You can have it today. Navfree or Osmand if you want the free route; Sygic has a paid app; I'm sure there are others.
Of course you'll lose out on all the things that make Google maps nifty: good search, traffic, rich POI data, etc, but the basic functionality works fine offline.
What does the government have to do with it? I'm under the impression that this is people freely choosing to undergo the procedure to free themselves of their addictions.
people who want to shout things to the world, but get all upset when we can tell what sort of things you shouted previously
I'd rather not shout it to the whole world. I frequently talk on mailing lists and forums where I expect there to only be a dozen or a hundred people reading it. Unfortunately the internet never forgets, and if I sign my real name to it, it becomes my legacy. I prefer to not have to think whether every random comment is well-considered and sensible. I just want to share an idea, not make a statement for all posterity.
As for Internet Fuckwards... Well, maybe people will say dumb shit because they're anonymous, but posting anonymously also protects YOU from being harassed by those fuckwads too. Let's say one day you post "Hey, Hitler wasn't entirely bad. He did a good thing with the autobahn!". Without anonymity, you now have some asshole - who may not mind posting under their real name since he's just protecting the world from you - following you for a few years in every forum calling you a nazi sympathizer and linking that quote. Posting anonymously you just make your little point and move on, internet fuckwads averted.
And I'm just some random geek talking about vaguely controversial things. There are far more critical cases like bullying victims who need a place to talk without attracting MORE bullying, or rape victims, or people who just need to talk about their dark fantasies or fucked up dreams. Anonymity protects you - it limits the damage to whatever nasty words someone can send back to your anonymous account. I would rather deal with those assholes than be physically hurt, stalked, and harassed.
Anonymity? I am so done with the concept, or trying to protect it in any way.
Then would you mind telling us your full name?
Youtube pulled it, but LiveLeak has the goods: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=16d_1356820592
Note that scrap mild steel is almost an order of magnitude weaker than hardened armor plate. Steel plates thinner than that (half) in a ballistic vest can reliably stop bullets going faster than that (7.62x51 has a lot more punch than 7.62x39).
averages are usually the best metric
Disagree. Medians (the 50th percentile) are usually the best metric. Averages are good when you're interested in how something performs in aggregate (eg, average MPG your car if you want to estimate how much money you'll spend on gas driving cross-country), but you usually want the median when you're interested in a quick snapshot of what your typical person experiences. It's usually a better metric, and it's just as easy to understand on a comparison chart like this.
As a similar compromise, I use Mutt + RoundCube. 99% of my mail is fine in Mutt, and the webmail UI makes it easy to handle attachments when I need them.
LastPass. Separate, strong passwords for every site; one YubiKey for the master login if you want it. KeePass is good too; store part of your key on a dongle for extra security.
If it's a minor tweak that everyone was using then there's prior art and you don't have a valid patent. If it's a tweak that no one else thought of that suddenly makes an old impractical idea become a realistic and useful thing, well, that sounds like a pretty legit patent to me.
But it's supposed to be for something novel - not just a minor tweak.
Why place a lower bound on the degree of novelty? If you patent a minor tweak that no one needs then everyone will just ignore your method and use the original one - which your patent doesn't cover.
There is no metaphysical part of the program that is not parallellizable
require 'digest/sha2'
string = 'Parallelize this!'
123456789.times { string = Digest::SHA2.hexdigest(string) }
puts string
Any suggestions?
Most programs have parts that can be run in parallel, but Amdahl's point is that as you increase the number of processors you'll find that the parts that are inherently serial - even if they're quite small - will increasingly become the bottleneck.
Sure, but patents are for methods, not ideas. I don't know if this patent is a legitimately a new method for wireless charging, but it doesn't matter if other techniques already exist.
And you'll find some neat things like this: http://www.gns3.net/screenshots/ .
People always strip the hell out of them by using the wrong one and you end up with a box of five really marginal screwdrivers that are only good for damaging screw heads.
Instead, buy a couple of magnetic handles with interchangeable bits, and then a big box of #2 bits: http://amzn.com/B0000DD6LW . Keep some #1s around for working on laptops and some #3s if you have big rack screws, but in a server room most things are #2.
THEN THROW THEM AWAY when you round them off. They're cheap and you have a whole box.
Honestly? The latter. I don't mind doing something ambitious and failing, but it should be "here, try this and we'll give you a big bonus if you succeed, no hurt feelings if it doesn't work out", not "do the impossible or we'll fire you". That'd be a miserable way to work.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach
