Well of course they sound the same. That just proves that your speakers are crappy. You need audiophile speakers, a tube amp, monster cable, and a wooden volume knob to really appreciate the difference. Go buy all that, then come back and tell me you can't hear the difference. And if that doesn't work, burn the clips to a CD and color the edge with a green marker. That'll do it for sure.

It's not different. I find the ticker thing mighty annoying, too.

You really have to admire the cojones on the cell providers. They take the part of the service that costs them the absolute least to provide and charge a premium for it. They somehow managed to convince the public that a 140-byte, non-realtime, unidirectional text message is as valuable as a minute of 8000 bps bi-directional realtime voice data. Brilliant, gentlemen, brilliant. *slow clap*

I don't mind shooting up some virtual people, I want to be as far away from real war as I possibly can be.

Yes, as an adult, you realize that. But would you have realized it as a child? Probably not, if the only experience you had with guns and death was video-game based.

I was a child in the 70s. We didn't have video games then, but we did have nasty brutish violent cartoons. We had concerned citizen groups whining "Think of the children!" right and left, but I don't remember anybody getting an anvil dropped on them because they saw it in a cartoon.

Games are just the modern replacement for cartoons in the same tired argument. Give kids some credit. They really can tell fantasy apart from reality.

Sure as hell doesn't serve the end-users.

"We find the defendant not guilty, your honor, on the grounds that the prosecutor is a dipshit."

Or, it's a test. My wife sometimes needs to hire clerical workers. The help-wanted ad she posts end with "Fax a resume to...". I looked at the ad and said, "Fax? Who has a fax machine any more? You should give them an email address!" She says no, the instruction to fax is intentional. She wants someone who can A) follow directions; and B) is resourceful enough to find a fax machine. This is not a high barrier to entry; think of it as the FizzBuzz of office help. In fact, that's exactly what it is, a way to weed out the absolute dregs before you start.

I'm not saying that filling out an awkward online form is necessarily a test for a tech job, but it may be... Can you follow directions? Can you restate your prior job responsibilities in a format other than your prepared resume? And, let's face it, they're asking you to do the data entry of basic information such as name, address, phone, etc. Key-punch operators are a thing of the past. Nobody's paying people to copy hand-written information off of paper and into the database anymore. If you're such a prima donna that you won't fill out the form, why should I even consider hiring you? Asking for a mailed application simply on the grounds that "your web site sucks" (even if it's true) only makes you look conceited and arrogant.

(Full disclaimer: My company's online job application sucks. It's not a test, it's just a poor purchasing decision that was made by a different department. I've argued to make it better. Still, it's not impossible to get through as evidenced by the fact that we have people successfully applying every day. If you can't or won't make the effort you're probably not someone I'm going to want to work with anyway.)

The story has a good premise: Can we measure the programmer's emotional and cognitive states to predict when they're more likely to produce buggy code? That's a fair question. Where it loses it is when it jumps from that to the assumption that difficulty (and thus concentration) is the mental state in which bugs are produced. Hopefully that was just a case of the reporter missing the point.

I guess I'm not alone in totally reading that quote in Sheldons voice.

Never say "the risks seem obvious." They're not, obviously -- demonstrated by the fact that at least one company thinks it's a good idea. So why don't you state what you think is obvious and we'll have something discuss?

From RT:
http://rt.com/politics/177248-...

Such authors will now have to register with the state watchdog Roskomnadzor, disclose their real identity and follow the same rules as journalists working in conventional state-registered mass media.

  The restrictions include the demand to verify information before publishing it and abstain from releasing reports containing slander, hate speech, extremist calls or other banned information such as, for example, advice on suicide. Also, the law bans popular bloggers from using obscene language, drawing heavy criticism and mockery from the online crowd.

So.., now you're not legally allowed to lie to a large number of people or incite violence based on those lies. Gee. That's bad how? Might be nice to have something like that in the West, because right now it's perfectly legal for FOX News to outright lie to their viewers.

