The Finns are definitely going to give you a run for your money if you play like you did today.

You know... since I've written enterprise applications (singlehandedly, and no, I won't tell you which ones) that dwarf slashdot... I might be tempted to write a replacement, given how bad Beta is and how much people are complaining about it...

How would I do it? In the spirit of Open Source, I'd use PostgreSQL as a database backend, as MySQL or MariaDB is, in my humble opinion, inferior to PostgreSQL.

One reason is the syntax of PL-PGSQL vs. T-SQL. I hate T-SQL compared to PL-PGSQL (or just PL-SQL if I'm writing a Stored Proc for Oracle).

After that, I'd model the database to do what I want, and store what I want, and I'd ensure that the data was fully in 3rd Normal Form.

And if you bitch about joins, I'll hit you with a fucking sledgehammer.

After that, throwing up some PHP to format the page is an afterthought. The critical piece is getting the database right.

The database itself would need to be clustered to be able to scale with the load, and PostgreSQL does a pretty nice job of it.

not really, i dived into dogecoin. but with my hardware i was able to mine 1,000 dogecoins a day which is worth $1.76 as of last refresh. roughly $50 a month with only the electric bill to pay its nice, but i decided the risk is worth investment. i don't quite trust 'asic' devices as the people making a scrypt based asic would almost certainly be making more profit mining new scrypt coins than selling asic for miners. at least until parts start going bad, then it's time to dump them on the market and let the buyers be jipped thinking they had a decent miner.
my current rigs do 170/khash but i just dropped $400 on a gpu that should do 600-800 khash on dogecoin the former is at my 2.2 days a total of 1700 dogecoins, which is as well as a 5ghash asic for bitcoin. mining bitcoin no longer makes sense(unless you have asic and are desperately trying to recoup your investment). oh and i get a nice free game to go with the new gpu. my power supply and motherboard are can do quad gpu, depending on how the initial gpu does i may buy a second and possibly a third. for legal reasons this is all part of my dad's small business. even though my computers are being run to do the work. as i am the only one with decent gpus. you may have heard of max coin so have i, but seeing the mining going on i'd say asic for maxcoin is highly likely. because math is hard and quality information on which exchanges to mine for maximum profit (they can all be converted once they are in your wallet) i am so far sticking with dogecoin.

Just spotted that people are stuffing comments into various stories here for the sole purpose of complaining about the /. Beta.

Maybe it's because I only occasionally visit here, but are people really that hung up on the current design?

Hell, I can remember when /. didn't even bother with any testing, period, just shoved changes straight onto the production servers. Fun times. (Not)

Having looked at the Beta, it seems to me a damn sight cleaner that some news sites I can think of*. Ok, the comment view controls could use some refining, but that's the whole point of beta-testing, right?

(*I still have nightmares about pre-2000s ZDNet. Makes the current design look almost pleasant by comparison.)

Things are going fairly well, I think.

I gave up playing WoW. I started playing SW:TOR, but found I didn't have time to play.

The only game I've been keeping up with lately is Second Life.

I've also been getting into Ingress lately. Does anyone else play? I like it because it gets me out of the house (even in these cold northeastern winter days) and I occasionally meet new people.

Horrid.

Think I'm done with slashdot (again) for a while (again).

So I see Slashdot is heading towards another redesign, and there's a fair amount of folks fighting the good fight. While I wish you all the best in your current endeavor, I shan't participate or agitate.

Because the sad truth is, original flavour management already killed off this site almost ten years ago through sheer lack of giving a fuck, and Slashdot's first exodus happened, taking some of the best from this place. Worse, Taco and cronies decided that the best move after that was to spend too long slapping a coat of Web 2.0 all over the place, which had the net effect of getting rid of around half the people who had decided it stick it out. By the time Barry O. was inaugurated, the damage was well and truly done. The only people left were idiots, trolls and the precious few too lazy to jump ship.

So go ahead, flood FP stories with anti-beta comments, create alternative communities but remember: This is well-trod ground. Many before you have tried and failed. Moreover, there's nothing here left to save anyway.

Best of luck.

5+ Years ago I warned people -- and got mocked by the assorted collection of fools we have for leftist trolls around here -- that if elected, Barack Obama was going to be an unmitigated disaster if elected President.

I WAS RIGHT.

From Fast and Furious to the sky high unemployment to the "recovery summer" that never happened to Benghazi to ObamaCare to the continual end runs around the constitution to illegally appointing people to the labor board to allowing a Nuclear Iran... and now in the SOTU he threatens to bypass Congress even more...

Like I said -- he's been a disaster.

The line for the libtrolls to kiss my ass starts to the left.

This is why I stopped paying attention to conservatives long ago: Breathless hype of impending doom, but as you investigate, you find that no matter what technical truth is contained in these overhyped claims, the reality always turns out to be underwhelming at best.

