Several of the projects I've released were written in-house for my employer to accomplish a certain task. Because I've made it a habit to work for enlightened employers, most of them have been receptive to me releasing my non-company-mission directed software under various open source licenses.

So say I'm working at Foo Corp and wrote Bar Widget to help them get something done. Bar Widget isn't something we make money directly from. It's just a piece of infrastructure that we needed, and my boss is cool and lets me put it on GitHub. You come along and say, "hey, JSG, we'll give you money for Bar Widget as long as you send us an invoice for it." Great. Thanks! But how do I do that? My boss is a good guy, but asking him to let me send companies invoices to use the software he paid my salary to write is a bridge too far. So maybe I ask Foo Corp to bill you instead; then what? I'm only going to see a portion of that money, probably routed in as a (taxable!) bonus on my next paycheck, minus however much he thinks it cost him to process the invoice, accounts receivable, etc.

In that situation, I'd have given you a heartfelt "thanks for thinking of me!" and started ignoring your calls and emails, too. It's not that I don't like free money, but that I don't actually have a way to accept it that won't either 1) get me fired or 2) have such a high overhead that it's not worth the effort to collect.

Yes, because it harms his credibility. There's no reason for him to have lied about the temperature of Earth's core, so it's clear that he made a mistake and spoke in error. There are three possibilities here: he knew the right answer but misspoke, he knew an answer but it was wrong, or he didn't know the answer but spoke anyway.

The first case is most forgivable. Smart people get tongue-tied all the time. It happens. Still, it's an important reminder that not everything out of someone's mouth - even if they were considered an expert in the field being discussed - can be accepted as fact without verification.

The second case is troubling. If he "knew" that the Earth's core was millions of degrees hot, then we're led to wonder what other incorrect facts he might have stated in other contexts. Maybe some inconveniently incorrect truths helped him in a debate? Maybe some policy speeches on the Senate floor weren't as accurate as we would hope?

But I personally find the third possibility to be the worst option, because it speaks to a mindset rather than a mistake. We believe experts because we trust that they have evidence behind their statements, and that they'll offer a correction if it turns out that they made a mistake. It's impossible to trust someone who says things without evidence, though, as if making up facts out of whole cloth when it suits them.

So those are the reasons why we care that he said something so blatantly wrong. It doesn't mean that his other positions are invalid (and certainly doesn't mean that anthropogenic climate change is invalid), but it does mean that a very prominent climate change supporter has made wildly incorrect statements public settings. I choose to believe that it's for the first reason and that he simply spit out the wrong number. You can bet that a lot of people have come to one of the other conclusions, though, and to those people anything he's said in the past or will say in the future will be suspect.

We're in a damned if we do, damned if we don't situation.

Hardly. We have a lot more options than just (invade | do-not-invade). We can help the refugees for one.

Right now this smacks too much of "wag the dog". A nice war against a "bad man" so that everyone can forget the NSA leaks. And a big party when we kill the "bad man".

The idea is to save lives in the long run by putting limits on harsh regimes in that they don't want to risk the UN/USA coming down on them.

The problem with that is that it is just as easy to kill thousands of people with regular bullets and bombs as it is with chemical weapons.

From a military standpoint, chemical weapons are used for two main reasons:
1. To deny terrain to the enemy.

2. To "soften" a "hardened" target. That's where the enemy is dug in so much that regular bullets and bombs are not effective.

That is not saying that chemical weapons cannot be used on a civilian town. Just that using them is no more effective than artillery or bombs or sending a infantry company in.

There's been rumors of Syria using chemical weapons for a while now, Barack Obama has reinforced the US policy of 'We'll go after anybody who uses CBRNE/NBC weapons', but has been waffling that Syrian weapon use has been unconfirmed.

And that gets back to it being just as easy to kill people with bombs and bullets as it is with chemical weapons.

Why do we care so much that it is *CHEMICAL WEAPONS* as opposed to *BULLETS*?

Why would we not want to get involved if 10,000 people are killed by bullets? But 100 people killed by nerve agent and we're in an uproar?

I guarantee that we will kill/cripple more civilians in a war than they have killed/crippled with chemicals.

Or... couldn't they just stop making the lossy stuff? If the expectation is that the consumer products would die without the business division's subsidies, wouldn't it be easier to just pull the plug on the consumer lines? I don't have enough corporate experience to know: maybe that's just not possible for some convoluted MBA reasons.

When I lived in the US (up till 2002, in Texas) most windows were still single pane even in new builds which surprised me given in Houston heat everyone needs A/C and it's expensive to load up the AC by having windows that just allow the heat in.

I'm on Beacon Hill. Our Internet services vary from street to street. It's ludicrous! I'm stuck with a slow provider right now, but a "gigabit" provider is trying to get access one block away.

Why do you think we legalized pot? Your connection might be slow but you cool with it.

"Sorry, grandpa."

If you end up in the military you have nobody to blame but yourself.

N00b.

It's where some half-assed tech journalist wannabe discovers the History -> Reopen Last Closed Window shortcut (and the Chrome equivalent) and wants to blare it from the rooftops like we've cured cancer or something.

He's gonna lose his freaking mind when he discovers Time Machine.

No caps. For real. No BS. No filtering either.

It's supposed to be in the Presidio, but the movie shot put it in the Marin headlands.

I was there last week and there was really bad smoke from the American fire, which is still burning. You might be getting both that and the Rim fire.

I guess that's good if you have a short attention span.

I presented you with an example from Firefly. So I'm a bit confused by your "short attention span" comment.

Do you believe that Inara's and Zoe's contrasting attire was so that the writers could expend less energy? Or so that the viewers would not get them confused with each other?

Except that fails as a narrative device in this situation.

Having each character wear their own outfit would allow for a visual "shorthand" for that character's history and personality.

Firefly and Blake's 7 are great examples of this. Why does Mal wear that long coat? Inara wears skirts and dresses but Zoe is usually wearing trousers. Jayne's outfits are different from Simon's.