I agree, but replace the words "bad programming" with "lazy programmers".

It is really no different than instances of "you have 1 message(s) waiting". Back in the day, when bytes and cycles really counted, saving the execution of a statement, and the program code space associated with checking for 1 or more-than-1 was understandable, maybe even desirable, but now? The only reason is a lazy programmer.

The disturbing part of this is that you see status text like this all the time, even in decidedly new code; there are lazy programmers everywhere.

Has the OP ever tried to run Windows on a minimum-spec'd system? Even XP on a system with those specs frequently goes into pauses long enough to make the operator (me) ask, "did it crash, or what?"

To paraphrase what others have posted, the operating system is the means, not the end. It should be small and lightweight. And it should bloody well not require beefier hardware than necessary. I've found that even generously spec'd systems still bog down under Windows as unknown processes kick off to do who knows what sort of housekeeping.

Fast and resource non-intensive should be an uncompromiseable goal of an OS.

I'm surprised to learn that the other parts of guns aren't also tracked with issued serial numbers. Heck, if you were to use matching numbers, it would create a secondary market for higher-valued all-original guns, based on what happens in the automobile enthusiast circles.

So, please explain how producing more food where it's needed -- like through crops that are higher yield without fertilizers, like these students demonstrated -- isn't addressing the problem.

There will always, always be a resource inequity. We have between 6,000 and 10,000 years of human history to demonstrate this observation. No magic wand is going to evenly distribute resources, and there are plenty of people who would say it's an ill-formed idea in any case.

So if, for the sake of argument, you accept that there will be resource inequity, transporting food is a really bad idea as it spoils quickly, moreover, the costs of transportation to locations where it is needed roughly increases with the amount of need, as such areas are typically away from infrastructure.

If you can't transport food, and there isn't a magic wand to even out everyone's access to resources, why, exactly, is producing more food locally not a good idea?

Certain technology can be declared illegal. Like guns in certain countries. Radar detectors in some US states. Blue lights on non-police cars in most US states. Mechanisms for counterfeiting printed money. Cloning of human embryos. Et cetera. It's perfectly plausible for a society to declare some particular technology illegal.

Heck, even certain knowledge is illegal for the general public to own, let alone internalize, like plans to make nuclear bombs.

"Dude, you punched a f-ii-sh."

Frelling awesome!

The real point is, though, that although some of those redubbed conversations are like Jabberwoky, some exchanges are reasonable (and some are spot-on visual homonyms, like the fish interpretation above), demonstrating that lip reading is wildly underconstrained.

Excoriated --- here are a few choice excerpts (there was some positive language, but the panel really did come down hard in this report):

"The panel viewed this as a poor science return for such a large investment in a flagship mission."

"Despite identification of two EM1 science objectives, the proposal lacked specific scientific questions to be answered, testable hypotheses, and proposed measurements and assessment of uncertainties and limitations."

"It was unclear from both the proposal and presentation that the Prime Mission science goals had been met. In fact, it was unclear what exactly these were. "

"After the presentation and subsequent discussion within the panel during executive session, other questions were formulated and then presented to the Curiosity team. Unfortunately the lead Project Scientist was not present in person for the Senior Review presentation and was only available via phone. Additionally, he was not present for the second round of Curiosity questions from the panel. This left the panel with the impression that the team felt they were too big to fail and that simply having someone show up would suffice. The panel strongly urges NASA HQ to get the Curiosity team focused on maximizing high-quality science that justifies the capabilities of and capital investment in Curiosity."

"As Curiosity is a flagship mission, the panel was surprised by the lack of science in the EM1 proposal ..."

"In summary, the Curiosity EM1 proposal lacked scientific focus and detail."

Ah, let's get one thing straight here. The notion of a byte did not appear before computer science. Anything that measures bytes is ultimately CS-derived, even if marketing folks like to confuse people.

As an experimental scientist, I can, with certainty, state that you are wrong when you claim "science is about provability."

It is extraordinarily difficult to prove something experimentally. Most advances come about because we (both individually as experimentors, and collectively as members of a given scientific field), think we've accounted for most potential confounds and artifacts, not because we've conducted perfect experiments. Biological sciences, especially, suffer from a huge number of uncontrolled variables that often we are not aware of, but impinge mightily upon our results. Biology, to continue, is noisy. Very, very noisy. In my lab, we measure phenomena related to visual perception, and I can tell you unequivocally that individual variation usually swamps any underlying phenomenon we examine (meaning, we need to measure with lots and lots of individuals to make sure we aren't being fooled, and even then, we can easily get fooled).

Rarely, if ever, do we prove something experimentally. It's only through the consensus of reproducibility that scientific facts get established.

