The best way to deal with haters is to ignore them.
I'd almost agree, but it's hard to ignore fuckheads like that at a kid's funeral. If they want to mess with people during a very personal and private situation, I have no qualms that their own privacy bubble gets a huge fucking hole in it.
Sad thing is, it's not even close to a taste of their own medicine. Your cell phone is out in public? Oh tough shit, gonna have to change your number. What are the families at the funeral going to do about anything in their situation to even remotely get back to where they were?
What's with all the complaints? How is this not news for nerds?
We thought the heliosphere should have ended earlier. It (surprisingly, without sarcasm) hasn't. It's explained within the same summary what the expected metrics for such a boundary should be (a change in the direction of the magnetic field), as well as a quantification of the closeness (that extra-solar particles are making forays into Voyager's sensors) of said boundary.
Add a dash of the fact that we are able to communicate through outer space with four-decades old technology, and I'm really not seeing what there is to bitch about.
Oh and the Mars rover? Yeah it's still being analyzed whether the "complex hydrocarbons" are actually organic compounds, just like how it was still being analyzed whether the timing glitch in the LHC was a violation of general relativity. That is speculation, it's not news (at least not for nerds).
35 years and still running (I had a 25 year old Toyota which did the same). What happened to us engineers? Where did we go wrong?
As much as I'd like to fogey things up and chalk it up to bean-counters and cost-cutting... Honestly, great technology is what happened (and keeps happening).
Building something to last is pointless when something twice as good/fast/efficient/what-have-you comes along sooner (and at the same or lower price) than the half-life that your product was designed for.
This obviously isn't the case for things like clothing or watches or automobiles (or industrial-grade anything), but the tau=1/e of consumer-grade technology is just too ridiculous sometimes for the "ol'-fashioned" way of doing things.
There are all sorts of things I'm ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don't regard it as insulting if somebody says I'm ignorant of baseball, it's a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact, not an insult.
The problem isn't that the religiously zealous are taking a benign interpretation of the label "ignorant" the wrong way. The problem is that many religions try to assert their dogma in spite facts that this generous fellow would claim they are simply "ignorant" to.
The proper analogy would be (ooh this one's fitting) someone understanding the NFL enough to comprehend the game they are watching, but then go on to claim that American football is just a well-designed brainwashing advert-tainment channel, and then claiming that soccer is the one true futbol and only one worth watching. Sound familiar?
When I was done with university I went for a graduate somewhere else, and brought my nerd arrogance with me. It only got worse when I took a job as an IT gnome, and I REALLY started to see all the shenanigans the stupidity of some people can cause. Arrogance comes from thinking that you're better than people around you. Sometimes it's actually true.
Can you say this about yourself in a variety of other situations? How about at a dance club? Or maybe attending a potluck or cookout?
If you ever had to be in a situation outside of your comfort zone, would you be afraid of the same judgement? Because many well-adjusted people aren't afraid of being judged for being bad at things outside of their wheelhouse. That's a huge part of the definition of being well-adjusted.
You are the type of person OP is trying to avoid becoming. The fact that you are looking down on others, and drawing pride from something as stupid as technology as a justification, shows the type of petty person that the aforementioned overdeveloped "nerd arrogance" can actually produce.
Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried. I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from? How can it be rectified?
If you're maybe accidentally observing arrogance and social dysfunction in general, and just happen to be surrounded by "nerds" and CS majors due to that being your own major, I'd suggest don't worry about it, because that's just part of growing up.
If you've genuinely noticed that "nerds" are effectively more pissy than the other social sects that you've hopefully also interacted with (for your own sanity, but also simply for the sake of a control in this experiment), then I posit the following:
It's basically just an acquired/adaptive defense mechanism that some people develop, based on an entire lifetime (middle school and HS for you guys, but basically a lifetime) of being judged for no apparent reason (yes high school is harsh), while being told by those with authority (teachers, parents, administrative staff, etc.) that you are doing a good (and better than your "peers", relatively) job.
