Now that I think about it, yeah, I guess I was one of the beta users. What the hell, I tried that with Gmail, years ago, and that worked out pretty well ...

The pre-public-release G+ was kind of odd-looking, but my God it was fast. I'm really sad about how quickly it went downhill.

I'll just re-quote from the article the passage I quoted in a previous post:

Understanding this is pretty easy; if you choose not to do so, that's your business, so to speak.

No it's not. The summary (and the article, which is essentially the same fluff as the summary repeated several times--I RTFA'd so you don't have to) says to avoid technical jargon, which has actual meaning and is therefore terrifying to people who want to be executives. The bullshit list is business jargon, which is inherently meaningless and is therefore very useful to C*Os and those who like to imagine themselves in such positions.

For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.

When G+ started out, it was clean, fast-loading, reliable, and did exactly what it was supposed to do and no more. You know ... like Google used to be. I had real hopes that G+:FB::Google:Yahoo.

Every change since then has made it uglier, slower, and buggier; with the latest interface changes they've not only caught up to but actually surpassed Facebook in the amount of irritating crap they shove at the user. Google may be able to coast on people's affection for them as a search engine (especially when the competition is Bing) but they're going to find it increasingly difficult to break into new markets if all they do is ape the worst behavior of the existing market leader--which in this case emphatically includes "adding a bunch of new 'features' when the ones we already have are kind of crap."

I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.

:)

I'm pretty sure GPP is making fun of Ken Ham's thought-stopping advice to his followers, which is supposed to immediately make "evolutionists" stop dead in their tracks, fall down on their knees, pray for forgiveness, and embrace the obvious Truth. Or something like that.

You left off the rest: "with his most mundane statements breathlessly repeated as though they were great wisdom." It's not Tyson's being an effective science popularizer that bugs me--I'm all for that--but the cult-of-personality aspect which seems to follow. Again, this is very much as it was with Sagan.

I'm right there with you, but don't hold your breath. It's appropriate that he's going to be doing this show. He's precisely this generation's equivalent of Sagan: a scientist who did good work in his field early on but who has since coasted on a public image as the Voice Of Science, with his most mundane statements breathlessly repeated as though they were great wisdom. [shrug] I guess it's better for people to choose a scientist to worship than an actor, musician, athlete, politician, or preacher, but it's still kind of irritating to watch.

Or just accept that land ownership comes with certain restrictions. For example, if I want an addition to my house, I can't just build whatever I want; I need to get permits and ensure that the construction complies with building codes. Saying "no, you cannot knock down this ancient structure which was built millennia ago on what now happens to be your land" strikes me as a reasonable counterpart to that.

Except for, you know, all the SNPs in noncoding regions which come up as significant in practically every GWAS ever.

No, and neither do you, because it never happened.

Indeed; people who don't care one way or another are people who don't care one way or another, and people who don't care one way or another don't generally bother posting. People who post endless screeching copypasta rants denying overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, are best described as denialists.

All of these are important things. So is global warming. See, it's actually possible for many things to be important at the same time. Welcome to reality--take a look around, and be warned that some of it may be a little confusing, but it's in your interest to try to figure it out.

RTFA, and try to understand that what appears to be your assumption, that scientific articles are commodities like movies or groceries, is not supported by history.

You don't think heart disease is a horrible illness?

Don't think "some rich, old guy." Think "your grandpa."