Why use the government to take their property away? Just go do it yourself. That would still be moral, right?

Whenever the government takes your money, you're not getting your money's worth.

I've decided against an Android phone or tablet several times based on the fragmentation and confusion of the ecosystem. The feature confusion barrier is too difficult to surmount. Will this play all the iOS games that I enjoy? Whose app store do I use? Is a storefront for that available on the device? Will I have to rebuy all my apps (ans: yep). Am I going to feel like the device is obsolete three months after I buy it? Will it run the right OS version? Am I getting locked into one app store? Am I going to have to root it to feel like I'm getting everything I paid for? If so, how easy is that to do? Is it the pain in the ass that maintaining a jailbroken iphone is?

All that, plus rebuying all my apps roots my feet to the ground of Apple's walled garden. I just don't have to worry about any of that if I just stick with iOS. I'd love to broaden my view of the mobile space with an Android device, maybe with a rooted Nook Color (I love my Nook B&W), but it's a headache, for all the reasons above, and I shouldn't have to buy into a headache.

I'm sure that even a quantum-cryptographically received photo would not be enough for the foil-hats. They'll just bend their world-view to fit like a Catholic explaining bible unicorns.

Armadillo Aerospace, this means YOU.

HTML and other web-related specs have never been truly written in stone, as the author seems to want. XMLHttpRequest, and innerHTML were functionalities written outside the spec and then later added to their respective spec documents. How many of us, as developers, have had a Business Requirements documenter interrupt our day to ask for details on how the system currently works so that they can go back and write the Requirements Specification docs to match? This back-asswards process is so common in my experience that I have come to empathize with those who believe that Req. Specs are essentially useless. They're a form of procedural ass-covering by businesspeople who want to be able to point at a document when something goes wrong.

The idea that the HTML spec from the WHATWG is functioning in the same manner is neither unexpected nor worrisome to me. I'm glad that they're acknowledging that it's code shippers who are truly defining the HTML world for us developers on a day-to-day basis. We don't worry about "what version of HTML does your site support", but instead worry about "which functionality does your site support"?

The real shift that's occurred in the code is that we're now (if we're doing as we're supposed to be doing) testing for client functionality instead of browser version, and certainly not for HTML version. Your site either supports the <video> tag or it doesn't. It either supports WebWorkers or it doesn't.

While I think it's an egregious error to omit Microsoft from the WHATWG, as they, more than anyone, could use some ears to the ground for following real-world standards, I think that having industry leaders all around a table, discussing a technology direction that will provide the next steps for HTML is a good thing.

Really, who else would the author have take over? It's implicit in his voiced distrust of private companies that he'd rather hand this off to some kind of governmental agency, or at least give it some kind of oversight powers. As to that: I don't want to give the future of HTML and the web to the same people who came up with the US Income Tax system--the poster-child for bureaucratic gobbledygook.

Chuckle.

You really should have read past the first paragraph. I'm agreeing with you--if the the past is an indicator of the future, and I think it is, it's going to get warmer and keep getting warmer for a few centuries.

I've spent a lot of a long career building models that fit real-world measurements and have predictive power.

I would never be so dim as to call that doing science. Prediction is not explanation.

As to your item 3: AGW hasn't been falsified because it's not falsifiable, nor has any climate model demonstrated predictive power. It's astonishing how few climate scientists betray any understanding of chaos.

I'll stick with the equally-valid theory that the past is an indicator of the future, that the current warming trend is normal in the scheme of things, and that it should get quite warm in the next few hundred years.

You're wise to post anonymously. Humor-impaired, but wise.

.05 is one chance in twenty that it's a fluke. That's what we call statistical insignificance.

A statistical correlation isn't evidence; it's a pointer that says "here there may be some interesting science." Until you do the science, you know nothing.

30 years is too short a period to be drawing conclusions. Looking at all of the current interglacial--back 10,000 years--makes more sense: http://smpro.ca/crunch/GISP2Civil.png

On that scale, these guys' record years are chump change. If the Mann Hockey Stick is an indicator that we're leaving the current cold spell and going back to normal temperatures, we can expect lots of "record years" for the next 200-500 years before it turns around again.

Having walked my dogs in -20C weather this morning, it can't get warmer fast enough.

I don't make those choices; individual businesses do. The fact that my clients choose to use what I consider to be the best, and best integrated, tools for the job is a happy convenience.

There's reality, and there's the Linux Enthusiast Reality Distortion Field.

they just use computers for resource allocation, scheduling, and billing and other accounting.

And the tools they use to do this are standards for the industry they're in, and they come from trade associations and accounting firms as Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. The firm that installed my furnace and water heater did it according to a dimensioned and commented Visio diagram they prepared laying out the equipment, wiring, gas piping and plumbing changes.

Where there's business, there's Windows.

I have a dim memory of a study indicating a genetic base for this.

For some people, Arabica tastes like dishwater; that's not hyperbole, it really tastes like soapy water. The more Robusta in my coffee, the better I like it. I also prefer Merlot to Chablis and have a taste for really hot, clear your sinuses, spices.

It's anecdotal, but among my friends and family, everyone's with or against the lot.

I cant say for sure, but for me its 100%.

This being slashdot, it's astounding that you think that's relevant. I'd have thought that, even at a low-ranked school, basic stats would be part of CS.

If anything, you've demonstrated that not all moving mechanical failures result in accidents, which weakens your case.