I prefer the Unix-based method from Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky. Everything is seconds based on the Unix epoch, with SI prefixes for longer periods -- ksecs (00:16:40), msecs (about 11.6 days), gsec (about 31.7 years), etc. With processing power as ubiquitous as it is, converting back and forth when planetary/celestial timing really matters is trivial. Most of our non-analog timing devices already work this way already, and those that don't (LED alarm clocks) are being phased out by devices that do work that way (smartphones). Granted this isn't any more likely to be used than the TCC, but at least it's cleaner.

Who said anything about money? I said trade. If Ook the caveman gives Thagg the caveman some fish in exchange for a bearskin -- as opposed to clubbing Thagg over the head and taking the bearskin -- that's trade, just as making a lean-to out of branches is engineering, adding 2+2 is mathematics, and Ook and Thagg grunting at each other is communication. Everything else is just an increase in sophistication and scale. And when Chief Krunk starts deciding whether or not Ook and Thagg can exchange fish and bearskins, that's regulation, and (assuming they can't simply kill him) Krunk's goodwill is now valuable to Ook and Thagg. Krunk's probably going to be getting some "donations" of trout and furs.

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke.

When people consider something valuable, that thing will be traded. Potatoes, oil, heroin, sex, shiny rocks, senators, whatever. That's not merely capitalism, it's basic human nature, on which capitalism rests. And it is by far those who dislike capitalism who push the hardest to make politicians valuable.

What I'm wondering is, can they modify this process to produce edible hydrocarbons? Probably not something you'd enjoy eating, but the primary limitation on a nuclear submarine's endurance is the food supply for the crew.

Yeah, the "tu quoque" fallacy is big around here.

What alternate universe do you live in? Criticism of Microsoft on Slashdot is consistently and routinely modded +5.

Umm... no. If the US government does something bad, we should criticize it. If the Chinese government does something bad, we should criticize it. If the governments of Liechtenstein or Brunei or Tonga are doing bad things, we should criticize them. The important distinction here is "people being screwed over by their governments" vs. "governments doing the screwing-over", not "US" vs. "China" vs. etc. etc. If anything, the fact that the NSA is acting badly towards Americans should make Americans more sympathetic towards Chinese citizens getting similar, harsher treatment from their government.

Maoism is basically "there are more peasants than workers, so it should be 'peasants of the world, unite.' Oh and by the way, since I'm a Third World guy and most peasants are in the Third World, I should be the leading Marxist now that Stalin is gone. Screw you, Comrade Khrushchev."

I didn't say I was fine with his belief, I said that I wouldn't have wanted him to be fired because of it. Nor would I want him to be fired for donating to promote it.

If he donated it in the company's name, that would be different, but to my understanding Eich made his donations in his own name, not in Mozilla's name. The contribution database merely notes that Mozilla was his employer at the time. So, for the equivalent question, if I were still at the same company as the coworker I mentioned, and he were promoted to CEO, I would not protest it. Nor would I protest if, as CEO, he continued to make such donations in his name. The important distinction is whether or not the views are being espoused by the person on his own, or by the company -- and I mean literally, officially in the company's name, not some vague "associated with the company because he works there in an important position" sort of thing.

Incidentally, I've been in the "leadership might do things I dislike" position, too. Back when I was part of the team of a startup whose CEO was a Scientologist, a coworker and I insisted that our contracts include clauses that the company not use "Hubbard Management Technology" (look it up, it's hilarious, sad, and offensive at the same time), and that if the company gave money to or bought anything from WISE (a Scientology business group) that it would have to make matching contributions to the EFF.

Well, I've worked with someone who denies the Holodomor (the Ukraine famine) and Stalin's other mass-murders, which are on par with the Holocaust. I would never have dreamed of suggesting he be fired for his views, and would have vocally defended him if someone else did -- and I'm about as anti-Communist as you can get.

"Can't get 'em,
They've et 'em.
They're gone and there ain't no moa."

The US (and the West in general) differs from Russia not in our inclination towards surveillance -- pretty much all governments do that -- but in the fact that it's controversial here.

You do know that it's possible to criticize bad things done by the US government, and criticize bad things done by other governments, right? Because your statement seems to indicate that you're unaware of this option.

Tell that to Alexander Litvinenko, Viktor Yuschenko, Anna Politkovskaya, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and many others.

What's ironic is that the folks who tend to do this, are just as likely to sneer that Americans don't care about anything happening outside the US.

Yes and no, at least based on my recent job searching. Yes, the C++ jobs pay significantly more (at least where I was looking), but there are far, far more Java, .NET, PHP, and Javascript jobs. So, you'll make more money in a C++ job, if you can find one.

I can't speak to intelligence or living situations, but part of my point was that for most people, motivation depends on being interested in something. Back in Jr. High, I recall a clique of proto-stoners who never seemed to pay attention or do well (though they never outright flunked) in the regular classes, yet excelled in woodshop, far beyond anything I could do. (Shades of Brian vs. Bender from Breakfast Club here, I suppose). They were certainly self-motivated to do good carpentry. You do start to get into more-advanced math (by everyday standards, not engineering standards) once you get into more-advanced carpentry. Plus it gives reasons to delve into other subjects. Different woods are suitable for different things, and that goes back to the biology of the trees they come from. Wood treatments involve chemistry to understand fully. Etc.

What I'm getting at is that most students have things they're interested in, and those things provide hooks into wider and/or more-abstract knowledge which teachers can steer their students towards. Yes, that doesn't always mesh with our current Prussian-era education model, but to me that just underscores the current model's shortcomings.

Trivia: Something like this is actually a plot point for one of the characters (Randy Waterhouse) in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. His first major big program is one that calculates calories supplied by various foodstuffs versus the time taken and calories burned acquiring them, to be used for running RPGs.

That matches my personal experience, actually. For example, I learned most of my core trigonometry well before I ran into it in school, because I wanted to write space combat games, and trig is how you answer questions like "my ship is at this position facing this direction, the target is at that position, what angle is it at relative to straight ahead?" Learned most of my Newtonian physics the same way. I learned a fair amount of biology, geology, meteorology, and other things when doing research GM'ing tabletop RPGs. And I know several people who learned things like HTML5 and CSS because they wanted to make nicer websites.

Granted, the basics like spelling and arithmetic probably need to be taught for their own sake. But past a certain point, I find that people learn something more effectively when they're learning it it accomplish a goal they care about. Certainly they're better motivated in those cases.