon enough, it will belong to no one. Owning software is more fleeting, and in many cases, it is a use once, and discard. Most games, movies and TV shows are obviously like that. The fact that we could buy some media on a CD, DVD, or a book, for example, is really about a convenient way to access the content therein, but we never 'own' the content, at least I don't claim 'that song is mine' or 'that story is mine'. We barely own the media since it is slowly degraded over time to uselessness.

Even when I buy a house, and then later sell it, it is pretty equivalent to renting it too. I think it is especially easy to see the similariities if I've a mortgage on it. i.e. the 'bank' owns it and I'm paying them to stay there. I may make a few dollars back on my sale... maybe. But usually, I'm just in a different house with another mortgage. i.e. rent.

When I die... I personally lose it all. gone.

I think you hit the issue with the restrictive terms. This is a problem that is not easy to overcome. Owning is not really the important thing, and it might actually be more important to consider it always a rental. But not having access due to some restrictive terms, like you live in Mexico, or Canada, so no access to your software, would the serious detrimental problem. That's when you want to have software installed vs streamed -- and not DRM locked so when you cross a border (virtual or not) you lose access to stuff you normally have access to use.

If I could reply to both of you I would...

Run -- if only to fail.

To try, and then lose, is far better than not trying.

But if you both win, you will be doing your country a service - you'll get a great pension - and you'll make a difference. Hopefully a positive one.

It's not that hard either.

To be a State Representative:
-must be 25 years of age at the time of the election
-reside in the state that you represent
-citizen for 7 years
-win election

To be a Senator

-must be 30 years or older at time of election
-citizen for 9 years
-reside in the state you are running in

Then the State requirements to be placed on the ballot apparently vary, but it seems that it is something like, the candidate gather 500 signatures.

really?
I have no idea when any business opens or closes anymore without consulting every business's website. Truly there is no real consistency. Sure you can guess that most every business opens by 10am and close after 4pm, but I'm surprised how often I'm wrong about each one too! I have to admit that stores in malls tend to keep similar hours, but that isn't 100% either.

So many business open anywhere from 7:30am to 10am in my area, and I find that if I drop by thinking some business must be open, I'm often foolishly waiting for yet another 15 minutes, or coming back another day kicking myself that I didn't check *before* I left.

The other trouble is days. open monday-saturday, tuesday-sunday, tuesday-saturday, closed wednesday, or the worst being monday-friday. And the infamous, gone fishing! If the idea of someone setting their business hours to different times bothers you, you need help.

I know at my job that really, any time period would be ok. There needs to be some overlap with various positions, but that's about it. There is no real business hours to speak of. Meetings with people are agreed upon and set.

I also am quite aware that many management folk think their workers are doing nothing if they don't see them working. Classic micro-managing style.