The trouble with this is that after fatty food their attractiveness as mates declines. That's where beer comes in. Don't forget the beer.

That's the beauty of it. It works with out without the 't'. The headline is fail-safe. Nothing can go wrong with it. Trust us.

LOL, Bad newbie candidate: "C strings work just like Java strings, but in C". Good candidate: "C strings are arrays of characters that use the null character to mark the end". Experienced candidate: "C strings work???".

If the entire student body doesn't shut down the school, or at least picket the office and generate some arrests, they should be horribly ashamed.

At the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors fired the president in an unwarranted way. Student protest helped get her reinstated. If student action can do that, I'm pretty sure it can get such an absurd policy overturned. You just have to have the brains to recognize it, and the balls to pursue it.

Anyway, shame on the students if this is allowed to stand.

Ads on the insides of your eyelids, random "disappearances", a stock market crash or two, a bunch of middle-aged White guys who achieved one thing and are now kicking back and raking it in as pundits, WW3, roving bands of thugs allied with motorcycle gangs terrorizing the nation, or any number of other random things that might be benign or catastrophic.

So, maybe I shouldn't delay in taking my camera down there to get a few shots of the old hamburger stand . I've already had plenty of warning...

Dollar General is planning to build a store in my neighborhood. They got approval a few months ago. Yesterday I saw ONE bulldozer parked near an old building on the site, which they plan to tear down. I won't be surprised if the dozer sits there for 11 days doing nothing. I would be absolutely stunned if they went from ground breaking to opening in 11 days, and there's nothing hi tech about a small box dollar store/grocery.

It's the red tape that usually makes these things take so long. How long did they spend wrangling with paperwork before they broke ground? They're not selling food so I'm sure that helps speed up some things.

The Wikimedia Foundation, currently flush with cash from its donors, keeps trying to force flawed new software systems onto the editor community, who has repeatedly responded by disabling the software.

Dice. Beta. Enough said.

They all suck in their own peculiar ways.

In fact, "All current languages have faults. There is no language that's suitable for all situations at the present time" is arguably something that aspiring programmers should learn at the outset.

Yes that's a good point. The organizers should definitely be the only ones to actually visit the site.

I also just had the idea that to make it easier (cost-wise) on the contestants, they could provide electric power at the site. You could profile different power sources, and have weight and cost penalties based on what the contestants chose.

I think most would chose solar; but you could simulate the power output of an RTG. Most contestants won't have access to plutonium. :) You would also simulate Martian days when sending juice to outlets. Teams would still have to provide a battery.

Oh and yes, the rules would definitely have to state that if you chose to accept power from the organizers you'd have to pay for it, and not bring any other power sources on board.

A robot that can cut and fit stone would come in handy. I'd definitely want some diamond saws on mine. I'd also look into some sort of furnace. Maybe you could only manufacture something like low-quality glass; but if you could make enough of it then you could seal in an atmosphere.

The resources that you can "bring from Earth" are obviously limited by weight constraints. Maybe you could bring some glue, expanding foam, or other compounds.

You obviously can't bring the entire manufacturing industry of Earth, so some things have to come on board. That's a real challenge that needs to be solved for Mars. We need to figure out what can be made on site, and what must come from Earth. Then you've got the even more interesting challenge of figuring out what industries can be set up locally after that.

I'm reminded of the colonial era here in North America. There was a shortage of nails around the time of the Revolution. A lot of nails had been coming from England.

I suppose once you have enough people on Mars to form an economy, the market would sort it out. Of course then you could have a Martian revolution too. I believe that scenario has been covered in some good classic Sci-fi but I haven't read it. Isn't that a big part of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?

I'd like to see a different competition. For the contest, I'll need some acres of cheap desert land. Nevada, I'm looking at you. The site should be selected based on similarity to Mars, as much as practical (e.g., sandy soil, rocks, etc.). It could even be in the dry valleys of Antarctica, although that might be a problem because people might see this as exploiting the pristine environment there.

Now here's the contest.

Based on a preliminary judgement process, participants each get temporary use of an acre. They are allowed to visit it exactly ONCE for an hour, and leave behind... a robot.

The robot's task is prepare the surface as much as possible for human habitation. There will be a mandatory delay in communicating with the robot, to simulate the actual delay communicating with Mars. To prevent cheating, all communications will be routed through the contest organizer's central server.

The winners will be judged based on how close they came to preparing something that could be quickly converted into a habitation by arriving people.

A few extra details need to be worked out, such as weight and size limits on the robot. Otherwise somebody might park an old 747 there and claim victory. It also needs to be something that could survive launch and entry. Contest organizers might subject each robot to predetermined G-force and temperature excursions at the start.

Maybe the contest should be allowed to run for a year or so. I think it'd be interesting.

Even without the contest, it would be interesting. It's a bit of an expensive hobby and perhaps more practical as a game; but there's nothing like the real thing. It could lead to actual techniques for surface prep.

Dear Mr. Nadella, IBM still makes mainframes. Please don't forget that. Sincerely, "Legacy".

I'm not in the biz but I was aware tractors were pretty hi tech now. I'm thinking you still need a person in the seat for a number of reasons. The first thing that comes to mind is that something might get snagged. The tractor is like a giant copy machine. Corn tray full. PC LOAD FERTILIZER.

As a long time Windows user, I didn't want a crApp Store. At the outset of this whole Win8 fiasco I said, "If I wanted an iPad, I'd already have one". So. I got a lot of down mods for that, IIRC. I think events since then have confirmed my PoV. If the customers don't want/don't care, then morale at MS has to be pretty low. Maybe they're just happy that anybody, Anybody, ANYBODY will show up at their party. That's not a recipe for a good relationship. Ugly person at the party, reeking of desperation... get's taken advantage of. Utterly and completely unsurprising. They shouldn't try to be cool. They should just go home and play on their computers. If they do, the coolness will come to them. Remember when it wasn't cool to be a geek? Where were we? Not at the party. At home. With the computer. Get it, MS? Go back to the drawing board, not the tablet.