I got my first taste of it back in the late 90s when the big conspiracy theory of the day was FEMA's apparently limitless power during a crisis. Clinton, busy with Lewinskygate, and on his way out, was just waiting for one good disaster in order to unleash FEMA and some sort of New World Order. And then you find out it's just boilerplate shit about responsibility, chain of command, and agency co-operation in order to better respond during an emergency.

And so we come to Dictator Obama and his Fascist Regime, Executive Orders flying out as as fast as his army of statist apparatchiks can churn them out, making a mockery of the Greatest Democracy in the world, like no other politician in the history of ever.

Don't believe the hype.

To be fair though, shame on me. I'm the one got excited then disappointed. No point in blaming the howler monkeys for being the usual idiots on this one.

Abortion in America leaves the United States with a body count comparable to the most bloodthirsty regimes in history. Hitler was a piker compared to the acolytes of Margaret Sanger.

The Prophetic Sanger

The REAL Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger and the KKK

In a previous journal entry, I used the term "in-vitro" where I meant "in utero". I went back and fixed it.

Apparently, the bus ride to Austin and subsequent March For Life made me more tired then I realized. Still -- if it changes just one mind and saves just one life, it's all worth it.

Had he survived his birth, he'd have been 3 months old today. As a result, I'm completely numb and probably won't be posting much over the next week or two. Just in case anyone thought it was going to be another 3 year sabbatical for me.

When does life begin? Scientifically, we can answer this question with a set of straightforward scientific facts:

Every living organism on earth has a DNA sequence, which varies by species. Tiger DNA is not the same as Giraffe DNA. There are some species that can make sterile hybrid offspring (Ligers, Tigons, Mules) due to similarity in the DNA, but the DNA of each parent species is not an exact match.

Therefore, there exists a DNA sequence that is uniquely human.

When determining whether a particular cell, or cells, are alive, we can observe one or more of the following phenomenon -- mitosis (cellular division where the DNA is duplicated), cellular respiration, as a result of osmosis or photosynthesis, etc. We can clearly observe and define life in these parameters.

At the time of conception, shortly after the sperm cell penetrates the egg cell, we can observe mitosis and cellular respiration. It is clear that at a biological level, this new organism is unquestionably alive.

This new organism also has a complete human DNA sequence, which means it is unquestionably, biologically, a human life.

Because of these Scientific Facts (in fact, you could even say "The Science is Settled") Human Life begins at conception, with each new person having the potential to develop into an adult organism.

The abortophile will often question this with, "Well, what about miscarriages? See, even God performs abortions so it should be legal!"

This argument does not hold up to a logical analysis. Sometimes, the process of human reproduction fails and the result is a miscarriage, or premature still birth. Some times, there is no explanation for a in-utero death. The reality is, people of all ages die every day of natural causes. Applied to it's logical conclusion, this argument can also be used to say murder should be legal, because all people are going to die anyway. Clearly, this is incorrect, and as a result, using miscarriages to defend abortion falls flat.

Referring to the unborn child as "pregnancy tissue" or "fetus" or "not really a baby" is also deliberately misleading by abortophiles. My second son was born too early, and died as a result. There was no question at all, just by looking at him, anyone could tell that this was unquestionably a tiny little boy.

The next argument made by pro-abortionists is often the fact that the unborn child is dependent on the mother for survival; that it is just a parasite. This is another weak argument, as no one disputes that a tapeworm is alive. While an unborn child does meet the biological definition of a parasite, this does not mean the unborn child is not alive, nor does it mean the child is not human. Furthermore, the average 6 month old is also dependent on the mother for care, and this is not unique amongst humans. Young being dependent on parents is a common trait amongst mammals and some other groups as well - birds, for example, care for their young. Furthermore, some Democrats consider people to be dependent children up to age 26.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that abortion is the ending of a human life through non-natural means. It is killing a person (and in the case of the mother, wounding her as well). This ending of an innocent life can not be justified in cases of rape or incest, as the child had no control over it's creation, and does not deserve a death sentence for being conceived under horrible circumstances.

From a medical ethics perspective, the only time an abortion can be justified is when the life of the mother is at risk. The reality of this situation is that BOTH lives are at risk, and the goal is to save the lives you can â" in this case, the mother's life -- because if the mother's life ends, the child's life does as well. Any other case -- there is no moral, medical, ethical, or any other reason to justify abortion. It is not a "medical procedure", it is a crime that when carried out successfully leaves 1 human life dead and the mother wounded.

So a question that often comes up in numerous gun forums is: What caliber bullet is the best?

Short Answer: The one you can handle the best -- where you have an accurate grouping -- plus, any gun is better than no gun if you find yourself in a situation where you need it.

Long Answer: The one rule of Hand Guns is that "stopping power" is largely a myth. Bad guys are stopped one of two ways - hitting a critical organ (heart, brain, spinal cord), which in the case of the heart could still give the attacker as much as 30 seconds of fight left in them -- or, puncturing enough holes so the attacker bleeds out and passes out from loss of blood pressure.

