I've always seen geeks as individuals that are "supersaturated" with knowledge of a particular discipline. There can be math geeks, computer geeks, star trek geeks, movie geeks, car geeks, sports geeks... But just because one is a geek does not in-and-of-itself mean one is a nerd.

Nerd is a title granted to individuals with two characteristics: high intelligence combined with a complete absence of social prowess. It's the latter trait that often distinguishes the geeks and the nerds. I've seen plenty of geeks in my life that are not nerds; as intelligent individuals with the ability to socialize, they are quite pleasant conversationalists. I have seen some nerds who aren't geeks; those individuals possess great intelligence not isolated to a particular discipline, but are very difficult to communicate with.

The problem with justice is determining who deserves it. Measuring culpability is no simple science.

If we're talking about murder, then let's consider motive. Who is more culpable: one who kills in cold blood or one who kills in passion? Let's be more specific: murderer A robs a bank, and during the robbery, shoots the teller; murderer B is a law-abiding citizen whose daughter was raped by a depraved individual, and in a moment of passion, he hunts down and kills the rapist. Both committed murder, but who deserves justice?

I think as a society we would agree that while both murderers are responsible for their actions, murderer B is less responsible than murderer A, as his emotional state, induced by a signifantly emotional and personal event, led to a crime of passion rather than murderer A's act of cold blood, and that murderer B is much less depraved than murderer A. As such, we would apply a significantly lower punishment on murderer B than on murderer A.

Now, no matter what the circumstances, murderer A's going down. But let's see how this plays out sans the 5th for murderer B. Without the Fifth Amendment, one of two things happen: Either he/she lies about committing the murder, or he/she tells the truth about committing the murder. And here's where the fifth amentment makes the difference...

Say murderer B lies about the killing, and is caught doing so. The act of committing a lie will very likely prejudice the measurement of their culpability by the judge or jury. (The human thought process would be something along the lines of: "If he's capable of lying under oath, what else is he capable of?") This would negatively impacting the sentence given.

On the other hand, say murderer B admits his guilt. Then there's no need for a prosecutor to measure culpability. Why does the state need to know why it happened, when it has an admission of guilt served up on a silver platter? The motive for the crime is now irrelevant and moot. While a plea deal might be worked out to reduce the sentence, murderer B will get stuck with likely the same punishment as murderer A. This then also negatively impacts the sentence given.

Pleading the fifth forces the state to carry out a trial, find facts, analyze them, and deliberate on them. This will provide a much more accurate measurement of culpability, allowing the state to offer murderer B a more appropriate punishment to best fit the individual's crimes.

I would consider the 4th Amendment a critical tool as well. I guess it's just a matter of choosing which tool is right for the job.

No one said the machines didn't work. The point is that going back to old voting machines is an epic failure of the political system in the 21st century.

Electronic voting is very simple, as long as it follows one cardnal rule: include the paper trail.

1) Create a PoV (point-of-vote) touchscreen machine w/ touchscreen that's networkable. When the user is done voting, the machine sends an electronic tally to a state / national database to keep count.
2) PoV machine also prints out a receipt for every voter after voting is complete, with detailed results that the voter can read and visually verify. Receipt includes a machine-readible 2D barcode.
3) Receipt gets fed into an on-site audit machine that's not networked. It reads in all the paper receits, scans the barcodes, and keeps a separate count on-site. It's count is audited against the count in the state / national database as the first layer of verifying vote integrity.
4) A random sampling of polling places perform paper counts of the receipts, which are then matched with both the machine-audit count and state/national database count as a second layer of verifying vote integrity.

Bam, there you have it. Electronic voting with instantaneous results providing continual updates regarding vote counts which still require two levels of auditing including a paper-trail to preserve vote integrity. And all this could have been done with technology that's been around for 15 years.

But capitalism has messed it up. Diebold gets contracts, palms get greased, and citizens get screwed.

Allan Savory gave a really good Ted Talk a few months ago backing up that claim with a substantial amount of science and experience. I hope you're not too lazy to watch all twenty-two minutes of it, but if you are, let me give you a quick synopsis. Dr. Savory states that the majority of our global warming issues are due to desertification (the destruction of grasslands and their transformation into desert areas), and he claims that 50% of the CO2 in the atmosphere can be removed simply by ceasing unsustainable agriculture practices and converting these lands into grasslands for grazing.

I believe this is the news article you're looking for.

sometimes the cheapest (and *correct*) option is to stay on an "outdated" platform.

Has anyone ever tried to leverage Microsoft into creating an IE6 emulation environment within Win7 & IE10? Wouldn't this do a better overall job of providing upgrade paths with a modern platform?

