You're still allowed to get excited at the fact that it isn't google, so your travel plans remain in a silo separate from that whole thing... that's actually quite a good thing.

I actually have a suggestion for this, but people tend not to like it.

I think that when you file your taxes, you should be able to fill out a form saying where the money goes. So you can pick whatever services you like and send money to them. This can be the fire department, roads, etc. If you fill out the form online, you can drill down to a relatively low level (e.g. replacing the stop sign at the end of your street with a traffic light). If there's not enough money for your pet project, then the money is invested in treasury bonds until there is enough money (or it passes the statutory period and goes to cancel the national debt).

So Mitt Romney can dedicate all his taxes to the military (because he thinks the military is underfunded). Barack Obama can send his money to international welfare (foreign aid). Hilary Clinton can give hers to domestic welfare. Tom Steyer can send his to the EPA.

This would reunite responsibility and ownership. I wouldn't be paying my taxes for stupid things that I don't like. I may pay them to something that you don't like, but who cares? You can pay your taxes to something that I don't like.

A side effect of this is that we'd balance the budget. Programs would only get money if they could get funding. And people could no longer complain about how idiot politicians spend our money. We could only complain about how other people spend their money, because we'd each be spending our own.

Actually, some fan of the show Frazier snuck her way onto the set and ended up being prosecuted for crimes against Kelsey Grammar.

I clearly don't understand the audience that video is supposed to be for.

If it was scare the western world, it's only going to give the leaders better arguments for making a moral case against these barbaric sociopaths.
If it was scare the muslim world... From what I've seen on reliable news sources, those countries that were on the fence or were somewhat ambivalent about ISIS are now in the "Let's obliterate those crazies before they attack us and/or we get lumped in with them!" camp
If this was to somehow garner credit in the jihadist world and show that they're the most jihadist of the jihadists, I don't think that worked for them either. You have to admit, that even when Al Qaeda is calling you crazy, that says something. I'm sure they'll pull over the fringe players who don't think Al Qaeda is violent enough, but not enough to offset the massive casualties they're taking at the hands of US air power.

The only thing that I could see this as a ploy towards is to try to drive a wedge in and alienate moderate muslims from the western world. Something along the lines of "See the crazy thing we're doing, we'll we're muslim, and since you're neighbor is muslim you should think of them as being as crazy as we are!!!"

My only problem with that is that these people just don't seem that well planned. It seems like they're making it up as they go along and not doing a particularly good job of it. Killing the pilot, let alone in as grizzly manner as they did, got them nothing and only hurt them unilaterally. Holding on to him and trading him for prisoners would have demonstrated that they were people that could at least been negotiated with. Strategically this was a dumb move.

Some stores no longer carry parts, and some carry a reduced inventory. But some stores still carry a decent supply of components ans similar small, useful items. We have two Radio Shack stores in the closest city; one is essentially useless and simply directs me to the other store (but I frequently try it anyway, since it's the closer of the two). The other one isn't half bad, and almost always has what I need. I shall certainly miss it if it goes away.

... it's copyright infringement.

To whatever extent the senate vote was pure idiocy, IMO it still doesn't quite topple the Indiana Pi bill.

That's a no op for me since I've always avoided using switch/case statements anyway. I always saw switch statements as an omission of poor design...

Please describe a construct that you can do in C that you can't do in python?

He could have simply made the book 260 pages instead of 240 and put in a 20 page chapter on ZFS right after RAID. The first couple of pages would be about the design philosophy of ZFS. Next introduce the concepts of vdevs, pools and pool types (in relation to what the reader just learned about RAID), sub file systems, snapshots and file system attributes. Next layout some scenarios using 8 disks in a JBOD. Create a raidZ, raidZ2 and a raid10. Next talk about tacking on another 8 disks and what the options would be for expanding a raidZ, raidZ2, raid10 set. Next talk about the pros and cons of read caches and ZIL's and ways to tune ZFS to be more performant. Lastly, talk about scrubbing and replacing failed devices.

I'll stand by my original argument... ZFS is essential to building scaleable networked storage devices with FreeBSD/Solaris and likely soon Linux. Yes, you could write the end all book on ZFS. Yes, someone like me would likely buy such a book. However, for your average sysadmin who knows nothing about ZFS this chapter plus google would give them a good starting foundation for building a storage device.

Naming a book "Storage Essentials" and then not talking about ZFS was a mistake. If you're going to be building any type of NAS, you're going to want to use ZFS for it's scalability, reliability and stability. While you might get away with UFS for a couple of terabytes, you're going to have a bad time of it when you've got 40TB worth of storage space to manage.

SpaceX has modeled the hell out of it. It's just really really hard. Honestly, I'd rather they fail in spectacular fashion and explore all the dark corners of their design before they stick people on the top of it. What's great about this is it's all gravy at this point. Once they work all the kinks out, it's going to eviscerate the competition when it comes to cost to orbit per ton. I can only imagine every other commercial launch company must look at SpaceX with a mix of horror and amazement.

Exactly. If the police get to unilaterally characterize what happened up to the point of tasing, what the hell does it matter that we've got footage of the hapless subject on the ground convulsing? How about if we throw the police in jail and start recording the court proceedings as soon as the iron door has slammed shut on them as they start their sentence, sounds like about the same thing.

Yeah, because in the 60's we were building reusable rockets that were autonomously landing on robotic ships in the ocean... oh wait.

Every magazine and newspaper in France should publish the offending cartoons on their front pages. Show these assholes that they wouldn't silenced with violence.