We are talking apocalypse here. Part of that would also be drastic reduction in population. The reason why almost universal sanitation systems are in place only recently is because of the rising population density. For a very long time communities could get along with no running water to their home and an outhouse. But then again the life expectancy was not very high.

Why should that be?! for example with flex time and all that it can very easy be that I will email someone who is already home with a "This is important, can you do this ASAP." I fully expect it to be done first thing in the morning the next working day, no more no less. Why should I not be able to do that?!?

On the other hand I also am sort of against all this private device / access company services outside of work thing. Why should someone access their work email outside of work? Outside of business hours I am not reachable, nor do I expect you to be, end of story. The only exception to that are people that are "on call", but they should get paid for that.

This! When people come to me and ask what NoSQL database they need, I let them describe the data and the requirements they have. Almost all cases the data is highly structured and need strong query capabilities. In almost all cases it turns out that the problem is not a that SQL DBs will not do the job, but rather a poor understanding of DBs in general and a koowl new hawtness vibe. I am not saying that MongoDB, CouchDB or Redis are not interesting tools, but with all their advantages, they have strong drawbacks.

Basically, if you look at the available options and do not know which to pick, you did not do your homework. You should research your requirements you have and the different options, including the classical SQL databases. In my experience, a clear option will normally jump at you once you have sufficiently invested time and effort.

And that would help them how again?

The odd thing about homeopathy is that is regularly outperforms placebos and in many cases even real medicine. Sounds like nonsense, but it shows that convalescence is more complicated than just the medicine itself. Many "traditional" doctors have little time for patients and basically just handle them as "take this and come back next week if it did not get better". On the other hand homeopathic "doctors" listen to their patients and talk about what the issue is. The result is that many minor issues are resolved basically without taking any medicine.

As anecdotal evidence, my wife had really bad back problems. No doctor could (or would) help her and she took relatively hard pain medicine. She went to a alternative practitioner that talked to her and gave her homeopathy and the issue resolved itself within a week. This was the first "doctor" to actually listen to her. If you think about it, it sounds like utter nonsense and that a psychiatry would be the better address than the orthopedy. But this is common place and in many cases you just do not need medicine. Most of the medicine you get is feel good medicine, like painkillers and few cases they are even counterproductive.

The important thing is that you need a doctor that knows the point where you need to switch to "hard medicine". In France for example, you need a medical degree to give medical advice and thus all homeopathic doctors have traditional medical training. Although I don't know how much they actually believe in the underlying idea, but the good thing is they will prescribe antibiotics where needed.

I think you can't dismiss homeopathy directly, for many it works. The real important thing that classical medicine must learn from it. Here and there there is interesting research into the placebo and nocebo effects. Doctors could learn to listen more to their patients and in some cases prescribing a placebo may actually help the patient.

And THAT is why basically the only goto resource is the family of Stackexchange sites.

There are other usenet groups except alt.binaries.*?

Dude! Who said these "foundations" need to be make from, say stone? Just because someone is to daft to imagine gravity, does not mean God could not work it out. For the Sun bit I also have an obligatory XKCD: Centrifugal Force. Just because someone is also incapable of doing coordinate transformations, does not mean God can not do them. In addition, the Psalms are "just songs" and as thus are at maximum "inspired" and not divine word as such, in contrast to for example Genesis.

Why the hell does an atheist need to point out their narrow minded interpretation of the text?!?

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I became an atheist.

Interestingly even helicopters can be landed in a controlled fashion through autorotation.

Actually modern airliners have computerized avionics since about two decades. Airbus (I honestly don't know to much about Boing) has more and more implemented systems where the pilot's input is filtered though a computer and only taken as "suggestion". If for example you yank on the stick, the airplane will react in a smooth fashion, gauged by the computer, the result being the optimal fastest response. This in addition that most aircraft are flown most of the time "hands off", that is purely through inputs into the autopilot. The trouble only begins when the computer switches from "normal law" to "alternate law" and gives the pilot more and more direct control of the airplane. This happens when the computer is "confused" and does not trust it's inputs and as a result requires the pilot to actually fly the airplane.

Yes you are. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is a body that rules about European directives. A directive is not a law per see, but a guideline how national laws should be implemented. Once a directive is passed, each national Government needs to somehow integrate the directive into their local laws. So the net result the directive has no real meaning to the people, the national laws have, which are influenced by the directive.

In this case the ECJ ruled that the directive was invalid. The result is that the directive is meaningless, but the national laws are unchanged by the ECJ directive. Now the Swedish government (and other) must change their laws accordingly. What GP is alluding to is that the Swedish government will probably do nothing until someone contests the Swedish law in a Swedish court. The only way the ECJ comes into play is as a reference decision.

The only other option would be if Swedish citizens file a complaint at the European Human Rights Court, which could then pressure Sweden to change it's laws. But that only applies if the the citizen brought up the issue in Swedish courts first and failed.

Because the current YouTube ting has squat to do with DMCA. The current system is a move by Google to please the major content produces and as a sign that Google is dedicated to enforce copyright law. The current problem with the current system is that is so easily abused and that is what Google should work on.

This is a plain wrong assertion. The CO2 content of the atmosphere was significantly higher in pre-historical times and the temperatures where marginally higher. BUT the difference is that CO2 used to trail behind temperature changes. This is the first time that CO2 is apparently driving the temperature change. Then again if you look at real climate science nailing it down to only C02 emission is a fools errand. The actual science is a bit more complicated and previous models have not fared very well, but then again it is based on limited data and (at the time) limited computational resources. What drives me nuts is that in most layperson circles, including politicians, it is a "us vs them" rhetoric. You bring up valid criticism on certain models (by established climate scientists) and suddenly you are depicted as gas guzzling SUV driver. (Which is far from the truth, I don't own a car, I use almost exclusively public transportation.)

I can still create an Instagram account without FB. Although I don't particularly like the FB acquisition, chances are they will not botch the entire thing.

My guess is that FB (the company) is realizing that FB (the website) will become obsolete sooner or later (think MySpace). The company is trying to move out of their single revenue stream and diversify. You can probably see more acquisitions from FB that are not in line with the FB service.

Except I have never seen a manager that can keep the timing required for the orchestra to not get out of sync. When GP said:

I know exactly what he meant. There way to many companies, especially big ones, where individual contribution/vision/whatever of managers is scant to none.