subsidize services for rural Americans, educators and the poor
elect Obama for a 3rd time cuz he going get you a Obama smart phone and dat interwebs.

Cuz no ones gots time fo dat slow-azz dialup. Now I gots to go feedz my foe kidz...where'd I leave da EBT ats...

They should hire a gay, black, female employee and see if FedX is brave enough to not accept items for shipping from them. The threat of a triple hat lawsuit I think would breakdown their resistance.

"A well charged and patched Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep robots that bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Just saying.... you are going to have to pry my auto-turret from my cold dead fingers.

Hey I did some paperwork for my job 10 years ago I should be paid every time that data is used again for the rest of my life. FAIR IS FAIR!!!

Artists and their corporate cronies think they should be paid every time you sing their song in the shower. Fuck them.

If 3D printers were everywhere and if just about anything could be made cheaply reasons for politicians even to exist will evaporate.

On a side note, a large portion of the population would still be too stupid or too lazy to thrive even in the land of plenty. You could hand them a free 3D printer, that could make just about anything along, with a big pile of printing material and they wouldn't get much beyond printing weed and hot pockets.

Falls squarely under "who cares"

I'm sorry your little scarcity business model is broken, BOO HOO.

The best thing for society as a whole is that 3D printers get so cheap that the average consumer can print just about anything they want or need for about the same price as a manufacturer. All this "income inequality" political nonsense can be finally put to bed.

"He has 10 Ferraris while I only have 9" doesn't ring as loudly from the whiners in the society as "he has a billion dollars, while I only have free welfare"

Need to shove Nancy boy out of his chair.

Just kidding, Hawking is the man, but I think his desire to eliminate aggression is very short sighted. Living things cannot function without aggression, else something else that is aggressive will roll right over them.

If you didn't have any form of aggression you would pretty much sit there while just about anything tried to eat you. Conversely you wouldn't compete at all for food and would probably starve. Nearly all sporting events or any form of competition would pretty much come to an end since none of the competitors would be willing to compete.

The human race would pretty much grind to a halt since sex would all but disappear.

If something isn't aggressive it isn't alive or soon wont be.

Combined arms trumps "super weapons" every time.

So you can detect all my subs with your fancy sensors and "Big Data". So how are you enjoying the cyber attack/EMP burst/barrage of cruise missiles targeting your power grid?

Can you hear me now? Didn't think so.

Want to make your home smarter? My two favorites are simple dimmer switches for nearly every light and electronic cypher door locks.

Turning on the bathroom light at 1AM with a dimmer let's have just enough light to hit the toilet, but not so much that you are blinded and woken up. The porch light has one too. I have the option of lighting up the walkway like a runway when needed, but most of the time it is just bright enough to make it up the stairs without tripping and doesn't annoy the neighbors with lots of glare, nor spoil the nighttime view. The ability to adjust the lighting to the task and mood makes the house feel more responsive to our needs.

The electronic cypher door lock. I can't sing the praises of these loud enough. I carry 1 key, my truck key and that's it. My family all have their own code to get in, set to a number they can easily remember. (I live in Florida, they tend to visit a lot when it's cold.). Visitors and roommates get a code when they need it, and when they leave I delete theirs while leaving all the rest intact. We use mechanical cyphers at work and I have electronic ones at home. They both have their issues (price and batteries) but they both work fine.

My experience with all the other forms of home automation, were items installed by my brother in law. My sister, their kids, and anyone who was visiting had no clue how any of it worked, only he did. After 5 years most of it was breaking down, and the new stuff wasn't compatible with the old, so we spend this last Christmas break tearing it all out and going back to more robust proven tech. (aka standard dimmers/switches)

The only thing I see a problem with most of it is backwards compatibility and cross manufacturer compatibility. You pretty much have to commit to one set of tech from one company, and then either have to gut the whole thing 5-10 years later or live with a patch work system.

I can see any number of short range no wires connections that would be handy:

Playing a game with a controller that typically is pointed at the screen of a TV/monitor.

I work in the aircraft maintenance field. 90% of our system failures come from bent pins in connectors. If the connector was just a pair of LEDs and sensors that don't actually touch that would be amazing. You also wouldn't have to worry about wireless connections being hackable or RF getting into places where it causes problems. Same would be nice for your smart phone. Just line it up at the data point on the other device you are connecting to and you'd have a fast direct connection between devices.

I can see this being very useful in situations that can bring Wi-Fi and cell service to it's knees. Large public venues, airports, etc. I've on many occasions wanted to weep trying to use Wi-Fi points that were melting under the number of people trying to connect to them with smart phones. Having a hot spot under every overhead light would be a Godsend.

Using this instead of a cabling run would be handy when you need to route your network across an area but don't what wires all over the place and Wi-Fi wouldn't be practical.

Fat is bad!!! Cholesterol is bad bad bad bad BAD!!!!

Huh, wait, you're telling me that people are fat and their cholesterol is high because they are fat and lazy and not because they eat lot's of it.......

We actually caused damage to people's health and made the fat epidemic worse by getting people to pursue diets that were more in line with farm subsidies than things that are healthy............

Well fuck, now how are we supposed to be able to tell people what to do and how to live??!!

Refined sugar is bad! Bad bad bad bad BAD!!!!!!

Let's try this again. Natural selection occurs over the short term. Evolution over the long term. Both effect the population and the individual.

If the individual cannot survive then the population will not be made up of that individual. With enough pressure from variation and natural selection two populations will drift apart genetically, eventually become incompatible and separate.

My rant pointed out that while Progressives/Liberals tend to push for evolution in the public education arena, yet they are conversely are horrified by the idea that people should be subjugated to the whims of said evolution, which natural selection is very much a part of, which is why they push for so many laws that restrict behaviors that might be "dangerous".

You make me sad.

Producers never "pay" taxes. Corporations never "pay" taxes. Even when they do, they still don't actually pay anything. The tax is just itemized in the cost of doing business and passed on down the production chain....to the consumer who now has to work 3 times as hard to buy his gallon of gas.

You are less than intelligent if you think that we would all be living in grass huts and caves without taxes. The gov't didn't build my car, my health care, my house, etc, etc private individuals did that. I also get sick and tired of all the hand wringing over the environmental damage our modern lifestyle causes. You do realize each advancement was made to address a problem in the past that was less healthy than before. The demonized automobile solved the problem (sanitation/disease) caused by horses in large cities. Major population centers had to deal with thousands of tons of manure and hundreds of dead animals daily before the automobile came along.

Speaking of the environment, if you don't like corporations avoiding their environmental responsibilities for the damage they do then quit supporting gov't environmental laws that protect them. Most of the regulations out there restrict corporations from a certain level of pollution but at the same time protect them from being sued. See for example the off shore oil industry. They can't pollute, but at the same time the US Federal gov't limits that damages and fines that can be levied against them. If those regulations didn't exist we the people would be able to bleed them out in the courts for damages, but geniuses that think that the gov't is the way to go create opportunities for these horrible regulations that allow them to keep on polluting.

But back to the fuel tax. If gas was $.50 a gallon. I think the average consumer could afford to kick in a buck or two per gallon to help pay for the roads they drive on (they're called toll roads and they are everywhere) and in the process avoid the giant leaches that are the various forms of gov't looking for a host to feed off of.

Last time I checked it was the Jordanians that are flipping out of the Jordanian pilot. Obama could barely stifle his yawn, and took the opportunity to blame Americans for it.