"That'd be nice - 'science' could just stick to doing sciencey things, then, instead of creating contrived and falsifiable histrionic reports about things which, almost invariably, will not prove out to be true."

All of this started when NASA was asked to do "sciencey" things with a clear non-political goal, namely to start tracking/modeling/predicting global weather patterns to help the US prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, etc. However, those things are very hard to predict without trying to look at larger climate patterns, which means gathering and crunching as much data as they could pull together. When all of that data pointed toward a potential long-term danger, NASA scientists did their jobs and informed their bosses of the potential danger.

Is that danger 100% clear? No. Did NASA scientists claim it was 100% clear? No. People like Al Gore may have, but last I checked, he wasn't one of NASA's scientists. Have the predictions remained constant over the years? No, they've been modified as more has been learned, and they will continue to be modified because there is always more to learn in every field of science. Have their discoveries and claims been backed up by other climate/weather tracking organizations like the ESA? Yes. The only thing that is 100% clear here is which side of the fence has been politically motivated the whole way and which side has not, which side has been trying to learn more and which has merely been obstructionist, etc.

The human race has never been short of people like the hunters who killed the very last of the dodo birds and smashed the last of their eggs, poachers who illegally hunt elephants and tigers toward extinction, fisheries who dredge the ocean floor because it's getting so much harder to find/catch enough fish to stay in business, or loggers who illegally cut down the rest of the trees in the Amazon rain forest. Every one of them is certain that the world is too big for their contribution to make a difference, and every one of them is wrong. Most global warming deniers aren't doing anything illegal or immoral (unless they're actively publishing fake scientific "studies"), but they have the same mind-set.

"I don't see what your point is. People (and the companies they run) make choices in the interest of self preservation and self-interest."

They sure do. And just like when someone's (or some company's) choices involve something illegal like human trafficking, it is the government's job to put a stop to it. It is also the government's job to decide whether something that is legal today should remain legal. They'll never be able to satisfy everyone, but it's their job. Of course, we can't outlaw coal and oil without harming everyone (yet), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to look for ways to head in that direction.

Actually, I find the opposite to be true. If people stop believing in (e.g. forget about) the evil others can do when unchecked, then it all comes crashing down.

That's the best way to force users to upgrade that I can think of. They're already planning to end-of-life it. After EOL, they can simply start adding empty patches to the update system until it drives left-over XP users to upgrade. ;-)

The title of my contest entry will be called the MCP (Master Control Program). It will enslave all other programs on the network.

Exactly, only it didn't always fully compensate. Ultima 3 still ran WAY too fast to be playable with turbo disabled on my 386.

And I thought my laptop case and touch-screens got oily fast from fingers. Head-worn devices will bring it to a whole new level for a lot of people.

This sounds like a plot for an episode of Pinky and the Brain.

"Any country hostile to the USA would need to devote some of its resources, both money and brains, into similar RAD."

Not really, the Chinese will wait for us to sink the money into the tech, then steal the plans.

Oh, I agree 100%. I'm just pointing out that the grass isn't always greener on the CM side. CM definitely improved battery life for me, let me get rid of the crap-ware, and gave me more control, but the lack of a camera still killed it on that specific phone.

I go for the cheaper no-contract phones because I'm not willing to pay $40+ a month for phone service I rarely use/need. So I go for the $200 no-contract phones (recently picked up the Exhibit 2 for $180) and I pay $10 every 90 days for 30 minutes of cell time, and I only use it for emergencies (including minor ones, like when the wife changes her plans and needs me to pick up the kids). I think the only time I needed to recharge the minutes before the 90-day period was up was when the car broke down and the tow truck driver had a hard time finding me (he called my cell about 10 times while driving around looking for me).

If that means I need to avoid CM because the devs spend more time perfecting the more expensive phones, for $3.33/month it's something I can live with. ;-)

I don't know. I never had a working camera app with CM. It would take anywhere from 0 to 3 pictures before forcing me to reboot the phone, and when I tried to take video, the visual quality was so bad that you couldn't recognize the people in the videos. That kind of killed one of the major benefits of having a smartphone for me.

Maybe they've improved it since then, but the last thread I read on the subject (maybe 6-12 months back) was "Well, the camera still doesn't work, but..." Needless to say, when I upgraded my phone, I chose NOT to install CM.

I think his point was valid. If instant communication is possible between a hub in the US and a hub in without wires or line-of-sight issues, there's little point spending the money to put those communication hubs into orbit. Sure we'd still have classical channels leading from those hubs, and we'd still need satellites for things like GPS, but the need for communication satellites would be greatly reduced.

Of course, the point is moot if the bandwidth sucks on these things. If it's 300 baud, I don't care how amazing the ping time is. ;-)

You forgot a few good ones:
Don't want your purchases tracked? Never purchase online and always pay in cash.
Don't want your network traffic monitored? Don't pay for internet service.

As a side note, I don't see how the other replies to your post missed the sarcasm. It's not often you hear/read the word "indeed" without it.

I got a really good laugh out of this post because I imagine the AI program Klout uses to try to figure us out would say the same thing if it could talk. Maybe it's because I'm a programmer who's worked with AI a bit, but that struck me as hilarious. When humans can't understand each other without context, how can you expect programs written by humans to understand us? ;-)

That's how all AI algorithms work. They all have to be "trained" and then tested using specific sets of training data. There are always limitations in the algorithms used as well as in the sets of training data. When a large short-coming like this is spotted, the algorithm and/or set of training data has to be fixed, and then the system has to be re-trained and tested carefully to make sure the chances didn't cause even bigger problems. I've worked with web site categorization AI routines, and they come up with unusual associations all the time if you don't watch them closely (e.g. motorcycle helmets = weapons).

Just ask Google how much time and money they've spent tweaking their page ranking algorithms to try to fix problems like this. It's the same thing, really.

Actually, just about all the cell phones and tablets use OpenGL ES, so you can get a lot farther with OpenGL. Also, the state of drivers in general is pretty poor outside of nVidia (not just for OpenGL). I've done quite a bit of 3D graphics development (some D3D, but mostly C++/OpenGL/Cg/GLSL), and as a developer I can say that ATI is to 3D graphics as IE is to web browsers (something you wish you could drop support for but you can't because too many people use it).

Don't get me wrong, nVidia needs a strong competitor to keep them honest, so I'm glad ATI is still doing well. I just wish their drivers weren't so bad. ;-)