There is so much wrong with the study, I can hardly decide where to begin...

1) They used a single project of 4500 lines of code. That's quite small. The project may have been fairly easy to analyze/debug/maintain even if the code quality is crap.

2) No objective measure was given of the "bad code smells" identified in the selected project.

3) It is possible they did a very bad job refactoring the code base. In addition to refactoring, they should have had other software professionals evaluate whether the "refactored" code was more maintainable in order to control for this.

4) There is no indication that they controlled for variability in the student's skill sets. The students who worked on the original code may have been much better students than those that worked on the refactored code.

5) The student group sizes were far too small to get meaningful results.

6) The "quiz" to determine analyzability consisted of 15 questions. This is far too small a size to determine how analyzable the code is.

7) The mean analyzability scores were 7 vs 6.63. This suggests the student's in both sets may have poor understanding of the code bases.

8) 10 refactoring techniques were not chosen based on applicability to the system in question, but were instead chosen based on previous studies that ranked the impact of refactoring on code quality. i.e. they treated refactoring as a "silver bullet" rather than deciding what types of refactoring were most applicable to the project in question.

There are so many flaws in the methodology that the results are meaningless. The only reason to waste time with this sort of nonsense is publicity.

vive la revolution

(sorry, I couldn't help myself

Why are they not allowed to charge for their work when the baker can?

Nobody is saying they shouldn't be allowed to. Heck, the licensing of most open source stuff explicitly allows you to charge for distribution.

What people are saying is they are being hypocrites for doing so.

Basically, to use your analogy:
The coal miner mined the coal for free
The generator generated electricity for free
The water gatherer filtered the water for free
The farmer grew the grain for free
The baker baked the bread for free
The waiter served the bread for free

Now these asshats spread a bit of butter on the bread and feel they should be compensated for their efforts, even though everyone else did most of the work for free. They don't seem to have felt any There is also no indication that the Elementary OS group intend to share any funds they receive with the people who did most of the work to provide their product.

Yes, they are within their rights to ask for money. They are still blatant hypocrites for doing so.

Interesting that "Starting a War" does not appear in that section.

That's just a perk of the $1000 reward level:

"Get all of the previous rewards and we will give you the opportunity to choose a payload to put in the drone as well (as long as the weight and size fit the constraints)!"

Just cough up $1000, and ask they drop off a copy of "The Interview" in Pyongyang. That will likely start a war.

Not because it was disrespectful towards Kim Jong Un, but because it was such a godawful terrible movie.

Showing these murders serves as a gut punch to the free world. It enables us to have a visceral reaction to this brutality,

And this is exactly why the video should not be shown or viewed. Our reaction to terrorism should NOT be an emotional one, for a number of reasons:

1) It screws with our understanding of how likely a situation is to occur. People "feel" that their children are more in danger of being abducted now than 20 years ago precisely be because there is more graphic reporting of abductions, not because more abductions occur. Similarly, graphic evidence of violence influences our perception of how likely that violence is to occur.

2) It's screws with how we respond to such incidents. Juries that are presented graphic imagery of a murder are far more likely to convict than those who are not, even if the crimes are identical. Citation

3) It gives our government far too much power. The reason so many draconian measures were easily passed post-9/11 is EXACTLY because it had a massive emotional reaction from the people. Our reaction should be based on reason, not a our "visceral reaction to brutality".

I'm not worried about Fox doing ISIS's work for them. I'm worried about them influencing the militant "let's glass the whole middle east" segment of America.

What value does the MPAA possibly offer that could come anywhere close to commanding such regal sums annually?

Hey, congressmen are expensive!

Ahhh...so you only agree with government regulation when it supports your own agenda...I see.

That's the problem I have with many Libertarians (the fucktard variety or other). Rather than just state "these are the areas we believe should be regulated, and these not", they often scream nosily about any regulation when it is something they disagree with and just remain silent if it is something they support.

It'd be nice if there was an actual position they took that described how they expect the government to function that was something other than "government bad. less regulation good. free markets good. deficits bad".

Never let facts stand in the way of demonizing your political enemies.

Is that intentionally ironic?

That was easy!

No, the evidence is:

1) Flying a plane takes a lot of attention. Sometimes things happen in a plane that require immediate attention.
2) There is no evidence of any mechanical failure with the plane.
3) There is evidence that the plane was operating correctly.
4) Therefore, based on (2) and (3), the crash was caused by pilot error.
5) The pilot's was taking selfies at critical points during the flight. This requires some attention.

Therefore, based on 1, 4 and 5 the act of taking selfies could have contributed to the crash.

WinForms is considered 'deprecated' by Microsoft

No, it really isn't. A substantial segment of the community assumed it would be deprecated when MS started heavily pushing WPF. Given that WPF has been around for 8 years now, it doesn't appear to be the "WinForms"-killer some thought it would be.

That being said, WinForms all but officially in "maintenance-only" mode. I would be seriously surprised to see new features. However, this is different than being deprecated.

There are signs that WPF is also heading into "maintenance only" mode, with the future being HTML5.

There is no such thing as an "unobtrusive ad."

That very term is offensive and is an oxymoron.

obtrusive (adj.): noticeable or prominent in an unwelcome or intrusive way.
advertisement (noun): a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
oxymoron (noun): a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction

You misunderstand the definition of one of the words you are using.

Europa?!?!

Well that's it, we're doomed.

Thanks Obama

And presumably you cannot even read the TFS:

"one classroom of children speaking Spanish and the other speaking English, "

Wrong. There is no My K-Cup or derivative thereof that doesn't require you to remove the insert in the machine that has the needle in the bottom of it -- the one used to puncture the bottoms of the pre-made K-Cups.

Wrong. I have these

I usually use these with my Keurig. Ocasionally I use standard K-Cups. No need to remove/reinsert the insert.

Why do people use laser pointers to try and blind pilots?

That's it!

We need drones with frickin' laser pointers attached to their heads!

Footnote:
For the comedy impaired, the above is intended as a humorous amalgamation of the GP's point that some idiots use laser pointers to blind pilots, and the scene from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil planned to have lasers attached to sharks heads. It is not intended as a serious suggestion. The author maintains no responsibility for any repercussions that may occur if you attempt the above and informs you that any attempt to do so immediately qualifies you as a real dick. The author further hopes that if you do successfully carry out the above that any plane you attempt to interfere with manages to land safely directly on top of your bloody carcass.