For another viewpoint on the compatibility of science and religion see Sir Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Partnership-Jonathan-Sacks/dp/0340995246

It's quite in line with classic jewish thought (e.g. Maimonides).

http://www.amazon.com/Calendrical-Calculations-Millennium-Edward-Reingold/dp/0521777526 while it doesn't necessarily answer the question posed, people interested in computing calendars shouldn't miss this book.

I have no vested interest, it's not my name on the cover ;>

While it's true that the "sequestration" is across the board, that's by department. Each government department is a huge enterprise. Surely, a little thought from the top (and from each agency) should have been able to find the least impactful things to cut.

Instead, the President (as the CEO) spent the last two weeks running around threatening the most dire results .... instead of meeting with the people (viz. the senate and house membership and leaders) to coax a settlement.

IANAR, but it is painfully clear who bears the greater responsibility for the outcome. Sadly, it appears far more difficult for the press (oh my, isn't Michelle wonderful at the Academy Awards?) to focus on either things that count, or on whose feet need to be held to which fire.

Upon reflection, and not surprisingly, the expert has made a good point.

If due to an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), your secret data was captured after it was decoded (as it must be to be actively used, or created, or transferred, at some point) or if the private keys are compromised (either due to torture, pressure on appropriate authorities, or captured as created (see above)) the benefit(s) of encryption are greatly reduced (even if the cryptosystem itself is very secure).

It is a bit of a chilling thought, and yes other posters have pointed to various good zones of defense, but Shamir's point is that some existing APTs in the wild have penetrated to the deepest levels.

As for the "air gap" method, as has been pointed out in other places, that's often compromised even for very secure infrastructures by people with laptops, cellphones, or compromised printers that are moved from one side of the "air gap" to the other....

It should come as no surprise to anyone that cold decreases range (it's true for most battery technologies, moreso for some than others). The obvious thing to do is to keep the car charging overnight (admittedly not always practical on a roadtrip, but for a daily commuter it's easier than heading to the gas station. I do go home nearly every night ;>).

I expect little of the NYT, so short of some lawsuit requiring them to make a retraction, I doubt there will be any significant retraction or adverse effect on the career of the "journalist".

As for driving in circles, hard to prove intent. Following {googlemaps, apple maps AND telenav} I managed to miss the fueling station at Disneyworld in the dark (none said turn right ... I guess "straight" and "right" are relative on a complex enough interchange).

The logs do prove that the journalist was a stupid driver who can't follow instructions. Unclear to me how to use them to prove intent.

Sadly, many drivers are stupid and incompetent, something to bear in mind whenever driving or designing anything for the mass market ;>

Pity. Obviously there's still a place for live lab work (hands on does matter), but a lot of relatively dangerous experiments could be carried out in a virtual lab, and closely tying the labwork (virtual as well as real) to the lectures makes the subject a lot less "dry" and builds intuition faster.

Sure, creating such virtual labs would be a considerable amount of work (but at least could be self grading), and tying the lectures to the labwork wouldn't be trivial.

But it would improve the learning experience (hard to sleep AND do the labwork).

I used Blackboard once, seemed unhelpful. As for teaching English, the class I got the most out of involved rewriting, rewriting and rewriting until we got it "right" (viz. what the Professor decided was right). Had we had the technology for e-submission, his markup, our re-submission many students could have improved faster (couple of day to 1 week turnaround isn't conducive to optimal learning).

Optimal technology usage should vary by subject, but in pretty much all cases (performance art, plays, stand up comedy ... as counterexamples) I would expect that good use COULD be made. But Professors have no incentive to innovate in this area (tenure, and increased workload/increased student expectations of turnaround) so I am not optimistic that most Professors will make the attempt.

Probably a lot of people can't. However, it seems rather daft to me to go "paperless" for libraries. My local library system has a fairly extensive ebook collection, has experimented with loaning readers (albeit only for the toddler set) and still has a large supply of traditional paper.

Adding ebook titles as funding permits, and perhaps having a "nook corner" for borrowing kindles, nook or whatever (perhaps corporate sponsored, a chance for them to get demo units in the hands of the public who might not be early adopters ;>) seems to me to a much sounder strategy especially given the DRM and relatively high costs of ebooks (artificially so) to libraries.

Also, as much as an Apple store is a wonderful design for *selling* things, it's far from clear to me that it's really a good environment for the things we have come to expect from libraries (children's reading circles? book clubs? study areas??). Indeed, it's the polar opposite of what I expect from a library.

And yes, I have iDevices aplenty, as well as a BN Nook, and a large room full of books and more in boxes. So I'm neither a luddite nor such a techophile that I can't appreciate the worth of a well bound dead tree.

