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Seriously? Let me know when they start rounding up dozens of people for no reason other than they believe in a different God and then they cut off their heads and post the video online. You fucking idiot, stupidity on the part of a few cops doesn't mean we're living under ISIS. Maybe you'd like to try living in the caliphate. Let me know and I'll buy the ticket if you promise to keep your ignorant fucking ass there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... https://books.google.com/books...

Sigh. Google is your friend.

It seems like you are cherry-picking some notable failures and extrapolating that to mean the entire classification is rotten to the core and incapable of doing hardly anything successfully. That's not wisdom, it's pessimism. You're not going to find private enterprise with lower rates of failure and obstruction, only lower rates of press reporting on it. While I'm not in a position to use the services of the VA, they are the source for much of the systemic improvements in health IT we benefit from today. Here's a source for you on that, which also features how they were the first to call attention to the thousands of people that were being killed by Vioxx. https://books.google.com/books...

When you make assertions that are also blanket statements, shouldn't you be providing some sources that back up your claim on something similar to that level?

Is some inefficiency in government really any worse than private industry attaching profit to everything that is done and denying service if you can't pay? Defense, education, environmental protection, etc. - getting those things done only when there is profit to be made from them is a certain recipe for disaster. We've already seen that with for-profit prisons we wind up with those prisons bribing judges to send people to prison for long sentences that would otherwise have been dealt with through counseling. And that was with children.

The single largest problem with government is that private industry is getting their fingers into it and corrupting the process. i.e. bribes, lobbying, unlimited political contributions.

Yeah, and I'm sure that 140 lb male is going to fare well against that 180 lb female mixed martial artist.

How about you stop being a dumbass and bring things to reality rather than making up exaggerated claims. The average man weighs about 35lbs more than the average woman.

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

(Full disclosure: I am neither female nor a parent; I'm a male who studies physics.)

There are too many links in the summary. The most relevant one is the google study, which has some interesting data and is fairly neutral. I don't think the study supports the flamebait headline, but instead paints a complicated picture. In particular, see the charts on page 5 of the study.

The story headline is in the same style as this interesting article titled "Papas, please let your babies grow up to be princesses". That article makes the case that interests in "girly" things are not mutually exclusive with interests in STEM fields. There are anecdotes in the above comments about girls being pressured by parents into STEM activities (like robotics clubs), and how it often doesn't work. Perhaps this is because some parents push STEM at the expense of "girly" things rather than simply encouraging STEM without taking a hostile stance towards "girly" things.

Just a thought.

Supposedly there is one 'Kinder, friendlier' advertiser who we are supposed to fellate eagerly.

lol? India can't even keep the power on. They can't clean up their garbage. They can't clean up their water supply...

https://www.google.com/search?...

And Osama came from a wealthy family and was wealthy himself. So? You realize that your post includes a link to Wikipedia? The reason there is an article about him specifically is because, well, they are an outlier and their exception to the rules makes them noteworthy enough to have an article to start with. Occam's Razor ring a bell? Yay! You found an exception and that somehow disproves, "...applicants' would probably never consider the path..."

At risk of going a bit too far I would highly recommend a Critical Thinking course (or two) at the collegiate level. "My driveway is wet, it must be raining." Or, you know, it could be a sprinkler, melted snow, a water balloon fight, or a myriad of other causes. You may find the following link beneficial:

https://www.google.com/search?...

I may seem like an ass but, oddly and truly, I have your best interests at heart. The more people who utilize logic the better my planet will be and the better your understanding will be.

https://sites.google.com/site/...

Women are cowards by nature. That's the reason they shy away from hard science. When Barbies lead to a crisis for girls and and their self-esteem, what does a 'you are wrong' from the scientific peers do? So they prefer soft stuff with no unambiguous results or even better pseudo-science where they can make up results and 'truth' as they see fit.

http://www.google.com/search?q=he+man+barbie&hl=en&gbv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=_hthVfLvJMXSyAPp4oDwAw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=993&bih=483#imgrc=744bLXCzthczBM%253A%3BXw4jHpoemUt-RM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fweknowmemes.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2013%252F08%252Ffeminist-double-standard.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fweknowmemes.com%252F2013%252F08%252Ffeminist-double-standard%252F%3B650%3B695

You mean, Nokla E6?

