Number 3 (no Adobe Flash) is a reason to love Apple products though. They got that bit of the list wrong. It's forced website owners away from proprietary Flash towards truly multi platform html5.

Not only is does it have negative value in the phone marketing, it's confusing and disappoints people - they think because it's Windows it will have more compatibility with their PC and will run PC applications and then find "yes it's Windows but it doesn't run Windows apps". Apple didn't call the iPhone the Mac Phone for a reason (even though it reputedly runs the same OS kernel).

Microsoft would have been better off just calling it Metro instead of Windows. Or pretty much any other easy to pronounce name.

Markakis Xuckerberapolis the founder of faceForum and the issuance of worthless shards of pottery as shares

COBOL is just as disadvantaged in dealing with an SQL database. All that DATA DIVISION syntax is about reading and writing flat files, not interacting with a database engine in a separate executable. (It's a while since I've done any COBOL so perhaps matters have changed now, but COBOL was always about fixed width record flat files).

My Java code needs no changes if table formats changed (things like added columns) because I try to use the supplied classes and the JDBC properly (and also take the time to make sure the database is designed right - such as using views, so the underlying data format can be changed without requiring all the things that depend on it to change).

SQL didn't exist until long after COBOL was a major thing. What COBOL is good at is dealing with fixed width record format flat files, which was a common way of storing stuff when COBOL was first invented. When you have a large complex system that's been going for decades, is fully debugged, and just works there is a huge cost in rewriting it that may just not be worth it.

indeed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Since I seem to be dismissing that paper for trying to use thermodynamics to define the probability of a living system I wanted to quickly add that I am explicitly not dismission it. I'm dismissing the summary that conflating the definition of life with a lower bound on it's thermodynamic probability. Often times thermodynamic bounds are very useful in ruling out how something did not happen and to identify the high probability way something could have happened.

Take for example, the observation that most complex living systems are beautiful as well. Why are they beautiful to us. I think it is because they visually have organization. And the single most obvious facet of organization are symmetries at large scale. For example, atomically speaking your eyes are very far apart. Yet your body has this beautiful bilateral symmetry.

THe obvious question is whether symmetries in living systems occur because living systems select for symmetry because there is an evolutionary advantage to it or because of thermodynamics.

to see this take something simpler. The packing of seeds in a sunflower is optimal in some sense (fibonaci) yet one might believe there's a chance it's just a thermodynamic accident not a careful selection.

In fact drill down a little more and consider the fact that nearly all proteins in your body form homo dimers that are symmetric.

an interesting paper
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

comes to the stunning conclusion that this symmetry is not from evolutionary selection! it's overwhelmingly improbable that function can arise from random collisions between proteins, and the only likely way two proteins can collide and form a low energy conformation that last long enough to perform a function is for collisions that form a symmetrical arrangement. Almost all other collisions wont last long enough for the dimer to perform a function (such as catalyzing production of a useful metabolite). Since Natural selection cannot operate on anything that doesn't do something to increase fitness this means that assymetric collisions are completely invisible to the organism. Therefore thermodynmics can rightfully claim that nearly all protein symmetry arrises simply from thermodynamic probability not from natural selection having a prefernce for symmetry. This is not to say that symmetry has no selectable characteristics. It's just that at the molecular level, those selectable characteristics are not required to explain the emergence of symmetry as we observe it. The frequency that we observe symmetric versus asymmetric homo dimers of proteins is exactly the frequency we would expect at random due to thermodynamics.

Thus the interesting thing about this new work in thermodynamics is it sets a lower bound on the conditions needed for life to emerge. It does not however define the probability of life emerging.

If we define life as the ability to organize and propopagate information then the highest form of life is a salt crystal or any self propagating organization of atoms with long range order. A diamond has far lower entropy than any living system. Like wise if we define it as system that processes energy to propogate itself then we have Fire as the ultimate for of life.

clearly gasses (disorded are dead) and crystals are dead. SO is life a liquid (in the middle of the two)? Again obviously not.

