Why is it that Ethernet can push 10gbit/s full duplex over a 100m unshielded cable,...

Precision wire twisting eliminates crosstalk and unequal induction.

Seriously. It's all in the twist.

...but USB (2) can only push 480mbit/s over a 5m cable (or 4gbit/s over the same length with USB 3)? Why the hell didn't the USB designers take a cue from the Ethernet cable designers?

Probably because USB is an evolution of serial communication between two endpoints (think RS232c and friends, or the ancient and beloved 20 mA loop) which isn't remotely the same paradigm as CSMACD networking.

These are the same tired and overwrought points y'all have been preaching since the 1970s. Americans don't want nukes, so just give it up. Move on!

Unless, or course, you are in favor of tyranny and ignoring the people's will. In that case, you've got a career in government waiting for you; you'll fit right in!

Do you even know what you're talking about? There are literally NO "sites" using BGP (except inasmuch as sites use routers to convey data back to users). BGP is used by ISPs and Telcos, on peering routers etc.

We use BGP internally here and we're connected to several other enterprises that have large BGP-routed internal networks. We're not a telco or an ISP.

The Nook Color I use in my car (with Torque app) stays connected to a regular USB cable in the dash that only supplies power when the ignition's on. It bluetooths to the ODBC. Running out of battery power doesn't seem to be a problem in a daily driver (which is good, because the car complains if the Nook boots, says the USB draw momentarily goes over spec and wants permission to shut down the USB port).

It used to charge reasonably quickly with the "official" cable and wall-wart ( which are actually very well designed (you can't hurt anything by using them incorrectly, because the cable head is longer so the extra pins don't touch anything if you plug it into a normal (not Nook) microUSB device)) but took forever without the special cable.

Dammit, I think that's my only slashdot first post ever, and it has a grocer's apostrophe in it.

One reason for it's awesomeness.

...printed guns can't make 10. They are not weapons, they are a political statement arguing that controlling the sale of guns is impossible because anybody can make one. It's not true, and the argument is literally blowing up in their face.

We certainly could control the sale of guns; the easiest and simplest way would be to kill every single human. A combination of engineered Ebola derivatives followed by mopping up with automated high-fallout nuclear weapons should do the trick, and you could probably set up for it in less than 50 years.

There are many other methods that would work too, but they would all be vastly more difficult, expensive and time consuming to implement. Universal human enslavement by near-omniscient robotic overlords, for example, would be very difficult to achieve. Forcible re-education of citizens and institutionalized culling of their children to eliminate all those intelligent enough to independently deduce the principles of firearms manufacture would take many generations.

So if you aren't merely posturing, and honestly do want total control of gun sales, maybe you should be campaigning for the extermination of mankind. It's clearly the most achievable real-world method of reaching your goal.

Why do programmers start counting at zero?

We don't. We start indexing at zero (in some languages), because that's usually the offset of the first useful location in an array (ie, addr + 0).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and testing against zero is usually computationally cheaper in hardware. You're right, but you're wrecking an ancient jest.

Female programmers can only count to nine without taking their shoes off, but male programmers can count to ten by just unzipping.

That chestnut's as traditional as "why do programmers always get Hallowe'en and Christmas mixed up", you know? Have some respect for the history!

Atheism is not a "tenet". It is simply the lack of faith in the supernatural.

There are at least a half dozen distinct different forms of atheism. The few that are inherently compatible with agnosticism are not faith-based, but the rest of them quite necessarily are.

But your definition of atheism is easily disproved anyway; absolute statements require only one counterexample. I have no belief in the "supernatural" whatsoever. Everything that exists, exists in nature. I am not an atheist and would resent being called one; I am an ordained religious theist (pantheist, essential monist variety). Therefore your definition of atheism is false, according to the rules of logic and science.

Did you know that there are several atheist religions? Did you know that many atheists believe in the supernatural? No, of course you didn't. We are all subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect; if you decide to study theology you'll be come less confident of your understanding of atheism the more you learn. A planet is smooth as a billiard ball if you look at it from far enough away.

OK, there are larger craters because the crust is thinner on this side, but why is the crust thinner on this side? Mere happenstance, or is it caused by orbital mechanics or some other reason?

One way to make a crust thinner is to hit it a lot.

Works on pizza and iron, don't see why it wouldn't work on moons...

If you've got rsync and bash you can run shootsnap. It's dead simple.

http://typinganimal.net/code/

Oh, wait, you said Windows. You'll have to spend money, then ;)

In days of old, before the Black Ships came and the secret of hose gartering that never ravels was lost and forgotten, Niklaus Wirth figured this out and bequeathed us Wirth's Law.

Back when the building RSX-11 executables larger than one MB that would consistently execute in real time required manually mapping memory for the taskbuilder step, software engineers had to write rockin' code just to survive in the field. We were all computer scientists by necessity. Today, though, the barrier is pretty low; just slap together a bunch of Java modules some anonymous 13-year-old wrote in a GUI and call it programming.

The point is that in many cases someone who is a mathematical genius is a complete idiot in many other aspects of life.

And almost everyone else possesses an utterly unimpressive amount of intelligence. I'll take the "idiot" who actually innovates.

And I will feed him, and care for him, and team him up with a group of hard working plodders, and under my leadership they will build a race of inhuman monsters and take over the world!

As someone who purchases insurance to cover all my properties and belongings, I find it objectionable that my tax dollars go to help anybody who chooses to live near the water.

That's a little too Ayn Rand for me. I'm OK with helping others as long as we're helping them get out of harm's way.
Public assistance to relocate, but not to rebuild. If they insist on staying they can do it on their own dime.

I don't generally see Sisyphus as a model for good governance. :)

I'd happily help the people wiped out by Sandy relocate to safer ground. I'll help them load their belongings into trucks and give them money, too. But if they want to stay I don't think the government should force me to subsidize that decision. It's fundamentally unethical of them to take my money for such futile endeavors; especially when cheerleaders for rebuilding Hello, Governor Christie are ideologically opposed to spending tax dollars that might actually benefit actual poor people.

Love the Laplace quote, BTW, makes a good sig.