I think Oracle has been pretty clear the whole way that they are trying to slowly kill off MySQL and drive users towards their more enterprise grade (read: grossly overpriced) product. They've jacked up the license fees substantially a couple times and pretty much every step of the way signaled that they're not really interested in supporting an open source DB, so I'm actually not even sure why this is newsworthy. I actually find a number of features of Oracle's DB offering fairly interesting, but wholly unnecessary for most web applications, so I expect everyone will move on to MariaDB and PostgreSQL. Nice of Oracle to provide a little window for everyone to switch, not that it was their intention.

8 years ago, shortly after the Ansari X-Prize was claimed, I was a new graduate who just started at one of Lockheed when Bob Stevens came to our office and held a townhall. Working up the nerve, I asked what impact he saw the X-Prize having, to which he replied "None, they spent $25 million to win a $10 million prize, so I don't see that being a good business model." Shocked by his lack of forward looking vision, I re-phrased "Do you think the fact that commercialization of space travel will change the shape of our industry?" (we were heavily involved in satellites at that location) Once again he brushed it off, saying that we had looked at the type of technology they were using long ago and decided it was not feasible to do profitably. And that was when I knew that Bob Stevens has absolutely zero vision, and is merely a bean counter. The only business model Lockheed knows is 1) Hire former military/government officials 2) Pay them gobs of money 3) Send them to schmooze their old buddies in the government and 4) Convince them to buy ridiculously expensive systems, whether the country really needs them or not (can't tell you how much completely wasted spending goes on because some general gets convinced that he needs his own satellite/plane/vehicle/etc rather than sharing the ones already available because he doesn't want to share with some other branch of the military or agency).

Every gif file has a name, filesize, hash, etc... and with a few bucks and the Mechanical Turk, I bet they can map one of these unique identifiers to the answers to your captcha, and hello spam city! I'm guessing you're really experiencing security through obscurity, which isn't real security.

"and the flux capacitor, but the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline; it always has."

It seems like any time there was a curved track section, it wouldn't work to just move it in 3 inches since the old piece would be to long or too short (depending on which way the curve was going). Not sure exactly how frequent this is, but I would think there would be quite a few to replace in 11,000+ miles of track. That would actually be interesting to me since you would have to have all the new pieces ready and on site (since you couldn't move them with the track torn up) waiting for that day.

I love the fact that in his own endless rant, he even says he doesn't want lawyers to pull rank... guess what, there's a reason mathematicians are not allowed to practice law unless they happen to attend law school, you have to actually know the laws for your inane rambling opinion to matter! Complete ignorance for the subject matter you are arguing should be an instant "bury" and this should never make the front page of /.

I commute to work, not that I like to, but I do like my wife (whose job is not close to mine), and I like being able to afford a townhouse, so living close work and quitting my job were not options. Where I live we have this new-fangled thing called a "toll road." You see, the way it works is you pay to drive on it based on how far you travel. When the road was built, the promise was that the tolls would only be used to pay off construction bonds and maintenance. Unfortunately, the state realized that no one can do without that toll road and they could set the price at whatever they like, so they changed the law, raised the tolls, and now they use it as a way to fund pet projects of all varieties. Of course, given their long history of honesty in policy making, I'm sure the federal government would never pull a bait and switch like that...

Try reading the Constitution before taking wild guesses what it does and doesn't say. They are called "enumerated powers" and are found in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

I like CFL bulbs, and probably 80% of the bulbs in my house have been converted, but there are some applications that CFLs are actually less eco-friendly for, like areas where the lights are turned on and off frequently, like hallways, closets, and bathrooms. It would be a shame if this law actually makes things less efficient than just leaving people to their own devices... I think most people don't like spending their time changing light bulbs and are going to buy CFLs anyway.

After years of not being able to participate in all night Halo matches or play WoW because I have too many projects around the house, it finally pays off to be a /.er with a wife.

I'm not sure how this is a surprise to anyone, the latest toys are always expensive until manufacturers get economies of scale. I still remember when flat screen TVs were $15,000 roughly 12 years ago and now it seems like you can almost find them for free in a box of cracker jacks.

..should probably keep their trap shut. When I think about companies that have really capitalized on the rise of the mobile phone market, Intel is top of the list...[sarcastic snicker]

I don't think he could make himself look guiltily if he tried. When you resort to objecting extradition to a neutral country because you might end up in Guantanamo, you look like hi're grasping at straws because you're guilty, whether or not it's try. It would be one thing if he were being sent to Poland or another country who was actually involved in that stuff, but Sweden? C'mon....

Seriously, all this means is that some atheists make equally ridiculous claims as some believers. Given how little we truly understand about the universe, I think it's a little premature to say that the cosmological constant is/isn't tuned to produce life. While it's observed value may result in fewer galaxies forming, it likely also means fewer galaxies colliding and annihilating all life caught in the collision. I don't think that the cosmological constant in and of itself has any implication in the argument for whether or not God exists, and I have no idea why people on both sides try to make every scientific issue connect back to that. Take a philosophy class, there is no definitive proof or disproof, believe what you choose to believe and let everyone else to make their own choice.

If the U.S. was really willing to ignore all the rules to get him (as his lawyer is suggesting), it wouldn't matter. The fact is, it's pretty tough to end up in Gitmo unless you're found with a detonator in hand in Afghanistan, and it certainly doesn't happen when there is this much PR around a case. And really, being extradited from one of America's closest allies to a neutral country seems like it would be a move in his favor if the concern was really being handed over to the CIA or some such thing. Seems like another attempt to divert the focus from the charges at hand.