If Microsoft can keep adding newer .NET libraries without removing the older ones, why not just include old IE libraries and call on them when necessary from newer versions?

Even a small portion of the money saved over the years could be used to upgrade ancient systems to modern standards.

Last November, I made my last $237/month student loan payment. Imagine how much money I could be saving now. In fact, I could've use a small portion of that money to help pay off my credit card.

Guess what I did in November? Bought a new car. $300/month payments.

You know very well where that money went. On other things. On new company cars, and other things. Lined a few pockets and greased a few palms too, I'm sure. Didn't get saved, though.

(For the record, I needed to replace my 96 Olds Ciera...237K was pushing it. Didn't need a car that expensive. Wanted it, though.)

Over the last eight years and my previous three ISPs, my router has never once received anything other than a 192.168.x.x or a 10.x.x.x IP address from my local ISP. Not once have I received a live & legit IPv4 address. I have to pay a lot more for those. What's the difference between this and CGNAT?

I can explain it with some data regarding my car, a 2011 Kia Sportage. Some would call it a crossover, other would call it a supersized hatchback.

2.4L 176hp four-banger w/ 6-speed transmission. EPA rated it at 21/28. It has an onboard mpg-meter that I've found to be pretty accurate. When cruising on the highway in optimal conditions (no wind, flat terrain, warm weather, inflated tires, etc.), I get:

34 mpg driving 45 mph
32 mpg driving 50 mph
31 mpg driving 55 mph
28 mpg driving 60 mph
27 mpg driving 65 mph
25 mpg driving 70 mph

In addition, the six speed transmission has *barely* enough power to maintain cruising speeds in its highest gear. Any time you accelerate, experience a headwind, go up any hill, drive with a cold car, or have a lot of weight in your vehicle, it doesn't use the highest gear and instead pushes back one or two gears for additional power, dropping your fuel efficiency further.

So, there are considerable variables there that will cause wide variation with highway driving. Grandma and grandpa will be very pleased that they get 32 mpg driving on the highway, while joe leadfoot will probably return the vehicle complaining it only gets 25 mpg (or less) on the highway.

In addition, I only get 12.5 mpg driving in the city. I live in a "city" of 5,000 people. My trek two-and-from work is 2 miles each way. I have six four-way stop signs between here and work. The fastest street I can drive on has a limit of 30 mph. My car is parked outside overnight, and I don't let my car warm up for more than one minute before driving it. Any other city driving is very similar. And that's all why I don't get the EPA-rated 21 mpg in the city.

Even the president has declared them guilty. Guess I should just throw in the towel.

“Whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not, cannot, prevail. Whatever they thought they could achieve, they’ve already failed.” -- President Obama (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/19/17823265-we-got-him-boston-bombing-suspect-captured-alive?lite)

For all we know, they were commiting a crime of an unrelated nature.

My point has not changed from my original post; I am tired of this bloody spectacle. The news has been fixated on this even for the past four days, and it has done nothing but reinforce fear and paranoia within our society. While the odds are high that these men are guilty, we should not let our personal opinions interfere with our judgement or our civility. I thought a little satire in my parent post would make this point, but I guess it didn't.

Is it safe to go out now?

I mean, before this case is even brought before a courtroom, police have already done the finger pointing, and the court of public opinion has already found him guilty. And how could either of them be wrong?

How many water pipes reach your house? How many sewer pipes?

We got ourselves a city slicker here. Fella, don't know how long it's been since you've seen pasture, but I'm not quite sure you got yourself an understandin' of how things work out in the country. Lemme give ya' a little lesson.

Out in the country, we don't run water & sewer pipes. We drill wells for water, and we use septic tanks to keep our shit.

Now, unless you've found a way to shove a grounding rod in the dirt, jack it to your computer, and pick up internet access free of charge, your analogy's fallin' flatter than a flapjack.

Country bunk aside, my point is simply this: We cannot easily afford to make broadband a "utility" for rural residents. It's not like water and sewer that we can pump out of the ground and then back into the ground. If we're going to guarantee access to all, we collectively have to pay for rural residents, who are much, much, much more expensive to run lines to.

I concur with the position that our laws should not be authored by corporations and should not be passed using the influence of campaign financing.

That being said, I support the bill. As a teacher, if I were to ask my students to take a survey in class, then aggregate the data and sell the results to a corporation eager to know how to market to that age group, I would be fired. Then why should a school condone corporations like Google or Facebook to permit the same activity? As a parent, I would be very upset to know that schools are allowing corporations to harvest marketing data while at school. And as a taxpayer, I want as little corporate involvement in our public school as possible.

I just wish Microsoft wasn't involved. Especially given all the illegal acts Microsoft has committed over the last two decades, it's almost the pot calling the kettle black.