With all the corrupt and inhumane shit that goes on in the world why do you people attack science based public health measures that have been in use for over half a century and clearly shown to work as advertised? What's the fucking point of protesting one of the few policies that governments get right on a daily basis?

No, it's much more satisfying to rape you until you beg me to forgive your disrespect.

Brave maybe, but the "awesomeness" of blogging about it is likely to backfire. It is unwise to publicly accuse someone of something as serious as attempted rape and not make a formal complaint to police. It's also unwise to blog about it until after the Judge has finished hammering his desk.

For the last couple of decades it's been virtually impossible to start work on a major engineering project without running all sorts of simulations, on the whole it has been a GoodThing(TM). Like engineers, advisers won't go away just because they have new tools, they will simply give more sophisticated advice but no matter what level of technology the advisers use, you need public servants that are not afraid to "speak truth to power". James Hansen is a good example of that type of public servant from the US, however facts alone cannot sway dishonest politicians such as James Inhofe. Where are the people who wanted to charge Clinton with treason for lying about a blow job? - Why aren't they baying for the blood of the habitual liars such as Inhofe who demonstrate on a daily basis they have zero respect for the high office they hold?

It's a very narrow definition of intelligence that assumes it must manifest itself as human like thought. An ants nest is an intelligent and efficient entity in it's own right but it doesn't have any thought processes, ant's themselves are basically mindless automatons, They don't think about the complexities of building nests they just do it, some species such as soldier ants build the ant equivalent of NYC every few days, shifting up to four tons of soil at a time. The octopus is another fine example, obviously a highly intelligent creature (can solve the "screw top lid" puzzle faster than any ape except man) but it's brain is nothing like that of a mammal. It has no left/right hemispheres and the neurons are distributed along it's arms rather than concentrated in a central organ.

Machines can now learn from weakly structured and contradictory data sources such as pages on the net and answer trivia questions better than humans (re: IBM;s Watson). To me this indicates we already have AI that surpasses the logical (left hemisphere) of human intelligence, our right hemisphere is the "in the moment" intelligence that we share with the Octopus, computers simply don't have the scale of sensory input that our right hemisphere thrives on and until they do their "thought processes" will rely on an artificial "right hemisphere" (such as whatever if finds on the internet). That doesn't mean it won't appear to have human like responses, after all most duck hunters know how to imitate a duck.

Agree, data mining is about finding relationships you didn't know existed but the Obama campaign is not a great example of that. I have .au at the end of my email address because...well...I live in Oz. Somehow Obama's super computer got hold of my address, miss-identified me as an American voter and started trying to sell me tickets to their convention, at first they were signed by various mayors and governors, then Michell. and finally Barrack in a last ditch attempt to extract $5 from me. Not spotting the .au makes me think their last effort was not a great deal more sophisticated than simply spamming commercially available email lists.

Someone else who doesn't recognize the significance of developments such as IBM's Watson.

Woah slow down there, I am a "boomer" (but not of the US variety), today's government is staffed by boomer's but until very recently it WAS staffed by WW2' war babies and before that WW2 veterns. Mandatory superannuation contributions (paid directly to the fund by your employer) started here in Oz in the late 80's, the funds are invested in approved managed funds and basically ride along with the ups and downs of the economy, however the funds offer all sorts of options as to where to invest your money (eg: gold, stocks, green tech, bricks and mortar, etc) you can even set up your own fund if you are into that sort of thing. The government doesn't owe me a penny, but it has forced me to save for my retirement in a way that I can't get at it until I'm 55 and penalizes me with double the tax for taking a lump sum and blowing it all before I'm 60. I just turned 54, mine is staying where it is for at least another 10yrs, then I probably sell up and move to the country closer to my three grandkids (where I can buy a house outright with the equity I have in my current home). Another good feature is that you can't lose an account due to job hoping, homelessness, ect. The government tracks inactive accounts via tax file numbers and "parks" them in a default (low yield, high security) fund until they are reclaimed/returned.

At the end of the day this sort of enforced saving regime makes my own 80yr old parents a lot less expensive for society to maintain in a humane manner, they faithfully invested in super every month without being forced to by the government and currently receive a pension of $0.00 from the government and have just returned from a holiday to the grand canyon. The reason that we have things like taxpayer funded pensions is that humans don't want to see grandma (or her friends) tossed on the scrap heap after doing their bit to build and maintain our civilization. It's also key to reducing the number of offspring a society produces to ensure they are looked after in their old age, and finally the funds themselves play an important role in building the infrastructure that keeps us all from starving to death.

Anyway, believe me when I say it really won't be long before you are thinking to yourself where did the last 30yrs go and how the hell am I going to afford to enjoy retirement.

At some point the popular uprising in Syria morphed to a civil war, then Israel dropped some bombs on it and it started to look like it was morphing into an old fashioned proxy war between East and West. If I'm not mistaken Obama has yet to send arms to anyone, but he recently signed a UN backed agreement with Putin to work together toward creating a "caretaker" government formed by the waring parties themselves. However before any of that can happen they need to negotiate a cease fire on the ground which is much easier said than done. Secondary goals are distributing aid, and sending in UN inspectors to investigate the reported use of nerve gas. They have also agreed that the day to day public service should not be dismantled (which was what threw Iraq into an orgy of looting on the 3rd day of the war).

If stopping the bloodshed and restoring order is your aim then you should be applauding an agreement that aims to stop the violence and reboot the politics, while at the same time asking WTF did it take them 2yrs to publicly agree (through gritted teeth)?

We Aussies took that route and the end result was pretty much the same. The closest we came to a revolution was a handful of gold miners getting shot at by some cops. The evolution of society is far more complex than portrayed in HS history class, the Boston Tea Party is seen as a significant event but it would have been futile if the existing society was not already intellectually primed for it. These singular momentous events are often more symbolic than anything else and are nearly always selected in hindsight. Australia's Eureka stockade is a fine example of a small group of revolutionaries with a valid (and popular) complaint against the crown who failed miserably to inspire those around them to join in, a more modern example would be the OWS crowd.

Umm, East Germany wanted the wall to come down, W Germany, France and the UK all tried to stop it from happening by (quietly) pleading with the E Germans to do something to stop it. As to Rome, Roman citizens were entitled to 1kg of grain per day from the emperor via their local bakery, needless to say many Europeans didn't require conquering, they simply chose to be roman and started demanding their "bread and circuses".

Same thing happens with windows compilers. Assuming the people involved trust each other, the simplest method is to always build from a tag and embed the tag into the binary. Use something like the unix "strings" command to find the tag when comparing two binaries.

In the dark ages, Putin (ex: KGB 'commando') would have sailed to the US on a Viking boat, personally kicked the crap out of Bush/Obama, and told Americans they would all have to get used to being paid in vodka.

Obama has always portrayed himself as MLK's "dream" and JFK's ghost all rolled into one. Not dissimilar to how Jesus portrayed himself as the "lamb" that was prophesied in the old testament. He certainly has the eloquence of the civil rights leaders but it will be a couple of generations before anyone can tell if he has had as much significance.

The recent UN compromise between Putin & Obama to work towards a caretaker government in Syria looks promising from a humanitarian and civil rights POV, but it's to the great shame of both nations that it's taken them 2yrs of bloodshed to get that far.

Doesn't matter, they have 300 million pin numbers to choose from?