"Lacks" is a strong word; it's just not inherent. Back when I used to write software in C and C++ for money, I would religiously put "}//end if" to make sure I could keep track of which braces went where. If I needed even more context, I would put " }//end if(var1 == var2). It's not that hard. Like many things in C, you have plenty of rope to hang yourself if you really want to, but you can also make it tidy and sensible if you care to. C is not your friend, and is not your enemy.

C is like an M1 rifle. Sturdy, proved in battle many times over, occasionally finnicky, and ready to put a high-powered round precisely where you aim it without apology. Whether you aim at your foot is your business.

Welcome to my life every time Slashdot posts one of their misinformed anti-patent rants. (Signed, a patent attorney.)

Which, in concentrated form, can form a black hole that can devour a whole planet.

Sure, if you're an SI purist. But everybody knows that in an insulated nerd environment, you can normalize to teraSpocks, which have a much greater Apparent Coolness in context.

Just run up a few thousand in credit card debt, and they'll rubber stamp you with their eyes closed.

In fact, Windows XP doesn't want to go on the cart. It feels fine! It thinks it'll go for a walk.It feels happyyyyyy.

That's version 2.0

The point is that by pushing for renewables at the exclusion of nuclear, the tree huggers have successfully kept coal firmly entrenched. Renewables are expensive, and they don't have the energy density of coal, much less Uranium. Without the political and emotional baggage, nuclear could have completely replaced coal decades ago, not "hopefully some time in the next 20 or 30 years, if we're lucky."

A coal plant, working absolutely perfectly according to its design parameters, will cause much more environmental and health damage than even a "catastrophic" nuclear failure. So no, it's not a technical issue. It's an emotional issue. We have all but cut off access to the cheapest, most abundant "green" energy source we have. It's like God handed us a big chunk of nearly-free magical energy and said, "Here, use this." Then Jane Fonda said, "But it's scary!" She's done more harm to the planet over the past 35 years than BP ever did.

Well, if we paid off making a new AI with a massive, hyper-euphoric, temporary endorphine rush, they might want to do quite a bit of it.

Of course, the comet will also start shooting off monster steam blasts, which could easily blast Philae off at escape velocity. The next Twitter update from Philae could be "I'm Lost in Space!"

You're doing it wrong. It's called amnesty now. All you have to do is pledge to vote Democrat, and Obama will send a plane to pick you up.

My anecdotal experience is that sometimes it's a ceramic diode getting hammered by out-of-spec back-voltage and ready to explode, and sometimes it does explode spraying ceramic shards all over the electronics lab. Root causes may include a dodgy transformer (pulled out of an old Hammond organ) with a highly questionable output waveform because you're a broke undergrad and it was cheaper than buying a new one.