What about a brushing? Or a waterpik?

I make it a point to not use camels* at all. For they are, in actuality, exceedingly nasty creatures. If Google (for some unfathomable reason) did choose camels over Jeeps, it must have been done because all of the Jeeps in the country had been rented for the weekend. Why the hell would they otherwise want to deal with such an obstinate, unruly, hateful creature as that**?

*Or, in fact, any camelids.
** Well, other than Eric Schmidt, and to be fair, he is CEO after all.

Actually, more! Remember! Mo' matter -> mo fun!

There are thousands of dialects and pidgins in the world. The problem is not mainly that we misunderstand one another, but that we assume that the use of these linguistic markers tell us more than where the people that use them come from; that somehow they are lazy or stupid for not "learning our language".

Your language (no matter what it is) is not a special snowflake. It is not fixed. It is not "universal". I doubt we ever will have a universal language. Different people will always speak languages differently. And speaking it differently says next to nothing about the value of the person or the value of what they are saying.

The country is not even near bankrupt. In fact, Congress could fix the budget deficit, issues with entitlements, and overspending on defense with a few tax and/or spending bills. We do have enough money in this country to deal with this. We just don't have the political will.

I do agree with getting the fuck out of the Middle East, though.

... if that was the case, I could certainly make enough helping people install their home theater systems to have them help me with interior decorating, and so on.

What if 90% of the home theater systems communicate via wi-fi and auto detect, using speakers with built-in amplifiers so all you need to do is put them in the right place and plug them into power? It is possible to do that today. What are you going to install when installation is so easy they don't need you? Or need you seldom enough that you can't afford food, let alone interior decorators?

If it's true, then bye-bye US. We don't have a populace or society that could withstand 33%+ unemployment. On the other hand, it is Gartner predicting this, so I'm hoping it won't actually be that bad (though this may be the one Gartner gets right).

Sure! I'll give up my communications rights so the assholes will be all that's left on the internet. Frankly, a statement like this:

Faced with this, the most sensible solutions are to either stop engaging with the internet, or to try to develop a resistance to it.

only makes me think that we need secure identification on the internet. I'm tired enough of the idiots that I probably wouldn't mind that too much (given that all of my identities online have had readily-recognizable components of my real name, I already live under that regime). I usually don't write stuff that I wouldn't want associated with my name. When I do, and it's warranted, I apologize. I guess some folks just don't understand manners anymore.

That being said, I also understand that there are many people in countries where using this solution wouldn't work out for them. So I guess it won't work, but I can dream of a time where trolls can be found and banned permanently, together with the astroturfing "social media" workers, spammers, and general asshats you often find online. And I truly think that's where we need to be going, as the Internet becomes the de facto communication medium of the planet.

The problem is that we need an accurate measure of a student's creativity instead of a student's talent for memorizing the correct answer.

The problem is that most large companies don't want creativity or innovation in most cases. They want only the amount of creativity that holds between the lines delineated by convention, process, job title, and political infighting. If they need creativity, it's in the form of regulatory capture or making competing products or business models illegal. And that's done at the CxO level. If you want to actually be creative, a larger company is one of the worst place to try to do that. Small companies might need "creativity" but mainly on tactical day-to-day survival issues. So creativity here is limited by resources and simple fear of being crushed by the competition. Really, about the only place that creativity is needed is in a startup and, then, only for the amount of time needed to get the product out the door and, in general, it's mainly the ops side of things than need to be beefed up. After the finance and process guys start stepping in, creativity goes down the tubes.

So, sorry to dispute, but I see a huge need for worker bees who carry out processes and hue to the corporate line. I don't really see businesses needing or wanting creativity, at least not to any great extent, regardless of what they say. In fact, you want to see how receptive your company is to creativity? Step on a few of the sacred cows that lie around in almost any business. Or even try suggesting new technologies. Even if your idea is creative, sound, and makes sense, it will not be celebrated by many in your company.

So, what's the problem with the educational system? It seems to be turning out the employees companies want (i.e., unemployable people that can be ignored while hiring lower-cost workers overseas).

OK, so you work at a company. What's the prob?

Which doesn't normally happen.

Price gouging because of stupid laws about copyright or orphan drugs? Yes. Letting some ill-behaved drugs out occasionally? Yes. But actual withholding of a legitimate drug from the market? Not usually. And, if it does happen, it doesn't happen for long.

So, yeah, even with the distortions in the "Free Market" (capitals used as you should for any theological Supreme Being), I'll take not dying from some bootleg chemical that got into my bottle of ibuprofen by "mistake" over all the relatively minor negative impacts the FDA has (or might have in the future) on my life.

And, if it gets to the point that the impacts are no longer minor, well, then I'll bring out the pitchforks. But not before - I'm not fucking stupid.

If anything, you should be asking yourself: if the FDA is only now issuing this guidance, and you haven't already been worried about security in your devices, how far behind are you?

If anything, we should all be asking ourselves where the secure OS'es (and, by this, I mean as verifiably secure as we can make them, via proof, extraordinary levels of test, etc., to the point where they can be insured for a relatively small amount of money) and languages that we can use to build secure systems? Not to mention proven identity services, secure communication services, and secure storage services? Right, we actually can't have these because (a) most people couldn't care less about having an actually secure system, (b) a bunch of paranoid and socially deviant nutcases (who are actually being spied on, to be fair) can't stand the idea of anyone knowing who they really are, and (c) spending money to do anything is right out.

A mathematically proven system with strong identity wouldn't be a perfect solution (if anything, there are always bugs in proofs, too), but today we're all building on some of the most insecure foundations our society's constructions have ever had. A stronger, more secure technical foundation couldn't hurt. And, yes, I know folks are doing research in this area. But it's too little and far too late and nothing (yet again) will come of it, because it requires people to acknowledge that they are unprepared for people who make it their lives to hack into their systems and the transition would be costly in the short term.

Face it folks, sometimes technologies get wedged into a corner made from random chance's vaguaries. To unwedge the technology and start moving forward again, you need to back up and maybe even build a new vessel to carry you in a new direction. Maybe it's time to unwedge computer security or at least give it a nudge in that direction..

But the mastery came early. It just got sanitized and polished later.

Well, that's fine, I guess, but I thought we were talking about masturbation in this thread.

Sharks, hyenas, and clowns. Always tied for #'s 1, 2, and 3.

Grammar reasonable. For "is" sheep. -- Conformist.