McAfee's first thought on disembarking: "Great, now where am I supposed to find a drug dealer in Miami?"

How will they get the password hash without first breaking into the system? Seriously, how useful are these brute force crackers in attempting to crack, for example, my gmail password?

You've got it wrong... it's my death you need to worry about. I'm a solipsist, so when I die everyone else ceases to exist.

You should be free to swing your fist. You are not entitled to swing your fist in the immediate proximity of my nose. There is a difference.

There are valid reasons that certain freedoms should be restricted in certain circumstances. The entitlement culture to which Parent refers has turned people who should be responsible adults into obstinate children crying that their favorite toy has been taken away. Have a modicum of decency and respect for others around you: turn the effing phone off and sit still for 5 minutes. And quit yer crying.

The point is it distorts the market by diverting attention toward a disease suffered by old rich people. Given the choice, scientists would allocate their time toward more deserving patients, not simply those with a bankroll. Look what's happening with the Gates foundation and malaria research: other areas of research are being abandoned because everyone's flocking to the malaria grants. It wasn't their intent to discourage scientists away from other areas of research, but that is what happens when you flood the market.

If you're going to be a philanthropist, you don't decide what science should do with the money, you let the experts decide.

To truly qualify as philanthropy, your donation should not come with strings attached. Despite AC's mockery, what this Koch guy is doing is not really motivated by any sense of altruism, he's just trying to save his own ass (yeah, it's intended). Here is a major research lab being required to study what would most benefit him, and you call that charitable? Seriously, you don't think it's evil that this twisted fuck can yank money and resources away from sick children just so he can have a few more miserable years on the planet?

Dude, that's not a philanthropist, that's a sociopath. Let's see, I am super rich but I have a rare terminal disease, but maybe I can cheat death if I purchase all the world's best scientists to work on *my* health problem. Never mind if they were previously occupied trying to save sick children. Fuck those kids, I'm rich and therefore I'm a higher priority.

I hope your benefactor enjoys his or her remaining time on Earth, because Hell is going to be a real bitch.

Well said. I look around at the endless swamp of copycat startups and wonder why I am in this ridiculous industry. At one point I thought the world was changing, instead of the same tired advertising cliches wrapped up in shiny social apps and glittering cloud storage. The fact that a stagnant stock price is used as evidence of Bartz' failure is itself part of the problem. Haven't these short term metrics already been thoroughly discredited? Then why does the financial press keep returning to them?

FTLOG people, please innovate. The internet right now is a thick wasteland of d-baggery without a soul. Every other site serves stealth cookies and multiple MBs of javascript code all trying to figure out more ingenious ways to take your money. I miss 1995, I'd give anything to complain about someone's use of the blink tag or tables used for layout.

I'm glad they didn't decide to record the brain waves of a young *man* in love... those would certainly make the aliens skeptical about ever visiting us.

"What did we learn from this Golden Record?"
"From what we can tell, we're dealing with a race that can't concentrate, constantly listens to The Smiths, worries about its hair looking right, broods pensively throughout the day, and fears never knowing the right things to say."
"On second thought, let's head out to Ursa Minor and see if we can find any intelligent life over there."

Dude, let me clue you in here. Science *is* the box that everyone tells you to think outside of. Science teaches you a rigorous methodical approach to data collection and analysis; science is about hypothesis testing and repeatabillity of results. Scientists have to live in this box, otherwise they'd just be mad scientists. For inspired thinking, don't read Karl Popper, read some Hermann Hesse. That will blow your little scientific mind. Too bad that you would consider literature the biggest joke on the planet. Enjoy your sheltered life, bro.

It's too bad your prestigious education hasn't taught you to avoid sweeping generalizations. To say that one package is "better" or "considerably more powerful" in all cases, is not a good argument.

Why would anyone use Oracle when MySQL is free, open source, and of course "better"?

R is an excellent platform for data analysis and modeling, with a great deal of traction in the academic community which means that cutting-edge statistical techniques are ported and/or implemented in R very quickly.

But, R is not a magic bullet. It is very inefficient to run complex data management routines in R, it is simply not optimized as well as some of those (gasp!) commercial packages. In addition, R loads its entire dataset into memory, providing a strict limit on how much data you can work with.

Good luck with school, and try to learn something. You might try opening your mind.

You have every reason to be confused: the term is being manipulated to make you think you are in favor of something that turns out to be the complete opposite of what you want!

From a technical perspective, one might assume that "neutrality" with respect to network packets means that each packet is treated equally, and that the network maintains a neutral stance towards the content, source, or destination of each packet. Sounds great, right? To you and me perhaps, but if you're a large corporation seeking to dominate the distribution of content, this conception of neutrality is not in your favor.

Since it is always cheaper to legislate rather than innovate, a cabal of such like-minded corporations has hijacked the term neutrality -- knowing that it will give off positive connotations -- and have instead twisted it to serve their purposes. They want to control the packets, so they can provide preferential treatment to those who pay for it, and of course deny access to anyone whose packets may dare to challenge them, however they see fit to do so.

To control the packets, these companies are lobbying for a law that will stipulate that the government be "neutral" regarding their desire to apply tiered pricing and access. This is what The Man thinks of as neutrality, which of course, is a far cry from the idea that you and I have of it.

Be wary of the words "Net Neutrality", you may find yourself supporting the opposite of what you intended, which could eventually further erode the privileges we all (should) enjoy as equal netizens.