Compared to rifles and shotguns, all hand guns suck.

But since you can't conceal an AR-15, here's my opinion on some of the various handgun calibers and why I would or wouldn't recommend them for self defense / concealed carry.

First -- just forget about .50 Cal or .44 Magnum. You're not going to find a small frame gun to conceal chambered for these rounds. (No matter how awesome they may be.)

Second -- no matter what caliber, do not carry FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) rounds. In a number of states, Texas included, you are responsible for the round. If it goes all the way through a bad guy and hits an innocent person, you're on the hook. For self-defense, you want a round that's going to hit the bad guy, expand, and stay in them causing as much damage as possible. So buy and carry some form of expanding round. Remington Golden Sabre Hollowpoints are good, so are Federal Hydra-Shoks and Hornady Critical Defense rounds.

Now one to some of the more popular rounds.

.45 ACP -- This is what I carry in my everyday carry gun (a Springfield XDS). I am physically strong enough to more than handle the gun, and the .45 ACP is a heavy, slow round (compared to the 9mm and .40 S & W) but leads the pack in FBI statistics in "one shot stops". For a handgun round, the .45 ACP is a pretty devastating round. However... the recoil can be a bit much, and if you aren't strong enough to reliably control the gun, it's not for you. If you can, .45 is the way to go.

.40 S & W: Sometimes called the .40 slow and weak when compared to it's 10mm sibling, the .40 caliber round is also an effective round. The recoil tends to be a little sharper in pulling up as opposed to the .45 (where the recoil is more of a back push) but some people can handle the .40 better than the .45. It's a good choice.

9mm: The 9mm round is often denigrated, but the fact is I used to carry a 9mm as my everyday carry until I bought my concealable .45. The 9mm is smaller, but faster, than the .45 and the .40, and carrying a hollowpoint round here is even more critical. However, 9mm often takes 2 shots to stop, so if you're going to carry a 9mm (or any other gun, really) practice is very, very important. Double-Tap!

That's it. That's the, uh, unholy trinity of hand gun rounds that I'd recommend.

The rest are too small in my opinion. And no, I especially recommend against a .357 magnum -- it's a small bullet (even smaller than the roughly .38 9mm round) and much, much faster. Even with an expanding round I think the risk of the bullet passing through the target and wreaking havoc on innocents is too great. .380 ACP, .38 Special, .22 -- better than nothing, but unless you hit a vital organ you might just piss the person off.

Home defense? IF you can handle the recoil, get a shotgun. Otherwise, or if you're married, the AR-15 is an excellent choice. Or even better -- get both! I have one of each, as my wife is not physically strong enough to reliably handle the 12 gauge boomstick. The AR-15 on the other hand, has very little recoil (part of why they're so popular) and most women can easily handle it. Plus, most magazines are 30 round capacity (and MagPuls are awesome). The AR-15, despite the claims of our mentally retarded Vice President, is EASIER, not harder, to handle than a shotgun.

For the AR-15, you can buy expanding rounds, typically both Hollowpoint and Softpoint (especially in .223 Remington - but be careful here. If your rifle is not rated for the 5.56x45 NATO rounds, DON'T USE THEM IN YOUR RIFLE. However, if your rifle is rated for 5.56 NATO (like mine is) you can use either 5.56x45 or .223 Remington. The 5.56 round is same bullet, but the 5.56 NATO variety has a lot more powder behind it, meaning a much faster muzzle velocity. For the shotgun -- double-aught buckshot, and maybe for the last one load it with a 1 oz slug. Though be sure of what you're shooting at, that slug may pass through your brick and your neighbor's brick.

Finally -- always aim for center mass. Unless the bad guy has body armor, headshots are stupid. And if you think you can "shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hands"... well, the gene pool is better off without you in it.

Good on you, Utah:
 

In 2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social worker. So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings attached. Each participant in Utahâ(TM)s Housing First program also gets a caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but they keep the apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs modeled on Utahâ(TM)s.

Found a special, for $59 you can get 120 rounds of 5.56x45 NATO, 55 grain FMJ-BT, with a plastic ammo can.

Finally. 1000 rounds cost me $600 earlier, but then again, I also picked up 68 grain green tipped NATO FMJ rounds, so I bought something slightly different. (My AR-15 will obviously handle both with no problem. I prefer a heavier bullet, more momentum usually means more penetration depth.)

For you non-ballistics guys and gals: Grain represents the bullet weight - a lighter bullet will have more range, but will pack less punch when it reaches the target. BT = Boat Tail, which also adds some additional range and in-flight stability. The 5.56 bullet is so lethal because it tends to yaw and fragment once it hits tissue (or ballistics gel) and the path of the bullet because very unpredictable (more predictable in a consistent gel, but far less predictable in a Boar).

Cheaper bullet prices = more range time for me. A day at the range is always a good day.