C also has a couple of features that appear to have come from Lisp:

1. Pointers to functions, which allow functions to be passed, etc.
2. Macros expansion phase prior to compile time.

There's a reason for the term "killer app". People are interested in violence.

It won't go away, but it might end up being like riding. It used to be a common skill, necessary for daily life in many cases. Now it is an expensive hobby, and an extremely rare skill. When my son is 16, I'd much rather he get into a Google car that drives for him than drive. By the time he is an adult and able to buy a car for himself, that pattern will be set and he'll probably be looking for thrills elsewhere.

Apparently, this crime is more serious than the torture and murder of a five year old, which only got 8 years and 600 lashes: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/meast/saudi-arabia-girl-death/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook

Not to mention all the failed versions of Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versions).

If you plot almost any human metric on a graph you will get a bell curve type distribution where there is always a small percentage that is the superlative of that particular metric.

True, but even people on the top of the scale get better with practice. If they have to have a day job, that is time they don't practice at becoming better (musicians, in this case). So you'd expect the level of competence at the 95'th percentile to drop.

I buy indie e-books from authors I like, and I hope they'll be able to continue to write full time. But if not enough people think it is worth the cost, then it isn't. That's life.

Click here for a refutation of her argument.

Not exactly. The stamps mean that somebody verified that the food is kosher. When we're talking about food that comes from a factory with thirty different ingredients, it is a bit hard to check it yourself. More natural foods don't require such a certification.

But yes - hair splitting is a fine art in Judaism. We have a whole encyclopedia of arguments (the Talmud), and often the hairs are split into multiple parts, lengthwise.

I think food doesn't count, in general, unless it as at least "an olive's worth". However, things that impart taste count when they are enough to impart taste. In this case, the pig cells clearly impart taste.

However, the question of eating an amount so small as to be invisible wouldn't have happened. Or at least, would have been considered ridiculous. Just because a pig drowned in the Jordan river wouldn't make the water forbidden.

Any lawyer would be laughed out of the beit din (= Rabbinical court). Jewish religious law is based to a large extend on precedent, and calling some things "kosher" and others "not kosher" has ample precedent.

In general, things that are so small they're invisible to the naked eye tend to be Halachically irrelevant. So the fact that a few stem cells from a pig were involved might not render it pork. I can see it being judged Kosher.

Of course, IANAR.

Yes. I think this falls under the "No True Scotsman", but I see how you could disagree.

You might not think it is worth doing things like https://www.facebook.com/, http://slashdot.org/, or http://www.amazon.com/ (to pick three well known examples of web applications). But some of us care about usefulness and/or getting paid.

Historically, communist regimes had no problem with using forced labor.

However, in an American revolution, the "occupying force" is local. They have no country to go *back* to. There is no cost too high to defeat the insurgency.

1. An insurgency can force concessions, as long as the rulers can afford to make them.
2. An insurgency can result in splitting the country.