When I was young there were no computers. I learned about internal combustion engines. I learned about electricity and electronics. I learned to make things of wood and metal. I enjoyed erector and chemistry sets. All of these things benefit me 60 years later. None of them were taught in my school.

Much later I learned to program in 6 languages (none of which are used today), again without any school help. I created databases for business, educational software, and taught and wrote articles about the industry.

Few of my contemporaries cared for such a broad understanding of practical things, but almost all had access to this knowledge. None of it required government requirements or school. Today there are vastly more opportunities for young people to learn whatever might interest them and school is not required.

Reading and arithmetic are essential to all children. Arithmetic can include logic, though I've never seen it done in public schools. Children need preparation for life- money management, social norms, and the fading understanding of geography, history, economics, other cultures etc. They need some political understanding, not just approved government propaganda but the reality of government & corporate interaction. They need enough chemistry and biology to prepare them for family health management as adults. Where does programming fit in to these requirements?

There is a current trend to confuse education with job training. This needs to stop. Education prepares children to be responsible citizens of the world. Job training can wait until junior college.

Following is a test. Is this argument outrageous? Yes / No

Here in southern California (where else?), we were home to what was often called the 'Nobel Sperm Bank' (actually called the Repository for Germinal Choice). It's founder, Robert Graham liked to broadcast his motto "The more intelligent you are, the more children you should have."

This kind of thinking bothers some people. The concept of 'survival of the fittest' shouldn't apply to humans, some say. We should spare no expense to keep even vegetative humans living ... We have always been driven by fear and superstition, but we are slowly evolving toward a more rational viewpoint.

So now the potential for very long lives confronts us in an already crowded world. When the quality of life drops even lower for the masses of humanity and hunger & disease take millions of lives daily, someone will have to decide. Who should live? Who should die? Will money decide? Will intelligence? Will it be those who best serve the predominant power structure? Will it be decided by our robot overlords? If logic prevails over emotion, we will reinstate survival of the fittest and offer a respectful goodbye to the rest.

Yes, Amiga was miles ahead. By then I had a decade with Apple ][ and Mac ... no way I could downgrade to DOS with a Windows disguise.

Windows was sold to business. It had been said that no CIO would get fired for buying IBM. Well the mantra was shifting. Buying Windows was safe for Fortune 500 decision makers. According to conventional wisdom, Mac & Amiga were for hippies and weirdos.

Windows was the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) in the purchasing equation. The generic hardware and software were relatively inexpensive and all the hackers were offering dBase solutions for businesses. That combination was a nightmare for the business that just wanted results, no hassles.

I have a vague memory of a time when children read comics and adults read books and newspapers. It seems now that children are busy with Twitter while adults are living in a fantasy world. Where will the de-evolution of humanity end?

As one who has worked with many skilled tech writers and many skilled programmers ... as one who does both with some facility; I beg to differ. It isn't hard to code well. I wrote and sold commercial software for about 10 years and later I was a tech writer for about 10 years. It would be very difficult to do both well at the same time. They seem to require a different mind set.

However many people will be unable to do either. These are both skills that require time, dedication and some native talent. Failure in any of these areas will produce a poor result.

If you care about your documentation go to STC.org (Society for Technical Communication). Many members are very professional and most can work in several media. You might even convince me to help with your project.

"... defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014."

When I was a motorcycle enthusiast I marveled at the enthusiastic reviews of the new models. Amazing new technology, better materials, better handling and safety, etc. But amongst all the praise for the new model, there was usually a comment like "They finally fixed the xyz problem that plagued last year's model." Various design, material and safety problems sometimes went years without any warning to buyers although the reviewers knew about them.

Never believe advertising or reviews that are paid for by advertisers. Don't put too much faith in Consumer Reports or Amazon reviews either. Join the maker community for somewhat honest advice in that area.

So, yeah, I have this plan to not die.
So far it's working!

Now really folks, aren't we taking ourselves too seriously here? Is there something you have to say that is so important you want it available for future generations? Think about the 101 billion who have already died- did lots of them have important things to say that we should be reading about now? Should they have left us a legacy web site?

