My guess is there were design documents worth about 25 bucks, but then he accidentally copied 2 mp3 files containing the music for Fords next tv commercial. That copyright infringement is making up the rest of the $50 million

Is it really "seeing around corners" if it needs something that the light can bounce off? With a mirror in the right place I can also "see around corners"

I'm sure it's still a great engineering accomplishment, but I wouldn't call it seeing around corners

First:

30 minutes later:

I agree. Git and mercurial supposedly makes branching much easier. What they don't tell you is that they only make the simple part easier. The simple part would here be to actually move a piece of code from one branch to another branch.

The real difficult part is when two branches start to deviate. When you make a fix in one branch and need to fix the same issue in the other branch that looks quite different. What should the code look like in the other branch given the code change in the first branch. This is what is hard about merging. This is still hard no matter what version control system you use.

Stop saying bandwidth hogs will destroy the internet.
If you want more bandwidth in the backbone you connect another one of the already laid out fibers or you put a few more fibers into the ground.
Torrents didn't destroy the internet, and neither did youtube or any other of the previous high bandwidth services. This is not a problem.

You do realize that it is possible to understand the expected payout and still think it is worth it?
Lets say you buy a ticket for $1 and the expected payout is $0.80. If you value the excitement of possibly becoming a millionaire at more than 20 cents it would be rational to buy that ticket.

You also have to factor in that most people spend very little money on the lottery. So little that it has no effect at all on their financial status even if they lose every time during their whole life. The dream is of course to hit the jackpot that would change their life big time.

It really comes down to the fact that not only the average is important. The variance is also highly important. Nobody would play a lottery with $1 tickets where you either "win" $0.99 or you "win" $0.95. That would yield an expected payout of 97% which is certainly higher than any real lottery. The logical conclusion is that this is better than the lottery where you could win a million but the expected return is only 80%, and still nobody would want to play it.

You could even extend this to payouts above 100%. Lets say you are given one dollar with the condition that you must buy a lottery ticket and you can only do it once. One has a payout of 150%. You either get your dollar back or you get two dollars back with equal probability. The other has an expected payout of 80% but when you do win you win a million dollars. Most people earn so much that winning 1 dollar with 50% chance is pointless. Thus you choose the chance to become a millionaire.

I agree completely. A lot of the math we learn in school is not that useful in everyday life. When was the last time you had use of the fact that the three angles in a triangle sum up to 180 degrees?.
On the other hand, understanding logic and knowing the total cost of buying a TV with one payment per month for two years versus saving up first and buying it later is something almost everyone would benefit from knowing.

I love math and don't regret a single math course i took in university, but I can still recognize that some of the math people learn in school have no practical application to most people.

Is that claim also valid for the jury?

You must not have seen The IT Crowd then.

You are supposed to answer the phone with "IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?"

The loss of faith was a long time ago. Now they just don't want to pay the members fee any more.

A similar site in Sweden http://www.uturkyrkan.se/ was the thing that actually got me to leave the Swedish church. I have been atheist as long as I can remember, but since I have been a member since birth I never really thought about it. Until you get a job and start paying taxes it does not matter at all. It has no impact on my life at all that I am a member. Then a site like this comes along and points out how you do it and how easy it is to leave the church. Then I started thinking, "This is not something I should pay any money to, since I do not believe in it.".

That is what got me to do it and I would guess it is the same for a lot of people. Sweden (and Finland also I suppose) is so secular that a majority of members of the church are not religious at all, and are only members out of habit since birth. These are the people that are now leaving

I am not going to argue that this is or is not a working free market, but I'd like to point out that the selling price not only covers the manufacturing cost. The selling price must also make up for R&D costs.

Notice how the summary does NOT say all Facebook users are narcissist or have low self-esteem.

Causality. Sometimes it is important...

FTFA:

The study doesn't go so far as to say that all heavy users of Facebook are narcissists or people with very low self-esteem, but that both those with a strong and weak sense of self use Facebook to assert their best view of themselves.

But this is not that important in a theater. You can't really move around in the theater except for moving your head a few centimeters to each side. I would think most people don't move their heads around to any significant degree while watching movies.
Also, the screen is really far away and few objects are so close that moving your head would show anything useful.

What degraded the 3D effect for me is when stuff floating in the air move off screen. Its like when you look through a window. Stuff behind the window your brain expect to disappear but things in front of the window are expected to move in front of the window frame. This is the reason I think 3D-TV will not be that good. Your "window" is very small so this effect will be much worse. Also the shorter distance to the TV will increase the 3D effect you expect when moving your head around.

A side note for us who get subtitles on the movies. The subs are placed "on the screen", with no 3D effect. When there are 3D objects in front of the screen, the subs are still on top of the objects which completely destroys the 3D feeling. If they would have closer objects partially cover the subs, that would be awesome for the 3D effect.

There are already two filters in place before it reaches /.
First of all, the clear cut patents will not even go as far as a lawsuit.
If it then is really unclear who is right it may have very low news value because "its just another lawsuit". There are probably a lot of these lawsuits. Depending on the company involved these lawsuits may have news value though.

Then there are the "Holy crap WTF are they thinking" lawsuits. They will probably reach the newspapers and then maybe end up here on /.

So sample bias seems very likely IMO.

As with all other professions the quality of recruiters varies greatly. I have talked with a few different recruiters and some of them know exactly nothing about what is a good programmer. They are generic HR people that can do little more than check the bullet points on the CV. To get past these recruiters generally require more bullshit and less actual knowledge.

On the other hand I have also talked with some really skilled recruiters that are dedicated to finding people for tech jobs. One guy had worked as a programmer himself for 15 years before he decided he should do something else. He asked good questions and I am sure he would sort out the people that exaggerate their CVs

Sadly, most recruiters belong to the first category.