Yes, road signs on turnpikes should be in both miles and kilometers, and speedometers should provide both mph and kph. The reason being safety: having to mentally convert between the systems is an unnecessary distraction for a driver who is attempting to keep a ton or more of lethal machine under control at high speed.

Where immediate safety is not a concern, let the vendor choose between the two systems. Most people these days can pull out their cell phone or pocket calculator and do any conversion they require. The few who cannot do this probably need other help in managing day to day activities so they can just ask someone how many kilograms are in a quart of blueberries.

User: open valves 12 through 84 for 12 minutes.
System: opening valves 12 through 84 for 12 minutes will dump 3012 tons of H2SO4 into the reactor core, which will result in fatal system failure and cause a massive explosion.

User: fuck you, I am the user.

System: opening valves 12 through 84, 11:59 minutes until valve shutdown. ..... 12 minutes later:

User: UNDO UNDO.... ... BAM...

You checked the box at your last doctor's visit that allowed your clinic to share your personal, non-identifying information about your condition for research purposes. And since you have now publicly disclosed your medical condition, not me, we can now use your comment and likeness in a public awareness campaign we're launching in your area on male impotence.

Yours truly,

Big Pharma

I have a patent on that form of intra-oral medication delivery and since I haven't licensed it for commercial production, you'll owe me $150,000 per rusty funnel used so far by you, henceforce referred to as "John 'Rusty Funnel' Doe, Defendant", $15 million for the rights to use the rusty funnel -- a 1 year limited, non-exclusive license, treble the amount of any profits incurred through the use of the rusty funnel intra-oral delivery system, and $150 million in legal fees due to us being forced to defend our intellectual property.

"You think that one of the biggest, most powerful companies in America is secretly a profiteer who spends his nights beating the tar out of citizens in court... and your plan... is to blackmail this company? Good luck." -- Morgan Freeman

There's a website for that problem. And just so we're clear; There's a lot of lingo us Americans don't understand. Calling gas "petrol", for example, or a semitruck a "lorry". Seems just a bit hinky, if you ask me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to shove off and go do the needful somewhere.

You freeloaders should be ashamed. It takes a lot of money to do that kind of research, and all these poor, defenseless companies are doing is protecting their investment by patenting the genes they discovered so if and when they choose to further develop it, they will make a reasonable perfectly reasonable 3000% profit on every pill sold.

Not only that, but I think you're all forgetting a very important point here: This virus kills quickly, and any treatment would only last a few days. Where's the profit in that? Sure, it'll kill you, but you as a patient are worth far less than the guy with the limp dick and a few extra bucks to eat pills to make him hard again.

If you want the situation to change, you need to get sick with diseases that are treatable but long-term. We're simply not interested in short-term illness, regardless of whether it kills you or not. Any cures or treatments for a short-term illness are purely accidental and you should be thankful we even bothered to develop it and market it! Ungrateful poor people... jeez. Why can't you all just dry up and die?

Yours Truly,

Big Pharma

P.S. I know you're taking Ritalin your friend gave you to do better on the finals. Contact me privately and I can hook you up with a doctor of questionable repute who will give you your very own legal script. Remember: Unless it comes from Big Pharma, it's a Bad Drug(tm).

Yes, very definitely. My comment was only meant in the context of accidentally destroying important data, or some such. Certainly if it could result in personal harm you would not want to do it. In most circumstances, anyway. I can think of a few exceptions.

Hahahahaha! Good one.

You are being funny but I've known guys with a couple of degrees that get taken by used car salesmen. The problem is there is "book smarts" and "street smarts" and just because you have one does NOT mean you have the other and in today's society you really do need both.

Now as far as the test in TFA? You'd probably need to give them an eye exam before giving them this "test" as that would be hard as hell to do if you didn't have 20/20 or an up to date prescription on your glasses, but on a positive note at least its not as irritating as the stupid word questions on the IQ test. The one I remember went something like "your neighbor cuts down a tree limb which then falls and damages your brand new car" and every single response they had was just so opposite compared to how any normal human being would ever act I just had to sit there and think what kind of person writes those tests because obviously they had never dealt with other human beings in their entire life.

"...you will lose those "rights" the moment a pressing global need calls for their exclusive use"

Good luck extracting that info from my brain or finding my hidden cache elsewhere across the globe. Also, good luck stopping my dead man's trigger attached to said cache.

See, I already took that into consideration. Fuck with me, my trigger sends the encryption key to a trusted person in another country, they make the transferring sale, and I get that money in the form of US Debt transferred to me.

Then I default you on your debt, even in prison. (and I say YOUR debt because I have none personally.)

Instant end of America. Considering there are several countries that hold HUGE amounts of US Debt, and I gave them each a quad-encrypted copy.

Already planned for these. Did so ten years ago when I first started working on this tech.

Best part, due to my body chemistry, 'truth-serum' simply makes me pass out. And I'm not prone to hypnosis of any sort.

I've got better anti-torture training than your own soldiers - my grandfather made goddamned sure of that.

Bring it if you think you've got the balls.

"How is that wrong? He said "that hits it", you are talking about "emitted"."

And by emitted, we're talking about from the earth. Now there's tons of other stuff that will screw up the beam, inverse square, snell's law, dust, etc.

At the retroreflector, you get about 1/4 of emited light from earth.

and out of those photons emitted from earth, only one typically makes it back under the most IDEAL conditions.

Protip: Emission means originating source, not reflection.

Try inverse square law and Snell's law and get back to me when you work with light for a living.

Ultimately, your goal is to get paid. If you don't do what the customer wants, you have failed to achieve your goal.

It is acceptable to try to dissuade them. It is acceptable to warn them. But document it when you do. And if they still want it despite all your warnings and attempts to convince, then give it to them. That's what you're getting paid for. If they complain later, show them your documentation and where they insisted even though you advised against it.

I once worked for a company that demanded the ability to do X in the software, despite my warnings that it was a bad idea. So I put in confirmations. When they first clicked the button to do X, it first popped up a message saying "This will result in _____. Are you sure you want to do this?". If they clicked Yes, then another confirmation popped up: "Are you really sure?" And if they clicked yes again, a third confirmation popped up: "Are you really, really, REALLY sure?"

An administrator mentioned to me later that he thought the warnings were funny, but he liked the fact they were there.

That's putting the cart before the horse.......you haven't even built your product yet, and you're worried, not about what your users will do with it, but how they will legally protect what they do with it. Two steps ahead (not to mention there's already protection).

Spending too much time worrying about problems that don't exist yet is one of the many ways you can sink a startup. It's similar to sitting there dreaming, "what will you do with all your money when we're rich?"