"popular" is a relative term. If 0.001% of all Android devices out there had Cyanogen running on them at this moment I would be floored.

>Right now if they ground up the waste and vented it into the atmosphere it would be less damaging than that caused by coal mining, megawatt for megawatt.

The Fukushima and Chernobyl exclusion zones would show that to be extreme hyperbole. Grab a tent and go live for a month a mile from a coal burning plant in a field, and then try the same thing a mile from Pripyat and let me know how that goes for you.

Reality has a well known liberal bias. That's why Fox News is out to destroy it.

I know, it's terrible. Something like 88% of the US buys the wrong car. I fully believe that all tests to get licensed should be conducted in manual transmission vehicles unless the subject has a medical exemption and has to drive an automatic.

Manuals have several advantages including better fuel efficiency, greater control over the vehicle, and reduced costs. And in rare safety incidents like the rare cases of "throttle stick" manuals are much safer. Newer automatics at highway speed will not let you shift into neutral if the throttle is sticking, but with a manual you just press the clutch pedal and move to the shoulder, then turn off the engine. Disaster averted.

I can still see a safety issue with the ignition being shut down arbitrarily. Imagine the car is a stick shift and the driver sucks at stick shifting. So they go to take off after the light turns green and manage to stall it instead, rolling it 40-50 feet into the intersection. Then the interlock stops the car from being started again . And the intersection happens to have train tracks. And here comes a freight train a couple of miles away...

If the behavior of the shutdown circuit could include logic like "don't activate unless the car has been off for at least 90 seconds" or something then that would be a lot safer.

This isn't 25 years ago. I just got rid of my 12 year old car that had a blue book value of ~$1000. It wasn't the prettiest thing, the trunk latch needed a bit of fiddling to get to open as the spring in the external latch handle was worn out, it leaked oil (slowly, about a liter per month) and it had a few other minor issues with it, and someone had backed into the driver's side door in a parking lot, leaving a dent about the size of a dinner plate. I traded it in, but if I sold it privately I realistically would have gotten about $700-$800 for it on the open market based on comparables for sale in the paper and on Craigslist at the time.

The reason I got rid of it wasn't that it was unsafe or it wouldn't start or run, it was that to bring it back to 100% would cost a couple of thousand dollars that I figured would be better spent getting something newer and fancier that I can afford to do. It was still mechanically sound aside from the small oil leak and pretty much the most dependable car I've ever owned. If selling it privately wasn't such a hassle, I would have been happy to see it go to some college student or other person who needed good basic transportation for not too much money.

There are lots of cars in the $1000-$2000 range these days that are sound and dependable, their only sins are that they are old and cosmetically challenged.

You're talking about targeted research within their existing product line. Bell Labs, Xerox PARC and others existed to do research on things that weren't even close to core business. The simple fact is there are almost no publicly traded companies today who can dump even a small fraction of their money into researching something that is not directly related to their product line without a shareholder revolt. What exactly do you think Microsoft's shareholders would do if MS announced they were getting into gigabit fiber buildouts like Google is doing?

Yup. They have a special mindset. Reminds me of a podcast of This American Life I heard a few months back:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/293/a-little-bit-of-knowledge

If you listen to Act Three, you hear this in full effect. Bob Berenz the electrician is CONVINCED he has found a problem with the understanding of physics and anyone who tries to prove otherwise is not paying attention to what he says, "doesn't get it" or is in on maintaining the "big science" status quo. The reality is he's made several basic errors in his own version and is unwilling to accept any explanation of them.

The countries that have *actual* government run healthcare shake heads sadly watching the spectacle.

From Wikipedia:

"In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.[13][14] One year later, the company merged with Confinity,[32][34] which operated a subsidiary called PayPal.[32] PayPal and X.com each had a person-to-person email-based payment system.[32] The original intent was to merge the two systems, but it never happened.[citation needed]

Musk strongly favored the PayPal brand over the X brand. After initially co-branding PayPal with the X brand, including making X.com a subdomain of PayPal,[32] he moved to officially remove the X.com brand for good. Following this, the board appointed PayPal founder Peter Thiel as interim CEO.[32] PayPal's early growth was due in large part to a successful viral growth campaign created by Musk.[35] In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock, of which $165 million was given to Musk.[36] Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.[37]"

TL;DR. Musk didn't create PayPal, he cofounded a company with a competing service that merged with the company that owned PayPal and while at the merged company pushed to use the PayPal platform as it was better. Then he left in 2002.

I really don't think we can lay the lion's share of PayPal's shittyness at his feet based on that. By that logic, Windows 8 should see Bill Gates hanged...

"why not take that time to toss in some viagra information for you to listen to"

Now you're just being silly.

"if you don't care about them, then let these scammers have their fun, what do you care?"

Oh, it's FUN! Scamming vulnerable people out of money is FUN! Scaring the shit out of some grandmother and then scamming her out of most of her food budget for the month is FUN!!! Can I have your grandma's number? It's all in fun...

Why not both? But you're not getting this, or you don't really care if anyone else gets scammed. Which is fine, but I also hope you don't expect other people to be altruistic towards you or your family. Because that would be hypocritical.

Not in my experience. The 300-500 segment of the market is split around 50/50 in my peer group and extended family between iPads and Android 7"-10" tablets. I've even seen the fanboyism catch on such to the extent that my entire immediate family only buys Samsung tablets and phones. And I with my 2013 Nexus 7 are an outcast heathen....

But also to be fair, the Surface Pro has more than enough horsepower to run full Photoshop just fine. Unless of course people are now saying that a quad core i7 with 8GB of RAM is not sufficient to run Photoshop.....

"And a Surface is nothing more than a crappy overpriced under performing laptop that wants to be a tablet."

Lies. The top end Surface tablets are actually excellent tablets and nearly top marks in the 'being a laptop' department as well. I used to think like you do about them until one of the guys at the office took the plunge and bought one and I got to use it. It's very good and if I didn't have to use a corporate-imaged (and locked down) laptop for my portable device I'd buy one in a heartbeat. In fact I'm trying to think of a way to justify the company buying me one even though it's not on the "approved devices" list.