The press release says the user doesn't need to know anything about how their tool works. So obviously it will infer the appropriate solution and implement that too.

Actually the printf example is one of the easiest to implement. You'll receive a sheet of paper with "Hello World" printed on it in 6-8 weeks.

If I only had a video camera every time I heard someone say, "Man didn't evolve from apes, God created man. It says so right here in the Bible!" ? However, I thought comments like this occurred so often, that no one would ever deny they are made.

If you've never heard something close to that said, you obviously have never encountered fundamentalist Christians.

Wha wha wha. The EE (electrical engineering) program I attended was designed as an 18 credit hour program in order to graduate in 4 years. I knew several students taking 20 credit hours. I did the program in 5 years, but that's because I took a year off to work an internship.

I thought the guys taking 20 were crazy (but brilliant), and 18 was certainly a heavy load, but 6 years for a 15 credit hour program is B.S. I know several teachers, and they easily completed the program in 5 years, some in 4.

If only Britannica would have patented cataloging a large amount of factual information in an indexed fashion...

In the USA we have them too, they are called insurance companies and HMOs. No matter what you call it (death panels vs health board), or who is doing it (insurance company vs government), it is rationing. Rationing is not an evil word, it is simply a description of reality.

When there is limited supply (of resource or money) the amount of the resource consumed (health care) is rationed. In a purely market based solution the rationing is accomplished by those with $$$ buying up the supply and leaving those without, well without. In a regulated (insurance or government) system, some panel will determine the rationing.

In the USA, we pay a lot more per subscriber for our insurance, so the insurance company will provide more services before cutting you off. However we do not distribute this evenly over the entire population, as those without insurance get poorer (although they still get emergency) service. Europe smears the service evenly among its citizens, but funds it at a lower level per subscriber so they have to ration it earlier.

In Europe, if you bought private insurance on top of the public health, you can get USA style health care for similar cost. Although due to the small number of people participating it can be hard to find private providers.

My grandfather died recently. He was 91 and had been in extremely poor health for 5 years. After a recent infection the doctors wanted to go to drastic measures to treat him. Why? He was miserable, wanted to die years ago. After the infection he was in much worse shape and the little quality of life he had was completely gone. They would have done exploratory surgery to find the source of some bleeding in his urine. Most likely he had a cancer of some sort. They would have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on a procedure that would have put him in much greater pain, and in his condition would probably have killed him anyway.

Thankfully grandpa's health directive was clear, and all his kids supported it, so the doctors were fine with putting him in hospice. However, they told us if one of his three children would have complained, they would have treated him with heroic efforts even despite his health care directive and the objection of the person assigned as power of attorney.

They said it happens frequently, they don't even agree with it, but they have to do it to protect themselves from wrongful death law suits. I don't have statistics to back this up, but my gut feeling tells me its this last 2 weeks of futile expensive health care that is going to make Medicare insolvent. And the reason it's expensive now when it didn't used to be, is simply that the surgery technology now exists to be used and it didn't before. 30 years ago, the only option for someone in my grandfather's situation was hospice.

Its an awful moral dilemma. Assume that 20% of those procedures turn out well. Well then it seems horrible to not try it on everyone in case they're one of that 20%. But if we simply can't afford it what do we do?

So, I say the good outcome rate for the procedure needs to be greater than 50% for Medicare to pay for it. Lower than that and you have to pay for it yourself. Assuming I'm right about the cause of Medicare insolvency, this probably would solve it.

Or places with hail.

Unless Elton John is their target market, these things are doomed.

Since that is obviously an uninformed opinion, I will post about baseline power.

BPA operates 31 hydroelectric power plants in the Pacific Northwest which supply about 1/3 of the electric power in the region. They also operate around 3/4 of the high-voltage transmission lines in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, western Montana and small parts of eastern Montana, California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

Source: http://www.bpa.gov/corporate/about_BPA/Facts/FactDocs/BPA_Facts_2009.pdf

Regardless of why they shutdown their nuclear and coal plants, this means there is significantly more power generation demand than what BPA can provide. Since BPA's power is hydro, it does supply baseline power. But at only 1/3 of the region's power needs, that is not enough baseline power for the region. Since BPA operates most of the high voltage lines, they deliver (but do not generate) most of the power in the region. They are delivering power from a mixture of coal, natural gas, and renewable sources. These other renewables do not provide baseline power like BPA's hydro does, because they only work when the sun shines or the wind blows.

Hyrdo does serve as a baseline renewable power source, but we aren't going to be seeing any more of that. Environmental concerns have not only halted nuclear power, but also construction of new dams. Until we get an efficient and environmentally sound way to store wind and solar power, renewables will always be limited to providing just a fraction of our power.

Although I suppose Windows 8 on a tablet might be a compelling hardware design, ARM is actually targeting the Windows server market. So the whole x86 thing might be less of an issue there.

But once you are a successful company, the troll tax also serves to inhibit startup competitors. There's only one thing corporations hate worse than competition. And that's new competition. Unfortunately the ones who would benefit the most from real patent reform are small independent entrepreneurs and the public at large, and they are unorganized.