I think I won the buzzword bingo on this section alone:

Not exactly what I see replacing Outlook at work.

Well in that case it also happened 5.5 billion years ago, so your warning may be a little late. Then again they did say it happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away...

We forgot Vista, we forgot ME... okay you didn't but the market did. I'm good until 2020, in consumer time that's ages. If Win10 lets me just not use the Metro crap I'm good for another 10 years (5 years normal + 5 years extended support). For example recently I and some friends have been playing COH2, what's the WINE rating? Garbage. Mac support? None. I can't not have a Windows desktop around, there's no equally compelling social reason to have a Linux desktop.

I know I can use it (had it as my primary desktop for 3.5 years) but in the end Win7 won me back. One of the great advantages of all the idiots running Windows is that you can't expect an idiot to fix things, so they fix it for you. On Linux there's often some kind of workaround or tweak or override or obscure configuration setting somewhere and that half-way solution is good enough that nobody will go through the effort to really fix it. Of course the downside is that on Windows when it really is broken, you can't do shit about it.

But here's the lazy slob in me, for most problems that aren't critical my first thought is how can avoid triggering this so I can just get on with my day. Even when I run into broken software it doesn't automatically mean I have much of an itch to scratch, more like a dog poop I stepped in and will circle around next time. Polish lets you not waste time on all those tiny problems that wouldn't really be worth your time to fix, but each one takes a nibble out of your productive or leisure time.

Exercising makes you fit, but unless you're an athlete it doesn't burn enough calories to make up for excessive calorie intake. I can usually burn 5-700 calories in an hour, but a Big Mac and 0.5 liter coke will undo that very easily and that's not counting the fries. You can subititute the burger with about 100 grams of potato chips or about three 0.5 liter beers. And if it's not excesses in sugar and fat you can easily overeat on quite ordinary food by simply eating too much.

You can easily overeat by 1000+ calories a day, in fact your body is built to quickly store fat in times of plenty since before refridgerators and preservatives that was the primary means of surviving harsh winters, draughts, bad luck hunting and so. The body is sending you all these wrong messages that you did great to secure all these reserves Except these days we only go up and never down.

Sure, it's just a matter of not eating but that's easier said than done, a nagging hunger is very very annoying. It's like I've grown up in a fairly cold climate, send a person from the tropical regions here and have him dress like me and I swear he'll think it's cold, damn cold. I doubt our bodies are that differntly build physically, but it's not as easy as to say it's all in your head. Maybe it is, but he's still freezing where I'm not. And I'm still hungry even though you're not. It's not fun. Being fat as fuck is also not fun, so I try balancing it out. But it's not easy.

And a bunch of rebel fighters shouldn't be able to blow up the death star, right? Or one man in a blue box against the Daleks or four SG-1 members against the Goa'uld System Lords. Yes, it's ridiculously improbable like most sci-fi, we constantly run into beings vastly more powerful than ourselves and none of them simply blow the Enterprise out of the sky and it's always a redshirt taking the bullet.

Orbits are many, valuable orbits not so much. The first few hundred kms are unusable due to atmospheric drag. Then comes LEO and the optimal solution is usually as close as possible, greater bandwidth/resolution, lower latency, shorter orbital period and more payload, less fuel. Then a lot of empty space before GEO, which is obviously quite narrow because otherwise it wouldn't be geo-synchronous and everyone who wants to receive signals need a much more expensive and complicated tracking antenna and multiple satellites to keep 24x7 coverage. True there's certain differences with frequency bands as well, but not anything like in space.

I'd rather just invest in cell phone towers (you can daisy chain these with point-to-point beams if cables are unfeasible/too expensive) and smartphones. Some 92% of the world's population is already covered by a cell phone signal, more people in India have cell phones than running water. They just don't use it for the Internet, yet. Because I really doubt the world's poor is going to have satellite reception equipment, this will be a fixed thing for schools and such. But then you'd probably do just as well using the cell phone network as the "last mile" and have a few big Internet gateways to the sky.

More like there's a ton of markets that Apple choose not to compete in and if you want to force a square peg into a round hole it gets real expensive. Like not offering a machine with drive bays, if you want more than one drive you should buy some wildly expensive Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. Or offering any cheap solutions, no cheap HDDs, no cheap screens, it's all high end or not at all. But their laptops are pretty much the same as everybody else's, the form factor hasn't allowed them to turn it into an art project. If I was in the market for a $1000+ laptop I'd consider a MacBook no matter what OS I was going to run on it. Not least because I could change my mind, even though dual booting (or even triple booting) is a hassle.

