Irony: Where you have the skill to completely understand that a major software program is "crufty and badly-written" but don't do anything other than complain about it "for years".

I've heard this argument since the beginning of time with regards to open source, but is there anybody on earth that could "review the source code" for an entire platform?

At some point you have to trust someone, like the folks that wrote the driver for your USB mouse...

Unless you happen to also understand the USB mouse source code at which point I stand corrected, until you can do USB mouse support and video driver and filesystem and etc etc...

I've tried dozens of different types of veggie-burgers or meatless burgers. And the problem is that no matter what type of spices/sauces you put in them, you just don't get the meat flavor. The oils and fats that are added to them don't sear/brown/caramelize etc..

With a piece of meat (beef/chicken/fish), I can cook it rare, medium or well done depending on the dish (tuna: sear only, hamburger: well done) or the consumer.

With meat substitutes it's "Cook it until warm/hot". The product itself doesn't change between temperatures. I'd say it's like making toast but atleast with bread a slightly toasted piece of bread tastes differently from one that is dark brown.

Toaster Oven... a 25yr old Hamilton Beach Standmixer. Though there's probably a few people out there with ones older than this.

I still use the same lawnmower I bought in '79. Had to replace the blade, but it still cuts the grass without problems.

How many of the "millions and millions" of iphone/android apps have only been used a few times. I seem to recall at one point there were about a hundred "flashlight apps" for iphone alone..

In a convertible with plenty of daylight, you run the risk of having the display being washed out by sunlight.

Wouldn't all these screens (2 side views and a rear-view) ruin one's night vision? Running the console lights at a bright setting already diminishes your night vision, and now we'll have two screens doing the same thing.

I guess having these cameras will also keep people from, i dunno actually turning their head and verifying there isn't something there when they change lanes...

Argh...

Now the bulbs are more expensive than the lamp....

I couldn't imagine outfitting a chandelier with $300 worth of bulbs...

So now I've got a bulb that when i turn it off at the switch it stops drawing electricity, they want lightbulbs all over my house that are not off but in "standby" mode. Sucking on power throughout the day...

I remember when lightbulbs were not $15 but $.50.

who cares, if you've got an idea and a way of making people rich, who the F cares.

Silicon Valley is full of assh*les...

Jobs.
Ellison.
McNeely.
Jayshree Ullal (CEO of Arista)
Zuckerberg
Sergey Brinn (cheated on wife)

These people lead companies and make people filthy rich. Why do they need a lesson from Miss Manners?

Silicon Valley is based on the premise of making investors huge sums of money, plain and simple. I don't mean the people investing on the NASDAQ, but those that work on Sand Hill Blvd. That is the Real Silicon Valley. Take a look at what Marc Andreesen has done since he sold Netscape. IPO and sold company after company for billions of dollars.

The people on the outside complain. Well you know, not having charisma like George Clooney works perfectly fine here. There's plenty of 80hr/wk engineers in the world that would have jumped at the chance to work at FB, Google, Oracle and their 'lack of charisma' CEOs pre-IPO.

In many video games, going back to some of the oldest, there's almost always been multiple races. Heck even Space Invaders had two races. WoW has over a dozen.

If you're going to make a game that involves humans. Which race do you pick? Someone's going to get offended no matter which race you pick.

I play SC2, Terran. There's Zergs and Protoss. Three races right there. Is someone offended that the Terrans appear to be primarily Caucasian? Sure there's a few bit characters that aren't. Why isn't Reynor hispanic, or Jewish or Chinese or Native American or whatever...

The most smug, pompous and expensive place to live....

It's the land of the have and have nots.

Want you kids to go to good schools in the area? Get ready to either send them to private school or fork out $1m plus for a 1600 sqft home with no land that was built in the early 60s.

If you didn't make in a killing in the previous dotcom bubble or the one we're in (Snapchat, i'm looking at you), enjoy mediocre housing and schools.

There's talk here about charging stations vs. using local fuel. Well convoy that shows up along with the president brings its' own fuel. They don't trust the local gas in foreign countries because there's no guarantee as to the quality or any foreign additives. I believe the engine in The Beast is a diesel which gives it such torque to move this "tank but looks like a limo" down the street with sufficient speed and acceleration to get away from trouble.

How much battery would you need to accelerate what could be 5tons away from trouble? The model-S "performance" Telsa has 425ftlbs of torque. This is less than most mid size trucks and my 4yr old BMW diesel sedan. There's quite a few off the shelf pickup truck diesels (Cummings, Duramax, Powerstroke) that can put out 700ftlbs or more of torque and you could easily put in more than enough fuel for the president to drive to/from wherever he needed to go (50 gal?)

According to the US Energy Administration...

  In 2012, the United States generated about 4,054 billion kilowatthours of electricity. About 68% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuel (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), with 37% attributed from coal.

Energy sources and percent share of total electricity generation in 2012 were:

        Coal 37%
        Natural Gas 30%
        Nuclear 19%
        Hydropower 7%
        Other Renewable 5%
                Biomass 1.42%
                Geothermal 0.41%
                Solar 0.11%
                Wind 3.46%
        Petroleum 1%
        Other Gases 1%

Even without the $25m owed in the contract, Oracle is probably still profitable on the deal.

I bet they maintain 60-70% margins... and that's on the services side...