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.

Belated, but: thank you.

You're overstating that by a lot. We're not looking at total funding, we're just looking at research. Even if we made the assumption that all of the funding in the science category went to research, the total would be $31.3 B.

I'm surprised by the dead face dicks complaints. I've read enough SMBC to see that as being pretty trivial, relatively speaking. Would be nice to get a little more insight into what exactly upset people (though I can't remember this particular strip).

Okay, I have looked up the GAO report: link

I am not weeping.

I... don't know where to begin with this figure. If "by 2010" you mean the amount which has been cumulatively spent on climate research since the United States was first conceived as a country, I probably would still not believe you. But maybe, at the outside. And only if you adjusted for inflation and you included work to address the 1930's Dust Bowl as "climate research."

That is a staggeringly ridiculous number, and the fact that you would present it here as though it were true, as though it were a plausible thing to say, represents a deep myopia. The total R&D budget for the US for 2015 is $135B, most of that goes to defense research.

Are you trying to suggest that Democrats have never been right-wing? The fact that Southern segregationists were Democratic prior to the modern reformulation of the parties does not make John Calhoun any less right-wing. I don't know what you're trying to suggest with the Lincoln quote, that has nothing to do with anything. Though, admittedly, this whole thread is nothing but mud-slinging... maybe you're just trying to fit in.

I know that established taxi companies are fighting this, and I'm sure that's a big part of why Uber is getting harassed, but Uber is a really sleazy company. If Uber were more sympathetic I imagine there'd be more of a push to defend them.

Look at AirBNB. Same crowd-sourcing business plan, competing with heavily regulated established players, but a wholly more endearing image. They do get some guff, but no where near what Uber has been facing.

Well... Except none of those advantages are exclusive to Steam. I'll grant you mention some that are worse, so I'll give Steam that much credit, but I get all of the advantages that you do from Steam through Good Old Games, with none of the DRM and without being tied to the service (though, of course, I must use the service to get the benefits which go above and beyond the games).

Also: Steam takes a crazy-high-but-now-standard-because-of-Steam 30% of sales. GOG takes the same, but the Humble Store takes 25%, of which 2/5 goes to charity. Now maybe that doesn't matter to a gamer directly, but it sure does indirectly whether or not they realize it. And tying your whole games library to Steam, with DRM lock-in, means that this revenue share is pretty well set in stone. There can be no market forces driving that down.

My lack of excitement is a fact, not an opinion.

Being old enough to have lived through the last VR fad, the Oculus Rift and its imitators hold no excitement for me. On the other hand, some new space combat games would be terrific - Freespace 2 is getting a little long in the tooth. Presumably we'll be able to play them on regular, non-head-mounted displays as well. Just need some new force-feedback joysticks. Don't know why, maybe it's for lack of space sims, but they've pretty well disappeared.

It seems to me that the right approach is incremental movement. I don't have the same problem as the person in the story, but I find that I do much better in paint programs, for example, when I use the trackpad on my laptop then when I use an attached mouse. Part of that is because the sensitivity is lower, but part of it is because I don't rest my hand on the trackpad - so that unintentional motions don't register in the way that they do with a mouse.

With that in mind, a trackpad wouldn't be a bad choice. Contour Design also makes a product called a roller mouse which attaches to the bottom of your keyboard. The intent is ergonomics, but the effect is a pointing device which you touch only when you need it. (I also like their variation on the standard mouse, though it's not a solution to this problem.)

Well, that's certainly a story about Google lobbyists and net neutrality, but it doesn't say what you're suggesting about secret edits sprung on the republican commissioners at the last minute. It says that the changes "came to light" a day before the vote, i.e.: this is when their existence was made public.

It does say that the bulk of the late-stage negotiating was between the democratic commissioners. This makes sense, given that the republican commissioners had already made up their minds about the whole thing, independent of any little tweaks to the language.

I don't think it refutes the Vice article at all.