The earth isn't round. It's an irregular, rough oblate spheroid.

Am I the only one who caught that dereference?

..how many swear words are in the comments.

Why is this wrong? I don't indentify with many people across the globe and often our values conflict. How do we resolve these issues with less violence? Good fences make good neighbors.

There's these things called "oceans", "mountains", "rivers" and "lakes" that do a pretty good job of isolating certain parts of the world from each other.

Would you be alright with prostitution, drug use, pedophilia and human slavery being practiced in your neighborhood? Because those are legal in countries around the world. Imagine you're got a perfect world in your town that you built through hard work - it's not corrupt, violent or poor - but what happens when some nogoodnicks show up and trash the joint? Wouldn't you want to preserve the slice of heaven you've worked so hard for? Fight them on the streets? There goes the neighborhood... but what if you could stop them from being there in the first place?

How do you make them accountable for their actions? I have a hard enough time trying to get responses from my state representatives, why do you think a global government would care about me any more? I don't think at a global level, a government COULD really ask people what they wanted.

Sure, we can start doing away with borders when you give me your house keys, car keys, and any other access control you have. Oh wait you won't do that? Well you're part of the problem, not the solution.

If we do remove corruption and money from the earth, why would we need a government, let alone a world government?

Well thank you for your advice! I ordered Crockford's book and I'm going to approach javascript with a fresh new perspective for a lot of the new code I have to write at least.

I think Java got a lot less hellish when I started using a proper IDE with code completion and a non-insane build system (maven). For all of Eclipse's instability, it makes writing java tolerable, even fun sometimes. Maven, though it can be hard to understand what all the XML in the pom is really doing, is such a relief compared to make or Ant.

I invite you to consider what would happen if we make them legal. The government would tax them to an absurd level, a black market would still exist (look at tax-free cigarettes and their role in criminal revenue), consumption would be more widespread on account of the disintegration of social mores against usage, and we'd be tying a government's income into drug consumption, giving them a perverse incentive to continue the use of said drugs. The government would go from "enemy of the cartels" to "yet another cartel," a title I feel they already have from heavy lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry.

I'm all for a repeal of the nastier drug laws and an eventual stop to the "War on" mentality, but there has to be a better strategy here than the "legalize it mon" that I hear college students repeat ad nauseum.

Well, what happened when they gave the foreign students OLPCs? They just started surfing for porn. Do you really expect them to do anything else?

It can, but the problem is you can't look at the screen.

"Hypothesized." If you're going to nag on people for spelling, better spell correctly yourself.

Doesn't this then lead us to a bootstrapping issue?

If life started with a giant virus, and viruses reproduce by infecting living creatures... wence life?

How do viruses reproduce without complex lifeforms in which to do so? If it reproduces on its own, I don't think pithovirus can be classified as a virus. Then, in that case, what separates pithovius from the prokaryotes?

I feel javascript is broken because it doesn't even have an import statement (you'd have to use the awful require.js). Even the lowly C and many varieties of assemblers have in-line importation via preprocessor. Javascript's dependency model is fundamentally broken, especially if you have to use HTML script includes. Couple this with an awful object model, strange string behavior, and obscene variable abuse in a lisp-like language that wants to pretend it's C and you have a disaster language.

Would you recommend any books for learning javascript at a deeper level? My frustrations mount with every javascript project that's thrown at me.

Also, do you think Java is really hellish? It's got its quirks, but since I discovered Effective Java and made heavier use of interfaces, it's been way more delightful.

But oh man, you're missing out on all that sweet infrasound and ultrasound! Imagine a stereo system that could give your wife a sonogram! Or a barely sub-audible 18.7 Hertz signal that vibrates your eyeballs during Paranormal Activity 11, so it really feels like you're being haunted!

Hitler's revenge. The UK may have won WWII, but ultimately they became what they loathed. Sometimes men who fight monsters become monsters themselves...

Sure, fine. I know javascript. I have for some time now. Too bad the people who wrote the mounds of code I have to maintain don't. Every feature of javascript is painful and can be abused easily.