There is something in what you say, it can be had when you are working across cultural and language bounds, and you can never please everyone all the time. Making an effort to be civil and polite at a basic level goes a long way though. However since this particular thread is in regard to a specific comment:

Yes, let's all play nice. Everyone have a love in. Never hurt anyone's feelings. Always be diplomatic. And take twice as long to get shit done.

There was no subtlety to his assertion, no edge cases, he (you?) was asserting that the only way to be productive would be to act in a rude and uncivil matter.

And perhaps more to the point, in this particular case of Linus' communication, is there any doubt that is tone and style are somehow a failure to understand cultural differences...

So by the logic the fleets of planes used by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and other mapping companies would need the prior consent of the property owners. The same would be — potentially, depending where you live — of commercial flights over your house as well.

It is legal to look in though someone's window as well. The right of privacy varies between states and country's but as a kind of general rule, the issues becomes when one goes to extraordinary effort to look at something that would not normally be visible. So did the sUAV in question violate their airspace? Did it have an out of the ordinary zoom lens, was it flying in areas planes aren't allowed to fly? Was it violating FAA regulations?

I am sorry but you can be firm and clear and still be civil. I invite you to provide evidence to the contrary. Not anecdotes about a couple of notable CEOs — and there is a big difference between a CEO and a technical lead.

ADA had generics long before VHDL. From the first version of Ada in fact. Stepanov and Musser wrote the Standard Template Library for Ada in 1987 C++ Standard Template Library was first developed in ADA and then ported to C++ in the early 90s.

Just to complete the trivia, Oracle's PL/SQL has a syntax that was based somewhat on Ada.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-use-of-%E2%80%9Ci%E2%80%9D-in-first-person-narration/

This was first discussed in July 2011 at the JVM Language Summit (PDF) link. It was discussed at the most recent JavaOne, and there have been more than a few articles about it.

Google Glass is only an overlay on your vision, not a replacement for your vision. So glass can make an overlay that looks bigger, but it won't replace and scale everything. Oh and it only works when you look up into the hud, it isn't there all the time...

Her iOS loving assistant tweeted for her? Or she uses multiple devices? Or one of a number of explanations that don't involve her being a shill? Or maybe she is? No one here has enough data to say, not that that is anything new on /., but at least theoretically this is a group of people who should know better...

Dropbox only gives 2GB for free and 100GB for 199 a year.

100G on Dropbox is $9.99/mo or $99.00/year. 200G is 199 a year...

But you are paying for backups, file versioning, sharing features, API, reliability etc. I pay for Dropbox because I don't want to admin a box and worry about all of that. For me at least it is worth it. If it isn't for you, then you don't have to use it...

Could that be because people don't really say "hey I did XXX and nothing wrong happened?" I have been using paypal for a very long time, and the two times something hinky happened they were friendly, prompt, and took care of the issue right away. But I also don't feel compelled to write a blog post or start a campaign about it, and I doubt anyone would care.

I suppose it means what you mean by teaching hardware to kids. If you mean using the Pi as an example of hardware they can completely understand, then you are right.

If you mean teach kids to make hardware projects using the Pi, then it is perfectly suitable.

While I am sure there are those who think the former, most of the discussion about teaching hardware I have seen has been about the latter.

Hmm none of those systems have open pins for hardware work, only one is roughly the same size, you can't really install any linux you want on most of them, only one can be run off of AA batteries.

And while you can to a lot with the hardware you mentioned, it isn't the same as having a small, relatively powerful, piece of generic hardware.

Binary blobs don't bother everyone...

You absolutely could get CDE on off the x86. SCO — the original SCO —offered CDE as part of their Unix offering. I used it in the early 90s

Citation Needed. Also I would be shocked if the entire curriculum of my K-12 education, including music, movies and videos*, didn't fit in 4G — with a lot of room to spare. When you are talking primarily formatted text, a gig goes a long way.

*: Assuming all videos and movies are 640x480 or lower, there was no HD and they weren't dealing with the best film stock and projectors.

...for a piddly 400g of added weight...

Piddly? That is most of a pound right there. We aren't talking some trivial difference