Windows 3.0 was launched on 22 May 1990 â" I know, 'coz I was there as a SDE on the team. [...] It was a big deal for me, and I still consider Win 3 as *the* most significant Windows' release, and I wonder what other Slashdotters think, looking back on Win 3?

Pleasedtomeet'cha. Some fine work you did on 3.x! Windows 2.11 was the first version I encountered, but we never really considered it more than a wrapper in which one could run Aldus PageMaker (the Adobe InDesign of today) to output to a LasterMaster 1000 typesetter, which was 'the' first dry toner laser that could lay down small serif type that would reproduce on camera.

Windows 3.0 was the first environment one could consider booting into and staying there... we sold a number of them for personal use and its stability for publishing began to rival the Mac (I'm a PC person but pull no punches). Wide adoption for business use in our area did not really start until 3.11 and even 95, but that was mainly because we had done our job 'really well' and had a large installed base of IBMPC/clones networked with Novell and LanTastic running DOS applications. Our customers were comfortable in the DOS environment and we didn't hurry them. Memory and CPU were precious and all graphical environments had plenty of 'hourglass' in those days.

It's worth noting that graphical environments, even multi-tasking is pervasive today but it is still a learned skill and there were many people from the DOS era who had optimized their work techniques well into the Windows era. One fellow who dealt with real estate contracts tried Windows said "It can hardly keep up with my typing speed! This is an improvement?" Even the task switching latency of DesqView (which did lag because hard disk was really slow by today's standard) was a source of frustration to him. Most days he'd stay out of it. He'd seen examples of multitasking workflow and was not convinced. "My DOS programs import and export just fine. Exporting useful bits and naming them properly is an essential part of working efficiently. If you haven't done that you haven't finished the job. So... I'm supposed to bring up some old thing and cut and paste paragraphs or sentences of it into a new thing, one at a time, while switching between them? Look here." He shows me a folder with hundreds of small files. "That's my clipboard. I have all the names in my head. Some of the pieces have several variations, but I can import the whole thing and delete the unused parts faster than the graphic environment can scroll a document from top to bottom." He really could too, in the days of green phosphor displays he was able to read while scrolling quickly, while half the characters had fading ghosts of the previous line. He did not fully commit to a graphical environment until it was running on a 486.

For all the early issues, Windows 3 was still a technician's dream. In order to fully appreciate its beauty, you would have had to experience the nefarious and wacky world of TSRs, IPX and 'packet driver' network stacks and DOS 386 memory extenders. When they finally did work they were really stable but it took a wizard's touch. Windows' driver architecture was well designed from the start.

No vertical tabs 10 years after widescreen displays started spreading widely?

It's coming. Well, at some point. Bug #51084.

Well, I used to think that too. In old times I'd agree 100% with you. I'm not gonna defend VB6, that was just a joke. But nowadays, javascript can run a lot faster than many compiled languages. You see things like Node.js which show that javascript engines have been insanely optimized, largely due to the languages (over)use on the internet. On my other post, I mentioned that Google made a demo using Dart (which is just a language which transcompiles to javascript, like CoffeeScript or TypeScript), rendering entire frames in 1.2ms. I am as much as baffled as you, but Google has found it easier to have low latency APIs for well-written JavaScript than with some Dalvik optimization.
My good advice is: it's hard for people with a compiled language background, including me, to accept that, but JS is very good for many things which we couldn't dream of 5 years ago, encroaching even C territory.

https://play.google.com/store/...

Agreed... Tovalds having a google+ poll for changing major version numbers is as arbitrary as not having windows 9.

https://plus.google.com/+Linus...

> I mean intuitively shouldn't toString() on a stream get back a string?

