Whenever someone cries "political" when you state unadorned facts, it is almost always because those facts would require them adjusting their world view. It's simply easier for most folks to cry foul and run away with their fingers in their ears.

That's the difficulty this guy is seeing. Telecommuting positions are fairly difficult to find. I looked for one on-and-off for about a half a year and never found a single one.

If you make a payout if SETI finds alien life, you suddenly give a financial motive to finding it. It could taint the results. Next Wow Signal we find and suddenly you'll have people who paid into it saying it's proof, and scientists saying it isn't. Lawyers will become involved.

Too messy if you ask me.

All the stability of Internet Explorer for a developer sandbox, and all the speed of your local internet connection! No more pesky waiting for your SATA drive! Now you can access your code through the blazing speed of your cable modem! MUCH faster. And add to that the security of not actually hosting your files locally. The cloud is always a better solution! For anything! I feel much better knowing that some faceless someone at Microsoft will be in charge of my backups. I certainly can't be trusted to do them.

Win-win I say. This sounds golden.

Exactly. If it was fun they wouldn't have to pay you to be there. This is where he goes wrong:

"Being able to sit quietly in an irrelevant meeting isn't actually a particularly useful skill in the rest of life, so I can hardly blame anyone for wanting something to do or some other distraction during them."

Yes it is a useful skill in life. It's part of how you stay employed. Your boss wants you in the meeting, so you are in the meeting. End of story. Wanting "some other distraction" is another way of saying "you're boring me" and is a career limiting move. Stay alert, stay attentive. Spend the entire meeting trying to think of something to add to it. A viewpoint missed or a good question unasked.

That's what you're there for.

NASA's mission was to go to the moon, but along the way they they discovered scratch resistant lenses and memory foam. I have both in my house right now.

The point is a discovery is something new and beautiful, no matter what the reasons for looking were. I can easily imagine some offshoot of this technology fixing some other skin condition like shingles or eczema.

As for the "this helps people's suffering" vs "quit whining and just shave your head" argument, I started balding at 14. I'm happy with my shaved head now, but at the time it started it felt like motherfucking Armageddon. Suddenly girls were a terribly important concern and I looked like a radiation accident. I wouldn't wish that kind of social suffering on anyone. Especially an awkward 14 year old fer chrissakes. It was miserable.

That being said, I greatly enjoy my shaved head now and if this treatment were to become available I wouldn't take it. Being hairless (once you're the right age anyways) is actually rather nice. You look just fine in the morning, rain doesn't bother me because I have no hair to mess up, and driving with my windows down feels wonderful in the summer.

It's an object oriented language. If it's missing a type you need, go make one.

... machine that can remember, know, and think.

Has there been some sort of HAL-9000 type breakthrough that I am unaware of? Remember, sure. Know? Computers are not self aware. Think? Calculate is a better word. Currently computers are simply super-fast abacuses. No thinking going on quite yet, thank you.

It can seem that way though. With an excellent algorithm you can get thought-like responses, anticipations to your input patterns. An excellent example is The Akinator. It gives you excellent enough results, but it's really nothing more than a very clever database.

Could IBM come up with something clever like this for the web? Certainly. But let's call it what it is, please.

AC, thank you. You've taught me something new. I never considered this.

You're forgetting market pressure. Predict too high - nobody buys the insurance because it is too expensive and your competition is cheaper. If insurance were a monopoly you would be correct, however.

And you seem to have missed the point this gentleman in the article was trying to make. The rainfall in Boulder is a good example, not a bad one. These people mine data for a living. If they're seeing catastrophic weather events trending upwards, that means something. He even said the old traditional averages around 05 have broken down.

That's vitally, fantastically important information.

Surface 2 and Surface 2 pro? That means we're still missing the Surface 2 Enterprise, Surface 2 Ultimate, and the Surface 2 Home.

Because it's Microsoft. And no product is worthwhile unless it has at least a half a dozen or so pointless variations.

Most Prostestant churches view the Apocrapha as having some value as a secondary source, but do not consider it to be equal to the Bible. The "Book of Mormon", on the other hand, is considered heresy.

Unless you're a Mormon.

That's the problem with faith. Let's assume I suddenly wanted to be a Christian. I suddenly have a heart full of faith.

Which one do I choose?

Faith is belief without proof. And all religions have no proof. So how do you choose?

Same problem you describe with the bible. These books are in, these ones are out. These guys add this part in and these guys leave it out. Everyone thinks differently and everyone thinks they're correct. That's the "bug" with faith. No proof means you can reach any conclusion you wish, since no proof is required.

You'll notice what form the complaints take:

'All these years later, we're still feeling the loss of jobs, the economic downturn, and the huge tax increases.'

These are all problems that you would expect any time any sort of industry leaves town. This is nothing specific to nuclear power.

As a side note, it's worth noting that people - when self interest is at stake - will actually miss something that by design makes chemicals that are deadly for thousands of years on end. I would actually call that a problem with our species. We're willing to create eons of poison just for a little immediate benefit. Very short sighted. Especially when "move and get another job" is an option.

I agree 100%. I actually moved to a better town to get my kids into a better school. The local school from my former home town had a crackhead blow his brains out on the playground. The kids found him the next day inside a playground feature. Allison can eat a bag of dicks.

And hey! If you really want to have a better school experience for everyone - take 5% of the defense budget and put it into schools. It would probably be 100 times the money they're used to having.

Garbage in, garbage out. So forgive me if I don't feel like playing. I'd like my kids to wind up better than the baggy pants wearing drug addled dipshits from my previous home town.

And good luck to you. I hope you get your children into the best place they can be.