The goal of diversity initiatives is to make the pool of qualified candidates more diverse. But it doesn't say anything about the differing attributes having anything to do with how qualified you are. Yes, diversity includes gender diversity. But, that has absolutely nothing to do with the (correct, but meaningless) assertion that people don't program with their genitals.

My statement was meant to be read as "We need more vaginas in here programming, as if vaginas have some role in the process of programming." They don't. And to suggest "diversity initiatives" imply that they do is a strawman.

My phone only rings if the caller is listed in my address book with a custom ringtone. My default ringtone is silent. Everyone I know knows that if they call me from an unrecognized number I won't answer it, and all they have to do is leave me a voicemail. I also have premium txt messages turned off on my account.

And you know what? 30+ years will have been a pretty good run for "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu."

It sounds like your workplace is respectful, and that race and gender rightfully don't factor into your opinions of each others' work. It sounds like your workplace happens to be diverse, which helps keep everyone centered on what does matter (technical chops), as opposed to what doesn't (gender, race, age).

But what are your feelings on the rise of brogrammers? Sexual harassment at conferences? Companies with cultures that do fixate on gender / race / what-have-you? Typically these cultures arise when the population is too insular, too homogeneous.

Diversity isn't about saying "we need more vaginas in here programming." What an irrelevant strawman. Rather, it's about preventing the myopic echo chamber that can result when things are too homogeneous.

Right. But DerYeghiayan's testimony is just testimony, not factual evidence. The whole point of this cross examination is to discredit the testimony. Testimony doesn't rise to the same level as fact by default, as humans are unreliable. It's not the same as hard evidence or accepted facts that are undisputed in a case.

I have better memories of Win98 SE than Win95 OSR2. USB was actually stable, at least on my machine.

With WinXP, it finally was reasonable at SP2. Prior to that... glitch-tastic!

I'm currently using Win7 SP1 on my work laptop, configured to use the classic interface. To me, it's like WinXP SP5 or something. ;-) For the most part, nice and stable. Although the WiFi network detection is still slow, unreliable and occasionally requires reboots to work.

Haven't touched Win 8.x and don't plan to any sooner than necessary. I hope to skip it entirely, as I did with WinME and Vista.

Not as trivial as you might think. Acid/base reactions generate heat. In the presence of heat, nitric acid and tributyl phosphate can form a dangerously explosive polymer called red oil. That's just one example of "what can possibly go wrong". Also, keep in mind that there are *millions of gallons* of this stuff. Neutralizing it all with baking soda would take a LOT of baking soda, and also generate that much more waste.

From my observation, people seem to think that "nuclear waste" is green glowing goo that turns people into mutants, and it's all the same no matter where it comes from. Thank Hollywood. Waste from nuclear power plants is basically expended fuel rods. They are radioactive, but the radioactivity is contained to an extent (the uranium oxide that is used as fuel is encased in a zirconium alloy). It's not something you'd want to hold in your hand obviously, but it's not *that* dangerous. These are typically stored in dry casks, that are filled with helium or some other inert gas, to keep chemical reactions from breaking down the zirconium alloy around the fuel pellets. The REALLY nasty nuclear waste (that is typically partially or mostly liquids and is stored in underground tanks at places like Hanford), does not come from nuclear power plants at all. It came from making plutonium for bombs. This stuff is nasty...not only is it extremely radioactive, but it's also *chemically* active (usually highly acidic due to nitric acid being used during the plutonium making process), and also mixed with all kinds of nasty toxic organic materials (another component of the plutonium making process is tributyl phosphate dissolved in kerosene). Take that, mix with nitric acid, mix with all kinds of radioactive salts, and you get something that is very nasty. The process is detailed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Although keep in mind, PUREX is the latest process, before it was developed there were earlier messier processes that created more waste, and in places like Hanford all this stuff gets mixed together, and who knows what chemical reactions take place in there. But most people don't really know any of this, they only know of "nuclear waste" that Hollywood has told them about.

The time lady!

At the tone the time will be One Fifty Nine and Forty Seconds. *BEEP* At the tone the time will be One Fifty Nine and Fifty Seconds. *BEEP* At the tone the time will be Two O'clock Exactly. *BEEP*

150MB? That's spacious. I have a 10MB MFM drive in the garage with a big ol' stepper motor on it to move the heads. 80ms seek time, baby! Zzzzt...zz..zzzt...zzzt...ztztztztzt....

Hearing the opening music over the tape loading sounds reminded me of this track, involving Pirate Adventure for the TI-99/4A.

I never experienced a mimeograph, but I do remember the sound (and smell!) of the Ditto machines (spirit duplicators).

As for a different sound that's largely died out: Fast forwarding / rewinding / ejecting a cassette tape.

Well, in this case the road was "clear" as the snow did melt immediately (road was till to warm) nevertheless the risk of "ice" here and there was given. Imagine snow melting and freezing a few yards further again.

I'm all too familiar with that, having grown up in snow. We called that slick ice that results from melting and refreezing "black ice." It was especially bad in areas with wind blowing snow over the road, as that snow would obscure the ice.

Lane detection on a highway is easy as you have a barrier on one side and poles on the other, actually you have poles on both sides.

Ah. Many of our highways here lack barriers and poles, instead just using large grassy areas to divide the highway from the surrounding environment, such as this. Those same highways can be up to 3 lanes wide. I've driven on I-94 (recently the site of a 90-car pileup) in conditions where drivers created 2 lanes out of the 3 that exist, because there wasn't any real reference to go by to find the lanes.

Self driving cars rely on a sensor array (short-range RADAR, long-range RADAR, LIDAR, SONAR, stereo and infrared cameras, temperature and accelerometer feedback) to build their world model. I admit I'm not a sensor expert myself, so I'm not really sure how degraded those sensor inputs would be in fog and snow. Obviously the thermometer and accelerometer would be fine, but each of the others would experience degraded range.

The self-driving car may end up going a bit slower than 80km/h to avoid out-driving its ability to look ahead. Depth computed from stereo vision I imagine would be heavily impacted, as fog isn't completely uniform. I'm not sure how LIDAR would perform. RADAR may be OK, as we're able to track planes through clouds just fine.

I also wonder how lane detection even has a chance in snow, unless the roads have been cleared, or there are clear lane ruts from previous cars. Having grown up in snowy Michigan, I know human drivers often get the lane boundaries wrong after a heavy snow. :-)

Ah, that makes sense. Inclement weather is 2x - 3x as stressful to drive through, and certainly much more dangerous. I doubt an autonomous car would have been great in those conditions either, though.