lol @ "under this program". because there are no other progams. none.

how exactly does this "laughed out of his job" comment demonstrate that OP didn't know he was a writer? is that some idiom that I'm unaware of, or are you failing at reading comprehension?

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.

so I'll just wait and read the story when timothy dupes it later this week

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.