While a good idea, it's not that easy for Windows users. Especially since the "basic" (aka "premium") versions of Win7 come even without the ability to limit execution of files in certain directories (which would surprisingly actually defeat this pus, at least the variants that I'm aware of, my knowledge in this area is a bit dated, though).

Guess you have to pay extra with Microsoft if you want some semblance of security...

Nope. The current version of this piece of internet-pus walks down mounted network devices, too.

So far they don't go for your network environment to hunt down unmounted shares. Not yet, at least.

Peanuts compared to the revenue. We're talking millions here.

Rest assured that a hack is already in the making.

I don't get the US. I mean, by now you should have noticed that the bigger and more complicated the technology, the more you play into your opponent's hands. First of all, you're using high tech weapons in a low tech war. You can't really fire any round anymore that doesn't cost you more than what your target cost your enemy. Welcome to asymmetric warfare. I don't know why I have to say it, I thought it's obvious: You're essentially in the unfunny situation the British were in when you had your fight for independence. And on top of it you also have to pose as the good guy, you can't even simply level the land and bury what's living under the rubble.

In basically all the wars the US had gotten into lately, they had the superior technology and the inferior position. Let's look at the stats. The US is fighting an enemy who not only doesn't give half a shit about collateral damage (the US at least have to pretend they care, so they can't use the aforementioned "scorched earth" tactics), an enemy that does not identify itself as such (so pretty much anyone and everyone could be hostile), while at the same time those that are NOT hostile may not be touched (since the US want to be the "good" guy and the backlash is considerable when something surfaces). And unlike the average US soldier, the enemy doesn't even give a shit whether he survives the war.

That's not a position from which you can win a war. The US loses unless they win, their enemy wins as long as they don't lose. That cannot be won in a scenario where your enemy is in a position where it does not matter to him how many resources he loses as long as he can inflict damage on you.

Precision bombing and precision shooting is a fine thing if you have a target. That's the main problem the US is facing today. It's trivial for them to eliminate any target anywhere on the planet. The problem is FINDING it.

Rest assured that this will be outlawed and considered "tampering with metering equipment".

I'm an old fashioned guy, coming from an age when we looked at the USSR and considered them the bad guys. So, my education equated "good" with "freedom".

I know, it's a very outdated notion today where "being good" usually means being obedient, conforming and doing what you're told. Oddly, that was what we were told the poor people in the USSR are forced to do if they don't want to end up in Gitm... I mean a Gulag.

Well, that's what the US thinks...

A non-spy pact with a country as paranoid as the US is like a no-kill pact with a homicidal maniac.

Well maybe your richy rich multi millionaire bulbs last a long ass time

Ever heard of "moving"? I don't own two houses, I've lived two different places in the past decade.


but the normal $2-5 per bulbs are garbage. I have to replace at least one every 6 months out of aprox 15 bulbs installed in my apt.
[...]I like the energy savings, and lower heat, but old ass bulbs are far more reliable.

FIrst, I buy the Home Depot discount bulk packs, in the 4 bulbs for $10 range. So yeah, comparing apples to apples here

Second, you have to replace ONE out of fifteen, every six months? Do you remember having incandescents at all? You have to replace all of them every six months (except maybe that one lonely attic light that you only use a total of 10 hours of per year), and the highest use ones, you could expect to replace every 2-3 months. People actually used to keep a six-pack of replacement bulbs around to deal with one or three dying at the worst possible time. Today? do people actually keep spare CFLs around? I don't, seems like a waste of space for how often I need one.

We apparently don't define "reliable" the same way.


The balast generally goes and then the bulb is toast. Sometimes they go grey first in the tube, but most are heavily yellowed from heat damage.

Ballasts go because of poor quality power, nothing more and nothing less (or putting a non-dimmable one on a dimmer circuit - same thing, just self-inflicted poor power quality). As for heat damage, Yes Virginia, some fixtures designed for burn-to-the-touch incandescents don't make suitable fixtures for CFLs. Specifically, if it has a heat shield on the base and a completely enclosing shade, yeah, you'll cook your CFLs nicely.

You just outed our spies in your network and you expect us to sign a no-spy list? Come again when we have undermined your security enough that you're as safe as the other countries we pretty much already own.

In other words, we'll only not spy on you if you hand over what we want willingly.

All these puns suck.

What I want is a wearable computer that belongs to me. Not a device that I basically rent and that works for its maker more than me.

In other words, it's not bloody likely that I'll ever get one. Unless parts get cheap enough that building your own becomes an option.

Here's what your future will look like if we are to have a shot at preventing devastating climate change

The West Antarctic Ice Shelf has already begun its collapse, guaranteeing us 10-12ft of sea level rise over the next 50-200 years (only the timeframe, not the result, remains in question). We have officially lost our "shot at preventing devastating climate change".

We do, however, still have a shot at preventing the necessary abandonment of every major coastal city on the planet, by avoiding another 200ft of sea level rise that would result from the rest of Antarctica melting.

At this point, we need to stop asking how we can go green, and start planning for our new seaside vacation homes in Arizona.

Judging from the projects I maintain and the third-party libraries I've had to deal with, being a programmer doesn't even require knowing how to program.

That said, the author does make some good points. I cut my teeth on Java, and my standards were set by Sun's (mostly) well-thought-out APIs and comprehensive documentation. Now I'm an Android developer, constantly infuriated by Google's shitty APIs and half-assed documentation. Google's terrible design decisions have made Android is an incredibly challenging platform, and the industry's response to surging demand for Android apps has been to simply lower its standards for software quality. The author is right, it doesn't need to be this way.

"The web is just an enormous stack of kluges upon hacks upon misbegotten designs. This Archaeology of Errors is no place for the application programmers of old: it takes a skilled programmer with years of experience just to build simple applications on todayâ(TM)s web. What a waste. Twenty years of expediency has led the web into a technical debt crisis."

I know, right? We had it so much easier back when we could just write our own interrupt handler (and pray we didn't step on DRAM refresh or vice-versa) to pull bytes directly off the 8250 - And once we had those bytes, mwa-hahaha! We could write our own TCP stack and get the actual data the sender intended, and then do... something... with it that fit on a 40x25 monochrome text screen (yeah, I started late in the game, those bastards working with punchcards spoiled all the really easy stuff for me!).

And now look where we've gone: Anyone using just about any major platform today can fire up a text editor and write a complete moderately sophisticated web app in under an hour. Those poor, poor bastards. I don't know how I can sleep at night, knowing what my brethren have done to the poor wannabe-coders of today. Say, do I hear violins?

Look up the term autism and understand why the author used that term.

Because it has become a meaningless buzzword used to describe every introverted snowflake on the planet?

The GP responded more-or-less appropriately to the TFA's nonsense. You have simply said "nuh-uh!". Substantiate, please.