Depending on how you measure "success record". The ones that have no failures (Saturn I, Long March 1) would seem to have an unbeatable success record by at least one metric. :)

Honestly, I think I'd prefer having pi defined as three than have division by zero return zero. My answers will at least be in the right domain even if the value is off a bit.:)

You only think this makes sense in the real world because you phrased the answer improperly."No one gets the apple" does not answer "how much of the apple does each person get?" The answer to "how much of the apple does each person get?"is "the question makes no sense because there are no people, so there is no 'each person'." Which is the real-world equivalent of what the mathematics says ("No answer/not-a-number").

'Sfunny, I was just coming to post "at least this foul-up can't be blamed on that idiot that's currently running for President", and here I find that someone has already tried to blame that idiot! :)

I think you meant to reply to Crimson Avenger, who is the one who claimed that American football is descended from Rugby. (I agree with him, but I never actually made that claim.)

Anyway, as long as I have you here, I'm going to call you out on the (humorously intended, I know, but still) "unique to this country" thing. First of all, there's Canadian football, which is nearly identical (at least from the perspective of someone who knows Rugby). Second, there are American Football teams on every continent except Antarctica (which has had American Football games, but lacks any formal teams or league memberships), and even an International Federation of American Football, which holds a world championship every four years. (Though for some reason, which I'm sure you can work out, they don't invite any NFL teams.)

Just a minor nit, I know, but this is Slashdot, so.... :)

Americans, Canadians, Australians, and even the Irish have their own local games that they refer to as football. That leave the UK and...possibly Jamaica?...as English-speaking countries where Association Football is unambiguous described as just "football". Sure, you can point to all the Spanish-speaking countries in the world that call the game "fútbol", but we're discussing the English word here, so it's reasonable to limit our survey to the Anglosphere, and there, you're wrong.

(Granted the term is fully ambiguous in Australia and Ireland, where a reasonable percentage of the population will assume Association Football if you just say "football", but a reasonable percentage won't.)

And even in the UK, the term has been redefined. It used to be (and in some sense, still is) a class of games, which is why Association Football even has that name. England alone has at least three games that were once all described as football, including Rugby League and Rugby Union. Blaming Americans for redefining the term every country has redefined seems a bit misguided and historically ignorant, and borders on hypocrisy.

A combination of: it's long-standing reputation for user-hostility, a general lack of interest in "geeky" things, fear of the unknown, and the fact that you have to go wayout of your way to get a copy.

True story:Iwas talking with a friend, who is a school-teacher, at a bar, and she mentioned how sad she was that the school was shutting down their Ubuntu lab. A while later, Isaid something about Linux, and she said, "Oh Ihate that." So Isaid, "if you hate it, why are you so sad the school is shutting down the Ubuntu lab?" And she replied, "Oh, is that Linux? Ihad no idea! Ithought it was that system where you had to type to make the computer do anything." :)

I don't know if you realize this, but "outside the US" is an area that contains countries which are not among the developed nations, and in poor countries with limited access to schools and low literacy rates, a lot of people do take the controversy seriously. Heck, Turkey, which is actually part of the EU, has a ever-so-slightly higher rate of evolution-rejectionism than even the US does. (Although it's the only country in the EU with more anti-science idiots than the US.) :)

Brazil also seems to have a lot of science-rejecting creationists. India, perhaps surprisingly, does not, but then evolution isn't actually all that incompatible with Hinduism. Can't find any data on China or south-east Asia or the rest of South America.

Yes, we're programmers, so all those so-called experts in user-interface design should just shut up. We don't need usability studies! We wrote it ourselves, and pressing Alt-X and then typing "frobnitz" works and is memorable for us. Why should we adapt to using these stupid mice the way lusers would expect?

Sure, intelligent programmers might realize that there are domains involved with computing and software projects that don't directly involve coding skills (like user interface design, or real-world use cases, or, god forbid, the realities of social interactions with others), but those are all quivering gamma rabbits who cower before us mighty Social Injustice Warriors who lurk in our mothers basements, and never have any interaction with women whose names don't end in .jpg!

Successful ones invariably are, yes. One common mode is the "benevolent dictator" model used by the Linux kernel. Another is the constitutional-democracy-with-technical-oversight model used by Debian. And there are a variety of others. But for an open source project to scale well, it needs some sort of conflict resolution method (at the least), since programmers are about as easy to get pointed in the same direction as cats.

Yes, the first thing Ithought when I saw the article summary was "this is going to bring out the SIWs (Social Injustice Warriors) in force!" :)

The unexpected reboot is clearly because it spotted something it shouldn't have. Can't let any photos of [elided] reach Earth. Can you imagine what would happen!?

Well, yes. But the paranoid Social Injustice Warriors who believe that Mozilla has become part of an ebul liberal plot to undermine western society and force us to all become devil worshippers and give Hugo awards only to registered members of the Communist party also believe that he was secretly forced to resign, and since the question wasn't relevant to my point, I decided to skirt the issue. But that is why I chose the (admittedly ambiguous) phrase "let him go." No matter who actually made the decision, the foundation certainly allowed it. :)

You mean the way we never hear the end of it now? I mean, here we are discussing it how many years later? :)

Seriously, I'm surprised the bigots didn't get together and fund him enough money to retire on, the way they did that pizza owner who said he'd refuse to cater a gay wedding recently.

And then there's the whole blaming Mozilla for the situation, when they were facing a massive boycott. The browser may be free, but the foundation depends on money from third parties (like Google), who only pay if the brower actually gets into people's hands. He thus became a liability to the foundation, quite literally, and even he clearly knew it.

1. The point of the foundation is to promote the use of Firefox.
2. Eich's appointment had the opposite effect; it was causing people to switch away from Firefox.

You can say all those people who were organizing the boycott are evil if you want (that's another debate), but I don't see how anyone with two brain cells to rub together can blame the foundation for taking what was the only reasonable way out of the no-win corner they'd painted themselves into. They either kept him, and faced widespread outrage and an ongoing boycott, or they let him go and faced widespread outrage. So, they picked outrage, because that was already unavoidable.

Technically, I only need one. I can always attach a hub. And, in an emergency, one is enough that I could suck out its power to recharge my phone. However, it would have to have a truly outstanding set of other features to make up for its lack. I'm not sure I can imagine a laptop with only USB that I'd actually be willing to buy, but I can't say it's not possible. But I do need at least one.

Want, however, is another issue. I want probably at least four, and would be dubious about buying anything with less than three. :)