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Or, better yet, put a "Beta" discussion topic on the main page - like they should have been done hours ago when all this first kicked off. At least the comments there will be on topic. Oh, and anyone care to bet that this will be the "obligatory XKCD" link when tomorrow's strip gets posted? ;)

Error 404?

Or, better yet, put a "Beta" discussion topic on the main page - like they should have been done hours ago when all this first kicked off. At least the comments there will be on topic.

Oh, and anyone care to bet that this will be the "obligatory XKCD" link when tomorrow's strip gets posted? ;)

Kludge and hack are synonymous, just not maybe the first definition. jQuery should probably this XKCD

http://xkcd.com/644/

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

*: I did try and warn him about the future but he said he had to rush off to do some shopping..

I feel that this one sums things up better.

Still, this post reminds me quite a lot of the xkcd about extrapolating off of one data point.

Even xkcd knows you need at least two data points to extrapolate.

Of course this one is also relevant.
http://xkcd.com/1022/

Maybe this one?
http://xkcd.com/605/

Possibly this one: https://xkcd.com/628/

Of course not. This is just as stupid as asking if you could calculate somebody's phone number.

How in the world has no one posted this yet in response?

The question is not "Should schools teach X?" but rather "What should we remove from the curriculum to make room for X?"

Pre-algebra. Whatever gets taught in the first year of math where math uses letters in addition to numbers, can be taught with some simple programs/scripts. So not only will students learn the concepts necessary for the math they'll be getting taught later anyway, there will be less of students claiming that they've never been asked to solve for X. They'll programming and math at the same time!

Obligatory XKCD

OB XKCD!

I say scrap it and start over from scratch!

I agree. Unfortunately starting over from scratch usually ends up being this.

Makes me think of this: http://xkcd.com/189/

But monitored by some wearable computer(s), I don't know how good current technology would have for accurately sensing and represnting various body types (plenty of critism of BMI for example) but I could see how turning excercise into a sort of game could have a future. If they can, more power to them, obesity has sadly become a significant problem and excercise is a necessary tactic for reducing it.

It sounds like an external password database was hacked and all the usernames + 'yahoo.com' and the matching passwords were tried against Yahoo Mail.

It doesn't seem like Yahoo could have done anything more about this. It is a case of password reuse, not Yahoo's password storage.

Right. Evidently it's easier to go for knee-jerk Yahoo bashing than to read TFA. I wonder if the folks who do that also save time and energy by reusing passwords? ;-)

It sounds like an external password database was hacked and all the usernames + 'yahoo.com' and the matching passwords were tried against Yahoo Mail.

It doesn't seem like Yahoo could have done anything more about this. It is a case of password reuse, not Yahoo's password storage.

http://xkcd.com/605/

If all the wine was gone we would need to wait for the next year's production. This is not going to come out all at once, so the vineyards that get it out first would essentially be able to set their own price (in a free market). If this price was high enough I imagine a majority of wine drinkers would simply wait until the market stablized.

That doesn't mean the demand hasn't gone up, though. People will be more inclined to buy bottles of wine. That means the demand has gone up. That market forces act such that the actual number of sales don't increase, is another matter.

Also, obligatory xkcd.

Reality check: you are on an internet message board where techies discuss relevant news semi-anonymously. A message board that happens to have a culture in favor of such things as argumentation, logic, and citing sources, and not in favor of such things as appeals to authority. You might get away with the above touchy-feely rant against your subordinates at work - though it wouldn't make a very good impression and I would recommend growing a thicker skin instead. Here, you're just making a fool of yourself. If you expect everyone to gasp in awe at your words of infinite wisdom and the gospel flowing out of your keyboard, boy, are you in the wrong place. All I've been doing until now is questioning your statements, in a more civilized manner than average for this site. What you could have done is explain why I'm wrong, build up some argumentation, cite some sources I can look at. What you chose to do instead is vigorous handwaving, "shut up and listen because I'm an engineer and therefore the only person here who is capable of understanding these things" and "ooh I'm so hurt that you're questioning my expertise as a person on the internet who posts stuff under a nickname. Well I ever! What a scandal to read such slander on an internet site ridden with expletive-laden rants!"

Sorry dude, I've been brought up to skeptically consider all information given to me, regardless of the source, to analyze it with logic and to seek independent verification of any claims. My training and work as a professional scientist has enforced that, and added to it an automatic reflex to try to poke holes is whatever comes my way. If you can't handle that, cry me a river. The engineers I know do have some notions of explaining their claims and citing sources, and some taste for a good technical discussion or exposition (hint: "shut up, I know what I'm talking about" ain't it).

...bits and pieces taken from the net with little or no understanding of context...

That, my friend, is more than you have provided so far. Feel free to explain why me linking to GE's gas turbines that are advertised for (among other things) peak electric loads at utilities is irrelevant to this discussion. I'll accept a good refutation any day, but "shut up you're wrong because I say so" will get you nowhere. As for wikipedia, if what's written there is wrong, well, have you noticed the site has an "edit" button? It's kinda a big deal for them.

and now you are going the extra step of questioning my expertise

And now I will proceed to go one step further. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Don't you think that is impolite and that you would react in a similar way to someone correcting your casual observations about your field by, for instance, implying that all computer programs are written in Visual Basic when someone has mentioned C?