Yes it should return a String (enforced by polymorphism) but not the String you imply.

From the API

Returns a string representation of the object. In general, the toString method returns a string that "textually represents" this object. The result should be a concise but informative representation that is easy for a person to read.

So your String should be a description of the InputStream, not its contents.

For example: "InputStream for URL: http://google.com/" or whatever satisfies the concise informative representation that is easy for a person to read.

2011, 17Meg . Is that even the same liteOS ? By the description it seems that yes. http://www.liteos.net/ https://code.google.com/p/lite...

You can add a Verbatim engine to the Chrome Selection Search extension, too.

Thank you Sir - i don't use Chrome, but it is nice to know that i am not the only stupid person whining about that.

You can add a Verbatim engine to the Chrome Selection Search extension, too.

Are you certain of that? Glancing at unemployment rates CA has been lowering their rate much faster than TX over the last 5 years. The gap is less than half what it was in 2010

If anything can be deduced from unemployment rates, CA is doing better than TX lately. I bet energy prices are going to cause some drag in the next couple years, too.

uBlock Origin is the original uBlock by gorhill - which was forked from HTTPSwitchboard. Gorhill gave uBlock ownership of uBlock to another team (see uBlock FAQ) , but still maintains his "personal" version... which has over a million users -- compared to the supposed official version uBlock - which has less than 80,000 users.

Interestingly enough, uMatrix - also by Gorhill is now available on Firefox, as well as Opera and Chrome.

Oddly enough, uBlock for FireFox doesn't appear to be related to Gorhill nor to the official uBlock team.

uBlock Origin is the original uBlock by gorhill - which was forked from HTTPSwitchboard. Gorhill gave uBlock ownership of uBlock to another team (see uBlock FAQ) , but still maintains his "personal" version... which has over a million users -- compared to the supposed official version uBlock - which has less than 80,000 users.

Interestingly enough, uMatrix - also by Gorhill is now available on Firefox, as well as Opera and Chrome.

Oddly enough, uBlock for FireFox doesn't appear to be related to Gorhill nor to the official uBlock team.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=...

You pay a gas tax today for all of those things.

You pay at the pump and then get a refund by filing Form 1220, at least in Oregon. Other states have the same kind of thing.

I can see the benefit of saving those few tax dollars, but at the expense of having The Man attach a GPS tracker to your car? It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Yep. But since knowing which roads and when is an important part of the pricing structure, a GPS will be required.

Add "&tbs=li:1" to your keyword search string. For example:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1

That will make it always use verbatim mode when you use keyword searching.

IT WORKS!

They should have done this five years ago - the old nimble Google of 2001 would have quickly indexed Twitter and Facebook, and every other silo of information. It's only Big Corporate Google that can't acknowledge another source of information for some sort of ego-bruising related reason. "Index all the world's information ... except if it's hosted by a company run by that guy down the street who drives that ridiculous 918 Spyder".

Twitter messages used to appear in Google's real-time search, but after Twitter chose not to renew their agreement in 2011, Google started to follow Twitter's rel=nofollow instructions.
So it's more like the guy down the street who drives that Spyder told Google to go take a hike and they complied.

source 1, source 2

The IDE that works, is free/FOSS and runs cross-plattform is the best for me. That would be Netbeans for me, since I mostly do PHP. QtCreator looks neat aswell. And after Anjuta, CodeBlocks and whatnot crashing on Ubuntu for me or not being supported for OS X it seems like a good candidate for C/C++.

In fact, I'd go as far and say that not having a good IDE that runs on Mac, Linux and perhaps Windows is actually a dealbreaker for a new programming language for me.

Example:
Yesterday I came across Dart again and clicked through a few websites on it. I still have it in the back of my head and haven't dismissed it yet because - Tadaa! - Google offers a chrome based IDE for it. ... Couldn't say though that I'm all ready for this cross-compiled for JavaScript fad that's going on right now, so I'm not gonna hold my breath.

That's my take on IDEs.

They do give you 30 seconds of warning: https://cloud.google.com/compu...

