In many ways the GUI system of icons is similar to the pictograph system of ancient Mesopotamia. You have one symbol for everything you want to express. The Phoenicians had a much better idea, an alphabet. You have a finite number of letters and an infinite number of words and sentences (I believe I'm quoting Noam Chomsky on the infinite part).

If you are limited to commands that contain only five lower case letters, then the number of possible commands is something like 26 to the power 5 which is over 10 million. It would be difficult to navigate through that many icons. The point-and-click method of using icons is just not as efficient as an alphabet with letters that make up words that make up a language.

The governments are the ones aiding the terrorists. They are the ones running secret campaigns outside the realms of democracy with no oversight, no accountability, and it's the people in whose name they are doing it who suffer the reprecussions of terrorism. Really, stop overthrowing governments, aiding in assassinations, toturing people, and causing havoc throughtout the world. And mostly, stop lying about it. What you are doing is illegal and immoral.

I agree. Cops seem a lot more sensitive to civil rights these days. However, I also live in Chicago and last year had my phone confiscated by the police for videoing an arrest on Division and Rush. I got my phone back after the cops erased the video. I say yes to Google Glass for cops.

That's true but it's my understanding the courts have ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place. If you don't want to be recorded, stay home. I think this page sums up the current state of the law: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/know-your-rights-photographers

There is data that shows vitamin c does not prevent a cold cold, DUI check points do not reduce accidents, and praying for someone sick acutally correlates with a higher likihood of them dying. No one cares. People are scientifically illiterate. They make their decions based on emotion and supersition. Look around and you'll see it's true.

These are soldiers. It's time to start calling them what they are. The only reason they wear para military uniforms is to intimidate you. Camouflage is the new red.

We couldn't find every kidnapped child in America if we gave the government unlimited power to search every home.

Are we sure the decision is based on science and not emotion? After all, a lot of what people believe about organic foods, vitamins, vaccines, and herbal medicine is founded on bunk but people still believe in it. Are we sure Neonicotinoid Insecticides are not being banned because they're man made and evil sounding?

as long as they don't put rounded corners on it.

It seems like Verizon and AT&T spend millions that they collect from their monopoly of the spectrum and give it to politicians to who then make laws in their favor. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B08&year=a

The government sales of the free spectrum to the highest bidder is one of the biggest scams ever. Carrier-less mesh networking technology has been a viable alternative for a long time ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking ) but the government persists in licensing the most useful spectrum frequencies to the highest bidder for billions of dollars ( http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=about_auctions ) while restricting the unlicensed spectrum like 802.11 to limited frequencies with severe power restrictions.

Mod parent up. Making laws against cookies is nothing more than government self-promotional propaganda. Governments do this all the time to justify their power. One of the biggest cons ever is the government convincing you that you need them to protect you because you're not smart enough to look after yourself. And without the government protecting you people will do bad things to you -- with cookies. What the government does all the time is look for the slightest issue, create a law for it, and then try to take credit for preventing a problem that would never have happened anyway. The CANSPAM Act was an example of this. The reason you don't get spam in your inbox is because of filters, not because of government laws. Yet the politicians who pushed CANSPAM through the US Congress are convinced they have solved a problem. Folks, you don't need the government to make cookie laws, it's ridiculous.

GNU Octave is a very handy program to know: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

It seems like anything that even remotely challenges today's established copyright dogma is the modern day equivalent of blasphemy that deserves absolute censorship so the old fashioned doctrine of intellectual property can be allowed to continue, unchallenged by more futuristic ideas.

The reason the internet revolution did not originate in Australia.

Next will be the War on Violence.