I'm still trying to figure out if "I can work, love normally and feed myself just like anyone else," is a typo, or if he is just really comfortable talking about his sex life. Either way, he's an inspiration.

Maybe not "under appreciated" as much as lesser-known, Connie Willis is a reliable source for a good read. I confess I haven't read her most recent 2 tomes (yet), but her earlier stuff is enjoyable. Especially if you don't mind some human emotion and humor with your ray guns and time warps.

Actually there are some differences. Putting everything in the cloud helps with disaster recovery and continuity of operations (COOP) planning, which was not as big a concern before 9/11, and was not addressed by having your own local server. Security will only become a concern after a big embarrassing breach. Otherwise, the contract you have in place with the cloud provider simply states that they do everything for you, up to whatever standards are required by your agency or industry, which actually saves your company or agency lots of time on documentation. And network speeds and availability in general are higher today than back then. Add in the ubiquity of personal devices and services for phones a pads, and you can see the circumstances are significantly different today.

I'm not saying it's going to succeed this time. Just that it may not be quite as cut-and-dried as you present.

To argue with myself, some of the uniquely cloud-related problems that people may not be thinking about yet are: what happens when your cloud provider suddenly closes their doors, either because of bankruptcy or (Megaupload, anyone?) legal issues? What happens when your cloud provider gets purchased by Google or Apple, and they change your contract? If there is a data breach, who is responsible for reporting? Notifying affected parties? Paying penalties?

Many of these can be addressed in your contract with the provider, but they need to be addressed from the start.

I don't mean it as an excuse. Far from it. But what choice do the TSA employees have in a system as screwed up as the TSA is?

We need to fix the system. I hope this (and the countless other similar horror stories) will help wake people up to the fact that the problem isn't that this happens once in a while. The problem is that, in the TSA system, this horrible occurrence is what's supposed to happen. This is what the system is designed to do.

If we don't want this to happen, we need to fix the system. We need to change the rules.

It's true. The TSA is correct when they say they were following the correct TSA procedures.

So let's not work to get those agents disciplined. Let's take this as a wake-up call that the TSA's procedures, and possibly their very existence, need to be re-thought.

If following the rules leads to this sort of incident, then the rules are bad and need to be changed. Simple as that.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about Google's motives and how the MPAA is acting. But at least from my understanding of the law, Google is right. The safe harbor provision to DMCA was made for exactly the reason Google says, and the MPAA is trying to grab more legal power, beyond the vast powers DMCA already grants them.

I'm not a knee-jerk Google fan-boy, and I understand Google has a dog in the fight, but in this case, Google is right.

Really what they are saying is that the ability to convince someone else of something leads to the convincer having more sex, and therefore his (or her) genes being propagated. Is that so hard for /.ers to believe?

Where it breaks down is if we try to interpret this to mean that people arguing from scientific evidence have no greater claim to the truth than people arguing from their own gut feeling. This theory doesn't state anything about truth being subjective; just that the human brain may have evolved in such a way that we are predisposed to believe stuff based on the argument rather than the evidence.

I think my brain just folded.

The moon race resulted in incredible leaps in all sorts of technology. It may be largely symbolic, as far as second "giant leaps" go, but sending humans to Mars is the next step.

And bringing them back really is optional, although our society will need to deal with some issues we find uncomfortable before we can do that. Issues like the right of a citizen to end his (or her) life with dignity, on his own terms, rather than keeping everyone alive as long as possible, no matter the cost or quality of life.

Once that right is established, we can work on ensuring people have the right to choose to go to Mars on a one-way ticket, if that's what they want to do. It may seem like suicide, because the end result will surely be death, but it's all the stuff that comes before death that would make it worthwhile to those who choose that path.

This would never happen if Oscar Goldman was still in charge.

...I hope it's a clip-on.

And for that cable-actuated claw hand, what safety mechanisms are in place to prevent the user's fingers from being snapped by the cables when a super villain bends the claw back, or the super hero runs into an immovable object because his (or her) vision is impaired by the helmet?

Ahh, but until Marty and Jennifer return, there is a possibility that they could die or get trapped in the future and never return, in which case there would be no M/J(2015) for them to visit. And after M/J(1985) return, their future selves have already been sorted out, so they would exist as different people (not fired, kids not in jail).

It only works if the original theory applies, and the Delorean travels along the current time track as if the people going to the future never left the present.

IMHO, of course.

There are many different ways time travel can be presented in fiction, with many different sets of "rules." In my opinion, BTTF actually sticks pretty close to its own rules, except when a) absolutely necessary for the story, or b) good for a laugh (see a).

The reason future versions of people don't know what's going on right now in their being-rewritten past is because they're in a different line on Doc's chalkboard. So when Doc in 1885 writes the note to Marty, he is from a future where (when?) he didn't know he was going to be killed by Mad Dog Tannen. So he couldn't possibly know that Marty was going to need to come back and rescue him, and would need gasoline to do it.

As for why Marty's parents don't recognize him, I would say they've had years to forget the details of what Calvin Klein looked like, and years of seeing their son every day as he grew up to look like someone they haven't seen in 30 years. Think of someone you know and see often. Now look at a picture of them from a long time ago. In your mind, they may seem like they haven't changed, but they have. It's like how I still picture my dad looking like he did a while back, when I saw him more often, and am now shocked to see that he has turned into Rush Limbaugh (not literally, but eerily similar-looking).

The one good question posed by this article is about whether Marty and Jennifer would exist in 2015, after they have just gone off in the time machine w/ Doc Brown in 1985. At that point, we might think they should be removed from any future time line until they return safely to 1985. I can only surmise that when traveling to the future, the Delorean travels along the future time line it is leaving, without regard for any changes it may introduce by doing so.

Perhaps a better overall question is: what happens to all the versions of people stuck on those time lines that are then cancelled out by Doc and Marty's travels? Do they zap out of existence? Do the time lines continue on, with fake-boob Lorraine married to Biff and all the other unpleasantness? Should we be happy that everything worked out for "our" Marty, because he's the only character who is the same person we met at the beginning of the first movie?

Because there is no control group, it's impossible to say, but the parent raises a valid point. If the U.S. Government wasn't so far in the pocket of corporate interests (a situation that has lead to the DMCA and other anti-curiosity laws), who knows how much farther ahead we would be?

Compare this to the 1960's, as America prepared to land on the moon. (Not all of America landed on the moon, obviously--just a few crazy white guys, but you know what I mean.)

Back then the country had goals. Mostly to beat the USSR, but still they were goals. Now we're all about short-term gains and reality TV.

I was going somewhere with this, but now I can't see my own point through the crushing depression and loss of hope for humanity.

Because when this accidentally crashes to earth, we're gonna need a bionic super-agent to defeat it.