Not in the least. Knowing the scope and culture of this site, to think that's impolite would require me to have a gigantic stick so far up my ass that it comes out my mouth. This not being the case, I gladly point the person to sources where they can learn why their viewpoint is wrong if I have time. Accompanied with a deriding comment for good measure - after all, this is slashdot. if I don't have time, I just ignore it. Also related.

As for the "And yes, do run on stuff other than kerosene" - my example given above was listed as running on "coal seam gas" and also "small", so your new "corrections" are even more insulting.

Now try the same without the touchy-feely part. If it is I who read your post too glancingly, then that gives you the right to correct me and/or insult my reading comprehension. No need to get on your high horse. Life's too short to feel gravely insulted whenever someone didn't pay enough attention to what you wrote.

Yeah, but those US rovers are wearing out too: http://xkcd.com/893/

That I can appreciate his likely skill with a service revolver

Cops don't carry those anymore. They carry Glocks. 9mm, 17+1 capacity. Yes, it's a technical nit to pick, but it means that the cop has 3x more bullets than you think he has if you think he's carrying a service revolver*. Also, he's probably carrying one or two spare magazines. In other words, Rain Man is screwed. Not only can he shoot you dead. He can shoot you very dead.

*I'm not saying this is always a bad thing. Cops deal with some seriously bad people sometimes, and I'm all for them being able to defend themselves. It just means that if you get a hotheaded cop on a power trip, there's potentially a lot of damage for IA to sweep under the rug in their coverup.

Actually, TFA doesn't say that the cats were cute.

Oblicatory xkcd

Ours just keep going and going... like the Energizer bunny.

Hopefully, that little guy will get to come home one day.

Ours just keep going and going... like the Energizer bunny.

To those who say some variation of "American can't build them like they used to", I say "top that!"

But that was more than 10 years ago. They don't build 'em like that any more.

Super-Ob xkcd.

World According to Americans

For experimental confirmation that the earth is not warming a great amount, stick your thumb out the window. This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.

Really? Using that argument alone puts you out of the discussion.

Obligatory xkcd.

Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1102/

So, does this mean they sold two tablets this year? :)

Step off physicists, this field belongs to chemists.

Oh, hey guys

Or this XKCD:

http://xkcd.com/793/

Better xkcd - at least this also uses data collected from Google.

But Arcturus is 36.7 light years distant--11.24 parsecs. We're safe. As long as the supernova occurs more than 8 parsecs away. the ozone layer won't be catastrophically damaged.

Obligatory XKCD: Another way to die in a supernova

https://xkcd.com/936/

*Anyone* can crack *any* password using brute force: https://xkcd.com/538/

I really wish I had mod points, because this made me crack up. (Here's the link, for those of you still wondering who Bobby is...)

Look, user 2629943, EVERYONE on this fucking site with a user ID under 3 million knows who Bobby Tables is. STFU. Delete your account. Better yet, start using Facebook or Google+ to sign in, you unholy retard.

Oblig: http://xkcd.com/927/

http://xkcd.com/55/

I mean, I'm glad it can do almost anything, but I'm still waiting for import antigravity to work properly.

Actually, this line of thought was translated into an XKCD strip.

https://xkcd.com/1318/

well. i know i should not. but it just seems to repeat again and again, and this seems so relevant...

http://xkcd.com/1150/

I really wish I had mod points, because this made me crack up. (Here's the link, for those of you still wondering who Bobby is...)

Many Europeans are already used to using different keyboards at different times.

Yep, absolutely normal. When I'm at work I'll have my employer's laptop (with a UK keyboard) in front of me ; to the far right, a French contractor's machine providing some data, obviously with a French keyboard ; to the rear right, a US contractor (staffed by Nigerians, of course ; actually it's the same company as the French, but a different division ; I forgot they'd merged) has another machine I need to input and extract data from, and that's got US layout (but with a British layout physical keyboard) ; then there's the client's two computers - one with a Norwegian layout for the old data system and the other with a UK layout on a physical Dutch keyboard for the new data system.

Oh, and my tablet, which is probably a Chinese layout keyboard, but I've never tried to remember. It's got a physical keyboard, but it's in my rucksac and I'm not getting it out.

Oblig XKCD.

For a site supposed to be for nerds that are self motivated to learn, especially when most people realize a single post won't mention every detail of a topic or every competing brand of tool , don't expect much sympathy for knocking away spoon fed information.

The general point is that while ssh tunnels are fine, setting them up is like using tar. Just because we can, doesn't mean that we want to. I can use tar when I need to, and have for twenty years, but I go to OS X and right click and say "compress", and it does as good a job for all practical matters, and it's what I prefer.

It's awesome that the details are posted here... gonna be here when I need them next? No?

Obligatory XKCD

That has got to be one of the most dead-on appropriate "obligatories" I've seen in a long time.

For sure. Even as a long, long time Emacs user, I didn't know you could program it for that.

For God's sake, you mean you've been doing 'M-x increase-CPU-temp' the whole time?

Just to support your point: http://xkcd.com/605/

There's extrapolation, then there's bad extrapolation. Can't tell whether they're doing the latter or not, since everyone likes holding the "inconvenient" (yes, intentional) bits back.

ObXKCD.

Obligatory XKCD

That has got to be one of the most dead-on appropriate "obligatories" I've seen in a long time.

For sure. Even as a long, long time Emacs user, I didn't know you could program it for that.