"If you choose a cloud offering which does that for you then yes, you don't have to worry about things like software updates and patching."

Well, yes, you need to worry anyway.

If it's not done, because it's not done. But if it's done, because of what the update/patching breaks on your own apps.

"As we speak, Microsoft is instructing its European "business partners" to give a certain French city a shitload of really cheap Office licenses."

Cheaper than zero?

"A Mars Colony will cost billions to trillions, but the benefits outweigh those costs by an unimaginable margin."

It must be I have poor imagination, because I can't see the benefits to _me_. That means I won't invest the "billions to trillions" it takes.

But, of course, that's me. You surely see the benefits to _you_ so just stop talking and produce the "billions to trillions" and go ahead.

What? No "billions to trillions"? Maybe the benefits of the investment are not so clear after all.

"How would you feel if your loved ones were on a plane, it crashed, and they were killed or mutilated and maimed for life, because some twit thought windows were a bad thing to have in an airplane?"

How would you feel if your loved ones were on a plane, it crashed, and they were killed or mutilated and maimed for life, because some twit thought parachutes were a bad thing to have in an airplane?

"You think that the sun, rocks, and trees give comfort to humans? After losing a loved one?"

No. He thinks sun, rocks and trees CAN give comfort to humans. And this must be the case since there're millions of animists over there (i.e. Japanese shintoists) who do in fact get comfort from that.

Becuase the comfort comes from feeling "there is a sense" in all this stuff, whatever the origin of this sensical thing is.

"[A]ny doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution.
[...]
Basically, if you claim that anything other than simple biology was at work in creating animals, then you lose your funding"

Hummm... nope.

You see, the definition above excludes the word "creation" for a reason (two indeed): "theory of evolution" is NOT a theory about how life came out from non-life, only how it evolutions once that it happens. And then, most non-pure-bullshit religion heads accept evolution nowadays as long as you accept that life creation was a god act or, at least, under god's impulse.

So, on one hand, the legislator seems to have an idea on how evolution really is (god thing) and it doesn't challenge the religious views of most people (bad thing).

"You do realize that most Christian congregations in the US are decedents of the Church of England."

You do realize that this is because those ancestors felt they were not wanted in England anymore.

"Ever been to Italy, Greece, or Spain? The "work ethic" in those cultures is utterly foreign to an American"

It's not the "work ethic" but the "executives ethic" which is the problem. Just go look at the numbers like hours per worker per year and average/modal salaries and then compare it to the GDP split between work and capital gains and their evolution in the last 25 years.

In Italy, Greece or Spain what is not competitive is not the workers but the executives and entrepeneurs. But then, all EU policies align to give more power to those entrepeneurs and executives and less to workers, go figure.

"Anti-GMO hysteria is anti-science, plain and simple."

No, it isn't. Anti-GMO maybe is fueled by anti-science but the real concern is anti-big greedy corps modelling future and setting their own agenda about population risk management.

Anti-GMO is looking at Deepwater Horizon oil spill and not wanting Monsanto having the same level of control about food as BP on the oil business.

"Genetic engineering is far less likely to have problematic outcomes."

Unclear.

Moving genes with known impact here and there under lab conditions is probably safer than standard crop selection and we know crop selection is pretty safe since we've been doing it for millenia.

The problem is the context: genes are moved from here to there using primers of unknown but frightening consecuencies all done by utmost greeding companies which are more powerful everyday. That's the worrying part.

"The US is the original EU. It worked due to limited bureaucracy."

No, it worked because in the end, one single folks (WASP, English-talking) ended up sweeping away all resistance and building their own single nation. By the time other ethinicities (jews, catholics, afro-americans, aboriginals...) came back gaining some recognition, the basis of the WASP nation was already so stablished that they had to integrate within. Now, try that in EU, try to set something along they lines of "well, the whole EU space is to be like the UK and you all French, Spanish, German... just have to accept the UK way" and see what happens.

"We have at least two of those, a common language and shared history."

In a quite weird way, maybe.

"The language is English"

No, it isn't. There's simply no country in EU -but UK, that will feel English anything of its own. Latin maybe, but then go try to convince anybody going back to Latin again.

"The history is one of fighting one another tooth and nail,"

Yes, but that's not a basis tending to a unification.

The EU-as-a-single-nation concept is a worthy intelectual one but very far from touching the souls of the people that should become that single country.

"somehow workers are viewed by companies as not having that same right"

In the end there's no more rights than those you can and will defend.

Companies use their big pull to defend their interests. A worker has no such a strengh and -basically voluntarily, they killed whatever strengh they could have as a group the day they ditched unions.

So no wonder.

"They're not terribly difficult, and I dare say they're easier than many of the code reviews I've been through."

So, please, tell me at a glance what did change in the spreadsheet (both contents and formulae) and why since yesterday.

After that, please, tell me how can commonalities be extracted from a spreadsheet (say, a worthnoting formula or workflow) so it can be applied to another dozen spreadsheets I happen to have over there, both past and future.

"The question is whether having the logic squirreled away in code or a DB would have made it more correct"

Then the answer is "it doesn't really matter". Of course the code can be as wrong as the spreadsheet but the point is that code is much easily auditable so, if you are using it for something important, you can *effectively* through more resources at it, which is basically impossible to be done on a spreadsheet.