The worldview eventually evolves into one that comes to expect two things: 1. People will judge and mock me for no reason 2. I'm actually better than them
This leads to the logical conclusion that since a good defense is a strong offense: "I will judge them first, and based on metrics I know are more important, such as computer skills, grades, worldviews, etc." and everyone else will just look and think "lol what an angsty nerd".
Ultimately though, I still think don't worry about it. If you think "nerds" are bad, try sitting in a room next to third and fourth year English majors desperate to justify the tens of thousands of dollars they've spent to be very very unemployed, and I think you'll see that nerds are relatively well adjusted.
And finally, best way to fix yourself if there really is an issue? Learn to dance, gain some confidence, get laid. Your past is erased in college if you choose so (hell, some people can look desperate if they choose the opposite). Social constructs disappear, and you'll have a much better chance of people liking you for who you are, rather than judging you for what they see at first glance. But that's only if you give them the chance and don't come off too much like a dickish nerd right off the bat!
Before you give in, I highly highly suggest you try virtualizing windows on a working (ideally multi-core) Linux box with Oracle's VirtualBox.
It's completely free, frequently updated, allows control of everything, including number of processors and RAM to dedicate to the virtual environment, and the only exception is the lack of support for discrete hardware graphics acceleration (But for now should be OK for the games he wants to play).
Four orders of magnitude difference in attenuation... That's literally 10,000x.
In related news, I will be attending this same conference to deliver a talk regarding my findings that peanut butter can serve as windows, with similar differences in optical attenuation, with uncertainty of plus/minus spider silk.
From all these comments prior me, it's pretty clear a LOT of people are hilariously confusing a Patent with a Law.
Just because some guy/entity patented a system "whereby 3D printer-like machines will have to obtain authorization before they are allowed to print items" doesn't mean every 3D printer will be required to compare all designs. Only those that license this technology. Think hard, this is how patents work.
This "system" would only apply to anyone who wanted to pay this idiot a licensing fee to protect something worthwhile, such as their entire CNC/machining infrastructure (Keep in mind, patent covers additive/subtractive/extrusion/etc. manufacturing too). It's really just industrial grade DRM for complex instructions/recipes that cost a lot to make and someone wants protected.
Previously, manufacturers that wanted proprietary instructions/designs would have had to license a number of units at cost/unit, or license unlimited units at a flat rate. Tell me how this would change that?
You don't like it? Buy a printer that doesn't license this technology. At most, this patent may more clearly separate the 3D printing field into an industrial, rights-managed arena, and a free (libre/beer) one where the instructions are free and the printers are open, with the former having a more industrial application, and latter having less money driving its development.
There's one thing OP doesn't mention, and TBH I think it's worth noting:
It's a pretty lonely game with a garbage multiplayer matchmaking setup/interface. One of the best things about Diablo II was getting online in super filled games and playing through with a huge group of people (who weren't necessarily your friends), while desperately trying to stack auras, barbarian yells, etc. trying to survive an everything-immune rakanishu.
But as with BL2, Torchlight doesn't put any time/effort/funding into providing/maintaining any form of centralized multiplayer servers (everything is P2P), and I think that's one thing that makes them fall very, very short of being a "Diablo Clone (with guns!)" if you've even remotely associated Diablo (II+) with multiplayer.
Also, to all the whiners bitching about b.net DLC, it's a fucking PITA to accidentally overwrite one set of local files with another if you play from any more than one location, or play with a character from 3 hours ago, because Steam servers don't want to update, or you didn't "log in" a second time while in-game just to update your character, or your computer you played on earlier went to sleep rather than properly quitting steam to upload your local files to teh cl0ud.
For disclosure, I prepaid for BL2 (the DLC pack was worthless about 30 minutes into the game, and now the game's already at half of what I paid for in two weeks of release), was disappointed and purchased TL2, and now regret being $60 in the hole.