Compute Engine performs the following steps to preempt an instance:

Compute Engine sends a preemption notice to the instance in the form of an ACPI G2 Soft Off signal.
If the instance does not stop after 30 seconds, Compute Engine sends an ACPI G3 Mechanical Off signal to the operating system.
Compute Engine transitions the instance to a TERMINATED state.

So if you're able to persist your state in less than 30 seconds, just watch for SIGTERM and you should be golden. Otherwise, checkpoint frequently.

Can someone help me understand EROEI ("Energy Return on Energy Input").

All the research on future sources of energy (that I can find) say that we're doomed as a civilization because the EROEI for renewables isn't as large as that of fossil fuels.

Okay, EROEI is the energy you get out minus (or divided by) the energy you put in, I get that. Fossil fuels take relatively little energy to gather, and generate lots of energy so their EROEI is rather large.

Wind and solar require a larger energy input per energy out, so it's EROEI is smaller but still greater than 1, even after accounting for mining the raw materials.

I'm not clear how the economic conclusion is reached that solar and wind cannot power our civilization. If we have enough rooftop solar and wind farms to generate all the energy we need as a civilization, and if there's enough left over to make *more* solar and wind installations over time (to replace the warn out bits), then why does EROEI matter?

Assuming that EROEI is a net energy positive (with a reasonable margin of error), why does it even matter at all?

(Also note: world population growth is slowing, and is steady or decreasing in all industrialized nations (including the US if you deduct immigration). The standard economic model assumes infinite consumption, but is that assumption correct? Is there be an upper limit to personal comfort in terms of energy use? Or at least diminishing returns? Would finite population and finite consumption invalidate the standard economic model?)

I have a Smart TV but I don't use any of the functionality of it. I have separate devices that I can use to do the exact same functions and I can replace them easily for a small amount of money if I want new/different features.

For an example of why I do this, there's how google changed their YouTube API so a bunch of older devices no longer work with it. Watch YouTube on a TV? Replace the entire TV. Watch it off a Chromecast and want to replace it? $35

You get trade dress on the non-functional part.

Orange's Orange garb is not functional in so far as the COLOUR goes. They can't get trade dress on the overalls' style, since that is generic. Nor on the vans an cars. But the colour, they can.

Same here.

Rounded corners (and don't give me BS about "it's not rounded corners". Go to the patent. There's fuck all BUT corners- not even aspect ratios or curve radius appears in the patent - and a picture of someone holding the tablet).

I believe the correct patent number is D670286. This is the first time I have looked at this patent. I encourage everyone to take a brief look at it, it is a very short read and even more ridiculous than I ever could have imagined. I've read my share of BS patents but this one takes the cake.

they are standing inside a Somebody Else's Problem field

What a golden phrase that is, brief yet descriptive. Thank you!

A Somebody Else's Problem field is no simple menace or obstacle, it is a projection of ill-tempered or incompetent energy. It can be intricate, beautiful or funny when viewed from a distance, like one of those biohazard crop circles. But you must make your way through them every day. You must be wary of strange invisible energies converging at sharp edges and central lobes. And often many overlap which compounds complexity.

It's better than up to your ass in alligators when your original objective was to drain the swamp, which is colorful but has become over-used. The swamp suggests one's foray into uncharted territory, the alligators are nameless, unpredictable and numerous entities like the (boring) onslaught of evil-minded adversaries in a video game. Life is not that simple anymore.

This is the 21st Century. We have aerials and DEM and LIDAR of the swamp, the alligators show a unique IR/pattern signatures on the terrain of endeavor, and all of them are fitted with radio collars (cell phones) anyway. You KNOW these alligators, you signed contracts with them. You hired them. And yet your navigation through the predictable messes and petty drama is not so much an obstacle as a dance -- as if one must tip-toe through a forest stepping only on the shifting shadows of leaves so as to avoid upsetting the sunlight.

