Great question.

I heard in one of the presidential speeches that the need for foot solders is waning and more highly trained technical personnel is waxing.

So, to take your hypothetical question even further . . . what happens when 20% or even 50% of the workforce is no longer needed to produce what we all need to survive or even thrive? How do the economics work out then?

" . . . just like America's manufacturing has been hollowed out by offshoring and globalization . . ." America's manufacturing "jobs" have been hollowed out more by our automation efforts than off-shoring and globalization. America's manufacturing output is up over the last couple of decades, but for every 100+ factory floor workers you now have a single highly trained technician watching over and tweaking the equipment.

I'm thinking that it is pretty difficult to do a burn out in a Prius, but it is pretty easy in a Miata. It varies, depending upon the year, but for older ones, they should be near 140hp in an about 2300lb car with rear wheel drive and a 4.++:1 drive ratio. At these numbers burn-outs are easy to achieve with little problem, even when unwanted. As they say on automotive boards, "ask me how I know" or "don't ask me how I know," depending upon outcome.

Thus, your advice to get a Miata to do burn-outs if one can't do them in a Mustang is probably good advice. I don't think it holds up well for the Prius, though.

I'm not so interested in recording all of my life, but I'd love to have at least a 30 minute buffer of recording going at all times. Then when something cool happens, I can tap my Google Googles, or whatever the tool turns out to be, and have that bit saved.

Hard to find, but worth the hunt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

Good question, but it's not really an issue for Dropbox as that service maintains full local copies on each of the computers I have on my account.

If you haven't listen to this podcast from This American Life yet, you should. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

The post mentioned "The jets [...] shoot off at supersonic speeds..." While determining supersonic speed requires not being in a vacuum, once you know what speed supersonic-speed is, can it not be used as a measuring stick for comparison? If I'm moving at a snails pace, I'm likely not crawling across the ground, in fact, I could be doing any number of non-transportive activities that could be claimed to be at a snails pace.

When you consider the size of the earth and the moon and the actual distance they are apart from each other, even if you account for the gravitation-well the earth could provide for passing objects, the earth provides very little shielding for the moon.

Great example of the slippery slope logical fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope). Going from me having that option to you, my family, or the government having the option to end my life requires much more than just an assumption that could occur.

...and a "GREAT" landing is one after which you can use the airplane again.

I might have to agree with you on that one!

Thanks nedlohs.

Funny how the ratio of Anonymous Coward comments to logged in user comments seems to have spiked on this thread.

Only one error in 100,000 miles -- I'll take that in a heartbeat over the thoughtless people I drive beside each day. I guarantee the best drivers have more than 1 bug in 100K miles.