If you're pissed off at Google for not fixing defects in older versions of Android, you can always switch to an iPhone or a Microsoft Windows phone. Why are you folks always whining about corporate decisions that make financial sense? Unless, of course, you're willing to something and make those "financial decisions" hurt the corporation involved.

Don't like how Google won't fix bugs? Don't buy an Android next time.

Unless you also want to say that the free market doesn't fix everything. There's a reason for various regulations concerning warranty and support regulations. Especially for vital telecom infrastructure.

And you don't talk scientifically unless you have an alternative theory, which to the best of our recollection, you have none. The best we can discern from your interminable hostility is that you don't think there's anything worth worrying about which, although highly indicative of your internal state, says little about the world itself. Why should we listen to you? No theory. No science. You're as far away from science as you could be.

The company behind PLATO? Give me a break.

Other than providing the hardware, CDC did almost nothing and had to dragged, kicking and screaming, into marketing it at all (and at which they did a lackluster and shitty job). Almost all of the software (including rewriting a lot of the OS - the CDC OS'es were not known for their "real time" capabilities, being mainly designed for high-performance scientific computing) were developed by the folks at the University if Illinois. And that software development? Mostly funded with government grants (back when we did those sorts of things for non-military things).

Control Data and PLATO? Fuck 'em - they were mainly irrelevant. Thanks for the hardware, though - it did have an interesting architecture (sort of like programming in microcode).

Get rid of anonymity. If users can hide behind a veil of online anonymity, if they can always be relatively assured that no one is going to trace down that AssH/\t350 is really Wendel Jeppers of 113 Terrace Dr., Apt. C, Meat Hollow, KY, and that there is almost no chance that one can deliver a summons to him, you will not get rid of harassment. Couple that with the fact that there is no authority which can get rid of a troll once and for all, that they can sign up with a new anonymous account, and it's easy to see that the EFF folks are idiots in this case.

It's all good to have folks stand up and decry harassment when it happens. We'd all like to think our better angels triumph over evil. They don't always (or is that often?). That's why we need identity, laws, and authority. Because certain idiots in this world need to be separated from polite society (and hopefully rehabilitated before being let back into that society) because they do cause harm.

The good news is that Bayesian probability and AI will soon be good enough to identify trolls, harassers, and other assorted knaves by the way they write - write enough like a troll, watch your post get bounced and your account cancelled - no appeal, go away. We'll have control. It's probably not the kind you want though, as these technical solutions always have collateral damage.

So, Internet idiots, you've all been warned several times. Are you going to grow up, act like adults, and control yourselves or are you going to be leashed? Your choice.

Working your ass off for 10 years? Try 30 and fighting age discrimination. It has nothing to do with diversity, people of different cultures, genders, etc. If it's being supported by these companies it's all about increasing the labor supply so they can screw over their workers more easily for less money. For those of you who think otherwise, you're naive and supporting your oppressors' schemes. Employment becomes a zero-sum game if the pool of workers is growing faster than the number of open positions.

I have never met one that wanted to be the "horse" from Animal Farm.

That would be Boxer.

Basic syntax and paradigm of a new programming langugae are easy. It's running into all of the corner cases and figuring out how to work around them that takes time. Not to mention the plethora of "value add" third-party libraries and frameworks, all of which have their own corner cases to bump into.

Sony is like XML. If Sony is the answer, it's a sure bet you asked the wrong question.

Doctors these days are employees - just like you. Your boss tells you to "improve quality" (i.e., "financial quality") by increasing throughput, sticking to Bayesian most-probable/most cost-effective care pathways, and sticking to the script, you'll do it, if you value your job. Remember - just because a doctor doesn't diagnose you correctly (especially for low probability conditions) doesn't mean he's diagnosing everyone incorrectly. In fact, outliers happen.

Sorry for your bad experience, but medicine is statistics/quant driven these days (just like everything else). The fact is that you did get a diagnosis and your doctors acknowledged that after you brought it to their attention. What more do you expect from a system that's chronically understaffed and seems to exist (like other systems in our country) to funnel ever-larger amounts of money into corporate coffers? Don't be pissed off at your overworked doctor - be pissed off at the corporations and hospitals that make sure there isn't time to do adequate diagnosis.

The $70 for removing a splinter is a small price to pay to avoid sepsis. Of course, you don't get charged $70 unless you can't get the damned splinter out and the wound disinfected and bandaged yourself. Minor sprain? It's terrible how that might actually be a fracture. You might want to have that checked out. However, most people who can still walk on it get by fine with RICE - rest, ice, compression, and elevation. And a call to my doctor's office on these things tend to get that message from the care team given a call. Same with having a cold. The last thing the doctors' office wants is some germy asshole who doesn't need to be there running about giving everyone else his or her cold. And they will tell you to stay away unless there's actually a sign of secondary infection for which one might need antibiotics.

I don't know what the medical profession ever did to you (other than charge you money - a separate topic which should be discussed elsewhere), but people are not overusing minor issues to visit doctors. In reality, in 1998 (first thing I found when I Googled "medical encounters annually US), there were less than ~4 medical encounters (counted as doctors' visits, ED visits, hospitalizations, nursing home admissions/discharges, and home care starts/discharges)/per person annually. The growth numbers since then don't show anything particularly interesting except for a minor spike when PPACA came out, because people who didn't have medical care before are getting it now.

"Cyberchondria" isn't driving anything, but your straw man arguments about people flooding doctors' offices for minor issues are bullshit, too.

Because if laws apply only to some, they finally apply to no one. That hurts me, because I count on laws to be a first line of defense against those who might wish me (or my property) harm.

I never said I approved of this solution. It does, however, have a higher probability of working than other alternatives, if life extension of humans is your goal.

*Something* you're doing is making them uncomfortable.

This! You see, the myth of meritocracy in tech hiring is so foundational that it must be something you're doing, something you're not telling us, something that's... well... just you being you. Because otherwise, we might have to acknowledge that most decisions in our industry (just like others) aren't particularly meritocratic and that would make us uncomfortable. And so, now, we can dismiss you as either a dissembler or just a social misfit, say "Sucks to be you", and go back to basking in the sunshine provided by that tiny spark of esteem that comes from succeeding where others fail. Yes, we are all moral giants, helping to build a world where all can prosper...

How the hell does a guy who doesn't need it get a prescription drug like HGH? If he orders it from overseas, why isn't it seized when coming into the country? Why isn't the doctor whose pad the prescription came from being investigated?

Bottom line - this is just another example of a rich fuck who doesn't seem to think the rules for rest of us apply to him and a government all too willing to let the whole thing slide if you're rich enough.

Yeah, I think people underestimate the difficulty of extending life.

This.

Of course, you could put evolution back on the proper track of life extension by only allowing females who had family histories showing all second-gen forebearers living past 90 to bear children, and then only by being inseminated by the sperm of men similarly sired and then only collected past the age of 75 or so to make sure their "stupid genes" didn't weed them out. Wash, rinse, repeat with cutoff ages increasing. The rest is simply culling of the herd - it might take a few hundred generations, but I'm pretty sure there'd be a few tricks left in the old genome that would let us get to be 120.