Michael Stonebreaker is probably the best-known database researcher alive. He invented Ingres, the first relational database, and developed the core of what is now PostgreSQL. Since moving to MIT, he's continued to push some of the bounds of database technology.

Disagreeing with his conclusions here due to the success of Facebook is reasonable. But to call him a nobody exposes your ignorance, not his.

Exactly, not a land grab. On the other hand, you also have the BBC...

host -t AAAA www.bbc.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk is an alias for www.bbc.net.uk.
www.bbc.net.uk has IPv6 address 2001:4b10:bbc::2

Um, the Think Different campaign started in 1997. The 1984 commercial was in, well, 1984. Do you really think that Apple kept the same marketing campaign for over 13 years, through two different upheavals of leadership?

Since Obama's inauguration, Cindy Sheehan has been arrested twice in front of the White House for protesting. She's demonstrated outside of his vacation home in Martha's Vineyard, and was doing the same on the streets of Oslo when he was getting the Nobel Prize. Code Pink is still protesting; I can easily find a reference to them doing so last Halloween in front of the White House.

Now ask yourself; is the problem with the protesters going away, or is the problem with the news media?

It's not that ITA doesn't search all airlines, it's that Southwest's agreements with ITA don't allow for cross-carrier comparisons.

Intriguingly, Southwest uses ITA behind the scenes for their flight searches, so you're still giving us money for the $88 flight. :-)

Well under the current system they are either turned away or forced to pay some exorbitant amount.

Actually, under the current system they are turned away if their condition isn't dire. Otherwise, they get treated and billed an exorbitant amount. Usually they are unable to pay, so in most cases the hospital has to eat the cost, but they'll try to defray it by raising the rates that they're charging the insurance companies, which gets passed on to the rest of us.

But there are provisions that will take place immediately -- things like making sure that young children can't be denied from a new plan due to a pre-existing condition, prohibit dropping people from a plan when they get sick, letting dependents stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26, adding tax credits to small businesses to allow for coverage purchase. It would be pretty easy for Democrats to spin taking those things away as a bad thing.

Actually, Congress uses an insurance exchange system (the FEHBP) that serves as the model for the Democrat's health care overhaul -- the FEHBP has a variety of plans in the exchange, and they can pick the one that best suits their needs. In fact, the Democratic plan actually states Congress and their staff will have to move from the FEHBP to the main insurance exchanges.

I disagree, and the usability bugs I currently have open on Apple's bug tracking system agree with me.

I love the fact that your corroborating witness here are your own bug filings. It's actually less compelling than "I'm totally right, because my mom agrees with me."

Not to pick on you, because I basically agree with your point, but I found that statement rather humorous.

A real "nerd" would recognize that the distinction between city and town is essentially a nebulous one, and do more research to determine what the distinction would be before calling something an "elementary mistake" or labeling people they don't know a "sensationalist manipulator".

For example, in the US, the designation of "city" is controlled by state laws, and as such is determined by any of a number of factors, such as type of government or incorporation status of the community. Vermont has nine cities, the smallest of which has fewer than 3000 people.

Actually, since MIT grades on a 5 point scale rather than 4, a 3.4 isn't really that exciting. :-)

Just found this article in which the "Ski Channel" is going to offer her a job:

"Either Ms Thompson is a cunning out of the box thinker and we want her," said Bellamy, "or she isn't, and her position would not last long. Either way, the law suit would no longer be clogging up the courts because there are now no damages."

- destruction of diversity in radio broadcasting (something the music industry ironically pushed for) via the death of media ownership regulations mid-'90s

Wrong. Radio hardly has any influence on what music people listen to these days.

I'm not sure that's true -- I actually think the ownership regulations have affected the music being produced. I look at it this way: after the Telecommuncations Act of 1996, companies like ClearChannel now could own stations across the country. In order to lower their costs, they would program all stations of a certain genre out of a central location. Hence, in order to get heard on a ClearChannel station, you can't appeal to local tastes and rely on a good set of customers in just, say, the Southeast markets; instead the music needed to be something that would appeal from Albany to Abilene to Anchorage. When a record company is aiming for as wide a market as possible, they're going to end up going for simpler melodies and sounds to avoid turning people off.

So, in order to get airtime across the country, you're going to tend to push rather pedestrian music. I think this is also why record companies have started pushing fewer artists in the last decade -- it's just not cost-effective to do more variety when every single artist needs to be marketed nationwide.

It all stems from the radio ownership rules. Even if radio no longer influences tastes directly (which might actually just be a case of the tail wagging the dog), it doesn't mean it doesn't have an influence on what's being produced.

And Scrubs has been renewed for a ninth season, so it's not even a valid point.