What is the virtue of a "legislative personnel layer"? When they vote without even reading bills, or regulate the internet without even allowing experts to testify much less understand it themselves.

Sometimes it's hard for people to imagine the possibilities of the future when only considering from the context of today.

I imagine if we as citizens saw the cost, our tax dollars that we are paying for these policies, more would take the time and interest to become educated on policy. And even if not, if it doesn't gain enough support, chances are it's not a necessary law or policy to begin with.

We should operate our democracy in the manner that only laws that are absolutely necessary are those that we as tax payers fund. Anything more, is simply undemocratic. I'm astonished how many laws we pass restricting our freedom, given how many Americans have literally died to provide. Bottom line, I never voted to waste over $1 Trillion dollars to for police to pull up weeds and arrest my citizens over plants. Just for starters.

Individuals select a bullet list of policies (i.e. drug war), they support on their tax return and are willing to pay their share to support the policy. To put their money where their mouth is so to speak, by way of paying taxes per policy by a percentage calc. The law is written that if not enough citizens support the policy, and therefore don't provide enough funding, the policy expires and the law is repealed.

I'm tired of paying for taxes on policies I don't support and never had a say in. And I'm tired of politicians passing laws I never asked for.

One tax employers can't avoid, and don't avoid, is paying the other half of payroll taxes that fund medicare and social security. Many employees don't even realize their employers pay this on their behalf. For those of us who are self employed, we have to pay both sides.

I felt it important to point out the correct acronym for flexible organic light emitting diode is FOLED.

We have to keep our acronyms straight, we're geeks! hahaha

Why can't people think past today? Think forward. Yesterday, as I was doing some iPad app development, I accidentally touched my laptop screen to scroll, thinking it was a touch screen for a second.

Why not enable touch on that screen as well to simply supplement current input methods? Let people use either depending on the moment and context of what they are working on.

All day vertical touch screen use would be tiring, of course, but there are plenty of plausible short term use cases, including the one I just reached for the other day. I would also love a digital marker white board in conference rooms that I didn't have to erase, and could email as a screenshot when we're done. Right now, we take a picture of the whiteboard with our phones!

"No thanks?" Do you sleep with your phone in your pocket? =) Gotta put it down sometime. Why not on a mat. Saves the plug in step, that's something. Innovation is always incremental. It'll get better.

All innovation is small incremental steps. You never go from horses directly to a Tesla Roadster.

Right, but as a geek, aren't you curious what the numbers look like?

"In 2008, a measles outbreak spread in California. It was traced to a child whose parents had decided not to vaccinate him. He brought the disease back from Europe, infecting other children at his doctor's office and his classmates."

This begs the question, were the other children and classmates that got infected, vaccinated but still got sick anyhow? Or were all of the people who got sick not vaccinated?

While vaccinations are essential, miracles of modern science, I would still like to know what the data is on effectiveness per vaccine formulation variation and so on. For example, I've read the current whooping cough vaccine is weaker and therefore less effective than its predecessor that had some minor side effects in some people.

nga nga not gonna fly here any more. haha =P

This is the classic designer first vs. sales/engineer first debate to designing software.

Typically in PC land, the sales team says, we need something new to sell. The engineers say sure we can do anything, but we don't know what people want, so we're just going to make it "customizable" and let users figure it out. We geek out on making it so flexible. More to do in the product often leaves less time to perfect the code which then ships with more bugs, we just patch in a service pack. It also leads to usability issues like stuffing more and more "features" into menus, eventually overstuffing the product with so much, users can't find anything to get the job done.

Apple takes the opposite approach, they battle it out in boardrooms for whether or not a feature deserves to be in the product in the first place. The designer first approach leads to a lower quantity of features, which provides them more time to get those fewer features perfected and polished to a shine.

FWIW, more and more people are giving the designer first approach a try in Silicon Valley. Top designers are being snatched up left and right.

"Others can embrace and extend when the patent expires."

The problem with that line of thinking, is not realizing that all that is created is evolutionary. Everything we build is done in small incremental steps, building on what was just built. No one goes from a horse and buggy to a Ferrari. You go from a horse, to a horse and buggy, to a motorized carriage and so on. Everything that Apple or anyone else has built, was done standing on the shoulders of giants.

Just wish we could easily re-order columns with FKs. =)

Another analogy that fits better is this.

Is it Verizon or AT&T's responsibility to police phone lines for someone who might be planning a robbery with another robber over the telephone? Is it the phone company's responsibility to do a criminal background check before handing out a phone book full of address information? Google is just a 411 service for the internet. And internet service providers just provide the pipes.

Really wish Josh would have thought it through more, it was an important televised moment to speak truth to power, in this whole piracy debate.

I've observed on dating websites, I see a lot of women who say "you must love animals" or that they love animals. Think there was even a movie called "Must love dogs". And there's that crazy ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan. Or the ladies getting naked for PETA.

Maybe it's because I'm a dude, but I've never felt any moments of affection or empathy towards animals like I do with people. Just an awe and general admiration for nature from watching the Discovery channel.

But many women seem to be wired differently in this regard.