In the US, our politicians and various political leaders already believe they are entitled to lead. Being elected by "the people" only bolsters their sense of entitlement.

That didn't stop people from buying calculator watches back in the day.

"I'd like to hear from more people with smart watches who are happy with them, to better understand the appeal."

The appeal was the idea of a watch that was also a freakin phone! That is just cool. That is something many a geek has wanted since they were little geeklings.

However, that is not what the Gear is. That is what the Gear was advertised and sold as, and hence the high return rate. They advertised a watch phone like the ones from TV and comics. What people got was a glorified phone accessory that only works with a handful of phones.

The problem is that coding is treated as a STEM course instead of the langauge course that it is.

Coding should be treated more like a language class than a science class. Yes there is some math involved, but the amount needed varies greatly depending on the language used and desired outcome.

If schools looked at programing like a language, they might see more people choosing to code. Start with a single coding language and work from there. Think of it like trying to first teach someone to read and understand English or Spanish. Learn to read code written in a language, then learn to write it. Follow a process similar to that of child learning their alphabet then words and sentences and eventually going on from there. It takes time to go from learning your ABC''s to write poetry or a novel. For many it will take that same amount of time to learn to code.

Teach a single language as the core language, and then have other coding languages be available to learn much like other languages are now in schools. I would suggest Cobol as it is used in a large number of businesses, has many dialects and variations for covering various programing concepts, and more importantly the syntax was designed so that non-programmers could read and understand the code.

Part of the problem is that we are trying to teach "coding" instead of teaching a language that will allow people to code.

Management is the reason why healthcare.gov has been such as disaster. Open source or not, it wouldn't have mattered. They didn't even get to start coding until this spring, because the government was so slow in issuing specifications for the site. Then as if the tight deadlines were not enough, Administrators kept issuing changes to the site up until last few weeks of September (despite an October 1st launch date). It wasn't little a change here or there either.

One of the last big overhauls was making it so people had to register before they could browse the plans. This was apparently becasue they wanted people to see what the price would be with the subsidy. The idea being that for many people the price before the credit would scare them away from buying in.

There is also more info on this at the new york times

My first thought was to use it in search and rescue. It would be very useful to be able to detect people trapped under rubble or inside a burning building. Send in a small robot with its own wifi and find out where people are trapped. With a little refinement, maybe it could be built into first responder gear or firefighter helmets.

If you or someone you know does not have access to a computer (or the site is stillf fubar) they may call 1-800-318-2596. There are usually some long wait times.
Most pharmacies should have phamplets about the ACA and that state's Marketplace (if the state has one). RiteAid is offering free Affordable Care counseling, no appointment or website needed. They are also offering a number to call if you need help understandin the ACA or do not have a RiteAid near you: 1-855-880-8777.

I was about to ask why they decided to move Slashdot to Wordpress.

This really sounds like it is more of a hardware push than anything. They can build the OS for their gaming machines and servers with linux cheaper and I would guess easier than doing an OS from scratch. I'm guessing the "Linux is the future" talk is better marketing spin.

I recently worked on a documentary about Cow Power (http://cowpowerfilm.com/).

Actually the biggest costs of Cow Power to farmers are the Digesters and Generators. Buying Cow Power does not subsidize the costs of the cows, but rather the loans for buying and mainatining the equipment, as well as the fluctuations in milk price.

Even though not all the methane in captured (yay cow farts) more methane is captured than would be otherwise. Cow Power also has byproducts such as fertilizers that do not have harmful runoff and bedding for cows.

Farmers are not getting rich off cow power or buying more cows to fuel the digester. They are using the digesters to better use and take care of the cows they have.

Use Google Hangouts. Add friends when or if desired. Use whipped cream and lube as needed. You could also use hangouts and build lego sets together.

Truly Good leadership is often undervalued and poor leadership overvalued. When asked about your leadership experience, it may be helpful to speak of times you have taken a leadership role on a project or gave a co-worker needed direction. I have found a good response for why I wasn't in a management position at a previous job to be "I prefer to get my hands dirty, so to speak, and I found that the departmental structure at didn't afford management the opportunity to be a part of projects in a way that my knowledge and expertise are most valuable. While I do possess leadership skills, and co-workers often come to me for advice and direction, I find that my skills as a are far more valuable to the " Basically you are telling them in HR speak that you are too good at your job to be wasting your time and the company's money to be doing anything else. While this has worked for me, ymmv.

There was an episode of Top Gear in Series 19 where James May raced aTerraMax. The vehicle in the segment could be set to run autonomously or be remote controlled.