A leap year is actually the addition of a single day. Why do we call this a leap second if the entire second is removed? And, what is wrong with just letting days stay brighter for 1 second?

And if we are this obsessed with accuracy, what to do about atomic clocks?

Look, Iâ(TM)m not saying it was humans, but it was humans.

I would setup a new table in Oracle with a unique constraint on the column. Then I would use a SQL builder and insert items until I get an error. I would parse the XML error response, and infer from it whether it was the unique constraint that was violated.

Efficiency is my middle name!

I would create a counter to count from 0 to infinity, and point the CPU IP do the address of that big integer. The program I want will be generated somewhere along the way. The trick is to filter out the ones you don't want.

What's the fundamental difference between being an EU member and having a trade deal with the EU? For example, is it theoretically possible to strike a deal that provides basically the same payment vs benefits as an EU member?

I would think one possible progression is for the UK to negotiate a deal with the EU that isn't actually that different from what is already in place. Pressure from Scotland and N. Ireland would be the main drivers for such a deal, perhaps.

Just wondering if the outcome of all this is basically the UK gaining some more latitude, but overall just an incremental change.

I'm all about the deep insight.

Just so we can say we can take ideas from the Lab to the Fab to the Tab.

code monkeys? You speak of employees not being the greatest asset, about how the "suits" don't care about them, only the quarter's results. Yet, you call your colleagues monkeys, unnecessarily demeaning their value. I smell hypocrisy.

And, how would YOU know something went awry? You would just cease, never suffering for even a nanosecond. No one you love would be pained by your prolonged absence. Everything would be perfect.

oh sweet release!!

I assume some hardware will be at the destination point. I am fairly sure once we figure out how to transport things over interstellar distances, moving these bags of meat and water won't really be a problem.

I also suspect once we can travel that far, the cosmos will bore us. Rocks tend to look the same everywhere. And perhaps other forms of life don't vary enough to keep our attention for very long. We will probably find more fun in trying to understand reality itself.

We will even don togas as we debate the unknowable.

PuTTY and Cygwin. They are the only truly essential thing on my Windows box.

My manager wasn't technical enough to open a laptop lid, but could debug your kernel memory manager with just a protractor and 2 fifths of whiskey. He once filled out a requisition form using only a sharpie stuck up his ass in the middle of a team meeting. Here's to Bill Brassky!

As a Lenovo Y2P owner, I have to just say that 3200x1800 is plain great. First, to the detractors of 16:9 aspect ratio, I really like this aspect. Running Blender, I can keep the side panels open and still have a reasonable working area. Same goes for Unity 3D. Web browsing is good, but 16:9 really shines when you side-by-side 2 browser windows.

As for the resolution, having text this sharp is a noticeable, if minor, convenience. I actually find that displaying 20MP photos is astonishingly clear. I thought it would be the other way around, originally. I thought the text readability would be the huge win and the photos/video win would be minor. In either case, more pixels are better than fewer.

And for those complaining about the Windows desktop at really high DPI: I just set the scaling to 200% and it works just great. Some apps kind of suck at scaling, though. I wish those Windows devs would get off their asses and fix it. But they are all probably busy writing Android or iOS apps right now.

Overall, the resolution is great, and the aspect ratio is just fine. Even in tablet mode - having a long page is just fine be me.

If there's one thing I would warn about in general about high res laptop displays, it's that the GPU can easily be underpowered for this. The Y2P's HD Graphics 4400 does an OK job, but the HD 5000 would have been way better. That's my one gripe about the Y2P.

To say another star has an exoplanet seems redundant. Why not just say it has planets?

In fact, seems to me that all stars have exoplanets, by definition.

One major fail was selling the type covers separately for a hundred bucks. They showed the product everywhere *with* the cover, making people think it was all one product. To walk into Best Buy with a picture in your head about what you want to get, and then be told it's another $100 - that kills any forgiveness anyone might have over Surface RT's other issues.

And then they screwed themselves yet again. Announcing a $150 price cut should have also included the cover. Yet again, Microsoft keeps thinking those covers are oh so precious.

I actually think Surface RT is a decent product. I'd buy it *with* a cover for $300. No more. And so, no deal. From someone not fundamentally opposed to the product.