The most unambiguous data to date on the elusive 113th atomic element...
Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans, elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans, elements 107 to 112 by the Germans, and the two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans.
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Goodyear tire saying their new auto-inflating tire violates their patents. They have "an app for that", and therefore, Goodyear's later tire is cleary a copy of one of their several millions apps. Apple is not sure which one, but they know since there is an "app for everything", Goodyear must be in violation.
They are asking $3.9 billion in damages and a halt on all sales of Goodyear tires. As they've pointed out tires are a clear infringement of their trade dress. Their buttons on their iPhones and iPads are round. And Goodyear tires are round. So that's $1 for every tire Goodyear has sold.
In a related note, the judge also ruled that tires in general were too similar to "rectangles" with extremely "rounded corners", which Apple also holds the patent to, and has ruled in favor of Apple in a reverse class action suit against all tire manufacturers.
This is a much bigger issue/concern for MRIs that are cooled by liquid helium (remember, liquid takes up 1000x LESS space than gas, think of how much helium is needed to fill one of those).
The tiny amount of gaseous helium needed to create one of these hard-drives will probably cost much less than the amount of material saved (7-platter drive costing 50% less than a 4-platter one according to TFA).
Those of you wondering why they don't just use a vacuum inside the drive. Hard drive heads ride on a cusion of air (or in this case, a gas of some kind) so that they don't crash against the drive.
If it's filled with helium, you can fill it to a pressure that's equal to environment (or at least really close).
Try to picture the failure rates if an airtight seal holding back 1 atm of pressure vs. one that only has to deal with a tiny fraction of that.
Also see the "Bicycles are toys" crowd, versus the people who have no car and don't pay insurance/gas/car payment and are happily bicycling to work, to school, grocery shopping, etc.
That almost makes sense, were it not for the fact that the comparison fails here as you can get a fully functional (arguably more functional, better performing) laptop at the same price, if not less than many of the tablets out there (Sub-$400 Sandy bridge core i5's).
It's like saying "Look at all the stuff I can get done on my $20k Ducati!" as an excuse borne out of misrepresented frugality and necessity.
No, unfortunately the concept is not generalizable to gamma ray frequencies (or xrays). It involves plasmonic components, which require metals with plasma frequencies above the operating frequency (otherwise the metals stops acting as a metal). There is no metal which would still behave "metallic" at gamma ray frequencies, I believe.
Quite right. More fundamentally, this won't work on any ionizing radiation, as you no longer achieve any cohesive refractive effect when your photons are randomly ejecting electrons via Compton or photo-electric effects, which become the dominant interactions at energies beyond UV.
How is this any different than the Geeksquad v1.0 fiasco where they were systematically violating privacy rights and stealing porn? There may be a difference as far as who was on the short end of the stick (as far as my porn stash vs. Apple's iPod stash), but regardless, it's a pretty classic case of giving low level workers high level authorization, without the proper regulations/oversight in place (think about the recent photos of morons stepping on the food they've prepared, etc.)
Generally, worst-case scenario is that a bartender or waiter hooks their buddies up with free drinks. But as TFA suggests, Apple didn't seem to set the bar too high when picking who would watch over its top-shelf product.
Considering how the peer-reviewed journal Nature ranks sixth overall in terms of impact factor, my guess is that there's more to the publication (and TFA) than your summary of it suggests.
You know what that really means? We're now going to "get what we want" because more companies will just leave out things that would be in the game otherwise and monetize it into "Day1 DLC" instead.
Many masters are very application-oriented, and there's a chance you will end up feeling like you are doing the same job as before, but at a slightly higher level. For most "technical" (i.e. sciences) fields, an M.S. means you take two years of classes without failing them, are able to regurgitate it out on exams, and maybe put together a Master's Thesis that's more a Rite of Passage than real work.