Everyone's Problem fields surround us all. Now that talk is cheap and global the economy and the lobotomy and the deficit and the crisis, the ecotastrophe and the asteroid interception problem and the toilet paper shortage in Venezuela, these things affect us all.

It's overwhelming.But now armed with the simple phrase, standing in Someone Else's Problem field I can imagine these problems are projected onto me like the epic dinosaur battle projected onto Professor Falken's face as he describes the futility of it all and how useless it is to try. Perhaps I can just step aside from the projector beam without some alligator biting me on the ass.

Like the one in the 1981 movie Heavy Metal? https://www.google.com/search?...

If it doesn't work, clear your system of WSJ cookies and try again.

Nope: It only becomes pejorative when the actions of the people it is used to describe are in the majority condemnable - a point that repeatedly flies way over your narrowly focused head.

The term might have appeared occasionally in the past, but around mid-2013 it took on anew and wholly pejorative connotation. Especially when used in its acronym form. Here is the google trend for "Social Justice Warrior". The phrase is almost non-existent until April 2013. Here is the google trend for "SJW". It follows the same pattern, but isn't exactly zero prior to April 2013 due to the existence of a company named "SJW Corp." Now gamergate didn't show up until September 2014, so I can't entirely blame the uptick in "SJW" usage on gamergate. However, you'll notice the big spike in searches for "Social Justice Warrior" starts in August 2014, which is only one month before the big spike in searches for "gamergate".

It's when it's been used since to describe zealots like you who equate any resistance to your methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist/...ist that it becomes pejorative.

For the record, I don't "equate any resistance to my methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist". You don't know anything about me other than that I find the set of folks who frequently use the term "SJW" to be somewhat detestable. One needn't be a "SJW" himself for that to be the case.

Nope: It only becomes pejorative when the actions of the people it is used to describe are in the majority condemnable - a point that repeatedly flies way over your narrowly focused head.

The term might have appeared occasionally in the past, but around mid-2013 it took on anew and wholly pejorative connotation. Especially when used in its acronym form. Here is the google trend for "Social Justice Warrior". The phrase is almost non-existent until April 2013. Here is the google trend for "SJW". It follows the same pattern, but isn't exactly zero prior to April 2013 due to the existence of a company named "SJW Corp." Now gamergate didn't show up until September 2014, so I can't entirely blame the uptick in "SJW" usage on gamergate. However, you'll notice the big spike in searches for "Social Justice Warrior" starts in August 2014, which is only one month before the big spike in searches for "gamergate".

It's when it's been used since to describe zealots like you who equate any resistance to your methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist/...ist that it becomes pejorative.

For the record, I don't "equate any resistance to my methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist". You don't know anything about me other than that I find the set of folks who frequently use the term "SJW" to be somewhat detestable. One needn't be a "SJW" himself for that to be the case.

Nope: It only becomes pejorative when the actions of the people it is used to describe are in the majority condemnable - a point that repeatedly flies way over your narrowly focused head.

The term might have appeared occasionally in the past, but around mid-2013 it took on anew and wholly pejorative connotation. Especially when used in its acronym form. Here is the google trend for "Social Justice Warrior". The phrase is almost non-existent until April 2013. Here is the google trend for "SJW". It follows the same pattern, but isn't exactly zero prior to April 2013 due to the existence of a company named "SJW Corp." Now gamergate didn't show up until September 2014, so I can't entirely blame the uptick in "SJW" usage on gamergate. However, you'll notice the big spike in searches for "Social Justice Warrior" starts in August 2014, which is only one month before the big spike in searches for "gamergate".

It's when it's been used since to describe zealots like you who equate any resistance to your methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist/...ist that it becomes pejorative.

For the record, I don't "equate any resistance to my methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist". You don't know anything about me other than that I find the set of folks who frequently use the term "SJW" to be somewhat detestable. One needn't be a "SJW" himself for that to be the case.

I don't want ads. I do want to pay the sites that provide content that's valuable, but not necessarily their monthly or annual fees which are far out of proportion to my use.

At least Google is working on an alternative:
https://www.google.com/contrib...

