Digital meters don't have the slow response that d'Arsonval meter movements have, unless extra circuitry is added. The inertia and magnetic delay of old-fashioned electro-mechanical meters naturally filter fast variations in the signal, and can result in a useful reading in cicumstances where the average digital meter produces a garbage reading. Of course, it's also good to know when a signal is noisy or jumpy...

I use digital meters exclusively these days - they're convenient, rugged, light, and have a higher input impedance and better resistance reading capabilities than all but the very best of the old analog FET-VOM's. But every once in a while I wish I had a well-damped analog meter to save me from dragging out the scope.

In the context of the Internet, the word "troll" used to mean, (according to Wikipedia):

"...a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."

The campaign that Kathy Sierra was a victim of goes far, far beyond this. How does it make sense that one word is used to describe such a wide range of behaviour? It's like calling a violent rapist a 'cad'. Trolls, (in the original sense of the word), are assholes. Auernheimer and his associates exhibited obsessive, psychopathic, downright evil behaviour and attitudes. We should never equate mere assholes and psychopaths - doing so trivializes destructive psychopathic behaviour while making assholery seem much worse than it really is. And the latter is perhaps more dangerous; it gives authorities one more excuse for implementing draconian laws in response to minor social infractions.

I've been asking myself the same question. I'd love it if somebody knowledgeable would give a credible answer.

I have this wonderful big wooden horse on wheels that I'm going to park in your back yard. Pay no attention to the noises coming from inside it. What's that? You don't want it? Sorry, it's already there, and it's now holding up your house...

I agree that "a lot of the hatred for systemd has nothing to do with the technical merits"; but I think it's also fair to say that a lot of the criticism is legitimate. It seems a major portion of the Linux ecosystem is being turned into something like Debian Sid - and a lot of people don't want their toys broken arbitrarily.

Is that you, Lennart?

I've always maintained that a large part of advertising's influence extends way beyond the purchase of specific products. It creates a context and a culture of expectation, desire, and need, such that an advertisement for one product may in fact sub-consciously prompt you to buy another, entirely different kind of product. If advertisers are pissing off buyers with targeted ads for items already purchased, aren't they poisoning the entire advertising ecosystem, both for themselves and for other advertisers?

The article is pretty short on details, but implies that the only cars in the test bed will be driverless. It strikes me that a better test would be a mix of driven and driverless cars, since that scenario is both more complex and more realistic. Algorithms developed and perfected in a 'simulated' real world stand a very good chance of falling apart in the 'real' real world - after all, public roads aren't going to be *totally* driverless for a long, long time.

I apologise if my comment was a repeat of an earlier one. If it was a repeat, then I simply missed the earlier comment. I regularly start out to post a comment, see that somebody else has said essentially the same thing, get annoyed that somebody beat me to the punch, then refrain from posting - but I'm not gonna catch 'em all, especially if they were posted while I was still composing mine, or if there are already a lot of comments.

Nope. I don't do the sock puppet thing, (never have, it's just not my style), and I only have one Slashdot account.

Of all the politicians bleating about the dangers of home-made untraceable weapons, and (probably) exhorting us to 'think of the children', how many of them are motivated primarily by concern for their fellow man? I'm betting it's at least a minority, and perhaps a vanishingly small one. No, I think most of them are reacting primarily out of fear - fear of losing their power over the citizenry; fear of primal, animalistic human urges that they want to see only on football fields and battlefields; and fear for their own skins.

I'm very much anti-gun and am strongly in favour of gun control. As a Canadian I contrast the level of gun violence here with that in the US and am thankful my country's traditions are so different. I really don't want to live in a crazy, bullet-riddled land. But in the face of rapidly-growing government power, and rampant governmental abuses of citizens, I'm starting to see the wisdom of people having access to guns. I'd like to think we can find a better way though.