The original faster version made me cry the first time I heard it, and this got me again. Not sure what it is.

I need mod points for this one.

As others have pointed out, music is probably a far better distraction than random noises that people around you are making with their discussions and what not.

What I do is to put a song on repeat. There are a bunch of songs that I have heard so many times that I don't even notice that they're playing anymore, and that allows me to concentrate on whatever it is I'm trying to figure out.

When I hear people talking or walking around or anything that I cannot control, I'm distracted because I'm trying to figure out what is causing that noise and am taken out of my "figure things out" shell.

I have an enormous problem with this.

You cannot be expected to guess the intelligence level of the test-writer, and should never be penalized for answering with a completely defensible answer.

This specific test is especially atrocious because the "wrong" answers (only due to knowledge they didn't think the kid would have) are exactly the kind of answers that some self-satisfied test writer would throw in there as correct.

And if it were their network your post might make sense.

The part you skipped over was explaining the other 3/4 of the cost, and the part you continued with was clearly speaking to that 3/4 and not the 1/4 you opened with.

FFS he even ended with a $35 book costing $28, which is about 1/4 less plus a tiny bit more to handle the formatting stuff.

I can't tell if you did this intentionally or not.

I would guess that at $10k a pop there aren't all that many people that have actually purchased it.

Methinks you have never heard the song. Your other inferences are likely just as invalid.

If it were wrong, it would only have taken one.

The thing you had to load from a disk was a DOS so you could actually save your stuff to one. Unless there was a trick that I'm unaware of that allowed you to directly write a program to a disk without an explicit one.

I don't see how removing the middle man from the equation is giving more control to apple. If anything, it's just distributing it to every single person with a phone.

I think you're all getting hung up on the 'ONLY APPLE' part, and not the "you won't pay anything for service anymore, since you're 'paying' by extending the network with your own device."

It sounds like a cross between the themes from Blade Runner and Cosmos, but not nearly as good.

If he's like me, then get him into college and grad school ASAP and get him on with his life before he's 18.

If he's like my wife, then leave him in the normal school system so that he can enjoy the rest of his childhood. He'll thank you for it.

Both my wife and myself were at the top of our respective classes and went to top tier colleges. We're both well above (though not as much as this kid) what society would consider genius. And we both would have been better served by completely different approaches.

There isn't a single answer for this. Thinking that there is one answer for "what to do with a genius" is making the terrible assumption that all geniuses are alike.

How about we just ask the kid what he wants? He'll be better qualified to answer that question.

I just bought a couple bags of Taco Flavor (the original) in their original-design packaging (think Pepsi Throwback for Doritos if you haven't seen these).

Then I got back to my hotel and read this.

I'll dump a bag out on the floor in his honor.

This is not about wanting to have different identities, or to be able to be a dick online. It's about freedom itself.

Without anonymity you don't have the freedom to say what is right if it goes against society's current notions of morality. If you do, you'll be silenced and punished (either by the authorities or society at large) for stepping out of line. I want to live in a world where people have true freedom of speech, and that world cannot exist without anonymity.

If anonymity weren't a foundation of freedom of speech there would be no such thing as a witness protection program. You need to be able to say things with freedom from repercussion for any social or scientific progress to be made. You won't always be right, but you'll never know if you had to keep it held inside until the world was ready to hear whatever it was that you wanted to say.