Education is the only option in the list which, if addressed properly, would lead to resolution or improvement of ALL the other options. How?

Educational level correlates with better awareness of one's health. If kids are taught from a young age to eat well in school (rather than left by the parents to just sit in front of the indoctrination box called the TV, watching endless advertisements for snacks and candy and fast food), we wouldn't be having an obesity and diabetes epidemic. Revitalize the school lunch programs, bring back mandatory physical education, and health education. Furthermore, educational level is a predictor of adult income levels, and the higher your income, the less you are forced to eat cheap processed fast foods as your main source of nutrition.

Education reduces crime and poverty rates, leading to less need for law enforcement, jails, and alleviates the overburdened court system. It also equalizes access to the legal system, which has become exorbitantly costly.

Education creates the engineers who build public works and infrastructure. With better education comes increased income and tax revenue, resulting in more monies to pay for such projects.

Education creates the scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technologists who run the space program, but education among ALL citizens more crucially increases AWARENESS of the importance of the role of such people in building the economy for future generations. Even if you don't go into a STEM career, having more than a GED-level education will show you the value of such positions in society.

Education reduces the need for large military forces. Smarter people don't fight wars because they don't GET into wars. Wars are fought because the people who have a political and/or financial interest to create conflict and profit off it, incite war through strategic foreign policy decisions. They manipulate and foment paranoia and fear in the public, in order to achieve their goals. Afghanistan and Iraq are the product of decades of foreign policy masterminded by Big Oil, using various excuses such as anti-communism and anti-terrorism, to justify spilling blood for their own profit. If people were better educated, they would be less susceptible to believing the lies that their government feeds them.

Education brings about scientific literacy and critical thinking skills, again allowing people to resist propaganda from climate change deniers (who are, like the military example above, shills from big business interests who are solely focused on short-term profit and are happy to destroy the environment for centuries to come as long as it makes them rich in their lifetime). If you lack those critical thinking skills, you won't know how to formulate questions about the world around you in a scientific and objective manner, and you won't be able to understand why scientific reasoning is fundamentally superior to religious, dogmatic, or ideological reasoning.

The only reason why we have so many problems in this world is because too many people are too damn stupid to know they are being manipulated by those who are in power. And the reason they are stupid is because they are KEPT that way by those in power. The LAST thing the government wants to do is make its citizens smart enough to question its motives and hold them and their campaign backers accountable. All they need from the people is to make them smart enough to turn on their TVs to watch Fox News, and know how to tap a touchscreen voting machine--and that's only until they figure out a way to eliminate the need for them to vote at all.

Precisely. The burden of proof is not on showing some improbably fanciful version of reality is false, but that what we can observe, quantify, test, and use to predict about the universe should be superseded by myths and superstition that have no such power. See Russell's teapot argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Geographically it may be close to the center, but I suggest that an alternative metric be used to compute the centroid, one that accounts for population density and per-capita network traffic volume. Even so, such a centroid may not be a particularly good candidate for a starting point, in as much as it makes little sense to claim that a good estimate for the roll of a fair six-sided die is 3.5 because that is the expected value of the outcome.

Cost aside, it would make more sense to build such a network in a heavy-traffic area, to see how questions of scalability and impact on end users will play out in the worse-case scenarios, rather than to build it in a small town only to discover the business model doesn't work for big cities. The reason why the former approach tends not to be chosen is because small towns are under-served for internet connectivity, their small size makes it feasible to lay out the infrastructure at less cost, and the lack of preexisting services and hardware makes adoption more likely.

Even so, the publisher's argument, as relayed by you, is obviously untenable. To claim that the word "under" refers to jurisdiction and in particular the location of production, would invalidate the copyright provisions of any product manufactured outside the US--that would include iPhones, which are designed in California but assembled and produced in China. Analogously, that a publisher may manufacture (i.e., print) a text outside the US whereas the author of its content may have written it anywhere in the world, does not and should not automatically mean that they are not subject to US copyright law.

So for instance, if Wiley's argument were to be considered valid, one would be forced to invalidate the doctrine of first sale for any device or product not made on American soil, even if it was designed or substantively created therein. That is so overly broad as to nullify the intent of the provision in the first place. And I would think that this must have been part of the rationale that the Supreme Court used in their judgment.

That Mr. Brin doesn't seem to understand the difference between the two words is not a good sign that he has carefully considered the point he wishes to make.

