Biofuels are nifty, but they will never scale to run an industrial civilization at current levels without creating an ecological disaster.

You didn't actually need a "think-tank" to figure this out. A hand calculator and the ability to use Google would have done just as well.

They could, collectively, save themselves in a fairly trivial manner. All they'd have to do is suck it up, let governments tax them, and purchase legislation benefiting the great unwashed (i.e. the 99%) with the same zeal applied to purchasing legislation designed to maximize profits and minimize business risk.

It won't happen, of course. Rich sociopaths are psychologically incapable of seeing themselves as evil, or as the cause of their own problems, and so we have another "French revolution" cycle approaching. It's evolution in action, of course. The problem will be whittled down a bit as wealthy sociopaths are killed en masse and the world gets its parasite load back down to a survivable level, until the cycle happens again.

And it will happen again.

Accidents do happen. People come home at odd times. Obviously the agencies are less than flawless. If they start breaking into people's homes, a few will get shot.

So, they'll job out this to criminals, who will hit your house later. No skin off the NSA's nose. This, however, will result in a few less criminals. Not bad.

Individual bad actors will always have access to unbreakable surveillance. Even now, there are encryption systems quite capable of foiling any agency.

All this does is make the agency unable to do mass trolling of the citizenry. You only object to that if you assume that the enemy is the citizenry.

Google Tinder. C'mon, you know it'll be one of the first apps developed.

Preferably in black, unstylish eyeglass frames.

I don't want to advertise the fact that I'm wearing this thing. Google geeks may think it's the coolest status symbol ever. I don't. And I don't care. I want to use the map feature, get the weather report.

Yes, I know it can give me automatic Yelp reports, tell me who and what's around, get me dates, show me movies and deliver specs on my computer by looking.

I could care less. I'll use the maps. And the weather. Maybe news, if I'm waiting for a bus. If they want me to buy it, it has to be cheap and boring.

Poor managers only manage up, only look at spreadsheets, and only look for short term gains and bonuses before they jump ship to the next company leaving someone else to clean up their mess.

Deferred bonuses for 3 to 5 years would fix this nicely - meaning a manager have to be around in 5 years, and still employed at the same place, to pick up their bonus - better still if paired with an "anti-bonus" if they do poorly. It would also mean that managers would have to live with what they create, and deal with the consequences of firing experienced staff and hiring a bunch of semi-qualified overseas programmers.

I'm pretty sure that would stop the "disposable worker" issue quickly. I'm also sure that it will never happen. It's managers who see companies as "disposable" and who make the policies.

It's NOT an art form. If you're a programming diva and you see, Oh, sob! Bad, sloppy programming practices...!

Blah, blah, blah. We've heard it all before.

Software is about producing something usable for money. You don't expect the bricklayer of your house to be an architect with a doctorate. You don't expect the guys nailing boards together to be either. Similarly, every person who makes money programming something doesn't need to know every aspect of software development down to the level of the circuitry, nor do they need to do it perfectly.

Sometimes you need a skyscraper. Other times, you need a quick shed in the back yard. Usually, you need something in-between.

Can there be problems or maintenance issues? Sure. I need to replace bricks and board every so often too. All structures are imperfect and must be adapted to changing conditions (Rotting wood, rotting OSs, etc.)

What these ivory tower assholes don't want to admit is that software development is a construction business like any other. They want their perfect constructions to exist forever in Platonic Space as perfect contemplative objects...

Get real. I hire the programmers I can afford. We fix it later if needs be. That's the real world, and that's how it will always be.

Since I'm engaged in humorous speculation, I posit that stable vacuum events are either limited in size and scope or that they travel at less than C, or both.

Speaking of which, does the inside of a black hole qualify as a more stable type of vacuum? Being a fairly ignorant sort, can a physics guy out there enlighten me?

No worries ladies and gents. Just some black hole or star being absorbed into a circle of more stable vacuum than the twitchy sort of vacuum we have over here. Move along. Move along. There's literally nothing to see there.

Look at your own experiences with governments, phone companies, cable companies, banks.

The kind of focused, reasonable analysis needed to produce workable products seems to end when the greatest concerns in the organization are self serving personal behavior and organizational preservation.

Which means that Microsoft is at the mercy of some dimwitted manager who's had a brainwave and somebody's ear. The results are usually disasterous (e.g. Windows 8 interface, Powershell interface instead of VBScript.net, the lack of realistic automated language migration from something like Winforms to ASP, WPF, etc. which could have been avoided with forethought and better design...). Somebody wanted their good review and their bonus. That's all it's about now at Microsoft, or any large organization.

And thus be seen for the closet corporate fascists that they are. Holder didn't go far enough, and neither did Obama (He never so much as mentioned it). The practice needs to end nationally, via federal law.

But it's still one of the best self-satirizong, surrealistic horror/comedies on television.

And the reason this happens, is because doctors so often can't come up with a fix (See article). Seriously, we have a medical system that has, after centuries, been unable to cure many cancers, arthritis, obesity, diabetes, etc. I suffered from insomnia for years. The approved drugs were all crap, pretty much. I now rotate a series of herbs with different modes of action, never repeating them for more than one night in a row. Result? No addiction problems and a sound sleep. Tell me how our current medical research system would ever come up with this trivially cheap and effective solution.

Not home doctoring. It's guerrilla medicine. It's not optimal. What is?

Oddly, I actually agree here. If I had to enforce anything that I though would help, it would be price transparency and published outcomes. That would also reduce the "run them through the mill" problem. Outcomes here can get pretty lousy.