Would suggest money is better spent curing cancer then finding intelligent life in the proverbial haystack that is the the galaxy.

While I would be fascinated by the idea we are not alone in the universe, ultimately I really don't care. While other "pure" scientific investigation might yield off-shoot technologies, having radio scanners record and computers process Fourier transforms trying to find some pattern to space noise pretty much has yielded about all the scientific discovery that is going to come out of the project. Nothing is going to be cured, improved, or evolve out of a continued dumping of money into Seti.

While I would love to live in a society that has the luxury of spending money on esoteric concepts like asking if we are alone in the universe, with the current crumbling of financial markets, looming crisis in Global Warming and loss of fossil fuel, and an increase in disease and cancer with an ageing and forever expanding world population suggests that wasting money scanning the heavens for alien life makes you an asshat.

Solve real problems today so we can sit back and paint pictures, weave baskets, and listen to white noise without guilt tomorrow.

This will not stop Sun Microsys... (ahem, sorry Oracle). Companies that choose to innovate in the courtroom will not let something like a dismissal of a single court case stop them from trying to leach on and suck innovation from other companies.

Release Xbox 720, just make sure you didn't rip off anyone else's patents on it.

However, all this shows is that Google is not all about "do no evil". The fact they paid 25 billion to buy a company only to turn around and use it as a vehicle to sue another competitor pretty much seals the fate that Google is about as cantankerous and vile as any other corporation.

Insert generic "Microsoft sucks" comment.

Seriously guys?

Regardless of whether so.cl succeeds or fails, by having another "giant" enter the social networking arena will drive up innovation.

When Google released Google+, yes we can agree that its kind of stillborn and lacking, but if forced Facebook to innovate and provide additional features. Google+ then also followed suit by making its features better.

I have no doubt that Microsoft is capable of doing a few things better then the rest, so if those things are disruptive to the way the current "standards" deliver social networking, then it will be a win for everyone when social networking improves as a whole.

Lets put it this way, Google, Apple and Facebook are ALL paying close attention. Its the reason why the are billion dollar companies and you drive a used Corolla, they don't just say "Microsoft sucks" and move on, they made something better.

Sure its easy and safe to say that Microsoft does not have a chance to displace Facebook, or even Google+, but this is only a research project and I think a few ideas will most likely trickle their way into Facebook and Google+ and social networking in general. Its interesting to see their take on social networking and foolish to assume they are completely irrelevant.

Wow, so the goal to be Green in the future is to introduce more bugs into hardware to save power. While I am sure there are limited uses of this kind of "math" in general I don't believe these chips will have widespread adoption because mathematical accuracy, at least for integer values, is kind of critical for most applications. Its hard enough for developers to predict the random an idiotic nature of the users of their software, now they have to build protection against hardware throwing them random results.

This instantly reminded me of a developer that claimed a 1200% improvement in performance after he optimized some code. The developer wasn't particularly skilled and some senior level guys had already optimized the performance about as far as it could be taken, so we were dubious. We found after a code review that basically this developer has improved the efficiency of the software by skipping some critical intensive calculations that was the point of the software.

Sure you could claim that this optimization is greener then the original code because the CPU is not working as hard, but if you are not going to get the expected results, f*ck being green.

My exit strategy away from IT/Software development is to pick up a trade. Electrician, plumber, carpenter, cabinet maker, home inspector, etc.

When I found that I have had a good run in IT and have not been able to build my own company or write some mobile "app" that I can sit back and retire on, then its off to trade school for me.

Houses are always going to be built or need a'fixin. Shit's always a'flowin. People are always buying houses they can't afford.

I am hearing continuously (at least here in Canada), that there are not enough people in trades and there will be high demand for more tradespeople in 10 years. That means ample work and lucrative wages. Becoming a handyman for hire, setting your own schedule, and pretty much making a good chunk of change fixing up or remodelling homes is going to be pretty attractive after a few decades of 12 hour bullshit days in front of a workstation making other assholes rich. Build up a small team of IT ex-pats turn hammer jocks and you can set up a pretty lucrative post-IT business.

Currently I would love to program until I drop dead, but I'm starting to see that the career path of a middle aged developer either moves towards management (I'm too competent for management), or starting your own company (become the rich asshole). I am thinking about becoming the later but barring that being able to work with my hands and build or fix something "real" is also sounding more appealing year to year.

Marketing team should be fired. It was designed to be "vincible", it's the primary selling point of the product. But I guess they mean that Vincibility is In the product.

If 89% of everyone were bank robbers, then there are not enough legitimate ways to get money.

If Siri is going to be a useful agnostic search/information/assistant tool, then keep it so.

If Siri is going to become a company shill towing the party line, then we don't need more of that. Otherwise just call Siri Justin Long and be done with it.

While I don't care about Nokia and their whining about what Siri returns as a search result for "best smartphone", the bottom line is that if Apple is going to start filtering and biasing search results then this is just bad business. Apple deserves whatever pending lawsuits are lying in wait for corrupting what should have been a useful feature.

Food should be priced per calorie.

A typical 2000 calorie a day diet should cost roughly $20 if obtained from processed foods or restaurants. That means the typical 4000+ calorie a day diet from eating at fast food restaurants or processed food would be $40/day or roughly $15k a year, or $60k for a family of 4, which is far too expensive for most people.

"Good" food, such as fruits and vegetables and non-processed food would be nearly free as farmers should be subsidized by taxes on the fast food/packaged food industry. This would encourage people who want to eat cheap to get their food energy from nutritious sources. Fast food restaurants can reduce their taxation by offering cheap "nutritious" options on their menu with produce bought directly from farmers at non-subsidized prices.

Salt and Sugar should cost as much as gold/oz forcing fast/packaged food industries to reduce the use of salt and sugar as cheap flavouring agents.

Looking back in history, only rich people could afford to be fat. Today the 99% are fat because they are eating like kings and queens and the 1% can afford liposuction and tummy tucks and trendy organic food.