The best definition of a living system in terms of information tehory concepts I have come across is the one by David Wolpert who coined in the term self-dissimilarity in reaction to the vogue study of self-similarity in self-organizing systems. For example, a pile of sand is self-organizing system that is ever changing but also ever-self simmilar. it's not alive either

so solids, liquids, gasses and self-simmilar self organizing systems are all bankrupt as a informational definition of life. What's self-dissimilarity then?

It's the concept that the organizational principles of a system can suddenly change as one crosses scales.

imagine one zooms out from a microsope from the atomic scale. at first you see the atom and it has some interesting symmetires in the way the electron oribits have some simmilarities. at a higher scale we see the molecule. then the collection of molecules. soon we see the patterning of molecules.
we observe that this is infact cell. then many cells. then it's an organ. then its many organs. then an animal. then a school of fish. then zooming our we see schools of fish separated across the ocean.

the key insight is this. at each scale everything you infer about the information content and predictibitly of adjaceny in the pattern works to predict the patterns propoagation at a slightly larger zoom. Up until it suddenly fails. you reach the edge of the liver or the edge of the cell or the edge of the animal. then the lower scale is useless in predicting how the next scale up is organized.

these abrupt steps in dissimilarity is a halmark of living systems. the degree of information gain at the step is phenomenal. this is different than saying for example that a composite rock is alive. the difference is that the system is processing information and energy across these organizational boundaries. that's pretty much the best definition of life interms of a single defintion that can be plotted on a graph. the x-axis is the zoom, and the y-axis is the predictability of the next larger scale from the lower one. you see steps. that plus the processing of information across steps is a living system. If you accept this you might feel like their are non-traditional defintiions of life as well. for example, if a bacteria is living thing, is it possible that a community of bacteria is also a lvifing thing. Perhaps the earth is too.

What's intriguing here is that systems with this property may imprint themselves on other systems. you might for example be able to spot radio emissions or atmospheric molecular composition that displays the imprint of dissimilar steps in it's self organization.

SO unless this theory considers this, I'm skeptical about it. Salt is self organizing but it's not alive. It is however highly probable. Indeed eutectic separation is highly propable but it's just physics not life.

The first two are easy... but the last one? Yikes!

I reach at least 35 mph every day I cycle according to the Cyclemeter GPS application. It's pretty easy to reach that speed downhill.
On the level I can sustain pretty much all day long 17-18 mph.

I'm a utility cyclist, but cyclemeter tells me I sustain about 17 or 18 mph on the flat (I live in a rural area so cars are not impeding me). I commonly hit 20mph for stretches, and there are some downhill parts of my ride where I hit 35 mph. I don't wear any lycra at all either.

In cities like New York and London, it's usually that the cars cannot keep up with bicycles (not the other way around). I live in a rural area, but whenever I've cycled in congested urban areas, I've often been MUCH quicker than car traffic and usually the cars are slowing me down. Car traffic in cities is slow because there are too many cars, not because of cyclists (or little duckies).

There's even an episode of Top Gear where they prove the bicycle is the fastest method of getting across London. And that's a TV programme unashamedly biased towards the car.

That's a troll, right?

On the flat (and I'm not a lycra clad person either) I can easily keep up 17-18 mph all day. In a city, this is usually as fast (if not faster) than cars. In no way are cyclists doing this speed compatible with 3mph pedestrians. Cyclists belong on the road. (In fact where I live cyclists have a right to be on the road - cars do not, cars need to be licensed, car drivers need to be licensed).

Motorcyclists are also vulnerable road users. Should they be on the sidewalk too?

It's also human nature. We know we're slowly buggering things up, but it'll take a while. To fix it means a large change in the way we run our world, and it will be difficult and may cause mild discomfort in the short term. On the other hand we can simply deny it's happening and continue with the business as usual which is far easier and the path of least resistance. People don't want to feel guilty for driving an SUV either, it's easier and more consistent to deny that anything is happening rather than admitting that you're (an albeit tiny) part of the problem.

Temperatures have increased in the last decade. The problem is you've cherry picked one particularly warm year to use as a reference point. However if you zoom out on the graph you'll see the temperature increase trend has been relentless.