So 'unfortunately' if you are going to build a product that people may need and enjoy you are going to start a business, that may create new products and create investment opportunities and jobs in the process, you are going to 'siphon'? 'Siphon' talent away from government ('and everybody else')?????

This 'story' is one gigantic flamebait.

There is nothing unfortunate about building your own company to pursue your own goals and you are not siphoning anything from anybody by building your own business. Under all circumstances, it is better if government doesn't get any talent whatsoever, why should talent be wasted in government rather than be applied where it is actually needed: in the private sector, doing something useful?

This entire premise is insane and asinine.

If I, as a third party, want to offer telephone services that use broadband internet (VoIP), Comcast will be able to make my access to their consumers so crap

Well it's a shame then the FCC rules under discussion would have nothing whatsoever to do with that,.

Gosh, I wonder what you are getting if it's not at all what you thought. I wonder what you are getting from an agency intertwined with the cable companies, when you ask them to provide regulation from same companies... Perhaps utterly the opposite of what you wanted?

When people read the summary of this story, I'm sure a lot will be like "blah blah blah blah MAGNETS GOOD FOR HEALTH AND CURE EBOLA blah blah blah.

The greenhouse effect was first proposed by Fourier (yes, that Fourier) in 1825. Way back before modern technology and computers he already figured out the basic relationship between heat trapping gases and planetary temperatures. From his paper in 1827:

"The establishment and progress of human societies, the action of natural forces, can notably change, and in vast regions, the state of the surface, the distribution of water and the great movements of the air. Such effects are able to make to vary, in the course of many centuries, the average degree of heat; because the analytic expressions contain coefficients relating to the state of the surface and which greatly influence the temperature."[

In 1864, John Tyndall furhter refined Fouriers work to show that different gases had different absorption spectra, and that water vapor, methane, and CO2 specifically were potent green house gases.

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius (considered the father of modern chemistry) put forth the first climate model and was one of the first to quantify the impact of CO2 on planetary temperature.

Since then, the science has only improved. We've gone from basic physics models to complex integrated global climate models. And they all show the same thing.

There was never any "global cooling". There were a handful of discredited papers in the 70's that tried to establish a possible cooling scenario. However the overwhelming majority of papers on the topic were all discussing warming and it's impacts.

And warming, while accurate, doesn't really define what the real problem is. Warming isn't the problem. It's what happens as a result of the warming that's problem. The additional energy into the climate system shifts the climate, which we, as a civilization, depend on. Also, warming gives the impression that every place on Earth is going to get warmer, which is not the case.

Climate change is a more accurate description of what's happening.

Incorrect. We can say quite a bit about the macro. There is quite a compendium of science out there. The problem is that people don't know the difference between a projection 100 years into the future about general climate conditions and the weather in their backyard. Ignorance is the problem, and there are those who hope people stay that way.

I and many others would like to see this contrary evidence you speak of, along with the physics that model the scenario AND can adequately explain observations from both present and past AND does not violate little things like thermodynamics and conservation of energy.

The Antarctic sea ice extent was not and is not projected to shrink in the near term. It was expected to expand as a result of the influx of fresh water from increasing land ice melt. As the planet continues to warm it will reach a point where the ice extent will start shrinking again (as the 0C starts pushing further south), but that isn't projected to happen until later this century.

If you're going to troll, at least try to do a decent job.

1. Al Gore is not now, nor has ever been, a climate scientist.
2. His remarks were purely speculative and had absolutely zero scientific support. There is not a single peer-reviewed research paper anywhere that makes such a claim.
3. The AR4 and AR5 model ensembles show an ice free summers in the arctic around the middle of this century.
4. The article is talking about ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, which has absolutely nothing to do with the ARCTIC SEA ICE.

Climate model ensembles have consistently predicted an overall increase in ANTARCTIC SEA ICE in the near term as a result of increased freshwater runoff from the continent. The decrease in salinity allows for ice to form at higher temperatures, thus expanding the sea ice extent.

This problem could have been easily avoided. Send iTunes users an announcement that they can go to the store and get the U2 album for free, if they want to.

That's how it worked for everyone that didn't enable auto-downloads of purchases (which is not enabled by default).