PhD's on the other hand, often (once again in sciences) spend the same two years learning the same coursework, and are expected to do 3-4 years of pure research, applying that knowledge, before they graduate. The sole purpose of the second (and larger) half of their tenure being to hone their ability to create rather than apply (I know many M.S. holders will be POd at that statement, but it obviously varies case by case, and I'm giving a broad brush stroke, so don't whine). Many PhD programs also give you an "honorary" masters if you fail to complete the PhD program (either by choice or by lack of research capabilities).
As an aside, many government research labs (some subgroups of which are strictly programming and computational) don't offer full time positions to anyone who doesn't have a PhD, and will only give those with an M.S. a temporary scientist position with the understanding that you are pursuing a PhD.
With that all being said and done, it really depends on what you want to do. PhDs are generally pretty high level. If you want your code to have application to something, you will most likely need a strong science background, whereby you are then using your programming skills to apply algorithms to solve problems. A PhD in CS will more likely be something very high level regarding computer science as a philosophy itself (hence doctorate of philosophy). It's quite a 180 and very likely more of a departure than you wanted to take from your current career.
Finally, as far as letters of rec go, graduate school in general is much more a case-by-case basis, and not only most admissions departments be very accommodating of any questions you might have during a phonecall, but letters of rec from work supervisors will also suffice in many cases.
Whatever you pick though, I wish you the best of luck and think you will have a great time and be happy with either one C: I only list the drastic differences in a PhD so that you are able to weigh it properly against a Masters (including the fact that it's oftentimes less employable during a down economy, because of how much more companies are "required" to pay PhDs vs. an M.S. holder that can do the same work).
Slashdot Mirror
The best way to deal with haters is to ignore them.
I'd almost agree, but it's hard to ignore fuckheads like that at a kid's funeral.
If they want to mess with people during a very personal and private situation, I have no qualms that their own privacy bubble gets a huge fucking hole in it.
Sad thing is, it's not even close to a taste of their own medicine. Your cell phone is out in public? Oh tough shit, gonna have to change your number. What are the families at the funeral going to do about anything in their situation to even remotely get back to where they were?
Escape goat? I like that, I'll have to start using that. It's a scapegoat, by the way.
Escape Goat. This is Guatemala after all.
What's with all the complaints? How is this not news for nerds?
We thought the heliosphere should have ended earlier. It (surprisingly, without sarcasm) hasn't. It's explained within the same summary what the expected metrics for such a boundary should be (a change in the direction of the magnetic field), as well as a quantification of the closeness (that extra-solar particles are making forays into Voyager's sensors) of said boundary.
Add a dash of the fact that we are able to communicate through outer space with four-decades old technology, and I'm really not seeing what there is to bitch about.
Oh and the Mars rover? Yeah it's still being analyzed whether the "complex hydrocarbons" are actually organic compounds, just like how it was still being analyzed whether the timing glitch in the LHC was a violation of general relativity. That is speculation, it's not news (at least not for nerds).
35 years and still running (I had a 25 year old Toyota which did the same). What happened to us engineers? Where did we go wrong?
As much as I'd like to fogey things up and chalk it up to bean-counters and cost-cutting... Honestly, great technology is what happened (and keeps happening).
Building something to last is pointless when something twice as good/fast/efficient/what-have-you comes along sooner (and at the same or lower price) than the half-life that your product was designed for.
This obviously isn't the case for things like clothing or watches or automobiles (or industrial-grade anything), but the tau=1/e of consumer-grade technology is just too ridiculous sometimes for the "ol'-fashioned" way of doing things.
It's supposed to be a freakin tablet.
Which is a freakin' computer running a freakin' operating system.
With freakin' lasers attached to their heads!
There are all sorts of things I'm ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don't regard it as insulting if somebody says I'm ignorant of baseball, it's a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact, not an insult.
The problem isn't that the religiously zealous are taking a benign interpretation of the label "ignorant" the wrong way. The problem is that many religions try to assert their dogma in spite facts that this generous fellow would claim they are simply "ignorant" to.