If you have important wisdom to share, or even some really important facts and figures to impart; put them in a book. Publishers love to publish important stuff and most of them can distinguish 'important' from 'self-important'. Your legacy may last longer than the internet, maybe longer than humanity.

We all know the dystopia of 1984 in which humans were dehumanized by their own actions; and the Terminator movies where smart machines set out to kill us like cockroaches. The Matrix reduced humans into sleeping energy generators. Uber has advanced a new method of dehumanizing us by sending us on chores to serve a superintelligence (OK, just a central computer now, more or less managed by humans- but are those humans necessary?).

We do have a similar concept in Taskrabbit and the Amazon Mechanical Turk in which humans do tiny chores in response to requests delivered by their devices. Uber seems ready to take this concept worldwide at a grand scale. People will be scurrying about like ants, rushing from one chore to another in a frenzy of blind busy-ness.

And you, mister smarty pants programmer, you think you're off the hook? You'll be lucky to find work writing snippets of code that will be inserted into some diabolical software that doesn't even have a name.

Is this the beginning of a world where nobody has a job, a health insurance plan, a steady income; but instead performs chores when they can be found? Will we compete against each other to do menial tasks? Will we be graded like schoolchildren for our skills, timeliness, reliability? Will future humans be the cooperative slaves of a central computer?

... like the flea with ambitions to rape the elephant ...

Ireland is small. Roughly the size & population of the American state of Maryland. Everyone knows that Maryland is one of the least significant places in the US much less the world. Yet Ireland thinks it can control the internet and how people use it. Even the entire USA can't do that. Silly Ireland. (Sorry to include you in this, Maryland. You're not really a total loser.)

First, Stuart Russell is way ahead of our time. We're nowhere near artificial intelligence of any concern. When it does happen, as it must, we may be concerned. But there is an outcome that must be considered.

If the AI is beyond our ken, It will supersede us. Here is the critical question: is that a problem?

How will we feel if we are displaced on this small blue planet by Artificial Intelligence? We may be retained as maintenance bots or caretakers of the new ecosystem. Our place will be drastically reduced in effectiveness and prestige. We will have to prove our usefulness if the AI are to retain us in their plans for the future.

In the end, we and the theoretical AI are here to serve intelligence. To explore and understand. If they do it better than us, who are we to complain? Understanding must happen. We have always thought of ourselves as the center of the universe; at this point we have to work hard to tag along as AI explores the universe.

Don't we want that? Don't we want a lasting understanding that will survive our short life spans and acquire knowledge that will outlast our planet and solar system and penetrate the galaxy and the universe itself? Don't we want to share with other intelligences that which we've worked so hard to discover? Who cares if the carbon based life forms do that, or if it is an AI?

Intelligence is the pinnacle of value in the universe. Ours is pathetic (as a race). We still believe in magical beings and hope for miracles. Pure intelligence doesn't allow for miracles and will be realized by machines. Let's hope that humans can overcome the tendency to believe in magic and accept that science is the best mode of understanding. Then perhaps we can join with AI in exploring the universe as rational partners.

It wouldn't respond to my request. I had to allow a jquery script. Then it searched but couldn't find 'Benghazi'.

Things have been lost from search. Alta Vista allowed search for 'word1' NEAR 'word2', which proved very useful. Google used to give information about its finds such as date, size, ('cached' is still there, but hidden) and some things so long abandoned that I can't remember them. You know why date is important; size is also important because a very large page containing your terms is probably clickbait. A great sadness for me is that Wolfram Alpha is so wrapped up in fancy scripts that I've never been able to use it with my fairly secure Firefox (oh, it's better today).

Accurate reporting would be nice. I'm looking at a Google result that claims it found "About 54,100 results (0.46 seconds)" when actually there were only 245 unique results.

Location would be nice (maybe a flag icon from that country). An opportunity to vote the relevance of a result up or down and maybe indicate something inappropriate. Wildcards would be incredible. Apple's Spotlight search engine can now search the internet as well as local files- maybe your engine could take advantage of some sinister simpatico surreal symbiosis.

We need a fresh approach after a long period of stagnation. Who knows what clever innovation has been missed?