This is why I am a pirate.

...and also, Firefox hasn't been a primary choice for most Linuxers for a long, long time, considering the abysmal performance.

...patent shizzle: We need a death squad killforce to squash these patent trolls from existence. Their being here is a burdon to all, and therefore, their life grant should be revoked. ASAP.

Are we capable of processing and relating to the currently available amount of (diverging) information?

If this issue is a backwards trend, it's one that is only possible because in a reality which has been shaped by the preceding two decades where we've seen a trend with exposure us to an increasing, almost infinite, amount of information.

The core human instinct is to seek and relate to similar peers. We need a "home base" to feel safe, where the things that worry us in some way relate more directly to ourselves and the close peers we identify ourselves with. I don't think we're *really* cognitively equipped to relate to and empathize with an entire world of differing opinions, cultures, and problems.

It's an ideal that must be pursued, because I agree with Eli that we may be digging ourselves (willingly as well as unwillingly) into these "bubbles" of safe havens where we aren't questioned, provoked or adequately challenged. Especially since I believe that knowingly or unknowingly, we all seek these bubbles for the same reason that all this information exists: We simply cannot cope with the sheer magnitude of it. Processing information properly requires relating to it, be it global warming, riots in Lybia and neighboring countries, death camps in North Korea, radiation from Fukushima, US foreign policies, local elections, slaughterings in Darfur, Palestine and Israel, starving children in Africa, Indian workers killing themselves for pennies making our clothes... The list goes on and on, and just writing this fraction of events down which we're all supposed to relate to, makes me want to crawl into a bubble.

So yes, we should make sure that these algorithms don't aide us in our instinct to reclude ourselves, but a 9-minute talk is nothing but a baby step in even explaining the magnitude of the task at hand.

...getting strangely aroused by this thought of miniature sattelites of something-point-something cm length being launched anywhere...?

...the cut scene frenzy and extreme linearity of playing Assassin's Creed makes it very much like watching a movie, so it makes sense they may just as well make them full-fledged ones. Not much point in interacting anyway, when all you're doing is helping to drive a plot forward.

Where I'm from - Denmark - companies aren't allowed to keep credit card information stored. Why is this allowed in the USA? It seems completely retarded and totally unnecessary. If you're making so many purchases that you're getting arthritis from putting in your credit card data every time, get a paypal account and put some money on that instead.

"1-click buy?" When did saving a couple of dozen of keystrokes become good reason to allow someone to store your credit card data?

Interesting. My colleague just said, "Ha! They've probably been stalking him for years, and just decided that it was time now as they couldn't benefit any longer from him being alive."

"You crazy conspiracy theorist," I said, and while going to the coffee maker I thought, "Even if that were true, why would they choose now to do this anyway?" And then I thought about how the US is bummed for money, and quite frankly cannot afford the current level of foreign military involvement, and having Osama taken out could be used to justify starting to pull troops out again.

Then I thought, "Damn - this guy's NOT gonna make me believe his crazy theories! And even still, no way Americans would be fooled by this to convince them it's valid cause to start pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan!"

And then I start checking my RSS feed, and this is comment #1:

Damn! :D

Having to buy the target device hardware you're developing for and having to buy new hardware to provide your development platform are two different things. The argument made was not whether or not you should buy a phone (both dev environments provide emulators anyway), but if you were forced to buy a new computer.

Then he'd use that.