The proper analogy would be (ooh this one's fitting) someone understanding the NFL enough to comprehend the game they are watching, but then go on to claim that American football is just a well-designed brainwashing advert-tainment channel, and then claiming that soccer is the one true futbol and only one worth watching. Sound familiar?
Do you realize where you are? Why in the FSM's name would you ask how to be more humble on this website?
Dude judging (characteristically harshly as per ./ commentors) you're clearly much worse at being humble than I am at humility.
I declare myself the humblest of the humblebees.
When I was done with university I went for a graduate somewhere else, and brought my nerd arrogance with me.
It only got worse when I took a job as an IT gnome, and I REALLY started to see all the shenanigans the stupidity of some people can cause.
Arrogance comes from thinking that you're better than people around you. Sometimes it's actually true.
Can you say this about yourself in a variety of other situations? How about at a dance club? Or maybe attending a potluck or cookout?
If you ever had to be in a situation outside of your comfort zone, would you be afraid of the same judgement? Because many well-adjusted people aren't afraid of being judged for being bad at things outside of their wheelhouse. That's a huge part of the definition of being well-adjusted.
You are the type of person OP is trying to avoid becoming. The fact that you are looking down on others, and drawing pride from something as stupid as technology as a justification, shows the type of petty person that the aforementioned overdeveloped "nerd arrogance" can actually produce.
Get some laid and calm down!
Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried. I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from? How can it be rectified?
If you're maybe accidentally observing arrogance and social dysfunction in general, and just happen to be surrounded by "nerds" and CS majors due to that being your own major, I'd suggest don't worry about it, because that's just part of growing up.
If you've genuinely noticed that "nerds" are effectively more pissy than the other social sects that you've hopefully also interacted with (for your own sanity, but also simply for the sake of a control in this experiment), then I posit the following:
It's basically just an acquired/adaptive defense mechanism that some people develop, based on an entire lifetime (middle school and HS for you guys, but basically a lifetime) of being judged for no apparent reason (yes high school is harsh), while being told by those with authority (teachers, parents, administrative staff, etc.) that you are doing a good (and better than your "peers", relatively) job.
The worldview eventually evolves into one that comes to expect two things:
1. People will judge and mock me for no reason
2. I'm actually better than them
This leads to the logical conclusion that since a good defense is a strong offense: "I will judge them first, and based on metrics I know are more important, such as computer skills, grades, worldviews, etc." and everyone else will just look and think "lol what an angsty nerd".
Ultimately though, I still think don't worry about it. If you think "nerds" are bad, try sitting in a room next to third and fourth year English majors desperate to justify the tens of thousands of dollars they've spent to be very very unemployed, and I think you'll see that nerds are relatively well adjusted.
And finally, best way to fix yourself if there really is an issue? Learn to dance, gain some confidence, get laid. Your past is erased in college if you choose so (hell, some people can look desperate if they choose the opposite). Social constructs disappear, and you'll have a much better chance of people liking you for who you are, rather than judging you for what they see at first glance. But that's only if you give them the chance and don't come off too much like a dickish nerd right off the bat!
Before you give in, I highly highly suggest you try virtualizing windows on a working (ideally multi-core) Linux box with Oracle's VirtualBox.
It's completely free, frequently updated, allows control of everything, including number of processors and RAM to dedicate to the virtual environment, and the only exception is the lack of support for discrete hardware graphics acceleration (But for now should be OK for the games he wants to play).
Four orders of magnitude difference in attenuation... That's literally 10,000x.
In related news, I will be attending this same conference to deliver a talk regarding my findings that peanut butter can serve as windows, with similar differences in optical attenuation, with uncertainty of plus/minus spider silk.
From all these comments prior me, it's pretty clear a LOT of people are hilariously confusing a Patent with a Law.
