Almost all marketplaces are broken. Getting eyes on your website, users to download your app, people to watch your commercial, etc. are all not meritocracies. That's why there are whole categories of professions to handle them (advertising, SEO, etc.). Everyone that makes products knows that if you want to make a ton of money, don't put your money into making a better product, put your money into advertising your currently crappy product.

I got ripped apart a few days ago for making the comment that programming is currently at the equivalent maturity to medicine back in the blood-letting days. This is more proof that we haven't created adequate solutions for common problems like search yet. Sure Google was better than everyone before them and there has been a lot of advancement, but we have a very long way to go yet.

If the "primary directive" of the NSA were actually National Security (rather than spying) what they should do would be obvious.

In the interest of national security, should the NSA discover such an exploit, they should quietly work with public and private organizations to get as much of the infrastructure fixed before the exploit becomes generally known.

Instead, though, what we have is that the NSA has likely had free access. Along with the rest of the world's spy agencies. And hackers and crime networks. That doesn't foster national security, IMO.

That's why software developers shouldn't insist on using the title Engineer. This kind of accountability is expected of an engineer, it's not an anomaly. When programming matures to the point where bugs are rare, then we will deserve the title.

I write software for a living and I'm well aware that if we were to compare computer science to medical science, the current era is roughly equivalent to the blood letting and leeches era. I can't wait for our penicillin to come around.

I don't see devs being hurt by this at all. Sure, Microsoft has changed what it is pushing, but their support of deprecated technology is still excellent. Not only is WCF still supported, but their SOAP stuff still continues to work just fine (and to be fully supported by Visual Studio), even though it hasn't been pushed for over ten years.

As for Silverlight - anyone that thought that was going to work wasn't paying attention. The fact is, there are still two markets for Windows apps; corporate stuff that has no reason to adopt Metro, so will continue to be WinForms and WPF for a long time; and consumer stuff, which is served well by apps delivered through app stores. In order to execute the current app store model without creating a virus epidemic, some protections need to be in place. That was always going to be based on the protections already in place with existing web technologies. Anyone who's surprised that app store apps adopted HTML5 and Javascript wasn't paying attention.

Also, the other technology supported for app store apps is XAML with a limited subset of the API. That's essentially what Silverlight was without the stupid browser plugin concept. So, Silverlight developers weren't left in the cold - 95% of their skillset is still useful for app store development.

GoPro: a heck of a lot cheaper, higher resolution, good enough for the cops. Put it in some sort of clip, remove it from the clip for close-ups. Yes, it's dorky. But less dorky than Google Glass.

San Diego developers already use cable service as a criteria when house-hunting. You want to be in a Cox area! Unfortunately, most of the jobs are in Time Warner areas. Now the service will go from bad to worse...

-- a lucky South-of-Interstate-8 developer...

No.

Matter and antimatter both spontaneously come from energy. We've seen it happen in supercollider experiments. Current big bang physics posits that all matter spontaneously formed from nothing but energy in processes known as leptogenesis and baryogenesis. The big mystery is that according to the physics we've observed, the matter and antimatter should have mostly turned back into energy. However, none of our experiments come close to the energy levels of leptogenesis and baryogenesis, so nothing has been disproven yet.

On the other hand, the universe coming into being with matter already in it, or matter somehow being moved into it, both would be huge deviations from the current scientific thinking. More importantly, we have a pretty good explanation for how things are without resorting to external forces, there are just a few gaps to fill (like the one that is the topic of this thread). There's no good reason to open the Pandora's Box of outside interference, as it makes meaningful discussion almost impossible.

If we stick to the current research path of assuming the universe is a closed system - we'll eventually find out if it's true or not. But, if we start with an assumption that the universe isn't a closed system, then it becomes impossible to get answers to the hard questions. Any question where there isn't an answer readily available (like "Why is there matter and not antimatter")" will simply be dismissed with "It was there all along" and no one will really learn anything.

Read the article. You weren't the first person to think of this.

Theorizing the state of things before the big bang is for philosophers. Besides, if there was matter in the space our universe occupies before the big bang, it wouldn't have survived intact through the first few milliseconds due to the incredibly high energy density, not to mention surviving whatever process caused the big bang in the first place.

If it didn't, then we would simply change the question to "why did it start with unequal amounts". Since that question would involve forces outside our universe or before the big-bang, it would be much harder to answer. So, scientists try to answer the this question first. If they disprove all of the theories that come up, they will start to consider that there may not be an in-universe explanation. But, it's much better to not jump to the unanswerable question prematurely, or science will become religion.

Read the article. It explains that if there were anti-matter regions, we should be able to detect gamma rays from the explosions. The number of gamma rays we detect are far too few for there to be large regions of antimatter.

.... the grunge that is going to collect between the modules!

It's really about the stupidest idea I've seen from Google.

Every pluggable/removable part multiplies the opportunity for failure. It's why so many consumer devices now have embedded non-user-removable batteries. (No, *not* to rip-off consumers when they have to pay for service to have the battery replaced. Most of these devices are discarded or removed from service before the battery might need replacement.)

Great. Now we have a bunch of under-insured, illegal jitney drivers, just like any third-world nation...

Read the tales of woe of Uber-X drivers who have lost their personal insurance. Yes, riders and the other driver in an accident are covered by Uber-X, up to an inadequate $100,000.

California Livery law requires $1,000,000 insurance, though, and specific licensing to drive passengers for hire.

These drivers typically have neither of these, though. And personal policies generally specifically exclude driving for hire. So, driver gets in an accident, Uber pays, and driver is now out of a job (or side job) and is uninsurable.

I worked on this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/...

It was a hacked GM X-car with batteries in what was the transmission tunnel, and most of the rest of the underside of the car. And, in fact, it had a full under-pan.

I don't recall it being touted as a safety feature, but instead, it was there to help reduce wind resistance.

I think the major hazard was the potential for chlorine leaks. It leaked on The Today Show. "Oh, that? It's just chlorine, just like in your swimming pool..."

Tell that to the Madison Height, Mi. fire department! (We had them out a few times...)