They removed the kidney from her brother because they believed it was already broken. So, they instead transplanted it to the desperate 67 year old guy who prefered getting a diseased kidney, hoping it could extend his life for a little bit, instead of passing it to a perfecly healthy person, which might put her life in jeopardy.

Or so I believe.

"Large scale" does not mean what you want it to mean.

I don't know what imaginative definition for "large scale" you are using, but if you wish to claim that Portugal's energy production doesn't fit your definition of large scale then, by your own definition, the energy needs of at least 145 out of 192 countries in the world also don't fit your definition of large scale.

Also, it also wouldn't matter to you that the energy produced in Portugal from renewable sources alone would be more than enough to fulfill all the energy needs of 128 countries in the world.

And, finally, Germany generates around 17% of it's energy needs from renewable sources. Maybe the 7th largest energy producer in the world also doesn't fit your definition of "large scale".

Or, possibly, you are desperately trying to move the goal post to avoid looking like a fool with your bullshit assertions.

Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be. Wind, hydro, tide .. these are all bullshit: they will never matter in the big picture, they'll feelgood measures that's don't actually accomplish anything large scale, just like most green initiatives.

According to wikipedia, Portugal produces 52% of its energy from renewable sources, with a combination of hydro, solar, wind and geothermal. Do you see 52% of the energy produced in a country with a population of 11 million as "all bullshit" and a failure to "actually accomplish anything large scale"?

A portuguese aeronautics engineering student from Instituto Superior Técnico already figured this out way back in 2009 in his masters thesis, available here.

How about we hold people liable when we discover they actually violate a particular copyright, rather than trying to extent tort coverage to criminal concepts like "aiding and abetting". Seriously.

Because in some jurisdictions, which at least until a few years ago consist of the entire world except the US and a hand full of puppet states, distributing a copyrighted work for personal use without the copyright holder's authorization is perfectly legal, and it is so very legal to the point that it is even explicitly authorized in the copyright code. So, these copyright trolls can't touch the people covered by those jurisdictions, and hence they are free to distribute any copyrighted work as they see fit.

yet, in some cases the distribution channels are still covered by a jurisdiction which they can corrupt. So, as they can't touch the end user, they do try to eliminate the distribution channel. It's cheaper that way, more cost-effective in terms of legal costs and, more importantly, they eliminate any potential competitor that may enter the media distribution business. If there is any doubt in that then just look how the US thugs are handling the megaupload fiasco, and notice how they only managed to pull that mafia-inspired racketeering stunt once kim dotcom was investing in a media distribution business backed-up by a string of A-list artists.

It appears that one of the previous job held by Paramount's worldwide VP of content protection and outreach was working for Saddam's information ministry, where he provided Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf with material to use in all those insightful broadcasts. Do you know the "there are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" quote? It must have been this guy who was behind it.

The basic model is now 60 years old, the oldest flying ones 50 years. But that doesn't make them 50-60 year old tech.

This is a well known paradox which is often called Theseus' paradox.

Then I guess that every Facebook executive, along with each and every lawyer at Facebook's service, won't mind placing their testicles in a vice operated by me. After all, just like they claim their intentions to be regarding CISPA, I also have absolutely no intention to abuse the vise in any way. So they can trust me, honest.

But but will they wilfully agree to that? I doubt they will, because they know very well that it is a risk which is simply not acceptable by any standard.

I've heard of Guile in the past, but I never managed to come across any application that actually uses it. Guile's own project list is rather meek, and whenever people talk about embedding a programming language, the talk appears to always shift to Lua. Does anyone know why no one picks Guile for any task? It would be great if it was possible to hear from anyone who actually gave Guile a try in any project.

"In my experience Go is probably 5-10x faster than C or C++. I estimate that programs that take me half an hour to write in Go would take me about 2½ hours in C and 5 hours in C++."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And the evidence that is out there states that the claim Go is 5-10x faster than C or C++ is bullshit. In fact, it's slower.

Notice the benchmark where Go took 30x the time the C program did to finish the benchmark?

IMHO, if it isn't standardized, opened up and backed up by an international standard then it will never be better than C. For all problems that may or may not affect C and for all problems involved in the development and update of a standard for each version of the C programming language, these multiple versions of the C programming language are effectively set in stone. This means that the language is future-proof, as multiple implementations may be developed and, by targetting the standard, they can interoperate without any major consequence.

If Go isn't standardized and if Google intends to control the language then it would be a terrible decision to adopt Go instead of a time-tested, well established tool which is future-proof and resistent to bit-rot. We all have Oracle and Java as a good warning.

From the article:

This sort of courses are a form of scam that preys on gullible people, who have heard some news how some guy put up a website that he later sold for millions and now they want a piece of that pie. Yet, the hard truth is that those courses are in themselves useless and a waste of money. Sure, learning something is way better than not learning anything at all. Yet, who exactly believes that those gullible clients, like an investment banker with a course in HTML and WordPress, have all the technical know-how needed to put together a new facebook or twitter? They don't. They can't even put up a hello world app together, because they aren't even taught any programming language. These courses are good enough to put up a site on geocities, complete with an animated GIF informing that the site is "under construction", and to register a blog in WordPress.org. Yet, you think you are learning to program? Sorry to dissapoint you, but you aren't.

The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?

I believe you missed the point. It's not a question of being possible to simply go to your local gay bar and track down a bunch of gays. The fundamental issue is that, with this, the nutters don't need to go to your local gay bar at all, because someone else happened to put a system in place that is able to generate a comprehensive list of all self-declared gays anywhere in the world. So, these nutters can easily get their hands on a list of potential targets which is much more extensive and thorough than any list they would otherwise be able to compile.

And, suffice to say, this is a recipee for disaster. And not just for gays. Imagine, for example, if Facebook existed in the 1950s and up until then there was absolutely no problem in being a member of the communist party, let alone being simply supportive of that organization or even a friend of any member of the communist party. What would happened if J. Edgar Hoover had access to the names, addresses and social network of anyone who ever joined a communist interest group in facebook, or anyone who ever clicked on the like button remotely related to any site which was pro-communism?

So, the ramifications are deeper than simply having alternative methods to gather information, and much more serioius at that.

It sounds like sarcasm to me. After all, Java is, in any measure, a successful language and platform. A considerable number of respectable higher education institutions have adopted java as the programming language for both OO courses and intro to programming, and any job search returns a high number of jobs which explicitly require proficiency in java programming.

If that wasn't enough, there's android developing. Nowadays, if you want to develop software for a smartphone you are basically forced to write it in either java or objective-C.

So, it sounds like sarcasm to me. Either that or someone has been hidden in bunker for the past 20 years.