Nonsense. The Linux machine will still be booted up, because Linux doesn't require you to reboot it every day if you want it to continue to work. The Windows 7 fish will be staring at them from the inside of a virtual machine. They will continue to use Linux for all their productivity work, and mouse over that VM window every once in a while when they want to play a game or run that one useful program which only runs under Windows.

It's quite common for depression to begin late in life, after you have already had children.

Also, for men at least, a trait that has a small chance of great success can be valuable. If there is a trait that will kill 90% of the men who have it, but make the remaining 10% so spectacularly attractive to women that each of those men father 15 or 20 children (ideally to be raised by some other guy who thinks he is the father), then that genetic trait is evolutionally successful, even though it kills 90% of the men.

It's the same idea as risk-taking in men being an evolutionary advantage. It doesn't matter if a trait is good for an individual, it matters if it is good for the entire group which has that trait.

PS: I notice that the parent post didn't actually mention evolution, so I may be answering a completely different question. But I think it's an interesting answer, even if it doesn't apply to the question asked. :-)

It is not hypocritical at all (although it may be a bit ironic). A hallmark of civilization everywhere is the idea that the state, as embodied by the government, has a monopoly on violence. Only the state can use violence against someone. If a citizen has a disagreement with another citizen, they must bring that disagreement to the state (the police or courts), and if appropriate, the state will use violence to resolve it.

It is perfectly normal and reasonable for a government to use violence for its own ends, and at the same time take measures to prevent its citizens from using violence for their ends.

I'm not saying Chavez's use of violence is just, fair, or even sensible. I'm also not saying the idea of restricting video games is reasonable or likely to be effective in reducing violence. I'm just saying there's nothing wrong with Chavez' government attempting to reduce violence by citizens.

In other words: the plan is stupid, but not hypocritical.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I don't have problems getting support on Linux from the Linux community.. Debian Ubuntu has the greatest and friendliest support people in the world.

Can you prove you got poor or non-existing support for Linux? Show us screen-shots, chat logs, and e-mail exchanges, or we won't believe you.

You want to hear about poor support? Try calling Microsoft tech support. They completely suck. I once called Microsoft tech support and I was on hold for 13 hours, and then I got connected to some loser who can't speak English. Of course I only called to swear at him, so I yelled abuse at him and hung up. But I had to wait 13 hours first. That sucks. If you want to yell abuse at a Linux support person, you can call Linus himself any time of the day or night, and he'll thank you for your suggestion.

The Linux community is great. I think you don't have any problems getting support for Linux, or if you do, it is because you are rude, stupid, and useless.

The article itself started out by oversimplifying the test. It would be an astounding coincidence if the test had both a 10% false-positive and a 10% false-negative rate. In fact, any normal test has a very different false-positive and false-negative rate. People who describe the test should mention both, not this meaningless "90% accurate" number.

The BBC article, while claiming to want to reduce confusion, actually perpetuates the problem by using the meaningless "90%" number instead of the specific positive and negative failure rates. If every article describing tests would quote both failure rates, that would go a long way to getting people to understanding the situation.

To translate to the "agile" buzwords of the day, they use a 2 week sprint cycle, and at the end of each sprint, the features for that sprint are complete and working, and the product is stable. They ensure this by doing daily builds and testing on those builds. Everyone runs the current build (he implies they run the daily build, but I expect that is too much hassle to upgrade every day, so in fact everyone runs the last sprint build (which is less than 2 weeks old, and has had a brief stabalizaiton period).

It's not rocket science, the notion of small "sprints" and a releasable product ready at the end of each sprint is fairly well known. All it requires is more discipline than 99% of development teams have. :-) Kudos to them for having the discipline to make it work.

If you're going to be discussing "legal rights", you may want to mention the country and state where these "rights" are supposed to exist. Otherwise it's hard to prove yourself right (and the other poster wrong).

Your father (and you, probably) do know more than the average member of the public. Your father understands the statistics behind the studies. He understands that "happens 95% of the time" does not mean "unpredictable". He understands the process of conjecture -> experiment -> evidence -> theory -> new conjecture to refine theory -> new experiments -> etc. He understands that "scientific fact" can and will change once new evidence is available, but as long as there is a very large body of evidence for the current theory, it should be accepted.

He even understands the difference between "fact", "theory" and "conjecture" which so confuses the general public.