"I do not care what you put into your body but I do care if you try to force me or my family to take something against their will."

The problem is that unvaccinated people create a repository for the disease. It harms the entire "herd" for some to not be vaccinated. Vaccination isn't a panacea, some people can get sick (although typically less seriously than if they'd been vaccinated)

Perhaps the way to "split the difference" is to set up "reservations" for people who don't want to be vaccinated. Or perhaps a single state. Then you will all only have each other to infect. Also, it will provide compelling evidence ... if you are right, you'll all be healthier than the rest of us. If you aren't, at least we won't be suffering because of poor choices you've made.

The combination of ensuring that "everyone" is co-located, and intense security probably made it hard to do the "obvious" QA. Put the test application on every Apple employees phone, everywhere in the world and give it a real life workout. Can't do that and maintain the cone of silence.

Frankly, in the Denver area, I like the Apple maps better than Google, and a little less well than Telenav's product. As I seldom use public transit (doesn't go to where my kids schools are, etc.) that lack is hardly ever noticeable. Missing walking directions is a minor loss (bike trails, etc.) but not a show stopper for me.

As far the main topic, should Executive "so and so" be fired ... its hard to say from the outside. Did they accept an impossible assignment? Did they claim it was done? Did they design an appropriately staffed organization to ensure quality? Were they hamstrung from above?

Sometimes the right answer is "sorry Boss, I can't do that" or "sorry its not ready for prime time yet". Don't know what was said, or the context. And the people who do know, sure aren't going to be chatting about it on /. if they want to stay employed at Apple ;>

As far as Tim Cook's performance goes, as a shareholder I'm happy to see that screwing up DOES result in having executives pay a price. An organization that continues to reward screwups slides downhill fast.

Having not used Ubuntu much since the Unity debacle (well, that is most of my Ubuntu systems stayed preUnity), I was curious about what my child was seeing in the library so installed Mint. Imperfect, but a lot more usable than Unity. Kudos to the school for taking the time to do a little homework.

I wish Mark and the Canonical team luck. The last several design choices have driven away technically literate people AND those aiming for the technically illiterate. No doubt there is some huge market that I'm just missing (Ubuntu Tablets ?) but I'll be darned if I can spot it.

The tablet market is, no doubt, huge. But Apple has a commanding share, followed by Amazon. Neither is likely to adopt Ubuntu as shipped by Canonical during my lifetime. Who does that leave left with enough presence to make a difference? If that is, indeed, the target market ... is it a wise one?

Yes, the installation process should be relatively automatic, and well documented so that another team can and should usually install it. However, such teams are often *too* capable, that is the Developer(s) should do some installations themselves so they see just what sort of nightmare they have created ... or how fragile it is in the context of a full production environment.

Development environments are no substitute for the RealWorld. Ignoring the RealWorld is a BadThing

What an ageist remark! Young people typically have no more experience (and often a lot less) with the various types of patents. Automobiles and fashion design are closer to the issues at hand in this case than software. How many software engineers commenting here have also worked in those trades?

You don't see (other than the odd kit car here or there) replicas of famous signature cars (e.g. Corvette). It's not that the other auto vendors are above copying, it's because various design elements are trademarked. While some small tailor shop can crank out Armandi clones and typically not get caught it's equally illicit. But Ford vs. GM vs. Honda, etc. are all too big and easy to nail if they copy patented and/or trademarked design elements.

Most of the action wasn't on the more familiar to software developers, "utility patents".

Now whether the jury ought to have asked questions to the judge or settled for explanations from the foreman I'll leave that to Legal experts.

That person(s) on the jury held patents shouldn't have been an issue. But whether they were supposed to apply their own expertise is another. Of course, those of us that believe in Jury Nullification aren't unhappy that jurors take a look at the bigger picture and not be led by the nose by lawyers ... but that's a horse of another color.

It is truly a pity that the jurors are speaking up, it reminds me of when the M$ antitrust judge spoke out of court and got bounced (due to perfectly sensible comments regarding the strategies employed by M$ at the time). Even the appearance of bias should be avoided.

FWIW, the jewish count is 613 commandments not 10 (you have to read all 5 books carefully). Rape is a subset of "armed robbery"
  which is one of the commandments which are traditionally interpreted to apply to everyone (not just jews).

Indeed, the penalty for the rape of Dinah turned out to be the extermination of the entire village of the miscreant (although Abraham did ask his son's if that was really appropriate).

Not suggesting that Atheists should become jews; just that one should read the totality of the text (preferably in the original languages) if one wants to complain about fine points of law.