> I've seen enough negative comments on this subject. Are there any other positive uses that people can imagine?

There's a reason why the prevailing reaction to these sorts of technologies is negative... they tend to follow a paradigm of making the device "smart", when what most people actually want is for the device to be "obedient". The former tends to take control away from the user, with the device altering its behavior whether the user wants it to or not.

For example, whenever I remove the key from my car's ignition, the driver's seat moves back automatically (presumably to make it easier for an obese person to get in and out.) The "feature" annoys the crap out of me, and it became even more irritating when I once had stuff stowed behind that seat, which the seat proceeded to crush. I've tried to disable it, but it doesn't appear to be optional. I've had to adapt my behavior in where I stow things to accommodate the damn thing, rather than the other way around. It's not the end of the world, but it annoys me enough that I'd never buy another car with that "feature" again.

I don't want my phone to predict my mood, or second-guess me, or arbitrarily alter its behavior without me telling it to. I don't want my phone to be my companion... I want it to be my dutiful slave.

Well, thanks to the mandatory sentencing and three-strikes rules that conservatives support, prisons are stuffed full of people who were not violent murders and rapists, but quickly become hardened criminals after being brutalized by the guards and the other prisoners. And unless you think rape is an appropriate punishment for, say, stealing food, then yes, prison rape is a serious problem. The constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment for a reason. This may come as a shock, but prisoners happen to be human beings too... if it's not ok for someone to rape your daughter, it's not ok for a prisoner to get raped either.

Moreover, you're setting up a false dichotomy between "making prisons safer" and "keeping the rest of society safe." Bad prisons are factories for violent criminals. Other countries lock up far fewer citizens than we do, and amazingly enough, their crime rates are significantly lower. Evidently our strategy of incarcerating millions of citizens isn't very effective, is it?

Ugh... I see this kind of Nirvana fallacy way too often. "The alternatives also have some drawbacks, so until something comes along which magically has no negatives whatsoever, we should just stay with the (much worse) status quo."

Moreover, the drawbacks you point out for geothermal and solar are a little silly. Geothermal energy is usually extracted from fault regions, where earthquakes occur anyway. It's true that injecting water into the faults causes the rock to fracture, but I'd argue it's better to release the pent-up stress in smaller tremors than let the pressure build and get released in a more devastating quake. As for solar taking away light from plants, you do realize they don't build these things over farms and forests, right? They're not going to be killing much vegetation by building solar farms in the Nevada desert, or on top of rooftops. There are other, more significant drawbacks to both technologies which you overlooked, but it's still way better compared to the disadvantages of coal.

That's how we assess these things... by seeing whether it's better than what we've currently got, rather than doing nothing because we're unable to invite a technology with no disadvantages whatsoever.

The point is that we can't mine hydrogen as a primary source of power, since the process involved in extracting it (by electrolysis, or steam reformation of methane) requires more power than what you get out. This makes hydrogen just an energy storage medium, unlike oil, coal, solar, etc, where we get more energy out of the "extraction" process than goes in.

Moreover, hydrogen is a particularly lousy energy storage medium. Whether you make it by electrolysis or steam reformation, you lose significant useful energy in the conversion process... you'd be better off just using the electricity or burning the methane directly, rather than bothering with converting it to a less useful form. Piping it long distances is out of the question, since it can escape through solid metal (and embrittles the metal in the process). There are also significant safety issues, as evidenced by TFA.

In response to your first point, there actually is enough to fill a 24-hour news cycle... plenty of interesting and important things happening around the world just begging for attention. Unfortunately, it tends to get ignored because it doesn't sell as well as the usual juicy gossip or trite bickering.

I have no problem with a station having a rightward slant to its editorial analysis and commentary, (although it really should just come out and say that it's pandering to the right, instead of pretending to be "fair and balanced"). I *do* have a problem when that same bias infects the news reporting functions of the station... this is where Fox fails miserably and deliberately.

Also, to the GP, what the fuck is "NPR Intelligensia Superiore Ruling Class network"? What, is intelligent analysis somehow a bad thing now? Is critical thinking an activity "real Americans" shouldn't do? Fuck anti-intellectualism... free thought, ingenuity, and creative problem solving made America the great nation it is today. Go to a library and try to improve yourself if you feel threatened by anyone with better than room-temperature IQ.

Actually, yes, that "experience" really is wasted if no-one outside of the game world is willing to give you credit for it.

Even if you can apply the skills you pick up in the game to real-world problems (which is an interesting but debatable notion), most managers would laugh at you if you tried to use your video game experience as the basis for asking for a job or a raise. Your long hours of game playing are more likely to be considered a liability, actually.

Perhaps things will change a generation from now, as the video gaming generation gets older. I doubt it, however... the managers of tomorrow are more likely to come from the ranks of employees focused on advancing their real-life careers now, rather than the legions of unemployed WOW addicts living in their parents' basements. (Stereotyping is a real-time saver!)

I don't want my neighbors to find out about my obsessive and crippling fear of genetically engineered dinosaurs next time they do a search for "Toronto Raptors" from my computer.

Really? I thought the point of the legal system was to avoid all this "might makes right" chaos that would prevail without the law. No wonder your post was modded "insightful"!

I'm going to start working out and arming myself to the teeth. If my neighbor cannot defend his claim to his swimming pool, well then I guess it's MY swimming pool now.

"Honey, call the city... I think they just delivered us garbage instead of our meal"
"Oh, actually, I just ordered from McDonalds."

That's the thing though... TLC and Discovery weren't always at the same level as the rest of the trash heap. I have fond memories of watching James Burke's "Connections" and other awesome programs in the early days of TLC, only to see the channel's IQ take a nosedive several years later.

Oh old TLC... how I miss you so.

Average ones. Not everyone flies with Icarus Airlines or opts for the Big Dipper discount.

Two letters: AI

Oh yes, please tell me more about how you're going to burn the hydrogen from seawater to gain net energy when it is already in an oxidized state.

Learn basic chemistry before trying to contribute to chemistry-related topics.