I've been working in IT for 20 years. I would love the median salary mentioned.
It all comes down to location (MidWest), skills (plenty o' them), and adaptability (plenty).

I've also, for 20 years, been the youngest member of my team everywhere I go. I'm now nearly 40 and I'm still the young'un.

Get off the coasts, the rest of the country has plenty of work for people.

Thank you.

This has got to be the best summarized version of my thoughts I've seen yet.

I'm going to use this later. Unless you opt out. :-P

My monitor doesn't have an OTA tuner in it. :(

Unfortunately, without the updates, the built in software is buggy and can crash.
With the updates, the built in software is less buggy but still crashes.
My TV needs rebooted about once a week as the simple act of turning it off and on with the remote is too much for the built in software. I don't even have a True OFF state unless I unplug the TV.

    Maybe I bought a crappy TV, but it seems this should be functionality that works out of the box.

And if everyone else's TW experience is like mine (warning: anecdotal) - it doesn't matter what speed you pay for, you will have crappy service.

Electricity - it has to be generated using coal, natural gas, nuclear, etc. I don't have a handy link to compare electricity usage to gasoline usage for an electric car, but it is using resources to generate that electricity.

The Prius. No, that reduced one resource use and substituted another.
The condom. Wait, that was before 1994.
The Internet. while technically prior to 1994, its uptake has curbed park usage significantly.
Google. I now use less non-Google things.

Were they using SimCity, Civilization, or simply the Sims to predict what is glaringly obvious.

i can imagine the Civilization model:

World ends in 2030 when Bismarck conquers Spain!

Dial-up requires a phone line. DSL is a cheaper alternative ($20 / month for basic DSL access v Free dial-up and a 29.95 phone plan).

I've noticed too that most people assume they are better at things then they actually are - not just with driving but in general. There are very few people who can actually multitask, but the majority assume that they are one of those few (even when presented with evidence to the contrary).

Many people swear that talking/texting/browsing/whatever on their phone does not inhibit their driving abilities. The reality is that there is maybe 1 person in 1,000 who is capable of doing so, but that one person is typically smart enough not to do it.

Unfortunately, perception is reality. People's perceptions are that humans are awesome and the best equipped to respond in some hypothetical unknown situation. This clouds people's reception of a computer, which is capable of processing and reacting far faster than a human, that is capable of handling day to day driving.

Are there situations where a computer can't figure out what to do? Certainly, and that's when a human would be needed. But in this case a computer controlled car would pull safely off the road, and alert the driver to take over. Mesh the cars, and eventually all the cars learn how to deal with this aberrant situation.

~shrug~ But I'm an optimist that hates driving. I'm ready to stop.

" do you happen to know how to manufacture everything you use from scratch including microchips, displays, etc.?"

Nope - but I don't have them running anything important without human intervention either.
I don't know how to build a car either, but I'm the one driving it.

FWIW -- I agree that a computer driven car is going to be far safer than anything operated by a human (or monkey, snail, slug, etc). I was just trying to point out why people may inherently be against it.

"Humans are essentially machines much more complex than that, and have tens of thousands of years worth of historical precedent for doing incredibly stupid things despite having accurate information - yet somehow they are more trustworthy than a machine just by virtue of not being a machine? "

I believe it is the fact that we (humans) built it, that makes us not trust it. We know how stupid humans are, how could we create anything smarter than ourselves?

I know some human drivers who have no idea how to merge onto the freeway.

Frankly, I have much more faith in a Google computer driving my car then I do the other humans on the road.

Yes, but those hardly require the expense of Blu Ray. I know my kids don't care about the quality of the films they watch.

The idiocy continues to this day. I bought a new motherboard, and they happily packaged the manual and the wiring guide onto a DVD with the drivers. In order to hook up my motherboard I needed a working system.

Granted, these days it's not that far fetched -- but that still bothered me.