I was an Emacs dude for a long time and still use it. Then I tried RubyMine, and eventually upgraded to IDEA. The IDE features are sometimes handy. I also use vi very regularly for quick edits of small scripts.

I would no more stick to one editor than I would stick to one programming language. Right tool for the job is the key.

Although I have gone from EDT to MDT & got right to work when I got there, I can't say as I suffered any more jet lag the next day than if I had put in a long day right here in EDT country.

But its been about a decade since last I flew commercial. I am a broadcast engineer, and when you are going someplace to play fireman and put out the fire in the cash cow, all of ones tools need to go along because you never know what you might need on the other end that home depot never heard of. You would be amazed at the sheer stupidity of TSA folks who can only see a specialty tool in the toolkit as some weapon they never heard of. Ignorance is fixable, stupid is not.

I was headed to the MI, UP to see about a tv transmitter the first time that happened, and I just rolled it all back out to the pickup and drove that thousand miles. Took my time, was only 2 days late, which in the end made zero difference. I haven't flown a commercial flight since. If I am needed that far away, then they can send Steve and the twin engine Cessna to get me. Very nice small plane, seats 8 in a pinch.

But now as I approach 80 yo, even that is about finished, the wife has COPD, and I don't feel its safe leaving her alone for 72+ hours.

Cheers, Gene

The problem is there is no alternative to oil.

None.

Nuclear may provide energy dense alternatives but you'd need to have been building plants 10 years ago. Coal is an option, but you will turn the sky grey.

Green technologies do not have the energy density needed. Simple napkin math can demonstrate this. There are no conspiracies; the world runs on oil because there are no alternatives available. A refusal to recognize the underlying thermodynamics and energy requirements in real world units, rather than fluffy unicorns and windmills, holds back adult discussions of what needs to happen and when.

The only technology available is nuclear. Manhattan-project style efforts to crack fusion technologies, or more usefully, the battery problem, would go a long way to help. We're not just there yet.

I am for it, as long as it isn't also construed to discourage the boys. That's the last thing we need to do to our "educational" indoctrination system.

In fact, anything that undoes the dumbing down to match the lowest achievers that has been done in the last 80 years or more needs to be undone itself.
Reading comprehension for instance, went down when they dropped phonics back in the 40's. That was a monumental mistake IMO. So now, in 2014, we have 3+ generations of people who cannot read the daily fish wrap in 15 minutes, even if it doesn't have anything in it but Ford advertisements. Not only that, but the writers (I hesitate to call them Journalists) of 75% of that drivel have no real command of the English language, both in terms of sentence structure, and spelling.

Our present system sits heavily on those blessed with a high IQ, teaching them how to scam for welfare rather than how to use those smarts to move us ahead.
I don't personally care if the child with a lower IQ ever "graduates" from high school. But the child with an IQ in the 150 range looks at the subjects being required today, is bored out of his skull, and gets a poorer grade because he just doesn't care, there are many more important things to think about than a geography lesson based on a book whose copyright is 40 years old & 20% of the countries discussed don't even exist today.

I know something about that since I was one of "those kids". I quit school as soon as I could, and went to work fixing the then new tv's in the late '40's. Since, I've had fingerprints in some very unusual places, and eventually retired from a nearly 20 year stint as the very well paid, 30% above what the market size usually pays, Chief Engineer at a TV station.

Its a very short push to my 80th and having just survived a Pulmonary Embolism that about punched my ticket, I'm less inclined to STFU when something isn't right.

All I want is a paper replacement.

There are large e-ink displays, but they all lack high resolution input - as high as a 0.5mm pencil can get you.

15 years after I graduated, I still carry engineering paper, and I get it from the same bookstore. All that's changed is I take pictures of my notes instead of scan them now.

Come on Apple - want to innovate? Figure that one out. I triple dog dare you.

The only thing the Teacher's Unions are terrified of.. is that they're going to be replaced.

"Junior has permission to use this gun, but only at these times"

Are you fucking kidding me? This isn't a toy or an internet device, it is a self defense tool. I think that mandating "smart" guns is stupid, but this is even more stupid. Most people can't even program their DVR, and you want them to program a GUN?

The beautiful thing about a gun is its simplicity: simple point and click interface. Add some basic safety and legal training, and the average person is just fine without any "smarts" to foolishly rely on.

Competition is coming.

*cough* Valve *cough*

..get the damn product finished Oculus.

I'm glad to see that even the ACs around here see the benefit of this. I read enough of the article (really) to get a pretty good feel, and wondered if /.ers were going to trash or praise the idea. As a training tool, it is pretty useful, more practical ways than it might seem at first glance, as it is fun enough to keep people's attention when being trained.

And yes, there are some real life parallels to zombies, like the AC said, or rapidly spreading infectious disease. Interesting stuff.

Should nobody be hugging THOSE servers either?

As a former cloud administrator: no. When you have 2000 physical servers, why do you care that 50 of them are currently broken? Why would I care that the hard drive failed in one and I had to re-install it (with an identical image and configuration to the other 1999 servers)

Hell, we had servers that never worked from the day they were delivered and no one gave a shit: it went on the backlog for the DC guys to diagnose and RMA. Some of them got fixed after 6 months.

How many gasoline cars the same age as a typical tesla have caught on fire?

On 24 August 2010, BBC News reported that ten [Ferrari] 458s had either crashed or caught fire in just three months.

If you do not have men with guns to protect your freedom, money, women, *insert thing here, other (bad) men with guns will come take it from you.

That's human nature, and I have no problem with my way of life being protected under threat of planetary annihilation.

Forget that lesson at your peril.

You are making a huge financial investment in both real dollars and opportunity cost.

Don't worry about developing web sites. Spend that time advancing your core knowledge. Learn as deep and as abstractly as you can. The technologies will change, the knowledge will not.

Any job you take now will likely not impact your career. Find out if there's a professor you can work with in another faculty instead - by going up and down halls knocking on doors if possible. Chances are they have some IT problems that need solving this summer or know someone who does.

It's so goddamn awful, it will drive me away from Gmail, its uncomplicated and great search results, and make me get off my lazy ass, and set up my own cloud service that I control.

It might even make me motivated enough to limit my exposure to Google in other ways, too.

The volume of non-work email I deal with has been dropping steadily, anyway - to the point where my own solution managed in my own cloud service might be worthwhile.

I strongly suspect I am not alone.

Full speed ahead Google!