You are entirely correct. And that is what I have migrated to doing.

I'd like to thank the Academy, my producer, and of course, all of the little people...

So my wife says, "Can you buy me this song?"

So I go to my computer and open my Windows Virtual Machine.
And I start Itunes.
And it tells me that since I haven't used Itunes in months, I need to update iTunes to the latest version. So I do.
And then I find the song.
And I buy it.
And download it.
And then since my wife wants it for her mp3 player, not for an apple device, I need to run it through SoundConversion.
And then I can put it on media and give it to my wife to use.

Or, I could go to TPB or KAT and download the album, already in mp3 format.

Yeah. Same amount of work.

As the anti-piracy crap is going by, and then the mandatory previews, I say to myself "If I had only pirated this, I'd already be watching the movie."

Whenever I go to itunes store, I say to myself "this would be so much easier to pirate than to buy. Less time, and I'd already be listening."

It's not about the cost. It's about the convenience.

So let me preface this by saying I am not trying to be facetious.

On what basis do we say "not warmer than today"? I know there is a lot of research that has been done demonstrating warming in the last several decades. Is there any research that has been done to determine optimum temperature?

Huge tracts of land in Canada and Russia are plagued by short growing seasons. Would a longer growing season in these regions allow us to grow more food to feed the (7 billion?) people of earth?

Or would cooling the earth make Africa better able to feed their own people?

Has anyone ever tried to quantify this?

Well, in the last two thousand years, we've had the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. So we've had some genuinely large variation.

How do we pick a specific mean temperature that doesn't tick off somebody, somewhere? Do we look to cool equatorial regions to lessen droughts? Or do we warm temperate regions to prolong the growing season? Who decides what the climate optimum is?

If we're going to make an engineering target, then we have to have a means to choose the proper end result.

Sure. Let's engineer it. Just tell me what the optimum global mean temperature is, and I'll get right on it.

(It's no more difficult than any of the other projects that I've been assigned. "Invent a machine that can do X. At a lower cost than a worker in China."

Oops. NASA isn't getting 6.3 Million in rent per year, they are saving 6.3 million in Maintenance costs per year. They are getting something like 16M/year in rent.

Yeah. That's a hardship.

"While this arrangement did not cause an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy, it did result in considerable savings for H211 and engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favoritism toward H211 and its owners. "

So nobody lost money. It sounds like Google found a way to save money (thus being good stewards of corporate cash).

In 2011 Google offered to pay a big chunk of restoration costs for the hanger, and NASA instead decided to sell or lease it. It was used for Star Trek in 2009, but other than that it seems to have sat empty.

So instead of an empty unused hanger, NASA is getting 6.3 million per year for the next 60 years.

I really don't see who is losing anything here.

Idiots. They should have used i and j.
Or better yet, give self-documenting variable names so as to create legible code.

Yep. If I can see farther than others, it's only because I stand on the shoulders of hobbits.

I've been programming/copying code since 1988.

I started with example code from, jeez, Turbo Pascal 4.0. Find an example. Modify it to fit my needs. I got to learn C on the job about two years later. I had some Microsoft C reference book. Lots of programming examples. Then x86 Assembler. By then I was lifting code out of one section of the project I was working on, and putting it somewhere else.

Then Unix kernel work on a trusted system. "Oh, look. That same privilege-checking routine is used in about a zillion places throughout the kernel. Why do I need to write something new and different, when we already have a routine that works? Oh yeah, I don't."

Somewhere along the way, Google became a thing. It made coding easier because you could simply search for what you were trying to accomplish. Chances are someone has done something similar. (Thanks guy who wrote FullDuplexSerial, and SPI interface routines for the Parallax Propeller...)

I'm not certain why Duke wants to punish these guys. They are figuring out how to get things done in a timely manner without reinventing the wheel over and over again.

The Prophet would be proud.

Or not. Depending on which faction you ask.

Even under the FAA's proposed new stricter definition, what these guys were flying was NOT a drone. It was a model aircraft.

Ãoe(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere; (2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating the aircraft; and (3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes.Ã

As a model aircraft, it is outside of FAA flight rules. (The FAA published suggested guidelines, but these do not carry any enforcement weight as they are only recommendations.)

Actually the sig is from a Star Wars:Expanded Universe novel. From Han Solo. I just thought it was fun.

Yep. Think tanks are often in it for the money. Nothing evil about money. I think both sides of the debate have their liars and their fools. (Not saying Bengtsson was either. He certainly has the CV to not be called out as a fool. I find it unsettling that so many on one side of the debate have jumped out to do so.)

Whether or not Bengtsson would have fit in at GWPF is unclear. We won't know. He wasn't really given the opportunity to find out.