In that order.

I agree. A friend's startup was originally based on Drupal. It fell over at a million records. They moved to Ruby on Rails. It fell over at 20 million records.

I'm in the middle of resurrecting the system, and not a day goes by that I don't say "WTF did they do this in a scripting language?"

Scripting languages are fine for scripts, and even occasional prototypes, but if you need to scale, you need a compiled language. Frankly, I'm not too fond of Java for production systems either.

When are people going to learn? If your site is at all controversial, don't register it or host it in the U.S.

I wrote a search-by-sketch app in 2003 as a portfolio piece when I was interviewing with Google. And I based it on a 1992 Siggraph paper. So whatever Microsoft has patented, it had better be more specific than "search by sketch".

This patent application is rubbish. I implemented this myself nine years ago as a portfolio piece while I was interviewing at Google. And I did it based on a 1992 Siggraph paper.

A wheel isn't very useful if you don't have a smooth enough road to roll it on. With what passed for roads during most of human history, a wheel just wouldn't be practical. Instead, they used a travois, which basically meant dragging a couple of poles behind a horse with your cargo lashed to the poles.

4. It's winter and it's no fun camping out at the protests. Let's see if they come back in the spring.

Never stop learning. You never know what skill you learn today might be the hottest new thing tomorrow. This week I learned Autodesk Inventor. Will it ever help me get a job? Probably not, but you never knew. Three years before that, I learned to program Android, and now I can't get the recruiters to leave me alone. You just never know.

Seconded. I register all my domains with Gandi. Clean user interface, no offensive advertising, no constant trying to upsell me. Easy to understand services and contract. Plus, they're outside of the U.S., which is a huge plus -- it makes it much harder for a U.S. court to seize your domain on a whim.

This is why you never register your domain in the U.S. For maximum safety, host it overseas too. See http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/2008/03/dont-register-or-host-your-domain-in-us.html

Well, I guess this proves there's no such thing as global warming. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-26-2011/weathering-fights---science---what-s-it-up-to-

Will LibreOffice read/write powerpoint? Because I tell you, using OO Presentation was one of the most painful things I've ever had to deal with.

I'm guessing that by 60%, they mean 60% of theoretical max. So if the Carnot efficiency for the conditions is 50%, then they're talking 60% of 50%.

Yeah, I'm waiting to see how much wharrgarrbl comes from this. More paranoia about mind-control satellites. More tin-foil hats. More snake-oil devices to help you think better. Soon, there really will be a market for Thinking Caps.

Here are some examples: The government makes the air and water cleaner by curtailing the freedom of industry to pollute at will. The government improves our health by curtailing meat packers' freedom to sell tainted meat. The government saved the bald eagle and many other birds of prey by curtailing farmers' freedom to spray DDT at will. The government prevented the thalidomide disaster from reaching the U.S. by curtailing the drug companies' freedom to sell insufficiently-tested drugs. The government curtails the freedom of the poor, old, and sick to freely die of starvation. The government fixes the crime problem by curtailing my freedom to commit crimes. I could go on for pages.

The government isn't always the problem, and those who say it is are usually the very rich (or those who work for them) whose freedom to exploit and enslave the rest of us is being curtailed.