"The evil Internet group Anonymous stops people who THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"

Will there be a new version every week that makes obsolete all scripts you created in the old engine?

Laxatives

I see a lot of this type of thinking and while it is certainly genuine to question why we intervened in Libya and not in Syria, Bahrain, etc. it still must be put into perspective.

1.) Given the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that overthrew their local dictators largely through peaceful protest, when Libya started cracking down extremely hard against their part in the Arab Spring, there was a massive outcry both internally and externally. Many Libyan units were seemingly defecting, protests were all over the country, officers had refused to attack citizens, and major figures defected. Despite this though, Gaddafi and his sons kept up the delusional rhetoric and spoke of massacres as they responded with pure military force. The Arab League, human rights organizations, and other countries were ratcheting up calls for a NFZ and finally at the last possible second (well after when it would have been most effective) that was implemented by the United Nations with BRIC and Germany abstaining but no vetoes by the Security Council. This stopped a very significant advance by Gaddafi on Benghazi after Ajdabiya had fell. The unique circumstances of the Arab Spring, the brutal crackdown in Libya, and a lot of support for protecting Libyans from the Gaddafi regime from all over the world led to the Western intervention in Libya by U.N. mandate. Does Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, etc. have all those conditions at play to even approach that level? Surely they have brutal regimes that have cracked down, but the mass defections are not present (some exceptions in Yemen) nor are the peaceful prior outcomes of Egypt and Tunisia (now that civil war in Libya has interrupted such positions won't likely be taken again).

2.) Be skeptical all you like, I firmly believe this was a humanitarian-driven intervention. The United States was dead-set against intervention til the last possible minute and even now has taken a back seat in the conflict. The West had wonderful relations with Libya after 2003 or so when Libya opened themselves to Western business and made nice political allies in Western Europe. Sacrificing all that stability and business for oil we already had access to makes no sense except to conspiracy theorists and extreme cynics. Intervention was driven by international unanimity for the most part with the usual regimes backing away from outright support (Russia and China for obvious reasons given their suppression of free speech as well as many Arab nations that didn't support it publicly due to Western interventionism PR and their own monarchical regimes). So the question is, is humanitarian intervention militarily a solution? Does it cause more harm than good? All debatable. We don't know what would have happened had Gaddafi crushed Cyraenica compared to the bloodshed now. Libya would have been more stable, but is a brutal regime of stability better than a possibility of a fresh start? Tough to say, especially with tribal-driven loyalties in Libya. I don't believe that all these rebels are Al Qaeda though as some may claim, many are former professionals, educated Libyans, and come from diverse backgrounds all to stand against the fascist and brutal regime of Gaddafi who massacred many en masse and now they have taken up arms against him and his rule. I feel it's a noble cause. Is it that simple though? No. Is it for the best? Who knows. Only time will tell.

We cannot intervene everywhere for humanitarian purposes for matter of expediency, pragmatism, temporal factors, global support, etc. But when there is so much call for help and support for it, then I feel internationally we should and have an obligation to whether it be in Ivory Coast (like we did), Rwanda, or Burma. I don't support the "white man's burden" argument, but I do support intervention when there is clear near unanimous support for intervention, a multi-national and cross-cultural military team, and a very clear threat to many lives and livelihoods like with genocides (in addition to internal support for that cause). And I think Libya is a very good example of what happened despite pussyfooting by some Arab nations who initially strongly supported intervention.

The facts are so much more complex than these simple quips some of you like to spout out. But quips that appeal to the emotional basis of some clearly delineated sociological mindset are what get people modded Insightful it seems, not a logical analysis of a very complex and multifaceted situation.

Sorry I don't buy that entirely. It's true that outsourcing IT has become more and more popular, but it's hardly to the point where "many Fortune 500 companies only have 6 or 7 employees that even deal with I.T." That's a pretty big hyperbole.

I work at a Fortune 100 company helping maintain production code and working on transitioning development applications all the way to the production environment. We have no less than a thousand employees (with an employee total of over 30,000 people) who work directly or indirectly in I.T. in no less than a dozen different departments. I'm sure that number includes our outsourced colleagues in India (and we do have many consultants as well offshore employees, especially Indians), but we have many, many locally-based workers here in our main locations in the United States. Those include many who work in traditional Helpdesk roles, network engineering, environment moves, development silos, production support silos, business-IT liaisons, database management, host systems management & batch, incident management & escalation, etc. etc. who all help to develop and maintain a portfolio of hundreds of disparate and important applications critical to our infrastructural and business needs.

Maybe I'm not as jaded about outsourcing as the next person because of this experience. Maybe it's because I see the critical role it serves in helping companies/consumers lower costs and Indians/others get better lives. Maybe my company is the exception (though I doubt it, all companies of this size have diverse I.T. needs that make I.T. staffs of hundreds probably needed). Regardless, I think that combining outsourcing strategies while holding onto valuable I.T. employees here in the United States and the Western world is nonetheless what needs to be done in order to facilitate the proper mix of cost-savings and quality service/employee morale.

Or Canada for that matter...

I think Blizzard has it this year for WoW with their Clippy-clone Crabby. Follows you along their web page linking you to Rebecca Black and generally being a nuisance responding based on what you're doing on the site.

Very well done by Blizzard. Seems like they actually spent some time and creative energy on this endeavor and I was chuckling the entire time.

Yes but if you read the resolution, it clearly states:

"Authorizes Member States...to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack...while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council;"

It's a misconception that this is just authorization for a no-fly zone. It is not. Similarly, it's coalition-led, largely by the French and secondarily the British who just recently managed to convince the United States to strongly back the measure in the Security Council.

Not sure where you get your news from, but at least from what I have seen on CNN, most of the "experts" interviewed on the subject matter seem to be pretty impartial so far. Of course CNN, like a lot of the news networks, has a lot of hysterical headlines and discussion topics, but at least the professed experts I have seen on there have by and large supported not getting hysterical and shutting down plants. Most seem pretty sensible on the subject. Just my observations having the network on in the background as I monitor the situation online as well.

Although I agree with your general assessment. In regard to dying from doing too much LSD, I think that is a quite low probability given its relatively high LD50 compared to what is usually taken. Information gleaned from an overview of the Wikipedia entry and its sources (along with Erowid) suggest no documented deaths linked to LSD usage alone.

They clearly were trying to preempt Wikileaks.

Not all robots are designed for exclusively indoor use. And a house can be built in such a way as to allow in plenty of sunlight. I'm not an engineer when it comes to solar technology though so I can't say for sure how useful that is as an energy source, especially for larger robotics.

I would think solar power would work better and be more readily available.

Is there a reason for it not being as considered as one would think? Is it too expensive? Technical problems? Or is it being increasingly used in robotics?

I vastly prefer the word "app" to "cyber."

As if adding "cyber" before every word suddenly makes it some revolutionary technological achievement.

*shudders*

Given the fact that many microprocessors can be found in the home in everyday objects, it's obvious that "Too many" is the main choice for most people.

In that regard the poll is unclear, as I am not sure if it's referencing PC-based microprocessors or those found in any embedded system within the household, which probably includes most household appliances to the extent that more than 10 is very, very likely.

But I can't really say "too many" considering all the appliances and electronic devices we use day-to-day which, while not necessary, certainly can act to make our lives easier.