If they sold em off for like 100 bucks a pop, I would certainly buy one. As much as I hate windows 8 on the desktop I think its great on a tablet. They aren't THAT bad, just a little underwhelming compared to the competition.

What really irks me is shit like this: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19166043-obama-not-scrambling-jets-to-get-nsa-leaker-snowden Whereby we now have US Trade Representatives considering revoking trade privileges of an entire country (Ecuador) because the administration has a personal vendetta against Snowden. It is really sickening what our government is willing to do to cover its own ass.

Just a thought, but have they stopped to consider that maybe the polar shifts might be causing the melting ice, and not the other way around?

We have a huge problem with this in my office. A couple of us are working on a new application that utilizes MVC, and a heavy javascript front end which includes Knockout.js. Since this project started I have re-factored this thing 3 times the first because I was told to keep the JS limited to just pure js and jQuery, so I did. However it got complicated and I got to the point where implementing SPA made sense, my manager seemed supportive so I went about the first re-factor. On one point another developer that has not kept his skills current started pitching a fit, at which point my manager who has also not kept his skills current started taking a deeper look at the project, together they claimed it got too "complicated," and at that point I was asked to revert back to page per view, with simple js, so I spent a couple weeks doing that. This eventually created MORE complications due to the nature of the application, rather than storing data in local variables I had to persist through cookies and all kinds of shenanigans. Short of going back and implementing the entire thing in with razor and persisting in session state, which I could have done but given the work I had done thus far was mostly on the client, this would have basically been a re-write of the entire front end. I talked to my managers boss about my frustrations with the indecision of my manager and she said that she absolutely wanted me to do it in SPA as that best represented the vision that she had for the project. So I went and re-factored it AGAIN using knockout, although to be honest this is the way I wanted to do it in the first place so I am happy with the outcome.

In any case, my point is that just a couple developers that have not kept their skills up to date have caused a lot of frustration for the department. The rest of us are all on board with this new way of doing things, why should we cater to the lowest common denominator? In my opinion if these guys doing want to keep their skills up to date they should be relegated to maintenance and legacy applications. We shouldn't hold the rest of the department back because two guys don't want to learn new things, one of which happens to be my manager unfortunately (but doesn't really have the authority to let me go, more like a team lead I guess). As far as I am concerned, you either get with the program or get out of the way and fortunately for me my bosses boss (the VP of IT) is on board with this so I've at least gotten my way in this case lol.

I completely agree with him in regards to how the patent office has been operating as of late. Although his numerous references to retards and special olympics is probably not going to win him any favor with the readers. In any case, I found the letter to be an amusing Monday morning anecdote.

We all know this is coming from the pestering and/or financial contributions of industry lobbyists. It is so blatantly and sickeningly obvious at this point. I've all but lost any hope that things will change. I will be creating my own island with my own laws, in the middle of the pacific, anybody care to join me? :) lol

Fact of the matter is, he did something illegal. It's irrelevant whether we agree with him, are on his side, or not, he should expect some punishment for his actions. Although I am somewhat glad the blew the top off of this one because it is at least a start to holding the government accountable for some of their actions. However, I think the espionage and aiding the enemy charges are complete bull shit. It is blatantly clear that was not the intent. That is just some embarrassed politician taking out some deep seeded need for revenge on him to set some kind of example. I'm not trying to defend the guy, but come on, don't let them start making shit up to make it look worse than it was.

Glad to know they are wasting our tax money on their extreme paranoia! 0_o

This is f**king insane, and EXTREMELY poor judgement on the part of our military leaders. So many things could have gone wrong here, not to mention the fact that they are certainly belittling the peoples trust in their own military. You have to wonder if they are just trying to train for overseas urban warfare, or if they are training to put down a revolt against the citizens of this country. Either way, they could have found a better place to do it than the middle of goddamn downtown Miami. Just plan stupid.

Simple solution... Apple gets rights to motorola patents, Googorola gets all its partners and android device manufacturers rights to whatever patents apple thinks they are infringing on and keep suing everyone for. Everybody pays less court and licensing costs, scumbag lawyers lose their biggest clients, consumers get the devices they want, everybody wins.

Now maybe my Molycorp stock will go back up! :D

Additionally... getting him something older and smaller and weaker would, in the future, provide you a lot of opportunity to teach him about building the thing. Upgrading components, and such.

I think what youre looking for is something that has a simple enough interface for him to just putz around and play, but that has the underlying system capable of supporting a great deal of tinkering when the time comes. That said, I would avoid Windows. Although it is great for the average users that want to just get stuff done and dont care to tinker, and although it DOES actually provide a pretty decent amount of guts to play with, it has a tendency to dumb people down in the end. I think what you might be looking for, which I'm sure somebody mentioned, is something like Ubuntu. Simple easy to use interface for now, with a powerful back end for later, and he will learn a LOT more on this platform than any other. There are a decent amount of games and such for linux, and with a little help from daddy and WINE most windows games can be played as well. Not to mention that it is free. The hardware that you put this on is more or less irrelevant at this point, as most games for younger kids are not too intense, later down the line if he gets more into more complex gaming you can upgrade. If I could go back to when my son was that age, I would have done the same thing.

I would say, "hell no you're not putting that shit in my drink!" and chug it really quick!

They should put this on kick starter or something? I for one would be more than willing to donate to a US based facility. Granted its would prob only provide a small portion of their funding but would at least show the government that the people are more interested in furthering our understanding of science than we are in killing terrorists and spying on our own citizens. Just sayin.