And further flies at altitudes that will be visible and audible to vast swaths of the population, flies at altitudes that include buildings, towers and uncontrolled landing zones.

As well as other important issues.

Yep, gotta get on this right away. It's more important to be first than right. While the FAA could likely move a bit faster, my sympathies simply don't pour out to Amazon. And it's perfectly OK to work on this sort of technology away from busy population centers. Like we've pretty much always done in aviation.

Cowbell.

I think it was Sears and, in fact, it appears to be active today. Although likely ignored by pretty much all.

Perhaps Amazon has more reach - it certainly has more cachet - but I don't see this as terribly effective. For one thing, standardized prices imply consistent quality. That might happen when you're making widgets. For labor with any degree of skill - I'm rather doubtful that this is the case.

Don't conflate intelligence (or, in the case of TFA, certain aspects of learning and higher order function) with social success. Politics is more emotional than technical. It is abundantly clear that intelligence (whatever the hell that actually happens to be), the ability to learn, the ability to think have only a modest bearing on what happens to an individual throughout their lives.

Besides, the actual magnitude of the effect in TFA seems rather small - there are likely a number of other factors involved to determine if you are fated to be Steve Woz or Idi Amin.

So there will finally be a financial benefit to using Slashdot after all?

Apparently you don't interact with my family - it is a sad, strange world out there.

I presume that the panel systems you stare at were not launched out of a deep gravity well.... Satellites need to be both robust and light weight. And simple. And redundant. And cost effective.

It's rocket science! It ain't easy.

Physics.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

Why? Don't you have a local Radio Shack or something? You could have always bought it online.

Again, it's philosophical. If you believe that, ultimately, the gene pool needs some chlorine then perhaps massive die offs of humanity (and lots of other organisms, remember, this is a high extinction event we are going through) are a good thing.

If you are a politician or an administrator trying to keep a society happy, or at least alive, not so much.

Have you seen who is moving into Florida? Those land whales are heavy. It's not so much that water levels are rising, it is that the land mass is sinking due to all that extra weight.

Those Double Cheeseburger / Extra Fries / Monster drink calories have to go somewhere.

While undoubtably true, one of the big issues with our currently changing climate is that the anthropogenic forcing is supposedly pushing change faster than historical 'natural' climate change. Thus, ecologies will have less time to adjust and that is generally considered to be a Bad Thing. The problem with that theory is that some of the finer grained climate studies - mostly from newer ocean sediment cores - indicates that some significant changes have happened over periods of decades. That clearly is putting increased stress on some critter populations and, in fact, entire enviroments but sometimes life is a bitch.

From a purely practical, selfish standpoint having significant changes in climate (and therefore resources and therefore economies) is going to put even more stress on H. sapiens sapiens so we will tend to screw things up more than ever. Might very well suck to be us in a couple of decades. And this is irrespective of whose 'fault' it is. Remember, the current period - the Holocene - has been characterized by very stable weather patterns. This is not normal and probably won't stay stable - again, no matter if it's caused by a volcano or big coal.

As to whether or not we can actually influence things by cutting down on carbon consumption - that is a completely open question. There are lots of good arguments to make about not using up all of the planet's resources in 200 or so years and mitigating our species impact on the rest of the planet. But that is very much a philosophical argument.

Channeling Sarah Palin? That's a scary thought.

She can follow up on her work at HP and merge the Democrat and Republican parties together. That should make things much more efficient, increase shareholder value and offer synergies to enhance international competition.