Hey sexconker, it's been another week, so time for a reminder that the number of Ebola cases in the US hasn't skyrocketed. Both Dallas nurses are out of the hospital. The only infected person in the US is this doctor, who didn't catch it from someone in the US.

Well, yeah, most people don't know what any of that smells like. I'm reminded of the Wikipedia article on Saffron, which says it smells like iodoform. Only chemists are going to know what iodoform is, much less what it smells like.

Oh, Khyber, Khyber... when will stop pretending to know things? It's "off the shelf" in the sense that they didn't have to design anything... they just grabbed an existing microcontroller design and added an extra module or two to it. tibit didn't say that it was cheaper because it's less complex; he said it's cheaper because, "Whoever packages it didn't have to do all the silicon and driver R&D." Just like there are software libraries that a software developer can grab and use without having to do a lot of work, there are hardware libraries that hardware designers can grab and use without having to do a lot of work. You need to do some AES encryption? No need to design that yourself; grab an AES core. You need to do some low-pass digital filtering? Get a filter core. There's even a site that has open-source hardware cores you can use: OpenCores

Yes

I'd say that depends on what you consider "reading and writing". For Westerners, Mandarin is difficult to speak and listen to because of the tones--it takes a lot of practice for them to pronounce the tones properly, and also a lot of practice to distinguish the tones. Reading and writing is difficult because of the large number of characters that need to be memorized. However, if you're allowed to have computer assistance, reading and writing becomes much easier; I'd say easier than speaking and listening. You can easily look up a word in an online dictionary, and when typing, the IME will present you a list of possible characters, and you choose the one you want. The latter is a huge simplification, since you don't have to remember exactly how to write a character; you just need to have a general idea of what it looks like, and the IME will take care of the details. This is even affecting the current generation of Chinese people... it's not uncommon for even a college-educated person to draw a blank on how to hand-write a character: "Character Amnesia"

Nope, no skyrocketing, and his own fiancee and family, who had the closest contact with him other than healthcare providers, are out of the 21-day window and are confirmed to be Ebola-free. You were wrong :)

So is ESR trying to convert the NetBSD CVS repo in some weird and special way or something, and that's why it failed? Because it has already been converted and is on Github; if he needs info on how it was done, there's probably someone on the tech-repository mailing list that can help. It's been converted to Fossil too.

No, it says a possible second Ebola victim. He didn't actually have the symptoms of Ebola, but felt sick, and since he had been in Thomas Duncan's apartment, he went to get checked out just in case. But his test for Ebola was negative.

I knew that, but did you? If you did, why didn't you link them instead of some random Google results? Results that contradict the BS you wrote.

Does it say that he was offered protective gear, but refused it? Because that's what you claimed: "When offered protective gear, he declined, and entered the man's apartment without gloves, or even a facemask." The Dallas Morning News article you linked just says, "Dyer said that the deputy and four other deputies accompanied Dallas County health director Zachary Thompson into the apartment, most without protective gear." It does not say that he was offered, but refused protective gear. Also, the Dallas Morning News blog post contradicts this WFAA report that says, "No one who entered the apartment that day wore protective gear." And a different Dallas Morning News article also says, "Monnig was one of several deputies who went to serve the warrant. None wore protective gear." In any case, none say that Monnig refused protective gear.

I think you need to work on your reading comprehension there... for one thing, wcnc.com isn't a Texas TV station, national news site, or a newspaper. It's a local Charlotte, North Carolina TV station. While just about every TV station has a web site these days, accessible from around the world, WCNC still a local station, with news geared for a local audience--it's no CNN or New York Times. And secondly, neither site reported "exactly the story [you] relayed". You claimed that there was a "second Ebola patient"--one of the sheriff's deputies. However, neither site says that the deputy contracted Ebola--just that he was feeling sick to his stomach/having stomach issues, and since he had been in the Ebola victim's apartment, the hospital wanted to observe him "out of an abundance of caution." FYI, the test results are back, and he doesn't have Ebola. You also said, "When offered protective gear, he declined." However, the articles never say that he was offered protective gear, or that he declined it. One simply states, "No one who went inside the unit that day wore protective gear."

I'm an official? And no, it hasn't. Netcraft confirms it, the guy doesn't have Ebola. You're uninformed and ignorant.

Yeah, 4 days after.

Nobody knows if he caught it or not, especially not you. But he's not showing the classic symptoms of Ebola at the moment; he's just being monitored.

Who said that? And it hasn't spread beyond the original source patient, so if anyone actually did say that (which is unlikely), they're correct for now.

Who said that? I never heard anyone in an official position say that. In fact, I heard some say that it could, and probably would reach America, but that it would be contained. E.g., this article from back in July 29: "Why Deadly Ebola Virus Is Likely to Hit the U.S. But Not Spread"

What? The only infected person in the US died earlier today--that's what this Slashdot article is about. Where does anything say that the LEO is infected? He doesn't even have the classic symptoms of Ebola, and neither do any of the people who the Ebola victim was staying with. The LEO just felt a bit sick, so he decided to go to the hospital just in case, but it's extremely unlikely that he caught Ebola--he was in the apartment 4 days after the Ebola victim was taken to the hospital, and he didn't touch anything in there. The linked news article sucks--why link to some place in North Carolina when the situation is going on in Dallas, TX? It's a heavily-edited version of the original WFAA article, which says, among other things, "'He's doing exactly basically what we told him to do: If at any time you don't feel well, go seek some medical attention,' Dyer said. 'I'm being told that he's not exhibiting classic signs of the Ebola virus. It's just a matter that he doesn't feel well, and because he had contact with Mr. Duncan's apartment, they're taking every precaution.'" And, "Denton County Health Department director Dr. Matt Richardson said Monnig is not currently classified as having had 'contact' with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan. 'Because of the absence of contact to the Ebola patient or anyone symptomatic with Ebola, we see no threat to the public's health regarding this individual,'"

So what do you think that Java API would return on Windows 9? Don't you think Oracle would have it return the string "Windows 9"?

Perhaps you should read some of the stories on The Old New Thing about the hoops MS jumps through to maintain compatibility. Here's one (of many). In that one, we find that MS changed the internal implementation of critical sections in Vista, but found that some programs were looking directly at the internals instead of using the API. So in order to not break those programs, MS made sure the value in the internal struct people were peeking at had the value those programs were expecting. Keep looking back through the archives and you'll find dozens of examples of MS doing crazy stuff just to keep programs working in newer versions of the OS. And with many Java apps being big and enterprisey, you can be sure that MS is going to do whatever it can to keep them from breaking on Windows 9^H10.