I agree that few people have true Broadband, but I think the important issue to look at is capacity. Most people, which jives from what I see in other posts, are fine with 1.5 - 3.0 mbps down and 128K-256K up. Where the problems lie now and in the future is being able to give everyone these speeds all the time. Usually, I run into bandwidth contention and I do not get my "non-broadband" speeds. I attribute this (perhaps incorrectly) to lack of capacity and having many more people online than the provider can serve. In the future, I think more people will be more concerned about getting lower speeds consistently than they will be for getting higher speeds...

There is no money in getting back to the moon, at least at this point. The principle driving force of the commercial space program is the generation of profit... Perfecting the space "tour" is what seems to be the first goal so the commercial company can get a cash cow going. I believe that the commercial space program will eventually want to get to the moon (and beyond), but right now I think it is all about just getting into space in manner that provides profit potential.

While the IE is losing ground a bit, they have enough share to make it a pain to develop web apps... I am still plagued with clients that have older IE versions and don't upgrade and I end up having to work around all the HTML and CSS standards that IE does not support or just plain ignore... So, I am glad to hear they are losing ground. I wonder if it is because web developers have stopped making exceptions in their source code for shitty IE browser support of STANDARDS and people are switching browsers to get their web pages to look the right way... Microsoft, are you listening?

The question of migration is not about staying in the 90's. Ask yourself this, "If it were your money, what would you do?". Your answer would probably be, if you were a successful business, you would look at the cost-benefit of the switch. So, citing training costs is a factor. Another factor might be whether you develop application that run on Windows, or do you just use Windows as development platform at all, or just a casual Business user? In the end, if the switch will cost you (the company) thousands of dollars and you gain nothing, surely you would not want to switch because Microsoft is forcing the switch. From a training perspective, one would want to push off the switch for as long as possible to allow the market (end users) to get the familiarity with the new Windows and Office on their home PCs so that training is minimal at the work place. If you personally upgrade your home PC, which a lot of people will do, and use it for a year or three, when your Office does the switch it (the new Windows) will be old hat, and that means less training on the company dime.

In the picture titled "Meeting the President at the Falcon 9 launch site, from left: Neil G. Hicks, Florence Li, Brian Mosdell, President Obama, Leslie Woods Jr., and Elon Musk. Credit: Getty Images"

What's up with that chics handshake? Reminds me of that episode of King of The Hill when hank meets the president and gets distressed about the weak handshake...

According TFA: "You don't have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint"

Really? Several articles have linked TiO2 to cancer. Yeah, real safe.

This information is great and all, but now what? Sure, the governments could be responsible and dust off the ol' disaster plans and have more frequent drills, but honestly, the day that the big one (earthquake, or, earthquake plus tidal wave) hits, the situation is going to be FUBAR no matter what people do. Sure, some preparedness will result in minor differences in life loss, etc. but in the grand scheme of things the same net effect will occur: total destruction. Therefore, the government, the people, anyone will do nothing but scoff at the prediction, until it happens, and then will cry "why didn't anyone tell me about this or do anything".

"It was all a dream" Classic final ending plot. The show had too many loose ends to properly tie up.

Even though TFA states "all software ideas are now potentially patentable as long as they are innovative from a purely formal point of view, meaning they're at least marginally different from how a technical problem was solved before", many standard design patterns used could be in trouble. For example implementing the well-known Observer pattern using non-OO language constructs, in say Ada83, could be a patentable thing. I mean, this is really bad precedence here and something every software engineer, hell, every company should care about.

Who would have thought 2010 was going to be a big deal. We just had a 2010 programming problem at work. Everything worked great in December then in January our software simulation stopped sending the correct time to our hardware. Turns out the simulation handles 2010 incorrectly. We now have to set our PC clocks to 2009 until the team gets a fix out. I bet we see more of this.

So the perception is that your coworkers waste "hours" of time. Well, that is your perception, but may not be reality. Do you follow them home? Do you know when they get in or leave? How about when that fire hits and they solve the problem no one else could solve. Are there tasks that should take hours to complete but these people get them done in less time? See, a person's value can not be measured by how much time he/she sits in front of their desk pounding keys. It is best to not worry about how much time they are "wasting" and mind your own business. Be grateful that you have a job and the environment is laid back. Worry about getting your projects done and making sure you know who is responsible for what. The real slacker will miss deadlines, produce crap work, and be slick enough to shift blame or avoid responsibility. Just make sure you have clear communication with people so they know you are counting on them and that your superiors know what you were supposed to do and what they were supposed to do. On team efforts where someone else is supposed to handle something and they are dropping the ball you can send a polite email offering assistance or asking about status if it is something that hinders you. Make sure you 'cc the appropriate people. Good luck.

22 fires out of how many millions of flights, of which none resulted in any catastrophe.. I think I am more worried about pilots updating their facebook pages and overshooting their destination airport by 150 miles.

After reading this I realize the not-so-obvious benefit of real planes flying around patrolling and bombing the enemy... The fear factor. As stated in the summary " Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones", which makes sense, a little spec in the sky orbiting quietly does not put the fear of God, oh sorry Allah, into the enemy. Get a couple of F35s, A10s or Apaches cruising about voila, fear is back. Intimidation is back factor in warfare. Never really thought about that aspect of an all-drone airforce...