piguy314

"(40 of 50 answers)"

What an impressive sample size they have there.

He's a fossil of a bygone era who should probably just get it over with and die already, that movie was hilarious.

Eh this is the classic guns kill people vs. people kill people argument. Not having guns or bombs isn't going to stop a war. Some of the bloodiest wars in history were fought using swords and spears.

How about cheap, nearly unlimited electricity (nuclear), medical scanning devices that use radio isotopes, radiation therapy to treat cancer, or a variety of other technologies based on the early work of physicists.

I was under the impression wireless bandwidth is always one generation behind cable bandwidth. Are they doing this because they are too lazy to upgrade their network and maintain their competitive edge over wireless? I can't imagine a state of the art cable internet connection could ever be seriously threatened by a wireless connection that offers what, 6Mbps under the best conditions? With the rise of internet video it seems like physical line internet providers are here to stay.

This article had great perspective. We tend to believe our current fiat money is something "new" and "modern" when in reality metal/virtual currency seems to move in cycles (as the author points out). We also tend to believe this most recent economic crisis was a modern contrivance as well, when in reality it bears striking similarity to many crisis from previous centuries. Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote about the similarity between the current economic collapse and previous valuation bubbles and currency crisis in their book "This Time It's Different" which might be good further reading for anybody who was intrigued by this article.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financia...

The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been extremely damaging to innovation and research in the US. There was a great lecture at defcon 17 about the specifics of the laws regarding jailbreaking and reverse engineering (when reverse engineering actually is legal, usually only to create/implement interoperability).

https://media.defcon.org/dc-17/audio/DEFCON%2017%20Hacking%2...

If I'm not mistaken, and I may very well be, this new facebook paradigm shift is just friend feed on steroids, and since facebook didn't create friend feed, they bought it, can't somebody come a long and just make a new version of friend feed that embraces authentic openness instead of this command and control, top down, DRM vendor lock in dystopian reality that corporations seem to love so much.

I wonder if they would accept a pre-paid credit card at the Apple store. These technically use the credit network the same as a regular credit card...

The law on this matter is, as I understand it-IANAL, that a password is a product of the mind and so it would be a violation of your fifth amendment rights to compel you to give up the password, as it would be "testimony against yourself." A password written on a piece of paper or a physical key would be a different matter. This doesn't mean they can't confiscate your laptop and/or image the hard drive to try and crack your encryption later though, it just means if you have encrypted files you can't be penalized for failing to disclose the password (probably).

This lecture from Defcon 17 may be relevant: https://media.defcon.org/dc-17/audio/DEFCON%2017%20Hacking%2...

Nobody disputes, or should dispute, the right of a sovereign nation to perform invasive searches at international borders. What is most serious and egregious in the DHS/CBP behavior is the slippery slope of trying to change the definition of an international border. The 4th amendment in no way protects you from a border search, but saying that 100 miles inside the country is an international border is ludicrous.

While your statement is most likely true, the study controlled for this effect by comparing students with comparable SAT scores.

Other than the warrant being furnished "under seal" everything here seems to be above board.

I think it would be a mistake to apply the Pareto principle to time distribution as the author seems to want to do here:

"so putting 20% into any one thing and reaping 80% of the benefits is a very time-maximizing way to live."

The Pareto principle is really about the distribution of causes and effect and factors. The goal would seem to be to isolate and identify your vital factors and focus most of your energy on those to maximize your output.

I was addicted to world of warcraft for about 18 months and I finally came to the conclusion that I was mostly using it as a "success surrogate." It was much easier for me to be successful in game than in real life, and the cycle time was much shorter. In an MMORPG you can achieve meaningful progress in your avatar in one weekend of solid grinding, but in real life to achieve meaningful results usually takes weeks, months or years of hard work. It was partly the immediacy of the rewards that made the game so compelling I think.