Android 4.4 isn't really an update for me. Broken SD support is a deal breaker.

Wonder if cyanogenmod will backport the fix? Or is it time to switch from Dolphin to Firefox?

Sounds like you're not aware of what Qt actually is. Qt is one of the oldest, most capable, most portable GUI libraries ever made. It's a little too C++-ish for my tastes, but it's certainly not hipster or craptastic or buggy. It's been around for over 20 years but still feels modern (Qt 5 QtQuick is a game changer), and forms the basis for more than a few large-scale commercial applications. In my mind, particularly if you use C++, it's the only game in town. The only downside is it's hampered by being written in C++. It's really hard to get good up-to-date bindings for other languages that aren't as popular, such as FreePascal, as you have to thunk between the object systems.

As for your Pascal arguments, I use Python for the same reasons. Use what works for you.

The story about the water fountain sign reminds me of the sign at the Foucault pendulum at the uni where I studied. They had problems with people touching the pendulum, stopping it, etc. So they put up a sign that said, "Danger, do not touch! 10,000 ohms." Haven't had problems with people messing with it in many years!

Being a farmer myself, I find that quote pretty funny. Guess he never bothered to actually visit a farm and fine out. I can't comment on the "safe to eat" part but I can certainly attest that yields are much higher, and pesticide application is much reduced with GMO varieties of corn, canola, and soybeans. However with the increase in yield comes increased disease pressure, so overall, with or without GMO, pesticide use is still on the rise and that concerns me, not so much for food safety, but for sustainability and environmental reasons. It's kind of like hospital antibiotic resistance issues.

The blogger also would be interested to know that the majority of food crops we eat (cereals) are not genetically engineered at all; they are bred as we've bred them for thousands of years. The real next stage for cereals is to develop cereals and bacteria cultures that can fix nitrogen. That is going to be a game changer.

As far as "organic" pesticides go, Chemical companies do work on naturally-derived pesticides all the time, but few of them make it to market because they fail toxicity tests (don't want them to kill birds, animals, etc). It's in their interest to develop good organic pesticides because there's huge public demand for it, and a lot of money to be made. But it's a very hard thing to do.

Sorry but that's all just pure baseless speculation on your part and fear mongering. The NSA can snoop SSL traffice regardless of ssl library simply by doing a man in the middle attack. And you'd never know it either, since they would be using a recognized root certificate. So I don't see what this issue has to do with openssl. And If they can brute force sniff SSL, I don't see how other ssl libraries are much safer.

Several of the OpenSSL developers have commented here on slashdot and expressed chagrin combined with determination to fix the problems which years ago were not considered problems--they were bad but accepted solutions for the portability problem. But times have changed, and openssl is changing too. As others have said it's still the most portable, and it is a good choice, and I do trust it. I think their response to heartbleed was admirable. They acknowledged and fixed the problem promptly.

Not sure if this is true, but someone claimed recently that highlight to copy, middle-click to paste was a bug in X originally, but it was found useful so kept. Also, as it currently stands it is a highly useful, but very insecure mode of operation. In effect anything you highlight is immediately visible to other apps running. In today's world this starts to become a security concern, especially if you run something that's not fully vetted and trusted (that's what non-root is for, after all!). Not sure quite how this dilemma will be solved.

Always kind of liked Time Trax. Had an interesting premise, though the execution was a bit flawed. The show didn't last long.

Guess it's not quite Sci Fi, but I always enjoyed the Highlander TV series as well. Not Sci Fi but appealed to nerds all the same. Though the show went way downhill when Richie became an immortal.

The middle mouse button is certainly useful, but I find the scroll wheel being a button is sufficient for me. I don't like Apple's multitouch mouse at all. Real buttons for me, thanks.

But I guess paradigms are changing. In Linux, as we move forward to Wayland, policies regarding the middle click are pushed into the toolkits. I hope they see fit to allow the enabling of select and middle-click paste. I can understand that not all users want it (some actually like the middle-click to start a page scroll), but for those that do, it's so fast and handy.

No, whitespace significance is probably not going to develop any bad habits. I can tell you've not done much with python. The whitespace syntax is excellent at helping one always use structure in his programs. Watching beginners use braces in java without any indenting at all illustrated to me that it's quite the opposite to what you suggest.

I program is several languages and python has never been a liability. The only thing it has done is make me hate how ugly braces make code. That and maybe forgetting semicolons in C.

Why is that? Have you ever used visual basic? For that matter have you seen any basic language in the last 20 or even 30 years? You do realize it's every bit as structured and powerful as Pascal and even c? There are lots of reasons to not to use visual basic but it's clear that you are not qualified to pass judgment here.

You can't really fault him for sticking with what he knows and knows how to teach. Any of us would probably do the same. Yes I'm confused as any of you what he means about python being based on C. But I can't really fault him. He probably (obviously ) has no experience with python. Come to think of it most of you bashing visual basic probably haven't ever used it either.

Seems like Android phones can outspec the iPhone in every way, including megapixels, but none that I've seen have the image quality of the iPhone camera. It's quite embarrassing how good of pictures my friends with iPhones can actually get. Mine are always noisy and blurry. Even with the LED flash. What's crazy is that even Sony, who makes the camera and camera chipset for Apple cannot even get a camera as good on their Android phones. What am I missing?

Package managers are essential, but the problem of distribution remains. Do you want to have to oneget install all your software through Microsoft? For OneGet to be useful it should at least allow the equivalent of Ubuntu's PPA system for adding third-party repositories, and maybe it does. Of course nothing prevents a malware-laden site like download.come from offering their own PPA.

Ugg. xda-developers is a forum of very smart people, but it's a frustrating place to go to find information. Having to read through dozens of pages of posts trying to glean bits of information is rather fatiguing. Especially topics that stretch on for literally years with hundreds of posts. Sometimes the first posts are updated to provide latest information, sometimes you have to read through several pages of comments to find what you're looking for.

Really all web forums just suck, plain and simple.

It's not just a matter of people being idiots or people talking to police without a lawyer. There's a much deeper psychological thing going on here, and that's I think the point of the article. A famous case years ago in Iceland really illustrated this phenomenon. Six people admitted to their role in a murder in Iceland and this was thought to be an open and shut case. Several of the accused even showed police where they disposed of the body, and provided details on how they committed the murder. The problem was, none of them actually had anything to do with the murder, or any murder at all, and all the details they were remembering were not real at all. It's a very long but fascinating read. Yes they were manipulated and badgered (by well-meaning prosecutors who didn't see themselves as manipulative), but the crazy thing is that as a result they convinced themselves that they really did participate in this murder. Was this just a case of over-zealous police and prosecutors? Or was there something more to it?

http://www.bbc.com/news/specia...