I buy tech books often to teach myself about things I think will be useful at work. I do not read them cover to cover - I study the portions I'm interested in, those that may solve a perticular problem. I may return to them later to study another aspect that I need to know. I consider the money well spent if I'm able to learn what I need when I need to learn it. That's what I consider a valuable resource.

I've used several MOOCs in the same way. I've worked my way through the bulk of them without difficulty. But I never bothered to complete them. I learned what I needed to know and moved on. I consider these courses to be tremendously valuable resources. I just don't use them the way the designers expected me to.

That doesn't make them a failure. It just means that if you provide a great source of information for free to the net, people are going to use them in ways that make sense to them.

The nice thing about a person's actual fingerprints is that they don't change over time. As one poster pointed out, oscillators do drift over time. I can't help but think that the components they're trying to measure also will change in the tested characteristics as they age. If a digital fingerprint doesn't stay constant over the life of the device, is it really of any value?

NOAA uses manned airplanes now. So do a lot of people. The advantage of drones is that they are significantly cheaper than manned aircraft. So Texas is basically killing innovation and new business models before they ever get started.

In most states, it's already illegal to take pictures that invade privacy. It doesn't matter if the picture of you and your wife making love in your bedroom is taken by a drone or by the guy next door sitting on his roof using his camera and telephoto lens. Both are already illegal.

This isn't about privacy.

I'm surprised at the numbers. Out of curiosity, what are you folks who don't have Java installed using for a word processor?

Too late? Really? I think not.

Maybe you've read about those red-light cameras that were all the rage a while back. I've never seen one, and it wouldn't matter if I did - I don't run red lights, so it's not an issue. If you really followed those stories, you also read about the large number of communities where the citizens got pissed off and decided to have them removed. So the towns did. Not everywhere, certainly, but in enough places to convince me that after they were put up, it wasn't "too late".

The cameras will stay so long as they don't cause issues. When they do, they'll be removed - perhaps by popular vote, perhaps by "citizen justice". But they'll go if they're causing problems for people who are just going about their lives. Don't misunderstand - if enough people think, "I don't like being watched", that's causing problems. If no one cares, they'll stay.

If they aren't causing problems, what's the issue?

Both are irrational.

Why? They've shown their true colors long ago.

Of course, if you care more about convenience than you do about their censorship and not standing up for what's right if it might cost them a buck, go ahead.

It's your choice. It always was.

I've worked with many wonderful managers, male and female. I've also worked with a few awful managers, male and female.

Hmmm - actually most of the bad managers were male. But let's move on - nothing to see here.