But this "for $1 you can get..." has nothing to do with network security, that is all about user stupidity. If I put up my "wireless internet" sign up in one of those disused airline rewards plan program booths that litter most of the airports I go through, and ask for people's credit cards, I'm also going to get money. Heck, I could probably find an unused visa application booth, and stand next to it with my customized application form and get all sorts of personal banking information from idiots. If you're dumb enough to type in a credit card number on a web site you haven't confirmed, then you're an idiot. And the only network security process that will help you is for someone to take your computer away from you.

Always assume public networks (wifi or cheap motel wired) are being recorded by someone who wants to steal your money. Always use SSL enabled sites, and always verify the contents of the certificate. Make sure your webmail is on an SSL enabled site, and if you are using other apps that use the network (thick-client mail), ensure it is configured to use SSL.

I know it's bad form to reply to your own posting, but my pilot wife points out that mechanics are usually eager to fly in the plane that they just fixed. After all, she's got to get home somehow, and faced with flying in the plane that she *knows* is fixed correctly because she just worked on it, or another plane that she has no idea who has been working on, the typical mechanic would put more trust in the plane she just fixed.

She's also told me an amusing story about a flight attendant who is also an AME (aircraft mechanic). Alas, that story didn't end so well, because although she was a licensed AME, she didn't have the bit of paper that allowed her to legally work on that particular type of plane, and even though the problem was trivial to fix, she had to sit there and glare at it for several hours until the proper mechanic arrived. It's kind of like not being allowed to change the oil in a Chevy Sprint because you are only licensed to work on the Suzuki Swift (and yes, they are identical cars).

It is quite a coincidence that a qualified mechanic from a company with a co-maint agreement happens to be on the flight, I agree.

The article doesn't say anything about him fixing it for free. He probably filled out a time-card for overtime as soon as he got to work the next day.

When an engineer is flown into a remote airport to fix something, she's got to get home somehow. I bet she takes a ride on whichever airplane is going in the direction she needs to go, regardless of whether it is the one she just fixed or not. These people are professionals, if they didn't think it was safe to fly in, they would not have signed off on the work. Forcing the mechanic to fly in the aircraft that was just fixed isn't going to make it any safer, it will just lead to more mechanics getting paid to sit in airplanes rather than fixing them.

First of all, many small airlines are not unionized. And even if they are, emergency maintenance is unscheduled by definition, so any union agreement would allow the company to send in the first qualified mechanic they could find. Secondly, what makes you assume the work was unpaid? I think it is reasonable to assume his company, Thompsonfly, approved the work under the existing cross-maintenance agreement, and that the AME was paid for the work just as if he was the on-call mechanic and got the phone call from his company dispatcher. He was probably paid the standard "callout" rate for his 1/2 hour work. They had to verify his identity and his credentials, which means that Thomas Cook Airlines needed to phone Thompsonfly for that information. Since they had them on the phone anyway, it's reasonable to assume they also got his company to authorize the work and assign him to the job.

In a remedial summer school class? He should be teaching the class. The GP is posted by the principal, right?

There's lots more the newspaper could have done (and, for all I know, they may have done some of this as well):

• a front-page "we screwed up" headline and an article explaining exactly what they did, and why it was immoral and unethical.
• a human-interest story about how this mob mentality destroyed this business.
• a clear criticism of how the towns people behaved.
• financial assistance for the family.

Just quietly firing the person who causes embarrassment for the company is frequently all a company will do, but it's never all the company can do.

The problem isn't the use of password asterisks, but the use of passwords in the first place. Good password usage requires a password to be 8 or 14 characters long, contain lower case, UPPER CASE, &ymbols, numb3rs, etc., and be unique: never repeat a password on multiple systems.

This is a lot of work, and these rules are being applied in cases where they are completely unnecessary.

In the real world, we understand that some situations require a solid steel door with a $300 deadbolt, and other situations only require a plywood door with a $1.99 padlock. And some don't require a lock at all, a simple "keep out" sign is enough.

We need to have better conventions to deal with trivial sites like Slashdot and Facebook, where it really is not at all serious if someone hacks my account, and important sites like my credit card company or Paypall, where a hacker can cause significant financial damage.

I'd love it if every site that required a login would offer 3 levels of security:
a) No security: anyone who types in my username can pretend to be me. This site is not allowed to store any financial details about me, and everyone knows that it is trivial to impersonate someone.
b) Minimal security: A simple password or browser cookie is enough. Someone hacking my account might embarrass me, but it's no great damage. This site is not allowed to store any financial details about me.
c) Significant security: SSL and a good password, or client certificate based security. Anyone hacking this site can get access to my bank account or credit cards.