The only thing you really need to know is - do you think they actually make them in mixed colors? Nah... they make a batch of a gazillion red beads, then blue beads, then green beads, then yellow beads... the tub is just their mix to maximize sales, they know that you'll end up with leftovers and will buy more expensive pure color packs to round it out. It's like how there's a silent conspiracy between hot dog sausages and hot dog bun makers, they avoid matching numbers so you'll always go out shopping more to make use of the leftovers. It's not exactly a coincidence when you end up with a tub full of colors you don't want.

It might be news to you, but capitalism - at least in the Russian variety and I wouldn't hold my breath on the US variety as of late - means a lot of the wealth has been accumulated on a few hands. I'm not sure that people are worse off on an absolute scale, but there's actually quite many feeling that they're worse off compared to everybody else. In Greece for example SYRIZA - the "Coalition of the Radical Left" - has been up to 27% in the polls lately. That's the birthplace of democracy, not some shithole that's never known anything different. Which I suppose is nicer than the way Germans reacted in the 1930s to the economic buttfucking of the Allies, I guess. In a dysfunctional economy most everything will seem like it's worth trying and they can be very productive in unconventional ways. Like the German war machine that nearly broke Europe's back in WWII was build by a country allegedely on the brink of bankruptcy. But money is money and guns in guns and what the lacked in the former they got plenty in the latter. Don't underestimate Russia and China just because they're not western.

The idea is good. But please, this is not hard to understand. NOBODY is going to learn a brand new language and new syntax unless they're under 22 or they've never learned another language and just stumbled into your new wunderkind.

Make a version of c, basic or Javascript that does the same thing and you have a remote chance of adoption. Make a new version of web erlang and you might as well be jacking off on Mount everest in the dark. You're safe because nobody will ever see it.

The question is if your diminishing return is less than their diminishing return. My impression is that with fiber connections you have a fairly high cost just because they need to maintain a fiber line, end point equipment, maintenance, service, support, billing and so on. From there they usually offer huge leaps in speed for relatively modest price gains, often like double the speed for 15-20% price gains and that shit multiplies. I could pay about 75% of my current rate to have 20 Mbit instead of 100 Mbit, even though I don't absolutely need 100 Mbit very often it's not worth it. That goes up to a point, then you need some kind of special equipment and the cost skyrockets when you pass out of the "normal" class of equipment and into special gear. Today gigabit isn't actually available to me and if it were it'd cost 200% extra, it's not worth it but if it was 50% I'd probably take it. And my motherboard wouldn't need upgrading.

I'd say 10G is a different story and only about bragging rights at this point, but who knows what the future will bring. If "everybody else" had symmetric gigabit lines, 10G might have a few uses. Sure it costs a bazillion now, but so would a 100 Mbit line not that long ago. It would be a lot more useful to get people on gigabit lines though, it's no good having a huge pipe if nobody can keep up. Already with my 100 Mbit symmetric my upstream is often faster than their downstream, having gigabit would not help at all but if they get upgraded it'd make more sense for me to upgrade. Like for example there's a rural roll-out that'll probably cover my cabin next year, if that's true I could do 100 Mbit offsite, online backup between machines I control. That would be rather neat.

But citizens can have their own redundant cameras streaming to the cloud. They can get smart enough to fedex cash so the cops won't get it. All of this will happen. It's a race, as always.

The music was probably just getting good on the Titanic as the band warmed up for the evening. There are still nuclear weapons and touchy world leaders in charge of them. Ebola may yet achieve full destructive power, particularly if a terrorist or two decide to self-infect and take a trip to New York City, Moscow or Saudi. Despite the recent developments in oil, "peak oil" or rather gradual hydrocarbon depletion and rising costs is going to bite us very hard in the next 50 years, like it or not. The world economy is a farcical house of cards, ready to crumble at any time.

So yeah, lower crime rates. Lower infant mortality. Yay.

But it can all disappear in a heartbeat.

Yes. Cops behave within the limits of the law when they're watched and many can't be trusted when they're NOT watched. I don't think we really needed a study for that.

How nice if this would turn in to legislation. Of course, for that we'd need a congress that had focus, a spine and would actually be bothered to consider the will of the people.

It wouldn't work. And I'm not saying that to be cruel, but a major part of the viewing audience would have seen LotR first and quite frankly hate the Hobbit done according to the book. And all that negativity would surely rub off on the movie, even if it was perfectly suited for boys age 12. Most people wanted LotR: The prequel and that's what they got. I'll go out on a limb here and say they actually made it a decent character drama with Thorin Oakenshield losing himself and finding himself again. Bilbo torn between loyalty to his party and doing what he thought was right. And it did a fair job to explain why everybody hates each other so much, dwarves and elvens and men.

I didn't care much for the romantic angle, but I guess it kept the girlfriend factor up. It was a bit long-winded, it was one movie stretched into three. The big action scenes are good, the small fight scenes about as painful as LotR. Remember Legolas' skateboarding and the counting contest with Gimli? Yeah, about the same. And don't forget the armies actually do clash in the book as well, Bilbo just isn't a big part of it. I guess they could have made it his story, but again that's not what most people wanted. They know how that story ends, with him returning to the Shire with the Ring so there's no excitement there they want the story of Middle Earth. Maybe it could have been done different if the Hobbit had been first, but not now.

Really? Seems to me Microsoft does a wonderful job, considering how many of their users don't know a thing about their computer.

I can imagine that going over so well with consumers "Hi! It's me, your autonomous car here. You know how I drove you up in the mountains and to this mountain pass? Well now there's a blizzard coming so I quit. Now I know you haven't touched the wheel in a month because I've been doing your commute and I wouldn't drive under these conditions, but you'll probably freeze to death if you don't get down so... best of luck? Toodeloo."

I hope the secret code is 'shibboleet'.

Seriously, he's going to die like the rest of us. I've seen how far we've come in medicine and I see how far we haven't gotten yet. The body starts failing one way then another way and it just keeps piling up as you get 70-90 years old. Cancer is just one of many, many things that are likely to kill you before you're 120.

The screen readers for the blind emit nonsense words when fed typographically incorrect input. Be glad you're not blind, and don't have to deal with them.

And that character on your keyboard, above the equals sign? It's the right one to use, but the author didn't use it. Instead, he made 100 typos using the wrong symbol.

There is nothing simple about typography, and a script such as you describe would cause more damage than it would fix. Any editor has to fully understand English, to know which word is the right choice, to understand syntax and grammar, and to know when a writer is deliberately or playfully bending the rules.

If you want to see what the state of the art in automated editing looks like, try using Word's grammar checker. If all of its advice is followed, it can make any interesting story read as blandly as an 8th grader's essay paper on the history of frogs.

It's actually very common here in Europe, it's a public service but the government issues some form of tender to buy it from the private sector. And yes, they do often suck at writing the contract and following up that what's been ordered is delivered in correct quality and quantity. If you ask for "a security guard" you get a body with a pulse, if you ask them to have mandatory training, pass certifications and exams you'll get that, but if you don't ask you don't get it even if they're totally unfit for the job. The ones you're buying from is in the business of making money, they'll cut corners if the contract permits them to. And you got issues with continuity and such, but people complain about public departments full of public employees that have a more or less permanent monopoly on what they're doing too. It's easy to get complacent at all levels when you can just say "it takes what it takes" and get funded next year too.