Thanks, and actually I added the quotes for exactly that reason. The left, like the right, has many different viewpoints (many of which I passionately agree with), so in an attempt to emphasis the generic nature of my argument I added the quotes. The "left" is a bad label, as is the "right" but for lack of better terms or many pages of explanation of the complex and rich philosophy and history of both "sides", I used the generically accepted labels, but tried to qualify them with quotes to emphasize the fact that they were just labels. Sorry if I didn't communicate that well.

A lot of people are confused about how this sort of law could be passed in Texas, which according to left-wing groupthink is a regressive bible-thumping gun-toting desert filled with rednecks who hate Darwin and force kids to pray in school.

This, of course, is nonsense. Much of the anti-Texas sentiment results from fundamental ideological differences that go to the core of the "left" versus "right" arguments.

Texans, for very valid historical reasons, have a deep seated mistrust of centralized government and authority. This can be seen in pretty much every part of our culture, especially our constitution and court systems. This way of thinking, of course, is a direct attack on everything that those on the "left" believe in. Even worse, the evidence clearly shows that our way of governing and beliefs work very well - from tort reform, to right to work, to zero income tax (just to name a few) we have a state that cherishes individual liberty, resists government interference, and we have one of the best economies in the world to show for it.

The success of Texas is a sore tooth to those on the "left". As a result, they are forced to rely on ad-hominem attacks and mischaracterization in a defensive attempt to protect and justify their beliefs, even though even casual comparisons of the success of cities and states that implement those beliefs shows that they are clearly misguided.

The fact is, disturbing as it may seem to those on the "left", Texas is beautiful, tolerant, friendly and a wonderful place to live. I moved my family here from the east coast seven years ago, and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made.

This law is just another example (among many) of Texas following in its long tradition of codifying individual rights and protecting liberties. Yes, Texas has some black marks in it's history - but show me a state (or country) that doesn't!

There is a reason why people from all over the country are flooding here, and why we gained four seats in the house in 2010. As much vitriol, misrepresentation and flat out lying that those on the "left" do about Texas, the truth is becoming more and more evident to those around the country, that just as once the United States was the place that people fled to in order to escape oppressive government, now Texas has become a safe haven within the U.S. for the same reasons.

Please go read Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html it will do you a lot of good intellectually.

While there are many things about python that I love (array slicing, list comprehensions, etc...) the lack of anonymous in-lines really kills it for me. I enjoy working with python, and for certain apps python/django is a clear win - but these days I find myself mostly slinging nodejs code.

There are two ways you can tackle this:

1) You just want to make cool things, but don't really care about the details
2) You really want to grok this stuff, and want to build stuff from scratch

This is roughly equivalent, in programmers terms, of learning a high-level language like .Net, PHP, Python etc... versus assembly/C.

Do you want to Just Make It Work(tm) without understanding the underlying libraries/platform? Or do you want to be able to build the libraries/platform?

For option 1, the Arduino is fantastic, and really can't be beat. For option 2, I'd say start with an 8 bit AVR, like AT tiny, grab a breadboard, come LEDs and a programmer, and pull your hair out until it starts making sense and the lights flash in the pattern you expect.

I took the second route, and have been very happy with my choice. Now, if (at my option) I just want to do something quick and dirty, I can grab an arduino and prototype something fast. But the thing is, I'm not constrained by that. I'm able to throw things together on a breadboard from components in a tray. I can write the code in straight C (or avr asm), and really grok the ISRs.

It's kind of like Processing (the platform for data visualization and artistic CG). Would you rather make fast animations that look great, are easy to make, but only run in the Processing environment? Or would you rather build your own cross platform UI stack and then create your own highly optimized animations?

I don't really agree with the "beginners" attitude towards Arduino, the same way I don't agree that Python is a good language for "beginner" programmers. We become programmers or amateur EE's for some reason - to solve some problem. If the problem you want to solve is that you want to be an expert developer, then don't start with python, start with c or asm. If you just have stuff you need to get done, python is great.

