Where have you been since 1997? Since then you've been able to consistently spend roughly $200 per video card and play the latest games at acceptable settings. That's why people cast a sneer at a $1,000 card let alone a $650 card that in of itself can build a really fast computer.

...Is almost certainly the correct answer.

We've managed to take principled stands against things like paying ransoms to hostage takers for years, recognising that even though the consequences in an individual case may be horrible it is important not to lend any credibility to the strategy of taking hostages.

Today we are seeing a few very small groups of people, who want to instil fear to promote some sort of ideological position, who actually do relatively little damage but do it in ostentatious ways to seek attention. How is it that our political leaders and media reporters think the correct response to this strategy is to give these people exactly the attention they crave, with wall-to-wall graphic media coverage and inflammatory political statements full of phoned-it-in remorse and concern? If we want to disrupt people who support terrorism, perhaps we should start with all the influential people who are making terrorism a viable strategy in the first place.

I'm pretty sure the correct reaction to these kinds of incidents is to allow the police to investigate, to put the perpetrators on trial, and in this case probably to send them to prison for life like any other murderer. Meanwhile, the politicians and media could spend their time promoting (both politically and with funding) things like medical research or safer driving, either of which has the potential to save many more lives in a single year than preventing every terrorist attack that has occurred in the same places in my entire lifetime.

Yhl. Yhbt. Hand.

While researching Asperger's (after my son's diagnosis), I read that Aspies tend to think in If-Then scenarios. For my son, this means that using If-Then statements are highly effective if you want him to do something. For example, if you say "Get your shoes on!", he'll continue to watch TV. If you say "If you get your shoes on, then we can go to the store", he'll get his shoes on.

As far as social situations are concerned, however, If-Thens are horrible. Social situations have tons of grey areas and complex rules that If-Thens can't account for. Someone with Asperger's can build up a "social rules dictionary" of If-Then statements, but it is tough to keep it all in your mind and "run" it real-time. ("If this person looks at me like this, then she means that... unless this situation comes up then this other thing.... unless a third thing happens then.....")

Computers (programming in particular) is all about If-Thens. All of the loops and statements and code essentially boils down to "If you get this input, then do this." Thus, working with computers can come naturally to people with Asperger's unlike social situations.

(I believe that I'm an Aspie as well considering my son's diagnosis and how alike my son and I are. I'd get diagnosed but that would cost money we don't have lying around and wouldn't help my son or me - as I've built up coping mechanisms for myself over the years.)

The rocking/spinning is called Stimming - or self-stimulation. It's utilized by those on the spectrum as a coping mechanism for situations (possibly including sensory overload) that they can't handle otherwise.

People with Asperger's aren't antisocial by choice. They don't readily understand the social rules that come naturally to other people. For example, if you ask my son (who was diagnosed with Asperger's) how his day was, you're probably looking for an answer along the lines of "It went pretty well." Instead, you'll get a second-by-second stream-of-consciousness replay of his entire day.

People with Asperger's can learn the social rules, but it takes effort to remember it all. This means that being social can be tiring. Add in the anxiety over getting something wrong and it becomes easier to not be social than it is to be social. All the while, the person with Asperger's WANTS to be social but finds it a tiring/anxiety-ridden affair.

It's worth noting here that neither point need actually move (or they could be moving towards each other a significant portion of the speed of light). It's the space in between which is growing longer.

No, people with Asperger's are high functioning Autistics. The good news is that they can usually function in day to day society. The bad news is that they mask their issues well enough that people can tell them they don't have any real problems. For the record, my son has Asperger's and I likely have it as well. (I'm not diagnosed because it would cost money to get the diagnosis and it wouldn't help me or my son at this point.)

Just because a few people take a social problem and joke "I must have Asperger's", don't think that anyone with Asperger's is just trying to pass blame off of themselves.

Where? Doesn't the observation have to support your claim first?

And it's worth noting the current quantum models already have a couple of senses in which photons can be partial. First, you can take energy away from a photon. Second, you can entangle a photon state with a non-photon state (such as the two slit experiment where a photon can entangle with itself while passing through two narrow slits, but not if you try to observe which slot it passed through).

I see that you get what you pay for. So your past benefits such as education have no financial value? Then how did you get that nice job? And you've already demonstrated that you're willing to spend money for the society thing which means you've given that some sort of financial value as well.

Why should I care? Ultimately, my desires are highly disengaged from public opinion in the rest of the world. Sure, the US government might find that being disliked is somewhat inconvenient, but I don't have much of an interest in furthering their wishes.

Generally the goverment doesn't decide who is and who isn't a troll. The Attorney General can only sue based on current law, and the judge getting the case can only decide based on current law. "Patent Troll" is not a legal term, and MPHJ doesn't get sued for being a patent troll, but for fraudulently representing what they are selling (licenses to patents they claim to have exclusive rights on, which they don't have, for instance).

Except that the Earth's motion relative to the galactic core already roughly matches that of the Sun (relative to the galactic core).

Lern2frameofreference.

What did you expect a leftist politician to look like?

Or at least, look to the uneducated observer like they might. And I see the order of magnitude drop in scientific productivity when you go from the private world to the public, unaccountable one.

There's also the PETA version where one generates a bogus controversy in order to lure in donations to a non profit which repeats the cycle as often as it can.