Why? In many markets where meaningful competition is hard to achieve you see that in Europe where it's more regulated consumers have it better and in the US where it's less regulated consumers have it worse. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary you have a very vocal libertarian crowd who claim the answer is more deregulation. "It doesn't work, lets do more of it" is what happens when you're blinded by ideology. To continue Lisa's story:

*Bear shows up*
Homer: The rock is not working.
Lisa: I told you that it didn't?
Homer: We need more rocks!
Lisa: Have you listened to anything I said?
Homer: Please Lisa, we need those rocks.
Lisa (picks up rocks): But they're just ordinary rocks.
Homer: Shut up and take my money!
[Lisa shrugs, then takes the exchange]

Depends on your perspective. In my country about 2% of the population is employed in agriculture. While we do need productive land, fertilizer, machinery and so on I'm pretty sure we could do better with 3%. So does anyone need to starve? I fail to see the big principal and moral difference between propping up a disabled person at home and a foreigner who for some reason also can't support himself.

Well, we also know that people who do get the "modern conveniences" are also more likely to pop out 1-3 children than 4-10 in order to support their old age. So we might be reducing the burden on ourselves long term, assuming we want to give everyone the basic needs. It might not be earned, but it might still be logical for us to do so. Basically, it comes down to Africa as on six continents population growth is fairly well in hand. It might be better to just bring them up to speed ASAP rather than turning millions into billions needing help.

And this is where it all starts to break down, it's better applied to close allies. Does the EU want the US listening in on all their phone calls? Does the US want the EU listening in on all their phone calls? We probably don't and an intercept-free solution is probably a download away with open source.

Well, they do seem to produce an awful lot of DNA code and you'll never find "programmers" more protective of their work, even though one only updates the code once a month and the other is just spewing it out to see what sticks. And they are extremely proud when a million monkeys (not sure where the typewriters come in) do produce a Shakespeare.

P.S. I know it's technically the testicles and ovaries, but lighten up...

Blame the NSA, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory clearly says Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total fuckwad.

This is actually a case where government regulation works, here in Norway there's a "reservation registry" against telemarketing, fixed and mobile phones. About 2.1 out of 5 million inhabitants have registered, never get any telemarketing calls. You can optionally reserve against ideal organizations too, though you can't reserve against surveys. There's a loophole for "existing business relationships" but it's pretty narrow and since that means you actually have business with them they're quite responsive to take you off any list to continue that business. Not that they have any choice either.

I like this quote from Stargate SG-1:

Sugar coating it just leads to people not getting the message, as long as you treat all the same no matter what sex or color or religion or whatnot they belong to - including not using that as derogative - it's fine with me. Same as when you won't fail people because that's not nice so a D is now the new F or refusing to time a children's race because they're all winners.

I remember when there was a big article and discussion about whether you could chastise other people's kids when they were being brats in your house. Most were on the "my house, my rules" side but some were in the "don't you dare, I choose how to raise my kids" corner too. Seriously, like you expect to be the sole judge of their behavior until they're 18? Hell no.

You might not like other people's opinion much, particularly if it's negative but it's also part of growing up - figuring out who is worth listening to and who is not. And who is just being a dick trying to make you do a dare or peer pressure or consequences like getting grounded and getting bad grades. "Tough, but fair" should be a honorific, at least compared to the wishy-washy people who'll spout vague positive encouragement no matter what.

Just note that seizure laws are as old as the constitution and the Supreme Court has never interpreted the 4th amendment that way. Example cases are "The Palmyra, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat) 1 (1827)." where they seized a pirate ship originally owned by Spain but was operating on its own. Or "Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U.S. 395, 24 L.Ed. 637 (1878)" where they ceased property of the man who'd leased out his property for a distillery. In "254 U.S. 505, 41 S.Ct. 189, 65 L.Ed. 376 (1921)" a taxicab used to transport illegal liquor was seized. In "Calero Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663 (1974)" they cease a yacht because the people leasing it had one marijuana cigarette. There's 200 years of precedent saying they can cease property even though the owner is innocent.

What seems to be fundamentally different is that most the recent cases seem to involve seizures where there's no real evidence of a primary crime in which the property was an "accessory". "Preponderance of evidence" has basically been replaced by speculation and accusation with no basis in fact. A conviction has never been a formal requirement, say they try to stop a car at a border crossing, the driver makes a getaway, abandons the car and is never found or convicted. In this case they would seize the car as objectively used for drug smuggling even though no person could be convicted for the crime. But when there's not the slightest hint of link to a crime, that's just wrong.

It also gets better, there's no need for the seized property to be instrumental in the crime.

Basically if you got a friend riding your car and you get stopped for any reason and they find a joint on your friend your car can be ceased under drug laws, there's no requirement that it be instrumental in transporting drugs. Same if you got a friend or family member visiting, your house is now a de facto drug stash even though it was on their person the whole time.

Basically it's the "nuke it from orbit" theory, anything found in the vicinity of a crime gets caught in the blast wave. It doesn't matter if it was your property and you're innocent, if bank robbers steal your car and use it in a bank robbery clearly you should lose your car right? Your fault for letting it get stolen and be used to rob a bank, you pay the price.

Is it time yet?