So I work at a Fairly Large Company (TM) and we recently downgraded from SVN to TFS. For years, I used the Git-SVN bridge which worked quite well.

The TFS/Git project, I'm sorry to say, so far DOA for an enterprise user like me. Git-SVN would take a many hours to migrate a large repository...but it worked. MS's Git integration has fallen far short. While checking out shallow copies works, deep copies crash on checkout (it runs out of memory, which really shouldn't happen). Even trying to get the latest version (i.e. git rebase in TFS parlance), it manages to flood my 16 GB system and die down in authentication. ...but I really think this is a good direction. I hat^H^H^H love TFS but being able to use Git is really useful. The lack of locks on all the files are particularly useful when doing large-scale edits with scripts/a good IDE and local branching is killer so I'd really like Git to succeed here.

I'd be curious as to what experience others have had with it in The Real World, rather than the chair-throwing annuls of MS HQ.

Or you could use the PIMPL design approach if you really want to "hide" things as seen here.

Basically, create a pointer to another object and then put the actual private data there. And then, you have the added advantage that you don't have to compile every that includes the .h file every time you add something to the data structure.

It's a bit of indirection, sure, but that's why C++ is so great: some of the stupidest things to do are easy (say calling a destructor explicitly), and the proper things to do are hard (oh, like trying to convert a number to a string. Frameworks make this easier, but this hasn't stopped every single large project I've ever seen from creating their own string class sometime in the distant past, which we keep using.)

So what's the difference between a naked guy at a tragic funeral and a WBC member?

Only one of them gets hauled away for public indecency. We should be able to find a middle ground here.

They sure left Ahmed Jabari (Hamas military chief) alone. If Israel's "defense" minister was killed, would Israel react any differently?

Isn't killing innocent people just wrong? How can you justify killing scores of innocent people to save a few lives on your own side? How is dropping a bomb and killing an innocent family any different than firing a rocket and doing the same?

There's a passage in the Torah that specifies the limit of reciprocity: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If they are willing to kill ten women and children "accidentally" for every one the Palestinians murder, I cannot see how any Palestinian can take their claims of peace seriously. If the rockets were fired from within their own borders and the terrorism were domestic, I'm sure Israel would find a way to be a bit more careful about stopping them.

As Cohen wrote in his brilliant piece for the NYTimes today, this is sadly a political affair where the objective is not to win peace, but an election.

Why do modern atheists feel the need to talk about God all the time? I don't remember Sagan, Darwin, or for that matter, Einstein feeling the need to dwell on the subject at any length.

There's also an TX/RX Hackerspace in Houston. They've got a bunch of fab equipment, an electron microscope, and a bunch of electrical engineering gear.

Both these places have open houses (go in and say "Howdy;)"), and grats to the folks from there bringing their freaky deaky time machine home.

(Pedantic: You can either say ATX Hackerspace, Hackerspace in Austin TX, or ATX (Austin TX) Hackerspace)

Given some of the information in the article, as well as happening to know people who work there, this sounds like the Houston Galleria Apple store. I have a friend who worked there and would tell me about some of the shady dealings that went on while she worked there. Anyone else want to hazard a guess about which "southwestern state's" "city" that this store was in which "allows for sexual orientation discrimination" in the workplace?

You do realize that Religion is by definition 'Top Down' right?

You should go visit a Quaker/"friends" meeting sometime and ask what went wrong with Nixon.

I would say killing DRMed music was. If Jobs were still alive, DRMed film would be next and we'd have something with a larger movie library than Netflix's pittance to choose from.

From the man's "Thoughts on Music" in February 2007:
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

I'll bring the beer though;)

User: Ahhhh, time to get down to business.
Toilet: Performing firmware upgrade to version 9.1442. Your toilet will restart in 10 seconds. Please do not use the toilet while it is in the process of powering up or down.
U: What? God, I need to...::bathroom sounds::
T: An error has ocurred in module processDump32.dll [0xF4127]. If this problem continues, please contact your hardware manufacturer. System flush will occur in 3..2..1
U: System what? ::User bursts out of toilet wearing...well...poop::
T: Would you like to sign up for a brief customer satisfaction survey? Your input is invaluable in helping us design and create new products. Thank you for using Microsoft, where quality is our number one priority.

If by "Europe" is doing badly you must surely mean the Eurozone. Unemployment in Norway/Sweden/even formerly bankrupt Iceland is very good. If you're having kids, the 2 months mandatory paternity leave in Sweden would be nice. You'd get to spend time with your kids and not have to work all the time and it allows your spouse to keep a career too. The governments themselves are very stable with the lowest levels of corruption in the world (if only Greece could say the same!), allowing the high tax rate to give you a decent rate of return on services you receive.

In short, it's the southern European welfare state on steroids but done responsibly.

...and Microsoft's Play-for-sure music store and the Zune spells the end of the iPod.

MS's app store will be a user hostile maze of DRM and there will be no reason to use the MS store; I can't think of the last MS game I played on PC. Oh, and I'm sure everyone will flock to Win8 for it.

Yeah, it's not like Steam is largest online game retailer or anything. It would be a more valid comparison to say good luck to Microsoft for trying to start an online music store against Apple.

There's a section in the dissent where Wickard v Filburn is discussed as precedent, but not even Thomas Scalito goes that far.

Source: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf

"Obamacare" has a provision that forces insurance companies to spend at least 85% of their premiums on providing health care and limiting overhead to 15%. So even if the companies raise their premiums they're still stuck with spending it instead of just increasing profits.

So if you can only make 15% of the premiums on profits, how do you raise profits? Raise premiums! Order meaningless (or possibly damaging) tests like X-Rays, MRIs, or whatever-the-new-expensive-diagnostics test is especially when they're not needed. Even with the 15% cap, this bill will not go far enough in addresses rising healthcare costs since participating in a fee-for-service model is inherently fraught with risk of fraud.