Well said.

From TFS:

"We find no reason to conclude that cellphone users lack facts about the functions of cell towers or about telephone providers' recording cell tower usage."

In other words, we assert you probably know your privacy is being violated by existing technical means, so we'll just ignore the obvious constitutional instructions about warrants when dealing with personal information -- whereabouts, in this instance. Because the constitution is abused and/or ignored by most judges now, so that's ok, right? RIGHT?

Let's say some people commit murder in parks. Because they do. So, using the "reasoning" of the utter morons in this court:

We find no reason to conclude that park users lack facts about the prevalence of murder in parks.

And therefore, it's perfectly ok. Mr. Murderer, go forth and murder some more. Next Case!

The problem is 'QWERTY' not bloody size. Sure after much experience you get to know where the keys are but how many know the full QWERTY alphabet 'QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM' so that you can tab through to get to the letter group you want (reduced number of keys, say 6 or 12 ie next key, 6 ABCDE next FGHIJ next). So you drop QWERTY and go back to your ABCs, so that a reduced key set works . This creates other problems for multiple devices so it makes sense to start pushing ABCs as a option on devices where it is purely governed by software.

Business customers will simply get updates after 'home users'. Home users will be crash test dummies who will simply be blamed for configuring their machines poorly or using it insecurely. M$ is running into harsher more competitive and demanding business market and hence is working to look better for them, so the monopoly market becomes a crash test dummy market (with all their machines reporting problems back, basically paying to be lab rats).

Yup, if it wasn't Microsoft, all kinds of other companies could have dominated the desktop market. IBM (OS/2), Quarterdeck (DESQview/X), Apple (Mac OS), NeXT (NeXT), any number of *nix companies (X11), and others.

Microsoft got big because they got the consumers interested, and questionable deals with vendors.

Plenty of people only know the tunnel-vision version of computer history and they believe Microsoft is it. They either don't remember (or are too young to have seen) software boxes (ahh, the good ol' days) had logos to indicate which OS they worked on so you could pick the right one.

Paying taxes is about paying for the revenue opportunities those countries create. Don't want to pay the taxes, 'THEN FUCK OFF', you are not entitled to the revenue opportunities those countries create. Want to generate revenue in the 'HIGH VALUE' markets, then pay taxes in those markets where the revenue is generated and do not steal infrastructure, a customer base with money or the social services of that customer base. Countries need to start killing of companies that steal access to markets without paying, corporate deaths sentences with asset seizure. That corporate tax greed is depriving citizens of social services that ensure health and well being. Corporate greed is killing a percentage of the population every year, it is time to hold them accountable for those deaths, when they cheat on taxes that pay for those social services.

Want out, fine, 'FUCK OFF' but don't expect access to that market any more. Sell your shit to third world sweat shop workers, good luck with that.

You seem to forget it is open source. If a manufacturer wants to sell cheap phones with a old version of the software with a smaller overhead, then it is up to them to patch it, the patches are out there and really it doesn't take all that much effort, just a couple of skilled staff members as a part time effort. The Android system provides choice for everyone, manufacturers, application producers and customers. Choice inherently is fragmentation but seriously calling choice fragmentation is blatant PR=B$ and likely stems from vested advertising interest from say some other company that provides little or no choice.

So Apple to customers, we give you no choice 'er' fragmentation, buy it like we sell it too you and pay to much for it or piss off but believe us when we tell you, that you will look cool and sophisticated when you flash our stuff about the place and not look at all like a victim of marketing and a certain gullibility when it comes to paying inflated profit margins.

Privacy, what about accuracy. My cell phone location data had me travelling to locations, I had never been, even overseas. Live in Adelaide, never left Adelaide since having the phone, but location data showing me travelling to Singapore.

So moron courts, how about placing some real legal risks on those providing that data, to ensure accuracy. So what is the penalty for the company providing inaccurate data, how many millions of dollars in penalties would they pay for providing inaccurate data, that threatens a conviction for what could be extremely serious offences. What is the legal warranty that the data provided is accurate, what is the penalty for failure in this regard, what right of challenge of accuracy of data does the defendant have.

Proper legal defence, prove the accuracy of the data to beyond a shadow of a doubt and I already know from first hand experience how inaccurate that data really is. Lawyers really need to put companies on legal spot when they provided data of questionable accuracy.

Bah, you had to mention tiles and tile sizes. Now I'm looking back at this project I abandoned because I couldn't find a pixel artist to help me get tiles and avatars made (I was able to fix the engines inherent timing/movement problems,) and still kicking myself.

Never forget lawyers. Lawyers first advice, you need us to advise you, so that you can pay us for each and every phone call, for each and every letter read and response written, for each and every email read and response written and, for researching your problem (you pay them to learn how to solve the problems they create for you). The problem here is reaching for the lawyers, the advice they give you and that you pay for, usually will be to pay them more and they will wrap that up in some sell able story. Once you reach for the lawyers, you have already lost. So they did not shoot themselves in the foot, their lawyers tricked them into paying the lawyers to shoot them in both feet.

Daikatana needed repackaging?

Seems to work fine over here, Windows 7, original install CD.

What got fucked up that it needed a repackage (besides the entire game being a nerfed piece of shit?)

Yup, as my fiance's 4S is dog fucking slow with iOS8 compared to being ultra-snappy with iOS6.

Quick clarification: Not the memory controller was gimped, but how processors communicated and shared stuff out of their memory to other processors was gimped. And the E7 v3 looks to have the same limitation. Pumping up QPI speed might help alleviate that SOME but nowhere near what's needed for multiple socket multiple GPU configs in a single non-nodal system.

It appears that they didn't do much to the QPI besides boost the speed a bit. That's not going to fare well in HPC stuff. The reason I didn't use the V2 E7-8*** line was because due to how gimped the memory architecture was, you could run 2 socket 4 GPU, 4 socket 2 GPU, but not 4/4.

It was cheaper, and just as effective, to go with the E5 instead, and make multiple node systems into a single box, instead. 8 socket, 12 GPU. Fuck yea.

Just give each person a few programming tasks that should take ten minutes or so.

Yeah, but actually no. Each skill set is different. I could write you a PCB router in under an hour, or whip up an image processing mechanism, layered image editing, signal processing, write an FFT from scratch. I can do assembly coding as fast as I can type while higher up, I favor c and Python for their various and highly disjoint abilities. I'm good at documentation, and I can manage effectively -- without getting the team to hate me. But fizzbuzz? Sort of boggles me. I solve it very slowly. Perhaps because there's no point to it and I don't really give a flying crap. :) But perhaps also because it's just not my thing. I despise puzzles-for-the-sake-of-puzzles, and avoid them like the plague.

Bottom line, any type of interview question or test will sit poorly with some high quality programmer. Some don't know a language, some have an unusual process, some aren't great communicators, some don't function well with someone staring at them or under immediate pressure... there is no perfect interview method, and surely no way to determine programmer competence outside of their actual accomplishments -- which, even when you can pull it off, is not the same thing as measuring their skills against others, placing them in an objective relationship to the skills of others, either.

Personally -- and this is strictly anecdotal, but reflects many decades of experience -- I've had a lot better luck asking many-possible-answer questions about techniques and areas of knowledge in a friendly, low-pressure atmosphere where the interviewee is made to feel they are welcome and respected the moment they walk in the door.