>>Most adults have no contact with math at work.

>This is really bullshit. Math is behind every freaking software we use in today.

Really? And we all know that most people are programmers. Oh wait, most people rarely use multiplication and division in their daily lives, so lets all hold them to the same standards as programmers! Hey, lets teach programming in high school! And Math! And a bunch of other crap most of them will never use and wont really enrich their lives or make them better human beings! And lets cut funding to music, athletics and drama to pay for it, they're too talented and healthy as it is!

Please. I spent 8 semesters learning 5 different flavors of math in college for my AA degree in computer science and I have to say I've used none of it in my daily work in our companies IT department. Granted I don't program much, but most people don't either.

Requiring everyone to learn trig, calculus, or even algebra in high school is bullshit. I would be blown away if more than 20% of anyone ever uses those things for their job. And how many of that 20% would already require a college education? Teach it in college, at least then you know you *might* needed it. Requiring it of some dork who is never going to college and is going to be a wage slave, factory worker or retail jerkoff its stupid and a waste of money.

And this film is different from the dozens of award winning independent films produced outside of Hollywood every year how? Hollywood has a monopoly on "dedicated, creative talent" these days or something? Thats news to me, most of the stuff they make is crap IMO. Kudos on making it with open source software, double kudos for licensing it under CC but otherwise its nothing special.

I'd put my money on them getting a nice rejection letter stating that since the driver was not at fault they'll have to cover their own medical/funeral expenses. Thats how it should be away. Seriously, if you fuck up you should pay for your own mistakes. I don't need my premiums going up because Johny Can't-be-bothered spaces out at a crosswalk and ends up with a hood ornament where his liver should be. By that same token I don't want some random person who just happened to be there to end up in the hole because I wasn't paying attention.

The long tail. Sure, they may cure cancer or AIDS but that isn't going to solve all of your health problems. The longer you live the more crap you need to keep your quality of life high and the more money they make. It may cost them billions in R&D, testing and trials to come out with the next miracle drug but they make it all back and then some off of the millions of people that live much longer lives. Not to mention the money they make on the cure itself. It is pretty true about your last statement though. If they can't make any money off the cure they wont bother.

Not only that, but Pong was cribbed from Ralph Baer's Odyssey, which he had been demoing around since at least 1968.

Dual boot and use them both. Any other world endingly difficult questions you need answered for?

Unicode does not necessarily mean any of this crap. International domain names don't use UTF-8 or UCS2 or anything like that, they are represented with a scheme called Punycode. Being a software developer, you may want to know a bit more about it. Just stop by any information kiosk marked with big rainbow-coloured GOOGLE sign and ask the friendly staff. Don't hesitate to ask about the difference between Unicode and the UTFs too, while you're at it.

The C programming language and sizeof(wchar_t) has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. Internet standards are not defined in terms of C and its data types.

To put this into perspective:

36,000 acres = 7.5 x 7.5 miles = 12.5 x 12.5 kilometers = the size of Walt Disney World

Source:
Convert 36000 acres to square miles

I don't know how something that doesn't have sex can inbreed, care to explain? They reproduce asexually, its kind of like natures cloning (big oversimplification, I know). Even so, if the initial population is large and diverse enough (and they "bred", which E. Coli does not) inbreeding wouldn't be an issue. Not like its hard to fit a couple trillion bacteria anyplace.

If you were going to buy a new, fuel efficient car why in the hell would you buy American? If 90% of the people go out and buy an import how is that going to help GM, Chrysler and Ford? I went here (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byMPG.htm) when I first heard about the program and went looking for a vehicle that would net me the 4.5k stimulus package. Since my old shit bucket gets 23 mpg average (by their rating system) I would need a car that gets at least 33 average to score the $4,500. How many US made cars came up? 2. Both Fords. Really only one car, because the 2010 Ford Fusion hybrid and 2010 Mercury Milan hybrid are basically the same car (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_CD3_platform). The problem is that US car companies have basically done nothing to improve fuel economy in the last 10 years. Why now, 11 years after my Oldsmobile Alero was made, is it still considered to have good fuel economy? Have we made so little progress? Why is my newer Toyota Tacoma, which is much less aerodynamic and heavier, getting almost the same mpg rating (22 mpg average)? Why does Ford, the only major car company in America on that government list, need a hybrid engine to top 35 when half the Japanese and European cars on the list are standard gasoline types? As you can see I'm not a big fan of US made cars, not only because of their notoriously poor quality (which has gotten much better as of late) but poor mpg ratings and much shorter lifespans. While I can't really think of a future without Ford, GM, etc, I have very mixed feelings about the botched Bush Bailout, and little better Obama follow up. Even so I know that THIS program, which may stimulate the economy and car sector as a whole, wont help domestic car makes as much as it will imports.

We have a similar deal here where I live. Basically you are not paying for the bag, you are paying for them to haul whats in the bag away. Instead of paying a fixed amount to haul the garbage out of a city supplied can once a week (weather theres garbage in the can or not), you fill X number of bags at $2 a bag and they haul that off once a week if needed. Its a great way to save money if you only throw out 4 bags a month, which is about how many you could fit inside the city supplied can around here (the bags here are much larger then a standard kitchen bag). It also encourages people to recycle more so less reusable stuff goes to the landfill. Now if you are a pig or have a large family and are throwing out 2 city cans worth of garbage a week its very much not a good deal, you end up paying a shitload more to dump your waste then if you paid a flat rate per week/month.

No, thats one good reason. Being "free" and "not costing money" are the same thing. Don't through around the word free when you mean FOSS or simply open source.