I *wanted* the album, and it took me two days to figure out how to get it. It did not appear for me anywhere automatically...

I can't believe people get worked up over being given music for free. Hey guess what, all sorts of free crappy music is in whatever music streaming service you favor also. Why not complain about that?

They're both still vulnerable to supernovae. You should have at least one backup in another galaxy.

Fun fact, the real reason for the Voyager mission was someone wanted a permanent backup of William Shatner singing "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". You didn't ever see the back of that record they included with Voyager, did you... now you know why.

CO2 may not be "clean" but its not as bad as the boogie men are making it out be. the fact is CO2 is a vital part of the circle of life.

Not if there's too much of it. We're pumping it into the atmosphere faster than nature can reclaim it. Global warming is a measurable fact. CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas is a measurable fact.

Ok, good for you, and when poor people cant buy food because it has to pass 100 regulations before it hits the shelf what about them? How about we continue the "choice" thing, as long as items are properly marked whats the issue? Or as for your last point on there, at what point is it "safe enough" people have made it thousands of years without the government telling people what they can and cant eat.

You're exaggerating to make your position sound more reasonable. Regulation on food safety is necessary because if they weren't forced to follow sanitary procedures, the factory farms would cut every corner they could and we'd all get sick. For-profit companies don't do anything that costs them money unless it would cost them MORE money to not do it. The regulations provide a level playing field; they all have to follow the same rules.

Next you are going to tell us that every building with a drive up ATM should have braile on it as well for all those blind drivers out there because.. the law! A little common sense goes along way, regulations leave little room for common sense. If the ramp is 1 degree off, is it stopping people from using it? If no WHO THE FUCK CARES???

Drive-up ATMs have braille on them because it's cheaper to mass produce just one model of ATM with braille on it than to produce two models, one with braille and the other without. And if we tolerate a ramp being 1 degree off, how far do they push it in the name of saving money? 15 degrees? 45? The angle is specified to avoid that kind of nonsense. And if you were in a wheelchair, I'd bet you'd be grateful for the legislation that allows you to live an independent life. Without that legislation, mobility impaired people would be unable to live without constant assistance. If I were designing that ramp, I'd be grateful for a spec there, since I have no clue what angle most wheelchair users can use.

Please, when can we have a hack that makes these printers print in Linux?

Or *BSD support?

Or Android support?

Clean Air becomes "Carbon Tax" (CO2 is clean), and regulations regarding all sorts of things not related to "clean air", and is just a means to totalitarian controls set by people like Al Gore.

CO2 is clean? Please tell me you're joking. CO2 in the atmosphere makes the planet warmer. That's not an opinion, it's a well-established scientific fact. Don't believe me? Put two bottles of water in the sun, with thermometers in both. Drop an Alka-Seltzer into one of them. That one will get hotter than the other.

Safe Food becomes So many regulations and costs that while food is safe, it is so expensive that most people cannot eat it.

I'll pay more for food that has stricter controls on quality. You're taking the argument to an irrational extreme; "Safe Food" is unattainable. What we can do is make it safer through reasonable regulation and testing. Which is where we are now.

Safe Working Conditions becomes OSHA regulations so deep and thick that on any given day your company probably violates a number of "safe working condition" regulations. Not to mention big fines for violations like your 3 foot barrier being only 2'11" tall, or your wheelchair ramp being 1 degree off.

Then they should fix them. The specs are freely available and attainable by any competent company. What you're bitching about is companies cutting corners and getting called on it. Anyone with a working tape measure can determine if something is 3 feet tall; someone who builds that stuff for a living has no excuse for that.

But then again, your comment is so ridiculous that it's probably sarcasm....

I've not over years of use, I guess it's that weak-ass Gorilla Glass 2 the original post was wishing for. Hopefully Apple ditched them if you can simply scratch it with keys.

I've kept a number of different iPhones in pockets with keys for years, zero scratches. I've not seen an iPhone screen witch scratches (cracks if it's dropped, yes, but not scratches).

Also, they HAVE used Gorilla Glass. In fact I'd imagine the newer ones ALSO use Gorilla Glass, they just aren't saying that (which they did not in the past also).