Kind of fits. Alibaba needs 40 thieves.

Those are interesting points.

I read 'Darwins Black Box' by Behe many years ago, and thought he made good rational arguments about irreducible complexity.

When a genetic mutation occurs, there will be a continuum of effect, from new feature to no effect to death.
Natural selection will only have a certain forcing effect that is weighted to the 'death' end of the scale.

The problem I have with evolution, is the vast majority of any random mutation will be non beneficial and that this process will happen faster than natural selection can remove these defects from the population.

Isn't this a problem for Evolution proponents.
Evolution requires that beneficial DNA mutations win out over non-beneficial.

Lets say DNA is like a self replicating VM. The VM has built in error correction but occasionally a copy error occurs. The premise of evolution, is this copy error is occasionally beneficial and the non beneficial errors eventually die out, but the spectrum of copy errors can cause vastly different outcomes. Sometimes a copy error may change an eye color, or cause a miscarriage.
The question is, does the rate of beneficial mutations outweigh the rate of non-beneficial so the NEW functionality is created and functional entropy is halted?
My pragmatic side says, If I changed random bytes in a VM, I wouldn't eventually get a facial recognition system, I'd get slowly decaying VM.
 

I've never understood the hate for VB. I program mostly in C and C#, but back in mid 90's I needed to write a large program that drove a real time thermometric titration system. VB6 was a fantastic GUI RAD that was able to everything I needed, including the creation of custom windows that were dynamically generated from SQL tables, to hooking into of DLL libraries that did BSpline array manipulation. I would have gone nuts writing that in C back in the day.
The verbose syntax of VB makes it easier for a broader range of abilities to be introduced to programming without all the symbology of C like languages getting in the way.

I used the side tab in chrome before it was dropped. As soon as it was dropped I deleted chrome from my system. Every PC I setup for anyone has Firefox with side tabs. I can have over 50 tabs open and it's the only sensible way to navigate on a 16:9 screen. There is a forum that discusses this, and the engineer who dropped it says very few used it. Well duh: you had to execute obscure commands to even enable it. Side tabs should be the default mode for any browser.

I've also been hearing about success in treating tinnitus by stimulation of the Vegas nerve.

I want to know why he would program all day on 17" monitors? We don't even let secretaries use 17" monitors. Go get 27" 1920x1080. I'm currently using a 4k 27" at native resolutions and I'm in my mid 40's.

What currency do you have to pay your taxes in? This is what gives 'power' to a currency. There is also a very interesting web site I've been reading philosophyofmetrics.com , that details how the worlds central banks are trying to replace the usd with sdr's.

I can't hear myself think for all the /. Groupthink.
All my kids a fully vaccinated, but I smell something fishy about the industry.
http://www.amazon.com/Dissolvi...

So if I said:
I stopped watching 60 minutes 10 years ago, because went from serious journalism to trashy current affairs program.

Then that would be ad-hominem .?

The book of Revelation has the ultimate answer for "It's bulky. It can be forgotten, or lost" and "My wallet is on a chain"

It forced all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to have a mark on the right hand or forehead.
Without the mark of the name of the Beast or the number of its name, it was impossible to buy or sell anything.
Solve a riddle: Put your heads together and figure out the meaning of the number of the Beast. It's a human number: six hundred sixty-six. (Revelation 13:15-18 MSG)

I worked with a chemist 15 years ago to develop such a product. A professor had found a salt, Fast Blue B, would change color specific to THC.
We were charged with trying to commercialize this, BUT, we couldn't prove that blood ratio had anything to do with breath concentration.

Breathalyzers for Alcohol are calibrated with an inferred ratio of 2100:1, of blood/breath concentration ratio. This is usually a fairly accurate assumption. The alcohol molecule is very volatile. THC on the other hand is a very different beast. If someone has smoked Marijuana, what you are reading is the residue on the lining of the airways which has a very poor correlation to what is in their blood.

This alone was enough to kill the idea, because ingesting vs smoking would give wildly different results.

I'd be interested to see if this has an impact on tinnitus, which for most people who suffer it, is like audio neuropathic pain.

Great Post:
The USA has allowed capitalists to subvert government to impoverish its people... but look at northern Europe: highly socialist while allowing capitalism and I think a much more mature society than the USA.
Even in Australia, we are much more socialized than the USA, and yes I hate the high taxes, but it provides a much better safety net for the poor.

I priced 10 2core VMs. It was 24k/annum. We do that internally on an R720 that cost 10k and needs about 3 hours a month maintenance. So for mainly internal use networks, where is the value?