You've been downvoted into oblivion, but I figure I'll tell you why you're wrong. It's simply narcissism to assume that the average person is incapable of critical thinking. Any cursory glance at average IQ numbers shows you that the average person is perfectly capable of critical thinking. Maybe not as quickly as those with a higher intelligence, but certainly capable. Critical thinking is a process, not an organ. It can indeed be taught.

Historically, the people saying "the people are stupid and shouldn't be trusted" were the ones who were stupid and should not have been trusted. You are one of "the people", one of us, and chances are you're not very bright. But we'll let you live freely in our society anyway, and you can take responsibilities for your own actions. Which will be punishment enough.

Sorry, there have been to many invasions of my privacy by various governments and corporations in the past two years for me to even consider this. Put a bug in my vehicle? Why would I do that? Nope, this tin foil hat looks much better in a vehicle of a more classic mint. I would never have OnStar, it's expensive, unnecessary and a huge invasion of privacy.

Wow. As an American who's been trying to move to Canada that makes me sad. Is it not a bastion of sanity and forward-thinking? Let's see, no stupid wars, prostitution mostly legal, top freedom in all of Ontario, sane cannabis position, public health care.... sounds like a utopia to me. It's crushing to hear there may be down sides... really? All I've heard about is this French Canada place...

I think this is a mistake anon. We need widespread voting to prove that the system is corrupt. Look at what's happening in Russia for an example. The only hope is to vote them out and then make them officially depose the constitution and civil rights. Otherwise we're essentially allowing them to have their cake an eat it too. They can pretend we're a democracy while oppressing us.

Actually, I felt betrayed when I found out that Apple has this installed. But ummm, predominantly Android phones were being sold by asshole carriers with a rootkit installed and enabled - actively sending keystrokes and personal data. The same rootkit is on iOS but it's disabled by default. Why would Apple need to sell this as a feature? It IS a feature. At least it's not enabled by default.

I think you're just a little too emotionally invested in your hatred of Apple. Why waste your time? Besides being guaranteed to be modded up, I mean.

Someone please mod this up.

The xxx moniker originated as a marking indicating poison. It's origins are essentially rooted in being attached to something that is detrimental to a person. Some porn is healthy and good, I'm not linking any links but there's a huge push in the porn industry toward videotaping healthy people who love each other having fantastic sex. Not to mention all the studies showing that those who wank are happier people.

You have been manipulated by your compassion and love for your fellow people and that compassion has been turned by the 1% into energy causing you to fight to give them power. What makes you think our ridiculously corrupt government wouldn't do anything other than decide treatment policy based on what Pfizer says? Shit, the essential treatments would be illegal and Viagra would be MANDATORY. It doesn't take a libertarian to recognize that. As for me, I'm skeptical of anyone who wants to centralize power away from the choice of the actual people. And on that note, I quite working for The Man five years ago and I'm quite happy.

It seems like Google has been having problems communicating within its own departments lately. They're just doing too many things at once. It's like watching a sleep-deprived juggler get thrown a few extra chainsaws during their act - not a pretty sight.

You know, this has become a meme? I.e. a meaningless social idea that's repeated again and again. We live in a world of incredible abundance, where you are orders of magnitude more likely to die of heart failure due to overeating than from hunger. I tried looking up the number of people who die each year of hunger to get some exact numbers? They're so small that nobody can agree on them. This is historically unprecedented and is directly an effect of industrialization - i.e. of making people "jobless" through mechanization. What has changed is the notion of poverty. Now you not only need food, shelter, free public education, a road system, a police etc. You now need an iPod, a computer, a snazzy phone. I live in the hood of my city - really I pay $350 a month in rent. My neighbors are mostly uneducated, those who are employed work factory jobs. It never ceases to amaze me at the incredible stereo systems and cell phones these guys can afford. A good friend of mine is currently unemployed, has two live at home kids, lives off of the dole and has a brand new iPhone 4s. Fuck I wish I could afford one of those. These poor people in poverty, it's a really tough rap.

Go to Somolia or Uganda to see what the United States was like 150 years ago. We have no notion of poverty in this country, really no idea at all. In fact, in an informed historical sense there is no poverty in the United States or Europe. Even massively populated countries like China and India have successfully met the essential requirements of their people for the past decade - an incredible accomplishment. We live in a post-poverty world where dying of starvation is many times less likely than dying of heart disease from over-eating. So you see other young adults such as myself crying about poverty in this country - usually from their iPad at Starbucks and it's a curious spectacle. It really is a kind of social meme, a meaningless chant coming down from ages past when the smokestacks of the industrial revolution towered high above the impoverished and starving workers. You find similar myths (and I mean that in the most positive sense) sung in the halls of religious worship. It's an idea, a way of understanding the world. And like many of these religious notions it has no bearing on reality. At the moment we are living in the utopia imagined by our forebears. And once in a while it's profitable to stop for a moment and appreciate that. Then we can go back to pushing the limits and redefining poverty to mean owning at least 2 HD televisions.

Well, I guess second hand. Anyway, my brother worked up on ANWR for an oil company. Every single thing was movable, including the building. It was insane what expenses they went through to protect the wildlife. He had a friend who was getting into his truck in the morning and a rabid fox was in the floor boards. When it tried to bite him he reflexively hit it with a flashlight - killing it. Rabies is really common up there apparently. The guy was fined $1500 and immediately fired. I thought that was really sad that killing a rabid fox in self-defense can cost an otherwise honest worker his job. Also, ANWR is a complete wasteland for 11 months out of the year. For 9 months it's a block of barren ice, and for the other two it's a giant mosquito infested mud pit. People have no problem with pumping oil out on their lawn in Oklahoma - yet a barren waste in the arctic nets such trepidation? I myself wonder why? The 1% can afford to protect some mystical northern fairy land, everyone else needs the oil and the jobs. Thankyouvermuch.

You know, I think you're absolutely right! Getting lulled into a sense of security in a free market is very much like sleeping in the shark tank. I've worked to with too many CEOs at too many companies. They make a split-second cost-benefit analysis to their bottom line and that's it.

However, I'm not under any delusions that we have any other choices. I would rather have The Prince be a selfish jackass who got his power from providing a service or product to the public successfully than a selfish jackass who got where he was by ass kissing or shooting people. Those are your basic choices; "free market" princes or sword wielding ones. Both do everything for their own selfish interest. The less power the state has the less power these fuckwits can get at. And believe me, if you create a huge and powerful state to supposedly limit and control "the free market" then you might as well spend your time punching beehives. Because you're not going to stir up more small-minded stinging insects by doing so. On the contrary, every power hungry asshole in the country will move to your capital and ass-french their way up the chain of command.

They're the same people, the question is where do you want to put them? Organizing soft drink delivery and production, or war making and nation building?

I don't know who marked you "Flamebait" but seriously, who likes police states? And furthermore, who doesn't think we're heading for one? The only people I know of are the actual "police" themselves. Every leftist I know hates the "Patriot" act as much as any right wing nut. We are united against the establishment, in this one thing.

Why the heck aren't they at least using Parrot? It's not hard to target and it would really help the project to get some extra programmers on board. In theory Parrot would allow code sharing between all the different languages that target it. So Dart could call Ruby which can call Python, etc. It's the great unifier of the programming religious wars, and nobody seems to talk about it anymore. Even when it's finally DONE! If you're going to make a new dynamic language, please, please make it using Parrot.