Russia, like any large nation the US hates, (see Venezuela) must defend against the standard CIA tactics used to de-stabilize governments and population bases through grass roots propaganda tactics. Forcing creeps and liars out of the game seems like a pretty good way to do this. You don't want to be forced out? Then follow the law and back up your claims with fact checking verification of what you are writing, don't use hate speech and don't incite violence. How hard is that?

There's a reason you're not allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and this falls neatly beneath the same rubric.

Honestly, think of the gossips and cruel kids in school spreading lies in deliberate attempts to undermine healthy energies. Putin has the guts to whip the carpet out from under such types.

So now, once you reach 3000 readers, the Russian government says you are a news source with real pull and must start acting in a manner befitting such responsibility. Is 3000 the right magic number to have picked? I don't know, but it makes perfect sense to draw a line somewhere.

Of course, any law can be abused, but right now I don't see this as an abuse. I see it as a sensible measure as Russia is under increasing media attack by a truly psychopathic nation whose leadership is completely disconnected from objective reality, has a tail-spinning economy and seemingly bottomless war lust. Of course you have to take measures to protect your populace from that kind of sickness.

But naturally, this proactive move is being spun with wicked and/or childish glee in the West (depending on whether you are CIA or just ignorant and easily led).

RTFA:

The digital system for the exam works on usersâ(TM) personal laptop, which they bring to the testing facility, where they download the company's application to the computers they use to take the tests. At the end of the exam, the file closes and locks. When the user is able to connect to the Internet, the file uploads. Users cannot make changes to the file after the conclusion of the test.

You have to drive to the exam site but you're expected to bring your own equipment? Who thought that up? Rather than trying to intrusively lock down everyone's machine it would be far better to simply issue everyone a cheap tablet or netbook on which to take the exam. Controlled hardware, no need to try to "lock down" innumerable variations of BYOD. The ExamSoft web site says the software runs on "any modern machine", defined as Windows, Mac, or iPad purchased in the past 3-4 years. But disable any anti-virus, and no VMs. They're basically trying to secure any random machine off the street to prevent cheating. That's a very fine example of "doing it wrong".

Requiring a human to be ready and able to take control in an emergency is just plain dumb. The human in question will be distracted. They'll be texting or playing Flappy Birds or doing any number of things that a passenger might do during a commute. Even if you require that their hands be on the wheel at all times they'll get bored and daydream and be absolutely useless in an emergency situation.

The only reason you'd want to require human controls would be in case the vehicle gets into a (non-emergency) situation that it can't deal with. Think about a situation that would normally be wrong, like parking on a lawn or driving on the wrong side of the road due to a blockage or something like that. Something that requires a judgement weighing the letter of the law against the practical realities of the situation.

Anyone actually used them? Is it as good as their demos?

I haven't done any admin or dev work with it, but as far as just logging in to the VPN at work Duo works very well. I initiate the VPN connection on my computer and get a pop-up on my phone almost instantly. Hit approve, and the VPN login on the computer completes. In my pre-smartphone days I used their SMS service. They'd send me 10 codes via SMS and the VPN login would say "enter code A", "enter code B", etc. Each code was used once, and a new batch sent whenever you'd used them up. (This is probably quite insecure if you use Google Voice or some similar service that redirects your texts so you can read them online.)

Plus, I used to work with Dug Song, one of the founders of Duo. Smart guy. I trust him to have done his homework.

What kind of numbnuts trusts a phone number given to them by the person being authenticated? "Here, call my accomplice-- er, I mean account rep, and he'll verify me." Yeah, pull the other one.

Unfortunately, even my credit card issuer can't get this right. They called me about some charges. "Now sir, to verify that I'm really talking to the account holder, what is your social security number?" Um, no. YOU called ME. You can reasonably assume that the phone number you have on file for me is valid. It's up to YOU to prove to ME that you're from my credit card company. "But sir, we ask this for your own security..." Eventually I got them to give me a ticket number so I could call the number printed on my card and get back to them. Turns out it actually was my issuer calling, not a scammer. Guys, you really should know better!