Same with EE, don't start with Arduino if your purpose is to really learn the stuff. You'll just be confused by the toolchain and helpful libraries.

I'm doing some fun stuff with chains js, an experimental library I've been working on to make async javascript look/feel more synchronous.

Massive scalability through distributed computing?

Ask the guys at SETI why it shouldn't all be done on centralized servers.

Not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse, or trolling, but in case you're serious - there are a fantastically wide range of applications that benefit from massive parallelism found in shader languages like GLSL. Just take a look at some of the books on amazon that have CUDA implementations for everything from fluid simulation to computer vision stuff.

Most recently I've been playing with the concept of doing sound synth and processing on the GPU with shaders in js.

In my original post I mentioned that WebGL isn't just for graphics. There are enormous benefits to being able to execute massively parallel operations on a web page.

Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.

As people start doing high performance computing and solving wildly complex problems in the browser with GPU accelerated JS, the browser will continue to emerge as the platform of choice for a wonderfully wide range of applications. IE will sit off to the side, largely ignored (except for certain "enterprise" business users) and will become even more irrelevant.

I'd expect to start seeing more and more web sites that want to do these things refuse to support IE at all, the shims and plugins just aren't worth screwing with.

I just bought one on T-Mobile - most amazing piece of technology I've ever owned. Absolutely stunning.

At first I was worried that the whole Pen thing would be a useless gimmick, but I use the damn thing all the time. For jotting down quick notes, it's actually as usable as carrying around a paper notebook, which has always been the bar I've measured these things against.

In all the technology I've owned over the years, PDA's, tablets, smartphones etc... they've never given me the ability to do away with paper/pencil notebook. This actually has, which is fantastic.

You know, I've been down on Unity as much as the next guy, until a wild thing happened: my 13 year old son sat down in front of it, never having used it before, and started navigating and using it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I was shocked, he didn't have any of the old UI paradigm hangups that I have, he looked at it with completely new eyes, and was immediately productive with it, using it in ways that had not been obvious to me.

After seeing this, I really had to reconsider my Unity griping. These guys really know something about usability, and while yes, there are flaws, they seem to be getting ironed out.

You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).

Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.

Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.

Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.

Do you have any supporting evidence of this other than a naive "I wish it were like this so it must be so!"

Want to throw out decades of research that support genetic influence of behavior on such diverse issues as alcoholism, personality disorders, etc...

A simple search of scholarly articles will give you plenty of studies conducted on identical twins raised in diverse social and economic situations, that have a genetic predisposition towards specific behaviors.

According to your point, if I had the right education, in the right society, I could be a NFL linebacker, correct?

Absurd.

You are an inspiration to many in the geek world, and have pretty much reached the pinnacle of what any geek could aspire to. That being said, you are frequently accused of having an abrasive personality, and many of your public comments (euphemistically) "lack tact." Do you ever suffer negative repercussions from this? Have you ever considered trying a different approach, or reading Carnegie? (That last bit wasn't a snark, I was "laid off" from a job once for similar issues, I turned to Dale Carnegie, and it had a profoundly positive effect on my professional and personal life)

I'm sure you feel very morally superior, and all that "what,what", but have you considered that perhaps there are significant geographical differences between where you live and parts of the U.S.? That this country is *really big* and most of it isn't urban? When I was in high school, my mother drove me 45 minutes each way to my swim team, which was at the YMCA, and was the closest option. My graduating class was 63 people, and the school bus ride was frequently over an hour long.

A +5 modded post for calling everyone in the U.S. "backwards morons" because we don't have city buses spanning the country. Seriously? You do realize that you can fit the entire country of France inside of Texas, right? California is larger than the entire country of Germany.

FFS, what's going on with the mods that a post like this gets modded +5? Mods, how about a tiny bit of quality control here? Or do I just have to post any random anti-US slogan in order to get +5 modded?

Here, I'll try: "Umm, the U.S. is like really dumb and stupid and stuff. Like totally, everyone there is a moron because, you know, they're dumb."