The Queen (or rather, her representative) did have to dissolve Australian parliament in the 70s using the crown's reserve powers to resolve a political deadlock. Of course we fought a war or two so she can't pull that stunt here...for better or worse.

How do we know you aren't just a cleverly written perl script?

Unfortunately the trend seems to be to optimize the site for mobile (all of them, at once) and say to-hell-with-PC-browsers. With extremely minimalist, Metro-like, stripped-of-any-useful-information pages now. So now the question has become "why do websites suck?". Lowest Common Denominator experience. Meetup.com went this way a few months ago and is now a shadow of its former self.

No there are 10 types of people:
Those that understand binary
Those that don't
And those that don't realize the joke is base-3.

These are delivery drones. I want them to figure out the route FROM the liquor store.

You can purchase a commercial device that spoofs some sort of disconnected/out-of-service tone just as you pick up the receiver. To normal humans it sounds like a quick beep, but to the auto-dialer software it makes it think the number is no longer valid and removes you from the list without handing it off to a human rep. They tell you to expect some calls with no one on the other end for a bit, while you are in the process of being auto-removed from various lists.

They should sample the "You have five minutes to reach minimum safe distance" ship's computer sound clip from Alien.

Give H1B holders who blow the whistle on their employers violating the law (overworking them, or claiming and paying them as if it were a much lower skilled job that in reality is higher skilled, the employer just wanted to scare off US workers, etc.) either fast-path to a Green Card, double the pay (paid by fines) they would have earned, and/or freedom to move to a different employer for their stay.

I.e. change the incentives for H1B visa holders to rat out misbehaving employers, rather than being scared to say anything because they loose if they do.

This makes no sense. The dereference is undefined, and therefore sk may be undefined iff tun IS null but not tun.

I.e. by the time execution reaches the if statement one of the two is true:
tun != null && sk == {something valid} -or-
tun == nul && sk == {undefined}

sk being undefined is possible but that undefined-ness can't be used as a way to infer tun != null--the only thing that causes it is tun == null! It's illogical for the compiler to do what you say and remove the if check. The standard says sk can be undefined, therefore something being in an undefined state is possible, not that the compiler can presume that undefined is impossible to occur and put it's hands over its ears and go la-la-la.

It's not just life and limb. Protecting property is also considered "essential". So critical tests to prevent the loss of a billion dollar satellite that couldn't not be performed at any other time should have been essential enough to bring in the government employees needed. I like to blame the Republicans as much as anybody, but if the summary is true then it's the NASA manager who didn't call his people back and jeopardized the telescope work who done F'd up this one.

That the potential loss in property was a future-cost is not relevant, the early Oct. time-frame was the only time the schedule would allow the tests, even if the failures wouldn't be noticed till after a (explosive?) launch. The THREAT to property was immediate if not the consequence.

That article belongs on tvtropes, not wikipedia.

I used to drive a Dodge Colt. That old rust bucket wouldn't get over 65 if you dropped it of a cliff.

At some point the divisions become so specialized, the sub-disciplines so fractal, that no college degree nor previous job is going to fully prepare you. At some point the companies have to stop being whiny and hire someone "merely" trainable and invest time to train them in-house. An unwillingness to do this, and a unrealistic expectation for STEM to produce them whole-cloth, being one of the several reasons for the "shortage."

According to Prof. Farnsworth they will have changed its name prior to the year 3000 to 'Urectum'.

The problem is that those most able to leave are the first to do so. The highest talent goes first, leaving the duds that would have a hard time conning a interviewer a second time in a row. Its a sorting process that doesn't pay off for the company.