A lot of sci-fi has its roots in an earlier era where it was risky to question the way things were. Authors of the time got around this by setting everything in an alien setting to disguise what it really was. Most sci-fi to this day continues the tradition of being more about social commentary than getting things accurate.

This is a very good point. There's a very active campaign going on to confuse people about net neutrality. I've gotten into enough arguments with people that actually agreed with me but had been misled by some of these campaigns that I have to ask people what they think it is before we talk about it.

When creative commons licensing first started gaining a lot of popularity I was excited. What a great way to share creative talent with on another and help to create even better works. Then I started looking on a bunch of music sites that host creative commons licensed material and was shocked by what I found. Song after song and sample after sample contained blatant sampling of other copyrighted works. I personally can't trust anything licensed under creative commons as I can't verify that what I'm using is safe to use without fear of a lawsuit. Unfortunately, the well has been poisoned.

So if you don't leave a positive review they keep your money. That's extortion, and very very illegal.

Actually regular viruses can act as vaccines as well, for instance contracting cowpox can result in an immunity to smallpox.

Other than just wanting to sound super awesome is there any reason why they aren't using Gbps instead of Mbps? It's sort of like saying a new car has a top speed of a bazillion picometers per second.

I'd have to say the genes for red hair were pretty damn helpful in making some of our women really attractive.

They keep saying that additional regulation will degrade service, raise prices and reduce healthy competition, yet the United States has some of the worst prices, service and competition with the little regulation that already exists. I don't see how adding additional regulation at this point is going to make things any worse unless modems and routers will start spontaneously catching on fire or service technicians are going to start shooting people's dogs.

Computers aren't the problem. The problem is buying a bunch of computers and thinking your job is done. Before computers we didn't just throw a bunch of kids in a room with text books and lab equipment and expect them to emerge 6 months later with a deep understanding of Biology. Why do we essentially do that with computers and expect any meaningful result?

It's a process.

Actually, it's not aerosols that were bad for the ozone layer but rather the chlorofluorocarbons used as a propellant to aerosolize the contents most spray cans up until the late 1970s. The most well known of these was freon, created by DuPont.

Every time you see a headline in the form of "Scientists discover new foo" you can pretty much stop reading right there. The author is most likely the sort of person that confuses science with wizardry and isn't very likely to produce an article of any real substance. You could actually just replace every instance of scientist with wizard and impart the same level of information.

This is my biggest my biggest issue with most of the ads on the internet. When it comes to sites that are proactive and actually have an approval process for ads and wrap them up in their own delivery system to avoid spreading malware to their customers, I let the ads through. Sites that take a reactive stance towards possible malware (or no action at all) and basically just spew whatever crap the third party advertiser gave them unfiltered get blocked.

The way I see it is if you don't care whether or not you're spreading malware you don't deserve ad revenue. Hell, you don't deserve any business from me at all.

Yeah, there's a mistake with your numbers. With those figures you're either trying to say that the US only has about 326 people in it or that website costs more money than the entire world has produced in the last 10 years.

Shit, they make it sound like you just walk out your front door and after a short nap the driver wakes you up directly at your destination. I must be doing something wrong when I have to transfer to 3 different buses so I can pick up dinner on my way home. I may not be in the norm but after extensive travel on the bus system here over the years I've found that I have a better idea of where things than people that just drive straight to work/school and the grocery store day after day.