Cool, thanks for filling me in. That was an honest question. Do you really think this merger is a "clear and present danger" to Microsoft and IBM (another honest question, o cynics of /.)?

I read the full article, jackass. Sorry to ruin your /. stereotype.

Novel idea: asking a question to harness the collective knowledge of /. to put an article in context. I'm not familiar with either of these companies and as far as I can tell this merger is nothing more than hype. Maybe I'm missing something and someone will correct me. That's the point of the question.

Microsoft and IBM have lots of competitors (Oracle comes readily to mind). What makes this different, besides the fact I've never heard of either of these companies? A blogger I've also never heard of who wants hits?

It's not just if it kills people. There is a significant impact simply from infecting people in making them sick, in terms of health care, missed work/school/???, and even the fact that people will be living in fear that they'll get sick (however rational or irrational that fear is). You know how the point of landmines is to maim not kill, since it takes three soldiers out of action (one cause they're hurt, the other two to carry them off)? That type of situation applies here too. There's much more to it than just lethality.

Eh, they'll get their company alcohol. When I was there (at a low-budget team) we were having a BBQ on the lawn next to our building, and a high-budget team was also having an event out there with an open bar (we just had a cooler). That's not too uncommon there.

On a nicer note, one time my manager thought it would be fun to spend a workday with the team at his house making beer. It was a good bonding experience and a welcome break at a very hectic time. Good people, good people.

From the summary:

No one said that strandings aren't a natural phenomenon. They have multiple causes! You didn't even have to click a link to see that!

In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn't discover this one, and it's documented fairly well elsewhere.

In Ocarina of Time, when you become an Adult, Zora's Domain gets turned to ice. How sad! I know. Anyway, there's a way to get underneath the ice from Lake Hylia. You have to stand directly beneath the gate that leads to the water temple in the center of the lake, against the wall to your right as you face away from the entrance. If you take off the iron boots, you'll start to float upwards, and if you time it right, you'll momentarily see through the wall. If you put your iron boots on at that moment, you'll be able to sink past that wall, underneath the lake. Woohoo.

So, after you do that, you have to swim towards the tunnel that connects the lake to zora's domain. While it's also frozen, since you're under the lake, you can just swim beneath it and still be transported to Zora's domain. When you get there, you'll be under the ice! It's pretty cool actually. There is a hidden cavern down there that looks like it was going to be something that wasn't included in the game. You can get out of the ice through the frozen waterfall -- just walk towards it long enough and you'll get through.

Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_7UmsKh4Gk . There are actually quite a few interesting glitches in that game. Ah, Ocarina of Time, how we loved thee... Still fun ten years later.

This question has been on my mind and it's relatively related to the topic of the article, so I'm interested to hear you folks feedback. How can we as computer scientists and IT pros be of service to society?

I've had some people tell me medical applications of CS are where it's at, others point to projects like OLPC, others say get rich and give away your money. Others still tell me to just do my work well and let the rest take care of itself. As a computer scientist, I feel like I have training and background in an area that's somewhat rare in society as a whole, and I feel like if I'm out to try to make an impact I should leverage those skills.

For instance, urban-rural digital divide. What have any of you done with regard to this? Anything in the developing world? Specifically applicable to the developing world, what's the role that technology can/should play? Where do you feel our field has the largest social impact?

PS: Yeah, I know it's youthful idealism. With all due respect, if you're just going to tell me that I'll just get slapped in the face by reality then you can save your breath; I hear that on a daily basis already.

Just out of curiousity - my understanding was that WiMAX was about 3mbps (yes bits/sec). I don't doubt the speeds you report but it struck me as odd. Does Clearwire use something besides WiMAX?

Love Portland by the way. Only been there once but loved every minute of it. Hell, I love the entire Pacific Northwest, hope I can get back up there sometime soon.

Or they can just come back in a couple days and do it again, hassle avoided.

The problem of course is that until recently no one (or rather, a very small number of their customers) saw them as dumb pipes -- only with the rise of decently internet enabled phones has the idea started to occur to people in large numbers that "surprise! your phone is just like your computer". A surprisingly large number of people (in the US I think 80%+) don't use their phones for internet/data on a regular basis, so the idea that their voice bits are the same as their data bits isn't readily apparent. Mobile phone companies are kind of like the AOL-era ISPs, faced with a sudden, rapid change in the way users view their services, as well as a desire to create rich "walled garden" experiences for their subscribers. In my mind, the transition to a mobile company as a dumb pipe will happen eventually and unstoppably, it's just a matter of when.

To be fair, switching to "dumb pipe" providers is a fundamental change in their business model. While certainly not expensive enough to wholly justify their current margins, running the kind of networks these companies do is expensive, and it's a lot to ask for that kind of change to occur. Remember, it wasn't long ago that 3G was just something to rant about not having on /., and data access on phones is really just starting to take off.

Companies are coming around, I think, albeit slowly. Offering unlimited data plans is a really major step that fundamentally changes the way people use data on their phones. In time, that will become cheaper, mobile devices will become more ubiquitous and cheaper, and that's when I think you'll start to see more "dumb pipe" type plans being offerred. I don't see mobile companies and their current model completely going away for some time at least, due to the large portion of the market that still doesn't care about data. As more services are offered for mobile devices, however, I think that too will change.

Yeah, I suppose... when I made the comment it was modded "insightful" rather than "funny" so I guess I read it in a bit of a different light.

Every browser has quirks. Things render differently even between Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. As long as the rendering engine's source code is different and people are running the browser on different platforms, you're going to have differences in the way that pages are rendered, and that's just a fact of life. This tool makes it easier to spot differences in the way your code renders on different browsers. I'm not sure what your sarcasm is adding (dystopian future of calculators?) but given that differences will always exist between browsers this tool seems well-designed and helpful.

Great, great, response. I know the poster is not asking whether or not he/she should do it, and I'm not really an "older" reader (currently trying not to piss my 20's away), but perhaps they'll find this useful as well.

You have a blessing in front of you in having a strong desire to do something, namely, to go to school and get your CS degree. If that's what you are passionate about right now then you need to take advantage of that energy and do it, because you'll make the most effective use of your effort by doing so. I am at a top CS program and many of my classmates are so-called "non-traditional" (read: have more life experience than your average student) students, and not only are they often the ones setting the curve, they ask the best questions, they are motivated, they take advantage of the opportunities available to them better than most, and all in all they enrich the quality of our program.

Some advice I might offer as a young student. Most of my friends who are older students tend to be a bit disconnected from the rest of the University. Don't make that mistake: as much as you might think so, you're not a graduate student, even if you're the same age as them, and your academic life does not only revolve around your department. At the very least, you'll have to fill gen ed requirements. More importantly, as an undergraduate, the university has resources that can be very helpful and enriching to your education. Make friends with some (highly motivated) younger students (even outside your dept) who tend to be more aware of these things and can help you get more connected.

You should be focused on your objective. But undergraduate college years are an excellent time to take some risks and go different directions than you may have previously seen yourself going. Do that: universities are breeding grounds for opportunity, and you might be surprised at what doors you might open for yourself by trying something new.

Good luck!

As of this post (12.48pm EDT Mar. 17), it looks like the distribution of responses of people who have seen the film is normally distributed, if slightly skewed towards liking the film (I'm assuming "better than Cats" is a form of high praise rather than an insult; even disregarding that the shape is still somewhat normal).

I know the standard disclaimer (this is not a scientific poll, etc), but it's interesting to me that opinions seem so random about the film. It's almost as if the quality of the film is unimportant (or at least that there is nothing universal about it). I wonder how common this type of result would be for other movies?