forget computers, this will make way more money as a weight loss device - dial up your artificial metabolism folks, summer is coming!

HA! Have you ever read a patent?
Sure.. there are some patents that you can learn something from... but the reason you file for a patent application is to protect your idea, and it's the patent office's job to read and understand your patent application (through all the legal jargon) and enforce that it sufficiently discloses the important aspects of the technology. How good of a job do you suppose the patent application office is doing at that?

The vast majority of patents don't disclose anything that someone with half a brain couldn't have figured out from looking at the product or reverse-engineering it. Disclosure of processes is useful, but they're in the minority.

If he rides the company into the ground and they lose 50% of their stock price in the next 5 years, Tim Cook will get over $100 million from these stocks - that's over and above his salary and other perks. So a $20 million per year bonus for sucking - how does that make sense?

If they wanted to set incentives, he shouldn't be getting STOCKS - he should be getting OPTIONS. They should define their expectations of what a decent CEO should achieve... lets say 400 in a year, 450 in 3 years, and 500 in 5 years. They should then award him plenty of stock options that vest in those intervals and allow him by buy at that price. If he does worse than what a decent CEO should achieve then his options are worthless. If he does better than a decent CEO, he will get rewarded for it.

By awarding STOCKS, they are rewarding CEOs regardless of whether they succeed or not. You cannot reward success without first setting expectations that clearly define what success is, and what failure is.

I agree. I said the same thing when the Nazi's were taking over Europe. The world will have another war. If not from Hitler then from someone else. We're better off focusing on our economy so we're better able to adapt to our new Nazi overlords... within reason of course. I'm not an advocate of being a coward, but we're not ready to defend ourselves and our families from a clear and present danger.

Part of the reason why it's so special is the fact that we've destroyed every other area of the world with mining, oil and gas extraction, agriculture and pollution. Windmills are part of the solution to that, and in the long term may help restore other areas to that condition. We should be caring more about the actual quality of our environment instead of focusing on how good it makes us feel to have one last place that is visually untouched (as opposed to [actually] untouched)

This is a great move for opening up the mobile market, and preventing unnecessary vendor lock-in. Right now people buy closed hardware because they like the closed apps that developers have written for the ecosystem. But when you can start to mix and match hardware and software, you'll be able to buy the device that you want and still get the apps that you want. It also reduces the overhead for developers, will bring business apps to android, and brings an app ecosystem to RIM. Great move!

1) pigs and cows don't produce food, they consume it. You don't need innovation to feed the world - just stop eating meat. You'll also be helping the energy crisis, water crisis, and climate crisis at the same time.
2) THE government? I assume you mean America's government, but even then I'm not sure which one you're referring to... it changes every once in a while you know, as does technology.

The article that you link to doesn't say that hydrogen isn't good or that it isn't green. It simply says that it may not be ideal. IF hydrogen builds up in the atmosphere then there will be some environmental impact, but that is not known. Even if it does build up, there is no analysis of whether that environmental impact is more or less than alternatives.
Green isn't some philosophical ideal - it's a moving target based on what we can achieve.

Their idea is clearly idiocracy, but the implementation is brilliant. Not only is it impossible to vote for science, its also impossible to leave a comment without voting against it... so if you want to explain why a grant is worthwhile, you have to do so by voting against it. They may be idiots, but they're damn good at it.

If non-US citizens participate in this vote, they'll probably vote according to their values. The Republican party's values and policies aren't exactly popular in the rest of the world, and (for the most part) the rest of the world likes science. Remember - basic scientific research is a public good; we all benefit from it, so everyone would rather wait for someone else to do it.

On a side note... do you honestly think the rest of the world is out to get you? You seem to be projecting (perceived) national and corporate political interests onto individuals... as if those individuals had no personal values of their own. That's like believing Swedish fathers are thinking "oh man, the US is beating us in nuclear weapons research... I need to switch professions and donate all my extra income to funding nuclear weaponry!".

S3 isnt the only option, and you dont need to have everything in the cloud to benefit from the lower costs and overhead... and there are options that will reduce your admin costs as well. The most important thing is to understand how people will use the solution... for an NGO you're probably relying on a lot of communication outside the firewall and would benefit from a SaaS model for storing documents and collaborating within the team and with other associations and stakeholders.

I'd point you to some of the more document-heavy enterprise social software suites... a lot of them can handle your public website and intranet as one solution. Sharepoint is overkill for 20 people, but there are some smaller options out there. I personally work for IGLOO Software (www.igloosoftware.com), which is definitely worth a look.

What's with all the hate? Lots of sites have a bounce rate between 30 and 50% [citation needed]. If seeing a half-loaded page is enough for 50 to 70% of people to
decide to leave, isn't it reasonable that a preview would be enough too?

I'd have to use it to decide if the interface is more annoying than useful (obviously)... but there's at least potential there. Heck, depending on whether google caches or optimizes the preview, this could reduce wasted bandwidth as well.

This may not be a popular opinion here, but why did you decide to go with open source solutions? If you aren't already familiar with drupal and are an expert at designing corporate intranets, you're probably going to spend several months of the next year building and maintaining your site. I won't try to guess your salary, but there are a lot of good solutions in the $5-10k range (some that use drupal) that could be more cost effective and give you access to people who do this every day. Drupal is an amazing product when it's in the right hands, but you shouldnt allow your corporate intranet distract you from your core business. Full disclosure: I'm a developer at IGLOO Software

I agree, but you seem to be implying that this law would decrease liberty. The original article in the NEJM explains that sugary drinks externalize their costs to the health industry. If we can agree with the science, then the fact is that everyone with health insurance is currently being forced to cover the costs of other people's consumption decisions. That is lack of liberty. The proposal will make people pay for their own decisions, so you don't have to. That's liberty.

Whether a person deserves what they get is never so clear-cut. You picked an extreme example, and many people would agree that we shouldnt have to pay for an obese two-pack-a-day smoker's health bills from a common pool... but who is going to decide whether he lives or dies? That sounds like a a death panel to me... one that is much, much worse than the so-called death panels that were recently proposed. So, stop thinking through your arguments half-way. Complete personal freedom doesnt work. You dont have the freedom to kill, cheat, abuse, or pollute. Accept that, and lets try to make the best of it from there.