My best guess? I'd say you need a liberal democracy that manages to avoid becoming a complete nanny state, as that undermines the human drive and dignity of self reliance, not to mention it's generally economically unfeasible. At the same time, it needs to be strong and vigilant enough to avoid letting corporations run roughshod over the population. Liberal democracies, while not perfect by any means, seem to be better at protecting individual liberty than any other form of government.

I believe capitalism should be viewed as an amoral economic engine of unmatched vitality, sort of like a nuclear power plant. It's got some nasty downsides, but it's really unmatched when it comes to economic production, and that's important for a society to thrive as well.

I think *all* governments tend toward oppression. Some types of government pretty much guarantee it, while some just inch their way there over years and generations. If the progress is slow, then at least citizens have the opportunity to fight against that inevitable progression, or even reverse it on occasion.

It's much more cathartic to gripe about the problem than to listen to a practical solution that fixes the issue at hand. What are you, some sort of... man?

Actually, I didn't notice this on any of my last trips. It wouldn't have been rocket science to figure out on my last trip either, as I use Google Calendar to leave notes for myself about times and dates of my trips, and the trip arrangements were made via my gmail account.

I actually had to explicitly search for that sort of stuff myself when I was away from home, and it wasn't hard to do. I literally just asked my phone: "Where is the nearest Italian restaurant?", and it responded with a list of them within five miles. Then I clicked on one that looked good, and then asked for directions. I'd never actually tried that before, and it worked beautifully. That's Google services done right. If I ask a question and need information, figure out how to provide me with a good answer. But I don't need an assistant who's constantly making "helpful" suggestions about that sort of thing.

Here's another example. I recently went to Verizon's website to look at replacing a lost charging cable and outlet adapter (from my recent trip as well), but didn't buy anything. Several hours later, Verizon e-mailed me with a helpful "we can help you find the phone accessory you need! Just ask us!". Not impressive technically, but honestly, sort of creepy, and makes me feel like not going back to their site. Essentially, it was just a reminder that said "when you're signed in and looking around on our site, remember that we're tracking every move you make!". Ok, not a big deal, but it didn't make a good impression on me.

And all those little taxes, from city, state, and country, all add up to between 40% and 60% of most US citizens' income. How much is enough? No one (well, maybe some nutjobs) wants to go back to laissez-faire, but I think it's not unreasonable to look at the amounts of graft and waste that occurs and demand better accountability before simply bending over for each new tax like a good, compliant citizen.

I have to wonder if the Chicago politicians even know what the hell they're really taxing when they attempted to tax all "cloud computing and streaming". It feels a lot more like a desperation move that they're hoping no one calls them on. Adding new taxes like this also increases the regulatory burden for its citizens and the city itself, which indirectly reduces the taxes effectiveness by increasing the overhead of compliance. It would be far better to simply adjust the property tax rate to match the expected revenue increase. Of course, that's a lot more visible, and the taxes there are already apparently pretty terrible, which is why they probably balked at that idea.

So, "get over it?" I wonder how many people will "get over it" by getting the hell out of Chicago - or at least the city itself? Having visited the area recently, I can assure you that there are lots of very expansive and attractive outlying towns and suburbs suitable for both homes and businesses.

Fascism uses the power of the state to oppress its citizens.

Capitalism uses the power of the state to ensure its corporations can oppress its citizens.

Communism uses the power of the state to oppress its citizens and ensure its economy remains in shambles.

Socialism grants significant power to the state with the expectation that it will use that power for good, and then its citizens are shocked and outraged when the government uses that power to oppress its citizens.

Wow... so this guy wants Google to know absolutely every private detail of your life so it can "connect the dots"? Financial transactions? Medical records? Google knows what food you and your friends like best so can recommend restaurants? Is this sort of hand-holding really something people want? Do you really need a computer algorithm to tell you to look up a friend in New York if you're traveling there? Can you not just ask your friend to find you a great local place to eat (hinting at a few of the types of places or foods you like)?

There's a lot that Google can do that would be really hard to do on your own. If you're in a strange city, the ability to ask "Where is the nearest Italian Restaurant?" is awesome, and it can guide you there in your rental car step by step (this was exactly what happened to me a month ago). Google doesn't need to know my food preferences. I can decide for myself that I'm in the mood for some deep dish pizza, thank you. And financial transactions or medical records? No, Google, you're not getting them from me, at least if I have anything to say about it.

I don't consider myself privacy nut. I use G-mail, and don't mind the targeted ads I see. I don't really care all that much about Google tracking my search results - fairly boring stuff to anyone but myself. I can always switch to DuckDuckGo if I need privacy there. But the extent to which some people are willing to give *everything* to Google sometimes surprises me.

Technically true, but that's not a helpful description to call everything "human error". We all understand there's human error involved, but the language used gives us more information. If the machine had a faulty circuit, we still call it a "problem with the robot" in order to affix blame not on the robot, but which humans involved - the ones who were working with the robot or the ones who built the robot. I'm pretty sure everyone understands humans built the robot, and are thus involved in the process and potential blame for when things go wrong.

No evidence other than the fact that the summary and article indicate a 5% loss of efficiency due to bug debris? Or are you accusing NASA of just pulling an arbitrary number out of their asses? Hmm... who to believe...

And I'll bet no one has thought of dimpling an airplane wing before. Oh, wait...

This. As one example, researchers are investigating ways to use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide in the air itself to synthesize kerosene. If we can manage to do that on an economically viable scale (which would mean building these plants on a massive scale), it would make a serious dent in curbing our fossil fuel appetite.

You simply can't beat the efficiency of hydrocarbon fuels in terms of released energy for a given weight and volume (as fuzzy gives us some hard numbers below), and that's crucially important for aviation. At the moment, there simply isn't any viable alternative.

Oops... first sentence is supposed to end with "and a commercial flight filled with cargo and hundreds of passengers."

There's a pretty big difference between a solo flight in an ulta-lightweight solar-powered plane. Note that they've had to wait for months for a clear weather window, and you're claiming that it's now possible to use commercial solar-powered planes? It's sort of like claiming that because we put a man on the moon, we're now ready to build a tourist resort there.

You can't pass a law of physics through legislation. This is cool and all, but don't mistake a this for any sort of substitution for current aviation tech. It's not, and won't be anytime in the near future. We need to focus our efforts on places where it IS feasible to reduce or replace our use of fossil fuels in the relatively near term. Power plants. Cars. Stuff like that. There are many people who are investigating more sustainable aviation fuels, but for the foreseeable future, these are still going to be carbon-based.

I hate sounding like a naysayer, but you need to be a bit realistic about these sorts of things.

Damn... if only we had some sort of device that could perform tremendously complex real-time calculations - thousands, or maybe even millions of them per second. Then they might... just might... have a shot at pulling this off.

This is a form of camouflage known as "dazzle", and it's designed to break up the shape of the object rather than necessarily hiding it from view.

Where have you been? GM is too big to fail.

He said a car, not a golf cart.