I like the D programming language. It's relatively new, but its well designed and multi-paradigm. It's suitable for system-level programming, but still supports higher-lever programming methods such as OO and functional programming.

I personally like the idea of scheduled releases which have been somewhat reasonably tested. Giving developers a mechanism to deal with the cutting edge versions of each package is nice, but I'd rather not have those in the releases on my servers.

Doesn't the US Navy already have a nearly emissions free propulsion system that it uses on most of its aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines? Seems to me like the most environmentally friendly option for powering these giant cargo ships would be nuclear.

Galois (look him up!!) is long dead, but he was quite possibly the greatest genius ever to walk the planet. Too bad he was killed in a sword fight when he was 20. As a teenager, he solved a centuries-old math problem and created a fundamental branch of advanced mathematics.

Wow! A sighting of the amazingly rare acknowledgment of error and an apology in an internet forum!!
    HogGeek, you are a good person.

You're new here, right? We compare Apples to Apples all the time! Just look at the threads comparing iOS with OS X. Don't get me started about the PPC vs. Intel fights we had years ago...

Please mod parent up. (I don't have mod points or I'd do it myself.)

Because the amount of damages doesn't matter when you don't have any money. The damage award might be $1.5M or $54K but in either case it's still more than she will ever pay because she doesn't have any money with which to pay.

When you're so poor that you've got nothing to lose, then you might as well keep fighting until you win (or die trying).

Where I went to vote, anyone who wished had the option of bringing an assistant. I recall doing this for my grandmother when her health was failing. She couldn't see well enough to read the ballot much less fill in a circle. So, I would read the ballot to her, and she would tell me what to mark.

I'm all for throwing money at math and CS (it keeps me employed), but I still think that E-voting is unnecessary. Just use paper. With paper, the ballots can be recounted in front of a group of representative for each side whenever there is a dispute. It's simple and crystal clear to the vast majority of voters. The only disadvantage is that it's slow, but so what? Voting is important, we can afford to slow down a little and do it carefully.

No. When you don't vote you just remove yourself from the process, but you don't remove your responsibility for the outcome. In a democracy, the citizens are responsible for the government they have. No system of government has ever been perfect, nor will any such perfect system ever exist. By voting we have the opportunity to work to better our system.

Aren't those people called "libertarians?" I hear that they actually do exist. You can vote for them, and if their isn't a libertarian on the ballot in your district, then you could run yourself.

You don't have to win the election to make a difference: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader have both demonstrated that third party candidates can have a huge impact in the result even when they don't win.

(BTW: "You" in this post doesn't refer to Beardo even though I'm replying to his post)

What exactly is SCOTA?

I hope that BAD 3D passes quickly. I find that imperfect 3D gives me a headache. Avatar was fine for me, but other 3D films that I've seen have me constantly squinting as my eyes try to resolve the slight blurs and imperfections in the image, so I often leave with a headache.

And, yes, I am aware that 3D viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3D).

I would venture to say that our understanding of how to effectively teach needs to reach back further than the middle ages. I'd pick ancient Greece as a good starting point. Socrates had a really good system: small groups of students with a very competent and engaged educator. The best way to teach hasn't changed in several thousand years.

Many of our current education problems would be quickly solved if we hired the best and brightest to be teachers, gave them small classes so they could work individually with each student, and paid them enough that they want to keep the job. Anyone who looks at the best private schools can see that this is exactly what they do. (Giving the teacher the ability to permanently eject disruptive students would be helpful, too, but that's a different political debate.) The dilemma is that this approach is expensive.

All of the dancing around that we see with people finding "new approaches" for calculus education every couple years is really just a game to avoid the honest, expensive, solution. Instead of paying teachers more to keep the best ones around, we keep the salaries low to encourage the brightest ones to find other jobs. Then we pretend like using a new textbook that introduces set notation with car analogies will solve the education problem.

By the way, I speak as a college math professor who graduates a lot of "future teachers." Many of our students in the "Math Education" track are friendly, caring, motivated students who really want to be good high school math teachers. What I have observed is that four years out from graduation the best ones have usually left teaching careers for more lucrative jobs in industry. Occasionally, some of our star Math Ed. students land nice jobs teaching at private schools which have salaries comparable to industry.
 

The crew stalled for as long as they could, but the Chinese gave them an ultimatum: come out right now or we will come in shooting.

The US learned with Gary Powers that giving people suicide orders is a very unreliable way to keep a secret. That's why I wouldn't expect thermite bricks on the equipment in a confined space in a pressurized airplane.