Since we can't predict anything about its future behavior. Say, I was asking myself yesterday, why there didn't seem to be any other intelligent technological life in the universe. I wonder...

And who makes those judgments? I can go to pubmed.com right now and find quite a few contradictory articles, and more than a few that might charitably be described as "fluffy."

If the goddamned medical community is so concerned about this, they can come up with a web site that's peer reviewed by their selected group of experts and pretends to be the last word on medical data.

No word yet of course, on how the esteemed "medical community" missed the problems with Vioxx, post-menopausal hormones, cobalt hip implants or any of that sily stuff. Because they're like, you know, infalible.

I read Wikipedia, knowing it's inaccurate. I cross reference and look at multiple other sources like a big boy. I read *everything* knowing that there's inaccuracy somewhere. Sounds like it's time for everybody to grow up. There's no great, all-knowing source of information *anywhere.* No group of wise thoughtful, beard stroking authorities who know all and see all.

It's just us, doing the best we can with the crappy information we're given.

Yes to all this. We taught them well, just as the British taught us to be a bunch of self absorbed nationalist miliaristic crazies. The 19th and 20th centuries were quite instructive.

You're a bunch of over-testosteroned, machismo idiots.

Offense definitely intended.

First point. Machines and software exist to serve *people* and for no other reason. To the extent that they do that, they are "good." Anything less is "bad." Simple enough for you?

Second point. Programming is not about "overcoming intellectual challenges." Don't flatter yourselves. Nobody cares how you feel. Programming is either about money or masturbation. If the latter, make it as hard as you like. Go for it. Wheeeee! Look at meeeee! Look how smart I am! Whoo hoo!

But if you're trying to make *money* programming, or actually have to get a task done, you need all the help you can get. If you have a manager or officer breathing down your neck to GET IT DONE so millions aren't lost, or someone doesn't die, you need effective tools.

Bottom line? Get over yourselves. The IDE is there to make accomplishing a task as easy as possible. It serves no other purpose. It should make everything easily known and obvious. Moreover, it should actually HELP YOU solve your problems. Otherwise, it's just another idiotic software failure.

And you had production work to get out *today* then you just paid your stupidity tax. Start looking at Gimp or Corel Draw. You may not like them, but they're there when the "cloud" disappears or the internet is down.

Then your Dad is the exception that proves the rule. I've tried it dozens of times over the years. I think it did work, once. The rest of the time, it was the usual troubleshooting with a healthy dollop of trial and error. Like all Microsoft diagnostics and error messages, it never seems to give you enough *relevant* information to solve the problem yourself, or even "enough *relevant* information." /End rant

George Martin said it, but I feel like screaming this about a dozen times a day. Don't change my words, my punctuation, or my URL. Don't suggest sites I might want to visit, items I might find interesting, or settings more befitting someone my age. Don't give me the ability to change all things *trivial* (e.g. appearance) but nothing that matters. If you're going to help, help me fix real *problems* and not just appearances. ("Ohhh, Microsoft helped me fix my network problem!" - said No one, ever).

In short, BUZZ OFF (And get off my lawn).

"...It's a huge clusterf*ck, and the upper management doesn't seem interested in fixing the actual problem."

I think you just defined, "upper management."

If the mathematics implies that machines can't be concious, it implies that humans can't be concious. The math is the math, whether the bits are in silicon or some goopy stuff between the ears.

Seriously. The obvious implication of this claim is that organic humans are some kind of super duper special thing beyond mathematics. This is sheerest horseshit and there's not a shred of objective evidence indicating this.

I'm sure they'll work for *anybody.* The NSA, the CIA, the Chinese, the Russians, the NYC police department, NASA, BP, Exxon....

Heck, the beauty of it is that the intelligence can be sold over and over to different parties to the highest bidders. It doesn't even have to be accurate, just convincing.

Of course, if the NSA hopes to shield itself from controversy by outsourcing to these front organizations would never allow that to happen.... (Ahem). Unless, perhaps, there was money to be made.

Because that worked out *so* well with drugs.

Oh, and by "drone" do we mean, "radio controlled model planes" or "radio controlled helicopters" currently sold in hobby and toy stores since the 1960s or so? How about model rockets? While we're at it, let's ban frisbees. Those frisbee golf people are really annoying. And then there are paper airplanes. Clearly a menace. Or how about gliders and small prop aircraft. I mean, *they're* clearly a menace too, eh?

Thinking anyone believes her.... Sure, hun. Santa Clause is coming. The Easter Bunny is real. There's going to be oil *forever, and the markets aren't rigged.

What's wrong with us pea-brained Marxist fuckwits is that we can do arithmetic. We know that eventually, oil gets too expensive and yields too little net energy to sustain an interdependent "just-in-time" web of supply chains capable of supporting 7 billion people, and we'd sort of like to to something about it before we all wonder where our next meal is coming from. Some of us, you know, don't trust capitalism to magically produce all those solution in real time just when needed. In fact, we don't believe in magic at all, which means that sometimes you actually need to think ahead, and beyond that which makes a momentary profit (e.g. highway systems, rural electrification, NASA, and the military).

The empire grew as long as there were new peoples (i.e. slaves and material resources) to be conquered at the periphery. This works for a while, but the area of a circle grows much faster than the circumference. You have to defend and maintain everything within the area of your empire, while the flow of peoples and goods coming in from the periphery shrinks in proportion as the empire grows.

So, Rome reached it's limits. Slowly. Its army eventually failed due to lack of resources and money. Without military force, the remaining group of rulers (i.e. Romans/invaders) developed the art of religious coercion and control, and the Roman empire eventually became the Holy Roman empire.

And the money continued to flow to Rome, for centuries....

While there might be trillions of barrels of "oil" in the Earth, little of that is both economically and energetically profitable. When enough investors figure this out, asset prices drop to zero or negative (Used oil platform anyone?) and financing for new equipment dries up as the returns look iffier and iffier.

So, the oil industry does what it does. It buys people at government agencies at the EIA to make the reports look less scary. It google-bombs the net by publishubg hundreds of little stories in small on-line publications where commenting is not present, to reassure naive investors that everything is OK, there will be oil forever and that business as usual will continue.

And it will, until the next economic crash.

You need a certain threshold of economic activity to maintain the current petroleum production industry. Since most of the cheap oil is gone, that threshold is very, very high compared to what it was 50 or 100 years ago when *cheap* oil was easily and widely available. The next economic crash will start the decline of the oil industry in a big way. It won't die for lack of oil. It will die for lack of money.