I can think of somewhere else to snip first that would probably have a significant effect. (And no, I don't support punishment of "thought-crimes", even though as a parent I can't help but perceive risk from people inclined to such things.)

If you hosted a well known "true black hat" hacker at the conference they would still command everybody's respect purely for their abilities, and everybody would want to hear what they had to say. You take for granted that much of it is going to be a lie, but it's still more interesting and on topic than (say) inviting a politician to speak.

Very nice -- like a marriage of Python and C#. Thanks for the link AC.

Just from what I've seen (not a user yet) Swift seems like an intelligently put together language. But I'd like it a lot better if somebody ported it so it can be useful across multiple platforms. I'm a C# developer who uses Xamarin's platforms, and compiling my code for all the major mobile and desktop platforms is a really good feeling. (Paying Xamarin's licensing fees isn't, but you know how that goes.)

Yeah, spoken like someone who has never had constipation. And looking at that stew the Jedi Master cooked in his little Dagobah hut, I'm not surprised.

With regard to Windows Phone you may have a point. Microsoft and Nokia have really aggressively pursued the low end of smartphones, particularly outside the USA, and have been seeing some traction in terms of devices sold.

However, in terms of profits, it's pretty much Apple and Samsung [running Android]. Bleeding millions of dollars has certainly done something, but I'm not sure what Microsoft's plan for the endgame is at this point.

FTFY

n/t (with unique-ifier that Slashdot demands).

My sister had that done as a Type 1 diabetic with severe cataracts. The cataracts are gone and she jumped to perfect correction of her nearsightedness, although she immediately needed to start wear bifocals for near vision, despite being in her 20's. Not entirely sure how that worked, but that's all I know.

No, they put a few drops of some chemical on your eyes, then wait a few minutes, and the chemical forces your pupils to dilate, in other words the hole at the front of your eye gets bigger and more open. Then they can look inside your eye and see if the retina looks healthy -- it gives them a bigger hole to peer through.

After the procedure your eyes take a while to re-adjust so the pupil stays dilated for a bit. My eye doctor gives patients free eyeshades if they don't have sunglasses with them, as it can be really hard on your eyes to go out in the sunlight with pupils still dilated -- sunlight can be extremely bright and painful. It wears off over an hour or two and your pupils get back to normal.

Can they give "warning shots" for some time period ahead of time to clear the area? Can they definitively detect whether any large mammals are in the vicinity before giving the big blasts?

Actually, even if they can, this sounds really bad, no pun intended. :(

I disagree. We are not entitled to say that a change in carbon will effect a change in net energy that we can predict using simple measurements. One reason is that a change in carbon causes changes in other features of the atmosphere that have a profound effect on the planet's warming or lack thereof. Climate change is chaotic and, thus far anyway, it's been impossible to predict over the long term.

Check out this article explaining why this is complex. For example, changing the CO2 changes the water vapor in the atmosphere, which will quickly goof up your best intentioned "back of the envelope" calculations.

Maybe you're in a different discussion by now, but many parents ago I posted:

So it's on topic for the discussion _I_ was having. Maybe you are talking to yourself. /just-joking

Your faith is strong, but it's misguided and based on popular oversimplifications. Here's Richard Lindzen writing in a WSJ editorial:

There are, however, some things left unmentioned about the IPCC claims. For example, the observations are consistent with models only if emissions include arbitrary amounts of reflecting aerosols particles (arising, for example, from industrial sulfates) which are used to cancel much of the warming predicted by the models. The observations themselves, without such adjustments, are consistent with there being sufficiently little warming as to not constitute a problem worth worrying very much about.

In addition, the IPCC assumed that computer models accurately included any alternative sources of warming—most notably, the natural, unforced variability associated with phenomena like El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc. Yet the relative absence of statistically significant warming for over a decade shows clearly that this assumption was wrong. Of course, none of this matters any longer to those replacing reason with assertions of authority.

Fortunately, the software will have no bugs, and there will never be any lawsuits related to its performance. ;)