And why should anyone care about "recommended" levels of anything?

God, I hope you're not a pharmacist.

I have never seen any study suggesting that

And I have never seen Australia, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

participants who drank pop daily had shorter telomeres

I didn't know I had telomeres until about five minutes ago.

And wait a minute, when they say, "pop", are they talking about any carbonated beverage? Is the problem the carbonation or the crap they put in pop to make it sweet and neon-colored and buzz-causing and impervious to going bad for 500 years?

I need to know, because I've become enamored of my Sodastream machine, which turns water into fizzy water. I can't drink pop because I play the chromatic harmonica and any kind of drink with sugar or caramel color will foul up the reeds and valves. But fizzy water is perfect because it's refreshing, and it wets my whistle (which is important for playing the chromatic harmonica) and allows me to belch "When the Saints Go Marching In". Seriously, I love those carbonated belches. I keep them on the down-low when I'm around others, but I've scared the hell out of the cat a few times with a belch that registers 6.4 on the richter scale. It doesn't startle the dog, but she does wag her tail as if to say, "nice rip, bro".

So, does this research mean that the fizzy water I drink (no added flavor, except occasionally I'll add a little spearmint or hibiscus tea) is going to give me stubby little telomeres? And does the length of my telomeres matter as long as they have sufficient girth? I need to know right away.

Yeah. I wasn't sure about all the complaining of the militarization of the police until I noticed that one of the items the Department of Defense was sending police departments was silencers.

There is no appropriate use for a silencer in police work. Not one. A silencer is an assassin's tool. Not law enforcement.

One example? Do you know how much psychological research is being done?

Just check the Slashdot frontpage over the past few weeks and you'll find a lot more instances of con men in Physics. Does this mean that the "current state" of physics research is rife with fraud?

How about economics? Biochemistry? You want con men? Parapsychology is a more rigorous discipline than economics.

Oh, you're right. Sorry. I misread it and thought it was a branch of the mounties for aboriginal regions.

Never mind.

Psychology research since the mid-90s has actually become one of the more rigorous scientific disciplines. I don't know if you're thinking back to the mid 20th century, but I'm not sure where you're getting a notion that there's something wrong with the "current state" of psychology research.

If you're a military, you don't ask what it costs.

Except in this case, their not military. Police have different requirements than the military, not the least of which is sticking to a budget.

Despite what you see with US police departments, police forces don't need the latest military hardware.

Canada is significantly colder than Sweden and Norway.

Parts of it are. Considering the very wide range of temperatures across Canada, if the government is looking for one rifle to handle any conditions, and cost is a factor, they're better off with wood laminate stocks.

If they've stuck this long with the Lee-Enfield, it's a pretty good indication that they're more concerned with reliability over many decades and standardization than they are with the latest tech.

> A complete nightmare, and even if you get it working, you wind up with an unstable system.

It's not as bad as that. I built 2 back back in 2008-2009, and they were rock stable-- kernel panics were extremely rare. They also didn't require much in the way of hackery. I put the EFI boot loader on a thumb drive and kept my OS X drive as free of hacked bits as possible. I wanted to be able to hook it up to a real Mac and boot it without issue, and I achieved this goal. Still, I would never recommend them in a business setting.

One of the machines was my daily driver, and dual booted Windows. The other ran OS X Server and was the fileserver in my house. The specs on the server were enough to get the job done, but my daily driver gave me top of the line Mac Pro performance for about $1200.

The only problem was OS updates-- they usually broke something. I maintained a bootable clone of both machines' boot drives, and waited a few days for other hackintoshers to find and figure out how to fix the issues before installing those updates. Both machines ran Snow Leopard for their entire term of service, which ended last year. They were replaced with refurb Mac minis. The hackintoshing was an interesting experiment, but I wanted a new OS without more hackery, supported hardware, and worry-free updating again. As a side effect, my electric bill fell off a cliff, which was nice.

You can't tell that from the logo.

Sure you can. Tell me one product with an Apple logo that does not have an Apple proprietary chip.

Yeah, I'm wondering if they're going straight for 3D gesture and voice control type stuff.

They've already got the mind control covered.

an Apple proprietary chip is involved in that

I kinda figured that from the logo.

What's wrong with using the iPad as a second screen

Portable music production means not having to carry two devices when one device will do.

All of the compelling uses I read about for something like the Surface have boiled down to pretty niche uses that are really not sustainable.

Music production, NFL sidelines. Those are two pretty high-profile niches.

It's nice that you like your Surface now, because it's not going to be around for many more years.

"Nyah, nyah!"

For music production, a hybrid tablet would be great

I use one every day. It's called "Surface Pro". Full ProTools, full plug-in support, full peripheral support, touchscreen and power to spare.