I'd say that people who insist that evil scientists are refusing lower that mortality rate are a much bigger part of the problem. Um, that research is still happening. The fact that you haven't heard of breakthroughs recently can just as easily mean that 1) nobody bothered to write about it or 2) it's a really hard problem, despite the large amount of money thrown at it.

Also, maybe it sucks, but if you have limited research resources, it's more efficient to try and develop a new vaccine to save millions of lives than it is to improve an old one and save dozens. It doesn't mean nobody is working on it--just, there's probably fewer. Triage is no fun for anybody.

Rechargable batteries last longer than the devices you put them in.

I love the attitude of one of the anon commenters: if you don't know enough to configure every single security option on your system right out of the box, you shouldn't have your *nix machine hooked up to the internet. Truly, this is the year of *nix on the desktop.

Insurance prices are going to go up, I think. Not insurance for the drivers though; insurance for the car manufacturers, who need to pass that cost on to someone. I could imagine premiums being pretty high since you can't take it out of the hide of an at-fault human driver.

None of it? None at all? Do the websites you visit not have to pay for hosting? Do the content providers you patronize not pay their writers?

The way people I know use it, it's just a useful tool for organizing events.

They talk about videos being big business right there. If you're going to pay them $$$ for "promoting" your posts, then controlling who you promote them to is...kind of obvious, isn't it?

I mean, promoting on FB isn't the same as a full advertising suite. It's almost more like blackmail. If you have enough followers, then they stop showing your posts to all of them unless you give Facebook money. As a halfway step between promoting and full targeted advertising, this makes total sense.

The argument isn't against testing, it's against standardized testing, and over-reliance on testing. If the standardized tests for history are based on a specific curriculum, that means everyone has to teach the same parts of history, with the same emphasis (which is a great way to indoctrinate people). It also means you can't focus on assignments and on general knowledge; a kid who has a broad understanding of world history and why things happened, but who doesn't have dates memorized, could get high grades in essay assignments but tank on standardized tests. Someone who's objectively better educated can still be rated very low by tests administered by someone who doesn't know their curriculum.

Wouldn't that be more intrusive, though? If every page was paywalled or subscription-based...like, every page...then you're going to be on-file as paying a whole bunch of people. Even if micropayments actually become a thing again, you're going to have a service with a list of every site that you not only patronize, but that you like enough to pay for.

God, imagine the damage it would do if someone hacked and published a record of _that_.

Seems pretty dangerous to people in repressive regimes, too, since subscribing to any kind of opposition news is basically funding a political enemy, more directly than just loading ads on a page.

Maybe we don't want to go back, but we sure don't want to stay here either. Google used to be a knight in shining armor, not so much these days. Their market share is big enough that they can get away with almost anything they want--so, put them up against competition again, and see if 'being the good guys' turns back into a desirable market strategy.

Yeah I'm not getting my hopes up either.

Too late for?..

I mean, anything that gives us an out from the Google ecosystem, without Firefox bloat, has got to be great.

Last I heard it's not even going to be portable to Windows 7 or 8.

Enjoy your paywalls!

Yeah, don't be silly. They're military hardware, not eggs!

We land a spacecraft on a comet for the first time. It loses power, but when it comes back online...it's different. It's moving. And we don't know what it's up to.