True, I agree that HVAC, ERP, and SBU should have been expanded. But some terms, such as "Hypertext Markup Language", "Motion Picture Experts Group", "Universal Serial Bus", "chief executive officer", "Federal Bureau of Investigation", "Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte", and even "application programming interface" are probably more recognizable to Slashdot's audience in the abbreviated form.

What technical benefit does binary code have that a JIT engine lacks, other than perhaps the ability to run in obsessively locked down W^X environments that prohibit runtime generation of executable code?

What's the common way to transition an existing PHP app off PHP?

But there are more than enough political constraints on developers to force their language choice. For example, Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Live Indie Games platforms could run only verifiably type-safe, .NET CF-compatible CIL, which in practice meant C#. In the applet era, you needed a language that compiled to JVM bytecode. In the Flash era, you needed a language that compiled to AS3 bytecode. Nowadays, the client side of a web app needs to be in JavaScript. And for a long time, entry level web hosting with PHP was cheaper per year than hosting with other server-side languages.

Let's play Hegelian dialectic:

Thesis

The "fractal" rant

Antithesis

The "hardly" rebuttal

Synthesis

Six identifiable bullet points

Then perhaps a clean break is needed between the "old language" and the "new language". It can be done like Visual Basic from VB 6 to VB.NET or Python 2.6 to Python 3, where modules in the old language first need to be translated to the new. Or it can be done with two side-by-side parser frontends, allowing a module written in one language to be include_once'd in a module written in the other.

Misspelling or pun on "guild"?

Good luck forging a certificate to MITM not only https://en.wikipedia.org/ but also the notaries used by Perspectives and the cited documents in References, unless you own the computer on which the test is being taken.

Which is kind of hard if your alma mater is 180 miles away.

I know the difference, but how should I go about teaching this difference to the virtual keyboard of a mobile device? Or is there a key ACM paper on how to guess where "its" or "it's" should go in context?

Xposed requires root. Why do so many more GNU/Linux devices than Android devices come with root? And how do I get a headphone jack fixed after I have voided the warranty by having installed a rooted ROM?

By that standard, using software in GNU/Linux is not really looking beyond Novell because just as Wine is a free reimplementation of Windows API, GNU/Linux is a free reimplementation of UNIX.

How should I "research" thoroughly if the product isn't even available for inspection in my geographic area?

"Nobody" is a strong word. People who pay $10 per GB for home Internet (sat, cell, or Iowa DSL) still use physical media.

Unless you're renting and the landlord won't let you modify the walls.

I was SAC, and that statement is laughable.

I was USN SSBN missile systems and have talked with many SAC (Minuteman) launch crews over the years, and it's the dead simple truth. Your systems are much simpler than ours (even without figuring that we had sixteen tubes that we operated individually while you mostly just watched lights) and you didn't (couldn't) operate them or intervene in their operations to the level we did.

The examples of the complexities that you didn't have to deal with are legion (off the top of my head and in no particular order):

• You had no pressurization system. (And even if you did you didn't have to wait for the ship to come to launch depth.)
• Your optical alignment system was set by the loading crew rather than operating in sequence as ours did.
• You had no navigation system interface to deal with as your tubes were fixed in position. (And equally, you didn't have to coordinate your countdown with the ship coming to launch speed or wait for the ship to commence hovering.)
• You did not test the missiles in sequence the way we did. (And unlike us, you couldn't do anything about faults even if you did, the weapons were miles away and maintained by a different crew).

Etc... etc...
 
So yeah, the jobs of the prairie dogs waiting in their holes (which is the subject of this discussion) were (are) pretty dammed simple. You punch buttons and swap drawers. If a tube goes down, and it's not at your end, you're screwed because there's f all you can do about it except to wait for a repair crew to be dispatched. (The liquid fuel guys? Yeah, I'll agree they were the real deal. But they're long gone.)

For you, did such avoidance involve finding a different city in which to work? Or did it involve dealing with sat or cell ISPs that charge $10 per GB?

Unless the plaintiffs are suing under a theory based on section 1003 of that chapter, which obligates manufacturers of a "digital audio recording device" or "digital audio recording medium" to pay a royalty despite not infringing copyright. That's 2 percent of the price of the device (minimum $1, maximum $8) plus 3 percent of the cost of the medium.