Why is so much precision required in routing? If it's not for your commute (which will not be "new"), then time and length should have some flexibility.

I used to bicycle over 200 miles a week, and most of that was without even an odometer. One of the great joys was the feeling of "I am going to go that direction and see what happens" for x miles or y hours.

And if I needed to get somewhere specific, I'd look at a route in advance and head that direction. If I got mixed up, I'd just head in the right cardinal direction for a while. At 20 mph it's not like you're going to overshoot anything that dramatically, and if the destination area seemed esp. difficult I would just print out a map.

Why does every turn need to be precisely mapped, and why would it be a problem to miss a turn every once in a while. When did sport stop having any sense of adventure?

$900 for a Swiss Quartz watch is not cheap. It's a very good price for a mechanical, though even a good mechanical from a less luxury brand is closer to $600 often.

I prefer the depth of books to movies by far, and in hindsight prefer them, but nothing gets my anticipation up as fully and joyfully as a great movie trailer that I can't wait to see the film.

I'd really love to see Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series brought to the screen. Those are by far my favorite space noir books right now.

If only it were the best and the brightest, instead of a system catering to those that can afford SAT prep.

Didn't you notice the new tagline?

Slashdot: News for MBAs, stuff that makes a profit

Whether it's Apple innovating, or someone else, the patent system needs some desperate repairs.

And settling with Trolls does not do this. Settlements tend to be under NDAs, and therefore nobody knows how much was bled, how little the gain was, or how much you can hold a corporation hostage for. This leads to a prospectors climate, and the only way out is to force things into actual litigation and set new precedents.

It's short sighted of Apple (Cook) to avoid such lawsuits. They have the biggest war chest (what, still the better part of a trillion USD in cash holdings?), and can fix this problem for the rest of the tech sector. I feel that Jobs did this to some extent with the RIAA, and it makes Cook look spineless and short term report focused.

So, around the new year Bloomberg the person was a champion for Codecademy, giving them some (imho deserved) press, and initiating conversations here on /. about how the world would be better off if more people knew how to code.

Now Bloomberg the media claims it's a terrible profession to go into.

I guess the world would be better if we all knew how to cook a nice, healthy, well rounded meal. Or how to change the oil on our cars. Or how to gut a fish. And, maybe we all shouldn't be trying to be chefs, mechanics, or fishing guides.

When I started I thought I had a point. I guess I don't. Coding is a great skill to have, and as a champion for liberal arts education, I believe many things make us well rounded, better thinkers, and more productive than narrowly doing only that for which we hope to get paid. It seems to me that there should be enough work to go around (every jackass has an app idea they can't write), and ageism seems a little... simplistic. Experience does have rewards, doesn't it?

Agreed. I'm down on fracking, and don't think the risk is anywhere worth it. However, there's too much money available in getting to that shale, so it's likely inevitable that where it's possible fracking will eventually happen.

The best we can hope for is some proper regulation and oversight over the petroleum companies.

I made the assumption that it jumps so high when leaving the rooftop to show how durable it is - that was the maximum falling distance for the playground they'd set up.

I agree. I can't tell who's commenting there in TFS, but I'd say that the claim that one can't self teach development in their spare time is a needlessly snooty and intentionally disenfranchising attitude.

Hobbyist in all sorts of fields develop expert ability. I'd make the argument that computer culture, especially in the case of web dev is one place where this is outstandingly obvious.

More importantly, why aren't they taking advantage of the free offerings out there, that actual help one learn to code? Codecademy's Year of Code is an excellent resource, and I believe far more valuable a learning tool for someone looking to develop a skill or a hobby, or just learn for learning's sake, than an expensive class in how to use a WYSIWYG blog editor.

Maybe I'm missing something?

I have a physics PhD with two postdocs (5 years total) at prestigious universities and am trying to find the right industry job, and it seems to me that a lot of companies are only hiring 22 year olds that they can pay less than $35k/year to.

That's only half true to be honest. I have geographic limitations, and if those vanished there are plenty of interesting jobs. Are you sure there aren't for you also?

Right on!

Because without government meddling companies would have infinity factories to produce infinity different meds.

I thought that normally the way things worked was that we had a communal need, so a tax was created to fund said need. This is even true with many excise taxes, though maybe that's not historically true at all times, but gas taxes pay for roads and taxes on cigs and booze pay for... healthcare or research or something? Maybe not.

But, coming up with a tax and needing to make up a whole new thing to spend money on just to justify the tax you want to create as an economic disincentive seems crazy to me. I'm sure others will inundate me with examples on all levels that make this appear to be the standard, but it seems to me that during a recession and during a time where the tax conversation is so vitriolic, inventing new revenue sources AND new expenditures is ridiculous.

I too was an Eagle Scout. Boy Scouts was hugely important to me for my teen years. But no longer.

You know when that stopped? When the BSA started selling off land to fund it's legal fight in the name of bigotry. Donated land, long held as fundamental to the teachings and skills that were a part of scouting, being lost to discriminate against gays, and non Christians.

You can claim that there's no religious bias, and amusingly go on to say that you had three different kinds of Christians in your troop as evidence, but that doesn't change facts. Because of all the lawsuits they've had to define things more clearly and now brag that they even have Jews and Muslims! Yeehaw, that is enlightened! And, the Atheism part - well, the charter says that anything goes, including individually defined spirituality, to which I'll say not believing in sky magic is well defined. But then, my troop was like yours, and every "non-denominational" service we were required to attend had bible readings. But, it is true that they were not as pushy as the Jehovah's Witnesses that knock on my door. Maybe we should call that "institutionalized".

Going to simply dismiss your straw man that all gay men are perceived as pedophiles.

Now, I got a lot out of Scouting. I learned great skills and leadership. I was a counselor for a few years at a leadership camp for older scouts. I gave a huge amount of time to Order of the Arrow. I gained confidence in my ability to do anything in the mountains I would want or need to do. My Eagle Scout project literally changed my life.

But, I see less of that when I look now. I see a lot of lame, half assed Eagle projects. Really, you built a fence around a shed behind your church? That's of great benefit to the community? I see a lot less emphasis on learning survival and wilderness preparedness, and a whole lot more practicing talking points on bigoted rhetoric. You want to pretend that there are people that don't believe in a God, fine, but when you're removing a social outlet and developmental resource from a child simply for having conviction in his own understanding of the universe, you're no longer a great service organization, you're just an individual asshole. Sure, they're within their strictest legal right, and have payed fortunes to defend that, but I refuse to pretend they're a great organization for boys.

You know what is not a compromise? Realizing that a 1911 version of the world isn't the ideal case and perceptions change.

It's been 10 years since Steven Spielberg took a stand, and you're still repeating the bullshit.
http://www.hollywood.com/news/Spielberg_resigns_from_Boy_Scouts_board/386418