The UP 3 sounded really interesting when it was announced. I was on a fitness kick at the time, and my girlfriend ordered one for me for Christmas. At the time, Jawbone was saying it would deliver by December 22. December came and went. We called, and Jawbone gave no reason but said deliveries would be delayed, and that it should be shipping soon January came and went. We called again. Same answer. February, March... the device didn't come until April.

When I had finally received it four months later, I found that the UP 3 had tons of problems. The biggest one was bluetooth syncing. It was supposed to constantly be sending data to the phone through bluetooth. But, the bluetooth connection failed multiple times a day. When it would fail, I would have to repair the band.

Also, the initial marketing for the UP 3 was heavy on the heart rate monitoring feature. It seemed based on the advertising that I could use the band to track my heart rate during the workout. But when the band shipped, it would only track resting heart rate while you slept.

Finally, the band just died. Customer service was terrible. Long waits on the phone, to hear them tell me they weren't authorized to send me a replacement. If that wasn't enough, was that in the midst of all of these UP 3 problems, Jawbone announced the UP 4 shipping soon. No discounts for the UP 3 users dealing with all the crap. On top of that, the UP 4 just seemed silly, with the only new addition being that could be used to make American Express (and only American Express) payments.

So I'm not surprised at all to see them fail. And given the track record with this CEO, I would strongly recommend against investing in any of his future projects.

Thoughtful questions. I think it's probably driven by two things. One, basic survival instinct. Even if it wouldn't affect us personally, it would make sense from an evolutionary point of view for us to have a drive to not just preserve ourselves, but the species as a whole.

Second, I think behind it there's idea driven by hope. That the human species is capable of great deal. That we can be much more than we are now. That we can become something that can do good for ourselves, other life forms, and the places we inhabit.

Agreed. Additionally, I think the "Like" button has done so much to reduce real social connection and intelligent discussion. No need to have meaningful conversations with someone. Instead, you can give them two seconds of your attention by tapping Like as you scroll through and do the same thing for hundreds of other posts. Disagree with someone's opinion? Why bother with a discussion that could help you understand each other? Just block them from your news feed and stay in your bubble.

I'm not on Facebook anymore but I took a look at Facebook's page about Facebook Groups, which was mentioned in the article. I was hoping to find something different. But nothing new here. Same old Facebook, just restricting to certain people in a group.

We're more likely to kill ourselves as a species than we are to be destroyed by some external force. Wherever we go, we will take our problems with us. As the saying goes, "wherever you go, there you are". If we face violence, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation now, we will eventually face the same problems on the moon, Mars, or wherever. Our challenge as a species is going to be working together to solve these internal problems. If we can do this, we can colonize the galaxy as benevolent stewards instead of as a destructive virus.

In conversations like this, a question we should be asking is whether it does more good or harm to bring our species to another place, with our species as it is right now. Is it really right to bring pollution, global warming, and the potential for nuclear destruction with us anywhere? To me it seems very speciesist to look at the problem from only the human point of view. Is it good for the universe for us to carry our problems with us right now?

I'm surprised they're just now replacing the calculators in high schools. I graduated close to twenty years ago, and had a TI-85 and later a TI-89. It made sense back then, because not everybody even had a computer at home. Nowadays you can get a computer for less than the calculator costs, and all the kids have smartphones anyway. The only worry now is preventing students from using a program that is too smart and which does all the work for them.

Does bring back memories. I remember taking apart my TI-85 and taking out a certain resistor, which sped the calculator up a lot. Pretty stupid thing to do actually - I definitely wouldn't have attempted it if I had bought the calculator myself instead of having it come from my parents. My friend wasn't so lucky with the process and ended up bricking his. I did some of my first ever programming in TI-BASIC. Automating calculations for chemistry and physics classes, I think. Fun times.

Facebook did not buy Snapchat. They tried to in 2013 but Snapchat said no. Facebook did buy Instagram, which is what you're probably thinking of.

Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio called the ousters "a changing of the guard at Canopy. It is quite literally out with the old and in with the new.

"With the departure[s] . . . go the last vestiges of the Ray Noorda era. Yankee Group expects that other, equally significant changes will be in the offing for 2005," she said. "The fate of SCO is one of the big question marks. New management at Canopy . . . may push [SCO] to try and settle."

This is all very premature, but why should anyone agree to settle with SCO? They are just plain wrong on the subject, and the company is falling apart. Their backs are to the wall, and they are in no position to negotiate.