Ah, the electronic version of the infamous Mountain Three Wolf Moon t-shirt. Not the price, but the reviews.

It's nice to see people working together like that.

So is the proper response here to: 1) allow a government organization determine what everyone can and cannot do; or 2) train drivers better so they can make educated choices and avoid bad behaviors on their own?

Personally, I doubt the average American would Do The Right Thing. But I want to make that decision, not my government.

Reading The Fine Article provides some links to follow. If you did, you would wind up on their KickStarter Page. That page includes a short trailer as well.

With apologies to Scott Adams:

And next week we'll have a doctor with a flashlight show you just where economic models come from.

Go ahead, laugh. It's funny because it's true.

If I wanted to stage an attack, this would be the perfect chance.

Indeed! Particularly when the FCC itself is saying that what the public sees and hears could vary:

What will people hear and see during the test?

During the test, viewers will hear a message indicating that “This is a test.” Although the National EAS Test may resemble the periodic, monthly EAS tests that most Americans are already familiar with, there will be some differences in what viewers will see and hear, which is one reason for conducting a national EAS test. The audio message will be the same for all EAS Participants; however, due to limitations in the EAS, the video test message scroll may not be the same or indicate that “This is a test.” This is due to the use of a “live” national code – the same code that would be used in an actual emergency. In addition, the background image that appears on video screens during an alert may indicate that “This is a test,” but in some instances there might not be an image at all. ...

Good times to be had by all!

I don't think there is any hidden purpose behind listing only the top 50. However, the paragraph preceding the list in the report says, in part:

... Finally, it should be noted that governments and natural persons are only featured further down in the list.

That begs the question: Which governments, and which natural persons, are listed past that first 50?

Larry Niven is rubbing his hands with glee and saying, "I knew it!"

Niven's future problem revolved around the perfection of organ transplants. In a world where everything but the brain and spinal column can be successfully transplanted, and life thereby extended indefinitely, what kinds of problems would arise? Organlegging was one such problem.

However, most of the problems actually had to do with the upper class hoarding the technology for themselves (the rich were the ones in power, which means they could pass new laws governing the technology, etc.). Niven's excellent The Jigsaw Man short story dealt with that from the "criminal's" point of view, and his book A Gift From Earth introduces an entire culture built around this problem (and what happens when better technology comes along to upset the applecart).

While the problem is slightly different, Niven's ideas of the problems and consequences of this kind of technology are amazing. I heartily recommend reading his Known Space collection, which is where this problem is addressed.

Pfffft. That screen is nothing compared to what you need just to handle development in Eclipse. Pansies.

Excellent point. All tablet vendors seem to be missing the multi-user feature, and they really need to add it. As you pointed out, tablets are less intensely personal and the owner is more apt to loan a tablet than they would a phone. A tablet is expensive enough to be a "family device" as well, where many people use it for slightly different things, like that desktop system sitting in the corner of the living room used to be, 15 years ago.

In addition to supporting multiple users, I'd like to have a "no user" setting. That setting would disable all the personal apps (like an email or address book app) but leave the generic network surfing stuff visible. Maybe have which apps enabled/disabled setup as a preference. That would be handy when loaning the device to other people.

Take that $30B and invest it in Space X.

Space X already has something a lot more concrete than the NASA plan. While lifting less, Falcon Heavy costs way less money per launch. $30B would go a long way to making Space X a reality, faster. I, as a taxpayer/investor, would definitely vote for that over funding NASA's idea.

For all those people complaining about jobs lost due to retiring the shuttle components: Get them jobs associated with Space X. Maybe part of that $30B could go into employee reeducation and retraining for Falcon assembly.

I just applied the fix and now I have to restart my Mac. What the hell? Is my MacBook masquerading as a Windows machine all of the sudden?

It just works. After a slight delay.

Within the article, the contention is that the prior art corpus is basically already-issued patents. Art that has not been patented is largely not checked. This leads to patents being issued for obvious art, as defined by other practitioners of that art.

Stupid example:

• Me: I'm letting people patent innovative integers. Any takers?
• You: Sure, I'll do that. How about '3'?
• Me: (Checks database that is, at the moment, completely empty.) Looks good. No one else has that one. You got it!

Common Lisp is my favorite language. I learned it a very long time ago. It was a struggle at first, but once I understood The Lisp Way Of Doing Things there was no turning back.

I'm waiting for the same epiphany with Erlang, but so far it's eluded me.

I very much doubt that C++11 heralds any kind of new interest in native code. Rather, native code in general has been getting more attention recently and C++11 just happened to be finalized around the same time. (Disclaimer: C++ is my second-favorite language. I want it to be liked and used, but I'm realistic.)

Nearly off-topic in the article is this gem of a paragraph:

But the most important thing to remember is to always choose the right tool for the job. No one wants to go back to the bad old days of wrangling text data for the Web using CGI scripts written in C. On the other hand, shoehorning every application into the same interpreted language or managed code environment, irrespective of the task at hand, isn't the right way to go, either.

This is most certainly not news, but I find it refreshing to see the blindingly obvious repeated again. IT shops that "standardize" on one language (or framework, even) are simply zapping themselves with low-voltage-yet-eventually-lethal tasers. Managers, take note. Again.

Great answer (emphasis mine):

Can [Comet Elenin] influence us from where it is, or where it will be in the future? Can this celestial object cause shifting of the tides or even tectonic plates here on Earth?

... comets are not the most densely-packed objects out there. They usually have the density of something akin to loosely packed icy dirt. "So you've got a modest-sized icy dirtball that is getting no closer than 35 million kilometers (about 22 million miles)," said [Don Yeomans, a scientist at NASA JPL]. "It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean's tides than comet Elenin ever will.

Oh, those wacky people at JPL. Always finding new ways to make Joe Average understand science.