Not for an iPhone 6/7, but possibly for some higher number. That's mostly about marketing though. Hardness effects how easy it is to scratch, but doesn't say much about how likely it is to break. Sapphire is harder than this and was going to be used for iPhones, but as everyone pointed out at the time - that was more about Thinking Different than it was about thinking practical.

A usage cap? What do you mean by this? Why would you need a usage cap to do streaming?

The revolving door argument is accurate, not thin at all, and a very important thing to remember when you have fine upstanding citizens like Meredith Baker getting appointed to office. The corruption goes from regulators to industry though, which is not the position that Tom Wheeler is in.

That does not mean that it's safe to appoint former industry lobbyists. Even an honest lobbyist has spent much of their professional life in close contact with, possibly friends with, industry reps, and the lobbyist's job is to regurgitate industry talking points. Believing those talking points, at least in part, makes a better lobbyist. Going from industry to regulation is less dangerous than the other way around, but the fact that Wheeler seems to be working out is likely a fluke. Someone of unusually strong character, at least for a person in his position (this is not a compliment).

As for finding someone without the ties to industry - this isn't as hard as you make it out. For one thing, why do they need to know all the details of the telecommunications industry before they even start the job? We like to pretend that this is a requirement for every position, but we have tons of CEOs, judges, and politicians who don't meet this standard and when they fail people love to jump on this as the reason. A much larger portion though, are successful. A CEO for example, needs to be able to lead first and foremost. If they can do that much very well, then they may not need to know everything about the company's products and practices before they start the job.

It can't really happen that way. At worst it would be during crunch time only - as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, you develop a resistance and it loses its effect over time.

That said, we already live in a world where use of stimulants in the workplace is expected. As the summary points out, 85% of people use caffeine. Personally, I would love to see adderall gain more widespread acceptance as a caffeine alternative. It doesn't make me jittery or hurt my stomach in the way that caffeine does, the only reason that I don't use it now is cost (and legal threats).

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was saying. Harlem, Jamaica, and Bed-Stuy are the brightest marks there - if stop and frisk was intended to keep poor people inside the poor areas, then it would have to be done more outside those areas than within them.

Just because something can be done, with enough know-how and tools, doesn't mean that you're not being prevented from doing it. When you need a soldering iron just to change a battery or to add some RAM I think you've fallen into this category.

"Being locked in jail doesn't prevent you from leaving, all you need is a hacksaw and some elbow grease. People have been modifying jails this way for a very long time."

This is a very poor characterization of the policies in New York. Nothing about "stop and frisk" or "broken windows" was localized to only poor areas, those were city-wide. You could point out some systemic racism if you want to criticize the targets of stopping and frisking, fine, and if you really stretched it you could possibly make the claim that racism might have been a motivator for implementing the policy rather then the more typical, and more likely, power grab by law enforcement, but stopping and frisking was certainly not a way to contain people in certain areas. Especially since stopping and frisking was happening within the poorer areas of the city with greater frequency then outside of those areas.

As for broken windows... I can not understand why some people are advocating selective law enforcement as a way to decrease police misbehavior. Selective law enforcement is a fast route to a corrupt police force.

Oh, ha ha. You're British or something, and you only take pounds?

You remember when the orange box came out? With an ATI partnership saying that it ran best on ATI cards and that ATI cards would come with a free voucher for the game? No? You don't remember that? Well it happened.

So how exactly might the Bolivian president have died in this situation? A heart attack?

Yeah, I had a vague idea of who Carly Fiorina was previously. I knew she headed HP for a while (with much associated hate around here) and I knew that she was potentially running for office next year, though I didn't know under which party. The summary though is just a long way of saying, "Carly Fiorina has made an announcement: 'I am running for office as a Republican.'"

I'm sure she'll mention the Affordable Care Act soon enough.

What, people don't have hard drives anymore? Why the scare quotes?

Speaking for myself, these sorts of distractions could really be a pain in the butt when they came at a time when we were rushing to get everything done. When they came during the slow bits though, I loved these just as a way to break up the day. Nothing is worse than focusing on just one thing without break or relief, relentlessly, all day long.

If you weren't already at +5 I'd have modded you up for being the only one posting something on-topic, as opposed to just more complaining.

Maybe not "shocked," but I'm a little surprised to see such a difference between sysadmins and DBAs. I usually think of them in the same group, with DBAs being a notch higher by dint of specialization.

Yeah, the grandparent sounds like an American:

Implying, I guess, that he wouldn't pay sales tax if he ordered online. That's how it works in the US anyway.