Actually, the study in question was on freeways, and it didn't necessarily have anything to do with interchanges, which are all rate-controlled in the area. One spot they found regularly jammed was just a rise in the road. The partially obstructed vision was enough to cause a few drivers to slow just a bit, which snowballed and then created a jam which moved backwards from the rise at a fairly constant rate of precession, two or three mph, IIRC. So after the jam moved away from the rise, there was *no* cause for it. It just self-sustained as drivers bunched up when approaching the jam.

There was a /. article on it. It was fascinating.

Just wait a while and we'll evolve flame resistant birds.

Researchers will demonstrate the process used to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. Researchers from Stanford and a defense research group at Rafael will demonstrate a way to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. According to the "Gyrophone: Recognizing Speech From Gyroscope Signals" study, the gyroscopes integrated into smartphones were sensitive enough to enable some sound waves to be picked up, transforming them into crude microphones.

I can't help but feel like there are gyroscopes involved in this process somehow...

I don't have a link handy, but a group (from Stanford, IIRC) did it as a study, rather than to make a point. They found that by driving slow (perhaps even below the speed limit) in a line, they could fix traffic jams. Not because of anything to do with speed limits, but rather just the dynamics of heavy traffic which can cause self-perpetuating jams, even though there is actually plenty of road capacity, no obstructions, etc. By creating a moving roadblock for a few miles and creating a gap that allowed the jam to unjam, they could quickly get traffic flowing smoothly.

Perhaps. Assuming you're right, it leaves open the question of whether the restrictions actually affect the level of violence and in what direction. The assumption of the cities with high violence and tight restrictions is that the restrictions reduce violence. Though that assumption seems logical, history calls it into question. For example, both DC and Chicago saw massive increases in violence after they enacted their draconian restrictions. The rest of the country also saw rising violence at the same time, but nowhere near in the same degree. So perhaps the city leaders were prescient, saw the coming wave of violence and acted to mitigate it, or perhaps their action actually exacerbated it. Or maybe the restrictions made no difference at all.

My money is on restrictions increasing the violence, mainly because the restrictions only affect the law-abiding, which gives criminals an advantage, and eliminates their single biggest worry (per FBI studies, in which violent criminals overwhelmingly report that their biggest fear when committing a crime is that the target might be armed). We'll get a chance to see over the next few years, since DC and Chicago have been forced by the courts to loosen their restrictions dramatically.

There are three basic levels of users:

1) Complete novices: Don't really understand basic concepts but learn enough repetition to use their programs at a basic level.

2) Competent users: Get the main concepts fairly well, can manage applications and the computer settings fairly well, but they get out of their depth fairly quickly and don't know any coding.

3) Gurus: Whatever the task they'll figure it out eventually.

Group 1 is good with any OS because they're not doing anything more than clicking icons and using apps.

Group 3 will really excel with Linux because of the power and flexibility it gives them.

Group 2 is the Window's base. They're smart enough to master the Window's administration environment but Linux is too complex and text based.

The thing it that group 2 isn't really an issue in a corporate setting. The users, regardless of competency, are basically confined to acting like level 1 novices fiddling with apps but ignoring the OS. And the admin staff will be guru's regardless.

If there is a problem it likely has nothing to do with usability but instead is based on app availability. The big name high quality end user apps are still lacking on Linux, and those are the things people will miss.

The misogyny arises from the implied assumption that the woman is just the object of men's desire, that she has no will of her own or ability to act, except to comply with the wishes of whichever man reaches her. The story doesn't actually say any of that, but it is pretty strongly implied. There's also the implication that the physicist and engineer are male, but that's the lesser issue.

It's interesting to note that merely reversing the gender roles in the story causes the perceived problem to disappear, but doesn't address the real issue. This is because it's not the story itself that implies the misogyny, but the cultural subtext, and since that subtext assumes that men are actors and initiators that the man has decided to go along with the game. You can truly eliminate the problem by modifying the story to make the woman the organizer of the little game, which puts all three on equal footing. She's acting by setting the scenario up, the men are acting by deciding whether or not they wish to participate and if so, how.

The difference is subtle, but such subtle, unconscious biases in many different areas can and do often combine into significant -- though often completely unintentional -- bias against women.

As an aside, when we speak of the "objectification" of women, the original use of that word in that context means not object as in "thing", but object as in "direct object", from grammatical structure. The objectified person is one who is always acted upon rather than acting upon others. This story clearly indicates both meanings of the word: The woman in the story is an object of desire, in this case sexual. That's actually perfectly fine. Men and women both can be objects of sexual desire, and as long as the desire doesn't translate into unwelcome advances or into other negative effects, everyone appreciates being thought desirable. But the woman is also and object upon which the physicist or engineer will get to enact their will, and her will isn't relevant. That is the way in which objectification is negative.

Revising the story to make the woman the initiator of the game, while not removing the ability of the physicist and engineer to choose, makes all of the participants actors and none of them pure objects.

One reason I'm rooting for an Altcoin is I'm worried about deflation if Bitcoin wins.

A limited amount of inflation is a good thing, if the cash sitting in your wallet gets progressively less valuable you have a motive to spend it and generate economic activity.

But there's a finite amount bitcoins, which means at some point they'll all be mined. At that point as the economy grows each bitcoin will represent an ever larger portion of the economy. People will be reluctant to spend bitcoin because they'll be forgoing those future price increases and the economy will suffer.

I'm not sure how well any Altcoins solve this problem, but I'd prefer a currency where the money supply grows in pace with the economy.

If we can't figure out a way to reduce that probability to approximately zero sometime in the next 866 years, we deserve to get smashed.

Actually, compromised Linux systems are in high demand because they make great botnet command and control servers. They're far more valuable than a compromised Windows box.

Also, the assumption behind your assertion is easily demonstrated to be untrue. MacOS had major virus problems, in spite of being much less popular than Windows. OS X has almost no viruses, in spite of being much more popular than MacOS. Android is a great case study: The dominant Android versions, using the Google Play store only, have no significant virus problems, while the much, much less popular Chinese devices have lots. iOS, of course, has basically none, and it's a far more attractive and profitable target than Chinese Android devices. It's less popular than mainstream Android, but given the demographics of the platforms is probably more attractive.

Market share has basically nothing to do with vulnerability to malware.

You know when gun deaths were really low? Before guns were invented. The homicide rate, however, was about an order of magnitude higher than it is now.

Your statement is true, but utterly irrelevant to the question of where the safest places to live are. Does it matter what weapon is used to kill you? Or rob you or, rape you, or... Of course it doesn't. You have fallen victim to (or else are disingenuously pushing, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're foolish, not malicious) to a very clever stratagem pushed by advocates of gun control: Focusing only on gun crime and ignoring other crime.

The statistic that matters isn't the number of gun deaths, it's the number of homicides, assaults, rapes, robberies, etc., total. And on any one of those scales, those states with strict gun laws don't do particularly well. To make them look good you have to do exactly what you did: arbitrarily exclude much of the violence.