I'm not disagreeing with that. I think it's been a positive for the linux kernel as well, making linux a much more secure platform. I just thought it was funny that the Russians swapped their hardware for something that ostensibly the NSA has had more access to.

If they're worried about the NSA having code running on their tablets.... why did they swap their mach/freebsd running tablets for ones running and OS that's had heavy development from the NSA?

More than a decade ago the NSA got involved in linux development and never left. Is it possible that their security people have poured over the millions of lines of C and assembly that make up the linux kernel and all the drivers that are running on their tablets? Possibly, but highly doubtful.

Finally somebody else who agrees with me! I have long advocated that we should have bases on the moon and mars just in case something bad happens on Earth.

I think it would be a noble goal to not only put a base on the Moon and Mars but to make them self sufficient. Beyond having a self sufficient base it should also have a repository of our institutional knowledge just in case something cataclysmic should happen on Earth. Speaking of eggs... I think that something that should go to these bases as well is a chunk of the eggs and sperm we currently have in cold storage that'll never get used. This would provide a safety net for genetic diversity and provide a starting place in case something bad happens on Earth.

So what happens when I pull up in my model S with a relatively new battery and it gets swapped for a battery that's been to hell and back and can barely hold a charge?

I know my relatives up in Minnesota despite their bitching about it being -60 are glad that it's decimated the ash bore beetle infestation. Up here in the north east we're hoping it'll have the same effect on the Asian longhorn beetle as well.

Though evolution being what it is, enough of these really cold winters and we'll just have populations of these insects that can winter over these temperatures.

I wasn't disappointed! On a serious note, I thought they were building the godzilla of ice walls to fix this?

Please describe a "rational discussion of the message of the bible." As the saying goes the devil's in the details. In order to make any sense of the bible in any rational sense means doing a hell of a lot of cherry picking. Unless you're advocating that stoning your wife on her fathers doorstep because she's not a virgin on her wedding night is a rational position to hold. (Deutorotomy 22:22)

So right away there's whole chunks of the bible that you're choosing to ignore. What do you keep then? I hope that the pieces you decide are relevant are the same pieces other people find relevant...

The four gospels we NOT written by people named Matthew, Luke Mark and John. Moreover the first three gospels suffer from major synoptic problems. John's gospel is an acid tripping roller coaster ride compared to the first three but in places still has bits and pieces copied from the first three. Six of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul and now considered complete forgeries. The whole thing is a literary train wreck.

I'll now stop whipping this horse and turn my attention to other horses... The ten commandments.
Ask yourself this simple question... Imagine you're all all seeing all powerful entity and you have the opportunity to distill your vast knowledge of everything into ten rules... Now looking at the ten commandments, there seems to be some serious room for improvement. Just imagine how many people would have been saved from dying of water borne diseases had one of those commandments had been "If the water is not of the purest mountain stream, boil it." I could belabor this but you get the idea.

Create flash cards that have a horoscope but replace the sign with a number. Then create another set of flash cards that have the astrological sign on one side and the corresponding number on the other side. Have a decent sample size of people try to match up the signs.

This experiment has been run many times and the result is that it's completely random.

Without knowing the sign ahead of time every other horoscope works equally well for any other horoscope. You get out of it what you read into it.

With Russia having the mountain ranges and abundant amounts of cold and snow in other regions, why host the games here? I think this is just Putin waving his dick about.

The bigger issue I have with this whole thing is that Nye is letting Ham frame the debate. They're already talking about making DVD's out of this. What happens if Nye completely obliterates Ham? I don't think this will happen, but if at the end of the whole thing Nye is seen to have taken Ham to task, how do you think they'll edit the DVD? These jokers have shown themselves time and time again to not be interested in the facts. At heart I know that Bill Nye is an educator and believes if even one person in the audience has a eureka moment he's done his job. Unfortunately, I get the sense that the creationists see this as some type of big game hunt.

tl;dr I think the creationists are going to edit the debate to ensure it shows Ham in a great light and show Nye poorly and declare victory.

Backblaze was analyzing their particular experience building a very large storage system using commodity drives. What they found was that certain manufacturers fared better than others. I didn't see anything in their paper about performing any types of performance tests, reliability tests, etc.

This was merely "We put X harddrives of brands A,B,C,D an E of sizes A', B', C', D' and E' and here's how they fared"

I'd assume the drives are capable of using the many write media, it's then the economics of media cost. Also at some point is it easier to just discard the media then worry about a piece in a middle of a backup set going bad after X number writes?

I've just assumed all along that they kept everything. Deleted just meant "not seen".

I'd love to see the machine they built. A 10k stack of bluray discs at 1.2mm a piece is 12m. How are they storing the media so they can get to each piece? I'd imagine their using an ink jet printer to label each one. Maybe they're bundling them in stacks of 100 and labeling each stack?

So many questions!

I call bullshit on this technology too. What would be cooler would be something that you attached to say a port on your body that would take your blood and oxygenate it in the same manner that fish oxygenate their blood and remove the CO2 and then recirculate it back into your blood stream. I'm not sure what your lungs would think of this arrangement. Another idea is to use that technology they showcased in the abyss and use oxygenate that liquid that you then breathe. The issues with that are that your body evolved to breath gas not liquids.

I thought this was their second launch. They've already launched one of these Cygnus resupply missions to the ISS, apparently that one was a demonstration. This is their first commercial launch...

Where exactly do you live? Not all schools in the US are created equal. I live in Massachusetts and our schools are rated some of the best in the world. Granted the rest of the country uses pejoratives like "Taxachusetts", commie liberals, the list goes on.. They laugh about how much money we spend on our schools, universal health care, etc. However they usually stop laughing when they notice that we have one of the lowest rates of unemployment and one of the highest levels of education in the country. At last check eighty six percent of adults in Massachusetts have a bachelors. Massachusetts is one of the innovation centers of the world.

Please don't judge the entire US merely on the poor experience in your state.

As to your second point... yes, churches are dangerously powerful. I feel in the last election many states crossed the line and participated directly in fundraising and coordination efforts.

I disagree with your assertion that the US system is broken compared to most 3rd world countries. Just like there are lots of variations in the wealth of 3rd world countries, their educational systems vary greatly as well. We could have a lengthy conversation just on the many different education systems in Africa, some pubic, some for profit, some that are good and some that are horrifyingly mindbogglingly bad.

As to your last point, yes there are many people in this country who think that their ignorance is a sign of reverence. They've come to a place of cognitive dissidence in regards to the world. Their lack of education, combined with their incomplete and poorly contrived belief system has backed them into a corner.

I'm proud to say I work every day to make that corner smaller and increasingly uncomfortable.