Do mobile devices (not just smartphones) have the potential to make face-to-face interaction less likely or desirable? Sure. Where we once needed to actually be in immediate proximity to another individual in order to sustain a meaningful dialogue or communication with them, we now have the convenience of tweeting them or posting something on their (heaven forbid) Facebook wall. We can text them, even if they are halfway around the globe. Does this necessarily decrease the quality of interaction? The most honest answer I can furnish is that it depends.

Throughout history, humans have been devising ways to make communication easier. We invented written languages, books, telegraphy, telephony, television, and the internet. We did all these things because we found it facilitated connection. Does it mean that when the telephone was invented, people started to lament that telephones were "emasculating" (sic) because they made it possible to talk to someone without being physically in the same room? That's an absurdly regressive, not to mention historically and technologically naive, view. It borders on sophistry.

Let's be clear that over-reliance on smartphones and mobile connectivity, to the point of eschewing physical interaction, is a definite phenomenon. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm an apologist for all the spoiled teens whose interactions with their peers is primarily through virtual, rather than real, means--and rack up the bills to show for it. Or that I'm excusing full-grown adults who insist on checking their feeds every 5 minutes, who can't be bothered to put their phones down for a real-life conversation in the flesh. But it is painfully obvious that Mr. Brin has an agenda here, which is to sell his company's glasses as the solution to this problem. As such, whatever legitimate criticisms he has lacks credibility because of his bias.

Moreover, there's another problem with Mr. Brin's accusations, and that is the unspoken assumption that these glasses *must* be an improvement. That is a claim that remains to be seen, because it isn't at all obvious. I, for one, would be very uneasy at the prospect of living in a society whose members are constantly recording each others' movements and activities. I suppose Mr. Brin (and Google) takes the attitude that we will simply become accustomed to this omnipresent surveillance, but I think that it is an entirely legitimate question to ask why we as a society SHOULD move in this direction in the first place. Thus far I have not seen any compelling rationale to do so.

In summary, I am distrustful of anyone who advocates for a new technology as a solution to a problem that is largely symptomatic of cultural attitudes and a lack of etiquette. Don't want your mobile devices to turn your social life into a virtual experience? The answer is not to buy the next fancy gadget, be it some silly-looking headwear or something yet to be invented, but to simply make the conscious decision to be a better person by interacting in person. And similarly there is a point at which a society needs to collectively decide for itself that it is better to experience the world first-hand, rather than through a handheld electronic device. To the extent that such a device facilitates that goal, the more power to it. That is the reason for technology--to enrich our lives, not become what we live our lives through.

Having to observe both American *and* Chinese holidays is a bit too much. Mid-Autumn festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the solar New Year, and the lunar New Year--and for each one I'm expected to go home and spend time with the parents. If the lunar new year becomes a federal holiday, there goes my last excuse!

Indeed. It sounds to me like the lesson to be learned here is that you don't throw out lowball offers when you have an opportunity to disrupt the market. Google made a miscalculation. Spend generously when you need to, in order to reap greater value down the line.

Now, whether that is ultimately important in light of Android's undisputed success and Apple's seeming disinterest in continuing to innovate with iOS, is another story. iOS has basically stagnated, and that's coming from someone who has stayed with Apple since the original iPhone. I've never purchased an Android device and even I can tell that it is a more flexible and capable platform.

You're typing and typing but you're not actually listening--typical behavior for someone doesn't want to actually think about the issue.

The whole point of having a privacy policy is that people can see that Delta is at least meeting their obligations to inform its customers. It's not about what Delta already has on them. It's about showing some basic, minimum level of responsibility--and they apparently can't even do that. It's NOT hard for them to do, and it IS the law.

And if you haven't noticed, the lack of a privacy policy does mean that Delta could technically store all your photos taken with your phone through their app, and potentially use them for marketing purposes--your consent having been implicitly given as part of your usage of the application. That isn't something that SkyMiles customers would or *should* be expected to know, nor is it information that Delta already has.

Silly? I don't think it's silly at all. It's a perfectly reasonable lawsuit, one that is likely to succeed.

Something that needs to be pointed out here is that the CA online privacy law is really NOT that onerous. It's not setting some insanely high bar for developers and companies to pass--as it applies to this case, it is simply requiring that users be notified upon installation of what information may be collected through the app and how it might be used. It's not as if that law even has any real teeth with respect to getting developers to protect the data they collect, as far too many people ignore privacy policies and just automatically click "Accept," because as sites like Facebook prove, most users are willing to sacrifice their privacy to a significant degree in order to obtain some entertainment or convenience.