I don't particularly like advertising, but I do see it as a necessary evil on today's web. Obviously people dislike ads, but they dislike paywalls even more. I suspect that far more than 50-60% of sites would die without ads - I'd say it's more like 80-90%. When I look at the sites that I visit (including Slashdot) nearly everything is supported by ads, with only a few exceptions like Amazon and Netflix.

One solution might be Google Contributor, which lets you buy ads from the pages you visit. The ads get removed from the page and the site owner gets money from you, rather than from an advertiser.

âoeOur team of experts will investigate how best to show this to pilots in the cockpit and develop guidance to most effectively modify the aircraftâ(TM)s flight path to avoid populated areas or prevent sonic booms.

Yes. On Sunday it will do this. But Monday thru Saturday this technology will be used to test methods for waging Cymatic Warfare... in which fighter planes slave their autopilots to a central computer that flies them in passes towards a target zone from several vectors, such that the sonic boom interfaces-to-ground converge at the same instant. We have yet to see what might happen as standard building materials are subject to this type of harmonically amplified sonic energy. By Saturday afternoon we'll know.

Because there is no such thing as a single-use technology.

...and how do you propose to BUILD any of this perennial childish sci-fi nonsense?

With our hands, making less than minimum wage. The robots will be busy taking over our jobs on Earth.

The Chinese/Russians/South Koreans will probably be on the moon by 2040, Japan plans an unmanned base by 2020 and Japan/India announced intent to have a permanent base by 2030 but more likely a decade later. A study in grey. Bear in mind that these are visible nation-states but there will be also be an invisible multinational corporate hand behind the early adopters. There will also be a forward-thinking billionaires practicing their Mandarin, Russian and Japanese in the mirror because they're fed up with endless politics.

Notice I didn't pair up the United States with anyone for Lunar exploration, because way things have been going we'll probably be paired up with Iran, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia and (post-revolution) Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Morocco, (and still) Iraq and Afghanistan to make portions of Earth more closely resemble the surface of the Moon.

Beam enough laser light at the object to heat its surface to the point that it ablates

Another extreme light solution, also reliant on melting its surface are giant parabolic mirrors deployed near the object. This interesting discussion points out some of the realities of gathering and focusing sunlight.

Once our civilization hits Stage 1.5 on the Kardashev scale we might revisit an idea proposed in 1993 by Paul Birch, How to Move a Planet through the use of what he calls a 'solar windmill' to transfer angular momentum between the sun and planets. It's Rube Goldberg as hell!

"We conclude that through the use of high-velocity dynamic compression member to apply forces efficiently, planetary orbits can be modified on convenient engineering timescales ~30 years, that the cost of such operations is not excessive in conjunction with terraforming or artificial-planet-building projects, that energy can be converted to and from orbital energy with little loss, and that the technique may also apply to the regularisation of stellar motions."

Then we could just bob the Earth and scoot it out of the way. If lowly earthworms are deserving of our protection, surely an asteroid may be.

Sheesh... you read the article and it sounds like a bunch of crackpot science with fluid dynamics terms thrown around. The key word here is vortex shedding shedding, which will cause the stack to oscillate. This is the energy they are capturing. Many smokestacks have spirals to break up the vortices which would otherwise cause fatigue.

What's the difference between clicking the URL or the buy button? Both take you to the same place.

Buy Now button
URL button
Easy button
belly button

What's the difference between clicking the URL or the buy button? Both take you to the same place.

Buy Now button
URL button
Easy button
belly button

What's the difference between clicking the URL or the buy button? Both take you to the same place.

Buy Now button
URL button
Easy button
belly button

What's the difference between clicking the URL or the buy button? Both take you to the same place.

Buy Now button
URL button
Easy button
belly button

That should be a more valuable click-through to boot.

click-through to boot

We can't say that we couldn't have seen it coming. The Products Feed spec existed for years as part of Google Merchant Centre, now it's one of the centerpieces making this possible - https://support.google.com/mer...