...welcome our robotic earthworm overloads.

We're seriously the last generation that will enjoy being at the top of the food chain on our own planet before the robots take over.

Apple is making products that users (even corporate users) are demanding, instead of making products that make IT managers happy. They've realized that successful companies listen to their core creative talent, not their bean counters.

The first company to produce iPad apps that can secure enterprise data (if they haven't already, I don't look for those apps) will make a mint. With cloud-everything, it shouldn't be a problem. Just don't store anything on the device, including passwords.

Don't listen to all the stressed-out middle agers pining for a care-free high school summer. Save kicking around Europe for a time when your life is crazy and you need to decompress. You're young and fired up and ready to learn and grow. Seize that.

I had two jobs at my university the summer between high school and college. One was doing data analysis and writing software for the school's particle accelerator. The other was changing out rat cages in the medical labs. You can guess which one paid more. Both were valuable experience. I got to know my way around campus, I got to know some professors -- I even got an email address over the summer. NOBODY had email addresses back then! After changing the rat cages I'd sit in my boss's office and use his computer and connect to systems all over the world. I know it's hard to imagine, but that was a rare opportunity at one time.

Universities are gold mines of opportunities -- outside the classroom. Get a job - even if it's changing rat cages - and get to know people. If you keep quiet and do what you're told it'll be years before you're doing anything cutting edge. Seek out those opportunities now. Find the profs doing ground breaking work and change the batteries in their robots or something.

And yes, between working at the particle accelerator, another job at the med school, and learning my way around the fledgling internet, I still managed to go to the beach with my girlfriend a few times and go to a bunch of movies I can't remember now. So I had fun. You will too. But don't listen to the workaholics telling you this is the last glimmer of freedom you'll ever have so make the most of it. Take the opportunity to get a leg up on the rest of the incoming freshmen by catching the attention of some profs now. Even if it means cleaning rat cages.

I used to use mutt. I had it all pimped out to support bunches of lists and a few dozen email addresses and do cool things on the results of procmail filters and so on. While everyone else was fighting with Outlook or extolling the virtues of Eudora I was the only person I knew who could search nearly 10 years of email from any computer, including my (barely) smartphone.

But then my coding chops ossified, I got annoyed bouncing mail to another POP box to deal with attachments or images, and I plain got tired of it. I jumped straight to web-based GMail since I couldn't stand the idea of my email history living on only one computer. I know it seems like the web interface is limiting for email but I'm totally happy with it, and it's been years since I've fought with my email program or lost a single message.

But, yeah. mutt is awesome.

No, the question always has to be "Is X safer than Y?"

The second law of thermodynamics will tell you that however you try to generate power, there will be waste and there will be pollution. Any single page from the history of mankind will tell you that when people are involved, there will be mistakes. No electricity generation options are awesome on their own merits.

Is nuclear power safe? No.
Is it safer that all other economically viable alternatives? Yes.

Make public policy decisions based on historical fact and statistics rather than fear and ignorance.

The facts show nuclear power causes less pollution and fewer deaths than any other economically viable energy source.

But accept that "less pollution" does not mean none, and "fewer deaths" does not mean zero.

Anyone unwilling to accept that needs to stop using cars and electricity.

> And just like after Chernobyl we were all assured by the nuclear proponents that "there can never be another nuclear disaster", we're being assured that now too.

Nobody said that then, and nobody is saying that now. There will be another nuclear power disaster. It'll probably happen in another decade or so, in a country that least expects it, in a scenario that seems avoidable in hindsight but happens nonetheless. It'll kill a few dozen or hundreds of people, and it'll make a few hundred or even a few thousand acres unsafe.

But meanwhile, coal, gas, large hydro, and other conventional power sources maintain a steady, background rate of several thousand deaths per year. Land is made uninhabitable by mining, villages are flooded by hydro [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Relocation_of_residents], groundwater is contaminated by fracking, etc.

Nobody - NOBODY - says nucelar power is safe and "you have nothing to worry about." What nuclear power proponents say is that historically, statistically, objectively, it causes fewer deaths and less pollution than conventional energy sources. That's all.

Ummm. Wow.

Do want.

Don't discount the wide availability of used and aftermarket products for Canon/Nikon as a benefit. A Pentax or Minolta body might initially be a better value for the price, but with a Canon or Nikon you can pick up lenses, flashes, and other accessories much more easily and at lower cost since they're so much more abundant.

Not all Canon/Nikon owners are brand snobs. Some are smart and practical.

If your smartphone has an acceptable camera on it, then you are never without a camera. If you consciously decide to bring any camera, you might as well bring a good one.

Every 2-3 years I buy what my research shows is the best P&S at the time, and they continue to produce worse images than my original Digital Rebel - the very first generation consumer DSLR. On full automatic, the Rebel is better indoors, better in tight spaces, has a longer zoom outdoors, and fires much faster than my current P&S. There are very few scenarios where the P&S gives significantly better pictures than my iPhone 4, so it basically collects dust.

Bottom line - good smartphone camera + entry-level DSLR gets my vote.

This is a great idea, especially for older people. My parents (who at their age don't really need anything) got a single photograph from a long-moved-away neighbor in the mail recently. It was of my sister and I in their backyard, playing with their kids. My mom was over the moon. I've heard about that photo like 5 times in the last month.

If you've got an old picture of somebody else, that you suspect they don't have, make a nice copy of it and give it to them this Christmas/Hanukkah. It'll restore your faith in "it's the thought that counts" which will be as big a gift to you as to them.

...the good intentions of someone who happens to live in North America or Western Europe and wants to help someone he sees struggling in another part of the world for colonialistic snobbery.

Telling people to mind their own business while someone else suffers, historically has not accomplished very much.

It doesn't matter if dude can replicate these maneuvers with a Parrot -- after hours and hours of practice and maybe nail it once in twenty tries. The computers performing the Penn maneuvers can reliably repeat them over and over again, and could fly as many quadrotors as whoever's footing the bill cares to buy. That's the difference the "autonomous" part makes.

And if you think "Bah, that's impractical - you need a big computer somewhere off-board to do the calculations" then you need to reread Moores Law.

Agreed. Summaries this deceptive belong on... whatever the political opposite of Fox News is.

You use electricity in your vacuum cleaner, your blender, and your hair dryer, and you pay for each, even though you don't use them at the same time. Nobody complains about that.

The difference is the unlimited plans. If consumers would consent to paying straight metered rates for bandwidth, like we do for electricity and gas/oil, we could be free of all these stupid packages and deals and calling circles and contracts.

Cell phone service and broadband internet are commodity utilities, yet they're marketed as "lifestyle" services -- which means, expensive advertising that appeals to emotions.

I hope that, before every device in our lives gets connected, that bandwidth becomes as boring and predictable as electricity or heating oil.