There are legitimate grammar and usage debates, with cogent arguments on either side. But the Oxford Comma is the One True Way. The best argument I've ever heard against it is, "Well, it saves a few drops of ink on the printed page." Anti-Oxford Comma heathens should be drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake for befouling the language.

This is an important distinction for patent claims. If you say "A widget comprising a, b, and c," that means the widget includes a, b, and c, and anything else. If you say "A widget consisting of a, b, and c," that means it includes only a, b, and c (which is why you never see "consisting of" in a patent claim, except in Markush groups).

I guess you would have to ask the many, many Slashdot posters who regularly mock the Bible, including the GP. (That said, there are plenty of books I hate, so it's not inconceivable.)

Um, did you read the page you linked to? Because it definitely supports exactly what I was saying. Whether you believe the Bible was divinely inspired, it was a near-contemporary account. The fact that a little blurb on Wikipedia mentions that some early-20th-Century archaeologists think Molech might have been made up is hardly conclusive evidence that Molech is "obviously" an invention of the Jews to denigrate their enemies. But regardless of what you think actually happened, the author of Chronicles was definitely saying, "Manasseh was an awful person because he sacrificed children to Molech." That's a far cry from the GP's original thesis of "Manasseh was an awful person because he did the equivalent of reading Harry Potter."

Yeah, I know you think it's clever and edgy to make fun of people who read the Bible, but if you're going to do it, at least have some basic understanding. The passage you're referring to, in which Manasseh's evils are enumerated, includes "he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom." This is a reference to Molech worship, in which people literally burned children to death in the arms of golden idols. Surely even for an edgy, clever Bible-hater, that's sufficiently abominable to call him evil.

Um, you realize that C came out at almost exactly the same time, don't you? Granted, I wasn't programming anything in the 1970s, but I know enough history to know that the Unix kernel was already being ported to C right around 1970.

"Lacks" is a strong word; it's just not inherent. Back when I used to write software in C and C++ for money, I would religiously put "}//end if" to make sure I could keep track of which braces went where. If I needed even more context, I would put " }//end if(var1 == var2). It's not that hard. Like many things in C, you have plenty of rope to hang yourself if you really want to, but you can also make it tidy and sensible if you care to. C is not your friend, and is not your enemy.

C is like an M1 rifle. Sturdy, proved in battle many times over, occasionally finnicky, and ready to put a high-powered round precisely where you aim it without apology. Whether you aim at your foot is your business.

Welcome to my life every time Slashdot posts one of their misinformed anti-patent rants. (Signed, a patent attorney.)

Which, in concentrated form, can form a black hole that can devour a whole planet.

Sure, if you're an SI purist. But everybody knows that in an insulated nerd environment, you can normalize to teraSpocks, which have a much greater Apparent Coolness in context.

Just run up a few thousand in credit card debt, and they'll rubber stamp you with their eyes closed.

In fact, Windows XP doesn't want to go on the cart. It feels fine! It thinks it'll go for a walk.It feels happyyyyyy.

That's version 2.0

The point is that by pushing for renewables at the exclusion of nuclear, the tree huggers have successfully kept coal firmly entrenched. Renewables are expensive, and they don't have the energy density of coal, much less Uranium. Without the political and emotional baggage, nuclear could have completely replaced coal decades ago, not "hopefully some time in the next 20 or 30 years, if we're lucky."

A coal plant, working absolutely perfectly according to its design parameters, will cause much more environmental and health damage than even a "catastrophic" nuclear failure. So no, it's not a technical issue. It's an emotional issue. We have all but cut off access to the cheapest, most abundant "green" energy source we have. It's like God handed us a big chunk of nearly-free magical energy and said, "Here, use this." Then Jane Fonda said, "But it's scary!" She's done more harm to the planet over the past 35 years than BP ever did.

Well, if we paid off making a new AI with a massive, hyper-euphoric, temporary endorphine rush, they might want to do quite a bit of it.