So would I, even for development on Apple. You can mix C++ and Objective-C. So for Mac OS X apps, you can write 95% in C++, and only use Objective-C for the Apple APIs. I try to keep all the Objective-C crap isolated in separate files whenever possible.

Objective-C is an ugly, clunky language, and the only reason Apple uses it is to intentionally make your code incompatible with other platforms.

Telecommuting was a nice experiment, but it doesn't work for people whose work is not easily quantified. Almost all SV firms have stopped the practice. About 20% of workers will get more done if they telecommute, since they have more time to work. Most other people show a decline in productivity, and for about 20% it declines to ZERO. These people get nothing done on their "home day". In theory, it may be possible to identify the people that are more productive, but that takes a lot of management effort, and causes resentment from people denied the privilege, since, obviously, the people that do NO work at home are the people that like telecommuting the most. Although it wasn't popular, Marissa was right to end the practice at Yahoo.

Hot steam is not going to cause a "megaton" explosion. Maybe one ton. Maybe not even that, since it could just vent to the atmosphere.

Citation?

Rather than "telling us", why don't you provide a citation. Because I think you are full of baloney.

Please provide a citation for this as well. I would love to read about how fuel concentrated to only 3% U-235 could possibly cause a "megaton" explosion.

Yes, but not at the same time. The light behaves like a wave as it travels, and interferes with itself. Then it behaves like a particle when it illuminates the backstop. But one happens after the other. In this experiment, the light, supposedly, can be observed acting like both a wave and a particle simultaneously, not sequentially.

Except that it wouldn't be. The people in remote rural areas would be the most likely to survive the initial blasts. They would also be the most likely to survive the ensuing economic disruption. If all the nukes in the world were detonated in maximum casualty producing air bursts, they would destroy about 0.2% of the Earth's land area. Air bursts produce minimal amounts of fallout. If they were detonated in sub-surface bursts (to destroy underground silos) the fallout would be worse, but would still mostly be contained in the ground locally, and almost no one would die in the initial bursts. Today's nukes are more efficient and cleaner than the WWII era bombs. They produce far less fallout for a given yield.

Even within target urban areas, there would be survivors. Some people in downtown Hiroshima, and many more in Nagasaki, survived the blast, and the radiation, and went on to have children and grandchildren. Most people in Hiroshima didn't die from the blast or the radiation. They died in the firestorm. But Nagasaki was mostly made from stone, instead of wood like Hiroshima, so there was no firestorm, and many more people survived there despite the bomb being nearly twice as powerful.

If people 200 meters from ground zero can survive, I am sure someone on New Zealand's South Island, 5000 km from the closest impact, will be okay.

Another problem is the cost. The prices listed in the summary are very expensive electricity ... and those are the lowball figures used to get the project approved, not the "real" numbers. Offshore wind would be cheaper, and have far less environmental impact.

They could certainly wipe out many urban population centers, and kill billions of people. They would also cause major economic disruption, and a collapse in trade that may kill billions more. But wipe out? No way. There are plenty of people living self sufficient lives in remote areas. There are many more people that have food reserves that they can live on until agriculture is revived. Many areas of the world, including most of the Southern Hemisphere, would not even be targeted in any reasonable scenario. Nuclear arsenals are much smaller than they were decades ago. There are far fewer warheads, and they are smaller and cleaner. A nuclear war with today's arsenals is not going to wipe out the human race.

This is where image support would make this place so awesome:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/dZqAEV0...

But I had three more points! Oh, drat.

It's a direct rip from Dr. Seuss's "The ABC Book", so I'm not authorized to change it :)

Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them. The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next. The rationale at the time was that whatever replaced him couldn't possibly be worse. Well, that was wrong.

Funny how short your memory is. The last 10 years of fighting in foreign countries has worked out real well for us, hasn't it.

I think we'd have a much better chance fighting ISIS on our own turf than invading yet another Arab country that we could never hold and win.

I shouldn't need to expand upon point 6, but you seem to need it:

6. Might, depending on personal preference, be more comfortable. Or, might not.

I hope that was helpful. This message brought to you by the letter "A".

Yes, automated groupthink is a wonderful idea. Doubleplusgood!