And a good worker will communicate with their manager and let him know when they don't have clearly defined goals and aren't being rewarded according to their successes

Communication works both ways.....

"The price of optics may have been coming down, not necessarily at Moore's Law speeds because the physics and market pressures are different, but that's also not going to show up in the 322 Tbps shiny marketing number either."
The optical networking industry was making HUGE leaps in the late 1990s in terms of capacity. The problem is they leapt way beyond what the market needed - why buy equipment to push more through one fiber when you have hundreds of dark fibers? Then the tech industry bubble burst and the optical networking companies (Corning, JDSU, etc) were in some REALLY sever pain.

There just isn't nearly as much money going into backbones these days because the last mile and even the edges aren't improving very fast.

Oh jeez, get over yourself. No one can keep a close personal relationship with every one of our friends. We have moved or have families or are just too busy. Facebook is a simple way to keep in touch. I log in, see someone I haven't chatted with in awhile, send them some messages and enjoy seeing how they are doing.

To try to make it seem like that is somehow anti-social and I don't have real friends is moronic. I don't maintain some sort of fake personality. I'll throw up a link or something if I think the people I know will enjoy it and that's about it.

Stop being such a judgmental prick. My "real" friends that I hang out with every weekend are on facebook. It is just an easy way to share things with them. Sometimes they organize events through facebook (like disc golf outings).

If you don't like it, fine, don't use it. But there isn't anything screwed up with people who do and find it useful.

And don't you find it ironic you are telling people to get off the Internet when you are on Slashdot posting all day?

And for the love of all that is good, learn how to use capital letters at the beginning of sentences!

Rare in this context really doesn't mean rare as in short supply...

"As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanides.[1] Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earths since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.

The term "rare earth" arises from the rare earth minerals from which they were first isolated, which were uncommon oxide-type minerals (earths) found in Gadolinite extracted from one mine in the village of Ytterby, Sweden. However, with the exception of the highly-unstable promethium, rare earth elements are found in relatively high concentrations in the earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust at 68 parts per million."

I realize that energy usage will be prohibitive to resource recovery at some point. It remains to be determined where that point actually is - e.g. uranium recovery from seawater might actually be feasible. I have no idea where that point is for rare earths, though. Rare earths are not actually rare, after all. They tend to be well diluted, with few high concentration deposits. That's exactly where the thermodynamic angle comes in, so we have to think about this in terms of energy availability.

I am perfectly realistic about the fact that we can't switch to a sustainable energy economy over night. Before we cover whole countries with solar cells, we should rather get a better yield from solar thermal, add in nuclear as an intermediate solution and we better hope that we get fusion running. We won't run out of hydrogen that fast.

Are you kidding me? Let me try to list a few of the many cars that now come with turbos: Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Subaru WRX, Dodge Caliber SRT4, Chevrolet Cobalt SS, Mini Cooper S, BMW 135i (and all other -35i cars), Mercedes Kompressor models, Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Nissan GT-R, Ford Taurus SHO, Mazdaspeed 3, Volkswagen/Audi GTI and TDI models, Bugatti Veyron, and pretty much any diesel vehicle out there.

Turbochargers have become very popular since they allow a smaller engine to achieve higher power ratings under heavy load but still get good fuel economy under lighter loads.

I disagree -- paying attention to your health is one thing, but any time you take a placebo (and sometimes potentially dangerous) cure instead of a real, effective treatment, you're losing out on all counts.

To be fair, there is little evidence for vitamins and minerals either (or, more specifically, no evidence that supplements would help anyone with a moderately balanced diet). Specific deficiencies are known to increase the risk of certain problems, but there is little evidence that you actually need 100% of the USDA allowance for most, or that taking more than the USDA allowance decreases the risk even further. The largest controlled study I'm aware of (News report) found no benefits in any of the 10 categories studied, including "the rate of breast or colon cancer, heart attack, stroke, blood clots or mortality." Studies show benefits from fruit and vegetable intake (which contain vitamins and minerals), but not from supplements.

FYI, every large scale, properly blinded study of acupuncture done so far has found it to be as effective as sham acupuncture - and depending on how you define some of those other modalities you mentioned (light and air therapy are basically bullshit, but going outside isn't), they may also be just as effective as placebo.

I'm glad homeopathy is getting a beatdown in the UK, but it's really just the most obvious bullshit in health care.

Smoking weed is not homeopathy. That would be something more along the lines of traditional medicine or herbal medicine. Homeopathy is different. Look it up.

It might, in the face of NCLB, those last two years could kill any motivation they might have. Going to college 2 years early is not just an advancement, it's recognition of excellence, the same sort of recognition that's quashed in high school because of "A winnar is everyone!"

Unfortunately, the linked to post and video doesn't give much details. Naively, I expect that the computer program is first figuring out very quickly what the series of movements to solve the cube and then implementing those. There are around 4 * 10^19 possible configurations for a Rubik's cube, but the group theory allows one to work out what steps to take without having to do very exhaustive searches since the Rubik's group is very well-behaved. However, this assumes one is in an actually solvable configuration. I'd be curious to find out if they've debugged the device well enough to make sure it doesn't hang or get in some infinite loop if one gives it an unsolvable cube (not all possible permutations of squares are solvable. Most trivially, edges need to stay on edges, corners on corners and centers on centers. But some configurations are still not solvable. For example, if one swaps two center stickers it isn't hard to see that that lays outside the Rubik's group of reachable permutations).

If you are achieving that much at that time in your life, why on earth would you be going to community college? Either make sure that their high schools can challenge them, or get them to a college with an academic environment that will.

A community college does not have that environment.

Far from two pieces of evidence...

a) A full lot (1K+) of identified bad SD cards

b) A detailed forensic examination of 6 cards, including known genuine cards as well as known-fraudulent cards.

c) That Kingston folded like a cheap suit BEFORE this blog posting.