So again, it's not that big a hurdle to simply ask for a privacy policy. The fact that Delta didn't even bother to do that makes me think twice about how conscientious they may be about protecting all that data they DO collect, and that is a much more serious concern.

Last time I checked, the educational process does not involve the presentation of scientific falsehoods as if they were truth, then expecting students to determine for themselves which is which. That would be fundamentally intellectually dishonest. "Teach the controversy/debate/both sides" is nothing more than a naked attempt at putting creationism on equal footing with science.

Maybe if they spent just as much effort to organize and protest against the Taliban and fundamentalist Islam, then it would be easier to dismiss such videos in the first place.

Anyone who has listened to or read Sam Harris knows that Islam has some very basic problems at the core of its doctrine that its present-day followers have overwhelmingly failed to address. To speak up about this is not to be Islamophobic. It's to state factual aspects of a religion that is not, despite claims from its moderate adherents, the "religion of peace." Because if it were peaceful, THESE PEOPLE WOULDN'T BE PROTESTING GOOGLE. They'd be doing everything in their power to excommunicate and weed out all the extremist mullahs and imams that call for death for apostasy, and violent jihad. The fact that we see protests against Western freedoms rather than Islamic oppression tells you everything you need to know. Moderates cannot just keep repeating "but we're peaceful and we're offended!" It's YOUR religion to claim, so CLAIM it. But don't go around to non-Muslims and pretend as if you're doing your duty, because the fight is not with us. It's with the extremists in your midst that threaten to pull your religion in THEIR direction. Unless, of course, you moderates agree with them, in which case you're not really moderate at all, and it's all just an act.

I'd like to make a rather pedantic point of clarification here: it is a "chromatic aberration" in the general sense that the system images spurious color, but it is not an aberration caused by dispersion (the variation of refractive index as a function of wavelength), nor is it a Seidel aberration.

If the purple hue comes from incomplete filtering of wavelengths outside the visible range, then it would be easy to test this theory by simply taking four kinds of photos: one that shows the flare with the unmodified camera, one of the same scene with a UV filter placed in front of the lens, a third with an IR filter placed in front of the lens, and finally, one with both UV + IR filters.

From the summary: "But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet,..."

Sorry, but Christian != "family-friendly." There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into a superstitious, fearful, dogmatic, and guilt-obsessed worldview. Conversely, there is nothing intrinsically "unfriendly" about being non-Christian--i.e., it is a fallacy to imply that Christians have some kind of exclusive claim on being more wholesome or moral than others, simply by being Christian.

Oh, and one more thing: this whole article is just a thinly-veiled slashvertisement.

It's their fault for not (1) randomizing the initial password, and (2) forcing new subscribers to immediately change their password after the first login, both of which are standard practices on properly secured systems.

Granted, you have a point in that people who test negative are unlikely to seek further confirmation that they are in fact HIV-negative, whereas designing a test with a high sensitivity but low specificity would result in many more follow-ups with more specific tests.

But where I think your argument treads on somewhat shaky ground is that (1) HIV is not the only STD out there, and there are lots of other very things you could catch through unprotected sex, such as hepatitis (which may lead to liver cancer); and HSV, which often leads to becoming a lifelong carrier. (2) Most everyone knows that there is a window in which one could be HIV-positive but the concentration of antibodies is below the detection threshold. (3) People who are responsible enough to bother getting tested AT ALL are also generally responsible enough to know better than to consider a potentially unreliable test as definitive justification for unprotected sex--that is, the ones who never get tested because of avoidant coping are the real high-risk group.

Basically, I'm not entirely convinced that the people who would go and purchase OraQuick OTC are the kind of people who would see a negative result as an excuse to subsequently engage in high-risk behavior. In any population, yes, you'll have some idiots. But to be able to test them at all is far more preferable than no test. The benefit of being able to reach those 11 out of 12 who do correctly test positive far outweighs missing the extremely small proportion of the population who might get a false negative, and the even smaller proportion of those who think a negative result is a license to become reckless.

Ultimately, frequent, widespread, and regular testing is the single best approach to HIV detection, even if the test has low sensitivity, because the more often you can test, the better chance you have at catching infection early enough to limit further transmission. And the easiest and safest test to administer at present is the oral swab--drawing blood through the arm is difficult, time-consuming, and carries risk of injury. Combined with prevention through education, widespread testing is the ONLY way we are going to reduce infection rates. Vaccines and cures are just too far off; we've been battling HIV for nearly 30 years now, and despite all the drug advances, all we have managed to do is to turn HIV into a chronic condition with lifelong complications, with the potential for multidrug resistance.