Just because some guy/entity patented a system "whereby 3D printer-like machines will have to obtain authorization before they are allowed to print items" doesn't mean every 3D printer will be required to compare all designs. Only those that license this technology. Think hard, this is how patents work.
This "system" would only apply to anyone who wanted to pay this idiot a licensing fee to protect something worthwhile, such as their entire CNC/machining infrastructure (Keep in mind, patent covers additive/subtractive/extrusion/etc. manufacturing too). It's really just industrial grade DRM for complex instructions/recipes that cost a lot to make and someone wants protected.
Previously, manufacturers that wanted proprietary instructions/designs would have had to license a number of units at cost/unit, or license unlimited units at a flat rate. Tell me how this would change that?
You don't like it? Buy a printer that doesn't license this technology. At most, this patent may more clearly separate the 3D printing field into an industrial, rights-managed arena, and a free (libre/beer) one where the instructions are free and the printers are open, with the former having a more industrial application, and latter having less money driving its development.
What a blatant attempt to fill up their roster of dancers.
There's one thing OP doesn't mention, and TBH I think it's worth noting:
It's a pretty lonely game with a garbage multiplayer matchmaking setup/interface. One of the best things about Diablo II was getting online in super filled games and playing through with a huge group of people (who weren't necessarily your friends), while desperately trying to stack auras, barbarian yells, etc. trying to survive an everything-immune rakanishu.
But as with BL2, Torchlight doesn't put any time/effort/funding into providing/maintaining any form of centralized multiplayer servers (everything is P2P), and I think that's one thing that makes them fall very, very short of being a "Diablo Clone (with guns!)" if you've even remotely associated Diablo (II+) with multiplayer.
Also, to all the whiners bitching about b.net DLC, it's a fucking PITA to accidentally overwrite one set of local files with another if you play from any more than one location, or play with a character from 3 hours ago, because Steam servers don't want to update, or you didn't "log in" a second time while in-game just to update your character, or your computer you played on earlier went to sleep rather than properly quitting steam to upload your local files to teh cl0ud.
For disclosure, I prepaid for BL2 (the DLC pack was worthless about 30 minutes into the game, and now the game's already at half of what I paid for in two weeks of release), was disappointed and purchased TL2, and now regret being $60 in the hole.
Stable Island, here we come, baby!
From the summary:
The most unambiguous data to date on the elusive 113th atomic element...
Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans, elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans, elements 107 to 112 by the Germans, and the two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans.
... Two steps forwards, one step back? ;)
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Goodyear tire saying their new auto-inflating tire violates their patents. They have "an app for that", and therefore, Goodyear's later tire is cleary a copy of one of their several millions apps. Apple is not sure which one, but they know since there is an "app for everything", Goodyear must be in violation.
They are asking $3.9 billion in damages and a halt on all sales of Goodyear tires. As they've pointed out tires are a clear infringement of their trade dress. Their buttons on their iPhones and iPads are round. And Goodyear tires are round. So that's $1 for every tire Goodyear has sold.
In a related note, the judge also ruled that tires in general were too similar to "rectangles" with extremely "rounded corners", which Apple also holds the patent to, and has ruled in favor of Apple in a reverse class action suit against all tire manufacturers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd9As_DlH6E
Benkyo benkyo benkyo!!
What about the impending Helium shortage?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229
This is a much bigger issue/concern for MRIs that are cooled by liquid helium (remember, liquid takes up 1000x LESS space than gas, think of how much helium is needed to fill one of those).
The tiny amount of gaseous helium needed to create one of these hard-drives will probably cost much less than the amount of material saved (7-platter drive costing 50% less than a 4-platter one according to TFA).
Those of you wondering why they don't just use a vacuum inside the drive. Hard drive heads ride on a cusion of air (or in this case, a gas of some kind) so that they don't crash against the drive.
If it's filled with helium, you can fill it to a pressure that's equal to environment (or at least really close).
Try to picture the failure rates if an airtight seal holding back 1 atm of pressure vs. one that only has to deal with a tiny fraction of that.
