But the real question is, Will Sales of Ice Boxes to Eskimos Finally Increase due to Climate Change?

Ironically enough, those cameras were made by Polaroid, not Kodak, and became known as "polaroids". Fujifilm also made some I believe.

It wasn't meant to be racist. It was meant to be a realist comment. The fact is, the majority of politicians (especially when you talk about the ones that are behind this bill) are, the majority, old and white. I am white myself, so this isn't some hateful remark against white people in general.

Fact is, America ranks as one of the WORST countries when it comes to diversity in politics. The USA ranks somewhere around 31st in the WORLD for women in politics. It is equally sad to look at the numbers for any other ethnicity in politics when compared to the number of white men (esp old white men over the age of 50) to other country's ratio.

I agree with you in principle, but there comes a time when calling someone "stupid" or a "dimwit" is the only thing left. There can only be so much discourse on the subject before you have to assume that the person you are speaking AT is not taking what you are saying seriously. This has been going on for months, perhaps years, with the entertainment industry and Hollywood. The masses cry out for them to change their business model, for them to provide easier access without over encumbering it with DRM that breaks the product/media, for them to update their dated delivery systems that FEAR technology instead of REVERING it, and for them to stop abusing the trust of their customers with empty promises and payments to more lobbyists to help further their agendas that none of us want to see fulfilled. There have been countless things now that deliver people the content they want, the way they want it, without issue (look at Steam and Netflix). But instead of building on the ideas of these pioneering services, they fear a digitally driven content delivery system that most of us would rather use than sift through thousands of torrents and comments to find the latest HD episode of a TV show that was on last night.

I am not a doctor. But if a doctor told me "if you don't change what you are doing, you will die or severely harm yourself", I would then seek a second opinion. If that second opinion told me the same thing, wouldn't I be a "dimwit" or "stupid" for not at least exploring with all my resources the methods necessary to stop my probable death? What about if an ARMY of doctors and doctors assistants and nurses told me the same thing? Am I a stupid dimwit then?

The same goes for the media industry execs who, instead of coming up with a new business model to support the changing environment, decide to try and control the very thing that is driving these breakthroughs in content delivery. If they refuse to listen to the "experts" and their customers, then aren't they also "stupid dimwits"? Is going and lobbying EVEN HARDER for SOPA/PIPA/ACTA and trying to break the Internet really NOT the work of a stupid dimwit in this case?

That is exactly how I feel. As a Network Engineer myself I share their frustration with old, grumpy, white men who sit on capital hill raining down laws that would effect my job and customers without understanding the technology itself, nor the gravity their actions would have on the Internet community at large. I've watched the hours long C-SPAN videos of the hearings with the SINGLE Google representative they invited as an "expert" only to see her get cut-off and publicly flogged and discredited, while old men who had to read basic networking terms such as "internet", "Internet" (they are not interchangeable), "IP Address" and "DNS" off a prepared piece of paper, listed the "merits" of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA. Especially from a security standpoint, the amount of negative repercussions to censoring the internet along the same lines as China could be catastrophic, and that is before even considering its' effect on free speech.

...I really have to question the idea of bringing back life that ceased to exist thousands, and eventually possibly millions, of years ago. Jurassic Park jokes aside, I hope they will take adequate precautions to not bring back something that could wind up being disastrous on the CURRENT iteration of Earth. I'm all for stuff like this, I just hope they err on the side of caution before bringing back random plants and introducing them into a modern ecosystem that has evolved well beyond when some of those plants will have existed.

That seems like just bad personal experience. I have built nothing but AMD machines since I starting building machines in 2000 and have never built anything else, both for myself and my customers. I have never had any failed systems or processors on my personal builds, and the number of failures from customers I can count on 2 hands, and that's literally hundreds, if not more, builds over a 12 year span. If you don't think ASUS makes quality motherboards, I am not sure who you are using but you'd be hard pressed to find better high end AMD boards. I recently starting using ASRock as well, which I believe is owned by ASUS, and have had no issues with those (even cheaper) boards.

Also, I have never found myself wanting for an Intel machine. And neither have any of my customers. I play Skyrim and BF3 and Crysis 2 on Ultra @ 1080p or better resolutions just like everyone else using a Phenom II X6, ASUS AMD Mobo, and an AMD 6970. And I did it cheaper than if I went Intel.

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it really makes me sick how quickly and easily ACTA was pushed and accepted in other countries. MAFIAA must have a silver tongue, equally as silver as the object they use to fuck over everyone else.

Enough to convince you, though. ;)

Maybe. But you'd have to think that any species at that point where they have left their planet and are exploring space would have strict rules about interfering with species that aren't at their level yet. Study? I can see that. But I don't think they would be studying us with a smile on their face and nostalgia in their hearts about our possibly similar pasts. If anything, they'd want to keep an eye on us to make sure we don't go down the wrong road with the technology necessary to be able to start effecting the universe around us. I don't think they would consider the possibility of contact, especially with how militaristic our world is (especially from an outside view).

If there IS intelligent life out there, I have serious doubts that they consider us being under the same umbrella as them. As nerdy as it sounds, I think something like what is presented in Star Trek would need to happen first. Either the development of FTL travel, the cleaning up of our planet to a degree where we aren't killing it or each other anymore would need to take place before any alien life wants anything to do with us. Probably all that and even more.

Either that or we could get lucky and just discover some alien tech on one of the planets in our solar system. Here's to wishful thinking!

You mean you don't want to boldly go where LOADS of others have gone before?

See what I did there?

I can only imagine what we could be doing in the field of medicine if stem cell research had its doors blown wide open with no restrictions. If we can make blind people see again under the current provisions and laws regarding stem cell research, one can only imagine the possibilities if they were allowed unrestricted federal funding. All of the research using new lines of stem cells is being funded privately, as current laws don't allow for federal funding of research having to do with new lines of embryonic stem cells.

Wonder what happens to those celebrities...will they be arrested too for endorsing a known pirate site? Will their labels drop them for doing the mega song? Didn't most of the artists in that song tweet links to the video and MU? And post links to them on their personal sites?

*sigh* "Slippery slope" doesn't even seem to cover this crap anymore.