Let's put aside for a moment the issue of whether or not Russia's problems is the fault of the U.S. government. But when it comes to saying the U.S. government or rather U.S. politicians are just as bad, we need to look no further than to RTFA. Kasparov mentions,

The Latin phrase "per se" means "in itself" or "through itself". It's not "persay". Also, don't use it when you actually mean to say "exactly". "Per se" is used when you want to say that something is intrinsically true about an object. If you mean to say that something "isn't exactly true", then simply say that instead.

Is it laser guided?

Yes, it's true that if a "too big to fail" company fails, bad things happen and people get mad. But let's look at it another way. In a market driven economy, the economy is strong when the market is strong. The market is driven by the consumer being able to choose the supplier of products and services. So, if the consumer is mad because of a poor performing company, the consumer can choose to leave and support a better, stronger company.

If a market driven economy no longer forces companies to live with the consequences of their decisions, opting to bail them out so no one gets mad, then their is no incentive for any company to be a good company because it isn't required stay in business. The actual good companies then see that their extra effort is a waste of time, an in order to compete, they also must become a company with similarly bad products and services.

Saving "too big to fail" companies only keeps people from being mad for the short term. But once the entire market is in trouble, they'll still lose and will be even madder later. There's a moral to the story for our society that goes beyond the stock market: FOCUSING WORRIES ON FAILURE IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY. DO INSTEAD WHAT YOU KNOW IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Teach Yourself Programming In Ten Years

Here's some PDFs from the U.S. military on what constitutes an "assault rifle". http://gunfax.com/aw.htm To be an assault rifle, the firearm MUST support SELECTIVE FIRE. The Sig716 mentioned in the article does not have selective fire and is therefore NOT an assault rifle. Period. It is a semi-auto firearm styled ergonomically like an assault rifle, but it isn't one. Also, does anyone else find the article a little strange? Rifles and TVs aren't even close to the same size or shaped box. D.C. is probably the most anti-firefarm city in the U.S. concerning its policies, and obviously the most public and political, and yet someone got shipped an AR style firearm instead of a TV? It wasn't even just a bolt action hunting rifle, it just so happened to be AR styled? Immediately after being reported the Brady Campaign of course jumped on this. Shipping errors can happen of course, but doesn't the convenience of all this kind of smell like a publicity stunt?

Hero/Heron of Alexandria pioneered steam engine technology (the aeolipile), vending machines, wind powered machines, force pumps, syringes, imaginary numbers, and a means to calculate square roots. All this was during 10 - 70 AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

You're failing to understand that:

1. Social networking isn't about people trying to be a celebrity. It's about some people trying to be a celebrity, while others just want to keep in touch with friends (e.g. for many, social networking sites are just the replacement for Instant Messaging). It's about access to information that is controlled and owned by the user.

2. Even for those that want to be celebrities, even they just want to be visible to other party-goers, students, and friends-of-friends. Nowhere does 3rd-party advertising companies mining their personal data figure into the equation. That is NOT what motivated the person to join the site.

3. The idea that the information is always "voluntarily provided" is bogus. That implies a conscious decision was made by the user. Clicking OK to a Terms Of Service agreement may cover a site legally, but in the real world it has nothing to do with whether or not the user understands the consequences of the legal double-talk a TOS agreement implies. If you misunderstand it's consequences, then it is not informed consent (regarding real-life informed decisions, regardless of any legal definition of "informed consent"). For example, if the TOS says that certain types of content won't be provided to third-parties except in special cases A and B, the user might not expect that this is just Cover-Your-Ass talk and that special cases A and B unwittingly happen most of the time from actions the user didn't expect would cause special cases A and B. Various sites are better or worse at this, of course.

4. All these sites have verbiage saying they "respect your privacy" (of course), but where is the transparency? Laws aren't magic wands. How do I verify whether or not my privacy is truly being respected. When potential profit is involved, it's the corporate norm that it's "better to ask forgiveness than permission". And if they get caught doing something wrong, they get a slap on the wrist because apparently corporations have more rights than citizens do, and then they continue to do what they've always done before.

5. Just because you may be disinterested about something only other people seem to be interested in, doesn't mean this doesn't eventually have implications for everyone.

6. Simply put, the point of the issue is what you're failing to understand.

Bakeries?? ...Really? So... it's the one place where you SHOULDN'T be offended if you find a pube in your sandwich?

...you're not getting it. It's waay better than the AMD stuff because it's xxxxxxtreme! That's like *twice* the xxx!

Uh no, it's to demonstrate that the code "works". The problem here is what it means "to work". Part of the usefulness of TDD is that you might not fully understand what it means "to work" yet, and the tests help you flesh that out.

Let me clarify, so you don't think I'm 100% ditching what you're saying versus stating it a different way. A test suite will tend to have BOTH tests for what the correct behavior *is* and also tests for what the correct behavior *is not*. In other words, what you're doing is defining the BOUNDARIES between correct and incorrect behavior. You're right in the sense that if your *strategy* is to write only *optimistic* tests (i.e. "proving that it works"), you'll miss subtle areas where the behavior isn't fully clarified (i.e. corner cases).

But here's the problem: for absolutely anything in the universe, there is an INFINITE number of things something *is not*, but only a finite amount of things something *is*. I've seen people go too crazy with using tests as a way of type-checking everything where smarter data types would have been a better choice, or performing a hundred "this isn't what I want" tests that could have been handled with a single "this IS what I want" test. My point is that you're supposed to program for the correct case, not design as if you always expect everything to go wrong. Write for the correct case, test for the correct cases FIRST, test for the EXCEPTIONAL cases, and write handling code for the things that are exceptional. Don't write an infinite test suite of what something is not.

CONCLUSION: Write the most EFFECTIVE tests you can that covers the most ground. Don't write *pointless* tests you have to maintain later if there was a better test. If a test covers a lot of logical ground by defining the boundaries of what something *is not*, then write the test for that. If it covers a lot of ground by defining what something *is*, write the test for that.

Exactly. One good example is when you look at how a SQL RDBMS indexes its data at the implementation level. Indexes are local and are concerned with local things such as the ordering of the data on the disk (e.g. clustered indexes). If you want a distributed SQL database, indexes are still typically a local operation and replication is handled at a much higher level. Much of these "NoSQL" implementations are about fast searches (requiring fast indexing) that are inherently distributed. If SQL RDBMS implementations had more sophisticated implementations that assumed the database is inherently distributed, and if the indexes were treated as such from the start, then searches would be much faster and there would be less need for "NoSQL" databases. When you realize that the relational model is based on "relations" (and in turn, set theory) you realize that there is nothing inherent about what is essentially math that prevents it from working efficiently in a distributed manner. If you can make a distributed "key-value store", you can make a distributed UNIQUE index too, etc. If speed is the ultimate concern and that is why they opt for "eventual consistency", then a special-purpose "NoSQL" database may be the way to go, for the *web* anyway. But if you need massive data *and* constant consistency (e.g. such as with financial transaction data), distributed SQL databases would be a better choice (given there is a good implementation available).

Step 1: Launch Chandrayaan-1
Step 2: Blow a hole in the moon and later announce the discovery of a hole in the moon...
Step 3: Profit!

:-)

Even later, scientists learned how to attach the frickin lasers to the flys' heads.

No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.

Here's what I think is important:

1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...

2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.

3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)