" her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Most of history has been written by and about men. Our aim is to bring to life the untold and lost stories of women."

Uh, her story has been told in the media, quite a bit. She was, for example, featured by 60 minutes. She's mentioned in nearly every CS textbook; I've seen her name pop up in movies and anime. Damn near any techie worth their salt has heard of Hopper. Any CS grad certainly has. She has a ship named after her; she was exempted from retirement guidelines, constantly promoted, to become one of the oldest and longest serving officers. She spent something like a decade, hired by DEC, to go around and lecture. She's in Arlington National Cemetery.

Comparing her to Jobs's pop culture fame is idiotic. On one hand, the head of a major consumer electronics company who was a consummate showman and redefined PERSONAL computing, versus someone who worked on mainframes during+after WW2 on languages most of the population has never heard of, and died more than two decades ago, well before personal computers could be found in most homes? When she passed in 1992, I was one of a handful of kids in my town who had a personal computer in the house, and I lived in a pretty well-off suburb of a tech corridor.

The cost of SSL certificates is not in the bits. It's in the security of the private key, some validation in extended verification certs, and the administration work involved in signing your key with the CA's key. "It's just bits" is like looking at a computer chip and saying "it's just sand."

Recommended viewing distance is about perspective, and how much your eyes have to move. Not the resolution of the screen.

Pro users want 8 bit (or better) color and wide viewing angles (this is important because contrast/gamma/color balance doesn't shift with slight viewing angle shifts.)

Gamers won't switch because of 30hz refresh rates and poor response time.

At this size, featureset seems to be jumping back a couple of years at least, which isn't surprising. If you're a programmer or spend all day looking at text, yes, by all means, switch! Ditto for CAD. But if you do graphics/photo work, like to watch a lot of video/animation, or game - wait. For a while. You'll need to wait until ~4K IPS panels come out on the high end, and then trickle down to low end.

I don't own a 4k TV, but I've watched one, when fed a proper 4k source, the difference is, "holy crap, when can I get one of those?!?"

Only if you're looking at it too closely. At recommended viewing distances, 4K resolution is difficult for most of the population to detect a difference in. Up close, yeah, it's obviously going to look astounding, and most people have "too large" a screen for their viewing distance, so in a way, I guess it works out :)

The problem with 4k monitors is that they have slow refresh rates (30hz?), slow response time, and all the usual non-IPS problems like poor viewing angle and color. None of which matters terribly for programming (save response time which might make scrolling a bit blurry.)

This statement makes no sense in light of the fact that the Volt's drivetrain includes a four cylinder gasoline engine.

I'm not convinced it's simpler in the transmission either. You still have three clutches, a planetery and a differential.

And yes, the engine can and will provide mechanical power directly to wheels

if conditions are right.
=Smidge=

That's not how rockets work... it's about momentum transfer, not velocity.

=Smidge=

It's not unintended, that's the point.
=Smidge=

That's not a bug - that's how physics actually works.

Your walking speed is limited no matter what direction to go since you only have one pair of legs. But in a space ship, the thrusters add up using typical vector addition... in all three dimensions.

It was literally a feature, and a good one! The most unrealistic thing about it was only that the top speed was limited, which makes no sense for a spacecraft in a vacuum.

I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere, 'cause real free-floating 3D with proper conservation of momentum would be a real pain in the ass.
=Smidge=

Steel bends, and bends back. Aluminum is the best example, being about three times lighter, but incredibly brittle. Carbon is also very brittle, just at the microscopic level. It'll fray, and slowly degrade until it comes a part -- like most fabrics.

I'm sorry, but you know not what you speak. Aluminum is used on millions of planes for, what, almost a century? There are very malleable forms of steel (like the springs in your car) and very brittle forms of steel (like some kitchen knives.) Go and look at the carbon fiber wings on thousands upon thousands of aircraft.

Go look at the carbon fiber rear seat/chain stays and front forks on millions of bicycles.

People commonly attribute specific qualities to broad material categories like "steel" or "aluminum" like you just did, which is completely ignorant of the fact that all these materials can be engineered for different properties.

Carbon fiber is the most engineer-able material available, just about. Choosing a fighter jet part was pretty stupid, given it was engineered for weight, very occasional use, and lots of airflow, etc. They could almost certainly have a proper ceramic rotor designed for them, but it's probably too expensive or they got sponsorship with AP (given the article etc. this seems likely.)

I love how you pretend that China is the only place where Windows is pirated. I'm pretty sure piracy of Windows is widespread in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and all of Asia.

Deaths versus shootings...are you really that stupid as to not be able to tell the difference? Here's your citation: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=number+of...

4,000 or so people in the US die every year because they're accidentally shot by children, ranging from toddlers to pre-teens.

Youtube is full of examples of the idiocy - many videos of "awww look, he's playing with...*BANG* OH GOD OH GOD"

  Smart guns may not be perfect, but would they lead to 4,000 situations a year where someone's life was in danger and a gun owner couldn't activate it? Probably not, given that there are only about 230 justifiable homicides a year, and 60,000 cases where the gun is presented but not actually used: http://takingnote.blogs.nytime...

So, gun owners: either start being more responsible with killing devices, or face increasing regulation of said killing devices. You want to have your own kids shoot you, that's fine, and I welcome your genes coming out of the pool. The problem comes when my kid comes over to play at your house, you lied or didn't tell me you had a gun in the house, and your kid shoots my kid in the face.

But hey, keep on showing up at restaurant chains loaded for the apocalypse, freaking out people, and helping us pass more gun regulations!

*golf clap*

The multipliers are a complete load of crap. They're supposedly based on demand, yet...I've noticed I can open the app, see a sea of available uber cars, and yet there will be a 2.5x multiplier in effect.