Interestingly, did the ambition of a robust space dream for the US die when the US had no real competition from the Russians or anyone else in the world? It looks like the US accumulated all the technical know-how (probably in some super secret programs) while never really unleashing its full potential. What a shame. Obviously, it's not clear if even with all the technical knowledge, how viable colonizing other terrains is. But having all that technical knowledge gives humans an edge without doubt. And to make a U-turn in my comment, it all goes back to basic human distrust. If the countries could actually agree and work on this together, there would be proliferation of knowledge and a better chance at space colonization. That's not happening any time soon. Space colonization is an issue that probably cannot happen with some basic human unity and cooperation between the countries.

That could be because initially, only college students were invited to use facebook. This trend lasted for a year or two and between such a close group, having pseduo names didn't really make sense. People generally trusted each other. And the trend stayed.

After reading these interviews on Forbes and Timeand reading up on wikileaks, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that Assange is doing what he has stood for and has spoken of. He has been very consistent in his actions and his views are visionary.

When I read some of the stuff he has said, he comes off as a cynic. However, his underlying motivations are anything but cynical. He truly believes that putting this data out into the world will prevent/has prevented wars(Iran-US war) and that things will progress in the positive direction. I, while more than a decade younger than Assange, have become a bit jaded in my world view unlike Assange.

Perhaps he is a cynical optimist,as illogical and paradoxical that sounds.

It depends!

the letter 'j' on my keyboard. Now, whenever I try to type my last name which has a j, it looks like I spelled it wrong when I try to type fast. bummer. I had to force that letter hard to do it right now. :( The component which literally turned green before this was the webcam.

I am in San francisco, the city which was described by Charles Dickens as "the coldest winter I had was a summer I spent in san francisco". I like it.

http://xkcd.com/756/ Mildly related to the summary (the secret hovering remark from this particular comic): "News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones."

Buddhism also "gives you a text or other teachings that must be questioned, that must be doubted, that must be tested, that has flaws because it's holy and that you can improve " Just saying! Although one can argue that Buddhism is not a religion too. And in the context of the world's major religions, Christianity, Islam and "Jewish"(?), it is not.

Buddhism also "gives you a text or other teachings that must not be questioned, that must not be doubted, that must not be tested, that has no flaws because it's holy and that you cannot improve because it's been taught by God or some other holy being." Just saying! Although one can argue that Buddhism is not a religion too. And in the context of the world's major religions, Christianity, Islam and "Jewish"(?), it is not.

When looking for fraud, Silver was not looking at the poll numbers but the raw data numbers themselves (essentially hundreds of thousands of numbers , if not millions). Out of all the raw numbers, when analyzed there should not be any distribution. But the numbers were slanted towards 6 & 8 suggesting (proving perhaps) tampering. There's plenty of sound theory in this. Just look it up.

Since the Director of Marketing was the one who said this, it makes sense only if Linux has a negative connotation attached to it (they probably had some verifiable data for this so called "commercial stigma". Personally though, I don't think people are THAT afraid of the unknown but I am just an engineer and I am most probably wrong in my thoughts regarding this.