Also see the "Bicycles are toys" crowd, versus the people who have no car and don't pay insurance/gas/car payment and are happily bicycling to work, to school, grocery shopping, etc.
That almost makes sense, were it not for the fact that the comparison fails here as you can get a fully functional (arguably more functional, better performing) laptop at the same price, if not less than many of the tablets out there (Sub-$400 Sandy bridge core i5's).
It's like saying "Look at all the stuff I can get done on my $20k Ducati!" as an excuse borne out of misrepresented frugality and necessity.
No, unfortunately the concept is not generalizable to gamma ray frequencies (or xrays). It involves plasmonic components, which require metals with plasma frequencies above the operating frequency (otherwise the metals stops acting as a metal). There is no metal which would still behave "metallic" at gamma ray frequencies, I believe.
Quite right. More fundamentally, this won't work on any ionizing radiation, as you no longer achieve any cohesive refractive effect when your photons are randomly ejecting electrons via Compton or photo-electric effects, which become the dominant interactions at energies beyond UV.
.... great douchebaggery.
How is this any different than the Geeksquad v1.0 fiasco where they were systematically violating privacy rights and stealing porn? There may be a difference as far as who was on the short end of the stick (as far as my porn stash vs. Apple's iPod stash), but regardless, it's a pretty classic case of giving low level workers high level authorization, without the proper regulations/oversight in place (think about the recent photos of morons stepping on the food they've prepared, etc.)
Generally, worst-case scenario is that a bartender or waiter hooks their buddies up with free drinks. But as TFA suggests, Apple didn't seem to set the bar too high when picking who would watch over its top-shelf product.
Considering how the peer-reviewed journal Nature ranks sixth overall in terms of impact factor, my guess is that there's more to the publication (and TFA) than your summary of it suggests.
You know what that really means? We're now going to "get what we want" because more companies will just leave out things that would be in the game otherwise and monetize it into "Day1 DLC" instead.
Many masters are very application-oriented, and there's a chance you will end up feeling like you are doing the same job as before, but at a slightly higher level.
For most "technical" (i.e. sciences) fields, an M.S. means you take two years of classes without failing them, are able to regurgitate it out on exams, and maybe put together a Master's Thesis that's more a Rite of Passage than real work.
PhD's on the other hand, often (once again in sciences) spend the same two years learning the same coursework, and are expected to do 3-4 years of pure research, applying that knowledge, before they graduate. The sole purpose of the second (and larger) half of their tenure being to hone their ability to create rather than apply (I know many M.S. holders will be POd at that statement, but it obviously varies case by case, and I'm giving a broad brush stroke, so don't whine). Many PhD programs also give you an "honorary" masters if you fail to complete the PhD program (either by choice or by lack of research capabilities).
As an aside, many government research labs (some subgroups of which are strictly programming and computational) don't offer full time positions to anyone who doesn't have a PhD, and will only give those with an M.S. a temporary scientist position with the understanding that you are pursuing a PhD.
With that all being said and done, it really depends on what you want to do. PhDs are generally pretty high level. If you want your code to have application to something, you will most likely need a strong science background, whereby you are then using your programming skills to apply algorithms to solve problems. A PhD in CS will more likely be something very high level regarding computer science as a philosophy itself (hence doctorate of philosophy). It's quite a 180 and very likely more of a departure than you wanted to take from your current career.
Finally, as far as letters of rec go, graduate school in general is much more a case-by-case basis, and not only most admissions departments be very accommodating of any questions you might have during a phonecall, but letters of rec from work supervisors will also suffice in many cases.
Whatever you pick though, I wish you the best of luck and think you will have a great time and be happy with either one C:
I only list the drastic differences in a PhD so that you are able to weigh it properly against a Masters (including the fact that it's oftentimes less employable during a down economy, because of how much more companies are "required" to pay PhDs vs. an M.S. holder that can do the same work).