When ever there is a radical shift in a large employment industry, there is economic devistation for a lot fo families

That's been true with every economic shift in history. The steel industry, automotive industry, that's just life. The transition to clean energy is going to devastate coal country. Too bad coal country wasn't working on developing a broader jobs base during the transition. Instead of building for the future, they wanted to score political points for keeping taxes low. Can't have it both ways.

If people stick with the coal industry when it's apparent to anyone with two neurons left to make a spark that it's a dying industry, then whose fault is that? We should hold up the march of technology and green energy for a handful of rubes living in the butt-crack of civilization? Yeah, we're not doing that.

> they can kill 13 people with impunity

That's a gross over-generalization, or rather hyperbolic spin on reality.

Do you drive a car? You help kill 100,000 Americans a year, by deciding to drive. And 20,000 pedestrians, and 10,000 cyclists. With complete impunity as long as it's an "accident" (statistical likelyhood with sufficient statistical reality).

Team up to create the pie, then fight for your pieces. I'm actually shocked Microsoft is participating. It's a good move and I'm not used to seeing Redmond do the smart thing. Maybe their collective IQ went up now that Ballmer is out of the picture.

Scalia never met a search he considers unreasonable. Assuming 911 calls can be tracked and callers identified assumes the caller is not actively avoiding identification. There are lots of ways to game the phone system but Scalia seems pretty ignorant when it comes to technology. The biggest favor he could do the country is choking on his lunch.

> What I don't understand is why anyone would invest a single dime of their own money in a business operating in a country where the instant an investment starts paying off, someone else will come reap all your rewards.

They don't. Not any more, not to the same extent. Russia actually took a significant economic hit when the investment money slowly evaporated over the past 10 years, but it's hidden by the rise in the price of oil and gas (at least gas in Europe, still, so far..).

If they're counting the carbon to harvest the stalks, then the comparison for gasoline should include the carbon from oil extraction, transportation and refinement. The article also doesn't state if the carbon reduction from plant uptake is offsetting the carbon emissions of burning biofuels. Sounds like they're saying, look at the carbon you get from burning ethanol, add in the diesel to run the tractor, worse than gasoline!

I remember a study by the airline industry trying to claim air transportation was more efficient than high speed trains. This study reminds me of that kind of science.

No, I am in the position of saying that whether or not there is an illiteracy issue in the US or not, you, Karmashock, are full of shit.

Personally, I think the evidence, as far as I have seen *is* ambiguous and scant. I'm not sufficiently interested in this argument to go digging for sources to back up the opposing point of view, since I'm not sure I even hold it - at least to any great extent.

My bone in this debate (as a professional statistician) is simply to point out that the specific data source you quoted is not what you presented it as. Thus it's deeply offensive to me that you misrepresent a statistical estimate and then have the temerity to go:

Assert as you wish. But without actual evidence, your claim is a mere assertion. I don't have to prove the opposite of your assertion to show that.

Careful there.

Those values you quoted are *not* education statistics. They are estimates from a model built on national data, only a very small number of which actually came from Montana. In short, these are *specifically* driven by demographic data, and for especially low population, unusual demographic states like Montana, can potentially give very inaccurate results.

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estima...

Specifically, the estimate for 2003 uses the following set of predictors:

- Percentage of the county population who were foreign-born and who had stayed in the United States for 20 years or less years;
- Percentage of county population age 25 and older with only a high school education or less;
- Percentage of the county population who were Black or Hispanic;
- Percentage of the county population in households with incomes below 150 percent of poverty level;
- Indicator variable identifying the New England and North Central census divisions; and
- Indicator variable identifying the SAAL states.

Seriously yes. Most of the above skills are nice and all, but the likelihood is that not any one person will have all of the above. Which means you need to work with other people. In fact if one guy has a particular skill, you need to be able to educate the rest of the group in it. It's no use building a group where if one guy dies everyone is fucked.

Yeah, if you had cattle, the last thing you would want to do is shoot them, anyway. You have there an animal that converts useless grass into all sorta of diary products. Turning that into a steak will probably fuck you in the long term, and you'd better be thinking in the long term.

In most parts of the civilised world, there's very little to hunt. Whole herds of wild animals are not going to magically appear, and in terms of land area hunting would require far greater an area of decent unpolluted soil than agriculture to feed any given population.

I think what this boils down to is you want to punish DropBox for some things that Rice did 10 years ago that you disagree with.

Rice was part of criminal administration. We aren't talking about philosophical differences, they were crimes. Rice may not have been robbing the bank but she was still part of the gang.

Any company putting Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld or Rice on their board is going to lose my business.

Maybe you missed it but she was also the National Security Advisor at the helm when the US was attacked on 9/11. If that represents the clarity and competence she brings to her job on the board, this is not a positive development for Dropbox.

Microsoft: Yesterday's Technology Next Week

They always reminded me of Yoyodyne Industries from Buckaroo Banzai, where the future begins tomorrow.

Or maybe he just doesn't want it to stop.

Or maybe he doesn't want to listen to the right wing scream and holler about him leaving America unprotected, how he's inviting another terrorist attack by hobbling the agencies trying to protect us. Frankly, given the piss poor treatment the president receives, I don't blame him one bit for not sticking his neck out.

I guarantee if did that by executive order Fox News would have Dick Cheney on the air every day grumbling about how he's playing right into the terrorists plans and Sarah Palin would be whining about how much the president hates America.

Don't like it, then give the president some cover by making it an issue with your Congressman. Oh, that's right, they don't actually work for you anymore. Too bad.