I've done one recently - it also tests memory and grace under pressure. Some people just can't perform well under the gun, and in a high-pressure workplace where you may be dealing with outages that are hitting the tech press within minutes, and the global press within an hour, being ale to not fold under pressure is a critical job skill.

Plus, as my old business computing teacher in high school said, "You will be doing tasks that make no sense on obsolete technology for inscrutable reasons. If you have a problem with any of this, you should probably drop out of this class, since you do not have what it takes to be a programmer in the business world." Dealing with arbitrary requirements is part of working for any large company, and seeing if an applicant will go through with it, or if their ego is going to get in the way, is a useful test.

I just rebuilt our monitoring system on Munin 2.0, which can deal with IPv6. Made life a lot easier, since punching holes in NAT routers and screwball port mappings went away.

Google and Facebook are both running ipv6, and both our office and a chunk of our datacenter are on ipv6 through a he.net tunnel. Wish native ipv6 was available, but Amazon hasn't enabled it for AWS, and the Comcast ipv6 rollout is to consumers, not to business clients.

The post to which you reply was not talking about celebratory gunfire, as you seem to be. (i.e. randomly shooting into the air.) Arizona, for example, has a law against that known as Shannon's Law. However, I was unable to find a specific law against celebratory gunfire here in Virginia. The fact is, few states have laws against it. Generally, shooting randomly into the air, will get you charged with negligent discharge of a firearm, as it should. But, no, " Shooting bullets into the air," is not illegal in most states.

Aimed fire into the air, however, is another matter. exhibition shooters have been know to do this quite often. To my knowledge, there is not a single law against this anywhere in the US where shooting is otherwise permitted, and the exhibition is conducted with appropriate due diligence.

I once had to put a 30-35 degree angle on a shot when I was trying to shoot steel plates at 200 yards with a handgun. It was interesting to watch the math of parabolic motion play out in real life. It was also completely safe given the conditions.

I think, perhaps, you need to check your "facts" a little more closely.

Um, it's not just that. Me and my friends use FB for organizing social events - parties, performances, etc. The fire performance troupe I'm involved with does most of our organizing on Facebook too - we have jobs, and kids, and school, and live all over the area, so having quick discussions there makes life much easier.

Look, I go to Burning Man. I've seen more people naked than anyone short of a doctor or a nudist tour guide, and I have to say the ban on nudity on Facebook is a good thing. There are creepers out there who post pictures of people having a nude stroll. Without the subject's consent.

Being able to complain about it means that they get taken down.

Facebook is for real life, and some people (myself included) like having an area where there isn't soft-core porn all over the place. See, if I had to deal with that, I'd return fire with some of the better pictures from /r/gaybears - not everyone is into the same thing, and you get rather tired of being shown something you're NOT IN TO.

Interesting - looks like they're doing a major recruiting push, since I'm in the interview process myself. I'd wanted to move to San Francisco, and saying that to the recruiter kind of surprised them. I don't live in a high-tech city, so the recruiters aren't anywhere near as vigorous, but I'm having the feeling that Google has just about tapped out the talent pool that's available in their local areas, and has sent recruiters after the less well traveled paths.

I wasn't even in the market, but when a company like Google calls, you tend to respond...

I remember a school house rock episode called three ring government. Rather insightful, I think.

I did not assert a motive. I wouldn't presume to know. I did, however, assign a political affiliation. That may be in error since I have no absolute proof of one. It's been notoriously difficult to find anything at all about BatNut's personal life. As if someone wants to hide it.

I do notice, however, that when suspected right wingers go nuts and kill people their philosophies, ideologies, and even sexual proclivities are writ large in the sky for us all to see. Of course, crazy doesn't have a political party so it probably doesn't matter in the end. But it seems odd that the big mass shootings seem to be carried out by leftists, and always in a victim disarmament (gun free) zone.

Realistically, armed morons with poor judgement hurting bystanders is a lot less of a problem than those same morons getting behind the wheel of a 2000 pound four-wheeled weapon and killing a whole family. At least I can shoot back at stupid or evil gun owners. There's not a lot I can do about stupid, evil, or impaired drivers.

IIRC it was in the same week as that leftist nut-job shot up the Bat Man premier, that a pickup truck carrying more than 20 passengers overturned, killing 14 people. The same number as were killed in the mass shooting. One armed citizen could have stopped BatNut. What do you do about 20 morons in the back of a pickup? Guns truly are not the problem. Stupid and Evil are the problems. And keeping guns out of the hands of responsible citizens because it is thought that it will save lives is both stupid and evil.

So we probably are turning a corner. And, when it's perfected, I hope every law abiding citizen in the world can get their hand on this technology and make at least one gun. No individual, armed or not, can physically force another armed individual to do anything he doesn't want to do. Disarming people simply leaves them at the mercy or those stronger than them. Whereas arming everyone just makes them all equally strong.

Is your rifle an AR style firearm? The AR is a modular design in which the reciever is split. The upper-half can be completly detached, and put on a different gun. You could be in trouble is you have an AR without a serial number on the lower receiver in the US. Or do you have a manufacturers license?

Out of curiosity, what performance enhancing drugs are the skeet and trap shooters using?

Hoppe's #9

It is not the job of the police to prevent crime. Nor is it their job to protect you as an individual. (don't believe me? check with SCOTUS.) Regardless, the only reason anyone is even working on predictive analysis is because the public is demanding it.

The job of the police is to take reports, conduct investigations, and apprehend suspects. If an individual officer feels it is his/her duty to help someone out, or protect them, then that's wonderful and I'm glad there are officers willing to do that. However, it's not their job, and you shouldn't expect it. The problem is people do expect it, and the more we expect the police to look out for individuals, the less freedom we're going to have. That's the only way for them to do the job we're asking them to do.

The coming police state (some say it's already here) will be the result of ordinary citizens refusing to take responsibility for their own safety. By foisting the job off on the police, you attempt to make them responsibile for your welbeing. In doing so, you compromise your rights. So if you don't like fascism, then stop asking for it.

You don't have to compromise your principles to be flexible. Nor must you lie to manage perceptions. Above all, don't give in and start doing what you think they want you to. Because then, instead of feeling some measure of respect for you, they can simply condecend to and pitty you.

I don't hate liers because it's too much effort direct too many ways. Instead I save my energy for the few people I can respect, and leave the rest to fail on their own.