Piltdown Man, to discuss your example, was due to observational error (ie, a hoax), not experimental evidence demonstrating provability. Observational science, as opposed to experimental science, is rife with missteps and re-interpretations. Look up the history of shooting stars, as one example -- they were considered purely terrestrial phenomena well after the establishment of the United States as a country. It took repeated observational events, not experiments, to establish that meteors are astronomical in origin.

Reproducibility is the cornerstone of modern science. Everything else is consensus. We think we know things, and mostly, we've been correct with a high degree of probability, since we've been able to take given conclusions and build, predictably, upon them. But, every now and then, even firmly-held beliefs with eons of structural experimental integrity are demonstrated to have been mistaken. There is very little scientific truth, merely scientific certainty. If you want absolute truth, look to mathematics instead.

If the baseball analogy is accurate, the impact of such a ray should cause something more than just a burst of radio waves. Why don't we see evidence of inexplicable pockmarks on the earth's surface? Or do we? 1 per km2 per centry is a lot when you have such a large surface area like the Earth. Heck, we should have reports of people being stricken down in broad daylight from time to time.

And part of Aero-Astro, and Applied Computer Science, and Theory of Computation, and Applied Mathematics, and ...

Personally, I'd put it in Signals and Systems, smack dab in the heart of EE.

The standard sales tax (VAT) in Greece is currently 23% for most things. (It varies, but that's the most common.) That's on top of the punishing property taxes, income taxes, taxes because you left your money sitting in a bank, taxes because it's Monday, etc. I jest, but only a little.

For those of you living in the US, can you imagine 23% states sales tax on essentially everything?

Argentina has instituted what amounts to a 35% import duty. Yes, that's a lot, but most things are purchased domestically.

The article lists the requirements for the structure, which include things like massive air flow, high heat density, high electrical power density, etc. Constraints like that tend to point toward structures with high surface area to volume ratios. A sphere (or section of a sphere in this case) has the MINIMUM surface area to volume ratio. So why would you want to put this structure into a dome rather than a long, low building?

(And if you really insisted on getting all fancy, architecturally, you could still make the long low building into a ring and retain most of the advantages.)

I saw the live press release on nasa.tv (highly recommended). The principle scientists involved recognized the parachute failure, but emphasized that this is unknown territory, and the mission objectives -- which were to make an attempt and gather as much data as possible about that attempt -- were fully realized.

Yes, the parachute failed. The vehicle was going something like Mach 2 at the time, having successfully aerobraked from Mach 4.7. They got excellent video of the entire process, and only four days (or something like that) after the mission, already had revisions on the parachute in mind to prevent such failure.

This was the first of THREE planned tests. Was the mission successful this time? Absolutely not, if you expected to have a first time test succeed. But if you were looking to gather data on potential failure mechanisms, it was an overwhelming success.

And, it should be noted, the deceleration inflatable ring (which has some kitchy acronym) worked very well, and importantly, they got good data on the design and how much it deviated from perfection (1/8 of an inch deflection at Mach 4.7 ... I dare anyone to do that with rigid materials, let alone inflatables). And the blute (the droge which pulls out the main parachute) worked entirely as intended. The downside? The shape of the parachute apparently needs to be more rounded.

They are exploring entirely new territory. Who here really, really, thinks that every such testing and development mission is going to be successful? Anyone? Raise your hands, I want to see, because NASA would love to hire engineers (hell, screw NASA, *I'd* hire engineers) who have that level of talent. They're called experimental missions because the outcome is not known.

Yes, it is two subway stops. And about 30 minutes of transit time each way, once you factor in the time to walk to and from the subway stations, the unpredictability of the Red Line frequency (although I must admit it has gotten heapsload better in the last few years; and major kudos to that skunk works project that brought the T administration kicking and screaming into the 20th -- yes 20th -- century by implementing time-to-next-train displays). While not an insurmountable impediment, it does mean that any given inter-campus class requires an empty slot before and after in your schedule. That too is not insurmountable, but now you're talking about two big impediments, so the motivation to attend physically has to be really high.

Here's an example from personal experience. MIT students are also allowed to cross-register at Wellesley College. As a male student at MIT, the motivations for doing so were really high when I was in school. I registered for an astronomy class at Wellesley, with the additional chance of getting some telescope time that I wanted almost as badly as to be around college gir-- I mean women. Even with all those attractions, I dropped the class because it was such a huge time sink when you factored in travel time (that and the class I had registered for was teaching stuff I had learned on my own as a kid by reading books).

So, two subway stops? Not quite close enough unless you have really motivated students. Internet attendance of lectures with once per week recitations that required physical attendance? That would work better.