Sure not too many people would be fact checking a news story, but if a writer provided sources then you or someone else could verify the information from time to time. It is a mistake to trust a news source just because you are familiar with the brand or the journalist.

Trust, but verified.

Even the best journalists get sloppy from time to time, brands get bought and sold and become a tool for some other agenda. The best written stories really do provide enough detail about where they are getting their information that someone could go and check directly with the source. The worst news stories are the ones that repeatedly cite "unnamed sources". Many a time I have read a news story and come to a completely different conclusion than the one presented because even if there is a bias in a news story when a reporter reports the facts and provides enough detail then people can draw their own conclusions.

Yes, but it shouldn't be. The utility of a news story should be in the verifiable information that is conveyed in the story. "Reputation" can be of some use, but it is far too easy to buy a reputation or flim flam your way into an undeserved good reputation. What might be useful in today's world is to have a linked list of facts and their sources associated with the article. Like what is required in a scholarly article, but with citations that do not interrupt the flow of the story.

What is being glossed over when the CEOs come out and say that Netflix and other content providers want a "free ride" is that it isn't Comcast that is paying for this network infrastructure and their customers aren't their property... We the customers are paying for this network infrastructure with our money and we are being told we are getting a level of bandwidth service to the "Internet".

For CEOs of Comcast and Verizon to demand that Netflix or others raise their prices and pass along those price increases to the customers of Verizon and Comcast if they want to connect to these networks is fundamentally a dishonest argument for fairness since it is the customers of Verizon and Comcast that want to access these Internet services in the first place and it is the Verizon and Comcast customers that are already paying both companies in order to do so.

It is way past time for government regulation. Either at the state, federal or local level to demand net neutrality. And if localities can't impose net neutrality in their licensing, permit or franchise agreements because the big companies have bought off the Feds again, then municipalities should just put up their own wires.

CDNs are exactly the same as a toll road. There is limited bandwidth over the wires and in this case Comcast is going to be bumping some other content providers off the road in order to make way for Apple exclusive use.

We are just going to have to recreate another big bang and then see what happens and therefore settle this debate once and for all.

Still. No way Fluke should have been given that trademark. This isn't a "mark" it is the design of the product itself.

That is another damning example of a big enough company being able to buy off the right lawyers to say some abusive use of the law is legally okay. A design patent might have been appropriate in this case, but those expire in 15 years and how long have they been selling two toned multi-meters? If it is more than 15 years then Sparkfun should have every right to sell something that looks similar.

Clearly they went for a trademark rather than the appropriate design patent so it wouldn't expire. But a trade mark is supposed to be exactly that: A word or mark on a product or marketing material that indicates the company or brand that is selling it. Like a Nike swoosh or the Apple with a bite out of it or even a word mark like IBM. It would be like Nike trying to trademark a two toned sneaker or Ford trying to trademark a black muscle car with a yellow stripe rather than just the swoosh or the word "Ford" in an oval.

Just because we can say that the government is at fault for awarding this trademark in the first place, doesn't mean we can absolve the company of an abuse of intellectual property law.

Yes, they got some bad press and figured it would effect their business, but I don't think they have made this right until they cancel or abandon this trademark altogether

If the supply and demand model applies to the job market then you can identify shortages by looking at the highest paid jobs first. Some of these professions are likely not very large, but even grouping some of these together then it appears we have a doctor shortage and lawyer shortage (Yes I hate saying that) and a shortage of middle managers. Based on these averages there is not meaningful shortage of Engineers, Scientists or IT because if there were a shortage then the average compensation would be higher. 1. Doctors $184,820 2. Chief Executives $176,840 3. Petroleum Engineers $147,470 4. Architectural and Engineering Managers $133,240 5. Lawyers $130,880 6. Natural Sciences Managers $130,400 7. Marketing Managers $129,870 8. Computer and Information Systems Managers $129,130 9. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers $128,760 10. Financial Managers $123,260 11. Sales Managers $119,980 "Shortage" shouldn't be defined by CEOs who are going to Congress looking for more H1B visa indentured servants.

Damn. I knew I was doing something wrong in my E&M class.

Do you make an active effort to craft something that will inspire future science and exploration with your storytelling? Or do you approach it as just something implicit in having spaceships and aliens and futurey type things?

Yours is a very important point.

I would just add, that the same is true if you are only "growing the economy" through population growth. There is a big difference between the "wealth" generated by population growth and the new wealth generated because of new technology. New technology doesn't have a family to feed, shelter, educate. With new techonology it can be, but isn't necessarily, a very clear net gain. But with population growth you get the appearance of economic growth without any new net "wealth" generation. Population growth has repeatedly been used to mask real economic and technology stagnation and given moral cover to those accumulating disproportionate wealth.

The real measures should be... How many people have savings? How many people have savings to be without employment income for 6 months, 1 year, 2 years? How many people are living paycheck to paycheck? Is the concentration of wealth creating too much risk in the economy? Is the economy able to produce enough high quality food to put on every table? Is the economy able to provide housing, home heating, air conditioning, electricity, medical care, education etc at affordable costs for most people?

I largely agree, but take issue with the phrase "standard of living" in this context and in this discussion thread. A broad middle class in America has been about more than the advent of indoor plumbing, smartphones and the ability to buy bread at the supermarket, but about political empowerment.

Even looking back at the 19th century, America turned on its head the European idea of "landed gentry" when we created a society in which land was cheap and plentiful (yes this was at the expense of native Americans) and this enabled a "middle" class of people that were more self sufficient and therefore more politically empowered in a democratic republic. And then into the twentieth century wealth took other forms, but American wealth still retained the characteristic of being broadly distributed enough to empower a large portion of the population.

The elite like to focus on technology and short term measures of resources because it is something that gives people a sense of control. And yes technology can enable the kind of wealth creation that will lead to a more vibrant democracy and freedom. But I believe the measure of a society is both the Freedom and the prosperity that it hands to the next generation. Without a positive growth in the measure of both Freedom and prosperity, then our civilization is failing to really increase our "standard of living".

And the aerial photos are even less impressive. Agritopia is a nice idea, but the actual subdivision seems to have the same or even less green space than most other urban or suburban subdivisions.

Seems there are enough examples of using surrogate mothers of a similar/related species to think that if you can create a viable embryo then the surrogacy might be successful.

Bingo. A lot of people forget that Google was several years late to the search engine business. Google gained where other search "engines" decided to replace real results with paid placements. I recall a meeting with Lycos where a first page placement in their "search results" would cost $10k.

"record of all your phone calls, emails and text messages" is a simpler way of putting it... and at some point we are also going to find out that it means a record of all the websites you visited.